Roosevelt Institute

The Roosevelt Institute is an ideas and leadership organization founded in the belief that America should offer opportunity to all. To develop a new social contract for the 21st century, we advance the work of progressive economists and social policy thinkers and support an emerging generation of leaders as they design solutions to the nation’s most pressing issues.

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Learn about our fellows

Want to learn more about our Summer Academy fellows?  

Read their bios and view their head-shots here 

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Our Summer Academy students share their responses to Why they choose to be part of the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network’s Summer Academy program.

We will have new videos released every day for the next week, be sure to vote by Friday, August 1! Watch the videos here on our Tumblr (Tag: Summer...

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Lawrence Katz: In the Artisanal Economy, Work Is What You Make of It

The Next American Economy project brought together 30 experts from various disciplines to envision tomorrow's economic and political challenges and develop today's solutions. Their assignment: be bold, and leave the conventional wisdom -- and their own opinions -- behind. In today's video, Lawrence Katz imagines a future "artisanal economy" in which crafty workers carve out their own niches.

Lawrence Katz, the Harvard economics professor known for his book The Race Between Education and Technology, speculates on the flourishing of an artisanal economy. He imagines a potential rebirth of craftsmanship in which education and training allow workers to transform low-wage work into high-paid business. 

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Frank Levy: Through Innovation, People Will Live Longer and Earn Less

The Next American Economy project brought together 30 experts from various disciplines to envision tomorrow's economic and political challenges and develop today's solutions. Their assignment: be bold, and leave the conventional wisdom -- and their own opinions -- behind. In today's video, economist Frank Levy foretells tech and health care trends resulting in longer lifespans and lower earning potential.

MIT professor Frank Levy speculates that in the next 25 years, health innovation will improve life spans while tech innovation reduces earning potential for many Americans, resulting in longer lives but no additional income. Add in the increasingly destructive consequences of climate change, and the middle class dream will become further and further out of reach. Triggered by resentment and fear, a new anti-technology movement will rise up with a bumper sticker slogan: "Another Luddite for Jobs."

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Rob Atkinson: After the End of the Innovation Era

The Next American Economy project brought together 30 experts from various disciplines to envision tomorrow's economic and political challenges and develop today's solutions. Their assignment: be bold, and leave the conventional wisdom -- and their own opinions -- behind. In today's video, Rob Atkinson speculates that concerns about technological unemployment are misplaced, and that the real challenge will be continued innovation.

Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, forecasts the end of exponential technological growth. The end of Moore's law and decline in R&D investment (due to reduced government spending and increased short-termism in the private sector) will lead to a reduction in innovation and a lag in productivity, Atkinson says.

For more, see "Are Robots Taking Our Jobs, or Making Them?" by Atkinson and Ben Miller.

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Progress Still Needed to End Workplace Segregation

  The passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act encouraged more integration at America’s private employers, with progress made as Black men and women and white women obtained jobs previously held almost entirely by white men. But by 1980, Black men's progress in workplace integration stalled, and ten years later, the Black women faced the same slowdown. White women have not experienced complete integration either, with occupations still half way towards integration. While we lack historical data for the Latino population, there is good reason to believe that workplace segregation continues for them as well. What's more, this data understates the amount of workplace segregation, because it measures occupations instead of job titles within each occupation. We know that more women and people of color are in lower-wage roles.

In June, The Roosevelt Institute’s Future of Work project brought together labor organizers and legal and policy experts to discuss what to do to end workplace segregation by race and gender. This infographic outlines five broad policy proposals to advance the inclusive workforce we must have if we are to create a bright future for America.

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David Autor: Why Technological Innovation Could Increase Inequality

The Next American Economy project brought together 30 experts from various disciplines to envision tomorrow's economic and political challenges and develop today's solutions. Their assignment: be bold, and leave the conventional wisdom -- and their own opinions -- behind. Their goal: not to provide a researched analysis, but to stimulate debate on critical questions.In the debut entry in our new video speculation series, MIT economist David Autor talks about the future of economic polarization.

There is a long-running debate between those who worry robots are taking our jobs and those who scoff at that “lump of labor fallacy” as just another version of Luddite thinking. In the video below, Professor David Autor, the MIT economist famous for his description of how technology has helped hollow out the middle class, outlines the debate and describes how it might be possible that both sides are right.

Professor Autor discusses a scenario in which technological innovation continues to reduce the need for low-skilled labor while increasing the demand for higher-skilled workers, thus increasing wages at the top while reducing wages at the bottom.

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Althea Erickson: What if the Etsy Economy Prevails?

The Next American Economy project brought together 30 experts from various disciplines to envision tomorrow's economic and political challenges and develop today's solutions. Their assignment: be bold, and leave the conventional wisdom -- and their own opinions -- behind. Their goal: not to provide a researched analysis, but to stimulate debate on critical questions. In today's video, Etsy Public Policy Director Althea Erickson imagines a future economy based on digital entrepreneurship.

Althea Erickson, Public Policy Director for Etsy, describes a possible future in which the "Etsy economy prevails." Over the next 20 years, she says, as the costs of entrepreneurship decline, more and more people will leave low-wage jobs for the gig economy. After an initial period of intensive price competition on market platforms like TaskRabbit and Etsy, the platforms will start serving as organizing institutions and will drive incomes up. Eventually, market platforms will begin to provide services to reduce the economic uncertainty of the gig economy -- the kind of benefits once offered by steady employers, such as retirement savings, health care options, training opportunities, and so on.

"Overall, we will live in the utopian dream of a micro-gig economy where people are self-actualized," Erickson speculates.

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Carl Camden: Full-Time Employment May Give Way to a Free Agent Economy

The Next American Economy project brought together 30 experts from various disciplines to envision tomorrow's economic and political challenges and develop today's solutions. Their assignment: be bold, and leave the conventional wisdom -- and their own opinions -- behind. In today's video, Kelly Services CEO Carl Camden speculates about a future workforce dominated by temporary employees.

The CEO of employment firm Kelly Services speculates that in 20 years, less than a third of the American workforce will be directly employed by corporations or governments. Rather, the majority of the population will work as free agents. Kelly Services placed 540,000 temporary employees in 2013, and can serve as a model for human resources firms of the future. In place of government or full-time employers, firms like Kelly Services will become the purveyor of social services on behalf of the freelancers they represent, including insurance, education, and retirement benefits.

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Andy Stern: The Future Economy Will Pit Man vs. Machine

The Next American Economy project brought together 30 experts from various disciplines to envision tomorrow's economic and political challenges and develop today's solutions. Their assignment: be bold, and leave the conventional wisdom -- and their own opinions -- behind. In today's video, SEIU's Andy Stern offers a darker take on a future in which continued technological innovation has had a devastating impact on the job market.

Andy Stern, president emeritus of SEIU, speculates that by 2040 technological advancement will have unleashed a tsunami of job loss. "The intellectuals who long served up education, entrepreneurial tendencies, and innovation as the answer to all our job problems joined the union leaders, market fundamentalists, and the conservative economists in the Flat Earth Society," says Stern.

But in the 2042 election, a new coalition will rise, securing the policies needed for us to live in a future defined by abundance and equality.

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Mike Mathieu: Big Data is Watching You

The Next American Economy project brought together 30 experts from various disciplines to envision tomorrow's economic and political challenges and develop today's solutions. Their assignment: be bold, and leave the conventional wisdom -- and their own opinions -- behind. In today's video, tech entrepreneur Mike Mathieu imagines what happens when data-mining is done directly to the human brain.

Mike Mathieu, entrepreneur and founder of high-tech business incubator Front Seat, speculates on the future of technology, imagining a 100-million-fold increase in computer power that leads to a revolution in data and the "sensor-fication" of the entire world. By 2040, he says, we can wire computers directly to the brain to capture data. The economy grows, but some suggest "data becomes America's Dutch Disease." In a darker turn, we begin to see a loss of human freedoms as behavior is increasingly predicted, tracked, and incentivized according to data models.

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Dorian Warren: Inequality Could Spark a Second Civil War

The Next American Economy project brought together 30 experts from various disciplines to envision tomorrow's economic and political challenges and develop today's solutions. Their assignment: be bold, and leave the conventional wisdom -- and their own opinions -- behind. In today's video, Roosevelt Institute Fellow Dorian Warren speculates on the political fallout of growing inequality over the next 20 years.

In his introductory post for the Next American Economy speculations series, Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Bo Cutter noted that nearly half the participants at our recent convening believed that "if inequality trends continue, the political backlash will be so extreme that our current system will change drastically in the next 25 years." In the video below, Roosevelt Institute Fellow Dorian Warren takes that concept and runs with it, envisioning a scenario in which national cohesion deteriorates as the country becomes increasingly divided between elite enclaves and a decimated hinterland. The consequences: a 20 percent incarceration rate, all-out civil war, and the end of democracy.

In his tragicomic scenario, he says, "Because politics was so hopeless, liberal democracy was a historical artifact. Since we transitioned to a civil oligarchy under one-party rule, many colleges and universities replaced political science departments with departments of molecular gastronomy."

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The NextGen Illinois project is a new initiative by the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network, Young Invincibles, and several other Illinois organizations to activate young people to shape a unique policy agenda for the state of Illinois, and to equip young adults with the tools to create change within their communities. It’s an effort by young people in Illinois to create a policy agenda for our state, tackling some of the biggest and most important topics state government can take on. NextGen also engages young people to talk about the systems and structures of our state government, because we recognize that we may need to change how our government works in order to see any progress on specific political issues.

Learn more and join the conversation: NextGenIL.org

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Follow #ChildPoverty to catch in on the conversation.

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Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow and Chief Economist Joseph E. Stiglitz says corporate tax abuse has helped make America unequal and undemocratic. But the Nobel Prize-winner has a plan to change that.

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Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow and Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz appears on an episode of Moyers & Company to discuss why America’s future prosperity depends on tax reform today. 

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National change begins in our own back yards. Learn how the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network's Rethinking Communities initiative is making it happen.