Oren Cass | |
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.jpg) Cass in 2025 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1983 (age 41–42) |
| Political party | Republican |
| Education | Williams College (BA) Harvard University (JD) |
Oren M. Cass (born 1983) is an American public policy commentator and political advisor.[1] In 2024, he named himself "chief economist" at American Compass, aconservativethink tank which he founded in 2020.[2]
He previously worked on the presidential campaigns ofMitt Romney in 2008 and 2012. According to a 2015 article inPolitico, he is a "general policy impresario of the emerging conservative consensus on fighting poverty."[3] From 2015 to 2019, he was a senior fellow at theManhattan Institute for Policy Research. He authored a book,The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America.[4] In February 2020, Cass established American Compass, an organization aimed at the question of "what the post-Trump right-of-center is going to be."[5]
Cass isJewish, and grew up outsideBoston, Massachusetts.[6] He attendedWilliams College, where he received a BA inpolitical economy.[7]
After graduating from Williams College, Cass joinedBain & Company as an associate consultant,[1] where he worked in the firm'sBoston andNew Delhi offices.[7] He took a six-month leave to work on theMitt Romney 2008 presidential campaign, in which Romney was defeated in the presidential primary.[1] He then enrolled inHarvard Law School, where he said he sought "to deepen his understanding of public policy" and established contact with Romney's staff, which hired him as a domestic policy advisor when Romney againran for president in 2012.[1][3][7]
He worked for the next Romney operation in 2011 between his second and third years at Harvard, and ended up with so much in his portfolio that at the end of the summer "they sort of said, well, you have to stay". He became domestic-policy director while still in law school.[1]
After Romney was defeated in the 2012 election, Cass returned to Bain, where he became a manager, but also "started writing on environmental and labor policy forNational Review.[1] U.S. SenatorMarco Rubio credited Cass for his 2014 poverty-fighting plan, according to Politico.[3][8] The following year, in 2015, he joined theManhattan Institute for Policy Research as a senior fellow, and was named toPolitico's list of the top 50 "thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics in 2015".[3]
In 2018, Cass published his book,The Once and Future Worker, which reevaluated American society, economics, and public policy, and introduces what he called "the working hypothesis: that a labor market in which workers can support strong families and communities is the central determinant of long-term prosperity and should be the central focus of public policy." He argues that the obsessive focus of policymakers and economists on "consumer welfare" is misguided because, as workers and productive contributors, people flourish and build strong families and communities.
National Affairs editorYuval Levin called it "the essential policy book for our time."[3]National Review wrote that, "[t]his book and its policy proposals mark Oren Cass as one of the nation's most original and forceful policy thinkers."[9]Jason Furman, chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, described it as "a thoughtful, provocative, carefully argued book that made me change my mind on some issues that I thought I'd thought about quite a lot."[10] The book was reviewed inThe New Yorker,[11]The Economist,[12]Foreign Affairs[13] and by French anthropologistEmmanuel Todd.[14]
Donald J. Boudreaux of theAmerican Institute for Economic Research disputed some of the book's positions, asserting that Cass focuses too heavily on the importance of production over consumption, to the point of extolling measures such as tariffs that coerce society into purchasing goods that would not be the first choice of uncoerced consumers.[15]
In February 2020, Cass founded American Compass, aWashington, D.C.–basedthink tank,[16] which is self-described as focusing on "what the post-Trump right-of-center is going to be."[5] Later, ahead of the2024 election, American Compass laid out a set of economic policies intended for a second Trump administration.[17]
As of July 2024[update], American Compass was a member of the advisory board ofProject 2025,[18] a collection ofconservative policy proposals fromthe Heritage Foundation to reshape theUnited States federal government and consolidateexecutive power should theRepublican nominee win the2024 presidential election.[19] Cass is thanked for hiscontribution to Chapter 18: "Department of Labor and Related Agencies."[20]
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Cass has argued for several changes to conservatism, including:
Under Cass, the group has strongly questioned the belief that free markets should be given primacy when setting public policy. Cass has described this "free market fundamentalism" as "pathetically simplistic."[16] Cass and the grouping hold that it is not only absolutely proper for society to intervene in the market but also necessary for it to do so.[16] Cass has strongly defendedTrump tariffs and the resultinginflation,instability andtrade wars.[21][22][23] He was a guest speaker on 'Interesting Times' withRoss Douthat and spoke about how he agrees with Trump's approaches to tariffs.[24] However, Cass prefers a phase-in period because factories take time to build.[25]
Cass has advocated for unionization that enables workers to collectively bargain for sector-wide pay standards and working conditions.[26] He argues that local industry should be protected by an across-the-board 10% tariff on imported goods, which would increase by 5% annually until trade deficits are brought to zero, while investment in local industry would be funded by a national development bank.[26]
In 2017, Cass wrote an essay framing rejection of strong measures to combatclimate change as a form of moderation, criticizing both those on the political right who question the validity ofclimate science and those on the political left he characterized as suffering from depression and misusing data to paint a picture of imminent catastrophe.[27]
The economist Oren Cass, the author of "The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America" (Encounter), much of which originally appeared inNational Review, is fed up with the robot hysteria. "Technological innovation and automation have always been integral to our economic progress, and in a well-functioning labor market, they should produce gains for all types of workers," he insists.
Progress on the rethinking of Reaganite shibboleths that his campaign promised has been scattered and rare. The hoopla generated by a recent book on labour markets by Oren Cass of the Manhattan Institute, which made a conservative case for wage subsidies and other interventions to promote the dignity of work among strugglers, was both justified and indicative of this.
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