Great Ideas

The biggest issue on Americans' minds today is the rise in prices. It has overwhelmed American's perceptions of the the economy, which by most other measures has been doing well.  At the root of recent inflation is a significant rise in energy costs, which Americans mostly experience in gasoline prices, but also through the rising cost of natural gas that affects home heating and even the price of electricity. Today on Great Ideas, understanding what is driving these price increases, where prices will be headed next, and what policymakers can actually do to achieve stable, affordable energy. Our guest experts are Mike Sloan, Senior Director, Energy Markets, and Andrew Griffith, Senior Energy Markets Consultant, both of ICF. 

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An issue we never talk about -- and don't want to -- is how the federal government collects tax revenue. We have a voluntary tax compliance system in America, and it turns out that there are a lot of folks who cut corners or outright cheat the system when it comes to paying their taxes. This is a big problem.  America loses $600 billion dollars a year in unpaid taxes that are owed under the law. $163 billion of those dollars come from the very richest 1% of us. That segment from the richest Americans is more than we spend on housing, homeland security, and the Department of Justice …combined.  And the total that we are losing from all that tax cheating is almost as much as we pay for Defense.

But of course the solution it's not something that most Americans like to think about or find particularly appealing. 52% of Americans have an unfavorable view of the IRS.  And let's face it, no one enjoys the process of paying their taxes or likes to think about ways to give the IRS more teeth. But that is exactly the direction the Democrats have been trying to suggest going in the Build Back Better bill. The mere suggestion has opened up a conversation about why this issue needs more attention and what we can do about it. 

Our guest Seth Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.  He has testified before Congress, and his work has been cited in the Financial Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and other publications. He has been featured in CNBC, NPR, C-SPAN and other outlets to discuss tax issues.

Today: the promise, the peril, and the challenge of China. China is a re-emerging superpower that is increasingly contesting the United States for economic, political, military, and even cultural dominance in the world. In recent years the question of how to successfully manage our relationship with China has become even more pressing, and even more vexing.  We are clearly deeply interconnected with the Chinese economy and even dependent on it, as recent supply chain disruptions have shown. The emergence of the Covid pandemic and discussions of managing global warming at COP26 have shown in the starkest terms just how much we need Chinese cooperation to tackle the biggest challenges that our country and the entire world face.

At the same time, we find ourselves embroiled in conflict -- over the Trump trade war, repression of the Uighur ethnic minority that many including the United States government have called a genocide, over disruption of the democratic government in Hong Kong, lingering flashpoints with Taiwan, and the increasingly aggressive economic investment agenda that China has been pursuing around the world. And we face a growing uncertainty over the future course that China will take as president Xi Jinping solidifies his hold on power and takes bold steps to shape Chinese Society.

To help us understand where China is, where it may be going, and how the United States and the world should work with China, we are very fortunate to have Michael Schuman.  Michael Schuman is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub and author of "Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World." He just wrote a fascinating article in the Atlantic called Xi Jinping’s Terrifying New China. 

The "Build Back Better" plan...it seems like that's all we've been talking about for months. And yet strangely, there's very little public understanding of what it actually is. To opponents, it's a wildly over-aggressive piece of wasteful social spending. Tosupporters, it's a critical and long-overdue investment in long-neglected aspects of what makes our society run. But now, the actual contents of the bill are finally taking their almost-complete shape. A month ago, an op-ed in the Washington Post was eerily prescient about the shape of the final bill. The author of that op-ed, Ben Ritz, is the Director of the Center for Funding America's Future at the Progressive Policy Institute joins the show to walk us through the mystery, the pitfalls, and the promise of the Build Back Better bill.

Affordable housing is the kind of issue that people love not to think about. It rarely generates a lot of political heat, and in rural areas it’s barely an afterthought. But guess what the top issue in the California legislature is this year.  31 bills were signed by the governor last month that were all housing bills. In California, and increasingly in much of America, a lack of affordable housing is the key issue, and also a burning problem that drives a lot of the other things we think about in policy. The definition of affordable housing is people spending no more than 30% of their gross income on housing. In California, the majority of households are now spending more than 50%. But it’s not just California. It’s a growing problem in a lot of places. In Maine, one out of every 5 households is spending half of their gross income on housing.

Our guest Sibley Simon – an innovative affordable housing developer – described how California is sending the rest of America a scary postcard from the future of what an affordable housing crunch looks like, and he explained the kinds of fresh ideas they are trying and that we will need to solve the problem.

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Our guest today says that American kids who are in danger and in need of foster care are being left in dangerous situations far too long.  But even more provocatively, she makes the case that children are sometimes being used as pawns as part of a broader social agenda that, however well-intentioned, can be disastrous for kids left in foster care limbo. Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where she focuses on child welfare and foster care issues. She has written for the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post and has appeared on NBC, Fox News and CNBC. Her new book is No Way to Treat a Child: How the Foster Care System, Family Courts and Racial Activists Are Wrecking Young Lives. She explains where the system is coming apart and how better data, more coordination with civic groups, and reconsidered priorities could help stitch it together. 

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Today we're revisiting our very first episode because it's so timely right now.  Congress is currently stuck on the President's "Build Back Better" plan.  A big part of the holdup is how much to spend on health care, and what to prioritize: more benefits for seniors, or more subsidies for everyone to afford private insurance? Build up a government-run health care system, or build up the Affordable Care Act? Force drug companies to negotiate for lower prices, or keep things the way they are because we need a pipeline of new medicines? All of which put us in mind of what we heard from health care expert Jim Capretta earlier this year, who described how to make three relatively simple changes that could cut costs and improve coverage for millions, and do it without breaking the bank.  Maybe there's a different way, and one that's less contentious, for Congress to get people more coverage, to lower costs, and to improve care. 

Recent months have brought a slew of weather-related catastrophes to the United States: wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, and floods. While scientists continue to caution that it is hard to draw a direct line between any one weather event and global warming, they also say that these kinds of extreme weather episodes are preview of what is going to become all too common in the years ahead. The increase in frequency and severity of extreme weather events and long-term environmental shifts threatens to shake our financial system to its core, costing trillions in our real economy and in our financial institutions.  To make sure we don't have an even worse financial crisis than 2008, Gregg Gelzinis, Associate Director for Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress, explains how regulators and financial institutions can act right now to get ahead of the problem.

On June 7, the F.D.A approved the use of the controversial Alzheimer’s treatment Aduhelm. This led to a backlash from many Alzheimer’s experts, who say that evidence for the drug’s effectiveness is limited. Now Medicare must choose whether to cover the drug, which has a sky-high cost. The decision raises a host of big picture questions about what we pay for – and what care we give – particularly to older Americans.

Joshua B. Gordon is the Director of Health Policy for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. He explains why Medicare is now in an unwinnable position, and how the government should work around this set of controversial questions to try to fix the larger problems in the healthcare system.

Over the last 20 years, there has been perhaps no issue in our public discussion more emotional, more fraught, and more elusive in terms of finding long term solutions than immigration. There have been many brief periods where it looked like the stars were aligning and political forces were coming together to support a longer-term consensus approach. Each time, those efforts have disintegrated into bickering and political backlash. 

But some analysts believe that right now, we may be on the cusp of a longer-term solution. One of those experts is Nathan Kasai. He’s a Senior Policy Council at the Washington DC think tank Third Way, and he’s just published an article laying out the argument for why now could, and should, be the time to finally get something done on immigration.

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