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The Roosevelt Rundown features our
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Don’t Fight the
Boom
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
(D-NY) had a clear message for Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell
this week: Don’t
worry about inflation yet.
“My concern, to be frank, is that a
misplaced diagnosis playing out with inflation could cause the Federal
Reserve to prematurely raise rates and constrain wage and employment
gains that have been beneficial to millions of Americans,” she said at
a House Financial Services Committee hearing on Wednesday.
It’s a concern Roosevelt experts
share: that overly cautious policymaking could weaken a recovery
that’s poised to create millions of jobs and flatten racial and gender
employment gaps.
As Mike Konczal and J.W. Mason
wrote for the New York Times, “. . . having the Federal Reserve ‘pump
the brakes’ on the economy by raising interest rates—does little, if
anything, to solve supply and demand dynamics outside of depressing
demand via potentially sparking a recession.
“It also ignores the possibility of
great news about economic potential: Demand running ahead of what
we’re used to could mean we’re finally in the early innings of another
boom.”
With increased public investment,
like the American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan proposals now
included in Senate Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget outline, we can own
that boom rather than fight it—and create a stronger, more equitable
labor market than we’ve ever seen.
Next week, watch this space for a
new Roosevelt issue brief by Mason, Konczal, and Lauren
Melodia—“Reimagining Full Employment: 28 Million More Jobs and a More
Equal Economy.”
The Child Tax
Credit
Beginning this month, about
39
million families
will receive cash payments as part of the American Rescue Plan’s
expanded child tax credit policies—among the most significant
anti-poverty measures in decades.
The now-recurring, fully refundable
child tax credit is a model for effective policy structure. High in
impact and visibility, it’s likely to activate a passionate base of
defenders, as programs like Social Security and Medicare have in the
past.
That’ll come in handy for the next
frontier: making the expansion permanent.
Learn more about successful policy
design in Alexander Hertel-Fernandez’s “How
Policymakers Can Craft Measures That Endure and Build Political
Power.”
What We’re
Reading
America's Post-Pandemic Rebound Could Blow
the 2009 Economic Recovery out of the Water [feat. Roosevelt’s Mike
Konczal] - Business
Insider
Are US Corporations above the Law?
[co-authored by Roosevelt’s Joseph Stiglitz] - Project Syndicate
We Can’t Afford to Shrink the Infrastructure
Bill [feat. Stiglitz] - New York
Times
The Biden Antitrust
Revolution -
The New
Yorker
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