I'm One of Biden's Advisers. Here's How I Think About His Economic Agenda. [View all]

[BeckyDem]

Last edited Thu Sep 30, 2021, 09:38 AM - Edit history (1)

By Heather Boushey

Ms. Boushey is a member of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers.

9-29-2021

Even in normal times, the nation’s economic policies can often feel detached from the daily lives of millions of Americans who get up and go to work each day, terrified that they might slip out of the middle class — or never make it in — but for me, an economist advising President Biden, the struggle to achieve economic security is deeply personal.

In the early 1980s, when interest rates hit almost 20 percent, my father was “pink slipped” from his machinist job building 747s at Boeing, an event that upended our family finances. It wasn’t just my family. All the kids on my cul-de-sac watched as our parents worried about health insurance and the mortgage. We were lucky; the recession was relatively short, and between my mom’s paycheck and my dad’s benefits, we got by until the orders for planes resumed.

But I recall being shocked by how much power Boeing had over our lives. When my dad was laid off, the economic security my parents had long worked for disappeared overnight. It got me thinking about the question that would come to animate my career: How can what social scientists call countervailing forces — things like unions and democratic governments that respond to crises affecting communities through no fault of their own — cushion individual families against the whims of the marketplace?

Millions of Americans don’t trust the government or its ability to improve their lives, and it’s not hard to see why. For decades, politicians of both parties have allowed corporations to grow into vast monopolies. They gave tax breaks to companies that shifted jobs overseas while promoting the use of fossil fuels that are destroying our planet and poisoning our communities. And they offered huge tax cuts to the very wealthy while refusing to support working families.



https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/29/opinion/government-biden-families.html?smid=tw-share

( Outstanding. )