Blog

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 15, 2016

Contact: Cody Tucker, 202-775-0106
or ctucker@ppionline.org

A Progressive Alternative to Populism

PPI Unveils New Blueprint for Shared Prosperity

WASHINGTON—The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) today released Unleashing Innovation and Growth: A Progressive Alternative to Populism, a new blueprint for renewing America’s economic dynamism.

The plan offers an array of creative proposals for accelerating the “digitization” of the physical economy; lowering regulatory obstacles to innovation and entrepreneurship; launching a new public works push; adopting pro-growth tax reform; grooming the world’s most talented workers; and enabling working families to escape poverty and build middle class wealth.

The blueprint also takes aim at the populist anger that has figured prominently in campaign 2016:

…[P]opulists do Americans no favors by claiming the economic game is hopelessly rigged against them, that the leaders they elect are incompetents, or that our democracy is rancid with corruption. None of these claims is true, and such demagoguery undermines public confidence in America’s boundless capacity for self-renewal. Populist anger fosters an ‘us versus them’ mentality that, by reinforcing political tribalism and social mistrust, can only make it harder to build consensus around economic initiatives that benefit all Americans.

“We believe progressives owe U.S. voters a hope-inspiring alternative to populist outrage and the false remedies of nativism, protectionism and democratic socialism,” writes Will Marshall, PPI President.

“I encourage anyone looking for optimistic ideas to create more jobs, wealth, and prosperity for hard working Americans to read PPI’s new report using innovation to spur growth,” said Congressman Ron Kind (D-Wis.), Chairman of the New Democrat Coalition. “This report is full of forward thinking policy initiatives that help grow the American economy.”

“In the midst of today’s populist uprising, it’s up to our leaders to recognize the real reasons why our economy isn’t working for everyone and to fight for effective solutions,” said Governor Jack Markell (D-Del.). “PPI’s blueprint gives policymakers a roadmap to create opportunity for all Americans by harnessing the unstoppable forces of globalization and technological innovation, while opposing the impractical, and sometimes dangerous, proposals offered by the political extremes.”

The anger on which populists feed is rooted in a real economic problem: America has been stuck in a slow growth trap since 2000. This long spell of economic stagnation has held down wages and living standards and shrunk the middle class. What the nation needs is a forward-looking plan for moving the U.S. economy into high gear. Instead, as the PPI blueprint notes, today’s populists peddle nostalgia for our country’s past industrial glory but offer few practical ideas for building new American prosperity in today’s global knowledge economy.

Unleashing Innovation and Growth seeks to fill this vacuum in the presidential campaign, offering bold ideas for unleashing the collective ingenuity of the American people—harnessing disruptive change, raising skills, lowering tax and regulatory barriers to individual initiative and creativity, and experimenting with innovative ways to rebuild middle class wealth and enable more Americans to exit poverty.

Summary of Key Proposals

Unleash Innovation
• Spread innovation across the economy: Adopt a new “Innovation Platform” aimed at stimulating public and private investment in new ideas and enterprises, and at diffusing innovation across the entire economy.
• Improve the regulatory climate for innovation: Tackle the mounting costs of regulatory accumulation, the constant layering of new rules atop old ones; Make systemic changes to regulatory agencies to make promoting investment, innovation and new enterprises part of their core mission; Rein in occupational licensing requirements that screen out many low-income entrepreneurs; Lift outdated restrictions on lending to small business; give businesses incentives to offer more flexible work, including paid leave.
• Innovate our way to clean growth: Implement a more innovative energy strategy that simultaneously advances two vital interests: powering economic growth and assuring a healthy environment; Recognize that, for the foreseeable future, the U.S. and the world will have to tap all fuels—renewable, nuclear, and fossil—to meet growing energy demand and sustain global economic growth; Institute a nationwide carbon tax to curb greenhouse emissions while driving investment to clean and efficient energy.
• Democratize trade: Sell more of America’s highly competitive exports to a growing global middle class; promote the free flow of data across global borders; support innovative trade agreements, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), that lift labor, environment and human rights standards in developing countries and enable more Americans to benefit from trade; Seize new opportunities for U.S. small businesses and entrepreneurs to use low-cost digital platforms to tap into global growth.

Align Fiscal Policy with Innovation and Growth
• Embrace pro-growth tax reform: Advocate for a dramatic shift from income to consumption taxes to stimulate investment in productive economic activities rather than those favored by the current tax code; Close loopholes that benefit special interests and dramatically simplify taxes for most Americans; Raise enough money to cut corporate income taxes down to globally competitive levels, and reduce taxes that penalize innovation and hiring.
• Modernize public works: Accurately measure the true economic impact of infrastructure spending; open infrastructure markets to private capital; define a strategic role for Washington through a national infrastructure bank; impose firm deadlines on project approvals and licensing process.

Groom the World’s Most Talented Workers
• Reinvent public school: Champion new models of school governance that enable more school autonomy and innovation, more customized learning, rigorous standards, and genuine accountability and results.
• Create new pathways into middle class jobs: Create a more promising approach to “career pathways” by combining classroom training and work experience through a sequence of jobs, within or across firms in an industry, and a sequence of credentials that signal their growing skill levels.
• Cut college costs for everyone: Rein in costs and decrease debt by encouraging colleges to offer three-year degrees rather than the traditional four-year program and focus policies on competency, rather than credit hours.

Build Middle Class Wealth
• Narrow the wealth gap with universal pensions: Champion “universal pension” accounts that would enable all workers to save for retirement, navigate the maze of tax-favored retirement plans, and take their pensions with them when changing jobs.
• Help families save for homeownership: Tackle the twin problems of declining homeownership and souring housing costs for both owners and renters by creating a new, tax-preferred mechanism for down payment savings—“Home K”—to lower obstacles to homeownership, like tight credit and down payment requirements, for first-time homebuyers and to promote savings.

Fight Poverty with Empowerment
• Empower people with smart phones: Use modern technology to cut through bureaucratic barriers to government safety net programs, consolidate benefit streams, enable people living in poverty more access to the information they need, and apply online for social supports; Encourage federal, state, and local governments to create online H.O.P.E. (Health, Opportunity, and Personal Empowerment) accounts and action plans.
• Expand housing choices for low-income Americans: Convert some federal rent subsidies into incentives for homeownership to relieve the burden on low-income families of high housing costs and reduce the waiting list for subsidized housing, without raising taxes or adding to the federal deficit.

Download Unleashing Innovation and Growth: A Progressive Alternative to Populism.