Great Ideas

For decades, polling has shown that the public trusts Democrats – and their more liberal-minded policy ideas – far more than Republicans when it comes to education. Now, one nationally celebrated conservative education thinker thinks he can change that. “Conservatives are actually much better positioned than liberals to take the lead on this issue,” says Rick Hess, Director of Economic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Hess launched “A New Conservative Education Agenda” – a project to compile innovative, conservative education reform ideas.  He gives us the rundown of why education policy went from relatively unified to contentious in America, some of the best ideas from AEI's conservative agenda, and whether conservatives truly can take the lead on this vital issue. 

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Conversation about child care in America is usually driven by the question of how to prepare our kids for success in their education and later in life. But the last year has brought home another critical aspect of child care all too clearly: it is a critical enabler of work. Without it, parents simply can’t participate in the economy, and that is disproportionately true for America's female workforce which bears the brunt of child care responsibility at home. As we try to recover from the pandemic-induced recession, the key to unlocking our labor force, particularly for American women, may very well lie in our ability to unlock childcare. Julie Kashen is the Director of Women's Economic Justice at the Century Foundation and a policy expert on workforce and economic issues, and she walks through the critical connection between the economy we want and the child care that American families need. 

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When people think of violent extremists, they tend to think groups like Al-Qaeda, ISIS, or other international terrorist organizations. But the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has actually called white supremacist extremists“the most persistent and lethal threat” here in America. In fact, those groups perpetrated two thirds of the attacks and plots in the US in 2019 and over 90 percent in the first 6 months of 2020.

To address this issue, the Center for American Progress and the McCain Institute for International Leadership have developed a comprehensive national strategy for tackling  white supremacist violence. It’s a bipartisan plan based on consensus policies that unite our political parties. Our guest Simon Clark is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, and he walks us through how to fight this threat.

What if I told you that in the last sixty years, the US government invented the modern world. It’s not really a stretch to say. Federally-funded scientific research and development led directly to the Internet, fiber optics, superconducting materials, LED lights, water purification, wireless technologies, lasers, bioengineered medicines, solar power, MRIs, GPS, satellites, weather forecasting, and every health treatment based on our genes. And that’s a short list. Economists say that half of our economic growth comes from these kinds of technological advances…and those technological advances mostly have their roots in US government-backed science. 

But over time, our investment in federally funded scientific research and development has fallen by more than half. 

Ben Ritz is the Director of the Progressive Policy Institute’s Center for Funding America’s Future, which develops policy proposals to strengthen public investments in the foundation of our economy.  We talk about some of the amazing stories of how we ended up with the world around us through US government-funded science, and how we can reclaim our edge. 

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This episode is about something called “devolution” -- handing off more responsibilities from the federal government to states and localities.  But…it’s really about something more profound. It’s about the entire state of our country, the nastiness and anger in our politics and public discourse. And about whether we can figure out a smarter way to work together, get more done, and lower the temperature. Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, argues that the way to get Washington to do better is to have it do less...to shrink down the number of arguments we have between people from different places and political cultures by not having them in the first place. It's a conservative philosophy, but one that is motivated by a genuine interest in trying to improve our government and our politics. Not sure you like this idea? Take a listen and hear him out...you might at least come away thinking a little differently about what role of the federal government ought to be, and whether we can all have a good faith conversation about it. 

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The share of workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement is down to 1 in 8, less than half of where it was 40 years ago. Recently, Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama decided not to form a union in what many analysts described as a historic vote, and a blow to the labor movement, especially after President Biden voiced support for the union drive. The episode points to a bigger question in the American economy and society: where is the union movement, and after years of decline, does it have a future? And more broadly, does it matter?

Our guest today says that we should all pay close attention to these questions…because labor unions are still relevant, even essential to American workers. But he also says that unions are badly flawed and in need of major and rapid reforms. David Madland is a senior fellow and the senior adviser to the American Worker Project at Center for American Progress. He’s been called “one of the nation’s wisest young scholars” by Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. And he’s written called Re-Union – How Bold Labor Reforms Can Repair, Revitalize, and Reunite the United States.

What does it mean to invest in infrastructure? President Biden has proposed a multi trillion dollar bill that has prompted a lot of questions that are surprisingly basic...and yet surprisingly hard to answer. What is an economic investment? What is infrastructure? And what is the role of government to invest in the kinds of things that could help us in the future?

Tori Gorman is the Policy Director for The Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to educating the public about the relationship between how the federal government spends money and the consequences for the future.  She says it's time to update how we think about infrastructure, and start thinking in terms of investments that will make our economy and our workers more productive in the future. That doesn’t mean she thinks all of President Biden’s infrastructure bill qualifies though...or is even a good idea.

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We’ve all heard the bad news.  The planet is heating up at breakneck speed. Unless we reach zero net carbon emissions by 2050, we are in for a world of hurt. But Lindsey Walter, a Climate and Energy expert at the think tank Third Way, says that if you look closely at all the numbers there’s a lot of good news that gets buried. There's major economic opportunity especially in the Midwest states.  And the total cost of the transition is affordable.  A look at what net zero emissions means, what the numbers say about our future, and why that future could be brighter than we think.

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The debate about raising the minimum wage is full of misconceptions -- myths that lead to a lot more partisan fighting than there needs to be. For example, a celebrated Republican pollster found that 80% of business executives actually support raising it. Dr. Sarah Jane Glynn, an expert in employment, work, and family issues at the Center for American Progress, says that we if we started talking about the reality of the minimum wage instead of the myths, we would get to consensus a lot faster. In this episode, Dr. Glynn explains the realities of the minimum wage, and a smarter way to talk about it based on those realities. 

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*BONUS EPISODE THIS WEEK* There are hundreds of federal agencies and departments, thousands of federal programs, millions of pages of federal regulation.  And it's all controlled by the federal budget. It’s the central plan of American government.  And it’s incredible how many misconceptions there are about it. For example, how much do we spend on foreign aid every year? How much do we actually spend on defense? What about political footballs like food stamps, or Social Security? If the budget is our plan, what’s in it?  And if our plan has some giant problems in it, how do we start to fix them?

Bob Bixby Executive Director of The Concord Coalition, takes us through it step by step, and then explains how we can start to get a better handle on controlling the budget. 

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