Creating a People-Powered Agenda

A Democratic Economy and How We Get There

Working people have been angry for a long time—with the unaffordability of basic needs, with the lack of agency over their lives, and with the feeling that the economy is rigged against them and toward the ultra-wealthy. The status quo is untenable, and the ideas and institutions that brought us here have no credibility with the public. But what comes next is unclear. On the Right, we see a politics of vengeful nostalgia. This week in Democracy Journal, Roosevelt President and CEO Elizabeth Wilkins proposes a path forward for the Left: a “good life” agenda, created not just for the people but with the people.

“As recent history teaches us, when working people say the economy isn’t serving them, policymakers need to listen,” Wilkins writes. The Biden administration took steps to break with past economic orthodoxy, but “when inflation started to intensify the very precarity and uncertainty that had been plaguing people for decades, they didn’t see a policy agenda that matched the scale of their biggest daily problems.”

Some of the most popular initiatives, however, were those that embraced people-centered policymaking and made bolder use of government tools—like the corporate accountability work at Lina Khan’s Federal Trade Commission. There, Wilkins led the development of the ban on noncompete clauses, which nearly one in five Americans are subject to. The agency’s final rule was informed by an overwhelming number of supportive comments, including multiple personal accounts of the imbalanced employer-employee dynamics noncompetes create: like the story of Deborah Brantley, who left her bartending job after facing sexual harassment but was then sued under a noncompete for taking another bartending job.

“In addition to giving people a greater sense of agency in the policy process,” Wilkins writes, “the lived experiences those workers and others shared helped make the substance of our policymaking better, too.” By involving the impacted public in the policymaking process—asking them what they’re experiencing and what could help them thrive—solutions actually meet the urgency of the problems they’re trying to address. On top of that, they can be rooted in a real politics. “By politics,” Wilkins writes, “I don’t just mean the electoral kind. I mean the kind of energy that develops around a political project that activates and includes people.”

This approach is hardly limited to the federal government. In fact, its roots are in local organizing, and it can be applied to every level of governance and to efforts both in and out of power—from municipalities enforcing tenant protections to grassroots campaigns expanding pandemic relief program eligibility for previously excluded workers.

The work of listening, agenda-setting, deliberating, and delivering is ongoing, but Wilkins shares four pillars that can light the path to the good life every person deserves:

1. Rein in corporate power: Unrig the economy so people are free from the concentrated power and dominance of a few supersized companies.
2. Build worker power and agency: Enable workers to shape the conditions of their workplaces so they can do meaningful work, earn a thriving wage, and enjoy leisure time.
3. Create economic security for all: Make the essentials of life—health care, housing, retirement—affordable for every person.
4. Design truly democratic institutions: Build an outcome-oriented government that translates the will of the people into real results, quickly and creatively.

“Our utmost goal right now is to channel the public’s energy into results they can see and feel,” Wilkins writes. “Working people are angrier than ever. And missing this populist moment, this fleeting window for persuasion, would be a grave mistake if we want to win the fight for what comes next.”

By bringing people into the policymaking process and giving them the tools to govern their own lives, we can build both the trust and momentum to get to a people-centered economy.

Understanding the Latest—and Future—Jobs Data

The economy added just 22,000 jobs in August, with sectors like construction and manufacturing showing signs of weakness as the Trump administration’s erratic tariffs and economic policies continued.

Today’s report is the first since Trump fired Bureau of Labor Statistics chief Erika McEntarfer in early August, claiming that revisions to the jobs data meant the numbers were “‘rigged.” But as Principal Economist Michael Madowitz told The Guardian this week, data revisions are “so standard, and the idea that it’s what actually set off this big political kerfuffle—this is a really unprecedented political situation.”

For now, even though BLS civil servants are collecting and analyzing data in the same ways as before, some fear Trump’s attacks on the institution might foster public distrust in the data. “I don’t think any of the experts involved at this point are at all worried about the credibility of BLS’s work,” Madowitz said, “but I know a whole lot less about what’s filtering down to the average person right now.”

While the job market is starting to falter, Madowitz emphasized that the real risks are long-term and structural. Read more in a preview of today’s jobs report for the Roosevelt blog.

What We’re Talking About

What We’re Reading

• On tariffs: A federal appeals court ruled last week that Trump lacks the authority to implement most of his sweeping tariffs. While the White House plans to appeal, the president could also amend his tariffs to comply with the court ruling, Roosevelt’s Todd N. Tucker told the Washington Post.
  • For more on the court’s decision, check out Tucker’s analysis on Bluesky and preview of the legal battle on the Roosevelt blog.
• On the Fed: Trump’s top pick for the Fed’s Board of Governors, Stephen Miran, says he wouldn’t resign from his role as chief economist on the Council of Economic Advisors if he were to be confirmed to his Fed position, raising alarms over undue political interference. Former Fed official and Roosevelt Senior Fellow Sarah Bloom Raskin told Quartz, “I would predict that a clear-eyed Senate would view this proposed arrangement as contrary to the Federal Reserve Act, and a show stopper.”
• On public sector unions: Citing national security reasons, the Trump administration has terminated collective bargaining agreements covering nearly 500,000 agency workers.
  • But government workers have not surrendered their right to organize. As one told The American Prospect, “I believe all workforces should have a union. They should have a voice. So my goal, while I’m still breathing, while I still have the capacity, is to fight for that.”