Media

A perpetual topic of conversation in progressive circles is how we need to boil down our prolix jumble of causes and beliefs to a streamlined vision -- something that can rival the crisp parsimony of the right's credo of "less government, traditional values, and strong defense."

Is the problem in America today that workers are too powerful in comparison with the corporations that employ them? Are our wages too high? Do too many of us have health coverage and retirement plans?

NEW YORK – On the eve of the release of new GDP numbers, Demos is publishing a new report challenging the dominance of GDP in the nation’s economic and policy debates.  Beyond GDP: New Measures for A New Economy illuminates the limits of a measurement that shows economic growth, as the 2011 numbers will likely indicate, against the backdrop of an ongoing national economic crisis.    

President Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address was a mixed bag with regard to this nation’s clean economy future, as detailed here yesterday. The President laid out some ideas that were cogent and compelling, and which could act as the pillars of a credible energy policy. Other proposals, however, would help further entrench an antiquated economy dependent on dirty energy.

President Obama made a strong stab at outlining a progressive narrative last night that envisions a nation where "everybody plays by the same rules." It's a pretty simple idea, tapping the powerful American ideal of egalitarianism -- that all of us should get a "fair shot" and that nobody is too high and mighty not to be held responsible for their actions. 

All presidential candidates jettison long-held beliefs in exchange for political gain. One need look only as far back as the last election, when Barack Obama professed opposition to gay marriage, despite being on record as a proponent as early as 1996, and John McCain came out against the DREAM Act -- legislation he'd actually cosponsored two years earlier.

Over the last year, the American public has been inundated with conservative austerity arguments. Medicaid and Medicare needed to be reined in (or handed over to the states entirely, according Paul Ryan), unemployment insurance was, at times, too costly a burden for the nation, and even heating oil subsidies to poor families had to be cut if the economy was going to rebound. All of this formed to core of the Republican economic orthodoxy. Cut to stimulate was the motto and everything else was deemed voodoo economics.