South By North Strategies, Ltd.

Improving Access To Work Supports

The Great Recession has demonstrated the importance of work supports to low-income working families. Recently, foundations and government agencies have intensified efforts to improve access to work supports while streamlining their delivery.

A policy brief prepared by South by North Strategies, Ltd.  for The Working Poor Families Project explored ongoing initiatives and examined how the Project’s state partners could support and advance efforts aimed at strengthening public work support programs. In particular, the brief identified five state policy areas for the Project’s state partners to consider and potentially pursue.

Around The Dial – June 8, 2011

Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:

• Peter Diamond of MIT explains what happens “when a Nobel prize isn’t enough.”
• Dean Baker describes a “disaster not averted.”
• Naked Capitalism explains the stakes in the Greek bailout.
• Jared Bernstein wonders “what went wrong and what to do about it.”
• Economix puts tax rates in international context.
• Marshall Auerback thinks austerity is a way “to throw away an election.”

Economic Relapse

Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect writes that the sputtering economy needs another recovery package.

This apparent policy paralysis is mainly a reflection of how much damage was done by the financial collapse.
…
What we face is not an ordinary macro-economic challenge of recovering from an ordinary recession. There is huge structural damage – everything from the loss of trillions of dollars of household net worth due to the housing collapse to weakened bank balance sheets to an epidemic of outsourcing as corporations try to cut their own costs. It all adds up to a massive deflationary drag. The proof is that neither zero interest rates nor double digit deficits — which ordinarily would provide very rapid growth — are curing the problem. But the government still has the remedy of large-scale, job-intensive public investment. Economic history shows that when the private sector is too traumatized to revive economic activity and employment, public investment is the only way to jump start a full recovery.
…
Obviously, the Republicans will never to agree to a program of large public investment. But Obama ought to propose one. It would be far better, both for Obama and for the country, to have the 2012 election as a referendum on jobs rather than an arcane and counterproductive debate about two brands of budget cutting.

Shrinking Public Payrolls

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities graphs the ongoing decline in state and local government payrolls.

Around The Dial – June 7, 2011

Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:

• Emil Malizia of UNC-Chapel Hill thinks about sources of rural economic strength.
• Naked Capitalism argues that “we are on the verge of a Great, Great Depression.”
• Paul Krugman explains why “vouchercare is not Medicare.”
• Fed Watch sees the economy “circling the drain.”
• The Wall St. Journal reports on state-level cuts to the safety net.