I am honored to be part of Dissent’s summer issue, “Beyond Stagnation,” with some of my favorite people @amyhanauer @jschmittwdc and many others!

Here’s my basic point:

The idea that family economic security is good for the economy has fallen out of favor for several reasons. First, we have a “ladies problem.” The intellectual legacy of the New Deal, which was at once progressive and patriarchal, has married us to a set of policies and proposals geared for a time when women had only recently won the vote and tended to work inside, rather than outside, the home. Second, despite research showing that policies that ad-dress economic inequality and support workers and their families are good for the economy, today’s political class believes that a healthy economy requires only business-friendly policies. Finally, we do not have a politics that connects and transcends these first two problems. Too often, so-called women’s economic issues appear as an afterthought, rather than as fundamental to family economic security and the economy overall. Yet there is a set of policies that has the potential to help grow the economy and enhance productivity while also supporting families as they live and work today. Together, this collection of new policies can lay the foundation for a new strategy for economic growth as well as a new broadly progressive political coalition that could be as transformative and as durable as FDR’s New Deal.

A New Agenda for American Families and the Economy | Dissent Magazine.