3. December 2020, 10:26 a.m. ET
3. December 2020, 10:26 a.m. ET
The New York Times
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William Ackman | CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management.
One of the main problems of capitalism, especially since it has been active for several decades, is that wage growth has not kept pace with long-term wealth creation, which disproportionately favours the rich and the upper middle class. This can probably be explained by the higher return on net assets after tax received by fixed assets compared to the increase in wages and salaries in the same period.
A possible solution to the problem of wealth inequality is to create conditions in which people without fixed assets can participate in the success of capitalism. To do this, we need a program that makes every American owner of the complex value growth of American companies. The government could finance investment accounts for every child born in America, a program we could call Home Rule.
The money received at birth is invested at birth in free equity funds; it cannot be withdrawn until retirement and is taxed for at least 65 years. With a historical rate of return of 8 percent a year, a $6,750 pension account at birth – which would cost the government $26 billion a year based on the average number of children born in the United States – would provide pension assets in excess of $1 million at age 65 or $2 million at age 74.
The return on investment is indeed one of the greatest miracles of the world, and every day that we wait for a solution to this problem, it is felt more and more. Because we have no money to invest in pensions – especially after the 2008 collapse destroyed the only potential source of long-term wealth creation for many Americans – we have little hope of building up pension funds or providing a forum for the next generation. In short, the American dream has become a disappointment, or worse, a disappointment for too many people.
Bertwright will not only help all Americans create wealth for their retirement, but he will also promote financial literacy and give all Americans the opportunity to participate in the success of capitalism.
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3. December 2020, 10:25 a.m. ET
3. December 2020, 10:25 a.m. ET
The New York Times
A loan… Otto Steiniger…
Robert F. Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Vista Equity Partners.
The number of things to be determined in this country may make it difficult to determine where to start, but for decades households in this country knew exactly what had to be done. On average, they spend 2% of their income on good deeds, and one way to improve the situation in our country would be for our larger companies to do the same.
As an example, we can mention the 10 largest banks in this country, which have made a profit of almost 1 trillion dollars over the last ten years. If they were to invest 2% of that in the next ten years to end systemic racism, we would have an extra $20 billion for the Afro-American communities of these banks alone. How’d they invest that money?
The ten largest banks could use the money to invest in Tier 1 capital for African-American banks and development finance institutions (CDFIs) for the benefit of African-American borrowers; to modernise these lenders and improve their financial technology capacity; and to strengthen their human resources.
Today there are more than 4,400 banks in this country with assets of $20.2 trillion. However, only 18 of them are African-Americans, and those 18 have only $4.4 billion. Many of these creditors do not have access to modern tools and resources, although our country’s largest banks use technologies that further reduce risk and increase efficiency.
During the implementation of the wage protection programme we saw how a CUFI could drastically increase the processing capacity of a credit union by upgrading its systems – from 40 to 50 in one year to 7,400 in four months.
We can talk about racial equality in the next decade, but unless we bring more capital and modernization to African-American lenders and strengthen their ability to reach African-American companies and borrowers, we are unlikely to achieve the changes our communities demand.
Similarly, the largest telecommunications companies and equipment manufacturers in this country could invest their 2% in tackling broadband inequalities; food companies could invest their 2% in ensuring equal access to healthy food; sports teams could invest in the communities where their players come from; and so on.
The largest industrial company in our country could solve one of the most important tasks of our time. Your funds may come from community or marketing budgets, corporate funds or even innovative new funding mechanisms such as the Bank of America’s Equality Progress Sustainability Bonds, which use historically low interest rates to make these investments without sacrificing profitability.
This is not only a moral but also an economic obligation. Last year McKinsey showed that narrowing the race prosperity gap would represent $1.5 trillion of our GDP, which would be a huge boost during the economic recession. Eliminating systemic racism will also strengthen social and political cohesion to the benefit of business.
Our biggest companies just have to do what the average American family does every year.
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At the New York Dealbook Summit in November, Robert Smith explained his 2% decision.
So what we’re saying is that we need to call on large US companies in key sectors to invest 2% of their net profits over the next two years to close these income gaps between races. And if you think about it, if you actually take companies that have industrial initiatives that are in line with what they do, you have the ability to manage their best thinking, their best use of assets and resources to solve some of the problems in areas such as modernising the banking systems in African-American communities, eliminating the food deserts in those communities, the deserts of health, the deserts of education. And we have the ability and the knowledge to do it. In fact, it is now only a function of how the capital is raised.
At the Dealbook Summit in New York in November, Robert Smith explained his decision of 2%. Credit-credit-credit-credit… The New York Times
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3. December 2020, 10:25 a.m. ET
3. December 2020, 10:25 a.m. ET
The New York Times
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Heidi Larson | Professor of anthropology at the universities of London and Washington and author of the book Stuck : How rumors about the vaccine are born and why they don’t go away.
When I thought about how we could solve our problems, I first had to take a step back and think about what was broken. The question of what needs to be repaired certainly depends on who you are, where you live, what your job is (or was), and above all, what you think America should look like after the repair.
For the past 10 years I have been working to close the vaccination gap that alienates friends, burdens parents and leaves children unprotected from disease. When the Covida vaccine becomes a reality, the question of who is ready for the vaccination and who is not will determine whether we can stop this pandemic and continue with some kind of normal life.
But the tension is very high. Vaccination decisions are increasingly being made on other matters: Politics, distrust of the government and big capital, alternative views on health and resistance to any form of imposed control. I have listened to many questions, some of them disturbing and angry, about why we need so many vaccines. Even the best scientific evidence plays no role in these discussions. These discussions are not a sign of a lack of information, but of the spread of what is perhaps the biggest problem we are facing: extreme polarization.
The findings on trust in vaccines can be applied everywhere to polarisation. The way I conduct this debate has taught me the ability to listen – to try to find out things about each other that we might have thought would be incredible. Anger on the outside often hides very different emotions on the inside.
So here’s the solution I propose, one conversation after another: If you come across another look, try to find something you agree with. You don’t have to change your mind. Just be open to others having theirs. It may seem illogical. But it’s the only place to start.
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3. December 2020, 10:24 a.m. ET
3. December 2020, 10:24 a.m. ET
The New York Times
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The author: Prithwiraj Choudhury | Professor at Harvard Business School.
The Covida 19 pandemic has brought about major changes in America, including in our world of work. My research shows that if companies apply good practices, employees can really work from anywhere. This will enable the new government to promote policies that lead to a more equitable distribution of talent across the country. But it is also a potential threat – when distant employees of U.S. companies decide they prefer to live and work outside the United States.
For years the brain drain has seeped into cities off the American coast and talented people and businesses have moved to a handful of coastal cities. Learning to work from anywhere is an opportunity to reverse this trend. In 2018, a program called Tulsa Remote offered $10,000 and a range of services to remote workers who wanted to move to Tulsa, Oklahoma, for a year. The Programme has received more than 10,000 applications for 100 slots. Two years later, only a handful of programme participants left the city, and Tulsa Remote signed up for the third cohort.
Other regions have taken note, and similar programmes have been launched in northwest Arkansas (participants get a mountain bike) and Tucson, Arizona. In future, the federal government must support these initiatives in two ways: Firstly, the economic development administration should set up a programme for the exchange of good practice and funding to enable small towns to launch such initiatives. Secondly, the German Government should invest in the creation of a national high-speed Internet access.
If the United States does not invest in the freedom of our employees to work anywhere, other countries will do so at our expense. Taking a job anywhere just means that: Employees can work anywhere in the world.
Immigration problems in the United States, from the growing number of refused H-1B visas to long waiting lists for a permanent residence permit, are already pushing talented people from around the world to other destinations. Canadian recruitment firm MobSquad used the Canadian Express entry program for skilled workers and hired foreign workers who were based in the United States and had difficulty with the immigration system to come to Canada – while continuing to work for their U.S. employers.
The new government must put an end to this flow of talent. Start by exempting MINT migrants – or PhD students in any field – from visa quotas and give them a quicker route to permanent residence.
By reforming the U.S. immigration system and repeating Tulsa’s story in other smaller cities, the next administration can ensure that when workers work from everywhere, instead of moving their talents – and their taxes – across borders, they choose jobs in the cities in the heart of America that need them most and help them recover.
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3. December 2020, 10:24 a.m. ET
3. December 2020, 10:24 a.m. ET
The New York Times
A loan… Otto Steiniger…
Michael Render, alias Michael Render. Killer Mike, grandmother-winner and co-founder of Greenwood.
On the financial side, a bill of lading was sold to the black community.
We tended to be consumers, not creators of wealth. Many of us haven’t had real opportunities to acquire wealth, and together we haven’t had the same opportunities – lower interest rates, access to capital to start and maintain a business, and funding to invest in what’s really important. When our grandparents and black ancestors managed to create wealth and prosperity, their stories were pushed into the background.
Greenwood County was different. Greenwood flourished in Tulsa, Oklahoma, early 1900s. Known as Black Wall Street, Greenwood has become a center for African-American entrepreneurs. Craftsmen, shopkeepers, architects, shoemakers, lawyers, artists, accountants, bankers and industrialists – they have all found their home (and market) here.
Historians estimate that the dollar has circulated at least 36 times in the community and can stay in Greenwood for over a year. While Oklahoma only had two airports, six black families in Greenwood had their own planes.
As the standard of living of black families in Greenwood has risen, so has the dissatisfaction of the white people around them. The 31st. May and 1 May. In June 1921, after a rebellious report, Greenwood was attacked, looted and destroyed by white racists who burned him.
About 300 people died, 35 blocks were destroyed and more than 800 people received medical care. It says nothing about the psychological trauma that people in this community have suffered. That’s why the Greenwood story has to be told.
So when Andrew Young and I, the former mayor of Atlanta, Ryan Glover, the founder of Bounce TV, decided to take the initiative to create a digital bank, we called it Greenwood.
It’s a digital bank, but it’s much more than that. It is a means of serving a society that is seen as a consumer, expelled by creditors and subjected to brutal racist repression. Greenwood is a symbol of what has been and what can be done. At a time of economic devastation, job losses and poverty, our imagination needs to be rethought. That’s exactly what we’re gonna do for Greenwood.
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I am the product of faith in myself and the turn of the dollar in the African-American community, said Killer Mike at the DealBook Online Summit.
I am the product of faith in myself and the transformation of the dollar into an African-American community. The acquittal we used when we were kids belonged to Miss Barnard, a black woman. The grocery store we went to was owned by black people. And that doesn’t mean we’ve had purchasing problems with other people or even companies. That means that the dollars we invested in that community were immediately returned to our community, whether it was to support an educational program or a sports program, whether it was a partnership – the Mac Wilborn I called, the number one poppy vendor – certainly helped many young people in his community who could afford to start their own businesses to help them. So for me it’s about doing what is sustained, which means that the dollar will stay in our community longer, and people should also remember that if the black community is economically stronger, as Robert said, the bigger the community, as Ursula said, the better the dollar will be.
I’m the product of faith in myself and the turn of the dollar in the African-American community, said Killer Mike on the DealBook.CreditCredit online top…New York Times.
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3. December 2020, 10:23 a.m. ET
3. December 2020, 10:23 a.m. ET
The New York Times
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By Marcelo Claure | Managing Director of SoftBank Group International and Chairman of the Board of Directors WeWork
Inequality for people of color is a reality. Nowhere in the United States is this clearer than in the education that children receive. Even before the pandemic, there was a lack of homework, which meant that too many American children did not have access to the Internet at home to carry out their school assignments. A 2018 Pew Research Center study showed that the gap was most pronounced among black, Spanish and low-income families.
The pandemic has widened this gap by shifting education to the internet, putting underage children at even greater risk of falling even further behind. According to a study by Common Sense Media, 15 to 16 million American students do not have a device or Internet service that is reliable enough for distance learning, and nine million students do not have both.
Governments must therefore make an urgent effort to ensure that every child from kindergarten to the twelfth grade has the opportunity to participate in education. The National Education Association recommends that you provide your class with an Internet-enabled device. It must have the software, webcam and keyboard needed for distance learning.
It sounds scary, but the work has already started. In 2017, I launched Project Sprint 1 Million, giving one million children free access to the Internet on my device. When I realized that the merger between T-Mobile and Sprint took place this year, I fought to continue this program. T-Mobile has expanded it to 10 million students.
While these efforts by the private sector are a good start, governments need to do more – especially when the reality of Kovid-19 requires distance learning in so many schools across America. Equipping children with the necessary digital tools will help to level the playing field for this unique moment and give them a better future.
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3. December 2020, 10:22 a.m. (Eastern time)
3. December 2020, 10:22 a.m. (Eastern time)
The New York Times
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Chris Murphy. United States Senator for Connecticut.
We’re a nation immersed in armed violence. A hundred Americans die every day from gunshot wounds. If you are a citizen of this country, you are ten times more likely to be killed by a firearm than in any other high-income country.
But the problem goes much deeper than the number of victims. Research shows that in areas with high levels of armed violence, children’s brain chemistry can change the constant fear of physical damage, making it difficult for children to learn and adapt.
This outbreak of armed violence is an election. We know how to stop this massacre, but we live with a political paralysis caused by a small industry with excessive political power. Over the past 30 years, the arms lobby has succeeded in blocking actions to reduce armed violence. But fortunately, their power is fading fast and Congress is closer than ever to implementing major reforms.
No change in the law would prevent death by firearms or mass shootings. But the data suggests a specific intervention with an amazing return on investment. The introduction of the national rule that weapons may not be sold without a background check by the buyer will save thousands of lives. In states that have already carried out universal reference checks, including my own state of Connecticut, the number of firearm murders has fallen significantly.
Federal law already stipulates that anyone who buys a firearm at a firearms shop must go through a screening process – a process that generally takes less than two minutes. This keeps weapons away from convicted criminals, domestic workers and anyone considered dangerously mentally ill by the court.
However, people who buy weapons online, at a weapons show or through a private vendor do not have to pass the inspection. This requires a national solution, because no state can protect itself sufficiently. A recent study found that in New York, a state with strict background checks, three quarters of the guns used to commit crimes were purchased in states with weak weapons laws.
The good news is that the universal federal law is very popular. More than 90% of Americans support this approach, including 85% of gun owners and the vast majority of NSA members. This makes universal background checks more popular than baseball or apple pie (at least in some studies). With this simple and necessary law change, Congress can save thousands of lives.
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3. December 2020, 10:21 a.m. (Eastern time)
3. December 2020, 10:21 a.m. (Eastern time)
The New York Times
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Oren Kass, Executive Director of American Compass.
If there is one message that America sends to our youth loudly and clearly and consistently, it is this one: Go to college. We run our schools as preparatory academies for the university. We provide more than $150 billion in annual government grants to university students. Our culture defines the campus experience as a prerequisite for a successful life and also promotes it as a real right to an amusement park: a bacchanal that offers enriching courses that you should take at least once in a while.
Politicians today flatly advocate simply throwing away tens of thousands of dollars of student debt per borrower as if the financial commitments made in an ivory tower deserved a special status that we would never give to a car loan or a negligible housing mortgage.
This is a bad message. Yes, for people with academic talent and the desire to pursue a career that requires an education that only higher education can offer, the road to university is the right one. But most people don’t.
In fact, less than one in five young Americans make the smooth transition from high school to university to pursue a career. Most of them won’t even graduate from community college. Approximately 40% of the people who actually get a diploma do complete work that does not require a diploma. At the same time, other sectors, such as skilled occupations, offer excellent career opportunities and face labour shortages. The gap between the cultural story and our economic reality is so great that many university graduates are now returning to vocational school.
Instead of generously sharing resources with students and leaving others to their fate, we should do the opposite. It’s crucial to spend more on building strong career paths outside of higher education, but it’s just as important to discover the saturated number of Big Edge.
In ten years’ time, we need to transfer half of the $150 billion in higher education to programs that promote employer-student relationships.
For the money we spend to get someone into university, we can give him or her an excellent professional and technical education, a subsidized job or internship and a savings account for his or her future education. A twenty year old can have many years of work experience, industrial loans and money in a bank. And a 16-year-old girl and her family can consider different options when evaluating their choices, get a full picture of the pros and cons of each and have a better chance of making the right choice for them.
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3. December 2020, 10:20 a.m. (Eastern time)
3. December 2020, 10:20 a.m. (Eastern time)
The New York Times
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Hal Harvey | Energy Innovation Executive Director
America did great things. Our economic success is based on ambitious efforts such as the transcontinental railway, the rural electrification programme, huge investments in drinking water, our unprecedented research universities, the interstate highway system and many others. We used these serious mobilizations to win World War II, drastically increase the life expectancy and health of Americans and master the technological revolution.
It’s time to shrug our shoulders and do the same with climate change. Success starts here with reducing emissions in four energy sectors: Electricity, cars, construction and industry. They all have a pathway to zero carbon emissions and none should be sacrificed, but each requires a national commitment.
Start with the grid. If America doubled its historical level of solar and wind energy use from this year and tripled it from 2030, we would reduce emissions from the energy sector by 90% by 2035. This is less effort than what we put into the construction of aircraft and tanks before the Second World War and it is similar to the Fracking Revolution that started in 2010. And we benefit from it today, thanks to cleaner air and better health.
Then there’s transportation. By 2035 we will only be able to increase car sales with electricity (which California and a dozen other countries are already asking for). If we equip these electric cars with our zero-carbon grid, that’s how it’s gonna be: No climate pollution from cars in 2050. And the trucks have to follow him fast.
Then the buildings go away. The heat pumps, which are already in use throughout the country, produce four times as much heat as conventional electric heating for the same amount of electricity. That’s really great. Their costs are now almost as high as a new stove, so… to heat our buildings with clean electricity thanks to these commercially available intelligent heat pumps.
The industry is the most complex task with complex processes and expensive equipment. The answer here consists of three parts: First, you are seriously committed to research and development. America spends a miserable half of 1% of its energy costs on research, which is not enough to invent new processes for producing aluminum, steel, cement, glass, and fertilizers. Secondly, we need government agencies to buy only the cleanest materials. The first markets will give preference to new technologies. Three: With the advent of low-carbon industry, America must complete its development with ever-higher standards.
America can do great things again, but only with serious commitment. There’s a general term: The best way to predict your future is to shape it. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.
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3. December 2020, 10:19 a.m. (Eastern time)
3. December 2020, 10:19 a.m. (Eastern time)
The New York Times
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Heidi Heitkamp. Former U.S. Senator from North Dakota.
Throughout the history of our country, the children, families and communities of Indians who were victims of colonial genocide have been banished, exposed to shameless damage and tragically forgotten. Tribal agreements signed on behalf of all Americans have been and continue to be broken, underfunded and neglected. In the early hours of his term of office, President Biden would take a new initiative: Operation Honour Our Tribal Contracts. That is what this initiative should contain.
Changes from National Holiday, Columbus Day, which is celebrated every second Monday in October, to Indigenous Peoples Day. Ensure that every tribal member who has a contractual right to health care has access to high quality, free health care in his or her home town. These include improving access to telemedicine, creating incentives and ensuring the recruitment and retention of health workers for indigenous communities, expanding mental and behavioral health services, and financing the construction and renovation of hospitals and clinics in the Indian health system. This must be done in consultation with chiefs and elders.
Invest in safe and secure housing by ensuring that tribal homes are connected to the sewerage system (currently less than half) and running water. Expansion of tribal shelters to reduce overcrowding and provide utilities and roads. In addition, we need to create ways to finance home ownership in India.
Develop the education system by investing in school infrastructure, recruiting the best teachers, housing teachers, providing additional social and academic support to improve learning outcomes and access to higher education, and implementing the recommendations in the Law on the Indigenous Children’s Commission.
Ensure the safety of indigenous people by extending the jurisdiction of tribal courts and increasing the resources and training of tribal law enforcement agencies. This includes holding the Ministry of Justice and the FBI responsible for their inability to protect indigenous people, and finally doing justice to the families of the missing and murdered indigenous people.
Make the provision of broadband and 5G technology to India the top infrastructure priority of the government.
Make funding for Indian land mandatory in order to avoid terminating policies that end our commitments to indigenous communities; increase allocations in existing programmes and create allocations in other programmes.
Introduction of contract accountability measures in each federal authority responsible for enforcing contract rights and creation of a special unit of responsibility to measure contract performance.
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3. December 2020, 10:18 a.m. (Eastern time)
3. December 2020, 10:18 a.m. (Eastern time)
The New York Times
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John B. King, Jr. | In the first place, it was the President of the Education Trust and former Secretary of Education under President Barack Obama.
Kitchen table. Spare table in the corner of a studio. A job in the basement, shared with siblings or parents. For the millions of children who attend public schools in our country, education has shifted from school buildings to their homes and to the internet as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Last month an alarming increase in the number of Kovid 19 infections in the country forced many schools and districts, which tried to reopen or introduce a mix of face-to-face and online education, to close their buildings and return to distance learning.
These developments reveal major gaps in educational opportunities. About 16 million students from kindergarten to high school. Classrooms – and even around 400,000 teachers – do not have the technology at home to teach and educate online, including access to computers or tablets and broadband.
For in the near future, distance and hybrid education will be the means to deny our children access to the Internet and devices or even block them at the school gate. We can and we must act.
Two things can now be seen as priorities: a rapid federal response under the new aid package for Kovid-19 and a national commitment to help our children make up for lost and incomplete learning.
When the pandemic forced most school buildings to close for a few months in the spring, the digital divide in America, characterized by race and income, became apparent.
Congress should act quickly and include an emergency communication fund in its next coronavirus package. This fund will provide $12 billion to schools and libraries, distributed by E-Rate, a federal program administered by C.C.F. that schools already know and trust.
E-grading is the most effective and, above all, equitable way of disseminating resources to help students and teachers gain access to the technologies needed for distance learning. Congress should now approve these emergency funds and commit to sustainable investments to finally bridge the digital divide.
In addition, we need to focus on providing national assistance to our children to make up for missed learning opportunities.
We can achieve this by investing in high quality, multi-week, voluntary summer programmes that are creatively designed for basic academic skills and include activities such as arts, sports, computers or environmental education. Experience shows that students participating in these programmes make significant progress in reading and mathematics, which can reduce the impact of knowledge loss.
We can also put our students back on track with a national corps of certified teachers who are committed to working with public school classrooms to accelerate the future education of our children. This is a full-time program, offered throughout the academic year, either through the expansion of the federal AmerCorp program or through state and community programs.
I am encouraged that senators led by Chris Koons of Delaware have already proposed a multiparty law that will expand the national service in response to the pandemic, double the number of jobs in AmericaCorps this year and provide hundreds of thousands of opportunities for the currently unemployed youth.
This is the mobilisation we need to support our children and stimulate our economy. We can meet the needs of the moment. The question is whether we have the will.
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3. December 2020, 10:18 a.m. (Eastern time)
3. December 2020, 10:18 a.m. (Eastern time)
The New York Times
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Chris Magnus. Chief of police, Tucson, Ariz.
We need to better address the mental health problems we have before September 11th. But how? We need to send one or more mental health professionals to these centers to handle such calls before they are sent only to police patrols. New York has recently announced a pilot programme in this regard. In Tucson, where I’m chief of police, we’ve been doing this since spring 2020.
Emergency calls from people in crisis situations generally fall into different categories justifying different types of response. The first type includes appellants who have questions that need to be referred or consulted in crisis situations. In many cases, 911 mental health professionals can address these problems and make recommendations. If callers need advice, triage specialists can call the crisis phone number for advice.
The other category of calls relates to cases where mental health professionals have to intervene but the police do not have to go to the scene of the crime. Local mobile crisis teams of mental health professionals can often handle these calls without the help of the police, when there is no evidence of weapons or violence. Such teams should be formed where they do not exist.
Suppose the alarm centre or the psychiatric nurse discovers that a weapon was used or that violence was committed at the crime scene. In this case, they should send both the police and mental health professionals. The police must always ensure safety at the crime scene before psychiatric staff come into contact with those who need it. If it is appropriate that only the police have contact with people in the field, they may decide to recall the mobile crisis unit.
A good triage of psychiatric crisis calls to the crisis centre can ensure that the crisis centre is in good hands and can help callers, police and psychiatric staff of the crisis centre to together provide the best possible care to people in crisis.
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3. December 2020, 10:17 a.m. (Eastern time)
3. December 2020, 10:17 a.m. (Eastern time)
The New York Times
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Kwame Owusu-Kesse and Geoffrey Canada | Chairman and President of the Harlem Children’s Zone
Since the Browne v. Board of Education in 1954, schools failed to bridge the gap in opportunities between black and white children in America. How do we really make schools work for all children?
The nation has been thinking about this issue for decades and has provided answers that have unfortunately been reduced for poor students. But we don’t think that’s the right question. The country needs to ask itself how we can change the areas around schools so that they become places where young people can succeed – at school and outside school.
If we want to break the vicious circle of poverty, we need to rethink education in America. We can no longer see education as a simple matter that takes place in a so-called school. Such a narrow approach has proved insufficient to meet the challenge of lifting large groups of people out of poverty. We need to extend the educational offer to the communities around the school building.
Researchers such as Harvard economist Raj Chetty have made it clear that the region in which a child grows up is perhaps the most important determinant of his or her social and economic mobility. Of course, the quality of the school where the child studies is important, but also the degree of segregation by place of residence, the social capital of the neighbourhood, the stability of the child’s family and the poverty level of the neighbourhood are important.
The Harlem Children’s Zone has been successful with this approach. We have bridged the black and white gap in our schools and have trained more than 1,000 students at the university over the past 10 years. But we’re not alone. Other organisations in the country, such as StriveTogether, the Northside Achievement Zone and Communities in Schools, have used the same holistic approach to help children from poor families find their way to progress.
A new field-oriented field of practice (i.e. where a child grows up) argues in favour of integrated service provision to areas in order to combat poverty effectively. These services include quality education and cradle-to-cradle programs, physical and mental health support, workforce development, affordable housing and community leadership development.
That is the level of support my country should give to poor communities across America. The Harlem Children’s Zone’s William Julius Wilson Institute works to improve the performance of effective organizations across the country through capacity building and technical assistance. But there is a catastrophic lack of resources to finance such ambitious programmes.
America cannot afford to continue to waste the talents of these communities. If these communities suffer, the economy suffers. When the economy suffers, we all suffer. We need to get to a point where the word education means much more than school; it means a real transformation of a child’s life from the cradle to the grave.
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3. December 2020, 10:16 a.m. (Eastern time)
3. December 2020, 10:16 a.m. (Eastern time)
The New York Times
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Alexandra Delano Alonso | Professor and Head of Global Studies at the New School
The call for a comprehensive reform of the US immigration system has been around for more than two decades. He’s failed. This call for reform was based on two facts: 11 million people live in the country without legal status; and the existing channels for migration to the United States through work visas, family reunification, temporary worker programmes or asylum are inadequate and run counter to economic and political realities.
As a result, millions of people in the country live in precarious conditions and are exposed to discrimination, oppression, constant fear of deportation and the terrible consequences of family separation. While this may seem a distant reality to many Americans, the fact that millions of immigrants and their children do not have full access to health and education services, do not demand safety, and do not participate in social life has implications for society as a whole, whether they are citizens or non-citizens.
So why does this system still exist and what still needs to be fixed?
Those who advocate immigration policy reform often describe it as a failing system. But its dysfunction serves clear interests. Historically, the U.S. economy has benefited from the availability of cheap and non-renewable labor. The exclusion of immigrants from social and political institutions is the result of racial prejudice, which has led to the distinction between desirable and undesirable immigrants. These are considered essential to the economy but pose a threat to security, public health and national identity. This illegality – which is built into the system when entering the country through unauthorised channels or when exceeding the period of validity of the visa for lack of other possibilities – is a criterion for exclusion from the outset.
A request for the cancellation of the ICE, including the closure of the prisons and finally the end of deportations, would be a first step towards the necessary reorganisation of these conditions. Rather than trying to reform the law enforcement system to make it more humane, we need to break the cycle of abuse, violence and lack of responsibility embedded in the enforcement of immigration and detention laws.
The dismantling of the ICE does not require the laborious process of drafting new laws or the support of all parties that has so far been so difficult to obtain. And resources from round-ups, detentions and deportations can be immediately transferred to justice, case management, social work and community development.
But the decriminalization of immigration is not a project that can be left to the political will of governments alone. The abolition of institutions also requires a rethinking of the vision of justice in society and tackling the racial and economic injustices inherent in a nation of immigrants from the outset. This requires that we distinguish between illegal words and immigration in our public and private conversations on a daily basis. It requires – as migrants themselves clearly do when challenging the fiction of borders and building communities on the basis of reciprocity – an understanding and response to the fact that the liberation of one person is linked to the liberation of another.
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3. December 2020, 10:15 a.m. (Eastern time)
3. December 2020, 10:15 a.m. (Eastern time)
The New York Times
A loan… Otto Steiniger…
Veronica de Ruggie | Senior Fellow of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
Economic growth is not only ethical, but also sublime, wrote my former colleague Eli Durado of the Kato Institute. I agree. These are my top three growth-enhancing measures. What they all have in common is the removal of barriers to growth. And they are all progressive in the sense that Americans will benefit most from the lower half of the income scale.
Let’s start with an initiative that has supporters across the political spectrum: abandoning zoning and other land use regulations that inhibit growth by restricting housing, especially in coastal cities where housing costs have exploded, making life difficult for ordinary people. Even a modest deregulation of the housing sector, such as increasing the space available for higher buildings, could significantly increase the supply of housing in the more prosperous parts of the country. This facilitates economic migration to these regions, which can reduce poverty and inequality by giving low-income workers better access to better paid labour markets. Discover an example of how Fairfax County, Virginia has successfully greened Tysons Corner’s community.
In addition, all government benefits such as customs duties, agricultural and export subsidies and most professional licensing requirements in areas such as natural hair braiding or home decoration should be abolished. According to the Institute of Justice’s report on professional licensing, the requirements for low and middle-income occupations in the United States cost on average about $200 in tuition fees and require nine months of training.
These demands benefit the richer, politically connected interest groups at the expense of workers and low-income consumers. And there should be no exceptions for health care. Abolish the rules that protect doctors from competition with nurses. At the same time, doctors need to be able to treat patients across the country and compete for telemedicine contracts.
Finally, we need to relax the security rules in an intelligent way. Take account of the environmental impact assessments required under the National Environmental Protection Act 1970. Scientists on both sides of the aisle agree that these tests need to be reformed. They cause delays and higher costs in infrastructure projects, but rarely deliver on promises to protect the environment.
Similarly, an excessively risk-free approval process slows down drug development. Improving the safety of available medicines does not compensate for essential medicines that are not on the market due to expensive approval procedures. The same applies to safety requirements for the development of new technologies. Of course we all want to be safe, but too much risk aversion kills innovation and hampers growth. We need a balanced approach.
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