The Year Ahead
Last week, Roosevelt’s Mike Konczal and Emily DiVito looked back on the year the American Rescue Plan made.
This week, Roosevelt Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz looks ahead to 2022—predicting how today’s trends may evolve in the new year, and how the currently delayed Build Back Better Act could drive prosperity for decades.
“The labor market has been disrupted like never before, and some of the changes might prove permanent,” Stiglitz writes. “Workers are demanding more, and this may finally tilt the balance of power toward labor after four decades of capital taking an ever-larger share of the economic pie.”
But as Stiglitz warns, in the absence of further investment, “the waning effect of earlier fiscal measures enacted around the world to mitigate the pandemic’s economic fallout might lead to a weakening of growth.”
Enter the Build Back Better Act.
“. . . over the medium term (and possibly even the short term), the supply-side measures embedded in US President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda are likely to help sustain growth,” he writes.
“More and better daycare facilities will enable more women to join the labor force; doing more to control the pandemic will reduce fears about working and reopening schools; and investments in better infrastructure will reduce the costs of moving goods and people.”
Learn more about the opportunities and threats 2022 could bring in Stiglitz’s “No Wiggle Room Ahead.”
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