Economic Recovery and Social Investment

NEXT SOCIAL CONTRACT INITIATIVE

Economic Recovery and Social Investment

by Robert Kuttner, Co-Editor, The American Prospect; Senior Fellow, Demos

Nearly two and a half years after the Great Recession supposedly ended, the economy continues to struggle with slow growth, high unemployment, and the hollowing out of middle-income jobs. In a new paper for the Next Social Contract Initiative, Robert Kuttner makes the case for increased social investment as a way of both generating a stronger economic recovery and creating more middle class jobs. According to Kuttner, who co-founded and co-edits The American Prospect magazine and is a senior fellow at Demos, expanding and improving the quality of human service work has been overlooked and should be a key component of a public investment-led recovery. He writes: "We can allow an increasingly laissez-faire economy to take a low road of underpaid and under-professionalized service jobs. Or we can use taxation, public borrowing, and social investment to create more high-quality careers in the human services, which in turn will stimulate an economic recovery and produce a society of more balanced life chances." Read Economic Recovery and Social Investment: A Strategy to Create Good Jobs in the Service Sector by Robert Kuttner. Download the PDF of the paper directly here.

RENEWING THE AMERICAN SOCIAL CONTRACT Renewing the American Social Contract is a series of major policy papers outlining bold proposals from leading thinkers for reforming American social policy in areas from wages and job creation to taxation and the welfare state. Representing diverse perspectives from across the political spectrum, the contributors to the series share a commitment to questioning orthodoxy and enlarging the boundaries of debate.    The next paper will be by Bruce Bartlett on the case for a value-added tax to fund key elements of the social contract. Please see the full list of papers here.