Note: The Roosevelt Rundown will be on hiatus until
January 8. Have a safe and happy holiday season, and see you back here
in 2021!
The Case for Progressive
Stimulus
Today’s possible stimulus
agreement—long overdue and short on necessary relief—misses the
mark.
As the COVID crisis rages into a
new year, long-term unemployed people, struggling Black and brown
communities, and cash-strapped state and local governments will need
more support.
In a new suite
of issue briefs,
Roosevelt experts outline the way forward.
Two key principles should shape
future stimulus spending, Roosevelt’s Suzanne Kahn writes in the
foreword to the briefs:
- “Stimulus dollars must be large
enough and long-lasting enough to effect structural changes to our
economy and public institutions”; and
- “Funds should be conditioned on states and other recipient
institutions implementing policies that actively fight corporate
concentration, empower workers, dismantle racist institutions, and
decarbonize our economy, along with other progressive
priorities.”
As Roosevelt Fellow J.W. Mason
argues in Preventing
Another Lost Decade: Why Large Federal Deficits Should Be Welcomed,
Not Feared, in Today’s Economy, the central problem in today’s economy is
too little spending.
In A
Green COVID-19 Recovery: Lessons from the
ARRA,
Roosevelt Director of Climate Policy Rhiana Gunn-Wright and Senior
Research Associate Kristina Karlsson explore what the 2009 American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act can teach policymakers crafting
climate-minded stimulus today.
And in A
True New Deal for Higher Education, Kahn, Jennifer Mittelstadt, and Lisa
Levenstein discuss how stimulus can be designed to universalize access
and remediate racial inequality in higher ed.
A common thread: In rescuing our
economy in the near term, we can and must invest in longer-term, more
equitable prosperity.
The Embedded Policy
Choices of AI
Artificial intelligence is here to
stay. And as the federal government increasingly deploys private AI
technology across agencies, ethics-driven procurement policy will be
vital. David S. Rubenstein explains in a new Great Democracy
Initiative paper:
“AI systems are embedded with
value-laden trade-offs between what is technically feasible, socially
acceptable, economically viable, and legally permissible. Thus,
without intervention, the government will be acquiring technology with
embedded policies from private actors whose financial motivations and
legal sensitivities may not align with the government or the people it
serves.”
Read Rubenstein’s recommendations
in Federal
Procurement of Artificial Intelligence: Perils and
Possibilities.
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