|
Why We Can Afford a Green
New Deal
Combatting the climate crisis isn’t
just affordable; it can boost an economy that’s been operating below
capacity. As Roosevelt Fellow JW Mason and Roosevelt Senior
Associate/Research Assistant Kristina Karlsson argue in a new
issue
brief, “How do we
pay for it?” shouldn’t be a gotcha question for progressives. “In
short, we can afford to pay for climate policy mobilization at the
scale that candidates are proposing; it can be paid for through debt,
through taxes, and through economic growth. Ultimately, we should not
be debating the cost of candidates’ various plans. What we should be
debating is which proposals will most effectively achieve the urgent
goals of reducing carbon emissions and promoting equity and economic
security.” Read
on.
-
Coming soon: Markets
alone won’t curb the climate crisis. Next week, a report by Roosevelt
Fellow Mark Paul and Colorado State University’s Anders Fremstad will
explore how neoliberalism and the myth of “free” markets have
prevented climate action.
- In other news: “In recent
years, activists around the country, including in New York City,
Boston, Providence, Chicago, Boulder, and Washington, DC, as well as
Northern California and Maine, have been working to transition
utilities to public ownership, which would make them accountable to
the public instead of investors.” Read more from Teen
Vogue.
 Public Power Is the Best
Medicine
“The idea that the high costs of
medicines are the price we must pay for innovation evinces a worldview
that is wholly blind to anything but a marketized approach to
prescription drug provision, despite the ways that such an approach
cannot and will never meet the needs of American patients.” Read more
from Roosevelt Vice President of Advocacy and Policy Steph Sterling
and Fellow Julie Margetta Morgan in “New
Rules for the 21st Century: Corporate Power, Public Power, and the
Future of Prescription Drug Policy in the United
States.”
-
Another angle: “The
last century has shown that the drug industry depends upon the stoking
of invidious divisions—between ‘patients’ and ‘criminals’; citizens
and non-citizens; whites and minorities; Americans and foreigners—to
maintain its wealth and influence.” Read more from the
New
Republic.
 An Unjust Health Care
System
“Every weekday for six weeks this
fall, I had radiation for early-stage breast cancer. October 9th was
my last treatment. This journey has been a lesson in privilege,
structural inequality, and our broken social and economic systems,”
Roosevelt Fellow Andrea Flynn writes for Inequality.org. “Our ability
to care for ourselves during a health crisis should not be dependent
on generous employers or on our zip code. We need more robust public
policies to ensure we all have access to the same paid leave that I
had.” Read
on.
 Don’t Bank on
Facebook
“[Mark] Zuckerberg says Libra will
help the disadvantaged, a highly dubious claim for a massive private
corporation that mainly aims to create shareholder profits,” Roosevelt
Fellow Mehrsa Baradaran writes for the Washington Post. “That’s because the financial system’s
issues are not problems with technology: They are problems of policy.
They should be addressed in Congress and the people’s bank, not in
Facebook’s boardroom.” Read
more.
 Trickle-Down
Tricks
On a special Halloween episode of
Pitchfork
Economics, Roosevelt
President & CEO Felicia Wong and Roosevelt Fellow Michael Linden
explain the scary effects of trickle-down economics. “I’m thinking
that the biggest trick of trickle-down economics is that cutting taxes
for the rich will help the poor,” Wong said. “We know that’s wrong.
The Trump tax cut made that worse—a sugar high for a few and more
insecurity for everyone else.” Listen
here.
|
