Roosevelt Institute

06/02/2026

For decades, Americans have been told that if the economy grows, people’s lives will eventually get better.

But too many people today are working harder, paying more for life’s essentials, and losing faith that our institutions can deliver anything but instability and exhaustion for anyone besides billionaires and corporations.

That’s why we’re launching The Good Life Agenda: Fuller Lives, a Stronger Economy, and Renewed Trust — a blueprint for what our economy should actually do: make working people’s lives better.

The agenda lays out 70+ policy ideas to:
🏛️ revive responsive government
🏠 control the costs of life’s essentials
💵 raise incomes and strengthen worker power
⏰ restore time and agency to people’s lives

This vision goes beyond affordability alone. It’s about restructuring the rules of a fundamentally rigged economy so people can not just survive, but live lives of security, dignity, and purpose.

As Roosevelt Institute President Elizabeth Wilkins writes, “democracy has to deliver in people’s daily lives.”

Read The Good Life Agenda: https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/the-good-life-agenda/?utm_campaign=institute20260602&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=goodlifeagenda

05/29/2026

A look at our top stories this week ⬇️

✅ A new Roosevelt Institute brief from Patrick Oakford and Economic Policy Institute analysis from Ben Zipperer make the case for restoring the minimum wage as a meaningful labor standard. Their recommendations include raising the wage floor, indexing it to wage growth, strengthening just-cause protections, and expanding safeguards against wage theft.
✅ Kate Andrias and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez joined the Pitchfork Economics podcast to discuss why an abundance agenda won’t succeed without workers. Their recent Roosevelt report argues that organized labor is essential to delivering the economic gains promised by abundance and ensuring those gains are broadly shared.
✅We’re pushing back on Jeff Bezos’s call to eliminate federal income taxes for the bottom half of earners. The affordability crisis won’t be solved by proposals that leave the wealthiest Americans untouched. A more equitable economy requires those with the greatest resources to contribute their fair share.

Read more in our :

We joined EPI and the Oklahoma Policy Institute to discuss a new way to think about the federal minimum wage in this week's Roosevelt Rundown

05/22/2026

A look at our top stories this week ⬇️

✅ Our Good Life Residents weigh in on Jerome Powell’s legacy at the Federal Reserve, from defending monetary policy independence to the limits of the Fed’s response to racial and class inequality during the pandemic. As Michael Madowitz argues, the Fed’s commitment to full employment must remain central.
✅ In the latest , we asked Atlanta residents and organizers what a means to them. Their vision for a better economy is built on quality jobs, thriving public spaces, and an economy that supports stronger communities.
✅ It’s time to push back on the fearmongering surrounding Social Security. As Stephen Nuñez explains, Congress has the tools to strengthen and protect the program if lawmakers choose to act now.

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We asked Atlanta what a good life looks like in this week's Roosevelt Rundown

05/15/2026

A look at our top stories this week ⬇️

✅ Oskar Dye-Furstenberg explores what today’s sectors and occupations look like, how they pay, and how they’ll change over the next decade. Fast-food and care workers are the jobs expected to grow the most—but whether they stay as low-paying as they are now is a policy choice.
✅ On Monday, childcare workers went on a one-day strike, calling for better wages and asking what it would look like to have a . In a new brief, Sarah Jane Glynn examines how parents are relying on a patchwork system of care—and why universal, public childcare is the better option.
✅ Brad Lipton and Noa Rosinplotz submitted a comment in support of click-to-cancel to NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, which could save New Yorkers over 600,000 hours a year, according to their analysis.

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Digging into data on childcare and the labor force in this week's Roosevelt Rundown

05/08/2026

A look at our top stories this week ⬇️

✅ Kate Andrias and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez explore the false choice between organized labor and abundance.
✅ According to Todd N. Tucker and Oskar Dye-Furstenberg, services may be the largest part of the US economy, but making stuff still matters.
✅ Stephen Nuñez counters Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’s baseless claims against SNAP beneficiaries.

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Building for and with the working class in this week's Roosevelt Rundown

05/01/2026

A look at our top stories this week ⬇️

✅ Elizabeth Wilkins, Brad Lipton, and Graham Steele discuss what’s going on in the private credit market and how shadow banking puts the economy at risk.
✅ The Trump administration’s plan to open up retirement accounts to risky investments could harm workers’ savings.
✅ There’s a hidden financial toll of informal caregiving on women and families.

Read more in our :

How shadow banking puts the economy at risk.

04/24/2026

A look at our top stories this week ⬇️

✅ Our President and CEO Elizabeth Wilkins on what people really want in a place to live—and why affordability isn’t the whole story
✅ She also spoke at a Congressional Progressive Caucus hearing on how fixing the tax code is key to rebuilding trust in government
✅ Our Director of Corporate Power and Financial Regulation, Brad Lipton defines financialization and describes its effects on our economy

Read more in our :

Plus, the ultrarich get to evade taxes—how making them pay would rebuild trust, in this week's Roosevelt Rundown.

04/18/2026

A look at our top stories this week ⬇️

✅ New report shows pro-labor clean energy policy delivered stronger projects, higher wages, and more investment
✅ For , Roosevelt fellows break down how tax policy can better support economic stability
✅ Introducing our first set of Residents, who will focus on the Federal Reserve and Social Security

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We pull out the receipts in this week's Roosevelt Rundown.

04/11/2026

Headlines say millennials are on track to become the wealthiest generation in US history, but that story misses a key reality: the costs of long-term care.

For many families, the “great wealth transfer” may never happen. With median income for Americans 65+ around $57K and nursing home care exceeding $115K/year, many are forced to spend down their savings just to afford care.

New analysis shows that after needing care, middle-class families see their wealth fall to ~42% of original levels, while the wealthiest are far more likely to recover most of their wealth.

Some turn to unpaid caregiving, but that brings its own costs: lost income, stalled careers, and less savings for the next generation.

To create a fair and lasting care system, we need to treat long-term care not as an individual health issue but as a structural driver of intergenerational wealth inequality.

Read more 🔗:https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/how-long-term-care-costs-drain-the-middle-class/?utm_campaign=institute20260411&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=ltcmiddleclassdrain

04/10/2026

A look at our top stories this week ⬇️

✅Jessica Forden’s new brief highlights how long-term care costs act as a structural driver of inequality, as only the richest recover from the financial toll of eldercare.
✅ President and CEO Elizabeth Wilkins on OpenAI: "Power doesn't yield on its own."
✅ Roosevelt Fellow Ned Resnikoff on a little-known provision in the ROAD to Housing bill that could speed up housing development.

Read more in our :

How the costs of eldercare are draining middle-class wealth in this week's Roosevelt Rundown.