Departments

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Economic Policy

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    4/14/2021

    How Domestic Labor Became Infrastructure

    Writer Moira Donegan argues that including funding for care workers in the infrastructure bill is eminently reasonable; feminist intellectuals for decades have argued that this work is essential to the broader economy, so funding it and supporting it makes sense economically and to recognize the labor of women. 

  • SOURCE: The New Yorker
    4/6/2021

    The Meaning of the Democrats’ Spending Spree

    by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

    Joe Biden supported a balanced budget amendment in 1995, ran as the "establishment" candidate in the Democratic primaries, and has been a regular advocate of bipartisanship. So why is his administration proposing the massive American Rescue Plan Act, and showing a willingness to act without securing Republican cooperation? A tour of recent history can explain. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    3/29/2021

    Government has Always Picked Winners and Losers

    by David M.P. Freund

    Government action has always been tied to economic growth, and always involved policy choosing winners and losers. Policies proposed by the Biden administration as part of the COVID recovery aren't inserting the government into the market, they're changing the parties favored by government policy. 

  • SOURCE: Common Dreams
    3/15/2021

    The U.S. Government Should Promote the General Welfare

    by Lawrence Wittner

    The preamble of the Constitution states that the federal government was established "to promote the general welfare." The Democratic Party, for its own good and that of the nation, must aggressively seize that mantle now. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    3/17/2021

    Manufacturing Isn’t Coming Back. Let’s Improve These Jobs Instead

    by Gabriel Winant

    Instead of focusing on infrastructure projects, the federal government should act to improve the pay and working conditions of medical and care workers, who have been a growing share of the American working class for decades. This would make poorer and older Americans healthier as well. 

  • SOURCE: Public Seminar
    3/11/2021

    The United States Is Picking Up Where The Great Society Left Off

    by John Stoehr

    Comparing the recent COVID relief bill to the 2009 bailout of the subprime crisis shows a rapid turn away from the Republican and New Democratic consensus that social welfare assistance must be tied to work and limited to people who are "deserving."

  • SOURCE: Talking Points Memo
    3/8/2021

    A Living Wage Should Be A Constitutional Right

    by John A. Gronbeck-Tedesco

    "It is time we invert John F. Kennedy’s famous dictum (“Ask not what your country can do for you …”) and ask what can the country do for us?"

  • SOURCE: New York Magazine
    2/8/2021

    The Forces That Stopped Obama’s Recovery Will Not Stop Biden’s

    by Jonathan Chait

    Has the bipartisan Washington elite preoccupation with budget deficits faded since the Obama Administration's troubled efforts to promote economic recovery in 2009? Will austerity wreck Biden's goals too? Jon Chait says that moment has passed. 

  • SOURCE: The Week
    1/26/2021

    Democrats are getting Chuck Grassleyed

    The Senate negotiations over the Affordable Care Act and the 2009 Recovery Act are not ancient history. It remains to be seen if Senate Democrats can learn from them. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
    9/4/2020

    The Depression-Era Lessons That Can Solve Today’s Evictions Crisis

    by Anya Jabour

    Social workers and researchers Edith Abbott and Sophonisba Breckinridge conducted an important study of evictions in Chicago during the Great Depression and advocated for federal support for a minimum standard of living including housing. The looming eviction crisis demands similar big thinking.