Spring, No. 56

With each passing month, we see new and often searing evidence that the climate crisis is deepening. The evidence affirms that a Green New Deal is not some idealistic wish—it’s an environmental and economic necessity.

In this issue, with support from the Open Society Foundations, we present a symposium making the moral case for a Green New Deal and describing how it would be implemented and paid for, what shape it might take legislatively, what long-term targets it would need to hit, and finally, the kind of grassroots movement that would be needed to support and sustain it. Authors include Washington Governor Jay Inslee, who made solving climate change the centerpiece of his presidential campaign. He co-authors the lead essay with Varshini Prakash of the Sunrise Movement. Other contributors to the package include former Representative Tom Perriello; Bracken Hendricks and Sam Ricketts, who worked with Governor Inslee; Rhiana Gunn-Wright, who helped develop the Green New Deal; Leah Stokes of UC-Santa Barbara; J.W. Mason of the Roosevelt Institute; and Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party.
Les Gelb passed away last year. He was a dear friend of the journal, a board member since our inception—and, of course, one of the most prominent foreign-policy analysts in recent American history. The issue features nine short essays discussing different aspects of Les’s legacy by some of our leading foreign-policy thinkers: Tony Blinken, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Jake Sullivan, Elizabeth Economy, and many more.

The Democratic presidential contenders are talking about a lot of things, but one topic that has been getting surprisingly and disappointingly short shrift is middle-class wages. Here, John E. Schwarz, Harry Lasker, David Callahan, and William C. Coleman present an original proposal for how to structure corporate taxation to incentivize paying higher wages. It’s an approach that deserves wide attention.

Ganesh Sitaraman and Anne Alstott respond to Vanessa Williamson’s review of their book. Rahul Gupta, the former health commissioner in West Virginia, reviews an important new book on “deaths of despair.” Adele M. Stan reviews Katherine Stewart’s new book on right-wing religious nationalism, and Arthur Goldhammer reviews Branko Milanovic’s meditation on the future of capitalism

Back Issues Archive

Symposium

Les Gelb, in Memoriam

By The Editors

1 MIN READ

The Common-Sense Visionary

By Tony Blinken Dan Feldman

5 MIN READ

Iraq: Admitting a Mistake

By Heather Hurlburt Ethan Porter

3 MIN READ

Stage-Setting Power

By Anne-Marie Slaughter Darren Geist Jeanne-Paloma Zelmati

4 MIN READ

How to Use Economic Power

By Michael Froman Jonathan Hillman

3 MIN READ

Foreign Policy and the American Dream

By Jake Sullivan John Nelson

3 MIN READ

The Middle East: Finding Opportunities

By Leah Pisar Matt Spence

4 MIN READ

China: Heeding Les’s Principles

By Elizabeth Economy Adam Segal

4 MIN READ

Grappling with Cyber Threats

By Gordon M. Goldstein Lee Wolosky

3 MIN READ

The Grand-Theory Skeptic

By Rosa Brooks Suzanne Nossel

4 MIN READ

Symposium

The Green New Deal

By The Editors

2 MIN READ

An 'All-Out Mobilization'

By Jay Inslee Varshini Prakash

22 MIN READ

A New American Dream For All

By Tom Perriello

19 MIN READ

The Greatest Mobilization Since WWII

By Bracken Hendricks Rhiana Gunn-Wright Sam Ricketts

30 MIN READ

The GND Is Expensive, and That's Good

By J.W. Mason

16 MIN READ

Cleaning Up the Electricity System

By Leah C. Stokes

12 MIN READ

Building the GND Movement

By Maurice Mitchell

15 MIN READ

Features

How to End Wage Stagnation

By John E. Schwarz, Harry M. Lasker, David Callahan, & William C. Coleman

23 MIN READ

Book Reviews

A Tale of Two Capitalisms

Will capitalism survive today’s extremes of inequality? And if so, which capitalism will it be?

By Arthur Goldhammer

13 MIN READ

When Money Meets Jesus

How Christian nationalism’s takeover of the GOP made Donald Trump inevitable.

By Adele M. Stan

14 MIN READ

Death and Politics

It’s not just opioids that are ripping into the lives of working-class Americans. It’s a political system that disserves them.

By Rahul Gupta

12 MIN READ

Responses

Reviving Public Action

In our book, we sought to make a broad and accessible case for public provisions of many kinds—and we agree that neoliberalism has failed. A response to Vanessa Williamson.

By Ganesh Sitaraman Anne L. Alstott

12 MIN READ

Back Issues Archive