Category: Vision 2020

Economic policy guides to reduce inequality for the 2020 U.S. election-year presidential and congressional transition

Posted on by David Evans

Change is coming to Washington, D.C. No matter who wins the presidential and congressional elections in 2020, a new set of economic policymakers will transition into government. They will come to power at a time of immense economic turmoil. A new Trump or Biden administration, and the new Congress, should quickly implement evidence-backed policies that reduce economic and racial inequality in order to spur strong, stable, and broad-based economic growth. This post, and our entire Vision 2020 initiative, is a guide for how to do just that, especially in light of the continuing negative effects of the coronavirus recession.

In addition to new lawmakers, change is also coming from a new, diverse generation of academics studying the economy. They have a new set of diagnoses for and solutions to our economic problems. Old economic orthodoxies have left tens of millions of Americans with stagnant wages and without key pandemic- and recession-fighting tools such as paid leave, healthcare, and adequate unemployment benefits. At the same time, “free market” policies bestowed the wealthiest Americans with exploding wealth and income, rising market power, and falling tax rates. But now, a new generation of scholars, drawing on new data sources, novel methodological techniques, and their diverse experiences, are offering new structural solutions to get the U.S. economy working for all.

These solutions are showcased in our latest book, Vision 2020: Evidence for a Stronger Economy, and in our President and CEO Heather Boushey’s 2019 book, Unbound: How Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do About It. To supplement these in-depth volumes, we’ve also recently published eight policy guides to provide policymakers and advocates quick access to Equitable Growth’s best resources and top experts in key policy areas:  

  • Worker power has declined for decades as firms amassed more control over their suppliers, contractors, and workers, wages stagnated, and unionization rates declined. Congress, state policymakers, and federal agencies such as the Department of Labor can rebalance the current anti-worker policy environment in 2021. Research suggests doing this by supporting unionization, cracking down on employer abuses, and enacting new pro-labor policies such as sectoral bargaining.
  • Universal paid family and medical leave could not be more critical in the current crisis. The United States is the only high-income country in the world that does not have a national paid family or medical leave program for all workers, which is one reason the coronavirus pandemic has spread so quickly through workplaces and communities. Research into states and countries with paid leave programs suggests that the federal government should establish a system with inclusive eligibility requirements, progressive wage-replacement structures, robust job protections, and adequate leave lengths.
  • The United States taxes income from wealth at much lower rates than income earned from working. This two-tier tax system gives preferential treatment to wealthier Americans, exacerbating inequality by income and race. Equitable Growth’s key resources and experts describe the current system and the various ways Congress could eliminate the two-tier system to make taxes, and our economy overall, more equitable. 
  • The market power of U.S. corporations, or “monopoly power,” means consumers pay more for what they need, workers earn less, innovation declines, and small businesses aren’t as likely to succeed. Monopoly power also increases inequality by boosting the wealth of executives and stockholders. Academics and former enforcers suggest strengthening U.S. antitrust laws to counter corporate power and boosting resources for the antitrust enforcement agencies—the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
  • Unemployment Insurance is a bedrock of the social safety net, but unfortunately, policymakers at the state level built numerous problems into the system. These include fragile technical and administrative systems, coverage gaps for independent contractors and those with little work history, low benefit levels, and overly restrictive and complicated program access rules. As the coronavirus recession demonstrates, these issues cause chaos and uncertainty exactly when people most need access to benefits. Equitable Growth has compiled the readings and experts for you to understand the current system and how to fix it, so workers get the help they need.
  • Racial economic mobility and inequality divides are older than the republic itself but have powerfully come to the fore of late, thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement. U.S. economic mobility is declining as inequality is rising. And Black Americans not only are more likely to experience downward mobility than White Americans, but also face systemic and institutional barriers to wealth building, access to credit, and income security. This post explains economic mobility dynamics, systemic barriers for Black Americans, and how to address them.
  • Automatic stabilizers are economists’ favorite tools to combat recessions. These policy designs ramp economic support programs up and down as economic conditions, such as the unemployment rate, rise and fall. Making more economic aid “automatic” means quicker, more sustained support for families in need and less politicization of the crisis. A body of experts outline a suite of six ways Congress could expand automatic stabilizers for this recession and those to come.
  • Small businesses are suffering during the coronavirus recession and need new policies to prevent a wave of bankruptcies. The Paycheck Protection Program enacted earlier this year failed to prevent layoffs and bankruptcies among the smallest employers and did not provide enough assistance to the hardest-hit areas or to businesses owned by people of color. Research suggests restructuring business aid so that small firms can be rescued with the same speed as big businesses and building up public financial systems to improve economic resilience.

The current economic status quo—a devastating recession and underlying fragilities due to sky-high economic and racial inequality—is untenable. Maintaining the status quo is a choice we can no longer afford to keep making. No matter who is in power in 2021, major structural changes are needed. Equitable Growth’s deep bench of policy ideas and experts, highlighted in the above policy guides, can guide the way.

Revamping U.S. small business rescue programs amid the coronavirus recession

Posted on by Maria Monroe
Small firms need to be rescued with the same speed as large firms.

The coronavirus economic rescue programs enacted by Congress this past spring failed to prevent layoffs and firm bankruptcies among the smallest employers in the United States. Existing resources, such as the Paycheck Protection Program, helped firms that needed a marginal boost to get through the worst of the shutdowns caused by the coronavirus pandemic. But the hardest-hit areas or businesses did not receive the help they needed because of the structure, timing, and delivery mechanisms of rescue aid.

What’s worse is that little data are available to evaluate whether rescue efforts have been equitable for Black and Latinx small business owners. Meanwhile, policy interventions through the Federal Reserve have efficiently saved the largest and most well-resourced companies. As a result of these imbalances, the U.S. economy may become increasingly lopsided, concentrated, and less dynamic, harming prospects for broad-based and stable growth and racial equity moving forward.

Revamping U.S. small business rescue programs amid the coronavirus recessionDownload

Heading into 2021, policymakers should prioritize restructuring business aid so that small firms can be rescued with the same speed as large firms. The Paycheck Protection Program should be altered to help firms in high-rent areas, firms that are smaller and less well-connected to the banking system, and firms owned by Black and Latinx entrepreneurs. Longer term, policymakers should build public financial systems to make our economy resilient for the next downturn, including:

  • Increasing the capacity of the Small Business Administration
  • Building a faster payment system
  • Ensuring universal access to the banking system
  • Creating established alternatives to ad hoc business rescue programs via the Federal Reserve

Emergency financial rescue has been primarily a subject handled by the U.S. Congress, the Federal Reserve, and the U.S. Department of the Treasury, through the Small Business Administration. The key resources below provide solutions that policymakers can deploy to strengthen small businesses and provide for more equitable economic growth.

Key resources 

“Broken plumbing: How systems for delivering economic relief in response to the coronavirus recession failed the U.S. economy,”by Amanda Fischer and Alix Gould-Werth

Well-functioning economic delivery systems, like plumbing systems, are essential to stopping the cycle of economic contraction. In this piece, Fischer and Gould-Werth outline how policymakers must invest in our economic infrastructure if our economy is to emerge from the coronavirus recession more resilient. This includes an examination of U.S. small and large business rescue aid programs, as well as Unemployment Insurance systems and U.S. paid leave policies.

“Did the paycheck protection program work for businesses across the United States?,”by Amanda Fischer

As policymakers consider how to keep the U.S. economy stable while efforts to control the public health crisis continue, it is useful to evaluate the early research on the efficacy of the Paycheck Protection Program—most notably, whether the money went to the hardest-hit areas, encouraged firms to keep employees on payroll, and kept small businesses from going bankrupt. It is unlikely that any businesses—and particularly, small businesses—will be able to return to normal anytime soon, and the early evidence suggests that the Paycheck Protection Program is struggling to meet its intended goals. Examining what we know about the program can provide a roadmap on how to deploy aid to American small businesses moving forward, and this piece offers up several short-term fixes, as well as needed structural changes.

“Enhanced U.S. social insurance will be necessary until the coronavirus recession recedes,” by Liz Hipple and Amanda Fischer

Research from former Equitable Growth Steering Committee member Raj Chetty and the Opportunity Insights team finds that U.S. consumer spending fell dramatically over the spring and summer of 2020, driven by public health and safety concerns due to the novel coronavirus and COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. These concerns keep people, especially those in high-income households, from purchasing in-person services. This indicates that until people feel safe engaging again in in-person services, such as dining out or getting haircuts, consumer spending on services will not meaningfully rebound. If policymakers want to fix the U.S. economy, then they must first fix the U.S. public health crisis. In the meantime, Chetty and his co-authors find that investing in social insurance programs—such as the expanded unemployment benefits enacted by Congress in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES, Act—is the best way to mitigate economic suffering during the recession, rather than stimulus measures targeted toward businesses or the rich.

Top experts

  • Amanda Fischer, policy director, Washington Center for Equitable Growth
  • Mehrsa Baradaran, professor of law, University of California, Irvine School of Law
  • Raj Chetty, William A. Ackman professor of public economics, Harvard University
  • Lisa Cook, professor of economics, Michigan State University

To view the other policy sheets in this series, please click here.

Combating the market power of U.S. corporations over workers and consumers

Posted on by Maria Monroe
U.S. antitrust laws, as interpreted and enforced today, are inadequate to confront and deter growing market power in the U.S. economy.

Recent economic research establishes that the United States suffers from a growing market power problem. Market power, often referred to as monopoly power, means consumers pay more for the goods and services they need. Workers earn less. Small businesses have a harder time succeeding. Innovation slows. Market power exacerbates wealth inequality, too, because those who benefit from monopolies—the high-paid executives and stockholders of corporations—are wealthier, on average, than the consumers, workers, and small businesses who bear monopolies’ costs.

U.S. antitrust laws, as interpreted and enforced today, are inadequate to confront and deter growing market power in the U.S. economy. To restore a fair and competitive market, we need legislation that strengthens the law and counters growing corporate power, enforcers who are willing to aggressively enforce laws, and increased fiscal resources to enforce the law.

Combating the market power of U.S. corporations over workers and consumersDownload

Antitrust enforcement is typically handled at the federal level by the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, and federal courts. It is governed primarily by Congress’ century-old policy direction in the Sherman Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act, and the Clayton Act. The key resources below provide solutions for corralling corporate power through these antitrust enforcement tools.

Key resources

“Reforming U.S. antitrust enforcement and competition policy,” by Fiona Scott Morton

Fiona Scott Morton discusses the evidence of increasing market power in the U.S. economy, the benefits of stronger antitrust enforcement, and the law’s overly lenient approach to corporate actions that undermine competition. She concludes with an agenda to confront market power.

“The state of U.S. federal antitrust enforcement,” by Michael Kades

Competition policy in the United States has become a major public policy issue for the first time in decades, but discussion about the current U.S. antitrust enforcement regime has been less systematic. This report examines enforcement activity (the number and type of cases that enforcers bring), the resources Congress provides for antitrust enforcement, and, in the federal system, the merger filing-fee system that has become the primary source of antitrust funding. The report finds that antitrust enforcement is historically low by a number of measures and funding for enforcement has decreased substantially since 2010.

“Joint Response to the House Judiciary Committee on the State of Antitrust Law and Implications for Protecting Competition in Digital Markets,” by Jonathan B. Baker, Joseph Farrell, Andrew I. Gavil, Martin S. Gaynor, Michael Kades, Michael L. Katz, Gene Kimmelman, A. Douglas Melamed, Nancy L. Rose, Steven C. Salop, Fiona M. Scott Morton, and Carl Shapiro

A joint statement to the U.S. Congress by top U.S. antitrust experts. They conclude that outdated and bad economic theory has undermined antitrust enforcement, allowing dominant companies to gain an unfair advantage in the marketplace to the detriment of other businesses and consumers, innovation, and productivity growth. They call on Congress to revise current law to align it with modern economic theory and to fix harmful judicial rules: “The signatories to this letter agree that antitrust enforcement has become too lax, in large part because of the courts, and that Congress must act to correct the state of antitrust enforcement.”

Top experts

  • Michael Kades, director of markets and competition, Washington Center for Equitable Growth
  • Nancy Rose, Charles P. Kindleberger professor of applied economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Tim Wu, Julius Silver professor of law, science and technology, Columbia Law School
  • Fiona Scott Morton, Theodore Nierenberg professor of economics, Yale University

To view the other policy sheets in this series, please click here.

Taxing wealth and investment income in the United States

Posted on by Maria Monroe

The federal income tax does a poor job of taxing income derived from wealth. The root cause of this problem is that the tax code allows taxpayers to defer (without interest) paying tax on investment gains until assets are sold. Moreover, even when assets are sold, the investment gains are taxed at preferential rates. The top federal tax rate on wages and salaries is 37 percent while the top federal tax rate on investment gains is only 20 percent. Finally, if taxpayers can avoid selling assets until they die, the investment gains are wiped out for income tax purposes. The result is a two-tier tax system, where middle-class families pay full freight on their wages while wealthy, disproportionately White families pay reduced rates on their investment income.

Taxing wealth and investment income in the United StatesDownload

Lawmakers in Congress should eliminate this two-tier system by reforming the taxation of wealth and investment income. To do so, they should adopt either a wealth tax or a reformed approach to income taxation, often referred to as mark-to-market or accrual taxation that would tax all investment gains on an annual basis regardless of whether assets are sold. Accompanying reforms to the estate tax—or the adoption of an inheritance tax—are also worth considering. The key resources below detail these solutions.

Key resources

“Taxing wealth by taxing investment income: An introduction to mark-to-market taxation,” by Greg Leiserson and Will McGrew

In a system of mark-to-market taxation, investors pay tax on the increase in the value of their investments each year rather than deferring tax until those investments are sold, as they do under current law. This issue brief first defines investment income and explains how mark-to-market taxation works. It then reviews the revenue potential of this approach to taxing investment income, explaining why a mark-to-market system can raise substantial revenues. Finally, it summarizes the distribution of the burden that would result, which would fall overwhelmingly on wealthy individuals.

“Wealth taxation: An introduction to net worth taxes and how one might work in the United States,” by Greg Leiserson

This brief provides an introduction to net worth taxes, also referred to as wealth taxes. It summarizes how a net worth tax works, reviews the revenue potential of such a tax, and describes the distribution of the economic burden that would be imposed.

“Net worth taxes: What they are and how they work,” by Greg Leiserson, Will McGrew, and Raksha Kopparam

Wealth inequality in the United States is high and has increased sharply in recent decades. This increase—alongside a parallel increase in income inequality—has spurred increased attention on the implications of inequality for living standards and increased interest in policy instruments that can combat inequality. Taxes on wealth are a natural policy instrument to address wealth inequality and could raise substantial revenue while shoring up structural weaknesses in the current income tax system. This paper provides an introduction to net worth taxes, perhaps the most explicit means of taxing wealth.

“The ‘silver spoon’ tax: How to strengthen wealth transfer taxation,” by Lily Batchelder

This 2016 analysis explains the case for better taxing estates or inheritances, and how lawmakers in Congress could do this. Batchelder shows how wealth transfers are extremely inequitable, currently lightly taxed, and that there are several practical solutions to resolve this problem.

“A modest tax reform proposal to roll back federal tax policy to 1997,” by Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick

In the economic boom times of 1997, federal taxes raised more revenue and were a more powerful force for equity. Zwick and Zidar propose several changes that would return the United States generally to this tax system, including increasing tax rates on capital gains, dividends, and profits from pass-through businesses, as well as some additional reforms, including taxing unrealized capital gains at death.

“Taxing Wealth,” by Greg Leiserson

This research paper outlines the case for major reforms to the taxation of wealth in the United States, details different approaches to reform, and discusses the economic effects of these approaches and their relative advantages and disadvantages.

Top experts

  • Greg Leiserson, director of tax policy and chief economist, Washington Center for Equitable Growth
  • Lily Batchelder, Frederick I. and Grace Stokes professor of law, New York University
  • David Kamin, professor of law, New York University
  • Emmanuel Saez, professor of economics, University of California, Berkeley, and an Equitable Growth Steering Committee member
  • Gabriel Zucman, associate professor of economics, University of California, Berkeley

To view the other policy sheets in this series, please click here.

Achieving universal paid family and medical leave in the United States

Posted on by Maria Monroe
Only 18 percent of private-sector workers have paid family leave and 44 percent have paid personal leave through their jobs.

The coronavirus pandemic and the recession it caused lay bare a familiar challenge for U.S. workers—balancing family and job responsibilities without access to paid family and medical leave. When a new child arrives, loved ones get sick, or a serious illness strikes, people need time away from work. But even at these times of joy or stress, bills and expenses will keep coming, and families must find a way to cope with financial uncertainty. While some workers can count on their employers to provide them with paid leave, it is rare: Only 18 percent of private-sector workers have paid family leave and 44 percent have paid personal leave through their jobs. Access to these benefits drops precipitously for lower-income and part-time workers.

This is not a new challenge, but it is often one that families deal with individually—with every household forced to patch together solutions as best they can.

Achieving universal paid family and medical leave in the United StatesDownload

The Families First Coronavirus Response Act, passed in March 2020, provided some private-sector workers with access to federal paid leave benefits for the first time, but the program fell far short of satisfying the needs of the workforce. In 2021, policymakers should prioritize the establishment of a national and permanent paid family and medical leave social insurance system. Evidence from states that already guarantee access to paid leave also suggests positive human capital and economic outcomes for families and the broader economy without meaningful negative effects on employers. Inclusive eligibility requirements, progressive wage-replacement structures, robust job protections, and leave lengths that meets the needs of workers and their families are all important policy design elements to consider in fashioning a paid family and medical leave program that meets the needs of the diverse workforce of the United States.

Key resources

“Vision 2020: The economic imperative of enacting paid family leave across the United States,” by Maya Rossin-Slater and Jenna Stearns

This essay examines paid family leave programs at the state and local level, which are helping to set the stage for a federal paid leave program. The authors then describe the current research on the impacts of paid family leave on workers, children, and employers, with an eye toward understanding the economic costs and benefits of a potential federal program and the key policy levers to consider. The authors also briefly discuss how paid family leave may relate to the growth in economic inequality in America and whether a federal policy could help curb this trend. While paid leave can cover both bonding with a new child and caring for other relatives, in this essay, the authors primarily focus on the effects of bonding leave.

“What does the research say about the FAMILY Act provisions?” by Equitable Growth

This factsheet summarizes the state of research on major paid leave policy issues by looking at the FAMILY Act, one of the most prominent, comprehensive paid leave bills introduced in the U.S. Congress. It summarizes studies on reasons for implementing paid leave, the definition of family members, the length of leave, wage replacement levels during leave, and job protection during leave.

“Paid medical leave research: What do we know and what do we need to know to improve health and economic well-being in the United States,” by Jack Smalligan and Chantel Boyens

Paid time off to address one’s own medical condition is the most frequently used type of paid leave, yet it has received far less attention in the policy debate and research. In this report, Smalligan and Boyens aim to inform future research by first providing background on what paid medical leave is and highlighting important features that make it distinct from parental and family caregiving. They then describe what is known about the expected impact of paid medical leave and the ways in which it could be expected to affect economic and health outcomes, including effects on individuals, public health, employers, and the U.S. economy. Paid medical leave could improve economic outcomes by reducing income volatility, helping workers to return to employment, improving productivity, and supporting labor force participation. Paid medical leave may also have positive effects on health outcomes by improving health management, encouraging earlier treatment, and reducing financial stress.

“Paid family care leave: A missing piece in the U.S. social insurance system,” by Jane Waldfogel and Emma Liebman

Leave to care for a family member with a serious illness, whether that be a spouse, domestic partner, child, parent, or other relative, is more widespread and more frequent than it is for the other types of family leave. In contrast to other types of leave—in particular, parental leave, which has been studied extensively—family care leave receives much less attention in existing research. Its inclusion in policy proposals is also uneven. This paper focuses on reviewing what we know and do not know about family care leave. This paper contributes to an understanding of the need for paid leave to care for a seriously ill family member and the current state of policy and research. Considering the evidence, Waldfogel and Liebman offer implications for policy and future research.

Top experts

  • Alix Gould-Werth, director of family economic security policy, Washington Center for Equitable Growth
  • Maya Rossin-Slater, assistant professor, Stanford University School of Medicine
  • Jane Waldfogel, Compton Foundation Centennial professor for the prevention of children’s and youth problems, Columbia University School of Social Work
  • Jack Smalligan, senior policy fellow in the Income and Benefits Policy Center, Urban Institute
  • Chantel Boyens, principal policy associate in the Income and Benefits Policy Center, Urban Institute
  • Tanya Byker, assistant professor, Middlebury College
  • Christopher Ruhm, professor, University of Virginia

To view the other policy sheets in this series, please click here.

Building worker power in the United States

Posted on by Maria Monroe
Union and AARP members rally in New York City on the city hall steps, March 2016.

Wages have stagnated for most U.S. workers over the past 40 years while the labor market institutions that promote worker power have faltered in a pro-business and anti-worker policy environment. These two phenomena are two sides of the same coin—productivity decoupled from wage growth results in employers more able to exploit workers to produce more per hour worked while undercutting wages.

Labor market policies, such as minimum wages or premium pay amid the coronavirus pandemic, are not keeping up. Meanwhile, labor laws meant to protect collective action and unionization efforts, guarantee freedom from discrimination, and promote workplace safety are not well-enforced. Furthermore, trends such as domestic and international outsourcing and the fissuring of the workplace are changing the U.S. economy in ways our labor market institutions were not built to handle. These trends unbalance power between workers and corporations so that workers are not able to share in the high profits they create and the economic growth they drive. 

Building worker power in the United StatesDownload

Traditional labor market polices, such as increasing minimum wages, expanding overtime pay, instituting prevailing wages, and enforcing anti-discrimination laws and workplace safety through co-enforcement, remain useful and implementable at all levels of government—local, state, and federal. Agencies, including the U.S. Department of Labor, the federal National Labor Relations Board, and the Federal Trade Commission, can make it easier for workers to organize, cut down on independent contractor misclassifications, and restrict the use of noncompete and no-poach agreements, which augment employers’ power over workers.

The United States also needs new policies to address economic power that is further tilted in favor of corporations. This includes new ideas such as sectoral bargaining among U.S. workers in the same industries and the co-determination of corporate governance for U.S. workers.

The pandemic makes all of these policies more necessary, as workers face unsafe working conditions with no voice, and with the likelihood of greater exploitation with rising unemployment and large corporations continuing to profit. The key resources below provide the details for these policy solutions.

Key resources

“Factsheet: How strong unions can restore workers’ bargaining power,” by Equitable Growth

A decades-long decline of unions has weakened workers’ ability to fight for a fairer workplace. About 10 percent workers are union members today, compared to 35 percent of the U.S. workforce in the mid-1950s. Over the past 40 years, the power of organized labor has declined alongside a steep rise in income inequality, the erosion of labor standards, and employers’ ability to dictate and suppress wages. Yet unions still play an important role in shaping U.S. labor market outcomes, helping both union and nonunion members share in the economic value they create. This factsheet details those outcomes, including:

  • Strong unions that benefit both union and nonunion members
  • Workers who are not part of a union today but want to belong to one
  • Strong unions that can counteract employers’ wage-setting power
  • The ability to strike, which remain a powerful way for workers to achieve fair wages and better working conditions

“The coronavirus recession exposes how U.S. labor laws fail gig workers and independent contractors,” by Corey Husak and Carmen Sanchez Cumming

Independent contractors are among the most vulnerable amid the coronavirus recession. Many independent contractors provide face-to-face services. They are either the workers most exposed to the novel coronavirus on the job or those most likely to be out of work without a safety net. Despite being classified as essential, those in the first group often lack the most basic rights and protections, such as sick leave or health insurance. Because they are at the frontlines, they and their families are at particular risk of getting sick. This issue brief describes the challenges faced by independent contractors and policy solutions to help these workers moving forward.

“Factsheet: The PRO Act addresses income inequality by boosting the organizing power of U.S. workers,” by Kate Bahn and Corey Husak

The PRO Act, passed in February 2020 by the U.S. House of Representatives, would address important structural policy barriers that keep workers from joining unions. This factsheet summarizes recent research around unionization, strikes, workplace fissuring, and long-term labor market trends. It demonstrates that the PRO Act, the most prominent labor reform bill to pass the House since 2018, could succeed in allowing more workers to fulfill their desire to join unions, and that this would ensure more equitable and efficient labor markets.

“Aligning U.S. labor law with worker preferences for labor representation,” by Alexander Hertel-Fernandez

This essay shows that steeply declining U.S. union membership does not reflect a lack of worker demand for unions, with nearly half of all nonunion workers expressing interest in joining a union. It shows that U.S. workers value industrywide or statewide collective bargaining and union-administered portable health and retirement benefits, making the case that state and federal lawmakers should change laws prohibiting unions from providing these to their members.

“Rebuilding U.S. labor market wage standards,” by Arindrajit Dube

This essay first examines the evidence demonstrating that raising the federal minimum wage boosts the incomes of those workers at the bottom of the income distribution without any significant job losses for those workers. Dube then explains how establishing wage boards to set minimum pay standards by industry and occupation would also raise wages for U.S. middle-income workers.

Top experts

  • Kate Bahn, director of labor market policy, Washington Center for Equitable Growth
  • Arindrajit Dube, professor of economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Equitable Growth grantee, and Research Advisory Board member
  • Suresh Naidu, associate professor of economics, Columbia University, and Equitable Growth grantee
  • Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, associate professor of international and public affairs, Columbia University, and Equitable Growth grantee
  • Michelle Holder, assistant professor of economics, John Jay College CUNY
  • Terry-Ann Craigie, associate professor of economics, Connecticut College
  • Sylvia Allegretto, co-chair, Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at the University of California, Berkeley, and Equitable Growth grantee
  • David Howell, professor of economics and public policy, Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy at The New School, and Equitable Growth Research Advisory Board member

To view the other policy sheets in this series, please click here.

Improving automatic stabilizers to combat U.S. economic recessions

Posted on by Maria Monroe
Making recession aid more automatic will allow relief to start quickly, making the recession less severe.

The new coronavirus pandemic and the recession it caused show that the typical set of economic policies used to fight recessions in the United States should be designed to automatically turn on and off in a downturn. It is impossible to predict when the economy will fall into a recession and, on the other end, when it will recover. Making recession aid more automatic will allow relief to start quickly, making the recession less severe. It also would commit Congress to stay the course until objective economic criteria are met and the recovery is well on its way.

Improving automatic stabilizers to combat U.S. economic recessionsDownload

Without this commitment, aid for the most vulnerable can be caught up in partisan politics and deal-making when artificial deadlines loom. Many times, as during the Great Recession, vital aid is not renewed, causing the entire economy, and especially marginalized groups and communities, to suffer for years. Instead, Congress could set automatic stabilizers to start as soon as the unemployment rate increases in a recession. The benefits would then phase out and end when the unemployment rate returns to near its pre-recession level. Specifically, this should apply to:

  • Enhanced jobless benefits
  • Direct payments to families
  • Aid to state governments

These automatic stabilizers would allow Congress to focus on novel aspects of the recession, whether they be public health, financial instability, or another cause, without having to relitigate fights over economically vital, previously authorized relief.

Key resources

“The coronavirus recession highlights the importance of automatic stabilizers,” by Greg Leiserson

This issue brief first explains what a recession is and what role public policy plays in fighting recessions, and then discusses a few important ways in which this recession differs from previous recessions. Finally, the issue brief explains why Congress should expand and reform the United States’ existing automatic stabilizers.

Recession Ready: Fiscal Policies to Stabilize the American Economy 

A year before the risks of the new coronavirus and the ensuing recession enveloped our nation, this book advanced a set of six evidence-based policy ideas for shortening and easing the adverse consequences of recessions. With the use of proven economic triggers, aid to households and states would increase through the following six pathways during an economic crisis and only recede when economic conditions warranted.

  • “Direct stimulus payments to individuals,” by Claudia Sahm
    • Congress should create a system of direct stimulus payments to individuals to be automatically distributed when the unemployment rate increases rapidly. Direct stimulus payments to individuals are effective at boosting consumer spending in response to a recession and replace lost income.
  • “Strengthening SNAP as an automatic stabilizer,” by Hilary Hoynes and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach
    • Congress should set SNAP benefits to increase by 15 percent during downturns. Research shows that every dollar in new SNAP benefits spurred $1.74 in economic activity during the deep recession in 2007­–2009. Recipients quickly spend their SNAP benefits, which provides a rapid fiscal stimulus to the local economy.
  • “Increasing federal support for state Medicaid and CHIP programs during economic downturns,” by Matthew Fiedler, Jason Furman, and Wilson Powell III
    • Congress should automatically increase the federal share of expenditures on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program during recessions. Declines in state revenues and increased demands on government programs, together with states’ balanced budget requirements, lead states to reduce spending, increase taxes, or both, during and after recessions. Those responses deepen recessions, slow subsequent recoveries, and deprive residents of valuable public and private goods. This proposal is designed to offset approximately two-thirds of state budget shortfalls.
  • “Infrastructure investment as an automatic stabilizer,” by Andrew Haughwout
    • The federal government should help states develop and maintain a catalogue of potential infrastructure projects and then expand infrastructure spending in downturns to counteract the declines in public investment that typically accompany recessions.
  • “Unemployment Insurance and macroeconomic stabilization,” by Gabriel Chodorow-Reich and John Coglianese
    • Unemployment Insurance is one of the most important existing automatic stabilizer programs. Congress should make reforms to the base program, including new triggers to expand the program in recessions.  
  • “Improving TANF’s countercyclicality through increased basic assistance and subsidized jobs,” by Indivar Dutta-Gupta
    • Congress should make reforms to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program to expand federal support for basic assistance during economic downturns and create an ongoing job subsidy program that is more robust in recessions. Safety net programs can be a crucial backstop for families struggling in hard economic times. Unfortunately, because of its block grant structure, the TANF program is unresponsive to changes in need and unhelpful for mitigating the effects of recessions. This proposal would make it more responsive to families’ real economic needs.

Top experts

  • Claudia Sahm, macroeconomic policy director, Washington Center for Equitable Growth
  • Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, associate professor of economics, Harvard Univeristy
  • Indivar Dutta-Gupta, adjunct professor of law and co-executive director, Center on Poverty and Inequality, Georgetown University
  • Jason Furman, professor of the practice of economic policy, Harvard University Kennedy School; nonresident senior fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics; and a member of Equitable Growth’s Steerinig Committee
  • Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, the Margaret Walker Alexander professor of education and social policy, Northwestern University
  • Jay Shambaugh, professor of economics and international affairs, Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University, and a nonresident senior fellow in economic studies, The Brookings Institution
  • Hilary Hoynes, professor of economics and public policy, University of California, Berkeley, and the Haas distinguished chair in economic disparities, UC Berkeley’s Hass School of Business, where she also co-directs the Berkeley Opportunity Lab

To view the other policy sheets in this series, please click here.

Addressing the U.S. racial economic mobility and inequality divides

Posted on by Maria Monroe
Intentional policy action is necessary to correct the systemic and institutional barriers facing Black Americans.

Economic mobility in the United States has been declining over the past half-century at the same time that economic inequality has been rising. Research by Harvard University economist and former Equitable Growth Steering Committee member Raj Chetty and his co-authors shows that rates of absolute intergenerational mobility have precipitously declined in the country during the latter part of the 20th century. People born in 1940 had about a 90 percent chance of growing up to earn more than their parents, but people born in 1980 had only about a 50 percent chance. Chetty also finds that Black Americans are more likely to experience downward mobility than White Americans, and that differences in family education, wealth, and marriage patterns cannot explain this Black-White mobility divide.

Addressing the U.S. racial economic mobility and inequality dividesDownload

Intentional policy action is necessary to correct these systemic and institutional barriers facing Black Americans. Just as government policy helped create these racial disparities in the first place via legalized discrimination, redlining of housing, and the often discriminatory impact of the criminal justice system and incarceration, policies are needed now to promote mobility and begin to address the legacies of these racially discriminatory structures. These policy solutions include:

  • Improving family income security by expanding refundable tax credits and by fully funding Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers to make them available to all who qualify
  • Supporting wealth accumulation for low-wealth families, such as through proposals for “baby bonds”
  • Addressing racial inequities in credit access and student debt
  • Redirecting public investment from the criminal justice system to education and social services 

These policies can be implemented at the federal level, such as through reforms to the Community Reinvestment Act to improve access to credit and reforms to the Department of Education’s stewardship of student loans, as well as at the state and local level through budgetary decisions related to police, prison, and education funding.

Key resources

“Reconsidering progress this Juneteenth: Eight graphics that underscore the economic racial inequality Black Americans face in the United States,” by Liz Hipple, Shanteal Lake, and Maria Monroe

This post features graphics on Black-White disparities in wages, intergenerational mobility, wealth, homeownership, incarceration, and health. The post demonstrates how policy decisions and racial discrimination created and continue to perpetuate economic disparities between White and Black Americans and offers policies to address the structural barriers driving these disparities.

“Race and the lack of intergenerational economic mobility in the United States,” by Bradley Hardy and Trevon Logan

This post explains that geographic and racial differences in economic mobility are particularly important from a policy perspective for three reasons. First, racial differences in mobility can exacerbate racial differences in other areas such as in housing, education, and health. Second, inequalities in opportunity are antithetical to our nation’s creed of equal opportunity for all. And third, structural differences in mobility limit the potential for overall U.S. economic growth.

This essay first examines the historic links between intergenerational economic mobility and race and income inequality—trends heavily influenced by changing patterns in geographic mobility—and how these trends are tied to explicit policy decisions in the past that persist today in terms of housing, education, and health inequality among low- and middle-income Black Americans. The authors discuss educational, housing, and income remedies for persistently low intergenerational economic mobility among Black Americans and how these policies could be put into action and paid for.

“Overcoming social exclusion: Addressing race and criminal justice policy in the United States,” by Robynn Cox

This essay discusses how the exponential growth in incarceration in the United States over the past 50 years has been due to more punitive criminal justice policies that tried to address racial and economic inequality through the criminal justice system instead of social programming. Cox calls for U.S. policymaking to shift toward addressing the root causes of racial inequality and poverty. One first step would be to conduct an audit of current federal crime-control policies and funding to eradicate policies that lead to greater racial disparities within the criminal justice system.

“Low intergenerational mobility in the United States shows impact of race and public policy,” by Liz Hipple

This research analysis compares intergenerational mobility in the United States versus Canada. The author highlights findings showing that despite the United States having higher average incomes than Canada, areas of particularly low mobility are concentrated on the U.S. side of the border, cover a large proportion of the U.S. population, and are driven by racial disparities in mobility between Black and White Americans. One explanation for why this pattern is observed almost exclusively in the United States is offered in another piece of research by University of California, Berkeley economist and Equitable Growth grantee Ellora Derenoncourt , who finds that as Black Americans migrated from the South, Northern cities decreased their investments in all public goods other than policing.

Top experts 

  • Liz Hipple, senior policy advisor, Washington Center for Equitable Growth
  • William Darity, Jr., Samuel DuBois Cook professor of public policy, African and African American studies, and economics, Duke University
  • Darrick Hamilton, incoming Henry Cohen professor of economics and urban policy, The New School
  • Bradley Hardy, associate professor of public administration and policy, American University
  • Ellora Derenoncourt, assistant professor in the Department of Economics and the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley
  • Trevon Logan, Hazel C. Youngberg Trustees distinguished professor of economics, The Ohio State University
  • Robynn Cox, assistant professor at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work

To view the other policy sheets in this series, please click here.

Reforming Unemployment Insurance across the United States

Posted on by Maria Monroe
Unemployed men wait in line to file Social Security benefit claims, circa January 1938.

Longstanding problems with the Unemployment Insurance system in the United States are immediately evident amid the coronavirus recession and echo the problems experienced during the Great Recession more than a decade ago. These include:

  • Administrative failures at state Unemployment Insurance agencies
  • Lack of a permanent Unemployment Insurance program that includes the self-employed and others traditionally left out of the program
  • Low benefit levels that require emergency top-offs
  • The temporary nature of fixes when recessions hit, which, in turn, requires renegotiations just months after political compromises are reached

The current disarray in the Unemployment Insurance system is neither a surprise nor an accident. It is the result of decades of conscious choices made by policymakers at the state and federal levels: Over the past decade, many states limited Unemployment Insurance benefits, made accessing the program more difficult, and allocated insufficient funds for program administration. This results in chaos and uncertainty just when Unemployment Insurance is critical to prevent deterioration in the wider economy and save families from precarious financial situations.

Reforming Unemployment Insurance across the United StatesDownload

As in the Great Recession, states’ trust funds are now being depleted, which sets the stage for the erosion of benefit levels while the crisis remains ongoing. And, as was the case in the Great Recession, in the first months of the coronavirus crisis, policymakers have yet to remedy the issues at the heart of these administrative failures.

But it’s not too late. Unemployment Insurance is a joint state-federal system. These programs are run at the state level but follow federal guidelines under the Social Security Act. Reforms to this system are important at both levels. The key resources below provide the details for enacting these reforms.

Key resources

“Unemployment Insurance reform: A primer,” by Till von Wachter

This primer summarizes how the Unemployment Insurance system functions in the United States and four ways it falls short. First, the current UI system suffers from financial instability that risks compromising its major role as a stabilizer in recessions. Second, the coverage of unemployment benefits has eroded over time, with a declining fraction of workers receiving lower benefits amounts. Third, the UI system does little to avert the large, long-lasting earnings losses among re-employed workers. And fourth, there are persistent questions about the effectiveness of Unemployment Insurance and related programs to quickly re-employ job losers. This primer lays out easy-to-implement small changes to address these problems, as well as fundamental changes to modernize the program.

“Unemployment Insurance and macroeconomic stabilization,” by John Coglianese and Gabriel Chodorow-Reich

The authors lay out a plan for improving the Unemployment Insurance program’s function as an anti-recessionary automatic stabilizer. They propose measures that increase take-up of regular unemployment benefits, full federal financing for extended benefits alongside improvements in the formula and design of extended benefits triggers, and an increase in the unemployment benefit amount when extended benefits are triggered.

“Fool me once: Investing in Unemployment Insurance systems to avoid the mistakes of the Great Recession during COVID-19,” by Alix Gould-Werth

Gould-Werth presents a description of the problems in the Unemployment Insurance system exposed during the Great Recession and then repeated during the coronavirus crisis. She shows that policymakers have an opportunity to intervene and improve the functioning of the Unemployment Insurance system by increasing and indexing the federal taxable wage base, redesigning extensions to respond to economic changes quickly, and standardizing a minimum benefit level and duration that are sufficiently generous.

“Factsheet: Unemployment Insurance and why the effect of work disincentives is greatly overstated amid the coronavirus recession,” by Equitable Growth

One of the biggest political obstacles to fixing the UI system is the fear that increasing access and generosity of benefits will discourage people from working. This Equitable Growth factsheet breaks down the research on work disincentives, showing that the amount of attention given to work disincentives (quite large) is disproportionate to the magnitude of the disincentives themselves, which are substantively small. At the same time, relatively little attention is paid to the benefits of Unemployment Insurance.

Top experts

  • Alix Gould-Werth, director of family economic security policy, Washington Center for Equitable Growth
  • Kate Bahn, director of labor market policy, Washington Center for Equitable Growth
  • Till von Wachter, professor, Department of Economics, University of California, Los Angeles
  • Adriana Kugler, full professor, McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University
  • Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, associate professor of economics, Harvard University
  • John Coglianese, economist, Federal Reserve Board of Governors
  • Jesse Rothstein, professor of public policy and economics, University of California, Berkeley, with affiliations in the Department of Economics and the Goldman School of Public Policy
  • Steve Woodbury, professor of economics, Michigan State University, and senior economist, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research

To view the other policy sheets in this series, please click here.

Experts discuss transformative ideas for 2020 U.S. economic policy debate at Vision 2020 event

Posted on by Maria Monroe
The June Vision 2020 webinar discussed bold ideas for economic structural change and racial justice.

Eliminate banks as the “middleman” for federal anti-recession aid. Cancel all student loan debt. Give workers a say in how their workplaces reopen and empower them to form unions. Provide federal relief to childcare programs to prevent them from shutting down permanently. Get Congress to do its job so the Federal Reserve can get out of the business of making fiscal policy.

These ideas for generating strong, sustainable, and broad-based economic growth and achieving racial justice in the wake of the coronavirus recession were put on the virtual table during a June 25 webinar sponsored by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. “Vision 2020: Focusing on economic recovery and structural change” brought together two panels of experts to discuss short- and long-term policy reforms as part of Equitable Growth’s Vision 2020 project for making transformative ideas to address economic inequality central to the 2020 U.S. economic policy debate.

“The recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic is a moment when we are thinking deeply about what’s working in our economy and what’s not working, and, critically, the important role that inequality plays in our economy today,” said Equitable Growth President and CEO Heather Boushey.

Boushey moderated the first of two sessions, a conversation with legal scholars Mehrsa Baradaran of the University of California, Irvine School of Law, and Emma Coleman Jordan of Georgetown University about the Federal Reserve, its role in exacerbating economic inequality, its increasing role in fiscal policy, and the role played by banks in the nation’s response to the coronavirus recession.

Baradaran noted that when the Fed was created during the Progressive era more than a century ago, part of its mission was to address equity in the economy and ensure broad “access to the tracks on which the economy runs.” But over the past 50 years, she said, the rise of “market fundamentalism” has led policymakers to focus only on markets and monetarism, the theory that the best way to ensure a strong economy is through changes in the money supply.

She said “the biggest myth” about the Fed is that when it takes action on monetary policy, “it is a neutral technocratic response to market principles in the abstract, when it is not … the way that the Fed’s monetary responses over the past several decades have massively increased [racial and other income] gaps and created wealth for asset holders in certain markets and deprived it to others is absolutely a political decision. It may not have been framed as such, but it was very much felt by people in the economy.”

Jordan asserted that the Fed is “guided by a set of ideological principles … they are committed to market determinism.” She criticized the Fed’s “orthodoxy that excludes considering individuals, excludes considering race.”

“It’s no surprise,” she said, “that the ideological commitment of the Fed to ignore race as a variable in looking at growth and looking at the economic well-being of Americans produced a kind of cognitive narrowness and blindness … the Fed uses this shield of neutrality to avoid major problems in our economy, and that is the cumulative effect of a long period of racial discrimination, a lot of it government discrimination.”

She said the country needs a new economic bill of rights, and that the Fed needs to be governed by “economic justice, a bold theory that gives us the opportunity to explicitly consider economics and identity, race, gender, and all of the variables that make up the human personality.”

The panelists raised concern that the Fed is engaging in fiscal policy, especially through some of its recent actions intended to prop up businesses, but is not subject to democratic constraints. While the Fed could continue to do this and be made more democratic, the better solution, they agreed, is for Congress to do its job and take responsibility for using fiscal policy to address the recession.

Both experts called for ending the use of banks as the channel through which the federal government provides aid to businesses and consumers in recession-rescue efforts. They said banks disadvantage small businesses, are not accessible to unbanked recipients, and feed cronyism by allowing businesses with which they have a prior relationship to go to the front of the line for aid.

Prejudice toward localism and using the private sector, said Baradaran, leads to an assumption “that the Fed has to use banks as a middleman.” She called for creation of a public option or public access points through such mechanisms as Postal Service banking or individual business and individual Fed accounts. 

The second panel discussed ideas for building power for workers and families. It addressed a series of important economic and social issues that existed well before the coronavirus pandemic hit and have been exacerbated by its costly and deadly spread. As moderator David Mitchell, Equitable Growth’s director of government and external relations, put it, “The coronavirus recession did not create the problems that we are going to discuss today, but it has crystallized them.”

Naomi Zewde, an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy at the City University of New York, discussed how the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated health inequality. Even before the virus, she said, “You’re born in the wrong neighborhood, you go to the wrong schools, you’re likely to get a job that does not offer health insurance, and you’re more likely to die prematurely … the virus exposes some of the challenges with having this patchwork system of coverage, and it also exposes some of the challenges of having coverage tied to employment when you have an employment crisis,” she said.

Discussing the Black Lives Matter protests, Zewde focused on the extraordinary racial wealth divide and the intense concentration of wealth at the very top of the income distribution—the “white billionaire class.” This concentration of wealth at the top, she said, leads to institutions and rules favoring that group over others, which contributes to the “violence of the state” that primarily affects vulnerable young Black people. And, she noted, they are facing the second recession in a decade, with increasingly bleak labor market prospects, as well as “the greatest educational debt burden of any cohort of Americans.”

She described the proposal she and Darrick Hamilton of The Ohio State University have advanced to cancel all federal student loan debt, which they have asserted is not only a long-term plan but also one specifically helpful in addressing today’s crises. “Instead of punishing people for seeking higher education and social mobility, find a way to reward it … so we can have a globally competitive workforce, on par with other countries that enable people to seek whatever education they want to without coming out with this huge albatross around their necks.”

Taryn Morrissey, an associate professor of public policy in the School of Public Affairs at American University, spoke to another long-term crisis exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic: the lack of access to quality, affordable childcare and early childhood education.

Morrissey pointed out that the costs of childcare have been twice the rate of inflation over the past two decades, and low-income families pay, on average, 35 percent of their incomes on childcare. And which children get what kind of care varies with age and income.

Before the pandemic, she said, “children in low-income households and infants and toddlers were much less likely to be in center-based care or in regulated or licensed care more generally … and this is a problem because on average, center-based care tends to provide higher-quality and more stable and reliable care than unregulated types of care.”

These disparities, she said, are due to lack of supply, high costs, and the general lack of public investment, particularly for children under age 3. Despite the high costs and despite what we know about the importance of early childhood education, she said, early care and early childhood education workers are paid little. And workers of color make even less than the average.

COVID-19, she said “puts all these problems in stark relief.” Many providers won’t survive months without adequate revenues. It is projected that as many as 4.5 million slots in licensed childcare facilities could be lost.

“Without swift and effective policy interventions,” she said, “there will be widespread shortages of childcare, and what remains will be very expensive and out of reach.” This, she added, will have an enormous impact on children’s learning and development. Moreover, if, as a result, working mothers drop out of the workforce, it could set them back decades. And, she said, all this will reinforce inequality.

To deal with the current crisis, Morrissey pointed to the need for short-term relief to keep existing childcare programs afloat. And she called for greater support for childcare and early childhood education workers. She said the Childcare Is Essential Act could accomplish these goals. To address long-term structural problems, she encouraged greater investment in Head Start and other early childhood education programs.  

Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, an associate professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, said that the coronavirus pandemic presents new strains on the workplace while exacerbating existing ones.

He pointed to the current health risk faced by those who have to work and interact with the public and the employment crisis created by the economic downturn, both of which have been borne disproportionately by Black and Latinx workers.

He cited an additional crisis, “the crisis of workplace voice.” This is “the ability of workers to weigh in on decisions that are important to them on an everyday basis at their jobs—how much they get paid, their benefits, the terms of their advancement, how they’re treated by their managers, and the health and safety conditions that they work under.”

Previous research, he said, shows that nearly two-thirds of workers have less say than they want over wages, benefits, and terms of advancement; nearly one-half of workers say they have little or no say in health and safety measures at their workplaces; and nearly half of all workers who are not union members would join a union if one were available to them.

With other colleagues, he surveyed essential workers in late April and early May on several coronavirus-specific issues related to conditions and worker voice. The questions related to use of personal protective equipment, availability of paid sick days, COVID-19 testing, and having a place and time to discuss workplace safety issues with colleagues. Union members were substantially more likely to give positive answers to each of the questions, by anywhere from 16 percentage points to 30 percentage points. This should not be a surprise, Hertel-Fernandez said, “because we know that this is a central function of unions—to provide these kinds of resources that workers need and want at their jobs.”

He added, “To the extent that worker voice helps workers get the kind of conditions that they need and want, it needs to be part of the public health response that states and cities are engaged in.” He cited policies that could enhance worker voice in this crisis and beyond, including electing workplace safety officers to ensure that workers are aware of their rights to a healthy and safe workplace, establishing worker-manager committees to ensure workers have a say in reopening conditions, and ensuring that workers can form unions and hold their employers accountable by going on strike.

The Equitable Growth Vision 2020 project includes a book of 21 policy essays that could form the basis of an agenda for equitable growth in the coming decades. Four Vision 2020 essay authors were featured at last week’s event. Though we at Equitable Growth could not have anticipated the pandemic and resulting recession when we published the book in February, the ideas showcased—geared at achieving structural economic changes—are even more urgently needed today.

For a complete video of “Vision 2020: Focusing on economic recovery and structural change,” click here.