Motherboard’s Nicholas Deleon wrote an article about the rise of the App Economy, in which he cited a PPI report.
Apple even claims that 1.9 million jobs have been created in the US in large part to the App Store. (The Progressive Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, suggests similar numbers.)”
Read the article in its entirety at Motherboard.
PPI President Will Marshall was quoted in an article from The News & Observer, which discussed the unpopularity of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and how that will affect undecided voters.
Somehow a brand is needed that will woo the swing voters, whose top priority is seeing their economic situation improve. That doesn’t lend itself to easy branding.
“They don’t believe the economic deck is stacked against them,” said Will Marshall, the president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a Democratic-leaning research group. “But they reject the Trumpian view that the economy is broken.”
Read the rest of the article at The News & Observer.
PPI Senior Fellow and trade expert Ed Gerwin was quoted by The Hill’s Vicki Needham in this article about the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Ed Gerwin, a trade expert with the Progressive Policy Institute, said that the significance of the strategic issues only became clear to him after he traveled to Japan last fall and spoke with their defense ministers where there are rising concerns about China actions in the South China Sea.
“I think in terms of the TPP there’s a huge geopolitical basis for passing it,” he said.
“TPP influences what kind of China we have commercially,” he said.”
Read the article in its entirety at The Hill.
David Lightman of The Charlotte Observer cited a PPI survey in his article on general election swing voters.
One survey in battlegrounds Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Ohio finds that swing voters are 21 percent of the electorate and voted for different parties in the last two elections, 2012 and 2014.
They largely call themselves independents (84 percent), have less college education than the broader electorate and include fewer African-Americans, the same percentage of Latinos and fewer liberals, according to the poll for the Progressive Policy Institute, a moderate Democratic-leaning research group. They are mostly concerned about the economy, and are more concerned with growth than fairness.”
Read the rest of the article at The Charlotte Observer.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 27, 2016
CONSUMERS WANT ONE SET OF RULES PROTECTING THEIR ONLINE INFORMATION, PUBLIC OPINION STRATEGIES AND HART SURVEY FINDS
National Poll Finds 94 Percent of Internet Users Agree All Companies Collecting Data Online Should Follow Same Rules
WASHINGTON—When consumers go online, they want their privacy protected, and they feel that no matter which company has their data – be it Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Comcast, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, T-Mobile or Twitter – that company should be held to the same set of rules, according to a new national survey by Public Opinion Strategies and Peter Hart.
The survey, conducted on behalf of the Progressive Policy Institute, demonstrates that online consumers do not have different concerns based on which specific entities collect online data. By overwhelming margins, 94% to 5%, Internet users agree that “All companies collecting data online should follow the same consumer privacy rules so that consumers can be assured that their personal data is protected regardless of the company that collects or uses it,” including 82% of Internet users who say they “strongly” agree with that statement.
“Ultimately, consumers want to know there is one set of rules that equally applies to every company that is able to obtain and share their data, whether it be search engines, social networks, or ISPs, and they want that data protected based on the sensitivity of what is being collected” said Peter Hart.
Consumers believe that all internet companies have access to a lot of data about their online behavior, and they want consistent privacy rules to apply to all of these companies regarding the treatment of this data. Of those surveyed, 83% agreed that online privacy should be protected based on the sensitivity of their online data, rather than on who is collecting and using the data.
The national poll of 800 Internet users was completed by a live telephone survey. The results clearly support that consumers want clear, uniform rules that protect their privacy based on the sensitivity of the data, not based on the type of company that uses the data.
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On behalf of the Progressive Policy Institute, Public Opinion Strategies & Peter D. Hart completed a live telephone survey of 800 Internet users nationally, May 23‐25, 2016. Fully 40% of the telephone interviews were conducted via cell phone, and the margin of error for the survey is +3.46%. The purpose of this memo is to review the key findings from the survey.
Download “Internet-User-National-Survey-May-23-25-Key-Findings-Memo”
In the midst of the chaos of this election cycle, some important themes are emerging. In particular, voters are highly worried about retirement security. Indeed, 91 percent of voters in four swing states agree that most Americans are not prepared for retirement. That’s according to a poll by the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), in partnership with veteran Democratic pollster Peter Brodntiz.
That’s why it’s time for a Universal Pension system that would help all U.S. workers save for retirement by eliminating the need to navigate the maze of tax-favored retirement plans, and making their job-based pensions portable. Specifically, the UP would reduce today’s welter of tax-favored retirement accounts into one universal IRA account (with a choice between a traditional or Roth-style IRA).
The accounts would be managed by private firms, under the supervision of the individual rather than the employer, giving workers more control over their investment choices. Furthermore, when workers switch jobs, they can rollover their existing 401(k) or other company pension plans into their Universal Pension reducing paperwork burdens and financial fees for both employers and employees.
And by helping all workers start saving for retirement from their very first day of work, the Universal Pension would harness the power of compound interest for everyone. It would help to close a yawning wealth gap at a time when wealth inequality is roughly 10 times wider than income inequality.
Continue reading at The Hill.
Amid mounting public concern about climate change, many progressives are giving nuclear energy another look. It’s already America’s biggest source of zero-carbon energy, far surpassing wind and solar. And “next generation” reactor technologies hold great promise for generating nuclear power in safer, cleaner, and cheaper ways.
What’s more, America will need more nuclear energy to meet the ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets President Obama set at last year’s Paris climate summit. According to the White House: “As America leads the global transition to a low-carbon economy, the continued development of new and advanced nuclear technologies along with support for currently operating nuclear power plants is an important component of our clean energy strategy.”
Nuclear energy today accounts for nearly 11 percent of the world’s electricity. Without it, the world produce an additional 2.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. Here in the United States, nuclear energy generates 19 percent of our electricity — 63 percent of all zero-carbon electricity in America. The United States as well as developing countries such as China and India will need more nuclear power to meet growing energy demand without loading more carbon into the earth’s atmosphere. But we’re heading in the opposite direction — decreasing more nuclear capacity than we are adding.
U.S. nuclear companies intend to add five more reactors to the nation’s fleet by 2020. In the meantime, however, they have announced plans to shut down three existing plants — and more may be in the offing. Why so many closures? One of the main reasons is the glut of cheap natural gas stemming from America’s shale boom. Natural gas typically sets the price of electricity on the grid in much of the United States. Today, with natural gas trading on the spot market at around two dollars per BTU, nuclear-generated power is being priced out of electricity markets.
Continue reading at RealClearPolicy.
In 2005, Denver stepped into the national spotlight by adopting a performance pay system negotiated with the teachers’ union, financed by a $25 million-a-year boost in property taxes. The subsequent decade of experience reveals a surprising lesson: No one in Denver thinks performance pay has made much difference in student outcomes, but most agree that charter schools – which aren’t eligible for the taxpayer-funded performance pay – have made a big difference.
Performance pay can work. But compensation systems are more effective when they are fashioned by individual schools or groups of schools (charter management organizations). Different schools and teachers have widely different needs and attitudes toward performance pay, and fashioning one system for 150 different schools is probably a fool’s errand.
The Denver effort began in 1999, with a pilot negotiated for the Denver Classroom Teachers Association by Brad Jupp, the union leader who later became Superintendent Michael Bennet’s chief policy adviser. The union not only embraced the effort, it helped raise more than $1 million from foundations to finance it. But to participate, a school had to get 85 percent of its teachers on board, so only 16 schools joined the pilot.
Continue reading at U.S. News & World Report.
SPEAKER OF ALBANIA: On Monday, PPI and NLC4 cohosted the Honorable Ilir Meta, Speaker of Parliament and former Prime Minister of the Republic of Albania, for a reception and conversation about Albanian politics, U.S.-
Albanian relations, and America’s influence in Southeastern Europe.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 19, 2016
Contact: Cody Tucker, ctucker@ppionline.org, 202-775-0106;
Steven Chlapecka, schlapecka@ppionline.org, 202-525-3931
WASHINGTON—Ed Gerwin, senior fellow for trade and global opportunity at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), today released the following statement after the United States International Trade Commission (USITC) released a new report concerning the likely impact of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement on the U.S. economy:
“The Progressive Policy Institute welcomes the release of the U.S. International Trade Commission’s report on the economic effects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership on the American economy. We are pleased that the Commission’s detailed economic analysis concludes that a U.S. economy with TPP would, overall, see higher growth, employment, and exports as compared to a U.S. economy without TPP, and we look forward to reviewing the report in detail.
“It’s important to recognize—as the Commission itself notes—that the USITC’s cautious economic model does not capture the full economic impact of many of the TPP’s high standard reforms. These include the benefits of stronger protections for U.S. intellectual property, the elimination of trade impediments for many U.S. service providers, and reductions in standards-related barriers to American exports.
“In particular, the Commission’s economic analysis does not fully reflect the potentially substantial economic benefits of two key TPP reforms: (1) the many TPP provisions that establish a modern framework for e-commerce and digital trade, and (2) those that make trade easier, faster, cheaper, and more certain for American small business. As the Commission notes, many observers believe—as we do—that the TPP’s provisions on digital trade are ‘the most transformative measures in the agreement.’
“PPI’s analysis has shown that expanding e-commerce and digital trade has particular potential to ‘democratize’ trade, by making trade easier for small and non-traditional traders. And—when taken together with the TPP’s many advancements for small exporters—the TPP’s digital trade provisions can support stronger growth, better jobs, and new pathways for sharing trade’s benefits more inclusively.
“Finally, the TPP would have benefits beyond those that can be measured in economic terms, including strengthening America’s geopolitical ties around the Pacific Rim and supporting important values—like the rule of law, transparency, and the protection of workers and the environment—that we seek to more fully share with our friends and allies.”
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PPI President Will Marshall was quoted on his thoughts about reforming America’s transportation infrastructure.
Infrastructure projects in the United States are taking up to 10 years to gain regulatory approval, a problem that is too often sending investors to other countries and driving up the costs of projects, several transportation experts said
An “accumulation of laws and regulations,” largely designed to protect the environment via environmental impact reviews, is bogging down approval of badly needed transportation projects and instead causing environmental damage, Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, said at a May 19 Infrastructure Week event here.”
Read the article in its entirety at Transportation Topics.
A PPI report on App Economy jobs is cited in this article from Recode.
Beyond flaunting the growth of Play, Google has another motive in highlighting the success of apps like Prune. It needs to convince regulators in Europe, who have opened an antitrust case against Android, that the operating system boosts other companies instead of thwarting them.
In its argument to regulators, Google is likely to point here, to a recent report from the Progressive Policy Institute. It claims that some 1.66 million app jobs emerged in the U.S. from the “app economy,” more than double the number from three years ago.”
Read the full article at Recode.
All around the world we are seeing the rise of the App Economy—jobs, companies, and economic growth created by the production and distribution of mobile applications (“apps”) that run on smartphones. Since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, the App Economy has grown from nothing to a powerful economic force that rivals existing industries.
In this paper we examine the production and distribution of mobile apps as a source of growth and job creation for Argentina. We find that Argentina had roughly 33,250 App Economy jobs as of March 2016.
What’s more, Argentina has the potential to add many more App Economy jobs in the near future. With President Mauricio Macri taking office in December 2015, Argentina began the arduous process of regaining its economic stability after the country’s crippling debt disputes of the prior 15 years.
Macri has made some large strides in normalizing the economy such as lifting currency controls, removing several export taxes, and most importantly, settling the debt dispute. By reaching an agreement with the holdout bondholders, Ar- gentina has regained access to international financial markets, giving Argentines, as well as outsider investors, hope for Argentina’s return to economic stability.
Download “2016.05-DiIonno_Mandel_Argentina_The-Road-to-the-App-Economy”
Some of the most dramatic gains in urban education have come from school districts using a “portfolio strategy”: negotiating performance agreements with some mix of traditional, charter and hybrid public schools, allowing them great autonomy, letting them handcraft their schools to fit the needs of their students, giving parents their choice of schools, replicating successful schools and replacing failing schools.
Many doubt that such a strategy is possible with an elected board, because closing schools and laying off teachers triggers such fierce resistance. Most cities pursuing the strategy – such as New Orleans, Washington, D.C. and Camden, New Jersey – have done so with insulation from local electoral politics.
All of which explains why reformers are paying close attention to Denver, Colorado. With an elected board, Denver Public Schools has embraced charter schools and created “innovation schools,” which it treats somewhat like charters. Since 2005 it has closed or replaced 48 schools and opened more than 70, the majority of them charters. In 2010, it signed a Collaboration Compact with charter leaders committing to equitable funding and a common enrollment system for charters and traditional schools, plus replication of the most effective schools, whether charter or traditional.
Read more at U.S News & World Report.
Since entering the presidential race, Donald Trump has been all over the economic map, with fantasy plans like getting Mexico to pay for a wall between the two countries.
But when Trump starts talking about how the U.S. never has to default because we “print the money,” he’s finally pointing to an economic strategy he could actually execute: The Trump ‘inflation balloon.’ If elected, Trump—the king of reneging on debt–would likely do everything he could to pump up the money supply. His goal: To create a rapid and unexpected inflationary surge that would transfer wealth from creditors to debtors.
Trump has already said that he would likely replace Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen, as well as auditing the Fed and running bigger deficits. Taken together, President Trump could engineer an inflationary spiral with little difficulty compared to fixing basic economic problems.
Unexpected inflation makes it easier for debtors to pay back debt, especially when interest rates are fixed and the debt is in the national currency. As a result, in the short-term, the Trump inflation balloon would temporarily help the United States, the world’s biggest debtor country, and hurt China, Germany, and Japan, all creditor nations.
However, history shows that a Trump inflation balloon would end disastrously, sending interest rates soaring, impoverishing the next generation, and potentially leading to global conflict.
Politically, progressives need to be wary of the Trump inflation balloon. The idea of higher inflation will appeal to millions of Americans who have seen their student debt and auto loans soar by 81% since 2007, while their wages have stagnated. To a new graduate struggling to pay back a fixed-rate student loan, a burst of inflation would seem mighty attractive right now.
To fight back, progressive candidates need to stress the importance of growth and innovation for reducing the burden of debt. Rising real wages, propelled by higher productivity, would raise living standards for today’s voters and their children without the need to borrow.
By contrast, a Trump inflation balloon would bring the U.S. back to the 1970s, a time when the misery index—the inflation rate plus the unemployment rate—was sky-high. That would be a disaster.
