The American Institute For Progressive Democracy - TAIPD

06/25/2019

Despite the still existing climate change deniers, planning has to be done now not sometime in the future. Of all the US. cities that can be protected from rising sea levels how are priorities to be established?

As the dangers and costs of climate change rise, policymakers are facing painful choices about how to decide which communities to protect.

05/27/2019

Have we heard before of the Middle East Conflicts War Memorial? Surely not. It is in a little town in Illinois (Marseilles). It honors the now more than 8,000 killed in the decades long series of conflicts we have played a part in in the Middle East. The Memorial Wall is maintained by bikers, many of them vets. Andrew Bacevich, whose own son was killed in those conflicts, writes that it is correct to say that those who have died did so in the service of their country but to say that they died defending American freedom is pure crap.

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05/14/2019

We have to start thinking about the future - in a consistent and comprehensive way. This piece tells us just why and what questions and assumptions are needed.

The Digital Age has the potential to be as disruptive and transformative for us as the Industrial Revolution was for our ancestors; that disruption could threaten our capitalist system and our democracy.

04/13/2019

Last year the institute (TAIPD) produced a major public forum on the issue of fascism in the U.S. As Josh Marshall notes we have taken, in the past weeks, another step in that direction.

Over the last three weeks a series of events have taken place which may seem individual but need to be...

04/06/2019

Making America Insecure Again!
Trump is not only badly messing up the United States - he is destroying the good parts of the European order that we have played a major role in creating. (Read this with worry.) Note: Robert Kagan is a major neo-conservative foreign policy thinker who has come to realize that Trump is making the world unsafe or safe for fascism.)
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/germany/2019-04-02/new-german-question?utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=twofa&utm_content=20190405&utm_campaign=TWOFA%20040519%20The%20New%20German%20Question&utm_term=FA%20This%20Week%20-%20112017

02/18/2019

The Senate especially and to a lesser extent the House are composed of billionaires and people (largely men) with a great deal of money. Our democracy needs to have them gone and to elect candidates who have not nearly as much wealth. We will need to supplement the pay of people elected so that they can afford to both run and to serve.

Contrary to a cynical proposal by millionaire Sen. Rick Scott, Congress should be paid more, not less.

02/08/2019

The pace of new ideas is speeding up. Those include ideas about leveling our vast inequality by means of taxation: both on income and on wealth (and there are different means of doing the latter.) And the really wealthy feel the heat coming down: and they need to. Michael Hiltzik points out what the billionaires have been up in this time of so many living from pay check to pay check. Don't love them - tax them!

Massive accumulated wealth is bad for democracy, and the U.S. finally is getting the message.

02/01/2019

Aren't the billionaires and the .1% people getting nervous? Their wealth is at last under attack by major political figures and they are sweating. Their contribution to the massive inequality in this country is becoming part of the public discussion.

Legal experts say Sen. Elizabeth Warren's plan for a wealth tax is constitutional, and economists say it's needed.

01/27/2019

One of the more exciting recent proposals is for the U.S. to engage in a Green New Deal. That project would involve a truly serious effort to combat global warming while also providing a major economic boost to the country. But of course the usual complaint of 'How could it be paid for?' arises. Here is a major answer.

It leads the way among several countries running circles around the U.S. in infrastructure development, which all have one thing in common.

01/10/2019

At long last the question of what tax rates should be created for people making huge incomes has been being publicly discussed. What has been happening however is that those who oppose significantly increasing taxes on the really wealthy are spreading misinformation. The following piece straightens out at least one misconception.

A recent proposal from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez brought out critics who either don't understand how our tax system works -- or who don't want you to understand it.

11/27/2018

The announced point of the piece from the NYT has to do with how statistics about race are presented makes a big difference as to people's (white people that is) reaction. But buried in the article is something of great importance: how the Census Bureau counts the rapidly growing number of mixed race people in the U.S. - they are counted as not-white no matter whether one parent is white.

The idea of white demographic decline has become an object of fascination on the right and the left. But demographers have grown uneasy with the projection.

10/15/2018

One of the promising aspects of current political movement is that moral critiques of capitalism are increasing. Here is one by a capitalist, a billionaire one to boot.

Nick Hanauer's rousing speech on the lies on which neoliberalism is built.