Phillip Longman: All Publications, Events and Press

Social Policy After the Economic Crisis

Articles — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 14:45:00 -0500

A New America Event
12/05/2008 - 12:15pm

While all eyes remain focused on Wall Street’s daily rollercoaster ride, America has entered the era of the trillion dollar deficit and its social safety net is strained to capacity. The bursting of the credit and housing bubbles will be felt far beyond the economic policy arena. It will heighten the need for a comprehensive rethinking of the policies and institutions that make up the social contract, which had for decades enabled economic mobility and a broadly-shared American… more

A Family-Based Social Contract

Next Social Contract — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:03:00 -0500

Executive Summary

Americans instinctively revere the family as an institution that helps facilitate all other aspects of life. The family fosters attachments across generations, provides a nurturing environment in which to raise children, and is a means of transmitting values from one generation to the next. It is the foundation upon which our social contract has been built.

Historically, public discussions of the social contract have largely ignored the role of families. In a pre-industrial world in which children both performed economically useful tasks while young and, as adults, offered vital support to their aging parents, it was easy to assume that the family as an institution could be relied on to take care of itself.

Today, however, the economic basis of the family is largely eroded. Children are no longer economic assets to their parents, but costly liabilities. Due to the growth of Social Security, Medicare, and private pension schemes, support in old age no longer depends on an individual’s decision to raise a family, but on other people bearing the burdens of parenthood so as to produce the vital human capital to keep the system going. Meanwhile, the widening life options of a secularized society raise the opportunity cost, for both men and women, of nurturing the next generation.

One result of these changed circumstances, in all advanced nations, has been a dramatic fall in birthrates,often to well below replacement rates, and rapidly aging populations. At the same time, the state of family life has become deeply problematic, with high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births, and increasing downward mobility among parents.

Other sectors of society have effectively appropriated for themselves much of the value in human capital created by families, contributing to the strain on parents and a decline in overall fertility rates. Public policy and current law stacks the odds against those who choose to raise children.

We need to make major adjustments to the social contract in order to allow parents to retain more of the return that comes to society through their investment in children. Because stable families make a great difference in the lives of children, the next social contract should support them. Because having and raising children is a public good, the next social contact should focus on supporting parents and children as early in life as possible.

For the complete principles paper, please see the attached PDF below.

Phillip Longman in CQ Researcher | 'Declining Birthrates'

Articles — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:35:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Compared to the $1 out of every $7 in payroll now distributed in the United States to Social Security and Medicare, workers could see $4 out of every $10 going to support those benefits, Phillip Longman, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, warns in his book The Empty Cradle. LINK (subscription required)

Too Small to Fail

Communications — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:45:00 -0500

A New America Event
11/20/2008 - 12:15pm

With the big guns in the financial services industry in turmoil, it’s a good time to ask hard questions about the nature of our finance system. Does bigger always mean better? Or does small-scale "relationship" banking, in which individual savers and borrowers are members of the same community, help to make a better banking sector? Community banks and credit unions were regarded until recently as vestigial players in a new world of global consumer finance. But today they aren’t merely… more

Too Small To Fail

Articles — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:34:00 -0500

When Paul Hudson, the chairman and CEO of Broadway Federal Bank in Los Angeles, speaks of the current financial crisis, he sounds altogether placid. "It's going to be difficult, because everybody participated in this low-cost-credit, high-value-asset scenario," he says. "But I'm not overly stressed." It helps that his own bank is doing fine. Broadway Federal, founded in 1946 to provide loans to the growing African American community of Los Angeles, is a small institution with five branches located in middle-class, largely black neighborhoods of the city. It has… more

Phillip Longman in the Windsor Star | 'A Brood and the Brass Ring'

Articles — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:55:00 -0500

New America in the News:

As the authoritative 2004 Phillip Longman study The Empty Cradle explained, aging populations and plummeting birthrates are now a fact of life everywhere, including the Middle East and other underdeveloped regions. LINK

A Family-Based Social Contract

Communications — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:00:00 -0500

A New America Event
11/13/2008 - 12:00pm

On November 13, 2008, the New America Foundation’s Next Social Contract Initiative and Workforce and Family Program hosted a discussion around the release of, “A Family-Based Social Contract,” written by David Gray and Phillip Longman. In their paper, Gray, the Director of New America’s Workforce and Family Program, and Longman, Schwartz Senior Fellow and Research Director of the Next Social Contract Initiative, argue that policymakers should focus on supporting parents and children early in life. Gray and Longman were joined in the discussion by Reihan Salam,… more

Wall Street is Dead. Long Live Wall Street!

Communications — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:00:00 -0500

A New America Event
11/06/2008 - 12:00pm

On November 6, 2008, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC., the New America Foundation’s Next Social Contract Initiative hosted a panel of experts to discuss the roots of the crisis on Wall Street and the lessons to be learned going forward. Video of the event is available at right. Andy Kessler—former President of Velocity Capital Management and author of several memoirs on life in the financial fast lane—provided an entertaining and informative opening presentation, after… more

Too Small To Fail

Articles — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:46:00 -0400

Last fall, Countrywide Financial, then the nation's largest mortgage lender, had a curious new idea --or, more precisely, an old one. No longer would it slush foreign capital through Wall Street to make subprime loans. Instead, the lender would depend entirely on deposits from savers who would finance one another's mortgages--kind of like that humble thrift institution run by George Bailey in the movie It's a Wonderful Life.

Sadly, Countrywide waited too long to get back to basics and became the first major bank of 2008 to… more

Phillip Longman in Mother Jones | 'Another Walter Reed-Type Scandal'

Communications — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 11:47:00 -0400

New America in the News:

In April, Phillip Longman, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Health Care Is Better Than Yours, told the tech website ZDNet that the government "could wire Walter Reed or Bethesda (the two biggest military hospitals) for VistA in an afternoon. Technically, there's no big problem." In fact, VistA's code is so flexible that it's even been adapted for use in other countries. "Yet," said Longman, "there are DOD people who have built their… more

Shannon Brownlee and Phillip Longman's books named as 'Best on Health Policy' by Slate | 'To Your Health'

Communications — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 07:08:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Sometime in the next four years, the health care delivery system in the United States is going to change. That's a given because the current patchwork--costly and unreliable private health insurance, overcrowded and underfunded hospital emergency rooms, technophilic and procedure-incentivized physicians--is coming apart at the seams. Whatever solution the 44th president and the 111th Congress enact may or may not prove adequate. But rest assured they'll change something.

What that means for you, reader, is you need to set aside a little time between now and Nov. 4… more

Phillip Longman on the Diane Rehm Show on WAMU | 'Book Discussion: "Vets Under Siege"'

Communications — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:48:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Philip Longman, Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of the Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Healthcare is Better Than Yours discusses veterans' access to health care with Martin Schamm, author of Vets Under Siege. LINK to audio

Should the U.S. Mandate Private Pension Saving?

Communications — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:00:00 -0400

A New America Event
07/09/2008 - 10:00am

On Wednesday, July 9, 2008, The New America Foundation’s Next Social Contract Initiative hosted a panel discussion on Australia’s mandatory pension plan (aka “superannuation”). Mavis Robertson, Former Chair of the Cbus superannuation fund, and Garry Weaven, Chair of Industry Funds Management and a member of the Superannuation Advisory Committee spoke on the pros and cons of superannuation. Jane White, President of Retirement Solutions, and Pamela Perun, Policy Director of the Initiative on Financial Security at the Aspen Institute, addressed whether… more

Phillip Longman in the National Interest | 'Battle of the (Youth) Bulge'

Communications — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:58:00 -0400

New America in the News:

...As each successive birth cohort comes of age, a larger share of youth will therefore have been raised in more-traditional and religious families. As Phillip Longman, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, observes, “Those who reject modernity would...seem to have an evolutionary advantage...” LINK (subscription required)

Phillip Longman in the Boston Globe | 'A World Without Children'

Communications — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 11:55:00 -0400

New America in the News:

...In Japan, where the fall in fertility rates began early, the working-age population has been a diminishing share of the nation for 20 years. Yet for much of that period, unemployment has been up, not down. "Similarly, in the United States, the number of people between the ages of 15 and 24 has been declining in relative terms since 1990," demographer Phillip Longman observed in the Harvard Business Review. "But the smaller supply has not made younger workers more… more

Bankrupt Nation

Ron Tang — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 10:57:00 -0400

For a married couple, talking about money can be hard. But the cost of using a credit card to put off the conversation is almost always worse. So it is with a company, a city or a country. In While America Aged, financial journalist Roger Lowenstein uses the stories of three deeply encumbered institutions -- General Motors, the New York City subway system and the City of San Diego -- as examples not only of the way most individual Americans… more

Phillip Longman in the Century Foundation Group Blog: Taking Note | 'The Assault on VistA'

Communications — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 06:32:00 -0400

New America in the News:

...So why would the DoD contract out the development of a health records system instead of co-opting VistA, which can be reworked for different contexts? It’s not because of it’s too difficult, that’s for sure. Blankenhorn quotes Phillip Longman, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and an outspoken champion of the VA noting that the government “could wire Walter Reed or Bethesda (the two biggest military hospitals) for VistA in an afternoon. Technically there’s no big problem....”

...Yet still, the DoD created an entirely… more

Averting a Bust for the Boomers

Communications — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:30:00 -0400

A New America Event
06/05/2008 - 9:30am

Most discussion of the impending wave of Baby Boomers entering retirement age focuses on the capacity of entitlement programs to support them. Under-examined is the question of Boomers’ abilities to support themselves and what policy changes might be necessary to help them do so. The ongoing instability in financial markets and its effect on the assets that many Boomers have planned to tap for retirement add to the uncertainty. Macroeconomic developments, workplace norms and existing policy barriers all make the… more

POSTPONED: The Monopolist Assault on Entrepreneurs

Communications — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:15:00 -0400

A New America Event
05/29/2008 - 3:15pm

**This event has been postponed until further notice. We apologize for any inconvenience.**

The yeoman tradition—in which the small property owner and the entrepreneur represent an American ideal—inspired many of the nation’s founders, Thomas Jefferson most notably. Yet today, deregulation and a lax interpretation of anti-trust law make it increasingly difficult for small businesses to even access local markets. Mega chains may be ruthlessly efficient in driving down prices, but their near-monopoly positions create tremendous barriers to entry and… more

Population Bombing

Ron Tang — Mon, 19 May 2008 08:46:00 -0400

In the 20th century, a global network of colluding activists, institutions, and governments sought to engineer solutions to various real and perceived social problems by, as Matthew Connelly puts it in his new book, planning "other people's families." In its most egregious expression, this movement led to the forced sterilization of millions of people around the world, including many thousands in the U.S., on the grounds that they were -- genetically or otherwise -- unfit. California alone had sterilized 7,500… more