I just finished reading
The Two Percent Solution by former Clinton advisor Matt Miller, and I was very impressed with a thoughtful and fairly impartial assessment of the big remaining progressive challenges.
Miller's basic argument is that for 2% of GDP per year, we can achieve universal health coverage, a low-income worker wage subsidy, an overhaul of teacher compensation tied to performance and incentives to work in high-poverty areas, and a host of smaller reformers.
He would pay for these by cutting 25% of corporate welfare, limiting the health tax exclusion, adding a 60% gasoline tax, cancelling some of the Bush upper-bracket tax cuts, and shifting some programs for the poor to direct aid.
He advocates a mix of government market-based solutions in order to effect these changes.
While I think Miller oversimplified almost everything, is naive about the politics, is a little glib in dismissing valid concerns about his proposed solutions, too readily assumes the good faith of Republican reformers, and omits some facts, the most valuable lesson I took away from his book was that so many of the current proposed solutions to these big problems are half-measures that don't do the job.
Do you agree? Are we serious or not?