FREOPP Ideas: Issue Areas & Interdisciplinary Programs
All FREOPP research considers the impact of public policies and proposed reforms on those with incomes or wealth below the U.S. median. For more on FREOPP’s mission, visit mission.freopp.org. To see our most recent work, visit blog.freopp.org and freopp.org/latest.
Policy Areas
Criminal Justice • Jonathan Blanks
We can improve public safety, reduce crime, and improve opportunities in disadvantaged communities with smarter policing and a fairer criminal justice system. We must overcome resistance from vested interests within police unions to holding unethical officers accountable for their actions.
Education (Pre-K & K-12) • Dan Lips, Gavin Schiffres
Parents and students should have more sovereignty over their children’s education, especially by enabling parents to use Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) to supplement their children’s brick-and-mortar schooling. The landmark enactment of universal ESAs in Arizona, in which every K-12 pupil will receive $6,500 for tutoring, technology, and instructional expenses, is a model for every other state. Microschools and charter schools give parents additional affordable options for their children. Well-designed testing is a key element to helping students succeed in school.
Education (Postsecondary education) • Preston Cooper
Student debt now exceeds $1.5 trillion. We must overhaul a system that, for too long, has incentivized colleges and universities to charge unaffordable prices for degrees that do not always improve the lives of their recipients. Measures of return on investment (ROI) can help ensure that that institutions are accountable for the economic outcomes of the students they plunge into indebtedness.
Energy • George P. Bush, Grant Dever
American prosperity and national security depends on affordable, abundant, reliable, low-carbon energy. Instead of making energy scarcer or less reliable—which primarily harms lower- and middle-income Americans—we should dramatically expand the role of nuclear energy in the United States. Natural gas has a constructive role to play in the low-carbon transition, as do emerging technologies.
Health Care • Gregg Girvan, Grant Rigney, Jeffrey Flier, Avik Roy
Americans deserve a health care system that provides universal—and universally affordable—coverage for today’s Americans, and a fiscally sustainable system for the generations to come. All Americans should have the freedom to choose among a wide variety of plans that suit their needs. Taxpayer-funded subsidies should be reserved for the poor, the sick and the vulnerable—not the wealthy. Enabling competition and curtailing the power of health care monopolies will lower patients’ costs and increase innovation in patient care.
Housing • Roger Valdez, Jon Hartley
A critical obstacle to universally affordable housing in the United States is the nationwide web of “not-in-my-backyard” laws and regulations that restrict growth in the supply of housing. In addition, we should modernize housing assistance so that it can help people live near their jobs and families, and reform macroeconomic policies that have placed home prices out of reach for middle- and lower-income Americans.
Immigration • Natalia Dashan
While much of the political controversy around immigration in the United States has revolved around illegal immigration, it is the broken system for legal immigration that is the core problem. If America once again becomes a magnet for the world’s best and brightest, those already here will greatly benefit from job growth, wage growth, and innovation.
Macroeconomics, Finance, & Bitcoin • Jon Hartley, Jackson Mejia, David Zell, Avik Roy
The vicious cycle of rising public debt, monetary inflation, and consumer price inflation is one of the greatest challenges of our time. Inflation primarily harms lower-income Americans, and we must protect Americans’ ability to place their savings in inflation-protected assets like bitcoin. Furthermore, we must reform financial regulations to ensure that lower- and middle-income Americans have access to basic financial services and the innovation economy.
Social Mobility • Michael Tanner, Aparna Mathur
A core promise of America is the ability of people to rise up from humble beginnings. The challenges faced by lower- and middle-income Americans today are multidisciplinary in nature, and require our renewed focus. Job and wage growth are essential; in particular, Americans need access to more blue-collar work and other jobs that don’t require a college degree. Our employment and welfare policies should encourage work, family formation, and income security. Paid family leave can help strengthen families at their times of need.
Trade • Matthew C. Klein
Low- and middle-income Americans have benefited immensely from the open international system. Clothing and other household goods are more affordable thanks to competition from imports, while the growth of export markets has led to new job opportunities for millions of workers. But free trade and globalized financial markets have also exposed Americans to problems emanating from other countries, leading, in some cases, to massive job losses and debt crises. It is important to understand how domestic political choices in the U.S. and elsewhere have distorted trade and finance in ways that disproportionately benefit rent-seeking industries and the wealthy, while also devising policies that can shield Americans from the downsides of globalization.
Special Features & Interdisciplinary Programs
An Affordable Life for Everyone
The rising cost of living has made everyday life less affordable. The rising cost of health care is an existential threat to American living standards. Regions like San Francisco and Seattle have driven up the cost of housing. Higher energy costs not only affect prices at the pump, but home utility bills, and every product or service that relies on transportation. Poorly designed student loan subsidies incentivize universities to increase tuition. The concentration of economic power through oligopolies and monopolies leads to higher prices. And the Federal Reserve’s massive expansion of the money supply has decreased the U.S. dollar’s purchasing power. FREOPP’s Affordable Life for Everyone initiative strives to ensure that every working family can afford the basic necessities of life.
COVID-19
We should learn from excessive economic restrictions and school closures in order to ensure that we protect both lives and livelihoods in future pandemics. Most importantly, we must overhaul the ways in which we make decisions and acquire data about critical public health threats.
State & Local Initiatives
While FREOPP focuses a majority of our work on federal policy, much of our research is highly relevant to states and localities. We have responded to increasing demand for our experts at the state and local level with a dedicated program led by Michael Franc and George P. Bush.
Rural Affairs
America’s rural communities face unique and myriad challenges. Many of the businesses and employers who formed the bedrock of small towns across America have closed or moved. Substance abuse and deaths of despair are endemic in many communities. The faltering of the rural social fabric is accentuated by economic challenges, including access to health care and other essential services; higher transportation costs; and less ability to take advantage of innovations in the information economy.
World Index of Healthcare Innovation
A first-of-its-kind comparison of the industrialized world’s health care systems on the dimensions of quality, choice, science & technology, and fiscal sustainability.
