Category: Uncategorized

How Apple’s Latest Move Could Boost the Post-Pandemic Recovery

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Apple announced this morning that it is reducing its commission on paid apps and in-app purchases from 30% to 15% for qualified small businesses and independent developers. This move obviously has plenty of implications for competition policy and business models.

But from the perspective of macroeconomic recovery,  this commission reduction comes at just the right time to simulate post-pandemic job growth.

It’s important to remember that the App Economy has been a potent source of jobs ever since Apple opened the first App Store in July 2008. In a September 2020 research note, we estimated that from the App Store’s opening in July 2008 to the pre-pandemic economic peak in February 2020,  the App Economy generated a total of 2.4 million jobs. That’s relative to the 15 million nonfarm payroll jobs created by the whole U.S. economy over the same period. The implication is that an estimated 16% of net job growth since the creation of the App Store in July 2008 has come from the App Economy.

The App Economy gains have continued through the pandemic recession, with our research showing that App Economy employment rising by 12% from April 2019 to August 2020, despite the weak economy. Employment in the iOS ecosystem and the Android ecosystem, respectively, are up up 15% and 14%  from the April 2019 estimates. (Note that many App Economy jobs belong to both ecosystems).

The commission reduction will build on these long-term trends, stimulating hiring by the “long tail” of small app developers and startups. Apple’s announcement says that the reduced commission will apply to existing developers who made up to $1 million in 2020 for all of their apps, as well as developers new to the App Store. So if you are a small business that is earning $500,000 in the App Store, the commission reduction may very well tip the scale for bringing on a new app developer, an extra sales person, or both.

It’s difficult to quantity the effect of the commission cut, but it certainly will make small businesses more willing to take chances and expand even in an uncertain economic climate. Climbing out of the pandemic, any action that encourages small business hiring  is good news for the U.S. recovery.

 

 

Carolina Postcard: New NC and Old NC Collide – Again

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

New North Carolina collided with Old North Carolina in the 2020 election. It was a split decision. The battle goes on.

New NC – younger voters, Blacks, urban residents, suburban women and college graduates – reelected Governor Roy Cooper and (apparently) Attorney General Josh Stein.

New NC helped President-elect Joe Biden come within 1.3% of carrying the state. It was Democrats’ best performance in a presidential race here since Barack Obama in 2008 and Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Old NC – rural and small-town voters, white evangelicals, older people and high-school graduates – carried the state for President Trump, despite predictions North Carolina would be his Waterloo.

Old NC (and gerrymandering) kept Republicans in control of the General Assembly. And in control of redistricting for the coming decade. The GOP won key judicial seats.

The race for Chief Justice is a virtual tie. In the Council of State, both parties kept the seats they held before.

Democrats had dreamed of flipping North Carolina decidedly blue this year. It didn’t happen.

Now the 2020s promise to be a decade of political trench warfare.

That’s why Democrats, despite unseating President Trump and reelecting Governor Cooper, look so grim and glum.

Democrats thought demographic trends were with them. They saw metropolitan areas growing, and they saw their strength growing there. They thought Trump would drive their voters to the polls.

He did. But he also drove Old NC voters to the polls.

If you live in a city, it’s hard to grasp how many people live in the state’s small towns and rural areas. And it’s hard to grasp how hostile they have become to the Democratic Party’s brand.

Is it race? Resentment over Covid-19 restrictions? “Defund the police”? The Green New Deal? Medicare for All? Taxes? Do Democrats look like “socialists”?

Whatever, it’s a reminder that North Carolina has the third-biggest rural and small-town population of any state – 2.9 million, behind only Texas (4.3 million) and California (3 million).

We have a lot of white evangelicals. Nationally, they’re an estimated 15% of the population, but 25% of voters. Their numbers are higher here. They voted 80% for Trump and Republicans.

Along with the rural-urban divide, we have a clear racial divide between the parties.

There’s an age divide. National exit polls showed Democrats stronger among voters under 40 and Republicans stronger among older voters.

There’s a diploma divide. The exit polls said Biden won 57% of voters with college degrees; Trump won 77% of whites with no college degree.

Such divisions aren’t new in our politics. Since World War II, North Carolina’s rapid growth has created a constant tension between what the state once was and what it’s becoming.

That tension has defined our politics. And it goes back to our very beginnings.

Historian William S. Powell wrote in his 1989 book “North Carolina Through Four Centuries”:

“Many key events in the state’s history came about because of rivalries and jealousies, first between northern and southern parts of the colony, next between east and west and more recently between urban and rural.”

“Rivalries and jealousies…between urban and rural”? Sounds like 2020.

In colonial days, Powell wrote, counties in the Albemarle region gerrymandered the state Assembly to dominate the Neuse and Cape Fear counties.

A century later, western North Carolinians resented the iron control that eastern landowners held on state government. The East-West split persisted through most elections in the 20thCentury.

This year, as throughout our first 400 years, New NC and Old NC battled again for control.

Don’t expect the conflict to end any time soon.

Original piece published here. 

What American voters just told us: How the electorate just shattered populist myths on both sides

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The 2020 elections have shattered two populist myths: Donald Trump’s invincibility and the left’s ascendancy in U.S. politics.

Trump has spent a lifetime burnishing his legend as an unbeatable wheeler and dealer. Never mind that his business career is littered by failed ventures and six trips to bankruptcy court. Through sheer force of will, Trump always wins in the end.

Or so he wants his supporters to believe as he sulks in the White House and insists, without a shred of proof, that he’s been cheated out of reelection. In a sign of how badly negative partisanship has warped our politics, 70% of Trump’s supporters say they believe the vote somehow must have been rigged against their hero.

To paraphrase the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but not to their own version of reality. In the real world, Joe Biden won about 5.5 million more votes than Trump and a comfortable Electoral College majority of 306-232.

Nonetheless, Trump is trying to milk cash from MAGAland, ostensibly for recounts and lawsuits, even as he privately tells White House staffers he’ll run in 2024 if things don’t go his way. But will Trump’s bulletproof mystique survive once he becomes a certified loser and joins the ranks of presidents denied a second term?

Read the full piece here.

Improving Oral Health Across America

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Millions of Americans suffer from poor oral health with decaying teeth, gum disease and chronic tooth pain. Poor oral health can limit a person’s employment opportunities, increase the risk of certain cancers, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, premature births and lead to unnecessary emergency department (ED) visits.

Poor oral health can be a result of limited access to preventive dental health sources, among other causes. However, there are a variety of confounding factors that limit access to timely oral health care, including:

• Limited insurance coverage

• Provider shortages, particularly in rural areas

• Cultural barriers

These problems are not distributed evenly. In the U.S., if you live in a rural area, you are less likely to have dental insurance and access to a dentist, and more likely to have tooth loss.

Oral health is a vital component of overall health status. It is vital that people have access to regular dental care to learn good oral hygiene and to treat problems early. This paper will explore barriers to care and potential policy levers to address them.

 

INTRODUCTION

According to one study, toothaches were the number one avoidable reason for visiting the emergency department (ED). In some instances, patients leave dental issues untreated until they experience so much pain that they visit the ED, desperate for treatment. But EDs are poorly equipped to treat dental conditions and usually simply offer pain medications or antibiotics and refer patients to dental providers in the community.

LIMITED COVERAGE

Cost is the number one reason people cite for forgoing dental care. More than 114 million Americans lack dental health coverage, roughly four times the number of people who lack regular health insurance. And that number has likely grown considering the 5.4 million people who have lost their insurance during the pandemic. People without dental coverage include almost two-thirds of Medicare enrollees, roughly 10 percent of children and 33.6 percent of adults under the age of 64. But even among those who have dental coverage, it can be a bit of a misnomer. Most plans only cover $750 to $1,500 of care per year, requiring patients to pay for additional care out of pocket. While only a small percentage of people exceed this amount each year, a crown can run as high as $2,500, which can surpass even an insured person’s coverage.

Though we know that dental coverage is a vital first step to getting people dental care, expanding coverage does not fully solve the issue. The data shows that in states that expanded dental coverage to adults with Medicaid, emergency dental visits remained high, even in urban areas with numerous dentists. This suggests there are other barriers, besides coverage, to accessing care.

Dental care has long been perceived as secondary to medical care. Traditional Medicare does not cover preventive dental services and Medicaid is not required to cover dental benefits for adults (though 35 states provide some dental benefits to adults). The perception that dental care is secondary trickles down to even those with coverage. Many people with dental insurance don’t use their benefits until they are in pain.

PROVIDER SHORTAGES

Poor oral health is not distributed evenly: rural residents are twice as likely to have none of their natural teeth remaining when compared to urban residents. This is because, in some areas of the United States, even if you have dental coverage, you may be hard pressed to find a dentist or a dentist that takes your insurance. While there may not be a shortage of dentists
in the United States as a whole, they are poorly distributed – and rural areas often do not receive the resources they need to address oral health challenges. As dental students graduate with more and more student loan debt, many move to urban centers to set up their practices because they will have more privately-insured patients. Thus, there are some rural areas where, even if you did have health insurance that covered oralhealth services, it may be challenging to find anearby dentist to serve you. In remote areas with small populations and more people on public health insurance, it can be hard for a dental practice to survive.

To help address this challenge, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) created the health provider shortage area (HPSA) designation to allocate resources tounderserved areas. Specifically, students thatchose to practice in HPSAs are eligible for loan repayment and scholarships. Today, more than 30 federal programs23 allocate resources based on HPSA designations and many states use thedefinition for state funding as well.

However, due to the way the agency defines dental health shortage areas, shortages and other barriers to accessing care may be overstated. This means that providers across the nation are forced to compete for limited resources. The program received 7,000 applications in the last cycle and could only award funding to 40 percent of the applicants.

Dental health shortage areas are rated on a point system, 0-26. The higher the score, the greater the level of need in an area. However, certain factors may skew the rating, including the fact that a point is added if an area’s fluoridation rate is in the bottom quartile for the nation, region or state. HRSA estimates that one dentist is needed for every 5,000 people (or 4,000 people in very high need areas). Narrowing the factorsthat allow an area to be classified as a HPSA willhelp ensure that limited funds get where they are needed most.

Other barriers to care also tend to be under-reported. Many Medicaid-insured adults report trouble finding a dentist that will accept their Medicaid coverage because of their state’s low reimbursement rates. While there might be community health centers that are happy to treat Medicaid covered patients, they could have limited availability for appointments and many private practice dentists might limit the number of Medicaid patients they accept. Without assistance navigating the health system, these patients might not get the care they need.

It’s important to consider these comprehensive barriers to accessing care in rural areas rather than just looking at the number of dentists in an area.

CULTURAL BARRIERS

Because oral health has long been separated from physical health, some people view it as secondary, and often need help navigating the existing resources and overcoming individual barriers to care. For example, a lack of awareness of dental benefits, how to find a quality dentist and oral health literacy all prevent people from seeking treatment.

States have long acted as the “laboratories of democracy” piloting innovative policy solutions, that if proven successful, can be scaled. Oral health is no different. The federal government has an opportunity to learn from the states and increase access to dental health services.

POLICY SOLUTIONS

Expand coverage and increase reimbursement.

Medicaid covers dental benefits for children, but states are not required to cover dental services for adults. If Medicaid took the $520 million that it spends annually on dental ED visits and invested it in upfront oral health services, it would cover roughly one million dental visits. Though all states cover eligible children through Medicaid, coverage for adults is less consistent. Some states cover preventive services for adults, but many only cover emergency dental services. All states should expand Medicaid to cover all low-income adults and cover dental services for adults recognizing that the upfront investment improves health and reduces unnecessary emergency room expenditures.

But Medicaid coverage isn’t the only thing limiting access. On average, state Medicaid programs reimburse dentists 40 to 50
percent of what private insurance pays. The low rates limit the number of Medicaid patients that dentists will accept. Increasing reimbursement, particularly in underserved areas with high numbers of Medicaid enrollees, would encourage more dentists to see Medicaid patients.

States should also consider programs that would help people above the Medicaid income threshold afford dental health benefits. The ACA does not require compliant health plans cover dental and many people — particularly those below 300 percent of the federal poverty level — may not be able to afford dental benefits without government subsidies.

Traditional Medicare should also cover preventive dental services rather than forcing patients to buy secondary Medigap plans to get dental benefits. Almost two-thirds of Medicare enrollees don’t have dental coverage. There are a variety of conditions that are more likely with old age including edentulism – where a person has no natural teeth. Fifteen percent of seniors are edentulous and it is more likely among older and poorer seniors. Periodontal disease is the most common cause of tooth loss and can be prevented with proper preventive care. Expanding Medicare coverage of dental care can improve the overall health of seniors, particularly among long-income seniors with limited resources to spend on dental care.

Redefine Health Professional Shortage Areas.

According to the GAO, in 2005 more than 30 programs used federal health professional shortage areas (HPSA) designations to allocated funding and resources. But as discussed above, the scoring mechanism might not be the most accurate way to decide what is or isn’t a shortage area. Furthermore, HRSA has long used county boundaries to measure provider shortage areas, which can create artificial borders and over estimate the number of people living in shortage areas. Using geo-analysis to calculate the prevalence of dentists is more accurate than using county boundaries.

For these reasons and many more, HRSA is currently accepting ideas on how to best update the health professional shortage area (HPSA) designation. The revised HPSA criteria should be formulated in a way that directs limited resources to the most underserved rural areas and considers all barriers to care.

Address provider shortages in underserved areas.

There are a number of policy initiatives to address provider shortages. Thirty-three states and the District of Columbia provide dental loan repayment to encourage graduating dental students to practice underserved areas. But these programs are slow to address current shortages. In some very remote areas, such as Alaska, where it would take years to recruit dentists to small, isolated communities, policymakers created a two-year training program for “dental health therapists” to help fill in provider gaps. But before more states create these new programs, they need to accurately understand the barriers to access care within their borders. As part of the process of reevaluating the criteria to establish a HPSA, HRSA should use a new methodology to address provider shortages in underserved areas. Rather than simply increasing funding to loan repayment programs, while important, the government needs to better understand and address barriers to clinicians providing care in underserved communities.

Address individual barriers through community outreach and education.

Oftentimes, communities don’t need more dentists to address access to care issues, but instead need greater resources to help people with finding and navigating the existing oral health resources and navigating individual barriers to care. Roughly 80 percent of community health center clinics offer free or discounted dental services to people who need them. Unfortunately, many potential patients often don’t know that dental care is readily available at these facilities and delay care until they experience so much pain that they end up at the ED.

States have developed pilots with a new type of health worker: a community dental health coordinator (CDHC). Community dental health coordinators help patients better access dental care and navigate the health care system. Based on the community health worker model, where workers help patients bridge the gap between clinical and community services, CDHCs provide community-based prevention, care coordination and patient navigation to connect people with available services in their community. They can work for health centers, private dental practices and schools to better connect patients with the care they need. They may be able to perform some preventive services such as sealants and fluoride applications, as their state licensing laws allow, but they are not mid-level providers and must work under the supervision of a dentist.

CONCLUSION

This paper outlines the three main barriers to accessing dental care – coverage, dentist shortages and cultural barriers to oral health. There are a variety of ways to address these barriers, but an effective strategy will attempt to address all three. Expanding dental health coverage and increasing reimbursement –particularly in rural areas is a needed first step to improving oral health. HRSA needs to better define dental health professional shortage areas so that limited resources are appropriately targeted to underserved areas. Furthermore, the federal government needs to better understand the dental health workforce and how to better reach underserved populations. Finally, focusing on cultural barriers to care can be a cost-effective way to increase access and improve outcomes.

Black School Leaders Matter

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Leadership matters. In a crisis, effective leadership matters that much more. In a pandemic the likes of which none of us have seen, leadership can be the difference between absolute success and complete failure.

America’s public education system was woefully unprepared for COVID-19. Our antiquated system of centralized school districts did little to empower its school leaders to rapidly adapt in such an emergency.  In contrast, the autonomy and independence that school leaders like Lagra Newman, Robert Marshall and Shawn Nelms enjoy, enable them to respond in ways that should be replicated.

According to a recent report by the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), “America’s Remote Learning Imperative,” in order to shift to effective remote learning during the pandemic, our schools need more than laptops and wifi hotspots for students. They also need to make changes in five critical areas: (1) professional development for teachers, (2) engaging parents, (3) student assessment, (4) students’ social-emotional learning, and (5) school governance.

Long before America closed nearly all of its schools, school leaders with autonomy were building the parent trust, teacher capacity, and social-emotional supports necessary to respond to school closures.

At Purpose Prep Academy in Nashville, Lagra Newman created a charter school that deploys two teachers per class in kindergarten through grade 4, so they can work with children in small groups.

According to the PPI report, seven out of ten surveyed teachers in the U.S. reported they had not been properly prepared for virtual learning.  During the pandemic-induced shutdown, Newman and her staff used their spring break to prepare. Teachers were asked to conduct wellness check-ins with every student’s family, to establish families’ expectations of them and their expectations of families. With twice as many teachers per class as a traditional school, Purpose Prep had a big advantage over other schools that tried to do the same.

With the information gathered from weekly wellness checks, teachers were able to target tutoring for particular students. Even as the school transitioned into summer break, Newman and her team dedicated three weeks of professional development for staff on teaching remotely, transferring the curriculum online, helping parents support their kids’ learning, and assessing student progress in online learning.

Read the full piece here.

How Deficits Could Cripple The Biden Agenda – And How He Can Overcome Them

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

 

Former Vice President Joe Biden has won the presidency and a clear mandate to govern following the highest-turnout election since before universal suffrage. But voters were less kind to his allies in the Democratic Party, apparently reducing their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives to single digits and electing a

U.S. Senate that will be evenly divided or narrowly under Republican control (pending two run-off elections in Georgia). As a result, Congressional Republicans – who spent the last four years indulging the Trump administration with trillions of dollars in unfunded tax cuts and spending increases – will surely use the unprecedented budget deficits President-elect Biden inherits as pretext to stymie his ambitious economic agenda. Biden will need to leverage his unique ability to work across the aisle and demonstrate that his objectives can be accomplished in a fiscally responsible way in order to overcome this conservative opposition.

Thanks to the pandemic recession caused by the coronavirus, almost one out of every two dollars spent by the federal government in Fiscal Year 2020 was financed with borrowed money instead of tax revenue. This $3.1 trillion deficit was equivalent to 15 percent of gross domestic product – the largest deficit since World War 2. Although the deficit for FY2021 is projected to be smaller, it is still projected to be roughly $2 trillion. As a result of the borrowing needed to finance these deficits, the national debt is on track to exceed the all-time high it reached at the end of WW2 (106 percent of GDP) before the end of Biden’s first term.

Senate Republicans have already begun using our nation’s alarming fiscal position as a pretext to undermine further fiscal stimulus and other measures to support the American people through the coronavirus pandemic. While Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were negotiating a $1.8 trillion relief bill to extend provisions of the CARES Act that expired in August, Senate GOP leaders said that the price tag is a non-starter with their caucus. Now that Republicans have probably preserved their Senate majority, it is unlikely that President Trump or President-elect Biden can get a stimulus bill much more than $1 trillion.

The GOP position on limiting stimulus spending is both hypocritical and misguided. The same Congressional Republicans who undermined the Mnuchin-Pelosi deal had no problem voting for a $2 trillion tax cut at the height of the last economic expansion, when the national unemployment rate was just half what it is today. There is simply no justification for offsetting the cost of policies to contain the coronavirus pandemic or mitigate  its economic effects amidst a temporary national crisis when interest rates are at historically low levels. President-elect Biden can and should call out the hypocrisy of those who voted to run up the nation’s credit card during a time of prosperity only to pivot to pinching pennies in the middle of a national crisis.

After the pandemic has been contained and the economy has recovered, however, fiscal concerns cannot be easily dismissed. Unlike the period following WW2, when a booming population and economic growth caused the national debt to fall rapidly, today’s record-setting debts will continue to grow in perpetuity thanks to irresponsible tax cuts and an aging population and that is causing federal spending on health-care and retirement programs to grow faster than the revenue needed to finance them. What was once a concern for future generations is now one for current retirees and taxpayers: the Congressional Budget Office projects that Medicare’s Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will be exhausted before Biden completes his first term, while the Social Security Trust Funds are projected to exhaust within the next decade. If nothing is done to shore up these vital programs, beneficiaries face the prospect of deep and automatic across-the- board benefit cuts.

 President-elect Biden can work with Republicans in Congress to balance the nation’s short- and long-term fiscal needs through the adoption of a “fiscal switch” that ties federal tax and spending levels to real economic conditions. So long as the economy remains in crisis, unemployment benefits should be increased to help laid-off workers help maintain their pre-pandemic income, otherwise healthy small businesses should be eligible for loans and other supports to help them survive the crisis, and state and local governments should receive federal assistance to plug gaping budget shortfalls created by the pandemic recession. As the economy recovers, these support programs should automatically be phased down, ensuring that they spend neither too little nor too much. Then, once the economy has fully recovered, other mechanisms should trigger to proactively reduce the nation’s structural deficits and pay back our debts. Establishing an agreement along these lines could make it easier for Republicans to support the temporary deficits needed to support our economy throughout the coronavirus crisis.

 

Tackling the federal government’s structural fiscal imbalance in this way could also help pave a path for enacting other parts of the ambitious economic agenda President-elect Biden campaigned  on. Not including his proposals to tackle and recover from the pandemic recession, Biden proposed roughly $11 trillion in new spending over the next 10 years and only enough offsets to cover about half the costs. There is certainly a justification for deficit- financing some of his proposals that would contribute more to future economic growth than they would cost in added interest payments, such as combating climate change or making critical public investments in infrastructure, education, and scientific research. But much of Biden’s proposed spending falls outside that scope, and the reality is that funding for any of these  priorities will be difficult to pass in divided government so long as Republicans can wield our unsustainable borrowing as a cudgel against them.

 

President-elect Biden is inheriting the worst fiscal situation of any president in U.S. history, one which the opposition in Congress can use to obstruct the ambitious agenda on which he campaigned. But this need not be the death knell for his bold progressive vision: as Vice President, Biden frequently cut deals with Sen. McConnell and other Republicans to end heated budget battles on behalf of the Obama Administration. If there is one person in national politics today uniquely equipped to convince Congressional Republicans and the American people that fiscal responsibility need not be in conflict with his plans to build America back better, it’s Joe Biden.

How Deficits Could Cripple The Biden Agenda – And How He Can Overcome Them

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Former Vice President Joe Biden has won the presidency and a clear mandate to govern following the highest-turnout election since before universal suffrage. But voters were less kind to his allies in the Democratic Party, apparently reducing their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives to single digits and electing a U.S. Senate that will be evenly divided or narrowly under Republican control (pending two run-off elections in Georgia). As a result, Congressional Republicans – who spent the last four years indulging the Trump administration with trillions of dollars in unfunded tax cuts and spending increases – will surely use the unprecedented budget deficits President-elect Biden inherits as pretext to stymie his ambitious economic agenda. Biden will need to leverage his unique ability to work across the aisle and demonstrate that his objectives can be accomplished in a fiscally responsible way in order to overcome this conservative opposition.

Thanks to the pandemic recession caused by the coronavirus, almost one out of every two dollars spent by the federal government in Fiscal Year 2020 was financed with borrowed money instead of tax revenue. This $3.3 trillion deficit was equivalent to 16 percent of gross domestic product – the largest deficit since World War 2. Although the deficit for FY2021 is projected to be smaller, it is still projected to be roughly $2 trillion. As a result of the borrowing needed to finance these deficits, the national debt is on track to exceed the all-time high it reached at the end of WW2 (106 percent of GDP) before the end of Biden’s first term.

Senate Republicans have already begun using our nation’s alarming fiscal position as a pretext to undermine further fiscal stimulus and other measures to support the American people through the coronavirus pandemic. While Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were negotiating a $1.8 trillion relief bill to extend provisions of the CARES Act that expired in August, Senate GOP leaders said that the price tag is a non-starter with their caucus. Now that Republicans have probably preserved their Senate majority, it is unlikely that President Trump or President-elect Biden can get a stimulus bill much more than $1 trillion.

Read the rest here.

A President Biden will do a better job handling COVID-19

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute
Criticized in their first debate by Vice President Joe Biden for fumbling the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump asserted he had orchestrated the “biggest national mobilization since WWII.” Don’t worry if you missed it, because it never happened. Early on, his administration decided to punt the responsibility to respond to the pandemic to the states — which meant they were left competing for limited resources, begging for federal guidance, and navigating a nationwide problem which they couldn’t solve on their own.

With deaths now totaling more than 230,000, it’s obvious that the U.S. response to COVID-19 has not been effective. President Trump wanted to downplay the seriousness of COVID-19 because he saw it as a political problem and hoped it would go away swiftly. But when it was clear it wasn’t going away, instead of adapting his strategy, he remained unwilling to listen to experts or follow leaders’ footsteps in countries like South Korea, Japan and China. Oliva Troye, Vice President Pence’s lead staffer on COVID-19, said even when it was clear that COVID-19 would spread to the U.S., the president didn’t want to hear it because his biggest concern was getting reelected.

There were multiple failures: Early on, the federal government neglected to do contact tracing of travelers returning from hard-hit regions, then the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) botched its early test kits, and the entire medical supply chain fell apart with limited personal protective equipment (PPE) for health care workers and not enough ventilators to meet demand.

Today, 10 months later, as America experiences a “third wave” of coronavirus infections, the Trump administration still has not mobilized the federal government to meet the moment. Specifically, they failed on three fronts:

Read the rest here.

Biden’s defeat of Trump is the most important win since FDR

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As the nation awoke the morning after Election Day, reactions seemed to suggest Democrats had lost nearly every office in the land. Numerous news stories recorded “huge Democratic disappointment.” How, many Democrats asked, could we be losing House seats and fail to take back the Senate? And with Biden running behind in early returns, many began to worry that far-left critics were correct: Biden had lost because he had “run the most plodding and forgettable presidential campaign in recent memory.”

What a difference a few days — and a few million mail-in ballots — make.

It is now clear that Biden has won the White House. Biden’s remarkable campaign will be increasingly regarded in coming days, and by posterity, as something of a miracle, among the best and most important in American history.

For starters, Biden is the first challenger to beat an incumbent president in a true two-person race in nearly a century — since Franklin Roosevelt beat Herbert Hoover in 1932. (Reagan 1980 and Clinton 1992 included third-party candidates).

Biden also received the most popular votes of any candidate in history, nearly 75 million (at this writing), and at least 4.2 million more than Donald Trump. Biden carried Georgia, which had not voted Democratic since 1992. He won Arizona, which has voted Republican in all but one race since 1952. And Biden carried the “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania that Trump carried in 2016. All told, Biden is set to win 306 Electoral College votes to Trump’s 232.

Not only that, but Biden was running against by far the most ruthless, win-at-all-costs, nihilistic president in American history.

Supported by thousands of disturbingly supine Republican officeholders, one of the country’s two great major parties was turned into an army of cowering enablers. Add to that Fox News, social media propaganda and other news organizations that amplified the president’s misleading statements, and Trump was able to assemble a powerful political culture free of facts. In short, Trump was willing to risk tearing the nation apart to win.

Yet Biden still beat him. It is how Biden won that matters most.

Read the rest here.

Create more autonomous, accountable district schools. Here’s how.

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Education wasn’t explicitly on the national ballot in 2020, but education is always on the ballot, even when you don’t see it. Now that the election is behind us, education reformers can focus again on states and communities, where most of the important decisions about K–12 education get made.

Before the election, too many jurisdictions were trapped in a stalemate between reformers pushing for more parent choice and choices, such as charter schools, and teachers unions holding fast for the status quo but asking for more money. Fortunately, about twenty urban districts around the country are exploring a more promising “third way”: the creation of autonomous, accountable district schools. Particularly in urban America, it is imperative that we replace centralized, standardized, industrial-era systems with more decentralized, student-centric schools designed for today’s world.

Such schools are known by a variety of names: innovation schools, partnership schools, renaissance schools, and pilot schools. The most effective models are nonprofit schools governed by independent boards of directors separate from the local school board. In some districts, such as Denver and Springfield, Massachusetts, innovation schools are organized into “zones” with a single board of directors for a group of schools within each zone.

Zone or innovation school boards negotiate schools’ performance contracts with the district, usually for five-year terms. Those contracts include clear metrics for success that the schools must meet for the agreement to renew. This creates an urgency to improve academic growth because the consequences for failure are real, including replacement of the team that runs the school.

Read the full piece here.

Can Biden quell our tribal warfare?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

After the craziest presidential election since, well, 2016, we can finally say what’s most important: Joe Biden did his job. He has put our democracy back on track.   

The former vice president turned in a steady, cool-handed performance that defied Twitter-wisdom about Democrats’ supposed leftward lurch. Instead, Biden built a broad center-left coalition that has won back the three Midwest states that put Donald Trump over the top in 2016, while also probably turning Arizona and Georgia blue.

Read the full piece here.

Will You Shut Up, Man?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

No one expected Donald Trump to be a gracious loser. But his hysterical and groundless claims that Democrats are stealing the 2020 election dishonor his office and sully the image of American democracy around the world. 

Sadly, they are par for the course. Whining, lying and suing is what Trump reflexively does whenever he’s cornered. The true national disgrace here is the Republican Party’s craven acquiescence in Trump’s false accusations and conspiratorial ranting. 

On Fox News last night, Sean Hannity lived up to his reputation as “Fox’s dumbest anchor” by witlessly parroting Trump’s claims. He also trotted out Trump henchpersons Corey Lewandowski and Pam Bondi to provide personal testimony of voter fraud that was at once incomprehensible and ludicrously thin.   

Then Senators Lindsay Graham and Ted Cruz and Newt Gingrich, another world-class dissembler, chimed in. Cruz lashed out at “Democratic cities” alleged inability to count votes fairly. No one cautioned that the President of the United States has a solemn responsibility to offer proof for his grave allegations. It was a nauseating spectacle of intellectual dishonesty and misplaced outrage at Democrats for doing what Trump is actually doing – defrauding the voters.   

Once again, the honorable exception was Sen. Mitt Romney. Trump, he said, “is wrong to say the election was rigged, corrupt and stolen.” Such a claim coming from the president of the United States “damages the cause of freedom here and around the world…and recklessly inflames destructive and dangerous passion.”

Will any other prominent Republicans step up and speak the truth as Trump trashes the integrity of U.S. elections? Don’t count on it. 

California’s misleading K-12 dashboard could lead to closure of the wrong schools

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Students at Ánimo Ellen Ochoa Charter Middle School in East Los Angeles are learning at one-and-a-half to two times the pace of their grade-level peers, based on their state standardized (CAASPP) test scores for the last three years compared to the average for the state.

But the California Department of Education has labeled Ochoa a “low performer,” based on how it ranks on various color-coded indicators on the California School Dashboard.

The department’s report of school performance — the state’s “dashboard” — is deeply flawed. For the 341 kids enrolled at Ochoa — 96% of whom are socioeconomically disadvantaged, almost all of whom are Latinx, and 24% of whom are still learning English — a flawed dashboard could lead to disaster. That’s because the school district could close the school based on its ranking.

Ochoa is part of the highly respected Green Dot Public Schools, a Los Angeles nonprofit educational organization, which was recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as a high-quality charter school operator during the Obama administration.

But in high-poverty middle schools such as Ochoa, students often arrive several years behind grade level. Few of them are “proficient” in math or reading. Ochoa’s students, while far behind, are making exceptional gains compared with students statewide. Yet the dashboard blends their test scores together with a year-to-year change measure that conceals both their high rate of growth and their low starting scores. These results only make sense when reported separately. They make no sense when blended together.

All but two states have viable measures of academic growth, designed to show whether students are catching up or falling further behind grade level. California does not.

Read the rest here.

 

Written by David Osborne and Steve Rees.

Tribalism vs. the American Idea

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

If Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump this week, it will begin to repair our country’s badly tarnished image around the world. An even tougher challenge will be reviving Americans’ confidence in their long-running democratic experiment. 

Most countries are bound together by ethnicity, language and religion. What makes America exceptional is that it was founded on a set of propositions favoring individual liberty and equality, and the right of self-government. The 2020 election is a test of whether these liberal ideas still hold sway, or whether Trump’s virulent brand of white identity politics and illiberal nationalism will prevail. 

A Biden victory naturally will reassure his supporters, who have watched aghast as Trump pollutes public discourse with lies, stokes social conflict and uses the U.S. government to further his political and business interests. But as president, Biden also would need to grapple with the radical alienation that has led white working class voters to entrust the nation’s highest office to a showman with zero political experience.  

Central to Biden’s appeal is his promise to unite Americans across a continental red-blue divide. That’s a tall order. The populist right is addicted to its hatreds, and its enemies list is long: the media, liberals, Democrats, globalists, immigrants, black activists, and the “deep state.” The “woke” left likewise seems primed for political retribution, not reconciliation. 

Nonetheless, if he wins Biden should take his cue from Abraham Lincoln’s message of magnaminity to the vanquished South. By virtue of his humble origins, pragmatism and empathy, Biden would be uniquely qualified to reach out to working class voters with a message of respect and hope. 

Their choice of Trump has been likened to raising a middle finger to a despised governing class. OK, message received. 

But what a stiff price we’ve all paid for that angry gesture! After four excruciating years of Trump-generated chaos and conflict, America is diminished in every way. No country has bungled the coronavirus pandemic as badly as ours. Major parts of our economy remain frozen and our society is seething with civil strife. Our standing in the world has sunk low, to the dismay of traditional friends and delight of foreign despots.  

The doleful lesson of Trump’s mad flitting and strutting on the Washington stage is that it can happen here. Our democracy’s antibodies against demagogues, con artists and conspiracy mongers evidently are weaker than we supposed. 

Having worked in national politics and public policy most of my adult life, I’ve taken the structural integrity of our political system for granted. However convulsive our struggles for civic equality and political power might become, they always seemed bounded by a broad and sturdy consensus around our founding political beliefs. 

Trump’s election, however, suggests that consensus may be coming unglued. He’s not moved by abstractions about individual liberty and equality, checks and balances, respect for minority rights, civil and reasoned debate, or a free press. In politics as in business, Trump follows the Lombardi Rule – winning is all that matters.

Although he is chief magistrate of the world’s foremost democracy, Trump evinces no sympathy for pro-democracy activists in repressive states like Belarus and Russia or brutal human rights abuses in friendly countries like Egypt or Saudi Arabia. He has assured Xi Jinping he won’t squawk about China’s horrific ethnic cleansing campaign against the Uighurs. The world’s dictators applaud, because Trump’s conduct vindicates what they’ve told their people: America’s professed devotion to liberal democracy has never been anything more than for a fig leaf for naked self-interest.

As odious as he is, however, it’s a mistake to focus too much on Trump. He’s a human shillelagh wielded by white conservatives in a tribal revolt against what America is becoming – a multi-hued, ethnically diverse, gender-equal, secular and socially liberal society. 

This revolt is fed by two streams. One is conservative Christians, who have been steadily losing their culture war against abortion, gay rights and marriage and the secularization of public life. The other is the white working class, which is shrinking as a share of the population and the electorate. These voters feel culturally eclipsed by minorities and immigrants, and economically dispossessed by deindustrialization, the shift to knowledge work and a new class divide between those with and without college degrees. 

It’s not hard to understand Trump’s appeal to these voters. They adore him because of his defiantly transgressive behavior, not in spite of it. He’s not a “typical politician,” he doesn’t listen to experts and elites, he’s not afraid to say anything or offend anyone, and he loves to troll the “liberal media.” 

Trump’s impersonation of a U.S. president may be entertaining, in the same tawdry way that pro wrestling and midway freak shows are entertaining. But it also subverts what has really made America great – setting up and sustaining the world’s longest experiment in democratic self-rule. Government isn’t a reality show or spectator sport, it’s how Americans tackle common problems and promote the general welfare. Democracy only works if citizens take care to choose their representatives wisely, no matter how pissed off they may be. 

Anyone with eyes to see knows that Trump has amply demonstrated his lack of leadership skills and governing competence over the past four years. That around 46 percent of my fellow citizens are prepared to make the same mistake twice is profoundly unsettling. It’s like tossing the car keys to your drunken teenage son on Saturday night. 

A thumping Biden victory would force Republicans to confront the reality that they are headed for permanent minority status if they don’t disenthrall their party from Trump, white cultural resentment and illiberal populism. Losing the White House and maybe the Senate too could be just the shock the party needs to cast a wider net and frame new appeals to suburban women, blacks and Hispanics and young voters. 

That would make for a healthier partisan competition organized around two heterogeneous political parties that cut across the divides of age, race, gender, and education, instead of just one. It would also weaken the sectarian forces that demand ideological purity, making both parties less susceptible to extremism. 

Biden could reinforce this counter-polarizing dynamic in his own party by avoiding the temptations of political payback and emphasizing at the outset his ambitious offer of “a new deal” for all working class Americans regardless of race, creed or color. It includes a massive domestic rebuilding project centered on public works and clean energy manufacturing. A national commitment to making America, not China, the world’s leading producer of electric cars and trucks could bring high-wage manufacturing jobs back to America’s industrial heartland.

Biden has promised to govern for “everyone who voted for me, as well as against me.” It will take every bit of his fabled empathy, but that’s the way to help all Americans recover their faith in democratic self-government.  

Millions Will Lose Jobless Benefits After Christmas Day

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned the Trump administration yesterday that if they do not reach another coronavirus relief deal, at least five million people (and potentially more) will lose their unemployment benefits, largely because two new unemployment expansions are scheduled to expire on December 26. Yet any deal they strike to extend that aid would need approval from Senate Republicans who spent the last month prioritizing partisan court packing rather than passing a relief package that they say would be a “death knell” for their majority and undermine their argument for obstructing spending under a potential Biden administration. The Senate GOP must stop playing politics with the unemployment benefits keeping millions out of poverty and extend them until job seekers can once again earn a good wage. If they don’t, the next Senate and president will have to do so after benefits have already lapsed.

The $270 billion expansion of Unemployment Insurance that Congress enacted through the CARES Act successfully mitigated what began as the worst unemployment crisis since the Great Depression. It aimed to replace roughly 100 percent of the average worker’s lost wages by boosting all benefits by $600/week. Republicans already let this temporary benefit hike expire in July over misplaced fears that such a large benefit would dissuade some people, particularly those who received more in benefits than they lost in wages, from going back to work. But the CARES Act also expanded benefits through two other programs that expire at the end of this year. Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) gives benefits to people such as gig workers and freelancers who do not qualify for traditional unemployment benefits, while Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) extends normal unemployment benefits by 13 weeks.

PUA and PEUC are essential tools in the fight against this protracted pandemic recession. Over 60 percent of the 23 million people who claimed unemployment in the week ending October 10 received benefits through one of these new programs (these numbers may include some duplicate or ineligible claims), and the share is likely to grow as more unemployed workers move from normal benefits onto PEUC. Federal relief efforts such as the unemployment expansions were so effective at replacing lost incomes that poverty actually fell at the beginning of the crisis, rather than rising.

Back in May, House Democrats proposed extending these programs through January 2021 and have since proposed a new extension for people who exhaust all available benefits. But Senate Republicans refused to even begin negotiations over a new relief deal until well into the summer and oppose spending anywhere near enough money on the nation’s recovery. Senate Majority Whip John Thune doubted this Senate could find the necessary votes to pass anything at all, meaning relief may not come until after December 26 – if even then.

If Senate Republicans let these programs expire, people on PUA will lose their benefits entirely. Most PEUC claimants will move onto another program called Extended Benefits, which offers just 13-20 weeks of additional benefits and is only available in states with high unemployment rates. But nine states do not have high enough unemployment rates to offer Extended Benefits, meaning their beneficiaries will also lose their benefits even if it is not possible (or not safe) for them to earn a paycheck.

Without benefits, millions of people would face dire financial straits. Low-income households that likely had little in savings have been more than twice as likely as high-income households to have someone lose their job during the pandemic, and jobs could become even harder to find as the winter brings a new surge of coronavirus cases that could further slow the economy down. Without savings or income, job seekers will struggle to pay for essentials such as groceries and rent, and the economic pain will spread to the businesses where job seekers would have spent their money.

Senate Republicans can decide today to extend these vital unemployment benefits. Doing so before December 26 would keep benefits from lapsing and help job seekers pay their bills on time. It will also keep states from disassembling the systems that administer those benefits, which would take time to rebuild should Congress extend benefits retroactively because of state unemployment systems’ archaic information technology. But if beneficiaries lose their vital financial support while President Trump and the Senate GOP are in charge, they will be without support for a while even if the next administration takes the necessary action of retroactively extending benefits.

Moving forward, policymakers should avoid recreating the Christmas benefit cliff through the adoption of “automatic stabilizers” – mechanisms that automatically increase the generosity of unemployment benefits for as long as economic data shows the labor market in crisis and gradually return benefits to normal as the labor market recovers. Tying unemployment benefits to real economic conditions, as many Democratic members of Congress have already proposed, would guarantee that laid-off workers keep getting benefits until there are jobs for them to find, regardless of the politics in Congress. Adopting such automatic stabilizers as a permanent feature of the Unemployment Insurance system would make our country more resilient in both the current and future recessions.

There are less than two months for the Senate GOP to put politics aside and join Democrats in preventing vulnerable people from going over the benefit cliff. No matter what the president says, this crisis will not “disappear like a miracle,” and his constituents will continue to need support as we navigate this national crisis. But if this Senate will not act, the next one should move quickly to restore benefits for jobless Americans and modernize the Unemployment Insurance system so future beneficiaries can pay their bills regardless of Congressional politics.

Bringing Diversity to Economic Thought – The Mosaic Project

Posted on by dcadmin

The Progressive Policy Institute is proud to launch The Mosaic Economic Project to create a network of diverse women who are experts in economics and technology – fields where their perspectives are grossly underrepresented. The mission of Mosaic is to train, connect, host and advocate for the participation of women, particularly minority women, in meaningful policy conversations. Listen in to this conversation with women leaders including:

Keynote:

Speakers:

Moderator: