One Democratic presidential candidate writes, “The American Dream is dying by the numbers. I’ve seen it in Iowa, where farm bankruptcies have gone up 71% since 2018. Where your water supplies are contaminated. Where opioid deaths have more than tripled since 2005. Where more than one in seven of your children live in poverty, while the state is short 359,000 child care spaces. Where over 55% of your kids leave the state for new opportunities. I’ve seen it across the country, where 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck…

“We need to rewrite the rules of the 21st-century economy so it works for us… First, we have to rewrite our tax code so that big corporations pay their fair share in taxes. Then, we need to rewrite the rules so that this money is reinvested in us, the American people. The Freedom Dividend will put $1,000 a month directly in the hands of every American adult over 18, no questions asked. This will reduce poverty, create millions of jobs, recognize the work of stay-at-home parents and caregivers, get the economic boot off people’s necks, and provide a floor upon which to build their lives… If the rules of the 21st-century economy aren’t working for you… Let’s change them.”
Andrew Yang, USA Today

Another presidential candidate notes that “About half of Americans don’t own stocks, and the share of national income going to workers — rather than investors — is actually near an all-time low… It used to be that a high school diploma came with a ticket to the middle class. That’s no longer true because many good jobs have been lost to global trade and technology…

“The federal government should make a major investment in [community colleges’] capacity to prepare students for employment, connect them to growing industries, and align curricula and standards with the skills that lead to good jobs… We should also help workers transition to new jobs by providing federal student aid to quality short-term certificate programs that demonstrate strong outcomes. We must also extend the earned income tax credit and unemployment insurance to Americans in training programs, so they can cover child care costs, rent, and other living expenses while they are investing in their future. These steps will help to bridge the prosperity divide in America and ensure that our economy works for all people, in all parts of our country.”
Michael Bloomberg and Arne Duncan, Chicago Tribune

“Low unemployment is great, but it should be the start of good social policy — not the end… [Trump’s] reelection campaign claims ‘we have the cleanest air on record’ when, in fact, air quality has been declining under Trump, and his administration is working on a bunch of regulatory rollbacks that will make air pollution even worse…

“One nice thing about a strong labor market is that it creates political space to finally pay attention to the myriad social problems that can’t be solved by a ‘good economy’ alone — things like child care, health care, college costs, and environmental protection — that during, the Obama years, tended to be crowded out by a jobs-first mentality. Good times, in other words, could be the perfect opportunity to finally tackle the many long-lingering problems for which progressives actually have solutions and about which conservatives would rather not talk.”
Matthew Yglesias, Vox