Who Pays? How Industry Insiders Rig the Student Loan System—and How to Stop It
Tuesday, 26 June 2018
The student loan program today serves industry insiders over its core stakeholder: students. The government justifies bailing out these other participants—lenders, servicers, debt collectors, and even colleges—as being in the best interests of students, student loan borrowers, and taxpayers. These claims, however, do not hold up. In Who Pays? How Industry Insiders Rig the Student
- Published in Brief, Economy & Growth, Education, homepage-slider, Publications
Beyond the Budget: How the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Increases Inequality and Exacerbates Our High-Profit, Low-Wage Economy
Wednesday, 20 June 2018
Many progressives have rightly criticized the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), also known as the Trump tax law, on the grounds that the TCJA will cost over $1.5 trillion in lost revenue over the next decade, at a time when there is already insufficient revenue being generated to meet our country’s pressing needs. Many others have
- Published in Brief, Economic Inclusion, Finance & Wealth, Politics, Publications
Who Are the Shareholders?
Tuesday, 19 June 2018
The ideology of “shareholder primacy”—the belief that businesses function solely to profit and “maximize value” for shareholders—has had a profound and toxic effect on our economy. Corporate executives used to, in large part, manage companies for the long term, workers had more bargaining power and greater economic security, and the economy was more dynamic. Today,
- Published in Economic Inclusion, Finance & Wealth, homepage-slider, Publications, Report
Don’t Fear the Robots: Why Automation Doesn’t Mean the End of Work
Tuesday, 12 June 2018
In Don’t Fear the Robots: Why Automation Doesn’t Mean the End of Work, Roosevelt Fellow Mark Paul challenges the narrative that large-scale automation will imminently lead to mass unemployment and economic insecurity. He debunks the idea that we are on the cusp of a major technological change that will drastically alter the nature of work,
- Published in Economic Inclusion, Economy & Growth, Publications, Report, Work and Labor
Airline Consolidation, Merger Retrospectives, and Oil Price Pass-Through
Monday, 04 June 2018
Following decades of lax antitrust enforcement, the airline sector today suffers from a market power problem. Fewer firms means there is less competition, which is great for corporate profits but bad for consumers and other stakeholders. In “Airline Consolidation, Merger Retrospectives, and Oil Price Pass-Through,” Roosevelt Research Director Marshall Steinbaum studies the last 10 years
- Published in homepage-slider, Publications
Thinking Outside the (Patent) Box: An Intellectual Property Approach to Combating International Tax Avoidance
Thursday, 31 May 2018
In light of the corporate tax cuts—included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA)—former Roosevelt Legal Fellow Andrew Hwang examines global tax avoidance schemes that are likely to remain pervasive among multinational corporations and proposes policy tools to curb these practices. “Thinking Outside the (Patent) Box: An Intellectual Property Approach to Combating International Tax
- Published in Economy & Growth, homepage-slider, Publications
Hidden Rules of Race are Embedded in the New Tax Law
Wednesday, 23 May 2018
The federal tax code is one of the most powerful tools of economic policymaking, housing critical rules that govern our economy. As such, it is also home to a set of hidden racial rules that, through intention or neglect, provide opportunities to some communities and create barriers for others. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,
- Published in Brief, Economic Inclusion, Economy & Growth, Finance & Wealth, homepage-slider, Publications
Making the Case: How Ending Walmart’s Stock Buyback Program Would Help to Fix Our High-Profit, Low-Wage Economy
Tuesday, 22 May 2018
The rules that shape corporate America incentivize behavior that has led to the economic puzzle we see today: high corporate profits coupled with low and stagnant wages. “Shareholder primacy” is the practice in which corporations prioritize shareholder payouts over productive investment and employee compensation. This way of operating dominates corporate decision-making today, so employees have
- Published in Brief, Economic Inclusion, Economy & Growth, homepage-slider, Publications
Unstacking the Deck: A New Agenda to Tame Corruption in Washington
Wednesday, 02 May 2018
Americans today rank corruption of government officials as their top fear—even above fear of North Korea’s use of nuclear weapons. Far from a new phenomenon, public trust in government has polled consistently low for over a decade. Newspapers report daily on elected officials who benefit personally from the policies they pass, regulators who once led
- Published in Democratic Access, Feature, Finance & Wealth, Politics, Publications, Report, Roosevelt Insights
Market Concentration and the Importance of Properly Defined Markets
Monday, 23 April 2018
Since the 1970s, America’s antitrust policy regime has been weakening and market power has been on the rise. High market concentration—in which fewer firms exist in a given market—is one troubling symptom and cause of market power. From 1985 to 2017, we saw an increase in the annual number of mergers from 2,308 to 15,361.
- Published in Brief, Economy & Growth, Finance & Wealth, homepage-slider, Publications
