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public goods
Taxes Need a Rebrand
Too often, tax is framed as a burden instead of a form of shared investment and discussed as a technical obligation rather than the foundation that allows modern societies to function.
Aug 01, 2026
Few issues matter more to the future of societies than how we fund the systems we all depend on. Yet tax remains one of the most misunderstood and poorly communicated public issues of our time.
For many people, taxation is associated with complexity, bureaucracy, and cost. Public debate often centers on what individuals or businesses are required to give up, rather than what those contributions make possible.
That is the problem. Tax's biggest challenge isn't policy. It's a narrative challenge that every society faces, whether in the United States, Argentina, Botswana, Thailand, or anywhere in between.
Too often, tax is framed as a burden instead of a form of shared investment. It is discussed as a technical obligation rather than the foundation that allows modern societies to function. Schools, healthcare systems, transportation networks, courts, emergency services, climate resilience measures, and public safety systems do not emerge on their own. They depend on sustained and predictable collective investment, and taxation remains the primary way societies make that investment possible.
When people can see what their taxes make possible, tax becomes more than a cost. It becomes part of the social contract that helps communities function and thrive.
Seen this way, tax justice is not only about rates, revenue, or technical reforms. It is about whether societies have the resources required to deliver opportunity, security, and resilience in a consistent and equitable way.
Most people do not experience taxation through fiscal policy debates. They experience it through outcomes. They see whether schools are adequately resourced, healthcare is accessible, roads and infrastructure work, and governments can respond effectively to economic shocks, climate risks, and public emergencies.
That means the conversation should not begin with forms, rates, or technical policy language. It should begin with a more immediate and universal question: What do we want to contribute to make our world better, and how should we fund it? Do we want to reduce cancer rates, prepare communities for extreme weather, ensure every child receives a quality education, keep bridges and roads safe, breathe clean air and drink clean water, and build healthcare systems that can care for people as they age without placing the full burden on the next generation?
But changing the narrative around tax also requires rebuilding trust. People are more likely to see taxation as a shared investment when they understand where public money goes, how decisions are made, and how those investments improve daily life. For example, an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report examining public perceptions of tax systems across 29 countries found that in two-thirds of countries surveyed in Asia and the Anglophone Pacific, more respondents agreed than disagreed that public services and infrastructure represent a fair return for their taxes, compared with 30% of countries surveyed in Western Europe and Latin America. This shows that when people can see what their taxes make possible, tax becomes more than a cost. It becomes part of the social contract that helps communities function and thrive.
Federal, regional, and local governments have a responsibility to build that trust, but the scale and complexity of public institutions can make the connection between taxation and public benefit difficult for people to see. This is where philanthropy can play an important supporting role, not by replacing government, but by strengthening the civic infrastructure that helps people understand, scrutinize, and participate in tax debates.
Philanthropy can fund civil society organizations working on tax transparency, accountability, and fairness. It can support independent research that shows how tax policy affects communities, journalism that follows public money, watchdog groups that hold institutions accountable, and civic engagement efforts that help people connect tax decisions to the schools, hospitals, housing, roads, climate protections, and care systems they rely on every day.
In that sense, philanthropy can help rebuild the bridge between contribution and trust. It can make tax feel less like an obligation and more like part of a shared public conversation about what societies need, what people value, and how those priorities should be funded. Philanthropy can also take risks, support innovation, and surface ideas that may later scale through public systems. Taxation provides the foundation. Philanthropy can help strengthen and extend it.
This matters not only for governments and philanthropy today, but for the next generation of wealth holders, donors, advisers, and civic leaders who will shape how contribution is understood in the years ahead. As the world undergoes one of the largest transfers of wealth in modern history, tens of trillions of dollars will move between generations. Those shifts will influence not only private wealth, but also the ability of societies to invest in their collective future.
That makes wealth stewardship an increasingly important conversation. Investment decisions, advisory practices, philanthropic strategies, and family office decisions all influence how wealth is deployed and how contribution itself is understood. These systems help set norms around responsibility, participation, and the relationship between private wealth and public life.
Rebranding tax does not mean making it simple or pretending it is painless. It means making visible what tax makes possible. It means connecting contribution to the public goods people rely on every day. And it means building a shared understanding that a better world is not funded by good intentions alone, but by the choices societies make together.
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Blueprint For Solidarity: Community Organizations Build the Public Good
In the shadow of federal failure, there’s a hopeful truth emerging in cities and states across our country: When communities act in solidarity, they can reclaim government and transform it to serve the people.
Feb 27, 2026
Our government should make life better for all people. Local and federal elected leaders should ensure we all have enough to eat, a roof over our heads, the opportunity to learn and grow, and access to care when needed.
Instead, Congress cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid and nearly $200 billion from food assistance programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), while committing a staggering $85 billion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This administration has chosen to fund fear over food, detention over dignity, and the interests of billionaires over the well-being of working people.
In the shadow of this federal failure, there’s a hopeful truth emerging in cities and states across our country: When communities act in solidarity, they can reclaim government and transform it to serve the people.
This is evident in the work of countless community organizations, including Chicago-based Equity and Transformation (EAT). EAT creates space for working people across race and language to take action to advance collective worker safety and justice.
Housing, public transportation, public schools, healthcare, and food are the foundations of a dignified life, and must be guaranteed for all.
Thanks in large part to EAT’s community organizing, Cook County has established permanent funding for guaranteed income. This vital work can serve as a protective non-carceral form of community support that addresses some of the economic harm and exclusion EAT’s members face. Especially for communities disproportionately harmed by the violence of policing, a basic guaranteed income can provide material stability that helps ensure essential needs, healthcare, housing, and food are not trade-offs, and that acts as a buffer against criminalization and the trauma of overpolicing.
Now, EAT is scaling its Cook County win, leading a statewide campaign for a permanent guaranteed income program that would support all SNAP-eligible households. The Illinois Future Fund Act would direct 25% of cannabis tax revenue toward direct cash assistance of $500 per month to SNAP-eligible residents in communities disproportionately impacted by decades of drug war policing. If passed, this legislation would be a step toward progress and show Illinois's commitment to using public resources to make people’s lives better.
A Blueprint for a Government That Works for All of Us
We are clear about what's at stake at this moment and what leaders are being asked to do. Leaders of community organizing groups are being asked to meet the pressing needs of their members as services and benefits are cut, fight government overreach as police and ICE target their neighbors, and continue demonstrating that solidarity is central to building the country we want.
Marguerite Casey Foundation is committed to staying in lockstep with grant recipients like EAT and remaining clear about the role of funders supporting grassroots leadership as their communities create a new blueprint for how the government should work.
So, how can we scale this solidarity through the work of community organizing groups and ensure policy choices improve the lives of residents?
1. Create a universe of public goods that belong to all of us. Housing, public transportation, public schools, healthcare, and food are the foundations of a dignified life, and must be guaranteed for all. We have seen global proof that access to public goods reduces poverty and precarity. It’s time our public dollars are used for the public good across our country.
2. Hold corporations and lawmakers that are exploiting our communities accountable. Those who make policies that starve our schools, close our hospitals, and detain our loved ones always find another billion dollars for corporate subsidies and surveillance giveaways. We must create penalties for those who are stealing from the poorest and whose fortunes are built on systems of harm.
3. Continuously practice a politics of solidarity. For Marguerite Casey Foundation, acting in solidarity means using our endowment to surge funds to frontline groups like EAT. Philanthropy’s resources are meant for moments like this. For EAT, it means organizing not just for services but for the power to define and deliver on solutions.
How to Help Build Solidarity Through Community Organizing
If you are a funder, building real solidarity means moving beyond transactional grantmaking. Funders must support bold and creative actions, not only by funding larger efforts but by standing with our partners when they take risks to protect their communities. Solidarity also requires us to bring more than money to the table. We should leverage all of our resources, from our extensive networks to our role as institutional investors, and be intentional about activating those assets in ways that generate momentum to meet the urgency of this moment.
If you are a nonprofit leader, ask for what you need and refuse to settle. Urge funders to meet this moment with courage and capital to fuel the bold experimentation needed. Can they give more, commit to multiyear grants, frontload payments, reduce reporting hurdles, provide no-interest loans, or organize pooled funds with their colleagues in philanthropy to raise the resources needed to fully fund your initiatives?
And if you’re not a funder or nonprofit leader, find an organization to support with your money, time, and talent.
Local organizations building community power are mapping a new way forward in these dark times. They are proving that the government can and must keep its promise to improve people’s lives—to be a means to collective thriving. Nonprofits, funders, and community members, acting in solidarity, can make this promise real.
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Immigrants Delivered $14.5 Trillion Surplus to US Economy Over Last 30 Years: Report
"MAGA’s claim that immigrants are a drain on government budgets? It’s a lie."
Feb 04, 2026
A groundbreaking new report released Tuesday details how immigrants in the United States over the last three decades have contributed a massive surplus to the nation's economy, resulting in a total of more than $14 trillion over that period due to the fact that immigrant families generate significantly more benefits to fiscal health than they take away in the form of benefits received or downside costs.
The white paper by the libertarian free-marketeers at the Cato Institute, not a left-leaning outfit, builds on an existing model developed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to create a first-of-its kind analyses to determine "how immigrants, both legal and illegal, and their children affect government budgets" in a cumulative manner.
Looking at 30 years of data, the 95-page report—titled "Immigrants' Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994-2023"—discovered that immigrants overall "generated a fiscal surplus of about $14.5 trillion" over those years. In part, the NASEM-Cato model shows:
- Every year from 1994 to 2023, immigrants have paid more in taxes than they received in benefits.
- Immigrants generated nearly $10.6 trillion more in federal, state, and local taxes than they induced in total government spending.
- Accounting for savings on interest payments on the national debt, immigrants saved $14.5 trillion in debt over this 30-year period.
- Immigrants cut US budget deficits by about a third from 1994 to 2023, and fiscal savings grew to $878 billion in 2023.
The paper concludes that "the average immigrant is much less costly than the average US-born American, and that immigrants impose lower costs per person on old-age benefit, education, and public safety programs."
The findings arrive with the US embroiled in a heated debate about immigration enforcement as President Donald Trump—backed by far-right xenophobes in his inner orbit, including White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller and Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem—has unleashed violent federal agents into communities nationwide to sweep up undocumented workers and their family members.
In a video produced for social media, David J. Bier, director of Immigration Studies at Cato and one of the report's co-authors, said the analysis shows in detail why it's a lie to believe that immigrants are "sucking us dry," a familiar argument by anti-immigrant "nativists" like Miller.
For every year from 1994 to 2023, immigrants in the US paid more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government. Check out the latest study from Cato’s @David_J_Bier. pic.twitter.com/0cigBbJwBq
— Cato Institute (@CatoInstitute) February 3, 2026
In summary, the report notes that immigrants produce a net fiscal benefit in the US economy because:
- The United States collected more in taxes from the average person than it spent on benefits (excluding pure public goods).
- Immigrants paid higher-than-average taxes because their higher-than-average employment rate led to higher-than-average incomes.
- Immigrants cost the government less than average because they did not add to the cost of the government’s largest expenditure (pure public goods) and received lower-than-average benefits for other major items, particularly old-age benefits and education.
As shown in the figure below, the difference between taxes paid by immigrants and the public benefits they receive "has grown from $158 billion to $572 billion in real terms since 1994." Just to look at 2023, working immigrants that year paid $1.3 trillion in taxes yet received only $761 billion in benefits.
This trend, despite endless cries from far-right pundits and xenophobic lawmakers that immigrants are a drain on public coffers, has held steady for decades—with no sign of it ending in the future.
"For decades, nativists have sold America this narrative that immigrant welfare is behind our deficits and debt," said Bier. "This figure shows how absurd that is."
The report argues that "rather than treating [immigrants—both documented and undocumented] as the cause of America’s fiscal struggles, we should consider immigrants part of the solution."
Mark D. Levine, comptroller of New York City, was among the public officials pointing to the report as timely evidence that the Trump-Miller-Noem narrative about immigration is built on a foundation of falsehoods.
"MAGA’s claim that immigrants are a drain on government budgets? It’s a lie," said Levine.
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Americans More Supportive of Higher Taxes Once Informed of 'Universal Benefits of Public Goods': Study
Researchers found that informing people of the benefits of taxpayer-funded goods and services significantly boosted public opinion of larger government, spending, and taxation.
Nov 18, 2025
A new study challenges the common assumption that Americans are preternaturally averse to higher taxation, showing that public attitudes become more favorable once people are made aware of the "universal benefits of public goods" funded by their tax dollars.
The study, conducted by Japanese researchers and published last month in the Japanese Economic Review, separated the US-based participants into a treatment group and a control group.
People in both groups were asked questions about their views on government size, spending, and taxation, but those in the treatment group were provided passages explaining the universal benefits of tax-funded transportation systems, public roads, trash disposal, and sewage infrastructure.
Researchers intentionally crafted the passages to highlight the benefits of universal goods, not means-tested programs targeted at low-income Americans.
Before and after reading the above passages, participants in the treatment group were asked: "How much of your taxes do you think are used for public goods and services that benefit all of you?"
They were also asked whether they agree with the following statement: "Regardless of income, everyone in the US more or less benefits from public spending."
The researchers found that the treatment passages substantially increased support for public spending, larger government, and higher taxes among study participants.
After consuming the provided information on the benefits of public goods, nearly 64% of those in the treatment group said they would support an across-the-board tax increase of 1%. In the control group, support was significantly lower at 52.5%.
"If people become aware that more public goods are provided than they previously thought, the government might politically achieve more redistribution through expanding its size without reducing policy progressivity," the study authors wrote. "Although we focused on transportation and trash disposal systems, governments provide other public goods. Exploring how our results may or may not generalize to other public goods would be interesting."
The study was published amid a growing national debate over the for-profit US healthcare system, with Democrats pushing for an extension of tax credits that help millions of Americans afford private insurance plans while Republicans float vague and unworkable alternatives.
Congressional progressives, for their part, have used the healthcare fight to elevate their case for Medicare for All, the only plan on offer that would secure universal healthcare—and at a lower overall cost than the status quo.
Opponents of Medicare for All—which would eliminate premiums, copays, and deductibles—have balked at the taxes Americans would have to pay to fund comprehensive health coverage for everyone in the United States.
But the Japanese Economic Review study suggests that US public opinion on taxes is malleable, particularly when people are informed of the benefits of universal programs.
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How We Can Counter the Far-Right’s Dangerous ‘Deep State’ Conspiracy Theories
To mobilize people, we must have a compelling alternative vision for turning government into a force for equity and justice.
Oct 15, 2024
Lies and rumors about the federal hurricane response serve to build the far-right’s governing power. At the expense of human lives, the far-right—which nowadays includes the Republican party, the Trump campaign, billionaire donors, GOP governors, and the advocates behind Project 2025—deliberately sows distrust in government, specifically targeting federal public administration.
Federal agencies’ roles in a disaster are to issue warnings, provide rescue and relief, and support rebuilding. Across the spectrum of public administration, agencies’ regular jobs involve the things we rely on every single day: ensure our tap water is clean, our food and medicines are safe, our collective bargaining rights are protected, our retirement checks arrive on time, and much more. Yet the far-right peddles a dangerous narrative that casts public agencies and civil servants as the “deep state,” the enemy of the people. By delegitimizing our government, they pave the way for an authoritarian takeover.
As we knock on doors to mobilize voters, we must be prepared to address widespread distrust in government, whether it manifests in anger or apathy. If people give up on government—which we formed to solve problems together that we cannot tackle alone—they retreat or turn to strongmen for answers. How do we debunk the “deep state” conspiracy and shine a light on the essential role of government in delivering on our needs?
There is a bleak logic to gutting public protections and public services: When government is unable to deliver, people become resentful and receptive to authoritarian fixes.
This summer I worked on a new toolkit, recently released by Race Forward, to help shift the narrative and block the far-right’s assault on public administration. It offers ideas for talking about what public administration is, and what it can be. While we know that the federal government produced or maintained many of the inequities and injustices we see today, it can also be part of the solution. Throughout history, movements for civil rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights, and many others taught us how to bend government towards justice.
We must begin by taking people’s affective responses to government seriously. Working class and poor people feel disaffected and disempowered because government hasn’t delivered for them. The class divide is real, the power and wealth gap between the rich and the rest of us is growing, racial injustice remains entrenched, misogyny is on the rise. Decades of neoliberal policies, pushing the commercialization of everything, have produced a full-blown crisis for working class people, disproportionately people of color. Privatization, disinvestment, and corporate capture have hollowed out public institutions and dismantled public goods. Our human rights are violated on a daily basis by unaffordable, commoditized housing and healthcare, food deserts, grocery price gauging, and hazardous workplaces, thereby shortening the lifespans of people pushed to the economic margins. Public administrative agencies are seen as bureaucratic barriers at best, and as controlling, coercing, and policing Black, brown, and poor people at worst.
This crisis has produced a fertile ground for a far-right plan, laid out by Project 2025, to capture the institutions of public administration. By delegitimizing government and setting it up to fail, authoritarians make it easier for themselves to take it over and turn government against communities.
Lying about federal disaster response fits neatly into this strategy. Rumors about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) seizing people’s property and spending aid dollars on migrants sow distrust, division, and hate and undercut the agency’s ability to deliver. This sets the stage for the far-right’s goal to end any government action to address the climate crisis. Project 2025 plans to drastically shrink federal disaster aid, shift costs to localities, privatize federal flood insurance, and terminate grants for community preparedness. Because climate research and planning are seen as harmful to what Project 2025 calls “prosperity,” the plan is to break up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including the National Weather Service that sends out hurricane warnings, and commercialize weather forecasting, likely putting warnings behind paywalls.
There is a bleak logic to gutting public protections and public services: When government is unable to deliver, people become resentful and receptive to authoritarian fixes.
This is particularly painful because it comes at a time when the Biden-Harris administration has taken some steps toward making federal agencies more responsive to people’s needs. This includes not only climate-related investments and jobs, but also new regulations that advance environmental justice, protect workers from heat exposure, increase overtime eligibility, ban non-compete clauses, and limit credit card penalty fees. But such agency actions often remain invisible, obscured by bureaucratic procedures, buried in the tax code, or held up in courts. We can surface these tangible efforts when we talk to potential voters and point to the purpose and possibilities of public administration.
A Trump presidency would reverse both recent progress and systemic protections embedded in the work of federal agencies. Project 2025 is not shy about terminating the enforcement of hard-won civil rights laws and privileging the narrow interests of corporations that price gauge, pollute, and exploit our communities. It would staff agencies with white Christian nationalists who seek to divide and dominate us.
These threats cannot be averted through a merely defensive stance. By calling on people to defend “democracy,” establishment politicians ignore popular anger, rooted in persistent experiences of inequity and injustice. Promoting an “opportunity economy” that relinquishes the goal of equitable outcomes simply doesn’t cut it. We can only block a far-right power grab if we tackle the injustices that fuel resentment. To mobilize people, we must have a compelling vision for turning government into a force for equity and justice. The job of public agencies is to protect our rights and deliver on our needs, and we can make them do just that—as long as we stand together, united.
In this election and beyond, we must contest the far-right narrative that undermines government and public administration. When people are reluctant to engage because the system is not working for them, let’s raise their expectations of government as a protector of rights, a provider of public goods and services, and a site for exercising our collective power.
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Bridging Academia and Activism: Meet the 2024 Freedom Scholars
From poetry to policy, these scholar-activists are illuminating a path toward a more just future.
Sep 18, 2024
Today, Marguerite Casey Foundation welcomes the 2024 Freedom Scholar cohort. This year we are celebrating visionary scholar-activists at the forefront of transformative social change as well as a total of $9.5 million in awards to 38 scholars over the last five years—a powerful investment in ideas that accompany movements for collective well-being and social change.
Our Freedom Scholar awards, launched in 2020, are a testament to the critical role scholarship plays in supporting social movements. By awarding $250,000 in unrestricted funds to each scholar, Marguerite Casey Foundation (MCF) is supporting research, writing, and teaching that bolsters our collective belief in a better, more just world.
Freedom Scholars: Bridging Scholarship and Social Movements
The Freedom Scholar awards are more than simply an acknowledgment of academic excellence—they are part of MCF’s mission to build a country where our government prioritizes the needs of excluded and underrepresented people. These scholars play a vital role in bridging the gap between academic theory and grassroots organizing.
Consider the recent surge in student-led protests on campuses across the U.S. From Princeton to UCLA, Freedom Scholars have been key supporters of student-led efforts to demand divestment and win a cease-fire, bringing with them years of research and strategic thinking to help activists push for transformative demands and envision systemic change. Their work is fundamental to contesting power and developing new models of governance that serve the many, rather than the few.
The 2024 Freedom Scholars continue this tradition. These are no ordinary academics—they are change-makers who understand that the work of liberation doesn’t begin and end in the classroom.
Meet the 2024 Cohort: Visionaries for Justice and Equity
This year’s Freedom Scholar cohort reflects extensive expertise across disciplines and is united by their collective commitment to a more just world.
Take Natalie Diaz, for example, a poet and professor at Arizona State University whose work examines the intersections of Indigeneity, language, and power. She invites us to rethink how language can either perpetuate violence or reclaim histories. In a time when Indigenous languages and cultures are under threat, Diaz’s scholarship is particularly urgent, illuminating the vital role language plays in advancing collective liberation.
Then there’s Dr. Daniel Martinez HoSang from Yale University, whose research unpacks the politics of multicultural right-wing extremism. Dr. HoSang’s work sharpens our understanding of how racist dynamics operate within seemingly inclusive frameworks, highlighting the deep-rooted systems of inequality that continue to shape society. His work is not just a critique but a call to action, urging movements to confront these structures wherever we see them.
The Freedom Scholars of 2024 are not just theorists—they are strategists, organizers, and visionaries.
Dr. Nadine Naber from the University of Illinois Chicago brings to the cohort a community-engaged scholarship that draws important connections between global struggles for liberation, with a particular focus on Palestinian freedom. Dr. Naber’s work in solidarity movements teaches us the power of linking our struggles—showing that the fight for justice is always interconnected, whether it’s in Chicago, Gaza, or beyond.
Finally, Dr. K. Sabeel Rahman, a legal scholar at Cornell Law School, has been instrumental in helping policymakers and organizers engage more critically with the concept of public goods. His research explores how we must rethink public goods—such as healthcare, education, and housing—not as commodities, but as essential components of a thriving, equitable society. By leveraging legal theory for practical policy solutions, Dr. Sabeel’s work helps movements craft a vision for governance that prioritizes the well-being of our communities over corporate profits.
A Commitment to Transformative Change
The Freedom Scholars of 2024 are not just theorists—they are strategists, organizers, and visionaries. Their work represents the bold ideas and imaginative thinking essential for any social movement to succeed. And it’s precisely this kind of visionary work that Marguerite Casey Foundation is committed to supporting.
What sets the Freedom Scholar awards apart is the financial freedom they afford recipients. The $250,000 prize comes with no strings attached, allowing scholars to invest in the work that matters most to them. Some have used MCF funding to launch nonprofit organizations, while others focus on building movement infrastructure by supporting existing nonprofits, publishing movement-oriented literature, or opening retreat houses where organizers can strategize and recharge. This flexibility ensures that the scholars can meet their needs and goals in real time, without the bureaucratic constraints that often accompany traditional funding models for academics.
Looking Ahead: Building a Future of Justice and Liberation
As we celebrate the contributions of the 2024 Freedom Scholars, it’s clear that their work will have a lasting impact not just in academia, but in the communities they serve. Their scholarship is grounded in real-world struggles and solutions, and their commitment to justice is unwavering. They are the thinkers and doers helping to fuel the next generation of liberation movements.
I look forward to seeing the ongoing impact of the 2024 cohort and am proud that MCF remains steadfast in its commitment to amplifying transformative scholarship for meaningful change.
Together, with these visionary scholars, we are building a future where equity, justice, and liberation are not just ideals but lived realities for all.
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The Coming Eclipse Shines a Light on What Our Government Does for Us
While total eclipses are not common, what is common are the governmental institutions that provide services to make us safer and healthier, offer and maintain green space, and allow us to make giant leaps in knowledge.
Apr 05, 2024
As most people know, there is a total solar eclipse arriving next week, Monday, April 8, 2024. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration tells us we won’t see another one in the contiguous United States for another two decades (August 23, 2045).
The eclipse will be visible in its totality in a broad band that stretches, in the United States, from Texas to Maine.
For those looking for a place to view the eclipse, there are literally thousands of public spaces available, many with special programs surrounding the event.
Unlike an eclipse, government is an everyday occurrence—ubiquitous and yet often invisible.
That includes the many National Parks and Forests in the path, such as the Solar Eclipse Festival on the National Mall, presented in conjunction with the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, and the National Science Foundation (NSF) in collaboration with the Smithsonian, NASA, NOAA, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. The NSF is also sponsoring “Sun, Moon, and You Solar Eclipse Viewing Event” in downtown Dallas (free, but you’ve got to register). The Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri offers a handy list of best viewing spots within the forest.
Additional locations include state parks along that path with viewing opportunities and programs, such as those of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Arkansas State Parks, Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Kentucky State Parks, Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, Vermont Department of Forest, Parks, and Recreation, and New Hampshire Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Your local regional and municipal park might provide the perfect spot, close to home, and some are running programs in the days leading up to the eclipse, such as a ranger-led hike exploring how animals will react to the eclipse.
Of course, even those in the path of totality might have challenges seeing the eclipse clearly if there’s cloud cover. Luckily, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information has that covered with its interactive map.
If you’re planning to be above the clouds to see the eclipse in the skies, you might want to view this video produced by the Federal Aviation Administration and aimed at pilots, warning of larger than normal traffic of air craft and drones along the eclipse’s totality path, and limiting parking spots at runways.
Ground traffic and parking spots for cars can also slow eclipse viewers on their way to their viewing spots. For them, state and local officials have also provided portals for updates about ground traffic—spots for congestion and road closures to increase public safety.
You’ll want to keep it safe. NASA offers guidance on eye safety for viewing the eclipse, and state emergency management agencies are providing a wide range of tips to have a safe and enjoyable eclipse experience, with everything from taking care of pets to creating a family communications plan for those attending large events.
And even if you’re not in the path of totality, you still might get something out of the eclipse: NASA is launching sounding rockets to study disturbances in the ionosphere created when the moon eclipses the sun.
While total eclipses are not common, what is common are the governmental institutions and agencies at every level that provide services to make us safer and healthier, offer and maintain green space for mental health and recreation, and allow us to learn and make giant leaps in human knowledge.
We often rely on government, but we don’t always recognize its role. Unlike an eclipse, government is an everyday occurrence—ubiquitous and yet often invisible. But it is important, every now and then, to shed light on that role and remind us that government is—or at least should be—for and by all of us.
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Forget the Billionaire Saviors of Journalism
The start of 2024 has been catastrophic for news outlets all over the country, even the ones owned by billionaires. What could an alternative look like?
Mar 02, 2024
America’s media institutions have had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad start to 2024. The unfolding crisis has been headlined by The Messenger dissolving after less than a year, major layoffs at the Los Angeles Times, and Sports Illustrated falling into licensing limbo.
The over 500 media jobs eliminated so far this year reflect a broader, worrying trend. By this year’s end, according to one recent estimate, America will have lost one third of all its newspapers and two thirds of all its newspaper staff since 2005.
The losses have been particularly acute in poor and remote communities, leaving ever expanding news deserts all across the nation.
The collapse of news outlets – especially local papers – is robbing our communities of indispensable watchdogs. The disappearance of reporters from city council meetings and public safety hearings is creating oversight vacuums that leave citizens in the dark and breed ever more shady dealings that let the wealthy exercise undue – and undetected – influence.
How did we get here? How did a country once chock-full of influential newspapers morph into a land of news deserts? One major factor, says University of Pennsylvania media studies scholar Victor Pickard, has been the disintegration of the advertising model that media has relied on for well over a century.
The media we have left are increasingly resorting to variations on the subscription model to make up for lost ad revenue. Some early paywalls appeared at the turn of the millennium, but the practice truly picked up steam a decade later.
Good reporting simply takes far more resources to produce than it can possibly recoup in digital ad dollars. The answer? A real commitment to public media funding.
Charging users for access to content has worked well for some outlets, but subscriptions haven’t been enough to replace ad funding in most cases, especially for larger publications or outlets that serve less wealthy audiences.
Other media efforts have counted on the benevolence of billionaires to fill in the gaps left by departing ad dollars. But resorting to billionaire help creates real concerns about the influence of exorbitantly wealthy owners on content, and the richest among us have increasingly been unwilling to foot the bill for quality journalism. The Washington Post, owned by the third-richest man alive, offered buyouts to bring its headcount down by 240 this past fall after laying off 20 staffers at the start of 2023. L.A. Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong’s net worth of nearly $6 billion did not save the jobs of the 115 workers that the paper laid off in January.
Fifty years ago, well ahead of the advent of the internet, if a local business wanted to get their message out to the public, they often had only one option: the local newspaper. That same business now has a whole host of options, from buying ads on podcasts to native advertising on social media.
Newspapers haven’t just lost their monopoly on print advertising. They face a new, lucrative digital ad marketplace that Google and Facebook have almost entirely captured. The digital first media ventures that looked poised to take over in the 2010s – think BuzzFeed, Vice News, or Complex – now all find themselves, at best, struggling on life support.
We have, to be sure, recently seen some exciting developments in nonprofit and worker-owned journalism, but these proposals remain limited in scope. The nonprofit model has its own flaws, and these assorted fixes also do little to address the fundamental tension between the profit motive and providing important information to the public. Given all this, a growing number of voices are calling for a fundamental rethinking of how we value journalism.
“Another way of looking at it is that the information produced by journalism should always be and should have always been treated as a public good,” Victor Pickard recently told Inequality.org. “And that, by its very nature, is not something that’s easily monetized.”
Good reporting simply takes far more resources to produce than it can possibly recoup in digital ad dollars. The answer? A real commitment to public media funding.
The United States does, of course, invest some money in public media. Last year’s federal appropriations allocated $535 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the private nonprofit corporation tasked with investing in public radio and television.
And some promising experiments are taking place at the state level, with governments including California, New Mexico, and Washington devoting public tax dollars for local news coverage.
But that funding amounts to no more than a drop in the bucket compared to what’s needed to revitalize and sustain news. A 2022 study comparing funding globally found the U.S. spends just $3.16 per capita on public media, compared to $142.42 per person in Germany and $110.73 in Norway. Spending as much on journalism as the United Kingdom does on the BBC would mean $35 billion a year going to sustaining coverage.
We need, as The Nation’s John Nichols recently argued, a “Marshall Plan” for journalism. Absent a major spike in funding, our depressing current media trends appear bound to continue as ad dollars dry up and greedy hedge funds essentially sell off outlets for parts.
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Down With Public-Private Partnerships. Up With a Future That Is Public
From escalating costs for the stretched public sector to environmental and social impacts, we found time and again that communities had been ignored, displaced, and had their basic rights violated by thoughtless projects designed and implemented in the pursuit of profit.
Feb 05, 2023
Last month, we joined more than 1000 representatives from all sectors of civil society who came together in Santiago de Chile to debate the future of – and threats to – public services the world over.
Participants discussed the chronic underfunding which continues to drive economic inequality, injustice and austerity, and the neocolonial policies that maintain the status quo.
Today those debates have resulted in the launch of “Our Future is Public: The Santiago Declaration for Public Services” – a momentous agreement signed by more than 200 organisations vowing to work to “transform our systems, valuing human rights and ecological sustainability over GDP growth and narrowly defined economic gains.”
One of the most damaging initiatives that has deeply affected the delivery of public services and infrastructure projects on all continents is the rise of public-private partnerships, or PPPs.
They have long been promoted by institutions such as the World Bank as a silver bullet to close the so-called gap to finance investments in services and infrastructure. The premise is that the private sector can deliver these services more efficiently and to a higher standard than the public sector, despite extensive evidence to the contrary.
We lay the pitfalls of PPPs bare in our new report History RePPPeated II: Why public-private partnerships are not the solution – the second in a series of investigations documenting the impacts of PPPs across Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe.
Launched at the Santiago conference with some of the partners responsible for investigating and authoring the case studies, the report not only highlights negative impacts of PPPs, but sets out recommendations for how to better finance infrastructure and public services in the face of false solutions that have been proposed given the context of the current polycrisis.
These narratives wholly reflect red flags that are raised in the Santiago Declaration.
Through these investigations, we discovered failures on multiple levels in PPPs covering infrastructure such as roads and water supplies, as well as vital public services like healthcare and education.
From escalating costs for the stretched public sector to environmental and social impacts, we found time and again that communities had been ignored, displaced, and had their basic rights violated by thoughtless projects designed and implemented in the pursuit of profit.
A prime example is that of the the Melamchi Water Supply Project (MWSP) in Nepal. First announced nearly a quarter of a century ago, the project’s aim was to deliver clean, reliable and affordable water to 1.5 million people in Kathmandu.
And yet, 24 years later, residents are still waiting, while communities at the Melamchi water source are facing scarcity of water and eroded livelihoods. Instead of safe, clean drinking water – an internationally recognised human right – they have witnessed an extraordinary revolving door of private companies and institutional funders, including the World Bank, who have each failed to deliver.
To add to the MWSP’s colossal failure, 80 hectares of farmland have been lost to the project, a heavy blow to local residents, and up to 80 households have been forcibly displaced due to construction.
Who owns and controls our resources and public services became even more vitally important with the outbreak of the Covid pandemic in March 2020. Market-based models cannot be relied upon to deliver on human rights or the fight against inequalities as they are accountable only to their shareholders and not to their users.
This resulting focus on profit is overwhelmingly apparent in our case study from Liberia. Here, US firm Bridge International Academies (now NewGlobe) ‘abandoned’ its students and teachers during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, shutting down schools and cutting teachers’ salaries by 80-90 per cent, despite being paid by the government.
And yet, in 2021 the Liberian government indefinitely extended the project, effectively subsidising a US for-profit firm at a cost that is at least double government spending on public schools.
In Peru, the Expressway Yellow Line has emerged as one of the most controversial projects ever carried out. This toll road was supposed to ease congestion issues in the capital city Lima, but instead toll rates have been unreasonably increased on at least eight occasions.
This generated almost $23 million for the private company involved and transpired with the complicity of public officials. Meanwhile, the Peruvian state suffered economic damages of US$1.2 million due to under the table negotiations between public officials and the private company, which led to the incorrect implementation and improper modifications of the contract years after it was initially signed.
Today, questions regarding the project and conflicts surrounding its implementation remain, while Lima residents’ expectations of quality road infrastructure to improve living conditions for those who have been most affected, continue to go unmet.
The human cost of the PPP projects showcased by History RePPPeated II is self-evident, but they are far from the exception. Rather they serve to illustrate common failures with the PPP model that risk compromising fundamental human rights and that undermine the fight against climate change and inequalities.
Their continuing promotion is one of the many reasons why we support the Santiago Declaration. Together with all its signatories, we will strengthen resistance to PPPs with their focus on private-led interests and promote public-public or public-common partnerships for a future that is public.
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'Our Future Is Public': Santiago Declaration Envisions End of Neoliberalism Death Spiral
A new manifesto calls for building "a sustainable social pact for the 21st century" in which "our rights are guaranteed, not based on our ability to pay, or on whether a system produces profit, but on whether it enables all of us to live well together in peace and equality."
Jan 27, 2023
An international coalition made up of more than 200 trade unions and progressive advocacy groups on Thursday published the Santiago Declaration, a manifesto for "a complete overhaul of our global economic system."
The undeniably anti-neoliberal document proclaiming that "our future is public" is the product of a meeting held in Chile—the "laboratory of neoliberalism" where Milton Friedman and his University of Chicago acolytes' upwardly redistributive economic model was first imposed at gunpoint by Gen. Augusto Pinochet's military junta.
From November 29 to December 2, more than 1,000 organizers from over 100 countries gathered in Santiago and virtually to germinate a left-wing movement against "the dominant paradigm of growth, privatization, and commodification."
"Who owns our resources and our services is fundamental. A public future means ensuring that everything essential to dignified lives is out of private control."
"We are at a critical juncture," the manifesto begins. "At a time when the world faces a series of crises, from the environmental emergency to hunger and deepening inequalities, increasing armed conflicts, pandemics, rising extremism, and escalating inflation, a collective response is growing."
"Hundreds of organizations across socioeconomic justice and public services sectors—from education and health services, to care, energy, food, housing, water, transportation, and social protection—are coming together to address the harmful effects of commercializing public services, to reclaim democratic public control, and to reimagine a truly equal and human rights-oriented economy that works for people and the planet," reads the document. "We demand universal access to quality, gender-transformative, and equitable public services as the foundation of a fair and just society."
The Santiago Declaration continues:
The commercialization and privatization of public services and the commodification of all aspects of life have driven growing inequalities and entrenched power disparities, giving prominence to profit and corruption over people's rights and ecological and social well-being. It adversely affects workers, service users, and communities, with the costs and damages falling disproportionately on those who have historically been exploited.
The devaluation of public service workers' social status, the worsening of their working conditions, and attacks against their unions are some of the most worrying regressions of our times and a threat to our collective spaces. This is deeply linked with the patriarchal organization of society, where women as workers and carers are undervalued and absorb social and economic shocks. They are the first to suffer from public sector cuts, losing access to services and opportunities for decent work, and facing a rising burden of unpaid care work.
Austerity cuts in public sector budgets and wage bills are driven by an ideological mindset entrenched in the International Monetary Fund and many ministries of finance that serve the interests of corporations over people, perpetuating dependencies and unsustainable debts. Unfair tax rules, nationally and internationally, enable vast inequalities in the accumulation and concentration of income, wealth, and power within and between countries. The financialization of a wide range of public actions and decisions hands over power to shareholders and undermines democracy.
Against the heavily privatized status quo, "we commit to continue building an intersectional movement for a future that is public," the document says. "One where our rights are guaranteed, not based on our ability to pay, or on whether a system produces profit, but on whether it enables all of us to live well together in peace and equality: our buen vivir."
According to Global Justice Now, the Transnational Institute, and other signatories, the creation of an egalitarian and sustainable society hinges on ensuring universal access to life-sustaining public goods delivered by highly valued workers.
"We need to take back control of decision-making processes and institutions from the current forms of corporate capture to be able to decide for what, for whom, and how we provide."
"Who owns our resources and our services is fundamental," the manifesto argues. "A public future means ensuring that everything essential to dignified lives is out of private control, and under decolonial forms of collective, transparent, and democratic control."
As the Santiago Declaration explains:
A future that is public also means creating the conditions for enabling alternative production systems, including the prioritization of agroecology as an essential component of food sovereignty. To that end, we need to take back control of decision-making processes and institutions from the current forms of corporate capture to be able to decide for what, for whom, and how we provide, manage, and collectively own resources and public services.
The public future will not be possible without taking bold collective national action for ambitious, gender-transformative, and progressive fiscal and economic reforms, to massively expand financing of universal public services. These reforms must be complemented by major shifts in the international public finance architecture, including transformations in tax, debt, and trade governance.
Democratizing economic governance towards truly multilateral processes is critical to overhaul the power of dominant neoliberal organizations and reorient national and international financial institutions away from the racial, patriarchal, and colonial patterns of capitalism and towards socioeconomic justice, ecological sustainability, human rights, and public services. It is equally essential to enforce the climate and ecological debt of the Global North, to carry out an expedited reduction of energy and material resource use by wealthy economies, to hold big polluters liable for their generations-long infractions, to accelerate the phasing-out of fossil fuels, and to prioritize finance system change.
The call to build "a sustainable social pact for the 21st century," the coalition observes, "follows years of growing mobilization around the world."
It also comes as a complementary alliance convened by Progressive International meets in Havana, Cuba to map out an emancipatory "new international economic order."
During Friday's opening session, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis called for the establishment of a movement capable of dismantling "the existing, exploitative, catastrophically extractive imperialist international economic order so as to build a new one in its place... in which people and planet can breathe, live, and prosper together."
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