Public Infrastructure

Congress has stripped the jobs bill of the reinvestment in America's infrastructure that would put people back to work and make the country more prosperous in the long run.

Instead, the bill relies on tax credits that are too small and too temporary to make a dent in America's high unemployment.

Viewing Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey in the year 2010 is a depressing experience. According to this 1968 movie, by now we were supposed to have moon colonies and regular passenger service on space planes. And anyone who struggles with automated receptionist messages or programmable televisions knows that today's computers are just as psychotic as HAL 9000, only dumber.

The New America Foundation's Steve Clemons talks with Leo Hindery about the Obama administration’s green energy initiatives, and how they fit into a broader American manufacturing strategy to create the millions of jobs necessary to achieve a full economic recovery.

1) We Don't All Agree on What a “Smart Grid” is – or What it will Accomplish.

Rather than a physical entity, the “Smart Grid” is really a concept. The term refers to a host of digital technologies, in various stages of development, intended to enable real-time coordination along the Nation’s electric grid.

California has 159,000 green jobs, according to recent analysis from NextTen.org, but we need more to really tackle California's scariest environment and infrastructure problems, and to provide jobs in the long term.

As the Senate takes up a greatly scaled down $15 billion jobs bill stripped of all infrastructure spending, the nation should consider the compelling case for public infrastructure investment offered by Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) and Ed Rendell (D-PA). Appearing on ABC’s "This Week" on Sunday, the bipartisan Co-Chairs of Building America's Future explained why rebuilding America’s infr

Please join the New America Foundation for a conversation with Steven Hill about his new book, Europe's Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age. And find out why California would be better off seceding from the U.S. and joining the European Union!

"Europe's Promise is a timely and provocative book..."  - Foreign Affairs

"Europe's Promise should startle, inform, and galvanize Americans in raising the ante in favor of a political economy where people matter first." -Ralph Nader

With the National Broadband Plan due to Congress in just over a month and the next round of broadband stimulus funding fast approachingm, the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative has invited Jed Kolko, Associate Director and Research Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, to discuss an important question: What is the relationship between broadband and economic development?

In a new slideshow issue brief, Economic Growth Program Associate Daniel Mandel examines several new tax credit bond programs included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.  Mandel describes the differences between tax credit bonds and traditional tax exempt bonds, and analyzes in particular the success of Build America Bonds, which have attracted new classes of investors to the municipal bond markets and lowered the cost of borrowing for state and local governments.