The influence of policy | Amy Hanauer | TEDxSHHS
Summary
TLDRThis speech emphasizes the profound impact of public policy on our lives, from education and health to environmental issues and economic inequality. The speaker highlights that while many aspects of life seem to be about individual choices, policies shape our opportunities, well-being, and the environment. They argue that small changes in policy can lead to huge improvements in society, urging citizens to stay curious, engage in collective action, and actively participate in shaping public policy for a more equitable, sustainable future.
Takeaways
- 🍼 Parents often have hopes, dreams, and worries for their children, from their future careers to safety and well-being.
- 🤔 Public policy has a massive impact on various aspects of life, including health, education, income, and environmental conditions.
- 📜 Citizens have the right and responsibility to shape public policy in a representative democracy.
- 💡 Even small changes in public policy can have significant effects, such as improving mass transit, lowering taxes, or increasing financial aid.
- 🌍 Public policies influence global and local challenges, such as environmental sustainability and social justice.
- 🚍 Simple adjustments, like increasing taxes by a small amount, can lead to large improvements in public services like transportation.
- 🇩🇰 Policy differences between countries, such as wages at McDonald's, show how much public policy shapes economic outcomes.
- 🎓 Public policies can transform societies, as seen with education systems and programs like the GI Bill in the U.S.
- 💪 Large-scale movements are often necessary to create meaningful policy changes, and collective action plays a critical role.
- 🚴♂️ Participating in local activities, like group bike rides, can also serve as a form of collective action and advocacy for better public policies.
Q & A
What is the main focus of the speaker's message in this transcript?
-The speaker emphasizes the significant impact that public policy has on various aspects of life, such as health, education, the environment, and economic stability. They argue that public policy decisions shape individual lives in profound ways, often more than personal choices.
Why does the speaker mention a baby being born at the beginning of the speech?
-The speaker uses the example of a baby being born to highlight how parents naturally wonder about their child's future. This sets the stage to discuss how public policy will affect that child's life in areas such as education, healthcare, and safety.
What role does public policy play in shaping people's lives according to the speaker?
-Public policy influences many aspects of daily life, including education, healthcare, wages, environmental quality, and even criminal justice. The speaker argues that these policies significantly impact people's well-being, opportunities, and quality of life.
Why does the speaker believe that curiosity about public policy is often discouraged?
-The speaker believes curiosity about public policy is discouraged because powerful interests benefit from the current structure of policies. These groups may not want people to question or challenge policies that work in their favor.
What examples does the speaker give to illustrate the power of small policy changes?
-The speaker gives several examples, such as a small increase in public transportation funding in Ohio and the impact of a $15 congestion fee in London, which led to reduced pollution and better transit. These examples show how minor policy adjustments can lead to substantial positive outcomes.
How does the speaker describe the role of individual action in policy change?
-The speaker acknowledges that individual actions like voting and writing to elected officials are important but often insufficient for significant policy changes. They stress the need for collective action and movements to create real change in public policy.
What contrast does the speaker draw between McDonald's wages in the U.S. and Denmark?
-The speaker contrasts the low wages of McDonald's workers in the U.S. ($9 per hour) with the higher wages in Denmark (around $20.70 per hour). The speaker attributes this difference to the varying labor policies between the two countries, highlighting the impact of policy on wages and job conditions.
How does the speaker address the issue of renewable energy policy?
-The speaker discusses how states like Maine have policies that promote renewable energy, requiring utilities to produce 40% of their power from renewable sources by 2017. In contrast, Ohio froze its clean energy standards, showing how different policies can affect energy consumption and environmental impact.
What point does the speaker make about the incarceration rates in different countries?
-The speaker contrasts the incarceration rates of Sweden and the U.S., noting that Sweden has 51 incarcerated people per 100,000, while the U.S. has 716 per 100,000. This difference is used to illustrate how public policies regarding criminal justice can lead to vastly different outcomes.
What call to action does the speaker make at the end of the speech?
-The speaker encourages the audience to get involved in collective actions, such as participating in Critical Mass bike rides, joining rallies, or advocating for policy changes. They urge people to stay curious and ask tough questions about why policies are the way they are, and how they can be improved.
Outlines
👶 The Curiosity and Concerns of New Parents
This paragraph discusses the birth of a child and the many hopes, dreams, and questions that parents have for their child’s future. Parents wonder about their child’s health, career, and happiness, while also facing concerns about financial stability, time management, and broader societal risks such as crime and incarceration. The core message emphasizes that public policy plays a crucial role in determining the answers to these questions, though curiosity about policy is often discouraged.
🚌 The Impact of Tiny Policy Changes on Society
This section highlights how even small adjustments in public policy can lead to significant societal improvements. For example, a small increase in state taxes to support mass transit could greatly improve transportation systems. Similarly, reversing tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals could restore financial aid for education, making a tangible difference in the lives of many students. The examples underscore how policy changes, even on a small scale, can lead to wide-reaching positive impacts on communities.
🏙️ The Role of Public Policy in Global and Local Issues
This paragraph delves into how different public policies shape outcomes in various parts of the world. Examples include London's congestion charge, which reduced traffic and pollution, and the disparities in wages for McDonald’s workers between Denmark and the U.S., illustrating how policy impacts quality of life. It also explores how environmental and criminal justice policies vary by region, shaping societal outcomes like energy use and incarceration rates.
🚴♂️ Collective Action and Public Policy Change
The final section encourages collective action as the most effective means of influencing public policy. The author suggests participating in movements like Critical Mass bike rides, attending rallies, or supporting various causes to challenge the status quo and shape public policies. The call to action emphasizes staying curious and involved, as public policy ultimately affects all aspects of daily life, from happiness to environmental health.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Public Policy
💡Curiosity
💡Inequality
💡Collective Action
💡Education
💡Environmental Policy
💡Social Mobility
💡Economic Disparity
💡Healthcare
💡Civic Engagement
Highlights
Parents' hopes, dreams, and worries shape their thoughts about their child's future, from potential careers to health and well-being.
Public policy plays a significant role in shaping outcomes such as education, healthcare, and financial security.
The speaker emphasizes that citizens have the responsibility to help shape public policies, which affect daily life.
Even small changes in public policy can have large impacts, like improving mass transit systems with minimal tax adjustments.
Tax cuts in Ohio over the last decade have benefited the wealthy but reduced need-based financial aid for higher education.
A small policy change in London, like a $15 congestion fee, dramatically reduced traffic, improved air quality, and increased mass transit use.
Policies affecting incarceration rates vary greatly by region, with the U.S. having much higher rates than countries like Sweden.
The U.S. historically made significant public policy advances, such as free education and Social Security, which reduced poverty.
The Clean Water Act helped revive polluted areas, such as the Kyoga River in Ohio, by improving water quality and fostering biodiversity.
Educational policies, like the GI Bill, helped the U.S. transition from an agrarian to an industrial society, increasing the education level.
Despite policy advances, the U.S. lags behind in some areas, like renewable energy standards, compared to states like Maine.
Public policy controls critical factors in our lives, such as air quality, economic equity, and access to education.
The speaker notes that individual action can be important, but large-scale policy changes usually require collective efforts.
Movements like Black Lives Matter and unions can inspire public policy shifts, emphasizing the importance of organized activism.
Citizens are encouraged to stay curious, asking critical questions about the impact of policies on happiness, poverty, and environmental health.
Transcripts
so while you're sitting here watching
this talk a baby is being born and her
parents have enormous hopes and dreams
for her and if they're like most parents
they also are curious about a lot of
things they have a lot of things that
they're wondering will she be a poet or
a c CEO will she be healthy and happy
will she like music or Sports they're
curious they Wonder these things and if
they're like most parents they also have
a lot of worries will they be able to
make enough money to give her a good
life will they be able to spend enough
time with her will her mother be able to
nurse her and then if they're anything
like me and they read the things that I
read on a daily basis they likely have
some weightier questions too How likely
she'd end up incarcerated to be the
victim of a crime will she ever stare
down the barrel of a
gun will she get good nutrition will she
be fit how long will she
live How likely is she to graduate from
high school from college will those
things put her in debt will she be able
to take care of her own children if and
when they come along we're humans we're
curious so we wonder about the future
and we try to predict it but if you're
really curious about all of those those
seemingly unrelated questionss I just
asked I can tell you one thing one that
has an enormous impact on all of them
and that thing is public
policy and the problem is that policy is
something about which our curiosity is
often
discouraged by policy I mean the rules
and regulations that we and our elected
officials put in place and as Citizens
in a representative democracy you have
the right
and the responsibility to help shape
those policies and they control
everything from whether a three-year-old
gets free preschool to how much a
company can
pollute to how much workers get paid to
whether I get to take a bus or have to
drive from my home to my job every day
policy matters it matters so much that I
named an organization policy matters
policy matters Ohio you can find us on
the web at policy matters ohio.org and
um we create a more vibrant Equitable
sustainable and inclusive Ohio by
fighting for the things that I think
would make the life of that baby born a
few paragraphs ago a little bit
better if you agree with the policies we
put forth you can go to our website and
support us but you don't have to agree
with the policy ideas I have what you do
have to agree with is the fact that
policy has an enormous effect on our
health our wealth and our well-being it
has an impact on how much exercise we we
get how much stress we suffer from how
much art we see it impacts how much time
we get with our kids and how well cared
for our aging parents
are many of these things seem to be
solely about individual choice but the
fact is that parental leave policy
overtime policy Transit Investments
public art Investments these public
decisions shape and mold our private
lives every single day and of course
they also have a tremendous impact on
how clean our air and water is how
quickly our ice flows are melting how
chaotic our climate will
be now here's the dirty little secret
about public policy it is the very very
hard to change with individual action
now I know I am violating the first rule
of speeches and of Life nobody wants to
be told that they don't have the power
to change things everybody wants to know
how they can make an impact people want
to dump ice on their heads they want to
shave their heads they want to run in
Races they want to have an impact
themselves people like me drive up to
speeches like this well I walked but
they drive up to speeches like this with
bumper stickers on their car that say
things like never doubt that a small
group of thoughtful con committed
citizens can change the world indeed it
is the only thing that ever
had well I hate to break it to you and I
hate to break it to Margaret me who said
that but the fact is you often need a
large group of of people thoughtless
people also have a lot of impact on our
policy you rarely get exactly what you
want and if you're someone like me it is
highly likely that there are moneyed
interests on the other side of whatever
it is that you're fighting for so I'm
sorry it's not very inspirational it's a
little hard to fit on a
t-shirt however here is the
inspirational thing about public policy
change a teeny tiny change in public
policy can make an enormous difference
in all of our
Lives I'll give you a couple of examples
right now in Ohio every taxpayer sends
70 cents each year to the state of Ohio
which is then redistributed to our
communities to support mass transit the
buses and trains that Hannah showed on
her side 70 cents I think in the
cafeteria upstairs you can get a bag of
chips for that much
money if each of you devoted two bags of
chips a year or maybe five bags of chips
a year to the state taxes that you pay
to support mass transit in our
communities maybe my RTA would come a
little bit more quickly and maybe I'd be
a little more likely to ride it tiny
change huge impact I'm going to give you
a different
example we have been cutting taxes in
the state of Ohio for the past decade
cutting income taxes to the degree that
a taxpayer in the top 1% in Ohio now
pays $220,000
less each year in state income taxes
toare compared to what they paid a
decade ago at the same time we have been
cutting need-based financial aid for
higher education more than any other
state in the Midwest and almost more
than any other state in the
country if we restored just 2% of the
tax increases that we've been giving
away we could restore our need-based
financial aid to its historic highs in
Ohio
100,000 kids who get those tiny
scholarships would get a little bit more
in their financial aid package maybe
they could quit their second job which
might mean that maybe they could
actually finish their coursework and get
that degree and get the career that they
had been hoping for tiny change huge
result in London in the early 2000s the
city was so congested that it was
unpleasant to be in it was deeply
polluted and people could not get around
efficiently nobody knew how to handle
this they finally decided to put in
place a
$15 congestion fee to get into the Heart
of the City at the peak times of day
they didn't know how that was going to
work out and a lot of people didn't
think it was a very good idea you want
to know what happened congestion dropped
by
30% the times for those Journeys dropped
by
14% biking jumped by 20% pollution fell
they generated over a billion dollars in
income they were able to buy hundreds of
shiny new buses in London and there are
now 30,000 more rides on mass transit
each day in the city of London as a
result of that change it's better for
bikers it's better for Walkers it's even
better for drivers and it's certainly
better for the planet tiny change huge
impact but we tend to focus on other
things we tend not to ask so much about
policy we when we meet someone we wonder
about their culture we wonder about
their relace race we wonder about what
kind of family they came from we might
ask them what sports they play what
hobbies they have what TV shows they
watch and those are all fine questions
they're all interesting maybe the TV is
a little less interesting but we rarely
ask oursel how might that person's life
have been different if they had grown up
under a different set of public policies
what if she'd been able to go to
preschool and be prepared for
kindergarten when she arrived in it what
if he'd been able to get that
scholarship and finish that degree what
if she'd never breathed in that
carcinogen those are the questions that
we're less likely to ask and the reason
I think we're less likely to ask those
questions is I think we're discouraged
from asking those questions we've all
heard it's impolite to talk about
politics or
religion and in America I think we have
a very strong tendency to want to think
that all of the results that come about
are about individual choices and
individual behaviors we also have a
really strong bias for wanting to say
the market Works a certain way and you
can't intervene in it if you do you'll
just hurt the economy well the fact is I
would argue that there is a reason that
someone doesn't want you asking those
questions there are people who benefit
from the way that we have structured
things now and there are people who do
not want difficult questions
asked so here's an example of a
difference in policy between the United
States and another country that seems to
be mostly about the free market
McDonald's is a notorious low-wage
employer here pays about $9 an
hour busts unions if they ever try to
set foot and most of us might look at
that and say that's just what that job
is worth and that's the way the market
works and if you change it McDonald's
won't be able to survive here and N none
of those workers will have jobs at all
well the fact is that McDonald's also
exists in Denmark and in Denmark
McDonald's pays an average of
$20.70 an hour the workers are in a
union and they get paid overtime if they
work on evenings or
weekends what is a poverty wage job here
is a middle class job in Denmark why
policy give you another
example by the year 2017 if you live in
Maine and you want to buy power from a
utility that utility will have to
produce 40% of That Power from fully
renewable sources wind and solil for
example that same year unless they
change the policy between now and then
your grandparents in
Florida will be able to buy their power
from a utility that can produce 100% of
That Power from nonrenewable highly
polluting mostly important mostly
imported fossil
fuels here in Ohio we had a clean energy
standard I think Zach referenced it in
introducing me because policy matters
helped um get that through a very
carefully crafted bipartisan compromise
last year your state legislature froze
our clean energy standards in Ohio
making Ohio the first state ever to go
backwards on clean energy the point is
what affects the cleanliness of the
energy we consume and the air we breathe
policy last example crime is down all
over the world which is a great
thing but you're likelihood of being
incarcerated varies tremendously
depending on the policies of the
community in which you
live so in Sweden 51 out of every
100,000 people are incarcerated that's
sad right it's
unfortunate here in the United States 14
times as many of our neighbors are
incarcerated in prison
716 people for every 100,000 that means
there are two
2.24 million Americans who are not
contributing to the economy who are not
helping their kids with their homework
each night who are not building toward a
better future for themselves and who we
are paying to keep Behind Bars why
policy now I've talked about some of the
things that I'm you know frustrated
about and that's a common problem that I
have but the fact is I think that there
are many things that we get right in the
United States in terms of policy we put
in place the world's first K through2
education system and then with the GI
Bill we let every returning veteran from
World War II go to college for
free as a result we catapulted ourselves
from being an entirely uneducated
agrarian society to a highly educated
industrial society from a place where
only one in four adults had even a high
school degree in
1940 to today we're nearly one in three
adults has a four-year bachelor's degree
still not high enough maybe I would
argue but an entirely different change
and we became the most educated country
on the planet other end of the age
Spectrum the elderly in 1930 80% of our
grandparents were living in poverty in
the United States we put in place Social
Security and Medicare sparked by those
two things and also by the growth in the
economy that was fostered by those
educational Investments we lowered the
elderly poverty rate to below 10% so
that today elderly Americans are the
least likely age group to be
poor we took a country that was deeply
divided along racial lines violently
viciously divided and we got rid of
slavery and Jim Crow we passed the
Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights
Act so that today while we haven't gone
far enough starting right here in Shaker
you can find integrated families and
classrooms and boardrooms and
neighborhoods
our own kyoga River caught on fire in
the 1970s in an international
embarrassment did we tuck our heads
under our wings and say there's nothing
we can do about this no in response we
passed the Clean Water Act at the
national level and today in that very
River 40 species of fish are thriving
they're cold today but they're
thriving so I would argue that for our
biggest challenges and our biggest
opport opportunities to make our air
cleaner to make our disease rates lower
to make our kids better educated policy
is
essential but here's the thing you'll
rarely hear someone like me come and
give a speech like this without urging
you to get registered and urging you to
vote and I'm not going to violate that
either you ought to do those two
things and you'll rarely hear a speech
from someone like me who doesn't say you
ought to write to your elected official
about the things that concern you and
not only do I agree with that advice but
I could probably give give you a long
list of things you could add to that
list but I would be lying if I implied
that you alone doing those two things
could make a significant difference the
fact is that if you want to have an
impact on public policy you're going to
have to get involved in a larger
movement however here's the good news
you don't have to do it exactly the way
that maybe your parents or grandparents
did you don't necessarily have to Doodle
your way through as many boring meetings
as I did even though I think that they
add some value so I'm going to give you
an easy entry to Collective action and
that is that on the last Friday of every
month in cities all over the planet
bicyclists assemble at the core of their
city and get on their bikes and they go
out and they ride past bars and board
UPS they ride past workingclass
neighborhoods and housing projects they
ride past college campuses and art
museums here in clev cland we meet up at
Public Square on the last Friday of
every month at 7:30 p.m. never changes I
don't always go in the
winter join us it'll feel like a bike
ride but you'll actually be building the
case for more bike lanes for more
careful driving for more Community it's
it it seems like a bike ride but it's
actually Collective action or if your
parents don't want you riding through
the Central City in the dark in
Cleveland then do something different go
to a black lives matter rally join a
union join the group that's trying to
reduce testing in Shaker Heights but do
something to not let people stop you
from asking the questions that you want
to ask do not let people stop you from
asking the hard questions feed your
curiosity why was that person laid off
why is that kid in poverty why is the
planet
warming or let's turn those questions on
their head why is that child so happy
why is that lake so clean why is that
City so
vibrant the answer if you're curious
almost certainly has something to do
with the policies that we as Citizens
and students and activists have helped
to put in place be part of that
conversation be part of that fight be
part of that ride thank you very much
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