Construction workers work on a railway in Kenya. (EPA/DANIEL IRUNGU)

By Jim Tankersley

Maybe everyone is overcomplicating America's economic challenges today. Maybe there are no deep mysteries behind the slow growth, the stagnating incomes and the widespread economic anxieties that have given rise to populist movements on the left and the right.

Maybe the problem is simple: too many workers.

That is the argument made in a new paper released by the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, which theorizes that the world economy is suffering from an oversupply of labor and too little demand for the goods and services those workers produce.

But the solution, they say, also is simple, though politically unpopular: roads and bridges, and a lot of them.

Penned by investment banker Daniel Alpert, the paper, builds on his 2013 book “The Age of Oversupply,” and it's Third Way’s latest effort to shape the liberal policy conversation in the 2016 presidential primaries. It does so in decidedly un-centrist fashion — by embracing a larger infrastructure spending program than Bernie Sanders does.

Read the rest on Wonkblog.

Map of the day

Other states could increase their minimum wages to levels below California's, which will gradually increase to $15 an hour, and still give workers effectively the same raise. Niraj Chokshi has more.

Top policy tweets

"Many people thought Obamacare would uproot employer coverage. 'Those predictions were largely wrong' https://t.co/T91Cnjg3j1" -- @sangerkatz

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"If you're poor in another country, this is the scariest thing Bernie Sanders has said https://t.co/CS9lBWF1D8" -- @ezraklein

"Assumption that helping global poor requires undercutting working class in rich countries rests on bad economics https://t.co/r2ARl1mQfH" -- @jeffspross