The Next Idea With all the talk of reforming health care, what if we are missing the bigger picture? What if all this emotional debate about whether to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, was a waste of time?

The Next Idea You can’t rebuild your home or your neighborhood without tools. But tools cost money. Here’s a solution: a community tool-sharing program. “Shovel Share” is just that, and it’s a finalist in the Knight Cities Challenge . Should the idea win, Shovel Share would create a network of tool-sharing centers around Detroit.

The Next Idea Thirty years ago, University of Chicago Professor Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind . The book deconstructed higher education’s failure to prepare students with the knowledge necessary to lead enlightened lives. Bloom’s emphasis on reading the Great Books was met with adulation by conservatives, who viewed it as a declaration of traditional values, and with condemnation by progressives who thought the work was a perpetuation of social class inequities.

The Next Idea We usually think of the economy as something centered around the flow of money for goods, services, and other enterprises. But what happens in places where that traditional model breaks down - where, for a variety of reasons, there simply isn’t much cash for anything? People learn to survive without it. They create “informal economies.” And in many parts of Detroit, these informal economies are at work, filling needs however they can.

The Next Idea Match people who need a service with people willing to provide a service. Use time as the currency. That’s the concept behind a time bank. “A time bank is a community skill exchange," said Kim Hodge , executive director of the Michigan Alliance of TimeBanks . "It’s a way of saying we all have something to offer – we all have skills and assets and we all have needs, and we could be sharing them with each other. So it’s kind of a pay-it-forward, or circle-of-giving program.”

The Next Idea “Detroit's greatest paradox is its abundance of space and its scarcity of quality housing.” That’s the opening salvo in writer Michele Oberholtzer ’s opinion piece for Model D . At one time, Detroit’s population was almost double what it is now. As people left, so did quality housing. That puts people still in the city at risk, Oberholtzer said. “The housing is often under code, or not up to par,” she said. “And the moment that a person leaves the home that they live in, that

The Next Idea When Sandra Stahl works on civic engagement in Detroit, there’s one question she hears again and again. “Where are all the young people?” The answer to that question is complicated. For one thing, Stahl said, “high school government classes tend to focus on the federal government.” So by the time students are eligible to vote, it’s hard to figure out what a city council does, or what the mayor does, or when all these local elections are held. In addition, many younger people in

The Next Idea Earth’s water is a natural medium for collecting energy, taking in about 97% of what we receive from the sun. After reflection and radiation, water stores over 2 million TWh (terawatt hours) per year. The world’s annual energy consumption is about 150,000 TWh. Clearly, we could benefit from using water for power.

The Next Idea Michigan's philanthropic organizations are facing a changing climate of giving. Movement of money within the nation's wealthiest families, low wages for many of today's young people, political polarization and the erosion of government safety nets are just some of the many drivers impacting how people give and how charities organize themselves. Today's contributor to The Next Idea has been watching many of those trends and others that affect charitable giving.

The Next Idea What if governments just gave money to people? That’s the big question that Thomas Weisskopf ​, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Michigan, is asking. Since automation is replacing human-powered labor in fields like manufacturing, robust employment may be a thing of the past. A permanent surplus of labor has massive consequences, driving down wages and even contributing to social unrest. According to Weisskopf, such a dramatic problem demands a dramatic solution.