Blog / Manufacturing and Industrial Policy
Don’t Workers Deserve the Everything Bagel?
Within six months of President Biden’s signature on the Inflation Reduction Act, companies announced a wave of solar, battery, and other clean tech manufacturing investments that will create more than 100,000 jobs across 31 states to make the nuts and bolts of clean energy. Many of the job openings will be in communities that have endured decades of divestment, deindustrialization, and economic insecurity. That response to the Inflation Reduction Act’s unprecedented federal funding is faster than anyone predicted. It offers an early validation of the strategy behind the law: to wield public investments to support climate action, good jobs, and greater equity at the same time. But some prominent commentators argue this is trying to do too much. Ezra Klein, for example, writes that such multi-pronged goals suffer from “everything bagel liberalism” that threatens the success of these landmark investments.