With inflation easing, the wages of working-class Americans are finally moving into the plus column. Average hourly pay for production and nonsupervisory workers — who make up four-fifths of employees — hit $30.27 in August, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
According to my organization’s analysis, working-class Americans’ wages, adjusted for inflation, have just edged higher than they were on Election Day, 2020. The average working-class American can now answer “Yes” to the question, “Are you better off now than you were under Donald Trump?”
That’s obviously important for political symbolism. But the milestone for real wages also explains a lot about why Americans have felt so badly oppressed by inflation up to now. The price of food and housing matters, but they matter more if price increases exceed wage gains.
WASHINGTON — The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) today released a new report, “Fixing Uncompetitive Markets: Protecting Working Americans from the High Costs of Market Power,” authored by Diana L. Moss, Vice President and Director of Competition Policy at PPI. This report offers an in-depth analysis of how concentrated market power in key sectors harms working-class Americans by driving up prices, reducing choice, pushing down wages and benefits, and limiting economic mobility.
This new publication is a key output of PPI’s Campaign for Working America, which was launched earlier this year in partnership with former U.S. Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio. The Campaign aims to develop and test new themes, ideas, and policy proposals that help Democrats and other center-left leaders make a compelling economic offer to working Americans, bridge divides on cultural issues like immigration and education, and rally public support for the defense of democracy and freedom globally.
“The lack of competition in critical sectors — such as food, health care, and transportation — has placed an enormous strain on working families,” said Moss. “This report lays out a roadmap for policymakers to more vigorously enforce antitrust laws, promote competition, and prioritize the economic interests of consumers and workers over the dominance of powerful market players.”
The report highlights the urgent need to address harmful mergers and anticompetitive practices that increase costs for essential goods and services. Moss emphasizes that robust antitrust enforcement in highly concentrated markets will foster consumer, worker, and entrepreneurial freedom. Protecting consumers from harmful, deceptive practices such as drip pricing and junk fees, particularly in sectors with limited competition, is also a focus.
“Working Americans deserve a fair shot at economic success, and that starts with ensuring they are not burdened by uncompetitive markets that work against them,” Moss added.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Find an expert at PPI and follow us on Twitter.
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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org
Competition is the lifeblood of a market system. Access to markets, choice, and fair prices and wages preserves consumer, worker, and entrepreneurial freedom. The benefits of this are tangible. Competition keeps the engines of economic activity and growth at a fuller throttle, promotes a more equal distribution of income and wealth, and a better standard of living. Moreover, markets rest on fundamental democratic principles that are essential for preserving economic freedom and opportunity.
The prospect of anything but hard-nosed competition in the markets that make up the U.S. free-market economy should trouble working Americans. The 2024 Democratic Party Platform recognizes the importance and role of competition in our political economy. It prioritizes promoting competition in markets that matter to working-class Americans, ranging from retail grocery, to agriculture, healthcare, drugs, fuel, transportation, finance, and construction.
An important reality is that market activity is largely fueled by consumers, workers, and entrepreneurs. For example, almost 70% of spending in the U.S. economy in the first quarter of 2024 was attributable to personal consumption expenditures. Small businesses were responsible for almost 45% of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) in the mid-2010s. And labor contributed almost 70% to U.S. GDP in 2019. These are big numbers. They make clear the high costs to the U.S. economy of a lack of competition if consumers do not spend due to high prices, small businesses do not get a foothold because of an unlevel playing field, and workers lose their bargaining power to powerful employers.
Antitrust enforcement referees the markets. Without it, prices, wages, choice, and the quality of goods and services are dictated by powerful firms, not the rough and tumble of the competitive process. Working Americans are the first to recognize the importance of robust market competition. But for the last several years, consumers have grown frustrated by high prices for food, housing, healthcare, energy, and transportation. Small businesses are restrained by the high walls they must scale to get into some markets that are dominated by powerful firms. And workers can be limited by anticompetitive restraints on their mobility, wages, and benefits.
These limitations force some of the most important market participants to make tough choices about what to buy, where to work, and whether to start a business. With limited government resources to promote competition through antitrust enforcement and procompetitive regulation, policymakers must also make hard choices. These choices should reflect what is important to working-class Americans to help them live better, not ideological trends or political interests of the day. This segment of PPI’s Campaign for Working America takes on the question of how to best promote competition enforcement to reduce the cost of living and improve the lives of working Americans.’
In the process, they are giving Harris a critical opening to broaden her base of support.
“It’s easier for prominent Republicans like Cheney and Gonzales to say, ‘I support Kamala Harris’ because, in effect, their old home has been ransacked and destroyed,” said Will Marshall, the founder of the Progressive Policy Institute, a center-left think tank. “The ties of partisanship, which are always strong in both parties, are attenuated by the fact that Trump has made today’s Republican Party absolutely unwelcome for prominent Republicans who served in previous administrations.”
Bush himself will not follow suit. A spokesperson says the former president has no plans to make endorsements or say publicly how he will vote.
Harris has embraced the backing of Republicans with whom she shares little common ground and whose endorsement likely has more to do with opposition to Trump than support of her policy positions. She frequently mentions that more than 200 Republicans have endorsed her, and her campaign said in an email playing up Gonzales’ backing that it welcomed into the fold “every American – regardless of party – who values democracy and the rule of law.”
“British pollster Deborah Mattinson, a former top adviser to Starmer, and Claire Ainsley, Starmer’s former director of policy, jointly briefed Harris campaign staffers this past week on a target demographic they call “hero voters.
In Britain, Ainsley told The Washington Post, these tended to be voters who had traditionally backed Labour but who had supported the 2016 Brexit referendum and the “Get Brexit Done” election campaign of Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party in 2019.
They were struggling with daily living costs and wanted change. “They felt like hope for a better life was getting out of reach,” said Ainsley, who now works with the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) think tank in Washington.”
“Any drop in an already small number can dramatically impact the campus environment for students of color, and students are already reporting negative effects,” the group said.
But some experts put a positive spin on the new data. It shows a way forward for diversity under the new regimen, argued Richard Kahlenberg, director of the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute.
“There were predictions that the Black population could fall to 2 percent at some universities and 6 percent at Harvard, and that did not happen,” Mr.Kahlenberg said. “I want there to be racial diversity on campus. I think it showed it was possible to achieve that without racial preferences.”
One area for litigation could be the personal essay. The court allows admissions officers to consider race in the personal essay, if it was germane to some life experience. Mr.Kahlenberg said that it could become problematic if essays are used as a way to elevate the applications of only certain groups. If, for example, equal consideration were not given to Asian American students who had overcome discrimination or to white students who had overcome poverty.
The U.S. Justice Department disclosed last week that it had charged six Hamas leaders with terrorism in February for organizing the Oct. 7 massacre of approximately 1,200 people in Israel — including more than 40 U.S. citizens.
Although none of those charged are likely to ever appear in a U.S. courtroom — three have since been killed and Israeli forces are hunting down the rest — the unsealed indictments are a crucial expression of American solidarity with terrorism victims everywhere.
Attorney General Merrick Garland drove home the horror of the Oct. 7 bloodbath in a statement justifying the charges: “During the attack, Hamas terrorists murdered civilians who tried to flee, and those who sought refuge in bomb shelters,” he said. “They murdered entire families. They murdered the elderly, and they murdered young children. They weaponized sexual violence against women.”
Hamas also seized about 240 hostages and recently killed six more of them to pressure Israel to stop the fighting and leave Gaza.
When the British political strategist Deborah Mattinson heard Vice President Kamala Harris boast in the presidential debate about prosecuting transnational gangs, she thought the message was spot on — and that Harris needed to deliver it many, many, many more times.
The former head of strategy for Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who won a landslide election in July, Mattinson was in Washington the week of the debate to meet with Democrats, including advisers to the Harris campaign, and share lessons from the Labor Party’s smashing summer victory. She and Claire Ainsley, Starmer’s former head of policy, urged Democrats to focus intently on winning back working-class voters who had drifted to the right in recent years — toward right-wing populists who seemed more in touch with their economic frustrations and cultural grievances.
“For voters, cost of living and immigration are the two biggest issues,” Ainsley said. “And that’s where they need to focus their attention.”
POLITICO spoke with Mattinson and Ainsley as they were wrapping up their visit to Washington. Harris, they said, was on the right track. But with only weeks left until the election, there was still plenty of work for her to do to defeat former President Donald Trump.
Their advice was not just based on intuition or interpretation of the recent U.K. election. Ainsley is a leader of the Progressive Policy Institute, where she directs a transnational effort to revitalize center-left parties. As part of that effort, the think tank shuttled Labour politicians to Washington earlier this year and the Democratic convention in August, and conducted polling and focus groups in American swing states over the summer.
Health care costs and reproductive health were key topics in Tuesday night’s debate. Vice President Harris presented concrete solutions for managing costs — such as addressing insulin and prescription drug prices and strengthening the ACA — while criticizing Trump for failing to deliver an alternative to the ACA despite promises since 2016. Additionally, Harris delivered impactful critiques by emphasizing Trump’s central role in undermining American women’s reproductive rights. This focus is particularly relevant, given the ongoing strain of high health care costs on American households and Trump’s continued efforts, alongside Republicans, to undermine reproductive health.
A recent Progressive Policy Institute poll reveals that working-class Americans are deeply concerned about soaring health care costs, which they largely blame on drug manufacturers, insurance companies, and hospitals. Key issues include opaque hospital pricing and high drug prices. In response, Harris has pledged to address these concerns as part of her health care platform, which was highlighted in the debate. Her proposals include capping insulin prices, limiting cost-sharing for generic drugs, and expanding Medicare’s ability to negotiate drug prices.
Harris’s evolution from support for Medicare for All to these more prosaic concerns is welcome. This pragmatic approach is likely due to the political decision to tamper the announcement of any major policy reform that would be targeted by the Trump campaign. Harris intends to instead protect and bolster the Affordable Care Act (ACA), along with making the Biden-Harris tax credit enhancements permanent, which are reducing health care premiums by an average of around $800 annually for millions of Americans.
Meanwhile, Trump’s inconsistent stance on repealing and replacing the ACA underscores his lack of seriousness and leadership on the issue, as evidenced by his vague statement during the debate: “I have a concept of a plan” to address or alter the law. Thanks to the ACA, a record percentage of Americans (92%) have access to health insurance. The Biden-Harris admin made an important contribution to this achievement by including enhanced subsidies for the ACA marketplace in its landmark Inflation Reduction Act. A record 21 million people enrolled through the ACA this year alone, reducing the uninsured rate from 16% in 2010 to under 8% today. But health care costs remain exorbitantly expensive, forcing working families to reprioritize their immediate financial needs over preventive or ongoing medical care.
Meanwhile, reproductive health care access remained a critical focus for Harris throughout the debate, as she vowed to reinstate Americans’ reproductive rights that were undermined when Trump’s Supreme Court justices overturned Roe v. Wade. Harris promised to seek national legislation to restore the legal right to abortion; enhance access to contraception; safeguard a woman’s right to access IVF, and repeal the Hyde Amendment. She also promised to continue to advocate for access to FDA-approved abortion drugs and select judges who uphold reproductive freedom.
Trump proved once again that he and the Republican Party are completely out of touch with working-class Americans who are increasingly distressed about the state of abortion access since the end of Roe. Refuting his record and providing faltering answers on reproductive access, Harris swung back, reiterating that Trump should “not be telling a woman what to do with her body.”
In PPI’s Winning Back Working America poll, 56% of participants said they are concerned about abortion access. Trump’s relentless effort to curtail access to reproductive health care is directly opposed to the majority of Americans’ wishes, eroding the foundation of democracy and their personal liberty. Harris and Democrats are aptly appealing to working-class voters, including Independents and Republicans, who are anxious about the fragile state of access to reproductive care in the 2024 election and beyond.
Harris’ focus on reducing health care costs and enhancing reproductive health access in the debate and in her campaign represents a refreshing shift that addresses the concerns of working-class voters. Even those with coverage often encounter substantial out-of-pocket expenses. Similarly, despite some states protecting reproductive freedom, individuals still face barriers and threats from Trump and Republicans seeking to undermine these protections. Harris and Democratic lawmakers present a promising vision for working Americans seeking relief from harmful Republican policies that threaten to increase costs and reduce access to care.
WASHINGTON — As the U.S. seeks to bolster its domestic manufacturing, the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) is more critical than ever, particularly from trusted allies. This insight is at the heart of a new report from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), titled “The U.S. Wants Manufacturing to Drive Growth. Foreign Friends Can Help.” The report examines the converse of U.S. “friendshoring” in friendly countries: the potential for allied nations like Japan, South Korea, Canada, the UK, and Germany to support U.S. economic growth through investment in sectors ranging from electric vehicles to biopharmaceuticals.
The report, authored by Yuka Hayashi, is the second in a two-part series. The first, “Behind Japan’s U.S. Steel Bid: An Aging, Shrinking Home Market,” provides a fresh perspective on Nippon Steel’s proposed acquisition of U.S. Steel and closely examines the economic realities behind Nippon Steel’s pursuit of the American industrial icon.
The new report highlights how these investments can create high-paying jobs, drive technological innovation, and strengthen America’s position in the global economy. Drawing on examples from states like Ohio, Michigan, and North Carolina, where Japanese companies have built major manufacturing hubs, the study argues that such partnerships are essential to America’s economic future.
“If the U.S. wants to strengthen domestic manufacturing, promoting foreign investment from friendly countries is a smart strategy,” said Hayashi. “Not only does it create good-paying jobs and spur innovation, but it also deepens our economic ties with trusted allies, ensuring that critical industries remain secure.”
The report stresses that the U.S. must be strategic in welcoming investment from allied nations, especially in the context of growing tensions with China. As part of this strategy, the report calls for expanding “friend-shoring” partnerships — moving supply chains to allied nations to ensure resilience and stability.
In light of the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, both passed in 2022, PPI’s report underscores the opportunity for the U.S. to attract even more foreign investment, particularly in green technology and semiconductor manufacturing. It also warns that protectionist policies could deter friendly nations from further investing in the U.S. economy.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Find an expert at PPI and follow us on Twitter.
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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org
Harvard’s long-awaited release of the racial demographics of the Class of 2028 — the first admitted after the Supreme Court prohibited colleges from employing racial preferences — defied all the gloomy predictions.
During the nearly nine-year court battle over Harvard’s admissions policies, officials swore that there was no possible way to preserve racial diversity without employing racial preferences in admissions. The data released yesterday makes plain that they were wrong.
As an expert witness for Students for Fair Admissions, I testified that Harvard could take steps — such as increasing preferences for socioeconomic disadvantage — to create healthy levels of racial diversity.
As the world grappled with shortages and soaring prices of energy and food following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the spring of 2022, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen introduced the term “friend-shoring” to describe a new dynamic needed for America’s economic engagement with the world. She called for building and deepening integration among trusted partners to secure supplies of critical raw materials, technologies, and products.
“Let’s do it with countries we know we can count on,” she said in a Washington speech. “Favoring the ‘friend-shoring’ of supply chains to a large number of trusted countries, so we can continue to securely extend market access, will lower the risks to our economy, as well as to our trusted trade partners.”
Yet, when it comes to working with friendly partners seeking to invest in the U.S., Washington’s message has been less than
welcoming. Amid the rise of “America First” economic nationalism, its policies have been inconsistent and muddled, even for companies from the closest allies in Europe and East Asia. Election-year politics have further complicated its stance, casting in doubt the fate of a high-profile pursuit of U.S. Steel by Japan’s top steel maker.
President Biden wants to strengthen American manufacturing. Foreign investors can help speed it up. They have for decades created more jobs, paid higher wages and spent more on factories and equipment than the average U.S. manufacturer. Their spending on research and development has enhanced productivity and accelerated America’s strong innovation.
America’s manufacturing is already starting to benefit as companies from allied nations take up Yellen’s concept and “friend-shore” some of their production to the U.S. Amid growing U.S.-China tensions, South Korea’s LG Energy is building an EV battery plant with Hyundai Motor in Georgia and another with Honda in Ohio, while BMW is adding EV assembly lines to its South Carolina plant. Multi-billion-dollar semiconductor factories are under construction by Samsung in Texas and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing in Arizona.
Yet, after hitting a record $440 billion in 2015, annual flows of foreign direct investment into the U.S. fell sharply — declines economists attribute to technical changes in corporate accounting strategies, as well as a protectionist turn in U.S. trade policy brought by former President Trump.
The pandemic then further lowered inflows. Between 2016 and 2023, the annual value of FDI averaged $256 billion. Investment flows have been helped by Washington’s efforts to bolster green technology and semiconductor manufacturing, but overall fell 28% in 2023 to $145 billion.
With the right set of policies, America can go a long way toward bolstering its domestic economy while strengthening its ties to close allies. To maintain strong alliances, the U.S. must not just talk, but show them it has their back.
Kamala Harris’ presidential acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention promised Americans “an opportunity economy where everyone has the chance to compete and the chance to succeed.” But working-class Americans are glum about their economic position today and what this promise means for them. For example, 2 out of 3 say the working class is worse off today than it was 40 years ago, while only 1 out of 5 say the working class is better off.
That information comes from YouGovsurveys of working-class voters—those without college degrees—conducted for the Progressive Policy Institute’s (PPI) Project on Center Left Renewal. They include a focus on 7 Presidential or Senate battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.
Working-class voters are divided on which political party will advance their interests. Asked who will “put the interests of working-class people first,” 38% said Democrats and 37% said Republicans. When asked which party would be best at “creating economic opportunities for working Americans,” 38% said Republicans and 33% said Democrats. Nearly 1 out of 5 said neither party.
FACT: Arctic sea ice cover is down by 3.2 million square kilometers — an expanse of water as big as India — since 2000.
THE NUMBERS: Carbon dioxide emissions intensity in 2023, in grams per $1 of GDP* –
Country
Value
Iran
54
China
42
Russia
36
Saudi Arabia
34
Canada
26
World Total
24
India
23
United States
19
Indonesia
17
Japan
16
European Union
10
United Kingdom
8
Sweden**
5
Ireland**
5
Singapore**
5
Switzerland**
5
Source: EDGAR, the EU’s “Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research”
** A 4-way tie for lowest emissions intensity rate among major economies.
WHAT THEY MEAN:
The Arctic sea ice expands and contracts like a lung, growing through autumn and winter to a late-March peak, then shrinking back over the summer to a mid-September “minimum.” The 2024 minimum is likely this week. Reviewing their 46 years of data, the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado concludes that it will be the fourth-smallest on record:
“With the waning of sunlight, the pace of sea ice loss in the Arctic is slowing, and the seasonal minimum is expected in mid-September. While a new record low is highly unlikely, extent at the beginning of September is below many recent years. Both the northern and southern Northwest Passage routes have largely cleared of ice, as has the Northern Sea Route. … Antarctic ice extent is approaching its seasonal maximum and is near last year’s record low. Arctic sea ice extent as of August 31 was 4.55 million square kilometers (1.76 million square miles), fourth lowest in the 46-year passive microwave record for that date.”
NSDIC says Arctic ice cover has contracted by about 10% per decade since the millennium. The cumulative loss of ice, averaged over a full year, comes to 3.2 million square kilometers — a space of water about as big as India — and means ice coverage is down about 40% from the 8 million square kms typical of the 1980s. The ice is also (a) thinner — now mostly 2 to 3 meters from top to seawater, which is about half the 5-meter average Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen found on his first-ever Arctic ice transit in 1893 — and (b) younger. In the 1980s, “old” ice four years old or more made up about a third of polar ice volume, and “new” ice less than one year old likewise a third; this decade, about 5% of ice is “old” and 70% “new.”
The diminished polar ice cap is an especially visible reminder that governments and industries have limited time to think and argue. Moving from ice to emissions, statistics from the EU’s EDGAR database — updated Thursday for 2023 emission totals, a day after the NSIDC published its 2024 Arctic minimum estimate — suggest three things. One, worldwide, the “battle” to contain climate change, if “battle” is the right metaphor, is being lost. Two, it’s being lost mostly in large middle-come countries – though carbon emissions from rich countries are now falling, those from China in particular, and also India and some other big countries, more than offset these drops; and three, the “battle” isn’t lost yet. Here’s a summary:
Totals: The number that counts for ice, forests, corals, northern mammals, sea life, arable land, and coastal community safety is the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Here the annual human contribution continues to rise. In 2000, human carbon dioxide emissions came to 25.2 billion tons. The 2023 total was 39.0 billion tons, meaning annual CO2 emissions are up 50% so far this century. Alternatively, since 2020 (an unusually low year because of the COVID pandemic), carbon emissions are up by 2.9 billion tons, or 8%.
Emission by country: Within this big emissions total, smaller country-by-country shares (based on territorial output) have sharply changed. The “developed” world — the U.S. and Canada; the EU, the U.K., Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland; Japan, Taiwan, and Korea; Israel; Australia and New Zealand — has cut annual carbon dioxide emissions by 2.5 billion tons since 2000. Though they are still far from “net zero,” they are trending down at an accelerating pace. Annual CO2 emissions from the rest of the world, though, are up 16 billion tons, including by 9.6 billion tons in China, 2.0 billion tons in India, and about 4.0 billion tons elsewhere. In sum, the growth of Chinese and middle-income country emissions has far outdistanced the “developed” countries’ reduction.
“Emissions intensity”: Against this overall growth of emissions, trends in emissions “intensity”– that is, the amount of carbon produced per dollar of output — offer some reason for guarded optimism. The United States and Europe have not cut emissions by getting poorer but by growing more efficient. In 2000, Americans produced 38 grams of carbon for each dollar of (real, inflation-adjusted) GDP, and EU countries 21 grams. By 2023, the U.S. was down to 19 grams per dollar, and the EU to 10, and the world’s most carbon-efficient economies suggest that there’s still a lot of room to improve. The U.K. and France are at 8 grams of carbon per dollar, Denmark 6 grams, and Sweden, Ireland, Singapore, and Switzerland set the world standard at 5 grams.
This positive trend isn’t unique to the wealthy world: Chinese emissions intensity is down 44% – from 73 grams per dollar in 2000 to a still-high 42 last year since 2000 — and India’s by 24%. In only three of the top 20 emissions sources — Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam — has intensity grown since 2000. Here’s a table summarizing emissions from the largest country sources, including total CO2 emissions in 2023, change in this total since 2000, and change in emissions intensity since 2023, with positive trends colored green and negative ones red:
Country
2023 Emissions (billion tons)
Change 2000-2023
Emissions/GDP ratio change since 2000
World
39.0
+13.3 billion tons
-27%
China
13.3
+9.6
-44%
United States
4.7
-1.2
-50%
India
3.0
+2.0
-24%
EU
2.5
-0.9
-52%
Russia
2.0
+0.4
-36%
Japan
0.9
-0.3
-36%
Iran
0.8
+0.4
+10%
Indonesia
0.7
+0.4
-26%
All other
8.1
-0.2
-44%**
* Using EDGAR data released last week. Other estimates, such as those by IEA, differ slightly but not fundamentally.
** Not available in EDGAR; PPI estimate using World Bank GDP data.
Final point: The Ireland/Singapore/Sweden/Switzerland 5-grams-per-dollar intensity standard is much better than any very large emissions source country has achieved. But their diverse economic mix — Ireland and Singapore with lots of high-end manufacturing and big computer servers; Sweden, Switzerland, and Ireland with big farm and livestock sectors; Sweden with its six auto plants; Switzerland and Singapore as services and logistical centers — suggests that bigger countries should be able to match their record. Had the world’s top 8 emissions sources done so, their emissions would have been 5.8 billion tons rather than 28 billion tons last year, and as a group, they would have been 80% of the way to net zero. So, that’s not an impossible goal, or even an unrealistic one. The ice bulletins say clearly that the ‘battle’ isn’t now being won. But it isn’t yet lost.
German scientist Markus Rex recounts the two-year “MOSAIC” mission, in which a specially equipped icebreaker sealed itself into the Arctic ice in 2022 north of Svalbard, and came out on the other side near Greenland two years later.
Fridtjof Nansen’s wooden Fram did the same thing in the first successful Arctic Ocean research and survey mission, from 1893 to 1896. The Fram bogged down (though it was later recovered); Nansen, after making the first estimates of Arctic ice thickness, ocean depth, and wildlife diversity, got to Greenland by sled and kayak.
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
WASHINGTON — The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) today published a new report, “Improving Housing for Working Americans,” authored by Richard D. Kahlenberg, Director of Housing Policy and Director of PPI’s American Identity Project. The report tackles the rising housing costs and offers pragmatic solutions to improve affordability for working families across the United States.
This new publication is a key output of PPI’s Campaign for Working America, which was launched earlier this year in partnership with former U.S. Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio. The Campaign aims to develop and test new themes, ideas, and policy proposals that help Democrats and other center-left leaders make a compelling economic offer to working Americans, bridge divides on cultural issues like immigration and education, and rally public support for the defense of democracy and freedom globally.
As part of PPI’s Campaign for Working America, this report highlights the growing housing crisis and outlines several policy recommendations to help alleviate the burden on working-class families. Kahlenberg emphasizes that exclusionary zoning laws, combined with high interest rates, have made housing unaffordable for too many Americans. He calls for reform to break down these barriers and increase the availability of affordable housing.
“Housing affordability is a fundamental issue for millions of working Americans,” said Kahlenberg. “By reducing exclusionary zoning and incentivizing the construction of multi-family homes, we can help lower housing costs, create more inclusive neighborhoods, and provide greater opportunities for working families to thrive. This report offers a roadmap for both federal and state governments to address this urgent problem.”
The report also highlights how exclusionary zoning laws have worsened economic segregation, preventing working families from accessing better housing, schools, and job opportunities. Among the key recommendations are expanding federal incentives like the PRO Housing Pilot Program, enacting the YIMBY Act to promote more inclusive housing policies, passing an Economic Fair Housing Act that would discourage localities from zoning practices that exclude working families, and supporting state-level reforms that legalize multifamily housing.
The report’s findings underscore the need for comprehensive reform at both state and federal levels to create housing solutions that work for all Americans, not just the wealthy.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Find an expert at PPI and follow us on Twitter.
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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org
The Progressive Policy Institute launched its Campaign for Working America in February 2024. Its mission is to develop and test new themes, ideas, and policy proposals that can help Democrats and other center-left leaders make a new economic offer to working Americans, find common ground on polarizing cultural issues like immigration, crime, and education, and rally public support for defending freedom and democracy in a dangerous world. Acting as Senior Adviser to the Campaign is former U.S. Representative Tim Ryan, who represented northeast Ohio in Congress from 2003 to 2023.
Since 2016, Democrats have suffered severe erosion among non-college white voters and lately have been losing support from Black, Hispanic, and Asian working-class voters as well. Since these voters account for about threequarters of registered voters, basic electoral math dictates that the party will have to do better with them to restore its competitiveness outside metro centers and build lasting governing majorities. The party’s history and legacy point in the same direction: Democrats do best when they champion the economic aspirations and moral outlook of ordinary working Americans.
To help them relocate this political north star and to inform our work on policy innovation, PPI has commissioned a series of YouGov polls on the beliefs and political attitudes of non-college voters, with a particular focus on the battleground states that have decided the outcome of recent national elections.
This report is the first in a series of Campaign Blueprints detailing new ideas that can help Democrats reach across today’s yawning “diploma divide” and reconnect with the working-class voters who have historically been the party’s mainstay.
Introduction
Housing in America is too expensive, and residential areas are increasingly segregated by economic status. For most
Americans, housing is their single biggest expense, and today, it is less affordable than at any time in the last 40 years. Housing prices have tripled since 2000, outpacing wages, which have doubled. The median household needs to devote a whopping 40% of its income to afford the median-priced home.
In the 2024 presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris has put a priority on making housing more affordable. She has correctly pinpointed the central problem — a shortage of housing supply — and outlined a number of policies to help the private and nonprofit sectors produce 3 million new homes. Planting herself firmly in the pro-housing camp, Harris is allied with Yes in My Backyard (YIMBY) forces. By contrast, former president Donald Trump has taken a classic Not in My Backyard
(NIMBY) approach, falsely claiming that federal incentives to produce more housing would somehow “abolish the suburbs.” He banks on addressing the imbalance of housing supply and demand with a fantastical plan to uproot millions of undocumented immigrants and deport them. Economists point out the plan would have the perverse effect of removing many workers who make the construction of new housing possible.
It’s especially important for working Americans that smart housing policies be enacted. Theirs are the families whose budgets are most stretched by surging rents and housing prices and whose children see their opportunities curtailed when rising economic segregation excludes them from the safest neighborhoods with the highest-performing public schools.
