Roosevelt Institute

ICYMI: Our top stories of the week ⤵️ ✅ We must build on the Biden administration's progressive economic wins. The American Rescue Plan’s prioritization of full employment ushered in a record economic recovery—helping the unemployment rate stay below 4 percent for a historic 30 months—and was followed by investments in industry and infrastructure through the Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS and Science Act, and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. A revitalized National Labor Relations Board is standing up for labor power and supporting workers’ right to organize, and an aggressive Federal Trade Commission is taking a relentless and innovative approach to antitrust enforcement. ✅ We can make industrial policy work for workers—our new report and latest webinar examine this issue by assessing local labor markets in five communities: Georgia, South Carolina, Michigan, Louisiana, and California. Read more in our #RooseveltRundown: https://lnkd.in/gHp2rzie

Two recent articles are perfect representations of a neoliberal push to deregulate clean energy development with the ultimate consequence of maximising short term profit for developers at the cost of a unsustainable pathway of wind/solar development that causes entirely avoidable local damage and draws even worse community opposition. This piece from Alan Finkel argues biodiversity protections should be slashed and burned to make way for wind and solar that destroys the local environment on the grounds of a "global" biodiversity benefit. This thinking fails to recognise that we don't have to sacrifice the local to help the global - and in fact, the two are complementary. https://lnkd.in/dC4HRu96 The Business Council of Australia, a group that includes several large fossil fuel companies and which has form in opposing good, well-designed climate policy (it once described a weak 45% by 2030 target as "economy wrecking") makes a similar bunch of arguments: the only possible pathway for past wind and solar growth is through environmental destruction. https://lnkd.in/deeNNd8Y As it does in the US, calls to deregulate infrastructure development and allow railroading and fast-tracking are extremely short-sighted, and have the dual effect of also speeding up new fossil fuel projects while increasing hate, friction and opposition to destructive, corporate-driven clean power projects. We have to be thinking here decades-long development, not the next few months. False dichotomies have incredible destructive power in ensuring we fail to imagine pathways that are both fast and environmentally/socially sustainable. This Roosevelt Institute report is a fantastic progressive take on permitting reform; one that puts forward a plan that prioritises the long road of energy system transformation, not the next quarterly report for shareholders.: https://lnkd.in/dD6U5G9Q

On the heels of President Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race, it’s imperative that we keep the more progressive economic approach we’ve seen in the last four years going—and think even bigger. As our President and CEO Felicia Wong writes: “We know now what we didn’t know before: that markets aren’t an end in themselves, and that economic power tends to concentrate if left unchecked. This is why we need more muscular government power.” She adds, “the progressive policies enacted throughout the Biden administration have ensured that more people have better jobs and have shown what government is capable of.“ The Biden admin has deployed long-neglected tools—like infrastructure and public investment—to address some of today’s biggest challenges. Read more on the economic legacy of the Biden years, and the path forward: https://lnkd.in/g5ktv5xM

We have two exciting webinars this week that we hope you can join! 🏗️ Tomorrow, in partnership with the Urban Institute, join us for "Building the Future: Collaborative Workforce Strategies for Industrial Policy Investments" as we launch new research with actionable recommendations for communities receiving significant investment through industrial strategy programs like the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Featuring: ▶️ Lael Brainard, White House National Economic Advisor ▶️ Ali Bustamante, Director of the Worker Power and Economic Security Program, Roosevelt Institute ▶️ Elisabeth Jacobs, Senior Fellow, Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population, Urban Institute ▶️ Madeline Janis, Co-Executive Director, Jobs to Move America ▶️ Davante Lewis, Louisiana Public Service Commissioner ▶️ Samantha Smith, Strategic Adviser to the President for Clean Energy Jobs, AFL-CIO ▶️ Moderated by: Josh Eidelson, Bloomberg 👁️ On Thursday, join us for "Envisioning the Good Life: The Need for a Progressive Vision." We will discuss the need for progressives to ground their politics and policy decisions in a bold vision of what it means to live well to combat the Right’s effort to leverage mass culture to advance its vision of what society should look like. Featuring: ▶️ Keynote Address: David Dayen, The American Prospect ▶️ Deepak Bhargava, President, THE JPB FOUNDATION ▶️ Johanna Bozuwa, Executive Director, Climate and Community Project ▶️ Harry W. Hanbury, filmmaker and writer ▶️ Daniel HoSang, Professor of American Studies, Yale University & Fellow, Roosevelt Institute Registration links in the comments below 👇

ICYMI: Our top stories of the week ⤵️ ✅ NEW report from our climate fellow, Kate Aronoff: *The fight for a greener future requires ending the use of fossil fuels* ▶️ The energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables is not only necessary, but must be managed by the state. Without state intervention, the private sector may offload its risks onto the public. ▶️ ▶️ Aronoff lays out a framework for harnessing state power to wind down fossil fuels. ✅ NEW op-ed from our President & CEO Felicia Wong & SEIU's President April Verrett in Capitol Weekly: *California needs a public banking option* ▶️ Five percent of households in the US lack bank accounts, and another 14 percent rely on predatory nonbank alternatives. On top of that, research shows that banks offer worse terms to Black and Latinx customers. ▶️▶️ CalAccount would not only provide these communities with access to financial services, but could inspire and inform the dozens of city and state legislatures—and even federal policymakers—looking to expand access to basic no-cost banking. Read and learn more in this week's #RooseveltRundown: https://lnkd.in/gp-GqMag

NEW 📄 Public clean energy investments alone won't cut it—We need government intervention to phase out fossil fuels in order to meet our decarbonization goals. ⛽ In our latest report, Roosevelt Fellow Kate Aronoff provides a policy roadmap for an equitable & publicly managed fossil fuel wind-down. 💡 Key arguments: ▶️ The US’s continued subsidizing of the fossil fuel industry is in direct conflict with its recently enacted measures in the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS and Science Act to decrease emissions through public investment in clean energy. ▶️ To rectify this tension, policymakers will need to make creative use of existing authorities and create new institutions to oversee a managed, just, and orderly decline of the fossil fuel industry that puts workers and communities at the center. ▶️ No incentive will convince fossil fuel companies to abandon their core business model in time to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. ▶️ Government involvement in the energy sector is not an anomaly—it’s happened throughout US history and around the world. The question isn’t whether the US shapes the energy sector, but toward what end—necessary decarbonization or continued reliance on fossil fuels. ▶️ A publicly managed fossil-fuel phase-out requires expanded state capacity. The federal government should establish new public institutions to manage and mitigate the risks posed by continued fossil fuel production, redirecting existing state resources and adopting a coordinated industrial strategy. Read the full report ⤵️ https://lnkd.in/gNVuDgme

🚀 Come work with us! Our communications team is hiring an editorial manager tasked with: ▶️ Editing and managing production processes of Roosevelt content ▶️ Guiding and providing feedback to freelance editors and designers ▶️ Creating communications content including email newsletters. Apply or share with a friend today ⤵️ https://lnkd.in/gSke_9hT

🎯 "The American Dream shouldn’t come with a hidden agenda or unexpected fees." Yet, nearly 15 million families—predominantly Black, Hispanic and/or low-income—have limited formal access to the banking system, largely due to the rise of extractive fee schemes, from overdraft fees to insufficient funds fees. For Capitol Weekly, Roosevelt's President & CEO, Felicia Wong, and SEIU's President, April Verrett, argue for creative action to tackle this problem, specifically pointing to public banking options like #CalAccount as apt solutions. "Tackling generational poverty and closing the state’s widening wealth disparities will take bold, creative action. By implementing CalAccount, California can give working families access to their own hard-earned money without fees or penalties – infrastructure that is sorely needed to build an equitable, just, and inclusive California economy." Check out their full op-ed! https://lnkd.in/dYt6z5G3

🗓️ Mark your calendars! Thursday, July 25, join us for a webinar discussing the question: what is the progressive vision of what it means to live a #GoodLife? The event will build on our report released earlier this year exploring neoliberalism as a cultural project that's lead to isolation, shame, and despair, as well as our recent follow-up essay series in The American Prospect, "Imagining the Good Life." 💡 Our keynote address and panel discussion will share various perspectives on critical components of a progressive vision of the good life, the role of culture, policy, and politics, and the strategies we need to get us there. Register today! ⤵️ https://lnkd.in/eK5q9MNh

Next public Unjust Debts event, hosted by the Roosevelt Institute, is free and virtual and I hope you will register to join us. https://lnkd.in/eB6jV64K