Read the full transcript of President Obama's economic speech. The Washington Post
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Obama focuses agenda on relieving economic inequality. "President Obama laid out an aspirational agenda Wednesday for the remainder of his presidency, looking past the Republican opposition that has long blocked his goals and toward policies to narrow income inequality and promote opportunity for the poor. Obama's remarks at an arts and education center in a low-income Southeast Washington neighborhood provided his most specific road map for how he intends to spend his final 37 months in office, seeking to overcome partisan fights about the budget and the troubled rollout of his health-care law. He pressed for a higher minimum wage, more spending on early-childhood education, an overhaul of immigration laws and other measures aimed at boosting the economy." Zachary A. Goldfarb in The Washington Post
Reducing inequality might improve growth. "That 2011 paper, by Andrew G. Berg and Jonathan D. Ostry of the International Monetary Fund, calculated that a 10% decrease in income inequality increased the expected length of a period of economic growth by 50%." Timothy Noah in MSNBC
Economic inequality induces social and political distrust: "One of the people watching Obama's speech was Robert Putnam, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government..."There remains a serious academic debate about causation--does inequality cause low trust, or does low trust (or rather, low social solidarity) cause inequality, or are both the effects of some as yet undiscovered third variable?"" Amy Davidson in The New Yorker
Music recommendations interlude: Crosby, Stills & Nash, "Unequal Love," 1970
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Obama focuses agenda on relieving economic inequality. "President Obama laid out an aspirational agenda Wednesday for the remainder of his presidency, looking past the Republican opposition that has long blocked his goals and toward policies to narrow income inequality and promote opportunity for the poor. Obama's remarks at an arts and education center in a low-income Southeast Washington neighborhood provided his most specific road map for how he intends to spend his final 37 months in office, seeking to overcome partisan fights about the budget and the troubled rollout of his health-care law. He pressed for a higher minimum wage, more spending on early-childhood education, an overhaul of immigration laws and other measures aimed at boosting the economy." Zachary A. Goldfarb in The Washington Post
Reducing inequality might improve growth. "That 2011 paper, by Andrew G. Berg and Jonathan D. Ostry of the International Monetary Fund, calculated that a 10% decrease in income inequality increased the expected length of a period of economic growth by 50%." Timothy Noah in MSNBC
Economic inequality induces social and political distrust: "One of the people watching Obama's speech was Robert Putnam, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government..."There remains a serious academic debate about causation--does inequality cause low trust, or does low trust (or rather, low social solidarity) cause inequality, or are both the effects of some as yet undiscovered third variable?"" Amy Davidson in The New Yorker
Music recommendations interlude: Crosby, Stills & Nash, "Unequal Love," 1970