The pandemic has shown Americans how far apart they are. But out of this crisis there’s a chance to build a better nation.
The pandemic has shown Americans how far apart they are. But out of this crisis there’s a chance to build a better nation.
The America We Need
The pandemic has shown Americans howfar apart they are.  But out of this crisis there’sa chance to build a better nation.
The pandemic has shown Americans how far apart they are.  But out of this crisis there’s a chance to build a better nation.
Many Americans have demonstrated heroic strength during the coronavirus pandemic, but the society itself has revealed profound weaknesses. Widening gaps in income, wealth and opportunity in the years before the virus hit left everyone more vulnerable to the disease. It undermined the nation’s defenses and weakened its response. Yet the devastation of the pandemic has also created an opportunity to begin to put things right, to ensure that the America that ultimately emerges is more just, more free and less fragile. Through this initiative, Times Opinion is exploring, and seeking to answer, basic questions about what the government owes its citizens, what corporations owe their employees and what we all owe each other. America was ailing long before the coronavirus reached its shores. Now we have the chance to make it better.
Cities have stopped being the engines ofgrowth and opportunity they once were. Now isthe time to invest in fixing them.
Cities have stopped being the engines of growth and opportunity they once were. Now is the time to invest in fixing them.
The pandemic is dealing prodigious blows to cities across the country. But the U.S. can’t hope to thrive again if its cities don’t—they’re the places that have historically supplied the keys for unlocking human potential. Though beset by racism and other injustices, cities not only provided shared, robust public infrastructure like schools, libraries and transit systems, they stirred together vast numbers of people from different cultures and classes. But even before the coronavirus struck, increasing segregation by economic class has made cities less fair and less resilient. This chapter explains what went wrong and advances prescriptions for how cities can awaken from their quarantine slumbers to fulfill their promise by fostering opportunity, invention and progress.
Workers have been left behind over the pastfour decades. It is time to ensure that all Americanscan share in the nation’s prosperity.
Workers have been left behind over the past four decades. It is time toensure that all Americans can share in the nation’s prosperity.
Too many Americans don’t possess the basic freedom to earn a living that allows them to feed and house their families with dignity and security. Wages for most workers, accounting for inflation, have been growing very slowly for decades. There’s less opportunity for career advancement amid contract-work and outsourcing arrangements. People of color have been hit especially hard, the result of centuries of systemic racism. Over the last 40 years, meanwhile, executive salaries have soared, and the fruits of economic growth have increasingly gone to investors and owners rather than employees. This chapter focuses on the economy necessary for us to be a fairer, better nation.