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14 Big Ideas to Build a Strong & Diverse Middle Class

Give states additional Child Care and Development Block Grant funding to double the number of children served by child care assistance, make the federal Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit refundable, and expand Head Start and Early Head Start.

Home ownership is commonly understood as the quintessential marker of having arrived in the middle class: a family’s home is often the single largest asset that they own and has traditionally served as an important vehicle for wealth accumulation and economic security. 

The working class today is much more complex and diverse than the white, male, manufacturing archetype often evoked in popular narratives.

Both economic and racial justice are core progressive priorities, but too often we discuss them separately. On the contrary, racial and economic harms are intertwined, as are our desired solutions to them. Wealthy elites exploit racial fears to turn working people against each other and government; economic pain increases racial resentment and facilitates scapegoating, fueling support for punitive measures against people of color.

Demos and Young Invincibles partnered to complete the State of Young America report, the first comprehensive look at the economic challenges facing young adults since the Great Recession. 

While GDP has been steadily increasing, indicating a growing economy, other metrics of progress show a very different picture.

Dēmos has measured the comparative effectiveness of five leading fiscal proposals. We evaluate the plans in eight categories: jobs and public investment; health care affordability; Social Security income; education; defense policy; fair and adequate revenues; and long-term debt reduction.

This explainer outlines the consequences of corporate actors consolidating their power to act against the public good, and how Black and brown communities can come together to collectively advance and envision a just, inclusive economy.

Why it is so important we expand our definition of public goods and protect them from profit-seeking private hands

In 2019, progressive organizations, funders, academics, artists, and more came together to strategize about what must be done to face and address the crises undermining our democracy.

This brief makes a case for directly empowering frontline communities to help govern public and private institutions that impact their lives.

Introducing a framework rooted in racial equity designed to amplify new narratives around power.

The specter of voter fraud is a talking point deployed to silence the voices of Black and brown voters across the country.

The three sets of steps policymakers and election officials must take to ensure that Black and brown Americans—and all Americans—can exercise their fundamental right to vote in 2020 and beyond.

Ways to increase access to the ballot for people who are released from incarceration and for eligible voters who are currently incarcerated. 

Congress must address how Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people confront both the worst health outcomes and the greatest threats to household financial stability as a result of the pandemic.

Our analysis of voter turnout in Ohio’s primary finds large disparities in absentee ballot request rates and voter turnout between predominantly white and non-white neighborhoods.

​​​​​Big companies are using data to preserve the power imbalance that keeps them rich. This economic model is rooted in chattel slavery and relies on the extraction and commodification of data.

New Mexico is failing to enable Black and Brown communities to access their fundamental right to vote.