Category: Uncategorized

Spectrum: The Faster the Better

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI has long held the position that quickly reallocating spectrum to the most efficient users– big and small –is essential for the continued growth of the wireless communications sector.

This stance was echoed last week at a hearing on the upcoming spectrum auction held by the House Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation. At the hearing, “Avoiding the Spectrum Crunch: Growing the Wireless Economy through Innovation,” industry experts and policymakers agreed that the upcoming auction needs take place as soon as possible at the risk of wireless communications companies running out of spectrum.

In his opening remarks, Subcommittee Chair Ben Quayle reiterated the importance of efficiently using available spectrum, saying “The U.S. wireless industry has been experiencing exponential growth…like the “app” market that we never envisioned a few years ago…As spectrum has become more crowded, it is necessary to ensure that it is being used as efficiently as possible, and that we have the policies in place to encourage industry’s continued investment and growth.”

Continue reading “Spectrum: The Faster the Better” →

PPI EVENT: The Economic Implications of the Wireless Boom

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The Progressive Policy Institute will host an economic forum to discuss the economic implications of the wireless boom.

Roger Entner, founder of Recon Analytics, will explain the findings of his recent paper, “The Wireless Industry: The Essential Engine Of Us Economic Growth,” to a policy panel that includes, AT&T’s Jim Cicconi, PPI Chief Economist Michael Mandel and Professor Thomas Hazlett of George Mason University.

Date:
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
9:30 – 11 a.m.

Featured Speaker:
Roger Entner, Founder, Recon Analytics

Roundtable:
Jim Cicconi, Senior Executive Vice President, External and Legislative Affairs, AT&T
Thomas Hazlett, Professor of Law & Economics, George Mason University
Michael Mandel, Chief Economic Strategist, Progressive Policy Institute

Location:
National Press Club, Murrow/White/Lisagor Room
529 14th Street NW Washington, D.C. 20045

Register for this event

If you have any questions, please contact 202-525-3926.

Space is limited. RSVP required.

PPI Battleground Home Values Index

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI’s monthly look at home values in 16 potential 2012 battleground states–our Battleground Home Values Index–stayed flat in February 2012. Median home prices in these states have fallen an average of 16% since the last election, or $29,525. While prices no longer seem to be falling, they haven’t yet risen either. Given the state of the housing market for the past two years, no news is good news.

Why the Instagram Purchase is Good News for App Economy Jobs

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The $1 billion purchase by Facebook of Instagram, a start-up with a hot mobile photo app, was played up by the New York Times as a way for Facebook to stave off competition–”eat the new start-up before it eats you, or before a competitor grabs it.”

However, there’s another way to think about the Instagram purchase. Facebook just sent a strong signal to potential entrepreneurs and venture capitalists: If you have a good idea for an app, or can find someone with a good idea for an, you can get very rich very quickly by being acquired by a Facebook, or a Google, or a Microsoft. All of a sudden starting or financing a new company, with plenty of new employees, looks a lot more appealing.

Continue reading “Why the Instagram Purchase is Good News for App Economy Jobs” →

Home Economics: Second Thoughts on Second Homes and the Mortgage Interest Deduction

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Mitt Romney caused quite a stir earlier this week when reporters overheard the presumptive GOP presidential nominee tell donors, “I’m going to probably eliminate for high income people the second home mortgage deduction.”

While Romney could probably personally stand to lose a break on his second home (not to mention third, fourth, etc…), the idea is not one that should be casually tossed about.

In fairness to Governor Romney, he’s not alone in thinking that eliminating the mortgage interest deduction for second homes is a budgetary and political win-win. But consider the following data:

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The Great Squeeze: It’s Not Just College Grads

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

There’s been a lot of press lately about how young college grads are struggling. And they are – especially younger grads who have seen their real earnings drop 15% over the last decade.

But that’s missing a big part of the story. You see, when college grads struggle, that trickles down to all levels of educational attainment.

While the economy has officially been in “recovery” for almost three years, we are still about six million jobs short of when the recession began in 2007. But just because we’re short on jobs doesn’t mean the number of available workers decreased alongside it. In fact, the opposite is true – with natural population growth, the number of available workers across all levels of educational attainment continued to rise, for workers aged 25 and older.

Now we all know someone with a college degree generally makes a more desirable job candidate than a non-degree holder – after all, that’s the selling point of going to college (and a big factor behind the $1 trillion in outstanding student debt). So in the competition for the 2.2 million jobs that have been created since the recession officially ended, guess who loses? Answer:  Those without education beyond high school.

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Anne Kim on the Economics Behind the Mommy Wars

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Anne Kim, PPI Managing Director for Policy and Strategy, explains the economics behind the recent “Mommy Wars” at The Washington Monthly:

“By now, every mother in America has heard of Democrat Hilary Rosen’s recent charge that Ann Romney, the wife of presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney and mother of five grown sons, has “never worked a day in her life.””

“Yes, the mommy wars are back.”

“Setting aside the question of whether raising children is “work” (it very much is, by the way), the mommy wars are so divisive because they’re framed in terms of values and choice. Where a woman chooses to work (at home or for a paycheck) is a proxy for her stance on career versus family and which she considers more “important.” Hence, First Lady Michelle Obama’s declaration this week that “families are off-limits” in politics.”

“But treating women’s work as an issue for culture and values misses the boat in a big way. Not only is it elitist, it denies the underlying economic realities of many women’s lives.”

Read the entire article here

Will Marshall on Syria

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI President Will Marshall explains why the U.S. should stop temporizing on Syria at Real Clear World:

“The tenuous ceasefire in Syria is a relief, but it also carries the risk that Bashar al Assad will manipulate the UN-sponsored truce to extend his lease on power. Russia, China and Iran favor that outcome; America shouldn’t. ”

“Yet Washington seems mired in ambivalence. On one hand, the Obama administration has called on Assad to step down. On the other, it has ruled out U.S. intervention and backed Kofi Annan’s UN-Arab League plan, which does not envision Assad’s departure, calling instead for regime-led negotiations with the resistance.”

“While Assad’s forces have stopped firing, they haven’t pulled back from population centers, as the Annan plan also demands. Resistance groups are planning street protests to test Assad’s supposed conversion to talks and reconciliation.”

Read the entire article here

How Unproductive Is Congress? It’s Not Even Naming Post Offices

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In just the latest sign of how gridlocked Washington has become, Congress is currently failing to pass even the most reliable of legislative standbys: naming post offices and federal buildings.

For each of the last several Congresses, naming post-offices has been a staple of Congress’s work. In the 109th Congress, for example, 98 of the 482 laws passed by Congress—or 1 in 5—were post-office naming bills.

But so far, the current Congress has managed to name just 17 post offices and federal buildings, plus one national refuge (the “Sam D. Hamilton Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge”).

Why the naming deficit?

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Election Watch: The End of the Beginning

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

So it’s finally, incontrovertibly over.

Rick Santorum’s withdrawal from the presidential race on Tuesday saved Mitt Romney and his friends many millions of dollars and additional heartburn from charges that he’s not a “true conservative,” and gave his campaign much more time to plan the convention and the general election. Even though Romney had the nomination all but locked, and might have knocked Santorum out of the race on April 24 with a big win in Pennsylvania, Santorum had a lot of incentive to stay in the race until May, when a bunch of primaries in states with large evangelical populations were to vote. One theory holds that the cold water the RNC poured on an effort by Rick’s allies in Texas to change that state’s delegate allocation from a proportional to a winner-take-all system was the clincher, since that was the only scenario under which Santorum might have denied Romney a majority of delegates.

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How E-planning for Retirement Can Help Lower-Income Savers

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The 2012 Retirement Confidence Survey recently released by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) confirms that many U.S. workers know that they are not saving enough for retirement. Two-thirds of workers say they are behind schedule in saving for retirement and only 14 percent of workers are very confident that they are saving enough.

Moderate and lower-income Americans make up a disproportionate share of the workers who are “under-saving” for retirement or not saving at all. While 93 percent of Americans with annual household income above $75,000 report having some savings for retirement, just 35 percent of households with income below $35,000 have any retirement savings. Moreover, the EBRI survey shows that higher-income households are more likely to consult with professional financial advisers, more likely to have determined how much savings they need to accumulate, and more likely to use online technologies to help manage their financial accounts.

Continue reading “How E-planning for Retirement Can Help Lower-Income Savers” →

Will Marshall on the Marlins’ Misguided Decision

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI President Will Marshall examines whether the Marlins caved to political pressure in Politico’s Arena:

“Baseball managers are entitled to the same Constitutional rights as anyone else. Period, full stop.”

“In fact, we ought to call an end to the all-too-common ritual of public humiliation, confession and absolution that follows whenever some celebrity says something stupid or offensive. It’s the closest thing our supposedly free society has to a totalitarian show trial.”

“To profess admiration for a tyrant like Castro – or a tyrant’s groupie like Hugo Chavez – is certainly obnoxious. But so is the idea that protecting people against “hurtful” speech, insults or foolish ideas should take precedence over free speech.”

Read the full op-ed here

Election Watch: A Conservative Romney Emerges

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Tuesday’s primaries in Wisconsin, Maryland and D.C. were a clean sweep for Mitt Romney, who also won 86 of the 95 pledged delegates at stake in the three states.

According to everybody’s estimates (other than those of the Santorum campaign), Romney is now well over half-way to the goal of the 1144 delegates needed to win the GOP nomination.  An especially credible estimate made by Ryan Lizza, Josh Putnam and Andrew Prokop for The New Yorker even before Tuesday’s votes were counted showed Romney as certain to get very close to the magic number at the end of the contested primaries, needing only a tiny sliver of the unpledged delegates to get over the top. At worst, Mitt’s in the situation Barack Obama faced late in the 2008 Democratic contest, when the only scenario that could have prevented his nomination was an unlikely and almost unanimous revolt among unpledged super-delegates. But any such comparison suggests that Rick Santorum could have Hillary Clinton’s staying power and ability to win heavily in late primaries, and that’s more than a stretch.

From a more practical perspective, the question going into the April 2 primaries was whether Santorum could somehow survive until May, when a string of southern and midwestern primaries could provide him with the sort of demographic landscape in which he has done well so far. But even if that happens, the June calendar represents a Romney firewall of delegate-rich primaries in New Jersey, California and Utah that now look likely to officially put the front-runner over the top–that is, even if Santorum fights on to the bitter end.

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Republican Candidates Ignore the Housing Crisis

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI President Will Marshall and PPI Senior Fellow Jason Gold critique the Republican candidates failure to address the country’s lingering housing crisis at the Las Vegas Sun:

If the Republican presidential candidates have any ideas for solving America’s housing crisis, they aren’t sharing them with the voters. Since leaving behind February primaries in Nevada, Florida and Arizona, the GOP’s final four have virtually dropped the subject.

That’s puzzling, because housing remains a top concern for U.S. voters. Some 12 million homeowners remain underwater and 4 million are delinquent on their loans or in foreclosure. The ongoing drop in home prices is the single biggest drag on economic recovery. As catastrophic as it is to lose a job, the percentage of Americans who are unemployed is actually exceeded by the percentage of Americans who have either lost significant wealth from their homes or are drowning in “negative equity.”

Yet the primary debate has fixated on such evidently more urgent issues as contraception, Obamacare, gas prices, Obamacare, porn, and, of course, Obamacare (which doesn’t actually take effect until 2014). Why have the Republicans clammed up on housing?

Read the entire article

Occupational Licensing: How A New Guild Mentality Thwarts Innovation

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The late economist Mancur Olson would have been a fan of Jonathan Ames. Ames is the creator of the HBO series Bored to Death as well as the eponymous protagonist, an aspiring novelist who moonlights as a private investigator. Olson may have enjoyed the ensuing hijinks, but he would have seen a larger economic lesson in the show.

In his classic book, The Logic of Collective Action, Olson demonstrated that small groups are usually more efficient and effective at achieving collective ends than large groups. Despite the narrower interests they represent, small groups find it easier to engage in coordinated behavior and achieve group ends, even when those ends may work against the interests of the larger society. Today, this “logic of collective action” can be seen in the spread of professional and occupational licensing. Whereas in the 1950s only five percent of the American workforce was subject to such licensing, it currently stands at nearly one-third. What this means is that, to enter certain professions and occupations, individuals must attain minimum levels of education and training and, often, pass exams to demonstrate their competency to practice.

Continue reading “Occupational Licensing: How A New Guild Mentality Thwarts Innovation” →

Suppress the Vote!

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI’s executive director Lindsay Lewis, and PPI Fellow Jim Arkedis, explain how conservative super PACs will likely wage a voter suppression war in November over at the New York Times:

 

The grip of the super PAC on the Republican primary season has been well-documented. They are wrecking balls operating outside the candidates’ direct control, fueled by massive influxes of cash from a handful of wealthy patrons. The millions spent by the pro-Santorum Red, White and Blue Fund and the pro-Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our Future, have prolonged their respective candidates’ rivalry with the front-runner, Mitt Romney, whose own Restore Our Future has bludgeoned the competition from Iowa to Florida to Michigan.

And that’s just the start. In the general election, super PACs will evolve into full-blown shadow campaigns. This transition is already underway, with the super PACs supporting Republican candidates beginning to take on voter persuasion operations — like sending direct mail and making phone calls — that have traditionally been reserved for a campaign operation or party committee.

The phenomenon won’t be isolated on the right. President Obama recently embraced the outside groups that he had rejected, saying that he would not unilaterally disarm. The president has dispatched one of his most trusted aides to run Priorities USA, the White House’s super PAC of choice.

Read the full op-ed