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Research Archive

May 4, 2023

Work Is Essential to the American Dream

Work is one of the foundations of American life. Almost always, being employed and earning income gives individuals the opportunity, responsibility, and community they need to flourish. The broader importance of work can’t be overstated. A larger workforce also contributes significantly to our general prosperity allowing us to afford, among other things, a more effective…

April 28, 2023

Social Capital: What Is It?

Words and phrases, as they say, can do a lot of work. Sometimes, evocative terms can be useful even if they paper over imprecise concepts or obscure definitional disagreement. But vagueness often overwhelms the utility of an idea, as, for instance, with the term “systemic racism.” Imprecision can be a feature but also a bug….

April 18, 2023

Introduction to The Social Breakdown

“Social capital” is an esoteric and often loosely defined concept, yet it captures a deep-seated intuition and shared sensibility among virtually all Americans: Our relationships have value, and what we do together matters. Social capital derives from our participation in—and belonging to—society’s “middle layers.” These middle layers are the myriad institutions, associations, and communities between…

April 6, 2023

Stop the AI Pause

Last week, the Future of Life Institute released an open letter that included some computer science luminaries calling to freeze deployment and research on artificial intelligence (AI) technologies for six months. One prominent AI ethicist insisted that the letter did not go far enough and proposed that the world’s governments prepare for “airstrikes” against rogue developers and data processing…

January 24, 2023

“Gig,” Contract, and Nontraditional Workers

A recurring theme of the Workforce Futures Initiative has been how little we know about the evolving needs of workers and businesses or even how the nation’s spatially and numerically vast labor market actually operates. This is especially true when we consider the “gig” or contract worker economy, which has grown dramatically in the past…