Maine Policy Matters

S2E1 Amanda Rector’s ”(Un)precedented: Reflecting on the Early Lessons of the COVID-19 Pandemic”

Maine Policy Matters—Season 2, Episode 1
Link to Essay: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/vol30/iss2/1/ 
What’s a state economist to do in the middle of an unprecedented global pandemic? When everyone is asking for answers, but they are hard to find?
In this episode of Maine Policy Matters, Amanda Rector, the Maine state economist since 2011, shares her thoughts on the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic’s economic impact, and what the future might hold.
Transcript
What’s a state economist to do in the middle of an unprecedented global pandemic? When everyone is asking for answers, but they are hard to find?
Amanda Rector, the Maine state economist since 2011, shares her thoughts on the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic’s economic impact, and what the future might hold.
[Background music]
This is the Maine Policy Matters podcast from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine.  I am Eric Miller, research associate at the Center.
On each episode of Maine Policy Matters, we discuss public policy issues relevant to the state of Maine. Today, we are going to hear an essay written by Amanda Rector–the Maine state economist–entitled  “Unprecedented: Reflecting on the Early Lessons of the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
In her words (full text of original article):
I remember very clearly the last days I spent in my Augusta office before the COVID-19 pandemic had me working from home. The last in-person meeting I spoke at was awkward as we tried to figure out the social dynamics: do we shake hands? Elbow bump? Wave from a safe distance? I chatted with someone in the parking lot who was hauling a computer monitor and keyboard and box full of paperwork to her car. “Who knows when we’ll be back,” she joked. The white board in my office was covered with notes on the potential economic effects from the pandemic. They were up for so long before I came back that I can still see traces of it that I couldn’t fully erase—a memory of the last days before so many lives changed so much.
I spent the early days of the pandemic drinking from a firehose of information, trying to wrap my brain around the economic impacts of a global pandemic. As an economist, I found I was suddenly a very popular person, even though it felt like I was just repeating the phrase “I don’t know” in every conversation. The only upshot was that no one else knew either. I took advantage of the small-town nature of Maine to start calling folks up, asking how their businesses or sectors were doing, what they saw coming down the pike, and what might be helpful as they navigated this strange new world of PPE (personal protective equipment) and stay-at-home orders. While the plural of anecdote is not data, on-the-ground perspectives do count for something when data aren’t available.
Data are my bread and butter: I use numbers and trends to understand what is happening and then translate that data for people who are trying to make decisions, whether policy, business, or research related. The challenge was that the pandemic broke my data sources. Demographic and economic data are notoriously lagged and most traditional sources wouldn’t start reflecting effects from the pandemic for months. The first source of real data I could get my hands on was vehicle miles traveled from the Maine Department of Transportation. We could use this as a proxy for economic activity because of the nature of the economic disruption—economic activity had slowed because the physical movement of people had slowed.
Even as quickly as the pandemic was breaking traditional data sources, though, there were people and organizations scrambling to put together innovative new data sources. Many of these new sources used big data and all of the digital information we trail behind us as  we move through the world. Opportunity Insights, for example, gave us estimates of consumer spending, small business openings, employment, and time spent outside the home. Were the data perfect? No. But it was much better to have semireliable, timely data (with an understanding of the shortcomings) than to be flying blind. Even the US Census Bureau, the staid bureaucratic stalwart of thoroughly vetted and significantly lagged data, got into the act, producing Small Business and Household Pulse Survey data with astonishing speed.
Federal policy response happened rapidly as well. The Federal Reserve Bank made monetary policy shifts and Congress passed fiscal stimulus and economic supports that were signed by the president in short order. Recent analysis has shown just how important those measures were: the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which takes into account various assistance programs, actually fell in 2020 and would have risen if it weren’t for the federal stimulus packages. Federal supports staved off what could have been disastrous economic consequences.
It is important to remember, however, that the COVID-19 pandemic has been a highly individualized experience. Everything from race and ethnicity to gender to household status to income level to geographic location to industry and occupation to the presence of children in the home has affected any given person’s impact from the pandemic. It has been difficult, at times, to remember that not everyone is having the same experience and that what has been a mild inconvenience for some has been an earth-shattering disaster for others.
It appears that, for many people, the pandemic has triggered a period of soul-searching. No one has been completely untouched by the pandemic, and the rapidity with which change happened has thrown us all for a loop. For some workers, this has been a time to think about what they really want out of life and work. Maybe it’s higher wages or better benefits (or any benefits, in some cases). Maybe it’s a different field of work. Maybe it’s more time spent at home instead of on the road commuting to a job. Maybe it’s more autonomy or more respect or more consistent hours. Anthony Klotz, an organizational psychologist at Texas A&M University, coined the term “the Great Resignation” to describe recent rises in job quits tied to the desire for better work, however that might be defined. We seem to be engaged in a nationwide period of navel gazing, with the final conclusions yet to be determined.
Where is this period of reflection and re-evaluation taking us? In some cases, it is accelerating trends that already existed. Remote work was already increasing before the pandemic, but with so many people working for so long in some form of remote work, it is likely that a higher share of remote work is here to stay. Recent surveys have indicated that workers are looking for the ability to work either fully or partly from home or a remote location. The combination of health risks for older people and a strong stock market likely accelerated the retirements of many older workers. Challenges in hiring workers, particularly in fields such as retail or leisure and hospitality, will likely accelerate the automation trends that were already beginning to take over for some hard-to-fill vacancies.
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a recession that lasted from February to April of 2020. A mere two months. The shortest recession on record. But it was also the deepest recession on record. It shows up in our economic data as a rift, or a spike, depending on the measure. Long-term analysis will have to treat the pandemic period as an outlier; I anticipate many future research papers with an asterisk next to 2020–2021. During the first months of the pandemic, the word I heard most often was “unprecedented.” It became so overused that it started to lose meaning. We used that word so much because there were so many things we had no benchmark for, no prior experience with, nothing to look back on. I have to imagine this is one of the words that will be synonymous with the COVID-19 pandemic. But now, what we have been through is precedented and the analysis that has resulted provides us with a historical reference point when looking back at the pandemic period and the resilience, ingenuity, and change it has sparked.
[Background music]
What you just heard was a reading of Maine state economist Amanda Rector’s essay entitled “Unprecedented: Reflecting on the Early Lessons of the COVID-19 Pandemic.” You can find this essay in Maine Policy Review’s special issue on Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Volume 30, No. 2. Maine Policy Review is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine, edited by Linda Silka, Joyce Rumery, and Barbara Harrity. Jonathan Rubin directs the Policy Center. A thank you to Jayson Heim and Kathryn Swacha, scriptwriters for Maine Policy Matters, and to Daniel Soucier, our production consultant.
In the next episode we will host Amanda Rector for a more in-depth interview about her thoughts on COVID’s economic impact.
We would like to thank you for listening to Maine Policy Matters from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. You can find us online by searching Maine Policy Matters on your web browser. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow us on your preferred social media platform to stay updated on new episode releases.
I am Eric Miller—thanks for listening and please join us next time on Maine Policy Matters.
 

S01E02 - Maine Policy Matters: Universal Basic Income, Covid-19, & ME

In this episode of Maine Policy Matters, Daniel Soucier sits down with Dr. Michael Howard to discuss the confluence of Universal Basic Income and the novel coronavirus pandemic.
[00:00:00] Daniel Soucier: Hello and welcome back to Maine Policy Matters, the official podcast of the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine, where we discuss the policy matters that are most important to Maine's people and why Maine policy matters at the local, state, and national levels. My name is Daniel Soucier and I'll be your host. 
[00:00:26] On June 19th, 2019 governor Janet Mills signed. LD 1324 into law. The bill created a committee to study the benefits and feasibility for social safety net reform in Maine. That could include a basic income program for the state. On the national political stage, entrepreneur, Andrew Yang made the Freedom Dividend a $1,000 per month stipend for every American adult.
[00:00:52] The major pillar of his 2020 Democrat primary campaign recently due to the intense economic distress felt across the world due to the Coronavirus pandemic countries have embraced experimenting with basic income to address workers and families battered by the virus. In the CARES Act, Congress appropriated direct cash payments of $1,200 from most adults and $500 for each child. In Spain, the government is moving forward to create a permanent basic income program to address the long-term economic stress brought on by Covid-19. We sat down with Dr. Michael Howard, a philosopher at the University of Maine, who is the co-editor of the Journal Basic Income Studies, and is also the national coordinator for the United States Basic Income Guarantee Network to find out what basic income is, what type of pilot programs exist in the United States and across the globe, and the confluence of basic income policies with the Coronavirus pandemic.
[00:02:02] Michael, thank you so much for joining us today to discuss UBI as a policy matter at the local, state, and national level, and why UBI matters for the state of Maine. 
[00:02:13] Michael Howard: Yeah, I'm glad to be here. Thanks for inviting me. 
[00:02:15] Daniel Soucier: Michael, I've noticed in just about every media outlet over the past year, there has been discussions of universal basic income, which some folks refer to as UBI or basic income, and we'll refer to it in all those ways throughout this podcast.
[00:02:30] A lot of times these media reports tend to be vague and oftentimes they mischaracterize universal basic income. So can you explain for us the major tenants of UBI and does it have supporters on both sides of the political aisle? 
[00:02:46] Michael Howard: Yeah. The universal basic income as scholars refer to it is one kind of minimum income guarantee.
[00:02:54] It's distinctive features are that it is individual. It goes to each person and not to households. It is universal. Everyone gets it regardless of age, wealth, or income. And it is not means tested. It is also unconditional. It is not conditional on any behavioral requirements such as willingness to work or look for work or having been laid off or pursuing some particular course of study or approved volunteer work.
[00:03:24] And it is in the form of cash rather than an in-kind benefits such as food stamps. There are variants of a minimum income guarantee. And when you mentioned the confusion sometimes people use basic income to refer to some other forms of minimum income guarantee, such as a negative income tax, which is like a basic universal basic income, but it is phased out as income from other sources rises.
[00:03:51] So it goes to the people who need it, but not to people who were above a certain threshold. And the earned income tax credit is similar to a negative income tax, but it is in addition to being phased out at higher incomes, is conditional on working for wages and it phases in as one earns more income and then phases out as one's income continues to rise.
[00:04:15] So the earned income tax credit, while it is responsible for lifting a lot of people out of poverty, it still leaves a lot of people in poverty who are not eligible. Now universal basic income has supporters across the political spectrum. On the political left, you have groups like Black Lives Matter that have endorsed basic income. You have on the right libertarians like Charles Murray, who's written a book supporting a basic income. So in a certain sense, there's a broad support for the general idea, but when you get into the policy details, you find considerable difference between the kind of basic income people want on different parts of the political spectrum.
[00:04:54] Daniel Soucier: Wow. Thank you so much for clearing that up for us. So UBI seems to be this unique and innovative policy solution that in recent times have been circling around both national and state level, even in the state of Maine. And so we recently saw entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who made UBI a major part of his platform as a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and here in Maine, governor Janet Mills signed LB 1324 into law just this past June in this established committee to study the benefits and feasibility for starting a universal basic income for the state of Maine. So are there currently UBI programs in place right now in the United States or maybe even globally, and if so, are those programs able to achieve their desired policy effects?
[00:05:48] Michael Howard: Yeah, let me start with the the LD 1324 here in Maine. It's a matter of full disclosure. I'm on that committee. And we've only had one meeting and partly because of the pandemic and partly because of the business that the legislature's engaged in, we've only met once and things are on hold right now.
[00:06:07] But the bill isn't actually necessarily looking at universal basic income at the state level. It's a bill to explore ways to enhance basic income security and that sort of broad sense of ensuring that everybody has basic necessities covered. But it might be done through an expansion of the earned income tax credit, making it refundable.
[00:06:31] There are lots of different things that the committee's looking at. And I suspect we might look at ways to move in the direction of basic income like policies, but it's really too early to tell where we're going with that committee at this stage. The only long-term government, universal basic income policy, I think anywhere in the world is Alaska's permanent fund dividend.
[00:06:56] And I co-edited two books on the permanent fund dividend. It's not a full universal basic income in the sense of being adequate for basic needs. But since the 1980s it has given every Alaskan, including children between a thousand and $2,000 annually. Based on the performance of the Alaska Permanent Fund, which was capitalized from Alaska's Oil Wealth. The policy contributes to Alaska being a state with relatively low poverty and relatively low inequality, and it's extremely popular.
[00:07:29] It's almost the third rail of Alaska politics. It was introduced by a Republican governor. With support from Democrats and the legislatures as well as Republicans. So that's a policy that's very interesting to look at. And currently there's a minimum income pilot project underway in Stockton, California, where a sample of residents in Stockton are receiving $500 a month for an extended period of time. And there are some initial results that show it's quite promising. What people find is that this money is not wasted. People at the ground level know what their needs are. And about 40% of them are using it for food. It's a way that it highlights the amount of food insecurity, even with existing welfare policies in place, that when given some extra cash, people spend it on food, they spend it on healthier food.
[00:08:21] So that's an experiment to watch. And there's planning for a project underway in Oakland, California that's privately financed. There's talk about a pilot project in Chicago. Our neighbors to the north in Ontario launched a very serious basic income pilot project, and unfortunately it was brought to a halt by the incoming Ford government.
[00:08:42] That's not really gonna go further, but there's enough initial evidence from that to, to be worth exploring. And although not a government program, the Eastern Band of Cherokee in North Carolina have given regular cash payments to all tribal members over a fairly long period of time. And those the results of that have been studied and people have found that it's not so much a handout as it is a hand up.
[00:09:09] Recipients experience better mental health results better results in finishing school, finding their way into meaningful employment. And so the cash payments are really more of an investment in human capital. And that's one ex another experiment that people point to. So it's been around for a while and there's a fair amount of evidence of what people would actually do if they received a universal basic income.
[00:09:34] Daniel Soucier: So that's fascinating. So there's some sort of precedent out there. There are some examples to point to. And with this increased media attention, this increased political attention for ubi as a policy option as a means to reform the social safety net. So does UBI draw a larger, a longer history? Has this, is this a fairly new idea? Did it, start percolating up with the Alaska permanent fund and discussions around that? Or is there a longer history here for universal basic income discussions?
[00:10:07] Michael Howard: It actually goes back quite a ways. The American Revolutionary, Thomas Payne is one of the earliest proponents of a universal cash payment in the form of a lump sum to be paid at the age of maturity and an old age pension. And this was gonna be based in his proposal on a tax, on the rent from land. Payne's idea was that once the land is bought up by a minority of the population other people are excluded from what ought to be thought of as what nature provides to all of us in common, the land.
[00:10:43] And those who have appropriated the land owe a compensation to the people who've been excluded. And so his idea was you give a lump sum and maturity and an old age pension so that nobody is thrust into poverty from lack of access to the commons. In the 20th century, a guaranteed minimum income, it was in the form of a negative income tax, was proposed on the political right by economists, Milton Friedman.
[00:11:09] And it was supported on the left by Martin Luther King Jr. and many other people. George McGovern in his presidential campaign favored what he called a demo grant, which was a kind of a minimum income guarantee to all citizens. And after that presidential election, Richard Nixon proposed a family assistance plan, which would guarantee a minimum income for all. Now, that included some work requirements and it failed to pass the Congress, but it came out of that milu of discussion about guaranteed minimum income. And then the idea was faded into the background for quite a while but more recently late 20th century in the last couple of decades.
[00:11:51] Partly in response to persistent poverty in all the countries with advanced welfare states, partly in response to fears of job loss due to artificial intelligence and automation. And partly to regardless of how the automation will unfold the growing precarity of employment, more people in part-time and temporary jobs without benefits.
[00:12:17] There's been interest in some kind of floor to be put under all earned income, and we could add to that concerns about the ecological limits to growth. The way that capitalist economies have dealt with poverty and low wages is to try to increase the pie. So capitalists still keep their profits and workers get a trickle down from the growing economy, but, if we face ecological limits to growth, then we have to find new solutions to a growing population, more people coming to the labor market, but perhaps fewer full-time well-paid jobs there for them.
[00:12:55] As evidence of the sort of growing interest, we see pilot projects popping up all over the world from India, which had a major pilot project. Namibia in Southern Africa, Finland, about a year ago, had a pilot project Ontario, I mentioned in Stockton, Oakland and California. Mississippi has a pilot project underway, and there's been considerable interest in UBI across European countries Germany, Italy, France, the UK, the Netherlands, Scotland, Switzerland have had either discussion about pilot projects or referenda showing a widespread public interest. So it's really on the agenda. And of course, Andrew Yang's campaign in the United States has put it on the political agenda here in a way that it hasn't been for a very long time. 
[00:13:44] Daniel Soucier: As an American Revolution specialist, I find it absolutely fascinating that ideas circling around basic income can be traced back to the founding of the country. So it seems like there's this bipartisan support for UBI today and his historically over time as well. And there are some, pilot projects in place for UBI policies at local, state, and national levels throughout the United States and in the world.
[00:14:13] So what are the objections then, to look at the other side of the coin? What are the objections to universal basic income from either, political, economic, or maybe philosophical stem. 
[00:14:26] Michael Howard: Yeah. I think the two major objections one is economic and the other is moral. The economic objection you often hear is that it would cost too much.
[00:14:36] For example, if you take the US population of roughly 330 million and multiply that by say $12,000, which is a ballpark figure that some people would propose for a basic income. You got a figure of nearly 4 trillion dollars and that just people's throw up their hands and say, who could afford that?
[00:14:58] Now $12,000 is not enough for an individual to live on, but you can imagine a family of four with $48,000 they might be able to meet a lot of their basic needs with that. If children got only half of what adults receive, which is quite commonly the proposal, you get a amount for parents, maybe half that for children, the family of four would receive 36,000, but the gross cost would be quite a bit less than 4 trillion.
[00:15:28] Andrew Yang's proposal didn't have anything for children, so it would be significantly less, but you're still talking about a pretty large gross cost somewhere in the trillions. One response to this gross cost worry is to point out that in a well-designed basic income scheme, the money going to those above a certain threshold would be routinely clawed back in taxes.
[00:15:55] So the net cost to the taxpayers would be closer to maybe a sixth of the gross cost that would be from my, 4 trillion figure, it'd be a little over half a trillion. Now that's still a lot of money, but it's not the apparent budget, busting amount of the gross cost. And if people find the gross cost nevertheless to be an insurmountable problem, a negative income tax would achieve the minimum income guarantee for what amounts to the net cost of a universal basic income.
[00:16:27] And actually in practice even the net cost would be substantially less because some of the other cash transfers of the current welfare state would become redundant. It's not clear why you would need an earned income tax credit or a food stamp program if everybody had a universal basic income. I think the cost argument is really much overstated most of the time.
[00:16:51] But that is when you just look at the, it's you look at university tuition, at the prestigious private colleges and you say, oh my God, $60,000 a year. I can't afford that. You look at the fine print and there are always scholarships, there are loans, and it becomes manageable for quite a few people to still go to a one of those schools.
[00:17:12] Now, the moral objection actually may be the more difficult one to overcome, and this is the objection that people have to giving quote people something for nothing. Why should able-bodied people who are able to work be given cash that's not conditional on their doing any work. Now the main response to this point is to call attention to the rather narrow conception of work that we tend to take for granted. Many people make contributions to society all the time but they're not paid. The most important example of this is people staying at home and raising their children. Most often these are women and they are often economically dependent on their husbands if they have a husband.
[00:18:03] If they don't, they're often in extreme poverty. And moreover, those who are in families with husbands, they are often trapped in situations of domestic violence. So basic income would first of all recognize that they're doing important work and it would give them an option to leave if they're in a situation that is really not tolerable.
[00:18:26] So that's one kind of feminist argument for a basic income that there's work going on, it's not paid. It may in fact be exploited, and this is a way to address that exploitation. There are other kinds of work that people do that is unpaid and not recognized. That has to do with artistic creativity, volunteerism, and community.
[00:18:46] This would be a way to encourage, recognize that and enable people to do it who otherwise would not be able to do it. A further response is to argue that with support from some of the past pilot projects there will not be a catastrophic number of people dropping out of paid employment. On the contrary, a universal basic income can enable people to enter the labor market, facilitating transportation, tools, training, and flexibility in choosing between full and part-time work while attending to childcare and dealing with other necessities of why. 
[00:19:27] Daniel Soucier: So I find these pilot projects and how people are spending the money to be absolutely fascinating and shows the different ways that UBI could be implemented and have people utilize that income for a variety of reasons. Now with recent news, we would be remiss not to discuss the convergence of UBI policy with the novel Coronavirus Pandemic.
[00:19:49] Governors throughout the country, including Maine, have issued widespread stay-at-home orders due to Covid-19, and there's been vast economic disruptions in the United States and across the globe. So Congress has recently passed the CARES Act, which is a 2.2 trillion economic relief package that includes $1,200 payments for many Americans, as well as $500 for each child and prior to its passage, we saw proposals for unconditional cast payments to address the crisis, not only from more progressive liberals like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but also from conservatives like Mitt Romney. Now as Congress is coming to consensus on a fourth phase of Covid- 19 economic relief that includes more direct payments, it makes me wonder what the role of UBI has what ability UBI has to play in times of national emergencies, such as the novel Coronavirus Pandemic to provide citizens with some sort of economic stability.
[00:20:52] Michael Howard: Yeah, I think it has an important role to play. Of course we don't understand enough about the virus to know when the stay-at-home orders can be safely lifted. It'll be interesting to see what happens in China as restrictions, which have been much tighter than in the United States, are slowly lifted.
[00:21:10] After having reached zero new cases, at least if you accept the government reports there, will the virus come roaring back requiring a retightening of restrictions? In the United States, we're nowhere near the peak of infections and even further from zero new cases. So I think this could go on for months.
[00:21:31] A one-time payment of $1,200 is clearly not gonna be enough to relieve the economic distress and unemployment compensation, which is another part of that package. Even if it's liberalized to include some self-employed people as the law included, it still leaves out many people who are not employed when the crisis began and they're now, they can't get jobs 'cause there are no jobs to be had.
[00:21:57] So not only will people be suffering with no income, the economy will be further weakened from lack of demand. The most straightforward method to restore confidence, stimulate demand, and reach all the people who are needing help, and to do this with a minimum of bureaucratic delay is to send checks to everyone on a regular basis until the lockdown can be safely lifted.
[00:22:26] The House Fi nancial Affairs committee proposed $2,000 to adults and a thousand dollars to children for the duration of the crisis. That's, I think, something in that ballpark is what we need. Now, of course rich people don't need it. People will say, why do you give it to everybody? But I think we can address that problem rather easily by just taxing that money back from those who are still earning substantial incomes by the end of the year.
[00:22:53] That seems to me to be the solution to the, giving it to people who don't need it, just as in, in a well designed basic income scheme, that scheme that's permanent. You build that into the integration of the tax code together with the income payments. 
[00:23:07] Daniel Soucier: Interesting. So as you noted before, one of the common objections to universal basic income is the claim that it would disincentivize working for wages and cause people to become comfortable staying at home.
[00:23:21] However, it seems like in the times of a pandemic that UBI could be a valuable tool in policymakers tool chest for combating the spread of disease. What role do you think UBI can play as a public health policy to help flatten the curve? 
[00:23:36] Michael Howard: Yeah, exactly. The usual objections to basic income simply aren't relevant in this situation.
[00:23:43] We want to incentivize people to stay home and not to seek employment, or to put it more accurately, most people don't need an incentive to stay home. The jobs have vanished as non-essential businesses have been closed. The problem is to enable people to survive during the lockdown without spreading the infection.
[00:24:04] I can add that the other objection, the cost objection is much less relevant in the current context. We've seen in space of a week, the Congress appropriated over $2 trillion without a thought as to where the money would come from. Apparently it's just gonna be deficit spending. Now, in normal times, the worry would be that such spending would be inflationary, but our situation now is the threat of deflation.
[00:24:32] Plunging ever deeper into a recession, we may very shortly be facing higher unemployment rates than during the Great Depression. So this is not a time to worry about inflation. It is a time to worry about keeping people economically secure in their homes and in their small businesses so that there is an economy left to rebuild when the virus has passed.
[00:25:01] Daniel Soucier: So you've discussed earlier that there are several programs at local, state, and national levels throughout the world for direct basic income payments. Now, at least on a temporary basis, right? The United States of America is experimenting with UBI as a public health and economic policy to combat novel Coronavirus and provide economic relief to millions of Americans once the pandemic subsides. What do you expect that America's gonna learn from this experiment with temporary UBI? 
[00:25:33] Michael Howard: Yeah. First, one big caveat. As with other, universal basic income experiments. We won't know whether the way people behave with a guaranteed income that is temporary is the way that they would behave if the income were permanent.
[00:25:50] And all the proposals for this are for a temporary emergency, basic income. So that's an unknown. That said the experiment would be unique in that it would include the entire country. All of these previous experiments have been either a sample population or maybe, rare cases, a whole town as in Dauphin, Manitoba.
[00:26:14] A limitation of these earlier minimum income experiments, in addition to there being temporary, was that they were limited to particular cities. So the systemic effects on the labor market of everyone receiving the guarantee are not observable. But if the entire country gets a universal basic income, then we'll have a chance to see for some period of time what some of those systemic effects might be.
[00:26:37] For example, we might find that employers will need to make some jobs more attractive in order to get people to take them on. Right now, people, if they have no choice but to take the job that's on offer or they have no income at all. That's a choice that significant numbers of people won't have if everybody's getting a basic income.
[00:27:00] And it gives a little more bargaining power to the worker in relationship to the employer for the conditions of work. And we might be able to see some more of that effect if a universal income is spread throughout the whole economy. 
[00:27:15] Daniel Soucier: That's quite thought provoking. Unknowing, the, we don't really know how this is gonna play out and but we will see what some of the systematic effects are as this unfolds.
[00:27:27] As many Americans have never really recovered from the economic stress brought on by the 2008 Great Recession have experienced a rather precarious work life over the past decade or more. So do you think that the millions of individuals that are now suddenly experiencing temporary job loss may increase their empathy with individuals who are struggling on a more regular basis with economic security? And could this perhaps lead into some policy changes at either the local, state, or national level? 
[00:27:59] Michael Howard: I would hope that would be the effect. The phrase I hear a lot during this pandemic is, we're all in this together. I think it's not quite true. Some people have no choice but to report for essential work.
[00:28:11] And some of them, like the frontline healthcare workers people in food production and transport they don't have any choice but to show up and they're doing so often that considerable risk to themselves and their families. On the other hand, you have some people who are privileged enough that they can retreat to their country homes and just ride it out.
[00:28:31] So the risk is very unequally distributed. Nevertheless, the threat of illness is real for all of us, and most of us are being affected in our family lives, our economic security, or our work. Many of us who are still working or working at home that could bring us together and break down some of the usual divisions that separate us between the employed and the unemployed.
[00:28:59] Or between those who work at home and those who work outside the home. And I'm thinking work here again, in a broader sense of just paid employment. People who do homework, who take care of their children. If everybody's at home, we're all doing a little more of that kind of work. And I think it may increase sympathy and understanding both within families and across some of the usual divisions in society. Also having to live for some period of time on a fraction of one's normal income, which many people will have to do, may educate many people about what it is like to survive on a low income. And this could lead to more generous and less restrictive policies down the road. But a lot of this depends on the politics, both during and after the pandemic.
[00:29:45] And I don't think it's clear what that response will be. In Hungary, Victor Orban has used the pandemic as an excuse to start ruling by decree. Basically, it's declared a dictatorship, so you have, on the one hand, the politics of fear and authoritarianism, but I would hope in this country that instead we would take the path of politics, of hope and solidarity instead.
[00:30:10] Daniel Soucier: So it seems like UBI might be able to be used by policy makers to help minimize some of the effects happening by novel coronavirus. However, I've noticed on the news that many policymakers are skeptical that these direct cash payments are a good idea during the Coronavirus pandemic because there, there's a fear that once these policies are in place, even if they're temporary, that they're gonna be hard to roll back.
[00:30:39] But as you've noted that, we're not sure how long the pandemic's going to last for. Some experts have suggested it could be as long as 12 to 18 months from now. And if that's the case, there certainly will be some intense economic distress for an unknown period of time. So even once the virus is battled back a bit, there's still gonna be some economic ripples to come out of this and this is most noted by the fact that in the first two weeks of these stay at home orders, there's been nearly 10 million new unemployment plans, which is a truly unprecedented figure. So what do you think the role of UBI could be in restarting the American economy after the pandemic subsides?
[00:31:21] Michael Howard: Yeah. I think it, it actually won't be hard to repeal 'cause you can simply stipulate in the law that the payments will end when the crisis is passed. But people may find that there is, and I think people may find there's much less labor market withdrawal and the critics fear. Doctors are reporting to work even when they're facing life-threatening conditions because they're committed to work, they have a dedication. And in normal times, most people want incomes above $12,000 per year. So they will seek employment above the basic income as soon as it's available. As the crisis ends, we may find that it would be desirable to continue the basic income, or we may find that we taper it down to a lower level so we still have an income floor, but not what we need when we have mass unemployment. Or we may decide to phase it out altogether, but as you suggest it, it may be necessary after the pandemic is over to maintain income support until businesses can get back into full operation and people can deal with accumulated debts.
[00:32:32] The future is so clouded that we really can't know exactly what we're dealing with. But one thing we can see right away is that to rely on the existing structures of the welfare state, in particular the unemployment compensation system it's not prepared to handle a crisis like this.
[00:32:51] The bureaucracy is too small to handle this deluge of applications. And more importantly, there are just lots of people who don't meet the bureaucratic requirements to receive unemployment payments. Many people are just gonna fall between the cracks. So we need something else that's more efficient, more tailored to the across the board needs that everybody's experiencing and I think we're likely to see something like a part, a temporary universal basic income, regular cash payments to everyone on the agenda for the fourth phase of the response to this crisis. 
[00:33:32] Daniel Soucier: That's very interesting. So before we, before our time together is over it's not every day that we get to sit down with a trained philosopher to discuss what might come out of the coronavirus pandemic if it does indeed extend longer than a month or two. Clearly there's gonna be some need for innovative policy responses that's gonna allow at least a portion of people to return return back to the typical traditional workplace from either working at home or being dislocated from work if the United States is gonna keep the economic engine from failing. But what do you see as the long term, maybe social, political, or lifestyle changes that might come out of the Covid-19 crisis? 
[00:34:18] Michael Howard: Yeah. As you say some essential work will need to be done throughout the shutdown. People need to eat and be housed. There are the other usual health emergencies that will continue to arise. Essential infrastructure will need to be repaired. That includes the communications infrastructure that we're increasingly relying on. And our economy is so integrated into the world market that there's not going to be any rapid decoupling of the United States from the world market, and they're going to need to be manufacturing and transport across national lines.
[00:34:55] It's really the whole world is in this thing together. But, in the context of the pandemic ,I think interestingly, the role of a basic income may be the opposite of what is usually thought of. Basic income advocates often argue that job losses due to artificial intelligence and automation combined with lower levels of consumption if we are not to overshoot the planet's ecological limits, that these two things point toward people working less, sharing the remaining work more, and spending less time, less spending, less money on consumer goods and enjoying more leisure and quality time in their communities. A basic income as normally conceived can facilitate all of these by partially decoupling income from paid employment.
[00:35:49] If part of your income is from a basic income, and part is from wages, then you can share a job more easily than if all of your income has to come from that job. However, during the pandemic, we don't want to maximize the participation of everyone in the paid labor market. That would only increase exposure to the virus. Rather, we want to maximize non-participation and keep the number employed doing the essential tasks to the minimum. Interestingly, an emergency universal basic income in combination with the right other policies can do that. But for those kept from employment, the basic income needs to be regular and it needs to be large enough to enable people to survive.
[00:36:36] That's why I think if this, if the lockdown continues for a more extended period of time, you really have to look at unconditional cash payments going out. Beyond just the onetime payment that people are supposed to be receiving. 
[00:36:51] Daniel Soucier: Michael, thank you so much for virtually sitting down with us today to discuss Maine policy matters and why UBI matters to the state of Maine.
[00:37:01] Michael Howard: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
[00:37:06] Daniel Soucier: Thank you for joining us. We would like to thank our sponsor, Maine Policy Review for bringing Maine Policy Matters podcast to you. You can find this in all of our episodes where podcasts are hosted, including SoundCloud, Stitcher, Spotify, iTunes, and Google Play. Remember to follow the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center on social media and drop us a direct message to express your support, provide feedback, or let us know what main policy matters to you.
[00:37:37] This is Daniel Soucier, and I'll see you next time on Maine Policy Matters. The information provided in this podcast by. The University of Maine System, acting through the University of Maine is for general educational and informational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and speakers, and do not represent the official policy or position of the university.

S01E01 - Maine Policy Matters: The Impact of Maine Policy Review

The focus of Maine Policy Matters is the exploration of policy matters at the local, regional, and national levels as well as to highlight how policy decisions in Maine matter at the local, regional, and national levels. The double play on the title reinforces the mission, vision, and values of the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center to inform public policy processes and promote civil discourse, integrity, and societal decision-making to solve the critical issues facing Maine and the nation. The podcast facilitates open and inclusive communication to advance relationships between policymakers, community leaders, students, faculty, and staff in the University of Maine System. In the first episode of the podcast, Dr. Linda Silka, the executive editor of Maine Policy Review and Senior Fellow at the Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions discusses the emerging and innovative policy research featured in the journal. She emphasizes MPR’s essential role in policymaking and policy education in Maine and discusses the scope and impact of the publication which has been downloaded over 260,000 times in over 203 different countries. This highlights that Maine policy matters to individuals across the globe.
[00:00:00] Daniel Soucier: Hello and welcome to Maine Policy Matters, the official podcast of the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine, where we discuss the policy matters that are most important to Maine's people and why Maine policy matters at the local, regional, and national levels. My name is Daniel Soucier, and I'll be your host.
[00:00:26] There are so many interesting and innovative things going on in Maine politics and Maine policy today that deciding on a topic for our initial podcast was no small feat. Instead of choosing one in our first episode, we sat down with Executive Editor of Maine Policy Review, Dr. Linda Silka, to discover the emerging policy issues that researchers, students, and policymakers are writing about in the Journal. Since its inception in 1991, Maine Policy Review has published nearly 800 articles and has well over two thousands subscribers. Since augmenting its print edition with a Digital Commons website, Maine Policy Review's articles have been downloaded over 260,000 times from over 9,100 institutions from over 203 different countries. This excellent resource highlights the variety of Maine policy matters being researched and debated in the state, but also shows that Maine policy matters to individuals across the globe.
Transcript
[00:01:35] Hi Linda, and thanks for joining us today. Thanks for asking me. Linda, can you tell us the topical focus of Maine Policy Review? What's contained in the journal the pages of the journal, and what's the overall mission for Maine Policy Review? 
[00:01:50] Linda Silka: One of the things that is just so interesting about Maine Policy Review is what the title says, what the name of we are really focused on Maine and we're really focused on policy, and we're very much focused on, not the most immediate thing, but very much on review, on really thinking about what's gone on in the past, what's going to go on in the future, what's going on now, and how we can think about all of these things.
[00:02:19] Daniel Soucier: So would you say, so it's sounds like Maine Policy Review is not your, say, your typical academic journal with these like theorists and specialists that are speaking to audiences of like their specialist peers. But Maine Policy Review is something that's a bit broader. So could you describe for us the writing style and maybe the accessibility of Maine Policy Review? Who's really writing these articles for publication and what do you think their intended takeaways or their intended audience is? 
[00:02:48] Linda Silka: Yeah. Really a good question. In a lot of states there's a big gap. There are great things being written by academics and there are great things being written by newspapers, but there isn't anything like a journal that, that takes a longer view that brings in different kinds of writers and really speaks to a kind of style of writing that doesn't assume that you have a whole bunch of academic knowledge. It doesn't dumb down anything. It just doesn't hide things behind the kind of academic knowledge we often use and our writers vary greatly. We have academics we have policy makers, we have business leaders, and we try very hard to help people write in a way that's going to help them reach a broad audience. That's really important. We want high school students to be pick able to pick up Maine Policy Review and say, oh, this relates to a class I'm in. We wanna have people living in senior facilities be able to do that.
[00:03:55] We want people in the Augusta State House. We want people that are working for councils of government. We want people to pick it up and say, I need to tell my other colleagues about this because it's really covering some important things. 
[00:04:09] Daniel Soucier: That's fascinating. So it sounds like it combines the best of both worlds as part, living in the realm of academia, but still it is accessible to a broad broad audience. So it sounds like Maine Policy Review is this really content rich journal and is able to speak to a variety of different individuals. Both that are, in the realm of policy making as well as individuals just interested in understanding policy. So have you found that there's any specific themes or topics that's gotten more coverage over time in Maine Policy Review? Does Maine itself have any recurring issues that keep popping up in the journal over time? 
[00:04:47] Linda Silka: One of the things that's a recurring issue and probably won't be a surprise to a lot of people, is. How do we keep our children in the state once they leave school, how do we make sure we have the jobs and the opportunities that people will stay?
[00:05:05] How do we make sure that people want to come to Maine who have the skills that we need? And that's a, that's an interesting struggle that if you look back we're in our bicentennial year. That's been a long-term struggle for Maine, is how to make sure that people can find what they need in the state.
[00:05:25] And there are a lot of policy issues there. They're about what kinds of jobs are available, how do we train people? They're about education. They're about the infrastructure that exists. We are. We are so far apart compared to other states in New England. Our distances are so great. We have opportunities to think about that in terms of the policy kinds of issues and having people come and have people stay, but they're recurring kinds of issues.
[00:05:53] And we are a state that is, on the one hand, we've long term been focused on things like marine issues and forestry and farming. Those are still very important, but how do we blend and think about those with other things that are going on in the times now. And so it, those are common kinds of issues that keep recurring and we really go at 'em, we really think about 'em.
[00:06:20] We don't say we haven't solved it, so we're never gonna be able to solve it. I, there's a real interesting can-do kind of approach. 
[00:06:27] Daniel Soucier: So these, so I guess I'll look at it from the other side of the coin for a second. So do you think the fact that these policy issues keep recurring, so things like articles about jobs, articles about training, about education, about, eliminating the drain of young people from the state or maybe even attracting others to the state.
[00:06:48] If you, so you see these as recurring issues over time in Maine Policy Review. Do you think the state is does it mean we're having trouble solving these problems as a state? Or what do you make of that?
[00:07:01] Linda Silka: Another interesting question. What I make of it is that they really are difficult problems and we need to step up and try things.
[00:07:10] Not assuming that they're necessarily gonna work, but they're are. What we do is, is really based on the best evidence in terms of what's gonna go on. But they're really difficult kinds of issues and we gotta keep trying. One of the, they're now books being written by policy makers and academics that are about wicked problems and that should really resonate with Maine.
[00:07:34] And they use that term for these problems that don't have a single solution. They might be things that combine what we need to do about education. So increasing the number of students that go to college, what we need to do about the decline in certain industries, what we need to do about the issues that are going on in terms of an aging population.
[00:07:57] And they're, when I tell students, I say, okay, we're gonna talk about wicked problems. And I hold up, some of the books that have been written about it, they laugh. They just say, oh yes. 'Cause it really resonates in terms of the use of Wicked in, in, in Maine. 
[00:08:14] Daniel Soucier: Absolutely. So you've, I guess you see Maine Policy Review looking at these wicked problems as a real asset that they keep recurring in the journal.
[00:08:24] Linda Silka: Yes. Yeah. 
[00:08:25] Daniel Soucier: Great. So in every issue of Maine Policy Review, I see that you write a column entitled Reflections. And one theme I've seen running through these columns in Maine Policy Review is how Maine is at the forefront regionally and nationally and policy related matters. Can you expand on this and maybe speculate a little bit on Maine Policy R eview's role in propelling Maine to its position as this policy innovator?
[00:08:52] Linda Silka: Yeah. Last week I was down in Maryland at a meeting that was bringing together people from a lot of different states who were thinking about policy kinds of issues. And I took some copies of Maine Policy Review and we talked about some things that were there and that. In two weeks, I'm going to Arizona to give talks about some of these kinds of things at University of Northern Arizona.
[00:09:15] And they're interested in part in trying to figure out why is it that there are these interesting things going on in Maine. And there are a couple things that are. To me or fascinating about Maine, that may be why some policy kinds of things get started here and get going here. One is that people know each other.
[00:09:37] The degrees of acquaintance are people are pretty linked. It's so information gets passed around fairly quickly. The second is, and I'm not gonna name any states, but states that I've lived in. There's a lot of status oriented things that are not a part of the Maine kind of way of doing things.
[00:09:58] And I saw that status oriented approach really getting in the way of coming up with solutions. It was more about the person and less about the problem solving. And I think a third interesting thing is we have a whole set of the issues come together. So we have a coastline, a lot of interesting opportunities and problems.
[00:10:26] We have forestry, we have just all these things that come together and so we have to keep thinking about policy across our different kind of positions and points. 
[00:10:37] Daniel Soucier: That's very interesting. So it's in some ways Maine Policy Review then is really reflective of Maine culture and of Maine society.
[00:10:46] Now one of my favorite parts of the journal, Linda, are these thought-provoking covers that are designed by Maine artist, Robert Shetterly. Now, we know that there's been a bit of controversy at times regarding the cover art for Maine Policy Review. Can you tell us a little bit about that controversy and what are the assets and liabilities for Maine Policy Review that come along with having such evocative cover based on original artwork? 
[00:11:12] Linda Silka: Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes people are concerned when they see the artwork. They've, they draw conclusions about the artwork that are different than the artists expected. And I think it's the Maine way that they let us know.
[00:11:28] They don't just go and talk to their neighbors and say, but they let us know and then we actually try to be responsive, have a little piece, in the so the next issue about it. But one of the things that's interesting about the covers is I was over at one of the offices the, in the university, one of the big offices and we were talking a little bit about Maine Policy Review and they said, we are so jealous, we just love those covers. And when I go to visit different legislators, the first thing you'll see oftentimes on their table that in their waiting room is the Maine Policy Review. And when I was down in Washington for a meeting with our congressional representatives going to their offices, They had them on their tables, the Maine Policy Review, that was very exciting.
[00:12:18] Daniel Soucier: Interesting. So the having the same artist over time definitely gives Maine Policy Review a distinct look to it and it's brands it in a way. Now my favorite personal cover is, the sheep that's sitting in front of the recliner watching television and smoking a cigarette. This looking at a quintessential what's wrong with American lifestyle, piece of artwork.
[00:12:42] Which MPR cover is your favorite and why? 
[00:12:46] Linda Silka: I have two favorites. One is the one for the library issue and where it shows a drawing of a cell phone, capturing that now we listen as opposed to ne necessarily reading. But it also shows the steps going up to it that look just like a library.
[00:13:07] So it captures that whole issue was about do we do we still need libraries? And the head of the UMaine Library and I wrote a piece for it that was called something like our library's necessary or are libraries obsolete. And it has been downloaded more than anything else I've ever written and I hear from people, and you look at the map that comes up on our website about what's being downloaded and where, all over the world people are thinking about that issue apparently. 
[00:13:42] Daniel Soucier: That makes me really think about the scope and impact of Maine Policy Review and sort of the shift that covers really exemplary of the shift of Maine Policy Review in some ways from just being a print medium to having some sort of digital space.
[00:13:58] Now, the content of the journal from the articles and columns like yours that you write, To the cover art really make the journal a compelling read and a really recognizable feature, like you said, in legislative offices, in businesses, places like this. And so Maine Policy Review in its history is published nearly 800 articles over three decades, and there are over 2000 subscriptions to the print copy of the journal.
[00:14:27] So who are the individuals or institutions on MPR's mailing list that's that's receiving the journal. 
[00:14:33] Linda Silka: Yeah. Every library in the state gets it, and you'll often see it displayed all the legislators get it. And then there also are a lot of individuals and organizations that, that get it.
[00:14:48] My hope is that high school students. Will you sit in their classroom? Since they can download articles and they can see things that we find more and more ways to really reach people across the age range because policy issues affect us all and the writing is really intended to be accessible to everybody.
[00:15:09] And we do have I mean there was a wonderful article in the Citizen Science issue that was a teacher who interviewed one of his students who was doing really interesting citizen science. I'd love to have every student in the state know about that, download it and read that article.
[00:15:30] Daniel Soucier: That's fascinating. Now I do know that the journal does have some relationship with high schools through the Margaret Chase Smith Library's essay contest, and that you do publish yes. At times articles from high school students. Could you talk a little bit about that? 
[00:15:45] Linda Silka: Yeah. It's just, it's such an important kind of initiative to have, to assist students in seeing that they have something to offer, that they have something to say and to learn how to frame what it is they have to say and that it isn't just something that they shared with their family or shared with their teachers, but that it gets a broad audience by being in each year in one of our issues.
[00:16:10] And it's just really interesting to read those and. See what the students have to say and to get a sense of kind of, of what's going on. And another one of my dreams would be to have everyone who comes to Maine to teach in colleges in their orientations, that they would read those essays written by high school students in Maine to give a sense, get a sense of the culture and the talent that's there. 
[00:16:37] Daniel Soucier: That's very interesting. A lot of people say that youth, is the call provides the call to action for policymakers. So it's great that you fold high school students into the journal.
[00:16:47] Now, what's really impressive to me regarding the readership of Maine Policy Review is it's not only, its vast impact throughout the state of Maine, right? You said it's in every library and in all these institutions, but it also has this worldwide readership. So I was thinking about this just this morning. And I looked online at the readership of the journal through University of Maine's Digital Commons website, and there was over 260,000 downloads of Maine Policy Review articles from almost 9,100 institutions in over an astounding 203 countries. So who's the typical audience accessing the journal online? In what ways do you think they're using Maine Policy Reviews content? 
[00:17:32] Linda Silka: It's when you have time in the morning and your bored go on the website and just, you can just sit there and watch the downloads and it tells you which article. Who's downloading it, and there's a wonderful map. So you can see that people in India are downloading, or the it's just really interesting to see. And you can see that there's every kind of institution, represented. There are governments in different countries. There are schools, there are colleges, there are businesses. It's just very interesting. And I, to go back to the example earlier of the library issue, it's, and how often it gets downloaded.
[00:18:21] It's getting downloaded in all these different countries. You see it all, all over in Africa, in Eastern Europe. It, and so trying to think about what does that mean and how do we pay attention to that is just, it's just very interesting 'cause on the one hand, our primary audience is having this work for Maine, but knowing that it's really getting downloaded at a lot of, in a lot of other locations is very exciting. 
[00:18:51] Daniel Soucier: Yeah, I absolutely agree. And it shows to how things have changed over time for Maine Policy Review. That, it's gone from this The sort of in-print only journal to having this broad worldwide appeal through the University of Maine's Digital Commons website.
[00:19:06] So clearly having some sort of online presence really is a benefit to the journal. So you're utilizing UMaine's Digital Commons website to increase the readership. In whay other ways is Maine Policy Review moving itself into the digital age where, print media seems to always need some sort of supplementation online, right? Because we have this 24 hour news cycle now, and individuals have this insatiable need that once they start learning about or researching various topics, it's just this need for instant gratification to learn everything you can about that topic. So in what ways is Maine Policy Review interacting with that?
[00:19:45] Linda Silka: What I think is really interesting is we're saying we're not going to simplify things in the sense that we're not gonna keep this kind of deep knowledge going on, but what we're gonna do is bring eyes to it and we're gonna use whether it is things like Twitter or other kinds of really skills that, different strategies that we're learning about and we have a lot to learn.
[00:20:06] But bringing the eyes to the issues, to the questions, to the opportunities, and using all of those different opportunities to increase people's thinking about policy in Maine, because what's true of a democracy, it's that we, ideally, we make decisions based on what everyone, thinks. Maine is leading in some of the ranked choice kinds of things that we're really thinking about those things.
[00:20:39] So how do we make sure that we're using new technologies to bring people to the complicated issues. 
[00:20:46] Daniel Soucier: Yeah. So I did notice that you are you, like you said, you're on Twitter. There's this increased presence on social media, a Instagram account, a Facebook account, and it's very true that a lot of the content in Maine Policy Review can't be simplified down, can't be boiled down to the 144 characters or whatever. So it's interesting that you're using a platform like Twitter to steer people in the right direction by looking what people are talking about online and then saying, Hey, if you're interested in tourism, check out these articles.
[00:21:18] Linda Silka: Yeah. Yeah. 
[00:21:20] Daniel Soucier: Fantastic.
[00:21:21] Linda Silka: Yeah. And it is just amazing on, really on all my travels. One of the first things I ask people when I'm giving talks different places, I say, have you been to Maine? And I get one of two different responses. One is, oh yes, and then long stories about being there. And the second is no, but I want to go to Maine. 
[00:21:45] Now, growing up in Iowa, we didn't hear people saying things like that. And so how do we, people are very interested. They are interested in how we're solving problems. They're interested in coming and spending time here. How do we make sure that they know about the interesting kinds of ways we're thinking about how to solve problems.
[00:22:07] Daniel Soucier: So it sounds like you've been traveling a lot for work and you tell people about About Maine Policy review. People will have this interest in Maine. Maine has this very strong sense of place with visitors, with local people. Now, when you travel, do you take Maine policy with you? 
[00:22:23] Linda Silka: Yes.
[00:22:23] Daniel Soucier: And what do people when you're traveling for conferences, to give talks, to have meetings? What are people's reactions? Those people from away when you introduce them to Maine Policy Review? 
[00:22:33] Linda Silka: Two or three things people say. One is, We don't have anything like this. How did this get started? How do you do all of this? That's one thing people say. The second is are pieces downloadable. And the third thing that people often say is, I'm interested in _ policy issue. Have you had anything on that? And then I say yeah, and if we happen to be near a computer, I show 'em how you can go online and check those things out.
[00:23:04] Or if we're not, I show them. A copy or two that I'm carrying and I say let's see what's in this issue and things. So those are the kinds of questions that I get. But the first thing that, or the comments, but the first thing is usually, oh, we don't have anything like this. 
[00:23:19] Daniel Soucier: That's interesting. So in some ways, Maine Policy Review is at the forefront of this exchange between academia, policy makers and having this real mix, this real asset of being able to talk amongst audiences, talk across different education levels like you said, getting high schoolers, college students involved all the way up through academics, policy makers, business leaders that's fantastic.
[00:23:44] And maybe
[00:23:45] Maybe if you look at that map of downloads as you're traveling around the country, maybe the downloads spike in areas where where you have been.
[00:23:52] Linda Silka: That would be fun. 
[00:23:54] Daniel Soucier: So that's interesting because in some ways, it seems throughout our conversation here you're talking about how Maine Policy review exemplifies the uniqueness of Maine society and the uniqueness of culture in the state of Maine. Do you have any further thoughts on that or/
[00:24:09] Linda Silka: Here's an example of how I think that it does illustrate that, and that is one of the, we always have a Margaret Chase Smith essay written by somebody who's noted, about issues that are going on. One of them in the last few years was by Ted Ames. A fisherman. But he's also somebody who won the MacArthur Genius Award, and he's really thinking about how do we maintain our fisheries in a warming ocean? And having him be the person who wrote that, I think really illustrates something about Maine. Here's somebody who is deeply committed to fishing, but also deeply committed to policy and is internationally recognized for his innovative work in that area.
[00:24:57] Daniel Soucier: That's interesting. So Maine Policy Review in some ways is made by local people for local policy concerns, obviously with these broader ramifications, but it also creates some sort of local buy-in to these policy policy issues as well. That's, that's all incredibly fascinating. So I guess before we're out of time together, it'd be great for you to share with us like what's on the horizon for Maine Policy Review. Give listeners an idea of what where Maine Policy review is going in the future. Now I know Maine Policy Review has had a variety of special issues in the past, right? So topics like leadership, food, aging, climate change, and of course my favorite as a historian, the intersections between humanities and policy.
[00:25:43] So does Maine Policy Review have anything planned to commemorate Maine's bicentennial? 
[00:25:48] Linda Silka: Yes. We're so excited about, we're doing an issue that's focused on the bicentennial and it really, the bicentennial in so many ways illustrates the kind of thing that we're trying to do with Maine Policy Review.
[00:26:02] Looking into the past, looking at the present, thinking about the future. And there's just so much that's terrific that is going on right now. Little snippets and papers. Just all kinds of wonderful things. Colin Woodard who's on our, our Maine Policy Review board has been doing amazing lead articles in the Portland paper about the bicentennial and the kind of history.
[00:26:28] So we're, we have great people who have come forward to write articles. We're really trying to capture all kinds of different perspectives, the past, the future, where we're going as a state and very excited about it as this issue will represent, I think what we do which is not focusing just on the present.
[00:26:52] But looking at the past, looking at the present and looking at the future. 
[00:26:55] Daniel Soucier: That's interesting because it circles back to what we were talking about at the beginning of our conversation, which is the assets of Maine Policy Review, having these issues occur over and over again in the in the journals.
[00:27:08] So it sounds like the bicentennial issue in some ways brings all of that together and combines the when... 
[00:27:14] Linda Silka: Great point. 
[00:27:14] Daniel Soucier: ...the past, the present and future together, and a very concrete way for readers. Now moving into the digital world and administering a journal, editing a journal must have some unique challenges.
[00:27:28] So what are some of those unique challenges for Maine Policy Review as you move forward? 
[00:27:33] Linda Silka: Really thinking about again, this, how to keep the depth of analysis that's included, but how to do it in a way that works when we have podcasts or when we have Twitters or when we have things on Facebook and how to really think about continuing to keep the complexity of the analysis so we end up with policies that have a long life, that work across different issues. And so many people haven't solved this yet. We probably, it'll take us a while to figure out how to bring together the digital age things, but we're working on it and we have. Telling people like you that are helping.
[00:28:14] Daniel Soucier: Thanks, I appreciate that. Now I know, yeah, I have seen that do, there's some facts and figures that get posted to Instagram and Facebook that shows like a chart of for example the age range of suicides in Maine. 
[00:28:28] Linda Silka: Yes. 
[00:28:28] Daniel Soucier: And then that steers readers to that article on that subject, or it talks about tourism in Northern Maine- there's charts about that, and then that steers readers to those broader articles. So in some way, it sounds like you're harnessing social media to say, here's an interesting clip that fits into those that one image or those 144 characters, and then saying, and here's the broader thing that, here's the broader topic you can get at.
[00:28:56] Linda Silka: Yeah. That's not the whole story. Go read the whole story. 
[00:28:59] Daniel Soucier: Fantastic. That's great that you're doing that in this age of clickbait where people get headlines and then all they do is share the headlines and they never dig into the story. So it sounds like Maine Policy Review's really committed to this.
[00:29:13] Moving people towards the broader, the more complex story instead of just delivering those small snippets. And that is it. 
[00:29:21] Linda Silka: And wouldn't it be fun if we had in neighborhoods across the state, like we had a Maine Policy Review day where neighbors just come together and everybody talks about the same article, but that's really relevant to something, that's going on in the state right now.
[00:29:37] I'm leading a number of book groups and where I'm really seeing just how much people like having something that can focus their discussions and boy, it would just be so interesting if we could move in that direction or thinking about the different faith communities where people regularly get together and could we have May is the month where you read a Maine Policy Review issue and talk about it. And we all, or people who are listening to this we decide, to do that in some way or going to a lot of the retirement communities, that are there, or that we come up with a package of materials for newcomers that come into our communities and one piece of that is a one pager about the Maine Policy Review and how they can, get it and learn from it. 
[00:30:23] Daniel Soucier: Very interesting. So if you are if an individual who's listening is interested in setting up a book group or bringing MPR into their faith communities I've provided your contact information as the summary.
[00:30:35] Is it would it be good for them to contact you? 
[00:30:37] Linda Silka: I'd love that.
[00:30:38] Daniel Soucier: You can steer them in directions. 
[00:30:39] Linda Silka: Yes. I'd love that. Yeah. 
[00:30:41] Daniel Soucier: So let's say to close let's pretend for a minute I'm a policy maker or I'm a business leader, or I'm an educator who's really discovering Maine Policy Review for the first time through this podcast, right? Listener out there. So can you tell me quickly why I should hop online and access my free copies of the journal? And in what ways is Maine Policy Review an asset to these individuals? 
[00:31:06] Linda Silka: Yeah. What I would say to myself is, what's a problem that I'm worrying about or thinking about? And I don't know as much as I would like about it.
[00:31:17] Could be about roads, could be about children, could be about the environment. And if you go to the website, you'll see you can put in a word and a topic and pull it up. And so I would say you're gonna find think about what you're worried about. Think about things you want more information at.
[00:31:37] Think about things you really care about for Maine. Take a look at the website. Put in some words, see what you find, and then think about who are two or three other people that you know that you'd like to share those ideas with. 
[00:31:54] Daniel Soucier: Fantastic. So Linda, I would like to thank you so much for sitting down with us today to talk about maine policy matters and why Maine Policy Review matters to the state of Maine.
[00:32:05] Linda Silka: Thank you. It was a pleasure.
[00:32:13] Daniel Soucier: Thanks for joining us on Main Policy Matters. You can find this in all of our episodes where podcasts are hosted, including SoundCloud, Stitcher, Spotify, iTunes, and Google Play. Remember to follow the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center on social media and drop us a direct message as this show develops to express your support, provide us some feedback, or let us know what Maine policy matters to you. The information provided in this podcast by the University of Maine System acting through the University of Maine is for general education informational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and speakers, and do not represent the official policy or position of the university.
[00:33:00] This is Daniel Soucier and I'll see you next time on Maine Policy Matters.