Ryan Streeter, Director of Domestic Policy for the American Enterprise Institute, joins us in studio to discuss localism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryan Streeter, Director of Domestic Policy for the American Enterprise Institute, joins us in studio to discuss localism.","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/cepa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/03\/Policy-at-McCombs-Episode-2-Ryan-Streeter.mp3","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"46.85M","filesize_raw":"49122368","date_recorded":"20-03-2019","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":""},"tags":[3,4],"categories":[],"series":[2],"class_list":{"0":"post-7","1":"podcast","2":"type-podcast","3":"status-publish","5":"tag-aei","6":"tag-localism","7":"series-policymccombs","8":"entry"},"acf":{"related_episodes":"","hosts":[{"ID":693,"post_author":"38","post_date":"2020-10-29 17:58:44","post_date_gmt":"2020-10-29 17:58:44","post_content":"\n
Carlos M. Carvalho is an associate professor of statistics at McCombs. Dr. Carvalho received his Ph.D. in Statistics from Duke University in 2006. His research focuses on Bayesian statistics in complex, high-dimensional problems with applications ranging from finance to genetics. Some of his current projects include work on large-scale factor models, graphical models, Bayesian model selection, particle filtering and stochastic volatility models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before moving to Texas Dr. Carvalho was part of the faculty at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business and, in 2009, he was awarded The Donald D. Harrington Fellowship by The University of Texas, Austin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr. Carvalho is from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and before coming to the U.S. he received his Bachelor's degree in Economics from IBMEC Business School (Rio de Janeiro) followed by a Masters's degree in Statistics from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).<\/p>\n","post_title":"Carlos Carvalho","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"carlos-carvalho","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-10-29 17:59:59","post_modified_gmt":"2020-10-29 17:59:59","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/cepa\/?post_type=speaker&p=693","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":580,"post_author":"42","post_date":"2020-07-03 19:53:40","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-03 19:53:40","post_content":"\n
Mario Villarreal-Diaz is CEPA\u2019s Managing Director and Senior Scholar. Mario joins CEPA from the University of Arizona where he was an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Economy and Moral Science and taught in the Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Law undergraduate major.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Mario Villarreal-Diaz","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"mario-villarreal-diaz","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-07-03 19:53:41","post_modified_gmt":"2020-07-03 19:53:41","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/cepa\/?post_type=speaker&p=580","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"guests":[{"ID":567,"post_author":"42","post_date":"2020-07-03 19:46:32","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-03 19:46:32","post_content":"\n
Ryan Streeter\u00a0is the director of domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he oversees research in education, technology, housing, poverty studies, workforce development, and public opinion. Before joining AEI, he was executive director of the Center for Politics and Governance at the University of Texas at Austin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr. Streeter has had a distinguished career in government service, which includes being deputy chief of staff for policy for Indiana Governor Mike Pence, special assistant for domestic policy to President George W. Bush at the White House, and policy adviser to Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith. Outside of government, he has served as a senior fellow at the Legatum Institute and as a research fellow at the Hudson Institute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He is the author of \u201cTransforming Charity: Toward a Results-Oriented Social Sector<\/a>\u201d (Hudson Institute, 2001); the editor of \u201cReligion and the Public Square in the 21st Century<\/a>\u201d (Hudson Institute, 2001); the coauthor of \u201cThe Soul of Civil Society: Voluntary Associations and the Public Value of Moral Habits<\/a>\u201d (Lexington Books, 2002); and a contributor to the Stephen Goldsmith book, \u201cPutting Faith in Neighborhoods: Making Cities Work Through Grassroots Citizenship<\/a>\u201d (Hudson Institute, 2002).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to his many television and radio appearances, which include BBC News, CNBC, Fox News, and MSNBC. Dr. Streeter\u2019s articles have been widely published in outlets including The Weekly Standard, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and National Review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr. Streeter has a PhD in political philosophy from Emory University.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Ryan Streeter","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"ryan-streeter","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-07-03 19:46:33","post_modified_gmt":"2020-07-03 19:46:33","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/cepa\/?post_type=speaker&p=567","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"transcript":" Welcome to the Policy of McCombs podcast, a data driven conversation on the economic
\nissues up today in this series. We invite guests into our studio to provide a highlight
\nof their work presented during a visit to the University of Texas at Austin Policy.
\nEmma Combs is produced by the Center for Enterprise and Policy Analytics at the McCombs School of Business.
\nI am your co-host, Carlos Carvalho, with my colleague Mario Villarreal.
\nHi, my name is Mario Villarreal and I am from the Center of Enterprise and Policy Analytics, and today
\nI’m here with Ryan Streator. Ryan Streator as the director of the Mastic Policy Studies
\nat the American Enterprise Institute AEI, where he oversees research in education,
\nAmerican citizenship, politics, public opinion and social and cultural studies.
\nBefore joining AEI, he was executive director of the Center for Politics and Governance at
\nthe University of Texas at Austin. His recent work includes two interesting
\npieces. One is a survey on community and society that is designed to contribute
\nto the literature and social capital. And the second one is a collection of essays
\ncalled Localism in America, where they explore how communities may
\nwork together to solve important problems and issues of local governance.
\nSo thank you for being with us today, Ryan. Thanks for having me. Great to be back. What would
\nyou highlight as the most important lessons of your work about localism and how communities
\nwork together to deal with important social problems? Well, I think that the
\nfirst thing that’s worth saying, and this is evident in some of the findings from the survey that you mentioned, which
\nwe did with NORC at University of Chicago, really using a lot of questions
\nthat haven’t been asked in quite a long time as a lot of public opinion research has focused on political attitudes.
\nWe wanted to drill down a couple of of layers and ask people about the quality of their communities,
\nhow they think things are going in their communities. Basic questions like how many friends do you have? How far does it
\ntake you? How long’s it take you to get to the grocery store? We asked all those questions as well as the kind of right track, wrong track questions
\nthat that you typically ask people. And I think, you know, consistent with other survey research
\nthat’s been done, our survey shows pretty clearly that when you ask people about
\ntheir communities, they have a first of all, a much higher regard for their communities than they do
\nthe country as a whole. Typically, they they trust their local government significantly
\nmore than they trust the federal government. And that’s that’s been consistent with what Pew found over years.
\nAnd our findings are very consistent with theirs. But you also find that people are much more optimistic
\nabout the direction that their communities are going compared to the direction that the country is going. And that has to do
\nwith just the state of things in general. It also has to do with the economy. People are less likely to say
\nthat the economy will be better in 12 months, but much more likely to say that their own personal situation will be better. And
\nthat goes for pretty much every demographic, including working class Americans. And so I think there’s something
\nfundamental in those findings that gets to the nature of people’s attachment to
\nplace itself. And I think given the, you know, well-documented
\nand significant divisions that we have in this country right now, politically and ideologically,
\nthat those are very real divisions in the survey, research is very clear about that, too. People think
\nin ideologically devisive terms in ways that are much more pronounced in stark than than 40 years ago.
\nI think what there’s what we’ve seen and this is reflected in our localism volume that you mentioned. It’s an edited
\ncollection with people from across the ideological spectrum who contributed to this understanding
\nthat we’ve perhaps tried to nationalize. That’s my term at nationalize issues
\non a grand scale. Trust our national politics to deal with them, debate those things in national
\nforums and look for solutions from the federal government when in fact it might make more
\nsense on some really big important issues from inequality to even immigration
\nand even some parts of climate change, for instance, to think again more constructively about what regional
\ngovernments, what state governments and what local governments can be doing, perhaps should be doing to combat
\nthese issues. And we might actually have more long term success if we kind of remember some of the lessons of
\nthe past about what it means to meaningfully situate responsible for problem solving at the local level.
\nSo I think, you know, the the the main the main point here is that
\nlocal governance and local problem solving is actually very consistent with where most Americans minds and hearts are.
\nThey’re there. They’re closer to home rather than than farther away. I see. Now, regarding
\nattitudes towards optimism within local communities and the way
\nthey interact with each other, that’s a very interesting aspect of it. There is the other aspect
\nabout the possibilities of communities actually coordinating in effective ways
\nto actually come up with effective solutions. Now, those interactions often
\nare embedded within a policy framework either dictated by local governments, state
\ngovernments or federal governments. In your research, could you highlight some of
\nthe features that you think are useful in public policies to facilitate that process
\nof communities organizing themselves and making the best out of that close
\nknit social fabric and features that may impede that
\nprocess? That’s a great question. I think that there are some pretty interesting
\nlessons in. Some a series of public policy reforms in the 1990s, the sort of get
\nat what these policy features are that you’re talking about, and I’ll come to the specifics in just
\na second. But to say more generally, I think looked at from the federal policy lens,
\nI think what what has worked in the past on federal policy and also state policy
\nvis-a-vis local communities is to have policies that are that are goal based where you’re trying to reach
\ncertain goals, but allow for and perhaps even require a certain flexibility
\nin terms of who the players are that actually are helping reach those those goals. And this has been written about another regulatory reform
\nliterature as well, kind of goal based regulation versus overly stipulated
\nprocesses. And I think you saw this in welfare reform in the 1990s,
\nwhich Republicans passed, Bill Clinton signed it had supporters and detractors on
\non both sides. But what what what the policy had that most people talked about
\nwas that it imposed work requirements on people. And that’s been the most controversial thing. That’s what people at debated and people
\nhave studied. There’s a second, you know, in my mind, equally as important, if not more important
\nfeature to that policy, which essentially took the role
\nof counties and the state government and then subdivisions as the place where that
\npolicy had to be worked out to actually provide services to help people move into the workforce. And there’s some
\nevidence in the literature that states that did second ordered evolution, where they took the resources
\nfrom the federal government, devolve those to the county and municipal level, actually had better employment outcomes because
\nyou had more actors within the community involved. But how they did that, whether it was through partnerships with
\nchambers of commerce and schools, whether it was through welfare agencies working together with workforce development agencies,
\nthat was really left to the discretion of the local leaders. But they were provided with resources and basic goals
\nto me. You can actually see those very similar lessons in the community policing movement of 1994
\nwas when the federal law was passed there, which really proliferated around the country after that. Community
\npolicing has a longer history, but the federal government actually by providing resources and goals,
\nwe saw communities adopting this policing model all throughout the country. And to the point
\nwhere, you know, the majority of people live in communities where that are are governed by that model in terms of the police
\nforce. You can also see the same thing in public housing reform in the early 1990s, also school reform where
\nyou had basic goals set in place. But there was the expectation that local communities would have some flexibility
\nin how to meet those goals. It’s probably a good time for us to revisit some of those some of those
\ndiscussions in terms of limitations. This becomes difficult when you have
\nissues where the goals really have to be met in a much broader way than there
\nare under the control of a municipality. And I think, you know, the most obvious case would be sort of climate change policy, for instance,
\nthat would be a little bit more more difficult to work out at the local level. Having said that, I still think cities
\nare at the forefront of this debate in terms of innovation, in terms of reducing
\nthe carbon footprint of new construction and the like. That really is is coming about through a lot of innovation
\nthat’s happening at the local level, even in the private sector. We need we need to encourage more of that. So I don’t
\nthink localities don’t have a role to play there, but when you have goals that cross state lines and all of that, you’ll see a limitation
\nto some of these policies for sure. Now, it seems very natural for for people to think
\nthat complex problem, complex social problems require
\nsome sort of centrally planned top-down intervention to be dealt
\nwith effectively. And there’s a natural thing about that. It’s a matter
\nof the scale or knowledge. Lin Ostrom, as you you know, she
\nwon the Nobel Prize by pointing out that sometimes commons problems
\nand governance of natural resources can be dealt with and be
\nsolved by bottom up approaches that tend to be messy, tend to be not neat
\nand clean, but they’re effective. Now, how would you respond to those criticism?
\nYou’re really allude alluded a little bit to the challenges of large scale problems and to be
\nsolved within localism structures and local governance structures. But how would you answer
\nthat criticism of scale and knowledge in dealing with with
\nthis problems? Well, I would say that you really need to be
\nfocused on the issue at hand and where the solution ultimately comes from or is
\nmost likely to come from. Try to be as honest about that as you can and and deal with these
\nthese problems as public policy matters, sort of with respect to the
\nissues that essentially define the kind of larger goal. And I think that, you know, for for instance,
\nwe talk about inequality and income stagnation in the middle. You know,
\nhigher gains in the upper upper tail. And this this growing problem of inequality and and most of
\nthe debate that we consume through whether it’s social media or through news
\noutlets is happy. Thing about federal policy and what we should be doing to the tax code in these sorts
\nof things. I would say and I used to say this to my my students just to get their eyebrows
\nto raise would say there is no national solutions. Inequal inequality is a function of all these
\nregional sort of variations. And I think you can see that. I’ll just give an example. I mean, Raj Chetty,
\nis Worksman probably the best known in this in this area? So I’ll cite that since since listeners might be familiar
\nwith it. But in his work with his colleagues on the Moving to Opportunity study, which was also created back
\nin the early 1990s as a part of this domestic reform kind of era that I was talking
\nabout, one of the things I think is really interesting about their findings is that income
\nmobility from the bottom upwards across the country is very different depending on where you are.
\nYou know, same same federal policies, same payroll tax policy, same income tax policies,
\nweak. We could argue that those should be different levels and that might affect some some outcomes differently.
\nBut if you expanded ITC, if you increase wages, wage subsidies, if you if you do all of
\nthose things, you’ll make the discomfort and pain of being at a low income
\nless painful. But if the issue is mobility, then you need to actually look at what drives mobility and what often
\ndrives mobility. Is the labor market where you live, whether or not it’s possible to
\nbe an economy that’s more inclusive. And so to put it very crudely, it’s better to be poor, better to be
\nborn poor in some cities in America than than others in in Salt Lake City. There’s there’s really good
\nupward mobility for people born in the lower lowest fifth quintile, whereas in some some cities in the southeast
\nor whatever, it’s very, very hard to get out of that that lowest quintile. So you’re dealing with lower local forces.
\nAnd you could you could you could talk about structural racism. You can talk about lack of access
\nto the opportunity sort of gateways through good post-secondary education, even if it’s a non
\nfour year kind of environment where you have good employer partnerships with a with an efficient
\ncommunity college system, even very localized within a larger metro area, you see really good outcomes. And so I think
\nthat’s where you need to actually if you really care about this problem, you should be asking questions about how regions can actually
\nmake the mobility environment where they are much more successful than than it has banned. And I just
\nI’ve been very unpersuaded that there are federal. The federal policies that are being debated. Pick your pick your favorite one
\nas an as a response to inequality. Well, I don’t think any of them will actually have the effect that having a much
\nmore effective regional system would have. And I think that’s just true empirically and in the evidence,
\nand perhaps not only about a permanent long term solutions or processes that
\nfacilitate upward mobility, but also ways to
\nease the pain of those that they are in less favorable favorable positions. You’ve done
\nwork on charity and solidarity and those kind of things. So I wonder if these surveys
\nand these essays also touch on how small communities are perhaps
\nan effective way to deal with these problems and
\nbe helpful of those in need in more effective ways than
\nlarge scale federal programs, perhaps? Well, I think that anywhere
\nthere has been success in helping people from the lower end of the income distribution
\nfind ways to move up. There’s a there’s a often an unreported sort of sob story
\nabout the role of civil society in the civic environment. That’s that’s there. The hollowing out of
\ncivic life in working class America is something that seems very real and is problematic.
\nAnd so in some parts of the country where we in the same towns are you seeing factories closed and you’ve seen jobs go away.
\nAnd the same places where you’ve seen the rise in the opioid crisis, where it’s been the most pronounced.
\nYou also have seen a kind of a dissolution of the civic order in those places. And that’s a that’s a big issue
\nthat no one knows exactly what the right solution is. But when you look at what why people actually
\nget access to opportunity, how they move into an area, let’s say, to a post-secondary enviroment, actually
\nfinish and then end up in the labor market, a much better position than where their family was when they they started
\nthe role of networks. That’s really important. There’s a pretty big literature on this, too, that networks don’t just matter
\nfor highly networked, more fluid college graduates. I mean, that that is a and in a
\nvery important thing of the post-secondary experience and beyond for for people that come from the upper middle class
\nand and have got a four year college degree. But there’s there’s a significant body of literature that shows
\nthat even in low income communities, people who have more relationships and more friends and more connections
\nactually have better labor market outcomes. But in terms of their immediate wages,
\nthe jobs pay better that they get immediately and their long term income gains are higher.
\nWhat I think is is part of our problem is we don’t have enough. Bridging social capital is, as some
\nsocial scientists have called it, within communities to help that student in a low income community. Going to a school
\nwith mostly low income classmates have relationships with people in the post-secondary
\nenvironment who themselves are connected to employers in much the same way that. Kids from low
\nfrom higher income families have. And some communities do a better job of making of bridging those connections.
\nAnd and I think instead of relying on just local ingenuity and
\nbasically accident’s of local entrepreneurship and leadership to produce these outcomes, we had to factor
\nthose into our into our public policy. We ought to, in our post-secondary public policy environment,
\nlearn some of these lessons that we’ve we’ve learned from some of the policies I was talking about earlier,
\nwhere the role of the community is actually presupposed and perhaps even required in the implementation
\nof those of those policies. Yeah, perhaps there’s some of his small thinks may not be a small at the end,
\nright. Especially and certainly in individual cases that’s that’s really, really true. You can look at two kids
\nwho start out in equally challenging circumstances. One does much better than other.
\nCertainly there are natural things, natural belittles that that play into that. But often it’s a it’s a function of the
\ncommunity. Where they are does sort of, you know, take a village after all. And that’s evident in
\nShetty’s research to write that it’s just this the students that moved into communities where they had
\nmore intact neighborhood dynamics, better school systems, the kind of social capital
\nwhere the expectation among their classmates was that they would go to college and all that their outcomes now
\nmatch the students where they went to school with in those new communities more than
\nthan the outcomes of the students in those neighborhoods that they that they left. So communities matter.
\nYes. Ryan? Yeah, fascinating. Perhaps us as a way to to wrap up
\nour conversation. Where would you like to see these research going here at SIPA?
\nWe value empirical research a lot and we
\nthink that there is an important aspect of actually assessing the real impact
\nof public policies in certain aspects of social life. From an empirical
\npoint of view, of course, this type of research is hard to assess empirically. But
\nI don’t want to lead dancer. But but it will be interesting in learning. What
\nare the next steps? What what Ryan and I believe are the next steps in this
\ntype of research? Yeah, great question and really important. A couple things come to mind right
\noff the bat. One is, I think, more research consistent with your own colleague
\nhere, John Hadfield, who’s a political economist here at McCombs. He’s done some interesting work on
\nsubdivisions of local government and the relationship to economic performance in an area. And his
\nis where he and he contributed to our volume as well. And his work has shown that when you have this competition
\nof municipalities within a larger region, you you actually get better economic
\noutcomes around the region for a variety of reasons that he explains. I think that just that
\narea itself kind of calls for our research. And his his research has really kind of opened the door to some of these
\nlarger questions about with the relationship between where governance for certain types of policies
\nis situated and the kind of outcomes that are all hoping for economically and socially in an area is important
\nand there could be more in that field. I also think that the role
\nof locally generated and state generated
\nregulations and and and related statutes and ordinances
\nthere, their effect on mobility, I think is really an important thing for us to be studying right
\nnow. So everything from occupational licensing to non-compete agreements to land use policies
\nand what their what their effect is on people’s ability to actually relocate to areas where
\nthere’s opportunity, their ability to actually start new firms and new new enterprises, I think needs
\nneeds to be studied even more thing with a growing awareness that some of these problems, many of which are actually generated locally, then raises questions
\nabout what the state’s role is in that regard. How much those things are actually inhibiting access to opportunity
\nis something that I think, given the scale of that problem state by state around the country, I don’t think there’s quite enough
\nempirical research in that area. So that that would be another one that I would look at. And then the third one would be just this whole
\nrealm of post-secondary education that’s not just for your college degrees, but those whole
\nnon-accredited certifications that employers value, training institutes and community colleges.
\nThere’s a lot there’s a lot of more interesting work that can be done in that area
\nrelated to how to assess where labor markets are changing and growing, where opportunities are and what schools
\nare actually doing. Can they read those signals? You know, and and I think that that’s an area where,
\nagain, given the importance that it plays, I think in in regional public policy right
\nnow, there’s not as much literature there as it should be. Well, for grad students listening,
\nI think to Ryan just set up like at least five or six dissertation topics
\nright here, hopefully. So hopefully you’ll get some takers that. That’s correct. Thank you very much for being with us today,
\nRyan. Great to be with you. Thanks. Before we wrap up, you can get more information
\nin our medium page. Thanks for listening to Policy Imogen’s. See you next time.<\/p>\n"},"episode_featured_image":false,"episode_player_image":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/cepa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2021\/05\/SC_PolicyMcCombs_Art-scaled.jpg","download_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/cepa\/podcast-download\/7\/policymccombs-ryan-streeter-of-aei.mp3","player_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/cepa\/podcast-player\/7\/policymccombs-ryan-streeter-of-aei.mp3","audio_player":null,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"google_play":{"key":"google_play","url":"","label":"Google Play","class":"google_play","icon":"google-play.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"},"itunes":{"key":"itunes","url":"","label":"iTunes","class":"itunes","icon":"itunes.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/cepa\/feed\/podcast\/policymccombs","embedCode":"Ryan Streeter on Social Capital, Civic Health, and Quality of Life in the United States<\/a><\/blockquote>