This year’s economic recovery—eight times faster than that of the Great Recession—is no accident.
It’s a direct result of the American Rescue Plan.
As Roosevelt’s Mike Konczal and Emily DiVito write, “Everything, from rapid job growth on down, was a choice based on prioritizing full employment. That was the right decision.”
That central design choice of the American Rescue Plan has had cascading effects throughout the year. More jobs, higher wages, and the Child Tax Credit have created greater economic security—particularly for those who’ve been left behind in most recoveries, like Black and brown workers. And that greater security has allowed people to find new jobs, demand better working conditions, and take collective labor action, as Starbucks’s first union can attest to.
Because of the American Rescue Plan, the US economy is now projected to reach pre-pandemic levels in 2022—and millions have been, and will be, better off because of it.
Significant challenges remain, as Konczal and DiVito note: “The shift in spending from services to goods has overwhelmed our supply chains and led to surprising inflation. More research is needed to understand how inflation will evolve next year.” (Roosevelt’s Lauren Melodia has some ideas for local, state, and federal policymakers in the latest issue of The Nation.)
“Amid these challenges, it’s easy to take the successes so far for granted,” Konczal and DiVito write. “But these hard-fought political victories deserve a central place in the story of this recovery.”
Read more in “The Year the American Rescue Plan Made: 2021 in Review.”
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