As new approaches of political economy gain ground in some sectors, American health care still reflects many aspects of neoliberalism. This article builds on proposals to reorient health care policy around a new industrial policy for health.

This is the second edition of our Index of Systemic Trends for the United States. The trends considered include poverty, wealth inequality, racial wealth inequality, income inequality, wage stagnation, the cost of higher education, homeownership, corporate taxation, taxation of the rich, labor union density, incarceration rates, healthcare costs, climate change, and life expectancy, among others.

Americans pay extremely high prescription drug prices — nearly double that of other wealthy nations. This creates a financial burden, with 83% of Americans agreeing that prescription costs are “unreasonable.” What’s more, high drug prices impact whether people actually take their medications. 29% of Americans say that in some cases, they can’t afford to take their medication as prescribed.

Community Wealth Building (CWB) is an economic development model that transforms local economies based on communities having direct ownership and control of their assets.

Every local government official, city leader, and activist in the United States understands a simple truth in this moment: too many Americans are hurting. Many are living through the most challenging time in their lives.

The United States urgently needs to transition off of fossil fuels and onto clean sources of energy (especially renewable energy) to maintain a livable climate. As of 2020, only around 21% of the United States electrical grid was powered by renewable energy sources.

Gentrification is a sinister contagion spreading through Black communities across America. After years of economic oppression and deprivation, the Black community now stands at the edge of perhaps the greatest displacement since the Great Migration.

This paper identifies four harms of this approach, specifically for health equity. It does not consider concerns of accessibility or affordability, defining these as health care, rather than innovation, problems. It limits the range of innovators, and also distorts innovation incentives. Finally, it tolerates harmful, and even biased, innovation.

The current public health crisis is demonstrating how deficiencies in our approach to intellectual property (IP)—a unique set of rights and protections that applies to the creations of the human intellect—and research and development (R&D) imperil the health, safety, and livelihoods of millions of people around the world.

In October 2019, the state of California passed AB-857, a historic law to charter 10 local public banks. Efforts to incorporate these public banks are now underway across the state.

In January 2020, Common Wealth and The Democracy Collaborative began a year-long project that explored how extending the models and approaches of democratic public ownership to the new frontiers of the 21st-century economy could help address the deep economic, social, and environmental challenges facing the US and UK.

The United States is experiencing an acute, long-term land and housing crisis. Decades of racist and exclusionary public policy along with rising housing costs in many communities have intersected with other structural economic problems, such as low wages and high debt loads, to drive up racial and generational inequality and supercharge displacement and community instability.

After a year of chaos and turmoil related to the COVID-19 pandemic and its social, economic, and political effects, we find ourselves faced with the question of what comes next. Down one path lies the notion of returning to business as usual, which in truth is a dangerous and impossible fantasy.

On October 20, 2020, the US Department of Justice filed an antitrust action against Google, the first step in what might be one of the biggest anti-monopoly cases of this century.

We are at a historic juncture. If we can secure a transformative and green recovery from Covid-19, the crisis could prove a watershed moment - a break from an unsustainable present and unjust past towards a reparative future anchored in a purposeful, inclusive economy.

The current public health crisis is demonstrating how deficiencies in our approach to intellectual property (IP)—a unique set of rights and protections that applies to the creations of the human intellect—and research and development (R&D) imperil the health, safety, and livelihoods of millions of people around the world.

The global spread of COVID-19 has shone a bright spotlight on both the vital need for reliable high-speed internet and the inadequacies of the for-profit, corporate model in delivering it.

The U.S. fossil fuel industry continues to seek bailouts during the COVID-19 crisis, as global oil demand craters and crude oil floods an already oversupplied market. These twin phenomena have combined to crash the price of oil, threatening the stability of the U.S. oil and gas sector.

Our current political economic system is in crisis. Forty years of market fundamentalism, privatization, and unchecked corporate power have led us to the point of ecological collapse, increasing economic and social inequality, and dangerous political instability and backlash.

Climate change is an unprecedented global social, political, and economic crisis. Without drastic action, the United States will likely experience rising sea levels that will regularly flood major cities, more intense weather patterns that will destroy homes and businesses, longer and deeper droughts that will disrupt agricultural production, and an increase in disease that will put stress on the healthcare system.