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People Need Stimulus
COVID-19 cases are rising. Job growth is
slowing.
As CDC Director Robert Redfield describes
it, this winter could be “the most difficult
time in the public health history of this
nation.”
Yet nearly nine months after the
CARES Act’s passage, Americans continue to wait for new stimulus and
fear the end-of-year
expiration of
vital benefits—from unemployment assistance to eviction
bans.
People need stimulus now. And the
greatest risk—as a groundswell of economists argue—is doing too little
and causing harm that lasts well beyond this crisis.
“The risk of overdoing it is less
than the risk of underdoing it,” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell
told
Congress this
week. “People are always worried about doing too much, and you look
back in hindsight and say, 'Well, we didn’t do too much. We might’ve
done a little more and a little sooner.’”
In a Project Syndicate op-ed,
Roosevelt Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz
explains why debt
shouldn’t be a concern: “The US desperately needs large rescue
programs . . .”
“The resulting debt from increased
spending should not be viewed as a hindrance, given the enormous cost
of doing too little. Besides, with interest rates near zero and likely
to stay there for years to come, the costs of servicing new debt are
exceedingly low.”
If this Congress (or the next)
fails to act, President-elect Joe Biden still has a powerful option to
provide relief and reduce
racial inequities.
“Executive action on student debt cancellation feels like one of the
most accessible executive actions to stimulate the economy at the
moment,” Roosevelt’s Suzanne Kahn tells
Time magazine.
Employer Power and
Employee Skills
With millions at risk of long-term
unemployment, some policymakers and practitioners have prioritized
workforce training to address what they describe as a “skills gap.”
But as Roosevelt Fellow Suresh Naidu and labor economist Aaron
Sojourner explore in
a new report, that
premise is flawed.
“Employers’ complaints about
‘skills gaps’ may be better explained by their power in the labor
market (‘monopsony’) and resulting unwillingness to raise wages to
increase supply. Just as monopolists look for more customers while
reducing quantity and raising prices, monopsonists look for more and
better workers while paying low wages and refusing to raise
them.”
Next Thursday, December 10,
join
the authors for a webinar discussion about their research and
findings.
- Featured
panelists: Amanda Cage (President & CEO, National Fund for
Workforce Solutions; Member, WorkRise Leadership Board), Lenore
Friedlaender (Assistant to the President, 32BJ SEIU), and Howard
Rothschild (President, Realty Advisory Board on Labor
Relations)
- Moderator: Elisabeth Jacobs (Acting Executive Director,
WorkRise; Senior Fellow, Center on Labor, Human Services, and
Population, Urban Institute)
Public Investment
Reimagined
In a roundtable published by
The American
Prospect this week,
Roosevelt experts reacted to Saule Omarova’s proposal for a
National
Investment Authority, which “would be charged with devising, financing, and
executing a long-term national strategy of economic development and
reconstruction.” Read more:
Catch
Up
If you missed this week’s Roosevelt
webinar, watch the full recording now:
Meeting
the Moment: Bold Ideas to Transform the
Economy
- Featured
panelists: Roosevelt President & CEO Felicia Wong, Gunn-Wright,
and Roosevelt Managing Director of Corporate Power Bharat
Ramamurti
- Moderator: CNN legal analyst
and Made
to Fail host Elliot Williams
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