The Aspen Institute
The Aspen Institute is a global nonprofit founded in 1949 that works toward a free, just, and equitable society through dialogue, leadership, and action on challenges facing the United States and the world.
The Middle-Class Promise Now Depends on Security, Mobility, and Access
The panelists argue that a middle-class life depends on more than income: people need security and a credible path from work to a better future. Elizabeth Wilkins says that path has weakened as workers lose bargaining power and the gains of economic growth become less widely shared; the answer, she argues, is to adapt policies that support workers, social insurance and access to essentials. The discussion also points to local decisions on housing, education and child care as part of making that promise attainable.
Communities Need to Keep More of the Value Their Work Creates
At Aspen Ideas: Economy in Tulsa, author and spoken-word artist Jerica Wortham argues that communities should measure success not by what they manage to create, but by whether the people who create it can keep any of its value. In her performance “No More Moral Victories,” she calls for budgets, paid work and lasting resources that let artists and neighborhoods sustain what they build and pass something on to the next generation.
Tulsa’s $120 Million Housing Fund Targets Financing Gaps and Local Capacity
Affordable housing projects can still fall short when construction and operating costs exceed what residents can afford to pay in rent, Lisa Albers of BOK Financial said. Robin Hughes of the Housing Partnership Network said the Tulsa Housing Impact Fund aims to raise $120 million from philanthropic capital, bank financing and local-government resources to address those gaps. The panel’s broader argument was that closing them requires more than raising money: capital, local development capacity and public institutions must be coordinated to match projects’ needs.
Economic Mobility Depends on Connecting Jobs, Skills, and Local Capacity
At Aspen Ideas: Economy in Tulsa, Derek Kilmer of the Rockefeller Foundation argues that economic growth will not create broad mobility on its own: communities need the capacity to connect workers to jobs and businesses to opportunity. The discussion, moderated by Edward Jones Foundation president David Clunie, makes the case for coordinating infrastructure, workforce training, public services and local institutions—and for directing investment to distressed places, where Kilmer says it can produce more jobs per dollar than in areas already growing.
Local Ownership Determines Who Benefits From New Investment
Starting a business is easier than making it durable, and growth alone does not determine who benefits. Dale King argued that communities facing major investments should negotiate for benefits such as a fund to seed local businesses, rather than wait to see what a project brings. At an Aspen Ideas: Economy discussion in Tulsa, Jay Bailey and Jailan Griffiths made the broader case that founders need capital, networks and support to sustain businesses, recover from failure and retain ownership.
Edward Jones and CoBank Tie Leadership to Long-Term Community Stewardship
At Aspen Ideas: Economy in Tulsa, Edward Jones managing partner Penny Pennington and CoBank CEO Tom Halverson argued that long-term leadership is a form of stewardship: executives must care for the institutions they inherit while strengthening the communities and opportunities they leave to future generations. Moderated by Aspen Institute leadership executive Stace Lindsay, the discussion also addressed the risks that could narrow those opportunities, including the US fiscal outlook and the transfer of wealth between generations.
Economic Growth Is Not Translating Into Housing and Financial Security
At Aspen Ideas: Economy in Tulsa, the panel argued that economic growth does not necessarily give households a stable place to live or a path to financial security. Texas Law professor A. Mechele Dickerson warned that homeownership and wealth-building are increasingly tied to family resources, while CAMEO Network CEO Carolina Martinez said small businesses often struggle to find capital suited to their needs. The speakers differed on remedies, pointing to public policy, financial education, political engagement and stronger support for entrepreneurs.
Leadership’s Long-Term Test Is What Communities Can Keep
At Aspen Ideas: Economy in Tulsa, Edward Jones managing partner Penny Pennington and CoBank CEO Tom Halverson offered different accounts of what leaders owe the next generation. Pennington argued that ownership, financial education and sustained local investment can help people build lasting opportunity; Halverson pointed to cooperative institutions and warned that fiscal and economic pressures could narrow future generations’ choices. Both measured leadership by whether the institutions and conditions leaders leave behind can keep working after they are gone.
Universal Child Accounts Need Progressive Deposits to Narrow Wealth Gaps
At Aspen Ideas: Economy, Ray Boshara of the Aspen Institute Financial Security Program and Kwame Owusu-Kesse, CEO of Harlem Children’s Zone, argue that Trump Accounts can make investment in children part of the social contract—but that a universal account alone will not deliver economic mobility. They call for sustained, better-targeted deposits and protections for young adults, alongside education and other assets that help children build on the initial seed.
A Predictable Permitting Process Could Restore Confidence in U.S. Construction
The question Lisa Epifani posed is whether the United States’ institutions can still support prosperity and technological change by enabling the country to build. Oklahoma Sen. Alan Armstrong argued that permitting reform should make approvals clear and predictable, while ensuring projects can proceed once permits are lawfully issued. He said that certainty would make it possible to build while continuing to meet environmental requirements.
Adam Smith’s Economic System Could Create Wealth—and Concentrate Power
Historian and political theorist Glory Liu argues that Adam Smith’s account of economic cooperation is not a simple defense of self-interest: it also asks how societies can benefit from rising productivity without letting wealth concentrate into private power. In a discussion with composer David Lang, Liu places that question in the context of Smith’s critique of mercantile privilege, company rule and slavery, and argues that economic life is about who sets the terms of exchange and who gets to participate—not just how wealth is produced.
Kevin Stitt Says Faster Permitting and State Control Can Lower Costs
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt argues that widening opportunity depends less on government aid than on letting people work, build businesses and support their families. In a conversation with ABC News correspondent Elizabeth Schulze at Aspen Ideas: Economy, he tied that view to faster permitting, greater state control over workforce policy and elections, and a distinction between equal opportunity and equal outcomes.
University Procurement Can Build the Pipeline for Diverse Board Directors
At Aspen Ideas: Economy, Ariel Investments chairman and co-CEO John W. Rogers Jr. argues that widening ownership requires more than changing who gets selected for leadership roles: people also need access to the investments and business opportunities that build wealth and qualify them for influence. In a conversation with The Atlantic’s John F. Dickerson, Rogers connects that case to his own introduction to investing as a child and to a family history of building businesses while fighting for fair treatment, including his great-grandfather’s experience in Tulsa’s Greenwood District.
Wage-Setting Choices and Financial Tools Both Shape Economic Security
Wages reflect employer choices as well as market forces, Arindrajit Dube argues, because workers cannot always move easily to better-paying jobs. Carrie Joy Grimes says personal-finance tools can help people act on their circumstances, but cannot repair the structural conditions that produce insecurity. Their shared case is that financial agency complements, rather than replaces, wage standards and safety nets: the former help workers manage the choices they face, while the latter address limits on pay and protection.
New York Must Plan Housing and Transit as One Urban Project
Felipe Correa, co-author of *Collective Living and the Architectural Imaginary*, argues that New York should treat housing as a way to organize urban life, not simply as a count of apartments. At a panel convened by FXCollaborative, AIA New York and the Aspen Institute Science & Society Program, he called for housing, transit, public space and services to be planned together as the city reuses underused land and accommodates changing patterns of domestic life. The discussion also brought development and design constraints into view: what can be built depends on financing, regulation and the conditions of existing sites.
Federal Science Cuts Could Set Research Back for Decades
In a Princeton discussion after a screening of *The Endless Frontier*, director Marilyn Ness, producer Elizabeth Westrate and immunologist Andrea Graham argued that cuts to federal research funding threaten more than individual projects: they can break the chain of accumulated work and leave younger scientists without the chance to build on it. Graham said the resulting setback could last for decades, even if policy changed immediately. The filmmakers said they expanded the documentary to show how funding reaches research teams and what its withdrawal means for their work.
Only 26% of U.S. Households Meet the Essential Wealth Threshold
Steven Brown, director of insights and evidence at the Aspen Institute Financial Security Program, argues that household wealth should be measured against what families need for security and opportunity, not just compared with the median. The program’s essential wealth metric sets three age-adjusted thresholds—from a basic cushion against hardship to resources for long-term prosperity—and finds that 26% of U.S. households meet its highest threshold. Brown says the benchmark can help researchers, policymakers, employers, and funders set and assess goals for building wealth.
Food Workers’ Essential Role Has Not Translated Into Pay or Power
The food economy depends on workers who often lack fair pay, safe conditions, a voice at work and a share in business growth. In a panel on food justice, the speakers present different ways to build worker power and share value, from collective organizing to employee ownership. They do not treat any one model as a substitute for workers’ voice or the power to make institutions respond.
The Utah Compromise Shows How Negotiation Can Protect Competing Convictions
Journalist Jonathan Rauch argues that religious pluralism depends not on setting aside deep disagreements but on negotiating ways to live with them. He points to the Utah agreement between the Latter-day Saint Church, Equality Utah and conservative lawmakers as an example: it paired protections for LGBT people with religious exemptions, a deal Rauch says created room for both sides without requiring either to abandon core commitments. Moderator Eboo Patel and conflict specialist Amanda Ripley extend the discussion to the institutions and practices that can make difficult engagement possible, while recognizing that an invitation to talk does not obligate anyone to accept it.
Religious Pluralism Depends on Institutions That Sustain Disagreement
John Inazu argues that religious liberty depends not on resolving disagreement but on preserving the procedures and institutions that let people continue to contest it. In this Aspen Institute panel, Inazu, Bryn Mawr College president Wendy Cadge and Interfaith America founder Eboo Patel examine how campuses, local organizations and shared public spaces can sustain that work. They differ over how well colleges are doing it and what story should bind a diverse country, but emphasize that pluralism requires both room for distinct beliefs and practical cooperation across them.
Culture Care Offers an Alternative to the Zero-Sum Logic of Culture War
Artist Makoto Fujimura argues that culture should be tended rather than treated as territory in a fight for power—a practice he calls culture care. In a conversation with documentary filmmaker Laura Waters Hinson, the two consider how art and film can make room for complexity. Hinson describes the challenge of making a documentary about missionary Elisabeth Elliot that neither reduces her to a hero nor turns her into an indictment.
Religious Pluralism Depends on Trust Built Through Everyday Relationships
In this Aspen Institute panel, Muslim, evangelical and Baptist leaders argue that religious pluralism requires more than acknowledging that people hold different beliefs: it depends on how communities protect freedom of conscience and treat their neighbors. Walter Kim emphasizes non-coercive expression and the relationships that build trust; Dexter Nutall asks whether congregations turn conviction into practical care; and Hamza Yusuf calls for humility toward other traditions without abandoning one’s own beliefs. Together, they make the case that pluralism is tested in ordinary encounters, not just affirmed as an ideal.
A New Wealth Benchmark Finds Only 26% of U.S. Households Have Enough to Thrive
The Aspen Institute Financial Security Program’s Essential Wealth report argues that financial security cannot be measured by income and expenses alone: households also need savings and assets to absorb shocks, build for the future and make choices. Using 2022 data, the report estimates that 26% of U.S. households meet its essential-wealth threshold, while another 17% meet a lower threshold for emergent wealth. Aspen FSP presents the metric as a first version—a tool to identify gaps, not a solution to them—and argues that researchers, policymakers and institutions can use it to assess whether programs help families build wealth.
The Declaration’s Promise Outran the Founders’ Narrow Vision
Ken Burns argues that the founding’s importance lies not in a settled promise of freedom but in language of liberty and equality that later generations could use to challenge its exclusions. In a conversation with David Brooks, Burns describes a republic built to check human ambition and a commitment to religious toleration shaped by practical need and the risks of sectarian conflict. Both speakers present the founding as unfinished: its principles can guide efforts to repair the country, but do not resolve its present divisions.