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The Case for a True New
Deal
President-elect Joe Biden’s newly unveiled
$1.9
trillion stimulus plan would be a major leap
forward, and an immediate salve for those who’ve suffered the worst of
this pandemic.
In the coming months, millions of
people—including tipped workers—could receive a higher minimum wage.
They could receive their COVID vaccine soon, and for free. They could
receive the funds they need to sustain their livelihoods and take paid
leave when they need to. And state and local governments could get the
relief necessary to function and maintain payrolls.
More durable and structural
changes—automatic stabilizers, heavier investment in green stimulus,
recurring cash payments—could and should be on the
horizon.
As Biden noted last week, we can’t
afford to spend too little. "Every major economist thinks we should be
investing in deficit spending in order to generate economic growth,"
he told reporters. "If we don't act now, things will get much worse
and harder to get out of the hole later. So we have to invest now . .
. There's a dire, dire need to act now."
This moment demands big thoughts,
bold solutions, and equitable systems. It demands new policy
frameworks and real transformation: in short, a True New
Deal.
On Pitchfork Economics,
Bharat Ramamurti—incoming deputy director of the Biden
administration’s National Economic Council—chatted with Nick Hanauer
and David Goldstein about Roosevelt’s True New Deal report, which
proposes nine
essential policies to address the COVID crisis and
restructure our economy. Listen
here.
Freedom from the
Market
In his just-released book,
Freedom
from the Market: America’s Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of
the Invisible Hand, Roosevelt Director of Progressive Thought Mike Konczal traces
the history of the US relationship with markets and charts the path to
freedom.
“This book argues that true freedom
requires keeping us free from the market. In some places this will
require the government to provide key services directly and
universally, rather than requiring citizens to rely on the
marketplace,” Konczal writes.
“Elsewhere it will mean suppressing
the extent of the market, such as the number of hours we work or the
ability of business to discriminate against their customers . . . But
in all cases market dependency is a profound state of unfreedom, and
freedom requires checks and hard boundaries on the ways markets exist
in our society and in our lives.”
In a Boston Review op-ed,
Konczal explains why time
is the universal measure of freedom.
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