Today on Volts: It has rapidly become conventional wisdom that Biden's industrial policy was weighed down by labor-quality standards. Betony Jones developed those standards for DOE & has since surveyed companies who received federal money about whether they slowed things down. Turns out they didn't!

New @volts.wtf episode with our Senior Fellow @betonyjones.bsky.social unpacking the Biden administration’s clean energy rollout. Betony points to permitting and implementation capacity—not community or labor standards, as some suggest—as the main bottlenecks that prevented greater success. 🎧⬇️

DOJ officials appear ready to approve the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger after executives spent months arguing the deal won’t reduce competition or harm consumers. We’ve heard that before. Media consolidation is sold as efficiency while power, jobs and cultural production concentrate in fewer hands.

The same administration that has enriched itself off crypto and prediction markets is now hollowing out the agency meant to oversee them. The CFTC has shrunk and pulled back enforcement just as these industries explode in size. The result is more room for grift, corruption, and consumer abuse.

California’s billionaire class has added trillions in wealth while paying lower effective taxes than working people. A one-time 5% tax on billionaire wealth to fund social services isn’t radical. Allowing this level of wealth concentration is. 🎯 from Emmanuel Saez and @gabrielzucman.bsky.social:

The federal minimum wage was created to prevent businesses from competing through poverty-level pay and help deliver a basic standard of living. After 17 years without an increase, the current $7.25 wage floor no longer fulfills that purpose.

New 📰: Patrick Oakford explores how stronger labor standards are foundational to the economic security of working families—raising the federal minimum wage to $20/hr by 2030, establishing just cause protections, and strengthening enforcement against wage theft. 🧵

Wage theft also remains rampant. The Department of Labor needs the ability to meaningfully enforce wage protections and ensure workers receive the earnings they are due.

#ICYMI: Our top stories of the week ✅ The Fed should be accountable to workers—not just Wall Street ✅ Atlanta residents define what a #GoodLife should mean ✅ Social Security fearmongering threatens public trust More in the #RooseveltRundown ⬇️ https://bit.ly/3Rgb3bQ

A complementary report also released today from @rooseveltinstitute.org provides evidence for this higher wage rate and argues that greater worker protections, including universal just-cause protections and stronger enforcement against wage theft, are foundational to families’ economic security. 2/3

A president using the IRS and DOJ to protect himself and funnel money to political allies is the kind of corruption democracies are supposed to guard against, not normalize. Our Fellow @bdgesq.bsky.social rightly sounds the alarm:

How high could policymakers set a national minimum wage? NEW report from @benzipperer.org proposes an evidence-backed benchmark that would lift pay for nearly 40 million workers without the job losses critics typically predict. 1/3

The authors and @okpolicy.bsky.social's Carly Putnam will be in conversation with EPI EVP Naomi Walker on these papers and the current ballot initiative in Oklahoma later today...and it's not too late to register! us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

This is a head fake. As long as billionaires talk about cutting other people’s taxes, they think they can avoid paying their fair share. Anyone serious about affordability should run from these kinds of policies.

New 📰: Patrick Oakford explores how stronger labor standards are foundational to the economic security of working families—raising the federal minimum wage to $20/hr by 2030, establishing just cause protections, and strengthening enforcement against wage theft. 🧵

New 📊: Explore our interactive dashboard on the future of the US labor force. Who works in the fastest-growing industries? Which jobs are projected to grow most over the next decade? And what do wages, education, race, and gender tell us about the structure of today’s economy? Take a look 👇

New essay for @knightcolumbia.org that argues for why democracies must fund robust public media systems and begins to develop what I've been calling the "Public Media Center" model. I will be expanding on this work for @rooseveltinstitute.org in the months ahead: knightcolumbia.org/blog/reimagi...

An abundance agenda that sidelines workers and unions is doomed to fail. Listen to Kate Andrias and @awhf.bsky.social explain why the support needed to build major housing, energy, and infrastructure projects only comes when workers have a real stake in what gets built and who benefits. 🎧⬇️

This is an extraordinary, unprecedented arrangement that turns federal settlement authority into a slush-fund to pay people who the president thinks deserve compensation. Government isn’t a pay-out vehicle for presidential grievances.

As AI transforms the economy, unions will matter more, not less. Excellent piece from Kate Andrias on why workers, not just in the tech industry but across sectors, need power over how this technology is deployed and whether its gains are broadly shared or hoarded by executives and investors.

Today @elizabethwwilkins.bsky.social very convincingly argues to @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com that Democrats should CANNOT become the party of tax cuts if they wish to fund everything liberals and progressives care about www.liberalcurrents.com/against-slop...

Sharp piece from @joeldodge07.bsky.social making the case for “public factories” as a response to monopoly power. When a few firms control production, supply gets squeezed, prices rise, and markets alone cannot correct themselves. But building out public industrial capacity can.

This Thursday we and @epi.org are hosting a must-attend webinar on the future of the minimum wage, featuring new research on why the federal wage floor must be raised and why arguments against it don’t hold up to the evidence. You won’t want to miss it. Sign up here: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

NEW 📣: Applications are open for our #GoodLife Residents Program on housing policy! Led by @resnikoff.bsky.social, the cohort will develop bold policy ideas to expand housing supply and address the real constraints on building, from costs to materials to financing. Learn more and apply by June 1 ⬇️

In Atlanta last month, we asked local leaders what a #GoodLife means to them. Their answers were clear: Affordable and quality housing. Access to healthcare. Jobs with dignity. And above all: more time with family and less time stretched thin trying to make everything work. 📹

Childcare in the US increasingly depends on “patchwork” care: relatives, multiple providers, shifting schedules, and parents working while caregiving. Our latest research shows families are being forced to make impossible tradeoffs just to keep up.

Great conversation between @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com and our CEO @elizabethwwilkins.bsky.social on why progressives should be in favor of a strong tax base to support a strong social democracy, rather than chase austerity or tax-cut politics that ultimately hollow out public capacity. 🎙️⬇️

As suspending the federal gas tax gains traction in Washington, a prescient reminder from our Senior Fellow @pkrugman.bsky.social: gas tax holidays are largely a windfall for producers that barely move prices at the pump for the consumers suffering from inflation.

#ICYMI: Our top stories of the week ✅ Care work and food services to see the most growth by 2034 ✅ Universal childcare is essential infrastructure ✅ Click-to-cancel could save New Yorkers at least 600,000 hours a year More in the #RooseveltRundown ⬇️

Worth watching: a timely message from @benmckenzie.bsky.social on how Congress’s proposed crypto “regulation” would further entrench a dangerously decentralized industry that enables scams, corruption, and massive wealth transfers from working people to the wealthy and political elites. 🎙️⬇️

Retirement is getting harder to hold onto. More older Americans are going back to work because Social Security and savings no longer cover rising basics like rent, food, and medicine. What was meant to be a stable exit from work is, for many, becoming a return to it.

I’m very excited about this project. Please share widely!

Childcare is at the center of national policy debates, and NYC is at the forefront of pushing toward more universal access. Come attend this free screening of “Through the Night” @thenewschool.bsky.social on 24/7 care work, the workforce behind it, and what a universal system would take. 🎬 ⬇️

Great conversation between @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com and our CEO @elizabethwwilkins.bsky.social on why progressives should be in favor of a strong tax base to support a strong social democracy, rather than chase austerity or tax-cut politics that ultimately hollow out public capacity. 🎙️⬇️

The Senate Banking Committee votes on the “Clarity Act” today, a major test of whether Congress gives crypto its own regulatory carveout. At stake is whether crypto follows the same laws as the rest of finance, or whether an industry built on speculation, crashes and lobbying gets its own rulebook.

NEW 📣: Applications are open for our #GoodLife Residents Program on housing policy! Led by @resnikoff.bsky.social, the cohort will develop bold policy ideas to expand housing supply and address the real constraints on building, from costs to materials to financing. Learn more and apply by June 1 ⬇️

How high could policymakers set the minimum wage? Join @benzipperer.org, @rooseveltinstitute.org's Patrick Oakford + @okpolicy.bsky.social's @cputnam.bsky.social share a new, evidence-backed framework for the federal minimum wage, and OK efforts to raise it. us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Jerome Powell’s tenure as Fed Chair was defined by crisis: COVID-19, inflation, rapid rate hikes, and political pressure on the Fed’s independence. Our #GoodLife Fed Residents reflect on the choices that shaped his legacy and what the next Fed Chair should learn from them. 🧵⬇️

In Atlanta last month, we asked local leaders what a #GoodLife means to them. Their answers were clear: Affordable and quality housing. Access to healthcare. Jobs with dignity. And above all: more time with family and less time stretched thin trying to make everything work. 📹

As suspending the federal gas tax gains traction in Washington, a prescient reminder from our Senior Fellow @pkrugman.bsky.social: gas tax holidays are largely a windfall for producers that barely move prices at the pump for the consumers suffering from inflation.

My nuanced take on this inflation print is: The data we expected to be really bad weren’t as bad as feared And yet this report is really bad Overall: Not great 🧵 breaking down the not great…. www.bls.gov/cpi/

NEW 📰: The US labor market is deeply divided. Our latest brief explores the "k-shaped" economy, the industries that employ the most workers, and what it all means for the future of work and a #GoodLife 🧵

Paid family leave was once expanding in corporate America. Now it’s quietly being scaled back. On this #DayWithoutChildcare, support for working parents is shrinking as labor markets loosen and employers pull back on benefits. The result is more risk pushed onto families.

As Congress considers crypto market structure legislation, @bradlipton.bsky.social explains why shifting jurisdiction away from strong securities protections could leave investors exposed and financial risks underregulated: 🧵↓

No one should have to jump through hoops to cancel a subscription. In a new letter to @hellodcwp.bsky.social, we find NYC’s proposed “click-to-cancel” rule could save consumers up to $162.5 million and 600k hours. If companies can sign you up with one click, you should be able to cancel with one.

Childcare in the US increasingly depends on “patchwork” care: relatives, multiple providers, shifting schedules, and parents working while caregiving. Our latest research shows families are being forced to make impossible tradeoffs just to keep up.

Medical debt is both a cause and a consequence of a financialized healthcare system. Companies across our economy, including major private healthcare firms, are increasingly prioritizing shareholder profits over the quality and affordability of their goods and services.

Projections show that recent cuts to Medicaid could create billions of dollars in new medical debt, stripping countless families of financial security in order to fund billionaire tax breaks.

Childcare supports families, employers, and the broader economy. A stronger system would expand access, improve affordability, and provide reliable options for parents. Read the full brief → rooseveltinstitute.org/publications... And the fact sheet → rooseveltinstitute.org/publications...

New data shows: • 83% of kids under 5 • 77% of kids ages 5–10 depend on regular childcare arrangements.