What's the Big Idea?

(Adapted from a post that first appeared at inclusionist.org, a blog about social policy.)

The past week was a busy week for progressive economic policy wonks. It started with a cover story in The New York Times Magazine about Sen. Barack Obama’s economic positions; moved to “Poverty Day,” the day on which the U.S. Census Bureau releases income, poverty and insurance data; and ended with the release of EPI’s newest State of Working America report. To boot, numerous speakers at the Democratic Party National Convention have spoken about the problems facing working Americans.

Despite this week’s torrent of data and commentaries – despite this week’s torrent of words – about economic conditions, a coherent story about the problems, causes and solutions is missing. Rather, it seems as if progressive-minded leaders are pulling their punches. In his speech last night, for instance, vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden spoke elegantly about the problems of working families but timidly about solutions. He briefly mentioned such fundamentally conservative solutions as tax cuts and welfare reform before moving on.

But at least Biden exuded passion. The night before, former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner gave a keynote address that was essentially a laundry list of safe, small-bore (a.k.a. “bi-partisan”) economic policies divorced from any larger economic story. What point should working people in struggling communities like those in Virginia’s Appalachian or Southside regions take from Warner’s remarks? That education and rural broadband access are good?

This failure of imagination when it comes to economic policy leads to cautious, incremental steps ill-suited to today’s challenges. (A dynamic that Robert Kuttner describes in an article about balanced budgets in The American Prospect.) Until progressive economic critiques are coupled with a willingness to offer solutions flowing from the critiques, the prospects for meaningful reforms are limited, regardless of what the data say or which party controls the levels of government.

One Million More

(A version of this post originally appeared on The Progressive Pulse, an NC blog.)

One million. That is the number of people that North Carolina has gained since 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Over an eight-year period (2000-2007), the state's population grew by 13 percent, going from eight to nine million.

Two factors drive population growth: natural increase (the difference between births and deaths) and migration (the difference between the number of people moving into a place and the number moving away). Migration may be further subdivided into international moves and domestic moves.

Since 2000, the main driver of North Carolina's population increase has been domestic in-migration, meaning that more people from other parts of the U.S. have moved into the Old North State than have moved away. Between 2000 and 2007, about 491,000 more people moved to North Carolina from other states than moved out. The next driver was natural increase (+353,000) followed by international migration (+189,000).

The addition of one million people to the state's population has driven the need for improved and expanded investments ranging from more spots in public schools to better transportation systems to improved public health and human services. Yet the state continues to provide, operate and finance such investments on the basis of models developed in the 1930s and 1940s, a time when the state was much smaller and very different.

If North Carolina is to provide the services that a growing population needs and demands, state leaders must rethink and modernize many of the structures and systems upon which the state relies. And as Meg Gray and Elaine Mejia of the NC Budget and Tax Center have argued, the foundation to that response must be meaningful tax modernization that fairly and adequately generates the revenues needed to fund vital public investments.

Southern governors talk policy

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. -- Southern governors are here this weekend at The Greenbrier for a regional meeting in which they're talking about issues critical to the future of the South: workforce development, health care and jobs.

On Saturday, governors talked about workforce development at the 2008 meeting of the Southern Governors' Association.

• Video of W.Va. Gov. Joe Manchin discussing workforce development
• Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine on workforce development and education
• Discussion of importance of education in the South by Northrup Grumman's president
• Video of Missouri Gov. Roy Blunt discussing the link between education and a better workforce
• Other videos

On Sunday, governors took part in a wide-reaching discussion that highlighted the problems of diabetes throughout the South. They also heard from industry officials on the potential for a new aviation cluster being built in the South -- an up-to-date equivalent of what happened in the region with automobiles about a generation ago. And they discussed several technological innovations that have made government work better.

For more info, check out the Southern Governors' Association Web site.

Newsweek focuses on the South and elections

The new issue of Newsweek has a cover story, "The End of the South" that features several stories of the South and how it is relating to the election process this year. In an essay called "Southern Discomfort" that highlights recent travels across the region, writer Christopher Dickey notes:

"Now this part of the country, where I have my deepest roots, feels raw again, its political emotions more exposed than they've been in decades. George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama have unsettled the South: the first with a reckless war and a weakened economy, the second with the color of his skin, the foreignness of his name, the lofty liberalism of his language. Suddenly the palliative prosperity that salved old, deep wounds no longer seems adequate to the task."

Other stories from the magazine:

• Howard Fineman on Obama's Southern strategy
• Jon Meacham writes the South "Just ain't that different any more"
• Photo essay of the South

Your thoughts?

Newsweek tackles Obama and the South

Newsweek's Christopher Dickey examines the state of the South in terms of the 2008 presidential election in the latest edition of the magazine.
Dickey writes:

Jobs are disappearing to places that are truly foreign, not mock-strange states like California. New immigrants are introducing brown into a color map that has long been dominated by black and white. There is a sense that a world is ending, maybe not this year but inevitably.
The election, and Obama's candidacy, have focused these anxieties like a lens. I found whites frustrated and indecisive about the campaign, families at odds, generations divided. Many who thought themselves beyond prejudice were surprised by their suspicions of the young black man from up north. Meanwhile, many slave-descended blacks, hugely supportive of the half-Kenyan, half-Kansan, Hawaii-reared Obama, seemed afraid to hope too much, inoculating themselves with pessimism about the chances that any man of color could win the presidency, even this man, even today, or that, if he does, he will survive. As I say, emotions are raw.

See the whole story along with videos and photos here.