The American Compass Podcast

Policy in Brief is now Talkin’ (Policy) Shop! On this episode, Oren and Chris discuss the problems that arise when chronic pension underfunding pushes public pension managers to seek unrealistic returns, pushing them toward risky, opaque, and illiquid alternative investments like private equity and hedge funds. These investments charge enormous fees while avoiding disclosures that would allow the public to evaluate their performance. When these gambles go bad, taxpayers are on the hook.

Capital imbued with public purpose, like state and local pension funds, should be invested transparently. Congress should pass legislation requiring reasonable public reporting standards for private funds that invest and collect fees on public-purpose capital.

Further Reading

• American Compass policy brief: Public Pension Accountability
• Confronting Coin-Flip Capitalism (Oren Cass, American Compass)
•  A Guide to Private Equity (American Compass)
• ‘Warning signs’: PE could impact public pension plans’ funding status this year. (Jessica Hamlin, PitchBook)
• Investing Novices Are Calling the Shots for $4 Trillion at US Pensions.” (Neil Weinberg, Bloomberg)

On this episode of Critics Corner, Oren Cass is joined by University of Chicago Booth School of Business professor and private equity expert Steven Kaplan. They discuss the pros and cons of private equity, the risk of bankruptcy during leveraged buyouts, and the effects—both good and bad—on both workers and investors.

Further Reading:

• American Compass’s work on financialization
• Confronting Coin-Flip Capitalism by Oren Cass
• A Guide to Private Equity by American Compass
• Populists Don’t Know Much About Private Equity by Steven Kaplan and Todd Henderson (Wall Street Journal)
• Debate: Does the Private Equity Industry Create Substantial Social Value? by Oren Cass and Todd Henderson (Newsweek)

On this episode of Policy in Brief, Oren Cass and Chris Griswold discuss how to spur private investment, innovation, and competition by guaranteeing demand for domestic production. In recent years, industrial production has been increasingly offshored, leaving supply chains more fragile and entrenched abroad. America’s domestic industry has declined as a result, degrading our long-term ability to innovate and leaving the U.S. dependent on other nations for critical goods. A local content requirement (LCR) for goods that are critical for national security or the industrial base would go a long way to reshoring American industry and rebuilding the U.S. manufacturing base.

Further Reading:

• American Compass policy brief: Local Content Requirements
• On Domestic Sourcing (Michael Lind, American Compass)
• The Balancing Act. (American Compass)
• The Import Quota That Remade the Auto Industry (Wells King & Dan Vaughn, Jr., American Compass)
• “Make It in America to Sell It in America Act (Senator Josh Hawley and Representative Claudia Tenney)

On this episode of Policy in Brief, Oren Cass and Chris Griswold are joined by special guest Jonathan Berry, partner at Boyden Gray & Associates and former Department of Labor assistant secretary. They discuss the “bachelor’s fad”—our over reliance in the labor market on bachelor’s degrees—and how public policy should respond. And listen to the end for some of our best bill title ideas yet.

Further Reading:

• American Compass policy brief: Banning Bachelor’s Degree Requirements
• Escaping the Bachelor’s Fad (Chris Griswold, American Compass)
• The False Promise of Good Jobs (Oren Cass & Richard Oyeniran, American Compass)
• Hidden Workers: Untapped Talent (Joseph B. Fuller, Manjari Raman, Eva Sage-Gavin, & Kristen Hines; Harvard Business School)
• The Emerging Degree Reset (The Burning Glass Institute)

On this episode of Policy in Brief, Oren Cass and Chris Griswold take a look at the damage done to workers and local communities when businesses go bankrupt. Jobs are destroyed, wages are reduced, and local tax bases are devastated. When financial markets push firms to assume excessive risk in pursuit of higher rewards, workers and communities are left holding the bag.

Oren and Chris propose a series of reforms  to the bankruptcy code that would prioritize workers and small businesses in the event of a corporate collapse. The goal: better align risk and reward by increasing the potential costs of bankruptcy and risky financial strategies, promoting more responsible investor behavior.

Further Reading: 

• American Compass policy brief: Pro-Worker Bankruptcy Reform
• Employee Costs of Corporate Bankruptcy (John Graham, Hyunseob Kim, Si Li, & Jiaping Qiu; Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago)
• Confronting Coin-Flip Capitalism (Oren Cass, American Compass)
• A Guide to Private Equity (American Compass)
• Foreign Investors Have Been Big U.S. Stock Buyers (Deborah D’Souza, Investopedia)
• Private Equity: Overvalued and Overrated? (Daniel Rasmussen, American Affairs)

In the spirit of the holidays, this episode of Policy in Brief focuses on the family and what public policy can do to support this vital institution. American Compass executive director Oren Cass and policy director Chris Griswold are joined by special guest and research director Wells King for this discussion of a monthly family benefit, as conceived in our Family Income Supplemental Credit (Fisc) proposal.

Further Reading:

• American Compass policy brief: A Monthly Family Benefit
• The Family Income Supplemental Credit (Oren Cass & Wells King, American Compass)
• Americans Support a Generous Child Benefit Tied to Work (American Compass)
• The Family Security Act 2.0 (Sen. Mitt Romney, Sen. Richard Burr, & Sen. Steve Daines)
• Romney Revamps His Family Security Act (Patrick T. Brown, Ethics & Public Policy Center)

On this episode of Policy in Brief, Oren Cass and Chris Griswold discuss how we should finance higher education in the U.S. Instead of simply offering blanket student debt forgiveness, they explore how to rethink financing from the ground up. Their proposals include treating student debt like all other debt so it can be discharged in bankruptcy, and putting colleges and universities directly on the hook for their graduates' future success.

Further Reading:

• American Compass policy briefs: Student Debt Relief the Old-Fashioned Way and Self-Financing by Colleges
• The Banality of Student Loans (Oren Cass, American Compass)
• A Guide to College-for-All (American Compass)
• The False Promise of Good Jobs (Oren Cass & Richard Oyeniran, American Compass)
• Colleges Should Only Succeed When Students Do (Mike Reeser, Texas State Technical College)

On this episode of Policy in Brief, Oren Cass is joined as always by American Compass policy director Chris Griswold to discuss a proposal to allow workers to administer their own employee benefits through organizations they control. This would be an American version of the Ghent system, a successful European model that improves benefit provision because it's more accountable than either government or employers.

Further Reading:
American Compass policy brief: Worker-Run Benefits
A Better Bargain: Worker Solidarity and Mutual Support (Wells King, American Compass)
Not What They Bargained For: A Survey of American Workers (American Compass)

On this episode of Policy in Brief, Oren Cass is joined by American Compass policy director Chris Griswold to discuss how U.S. trade fell so far out of balance—and some ideas for how to rebalance it. They explore three key ideas: the global tariff, the import certificate, and the market access charge. All three use market forces to bring trade into balance and help fix the decades-long erosion of American industry and innovation.

Further Reading:
American Compass policy briefs: The Global Tariff, The Import Certificate, and The Market Access Charge
Regaining Our Balance (American Compass)
Searching for Capitalism in the Wreckage of Globalization (Oren Cass, American Compass)
Where's the Growth? (American Compass)
Here’s How I Would Solve the Trade Problem (Warren Buffett, Fortune)
Robert Lighthizer on the need for tariffs to reduce America’s trade deficit (The Economist)
Why the Market Access Charge is Necessary to Fix Trade Imbalances (John R. Hansen, Coalition for a Prosperous America)

On this episode of Policy in Brief, Oren Cass is joined by American Compass policy director Chris Griswold to discuss a proposal to create an online age-verification system to keep kids safe online. They discuss how the current system leaves children unprotected, potential privacy concerns, and why the public sector needs to step in to help parents protect their kids online.

Further reading:
Lost in the Super Market (American Compass)
Protecting Children from Social Media (Chris Griswold, National Affairs)
How Changing One Law Could Protect Kids From Social Media (Yuval Levin, The New York Times)
The Dangerous Experiment on Teen Girls (Jonathan Haidt, The Atlantic)
Kids Online Safety Act