Next Social Contract Initiative
 

The American Social Contract: A Promise to Fulfill

A New American Contract Mini-Site
This New American Contract mini-site provides a history of the social contract from the 18th century to the 21st. Authors Michael Lind and David McNamee offer an informative guide to contemporary trends in health care, retirement policy, education, wages, and other policy areas, concluding with a rich description of the trends and challenges facing the United States in the years ahead.

A New Narrative

Through a program of research and analysis, the Next Social Contract Initiative will construct a meta-narrative to help us understand how the American social contract has evolved, why it fails to meet our needs today, and how we can reinvent it for the conditions of a largely postindustrial and increasingly diverse society. Without an understanding of the evolution of our social contract, major institutional reform will be difficult at best and impossible at worst.

The meta-narrative will have two main dimensions. The first will show how new institutional arrangements are better suited to today's social and economic realities than the patchwork policies left over from our recent past. The second will explain why such new arrangements reflect shared American values while making the American public more secure and our society both stronger and healthier.

Articles

It's Not Socialized World After All

During last year's Republican presidential primary season, candidate Rudy Giuliani succinctly captured what millions of Americans think about health care abroad. "These countries that say they provide universal coverage -- they pay a price for it, you know," Giuliani told his audience. "They do it by rationing care, by long waiting lines, and by limiting, or I should say eliminating a patient's choice."

Phillip Longman | Washington Post | September 27, 2009

Can Obama Be Deprogrammed?

In my first foray into political life in the 1970s, I worked during college on the staff of a liberal Democrat in the Texas state Senate. Only a few years earlier, Patty Hearst had been kidnapped and brainwashed by the Symbionese Liberation Army, and a moral panic about cults seducing college kids was sweeping the nation. One result was the rise of a new, thankfully ephemeral profession: "deprogrammers" who for pay would kidnap a young person from a cult and break the spell, by means of isolation, interrogation… more

Michael Lind | Salon | August 4, 2009

Green Jobs: Hope or Hype?

After the release of a miserable June jobs report, President Obama stood with a group of green company CEOs and told reporters that "men and women like these will help lead us out of this recession and into a better future."

But if the White House puts too many eggs in the green recovery basket, we may all be disappointed. The green sector is simply not large enough or competitive enough to be a major engine of job creation.

Samuel Sherraden | CNN.com | July 28, 2009

Immigrants Should Be Eligible for the Presidency

The presidential election of 2009 is the first in American history in which questions about the citizenship of both major party candidates were raised. Article II of the Constitution says that "No person except a natural-born citizen ... shall be eligible to the office of president." During the campaign, some argued that this disqualified John McCain, because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone where his father, a naval officer, was stationed. Also during the campaign, some conservatives raised questions about whether Obama was born on… more

Michael Lind | Salon | July 28, 2009

Healthcare Reform: More Raw Deal Than New Deal

In 2001, Ted Halstead and I published a book titled "The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics." Though I'm not sure we always succeeded, the goal we set for ourselves was to think freshly about how the legacy of the New Deal could be revised and updated for the 21st century. We decided that when it came to benefits our guiding principle should be a "citizen-based social contract." We chose this phrase, not to discriminate against non-citizens, but to express two ideas: first, that benefits like healthcare… more

Michael Lind | Salon | July 21, 2009

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Policy Papers

A Better Way to Regulate Financial Markets

There is widespread recognition that the financial crisis which triggered the Great Recession was significantly due to financial excess, particularly related to real estate. Now, policymakers are looking to reform financial systems in hope of avoiding future crises. But like the drunk who looks for his lost keys under the lamppost because that is where the light is, policymakers remain fixated on capital standards because that is what is already in place.

Thomas Palley | November 12, 2009

All Power to the Choice Architects

If we go by election results, and no better guide to our national mood exists, the years of conservative hegemony in the United States are over, at least for the foreseeable future.  Not only has the country elected a Democratic president and Congress, but conservative ideas, which once had seemed so innovative, are increasingly stale or non-existent.  Meanwhile, the Republican Party seems both directionless and leaderless. 

November 9, 2009

The Jobs Deficit

The economy has lost 8 million jobs since the beginning of the recession.   But because the population is growing, we need to create over 9.6 million jobs.  Due to severe job loss and steady population growth, the unemployment rate has soared to 9.8%, nearly as high as during the early 1980s.

To read more, click on the slideshow below.

Samuel Sherraden | October 20, 2009

POLICY ROUNDTABLE: The Challenge of Job Creation

What the Government Can Do to Better Promote Job Creation by Timothy J. Bartik Jobs: What Can We Do? by James K. Galbraith The Time Has Come for Direct Job Creation by L. Randall Wray
October 18, 2009

The Fiscal Austerity Trap

Fiscal conservatives are opportunistically looking to use the recession induced spike in the budget deficit to revive their crusade for fiscal austerity. The case for fiscal austerity is based on flawed economic analysis and it is not supported by thoughtful budget analysis. It was the wrong agenda before the crisis and it is even more wrong now.

Thomas Palley | September 15, 2009

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Events

Risky Business

Long before the complete meltdown of the financial industry last fall, Senator Byron Dorgan warned us about the risks posed by one of the key ingredients in that catastrophe: the complex financial packages known as derivatives. In a Washington Monthly cover story, "Very Risky Business" (October 1994), the North Dakota Democrat predicted with uncanny precision what actually happened in September 2008 -- the
10/15/2009 - 8:00am
10/15/2009 - 9:00am

Saving Capitalism

On September 21, 2009, author and economist Pat Choate discussed his new book, Saving Capitalism: Keeping America Strong, at the New America Foundation.  In a conversation with Michael Lind, Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at New America, Choate offered his perspective on the ongoing economic crisis and outlined his book's comprehensive policy prescription for recovery and sustainable growth. 

09/21/2009 - 12:15pm
09/21/2009 - 1:45pm

Dealing with America's Debt Overhang

Second Bernard L. Schwartz Economic Symposium

The bursting of the housing and credit bubbles has left the United States with a huge debt overhang.  As a result of the buildup of private sector debt and the economic crisis, households and firms are finding it difficult to service debt and lay a foundation for a sustainable recovery. 

New America Foundation's Economic Growth Program hosted leading economists and public intellectuals to discuss the following questions:

09/15/2009 - 8:30am
09/15/2009 - 1:00pm

The Power Problem

On July 24, Christopher Preble discussed his new book The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free. Dr. Preble was joined by New America's Michael Cohen, Senior Research Fellow and co-director of the Privatization of Foreign Policy Initiative, and Michael Lind, Senior Fellow and Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program, as well as Gordon Adams, a Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center, in discussing whether and how the U.S. should scale back its global military commitments.

07/24/2009 - 12:15pm
07/24/2009 - 1:45pm

Can Washington Power Up American Inventiveness?

A New America Foundation/Washington Monthly event

07/20/2009 - 12:15pm
07/20/2009 - 1:30pm

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Core Principles

With this narrative as a point of departure, the initiative will identify principles on which a new social contract should be based. These guiding principles will reflect the values and aspirations of the great majority of the American people.

They will define the respective responsibilities of the main parties to any social contract. And they will define the risks against which individuals need to be insured, the benefits we should expect government to provide, and how the costs for these social protections should be shared among the primary sectors of society. If the next social contract is to offer a new approach to providing both basic economic security and economic opportunity for all Americans, it will have to be:

  • Citizen-Based
  • Lifelong
  • Responsibility-Based
  • Family-Based
  • Asset-Based
  • Pro-Growth

Recent Publications

Not Out of the Woods: A Report on the Jobless Recovery Underway

Despite widespread acknowledgment of an American jobs crisis, unemployment is more severe than reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the economy is in the early stages of a "jobless recovery." This new paper by New American Contract's Niko Karvounis takes on optimistic commentators who have seized on the recently emerged "green shoots" to declare the economy on the path to recovery, and outlines why high unemployment will persist even as other economic indicators improve.

In Defense of the Uptick Rule: Limiting Volatility in a Market Stacked Toward the Downside

The “uptick rule” presents a mild mechanism to create bumps in stock price slides, and head off self-feeding selling frenzies made worse by spasms of shorting. The rule is particularly valuable in today’s environment, where the short selling market is so dominated by piggy-backing hedge funds, argues New America's Emily Gallagher in a new paper.

 
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