Whoever the 2020 Democratic nominee for president ends up being, they will no doubt run on a platform of raising incomes and rebuilding the middle class. But what are the best ideas to achieve a high-wage America?
On Wednesday, June 12, leading experts will convene to take a hard look at the details, and debate some of the most promising policy paths: from expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, to implementing a jobs guarantee and democratizing ownership.
The event is sponsored by The Century Foundation’s Bernard L. Schwartz Rediscovering Government Initiative (RGI), with additional support provided by Cornell Research Academy for Development, Law, and Economics (CRADLE) and the Democracy Collaborative.
Event Details
Wednesday, June 12, 2019
9:00am – 11:00am
Spire
750 First Street NE, 12th Floor
Washington, DC 20002
Speakers
Keynote Address: U.S. Representative Ro Khanna @RepRoKhanna
D-CA, 17th District
Moderator: Angela Hanks @AngelaHanks
Deputy Executive Director, Groundwork Collaborative
Moderator: Dylan Matthews @dylanmatt
Senior Correspondent, Vox.com
Joe Guinian @joecguinan
Vice President of Theory, Research, and Policy and Executive Director of The Next System Project, Democracy Collaborative
Robert Hockett @rch371
Edward Cornell Professor of Law, Cornell University
Jeff Madrick @JeffMadrick
Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation
Director, Bernard L. Schwartz Rediscovering Government Initiative
Sharon Parrott @CenterOnBudget
Senior Fellow and Senior Counselor, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP)
Andrew Stettner @pelhamprog
Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation
Pavlina R. Tcherneva @ptcherneva
Associate professor of economics and director, economics program, Bard College Levy Economics Institute
About This Project
The Bernard L. Schwartz Rediscovering Government Initiative, was founded in 2011 with one broad mission: countering the anti- government ideology that has grown to dominate political discourse in the past three decades.
Speaker Biographies
U.S. Representative Ro Khanna @RepRoKhanna
D-CA, 17th District
Congressman Ro Khanna represents California’s 17th Congressional District, located in the heart of Silicon Valley, and is serving in his second term. Rep. Khanna sits on the House Budget, Armed Services, and Oversight and Reform committees and is first vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He also serves as an Assistant Whip for the Democratic Caucus.
Rep. Khanna is committed to representing the people and ideas rooted in Silicon Valley to the nation and throughout the world. For each job created in the high-tech industry, another four jobs are created. The tech multiplier is even larger than the multiplier for U.S. manufacturing. Rep. Khanna will work to ensure the technology sector is at the forefront of U.S. economic policy and strive to provide opportunities to those our changing economy and technological revolution has left behind. To do so, the U.S. must implement policies that will not only create tech jobs in Silicon Valley but across America. This includes job training programs, economic development initiatives, re-wiring the U.S. labor market, and debt-free college to help working families prepare for the future.
A dedicated political reformer, Rep. Khanna is one of just six elected officials to refuse contributions from PACs and lobbyists. He also supports a 12-year term limit for Members of Congress and a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.
Rep. Khanna was born in Philadelphia, PA, during America’s bicentennial, to a middle-class family. Both of his parents immigrated to the United States in the 1970s from India in search of opportunity and a better life for their children. His father is a chemical engineer and his mother is a substitute school teacher. Rep. Khanna’s commitment to public service was inspired by his grandfather who was active in Gandhi’s independence movement, worked with Lala Lajpat Rai in India, and spent several years in jail for promoting human rights.
Joe Guinian @joecguinan
Vice President of Theory, Research, and Policy and Executive Director of The Next System Project, Democracy Collaborative
Joe Guinan is a Senior Fellow at The Democracy Collaborative and Executive Director of the Next System Project. Having first worked with Gar Alperovitz and The Democracy Collaborative ten years earlier, he returned in 2012 to help design, launch and implement the Collaborative’s work on alternative political-economic systems. A former journalist, he was previously a program director at the Aspen Institute and a fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and has served as a consultant to the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation. With a decade of experience in international economics, trade policy, global agriculture, and food security, he has been a frequently cited expert on globalization and economic development in major news media, including the New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, BBC News, and Al-Jazeera. Born in England with dual Irish and British citizenship, he grew up in British labor movement circles and was educated at Balliol College, Oxford. He writes regularly for progressive outlets in the UK, including openDemocracy and the journal Renewal, and is a member of the editorial collective of New Left Project.
Angela Hanks @AngelaHanks
Deputy Executive Director, Groundwork Collaborative
Angela Hanks is the Deputy Executive Director of the Groundwork Collaborative at the Hub, working to advance a cross-cutting economic narrative for the progressive movement.
Before joining the Hub in 2019, Angela served as director of the Center for Postsecondary and Economic Success at CLASP, director of workforce development policy at the Center for American Progress (CAP), and senior federal policy analyst at the National Skills Coalition. Angela began her career on Capitol Hill as a counsel on the democratic staff of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee and legislative assistant to Congressman Elijah E. Cummings.
Angela earned her bachelor’s degree in political science from George Washington University and her law degree from the University of Maryland School of Law.
Robert Hockett @rch371
Edward Cornell Professor of Law, Cornell University
Robert Hockett joined the Cornell Law Faculty in 2004. His principal teaching, research, and writing interests lie in the fields of organizational, financial, and monetary law and economics in both their positive and normative, as well as their national and transnational, dimensions. His guiding concern in these fields is with the legal and institutional prerequisites to a just, prosperous, and sustainable economic order.
A Fellow of the Century Foundation and regular commissioned author for the New America Foundation, Hockett also does regular consulting work for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the International Monetary Fund, Americans for Financial Reform, the ‘Occupy’ Cooperative, and a number of federal and state legislators and local governments.
Prior to doing his doctoral work and entering academe, he worked for the International Monetary Fund and clerked for the Honorable Deanell Reece Tacha, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Jeff Madrick @JeffMadrick
Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation
Director, Bernard L. Schwartz Rediscovering Government Initiative
Jeff Madrick is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation and director of the Bernard L. Schwartz Rediscovering Government Initiative. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at The Cooper Union, and is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books. He is a former economics columnist for the New York Times. Madrick’s most recent book, Seven Bad Ideas: How Mainstream Economists Have Damaged America and the World (Knopf), was published in 2014 and makes a comprehensive case against prevailing mainstream economic thinking. He is the author of a half dozen other books, including Taking America (Bantam) and The End of Affluence (Random House), both of which were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Taking America also was chosen by Business Week as of the ten best books of the year. He edited a book of public policy essays, Unconventional Wisdom (Century Foundation) and also authored the book Why Economies Grow (Basic Books/Century) and Age of Greed (Alfred Knopf). His book, The Case for Big Government (Princeton) won a Pen America non-fiction award.
Dylan Matthews @dylanmatt
Senior Correspondent, Vox.com
Dylan Matthews is a senior correspondent at Vox.com, where he serves as head writer for Vox’s Future Perfect section and covers philanthropy, economic policy, poverty in the US and abroad, social science, and more. He is the host of Vox’s Future Perfect podcast. Before joining Vox, he worked as a reporter for the Washington Post’s Wonkblog.
Andrew Stettner @pelhamprog
Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation
Andrew Stettner is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. His career as a non-profit leader spans 20 years of experience modernizing workforce protections and social insurance programs at every level, including community organizing, research, policy, and program development. At the National Employment Law Project, he spearheaded a decade-long effort to realign the unemployment insurance safety net with the needs of the modern workforce that culminated with a multi-billion dollar package of reforms enacted in the Recovery Act in 2009. In 2010, he was elected to the National Academy of Social Insurance in recognition of his leadership in the field and received Jewish Funds for Justice Cornerstone Award for outstanding contribution to social justice by leaders under the age of 40. After working at NELP, he took his research on low take up of social insurance into action designing and implementing multi-million dollar benefits enrollment initiatives first at Seedco and then at Single Stop USA. He has published dozens of policy reports and been frequently cited in media outlets across the country. He is a graduate of Columbia University where he earned a B.A. in Psychology, and also holds an M.P.P. in Public Policy from Georgetown University.
Pavlina R. Tcherneva, Ph.D. @ptcherneva
Program Director, Associate Professor, and Research Scholar, Bard College and the Levy Economics Institute
Pavlina R. Tcherneva is Program Director, Associate Professor, and Research Scholar at Bard College and the Levy Economics Institute, NY. She specializes in monetary theory and public policy. Tcherneva consulted for the Sanders 2016 Presidential campaign after her work on inequality had garnered national attention. Her research on the Job Guarantee has informed the proposals of several members of Congress. She has collaborated with governments around the world on designing and evaluating employment programs, and frequently speaks at Central Banks on macro-economic stabilization policies. Tcherneva’s early work assessed Argentina’s adoption of a large-scale job creation proposal she had developed with colleagues in the United States. She is currently researching the impact of such jobs programs on young people and women, as well as on income inequality, household health and well-being.
Her book Full Employment and Price Stability is a rare collection of writings on employment and inflation by Nobel Prize winning economist William Vickrey, adapted for the modern day. Her reinterpretation of J.M. Keynes’s fiscal policy for full employment was recognized by the Association for Social Economics with the Helen Potter Prize in 2012.