Afternoon Must-Read: Jared Bernstein: My Version of the Progressive Agenda Fits on a Little Bag

Jared Bernstein:
My version of the progressive agenda fits on a little bag. Take that, complexity!:
“I was having a coffee with someone at the Corner Bakery…

>who argued that the problem with the policy agendas of people like me is that they’re way too complex. ‘You couldn’t write it down on this little bag, for example,’ he said, a bit haughtily for my taste, as he threw down the gauntlet and handed me the bag…. The topic is: ‘Ways to reduce inequality and generate broadly shared prosperity.’

>I’ll write it all down here …. Full employment! Low-income Households: education opportunity, expand EITC, higher min wage, subsidized jobs (direct job creation). Middle class: affordable higher education, boost manufacturing through lower trade deficit! **High end:&& close wasteful tax loopholes, financial market oversight (fewer bubbles), ‘financial transaction tax.’

>I suppose you could argue there’s more… politicians committed to reconnecting growth and prosperity… willing to write the budgets… reducing the influence of money in politics… financial transaction tax… a tiny tax on security trades, like 0.03 percent… that would raise significant revenue while dampening unproductive volatile and high-speed trades.)…. Protecting what we’ve got, from social insurance to labor laws to Obamacare.

>But… there’s no great mystery to pushing back on the great economic disconnect. In fact, it’s in on the bag.