Category Archives: Government and Governing

Next Week’s Opportunity To Get Our Labor Board Operating Again

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President Obama has nominated five people to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Two are Republicans. All are waiting for confirmation by the Senate. Let your Senators know these nominees should be confirmed so the NLRB can get back to work.

What Is The NLRB?

The NLRB is the agency that “safeguards employees’ rights to organize and to determine whether to have unions as their bargaining representative. The agency also acts to prevent and remedy unfair labor practices committed by private sector employers and unions.”

The NLRB supervises elections to form or decertify unions in the workplace. It investigates charges that employees, unions or employers violated rules over labor practices and rules on the charges. It works to get problems resolved rather than taken to court. And finally, when the NLRB has issued a ruling that is ignored it can take the parties to court.

But if the NLRB is prevented from operating there is no one to make sure that the rules for labor practices are being enforced. This hurts workers and companies.

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Deficit Falling Even More Dramatically, Few Know It

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Austerity is beginning to hit and the economy is slowing as a result. The most immediate effect is that flights are delayed, but unemployment checks are smaller and there are fewer things We the People do to make our lives and economy better — also called “government spending.” But hey, as Dean Baker writes in, Deficits Are Bad and the Sun Goes Around the Earth,

…many people can profit from slow growth and high unemployment. The after-tax profit share of GDP is at its highest level more than 60 years. For those who own lots of stock and are at the top of the income ladder, times are good. These people may see efforts to lower unemployment as posing a risk. With lower unemployment workers may be able to get a larger share of productivity growth. This may be good for most of the country and mean increased economic growth, but it would mean less for the one percent.

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What Does It Mean To Be An “American” Corporation?

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What does it mean to be an American? What does it mean to be an American corporation? An article in the Wall Street Journal the other day should trigger questions like these.

WSJ: Domestic-Based Multinationals Hiring Overseas,

Multinational companies based in the U.S. boosted their global work forces in 2011 almost entirely by hiring workers overseas, underscoring the slow growth in the U.S. job market.

… The paltry hiring at home reflects where multinational companies are focusing their attention. Stronger economic growth in overseas markets in Asia and Latin America is driving their expansion, reinforcing their shift toward cheaper labor or closer access to customers.

The U.S. parents of multinational firms account for about one-fifth of total private U.S. employment. Since 1999, employment by U.S. multinationals is down by 1.1 million inside the U.S., while it is up by 3.8 million overseas.

The hiring by American companies is not happening in the U.S. At the same time these companies are holding $1.7 trillion of profits outside of the country, away from their own shareholders and our economy to avoid their taxes, while pushing to dramatically lower the taxes they pay us – and even to get out of paying any taxes at all on money they make outside of the country!

Why Do We Have Corporations?

Why do We the People even have laws that allow corporations and give them special benefits? The answer obviously is for our common benefit — why else would we do it? The corporate form of a business enables the company to easily obtain capital from investors, in order to accomplish large-scale projects that benefit us. To encourage this we give these entities special privileges. For example, we limit liability which means the investors are not held liable for the actions of the company – they won’t lose more than their investment if the company gets sued for some reason. We provide a system that helps them obtain financing, insurance, market liquidity and all kinds of things to help those investors get a good return on their money.

Benefit: We the People want railroads, but it takes a lot of money to build and operate a railroad. And our system wants private companies to do the work of building and operating railroads instead us just doing it ourselves. So we set up a way for a private company to gather investment from lots of people.

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Minimum Wage Raise Essential To Fix Our Economy

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The Walton (Walmart) heirs now have as much wealth as up to 40 percent of all Americans combined, and Walmart’s sales have been slowing down. What does the first fact have to do with the second? (Hint: Sign this petition for raising the minimum wage.)

The top 1 percent now rakes in 20 percent of the nation’s income and holds one-third of the country’s wealth. Meanwhile the economy remains stagnant because the incomes of regular people are stagnant and falling – meaning they can’t buy stuff and can’t invest in their own futures.

From the post “40% Of Americans Now Make Less Than 1968 Minimum Wage”:

The chart shows that wages used to go up as productivity went up, but in the 1970s they decoupled. Productivity kept going up but wages stagnated.

Regular people’s incomes have been stagnant since the 70′s while costs keep going up. In fact, 40 percent Of Americans now make less than the 1968 minimum wage if that minimum wage had kept rising along with productivity. If the minimum wage had stayed coupled to productivity the minimum wage would now be $16.50 an hour – which more than 40 percent of Americans now make!

Instead all of those people’s possible additional income went to the top. And that plus changes in taxation is why we have the inequality we have. That is what happened to our economy and to all of us.

Now, here’s another chart. This chart shows that financial-sector and non-financial-sector compensation used to rise together, but in the late 70′s / early 80′s they decoupled. Financial-sector compensation took off, while non-financial-sector compensation did not.

It is as simple as this: If we want our economy and democracy to recover, the minimum wage needs to be raised as a core part of the solution. (But only part.)

Sign this petition calling for “the leaders of the House and Senate to allow an up-or-down vote on the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013, which would raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour and then index it to inflation.” While $10.10 is too low, it’s a start, and it is what is before the Congress. There are other essential things we need to do, but we need to raise the minimum wage to set a floor that is not falling out from under us.

Inequality Holding Back Recovery

The recovery from the economic crash is stagnant, and unemployment remains in emergency territory.

In January Economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote this op-ed for The New York Times, listing four reasons why the terrible inequality we face today is holding back the recovery, “Inequality Is Holding Back the Recovery”:

There are four major reasons inequality is squelching our recovery. The most immediate is that our middle class is too weak to support the consumer spending that has historically driven our economic growth. While the top 1 percent of income earners took home 93 percent of the growth in incomes in 2010, the households in the middle — who are most likely to spend their incomes rather than save them and who are, in a sense, the true job creators — have lower household incomes, adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1996. The growth in the decade before the crisis was unsustainable — it was reliant on the bottom 80 percent consuming about 110 percent of their income.

Second, the hollowing out of the middle class since the 1970s, a phenomenon interrupted only briefly in the 1990s, means that they are unable to invest in their future, by educating themselves and their children and by starting or improving businesses.

Third, the weakness of the middle class is holding back tax receipts, especially because those at the top are so adroit in avoiding taxes and in getting Washington to give them tax breaks. The recent modest agreement to restore Clinton-level marginal income-tax rates for individuals making more than $400,000 and households making more than $450,000 did nothing to change this. Returns from Wall Street speculation are taxed at a far lower rate than other forms of income. Low tax receipts mean that the government cannot make the vital investments in infrastructure, education, research and health that are crucial for restoring long-term economic strength.

Fourth, inequality is associated with more frequent and more severe boom-and-bust cycles that make our economy more volatile and vulnerable. Though inequality did not directly cause the crisis, it is no coincidence that the 1920s — the last time inequality of income and wealth in the United States was so high — ended with the Great Crash and the Depression. The International Monetary Fund has noted the systematic relationship between economic instability and economic inequality, but American leaders haven’t absorbed the lesson.

Translation:

  1. Top 1 percent (a few people) taking most of the gains, income in the middle (lots of people) is falling, they can’t buy stuff.
  2. Middle class disappearing, unable to invest in education or start businesses.
  3. Tax system rigged so gains going to 1 percent not bringing revenue to government, with incomes to the rest falling, revenue to government decreasing. Government can’t afford to invest in infrastructure, research, education, health and other things the help economy.
  4. Inequality that drives such massive amounts to a top few makes even the rich feel poor so they speculate and engage in quick-buck schemes, economy becomes “volatile and vulnerable.”

Raising the minimum wage is at the center of a set of policies. It is one part of what to do if we want economy to work again for regular people and for the future. Other parts include but are not limited to:

  • New tax brackets for higher incomes,
  • restoring the estate tax,
  • restoring corporate taxation,
  • getting rid of tax incentives that encourage corporations to move jobs and factories and profit centers out of the country,
  • possibly a wealth tax to address the deficit and debt,
  • a tax on Wall Street speculation,
  • restoring government services that help lower- and middle-income people obtain affordable higher education and get job training,
  • renegotiating trade deals that pit American workers against exploited, underpaid workers in non-democracies, thereby making American democracy and wages a competitive disadvantage
  • and many other steps to address the changes brought in since the “Reagan Revolution” that drove the huge increase in inequality and decrease in government investment in our economy’s future.

Raising the minimum wage is not only the moral thing to do, it is essential to bringing the low end up and start distributing the gains more fairly.

Even Walmart’s Sales Hurting Now

After the economic crash Walmart was ascendant. More and more people were moving down the income ladder toward the bottom, they were moving from the upper-scale stores to the bottom, i.e. Walmart.

But now so many people have fallen below the bottom that even Walmart’s sales are slowing down. Seeking Alpha recommends a SELL on Walmart stock because,

WMT derives most of its revenues from domestic operations in the U.S. where it has a dense network of stores and logistic centers. However, U.S. growth has almost flattened over the last couple of years eking out a yearly growth rate of just 1 percent.

Walmart can’t just raise wages on their own because that will give their competitors an advantage, and soon we’ll all be complaining about Target instead.

Even Walmart needs someone to come along and force wages up. Who could that someone be? It’s up to government – We the People – to make all employers raise wages so they can all have customers again.

Government Needed

All businesses will tell you that if they didn’t do everything they can to boost profits, someone else will, and then they’re screwed. Business is a cut-throat game and you have to fight to survive. You have to fight as dirty as the rules let you fight. Businesses will tell you that if they don’t keep wages as low as possible, deny health insurance, cut safety costs, cheapen products, and everything else they can get away with they will be gone, replaced by businesses that will.

The key to the equation is the “what the rules allow” and the “what they can get away with” part of that dirty fight. Businesses compete on a playing field, and the rules and enforcement of those rules determine the way the game is played.

Every individual business wants to save on labor and other costs. But if all businesses do the same, the result is that no one has any money to spend and all of those businesses are in trouble. This is where government comes in. Government is the essential part of this equation, setting and enforcing the rules in ways that make up for what inevitably happens if all businesses cut wages, costs, etc. And government is essential for enforcing those rules.

From “You Can’t Have Healthy Businesses Without Strong Government”:

Imagine this, though it might be difficult: some people are greedy and want more for themselves, at the expense of the rest of us. Yes, this is shocking, but true!

Government protects us from those who would take advantage and take too much. Government does this both domestically and internationally. At home it protects us from criminals and exploiters. Government also protects us from physical and economic threats from other countries.

[. . .] When too many business reduce costs by cutting employees or paying less, the system collapses from lack of demand. Government is needed to keep businesses from laying off too many people or cutting pay. Sometimes government does this by stepping in and hiring people (or just giving them money like unemployment benefits), or buying things, thereby creating demand, causing businesses to hire.

Crucial to this equation:

When government is strong we have more enforcement of a level playing field for all of us, more education for all of us, more security for all of us, more protection of our environment, more infrastructure so our own startup businesses can flourish and compete, more parks, more promotion of the general welfare.

And when government is weak we end up with a very few greedy, ruthless billionaires and their giant corporations controlling the economy, stifling competition, scamming and defrauding us, and consuming the environment and resources for their own short-term profit.

Sign a SignOn.org petition posted by the Campaign for America’s Future calling for “the leaders of the House and Senate to allow an up-or-down vote on the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013, which would raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour and then index it to inflation.”

It is the nature of our current economic system that things will concentrate into fewer and fewer hands. When you let the ones with more money win the game and set the rules it is inevitable that they will increasingly set the rules to they always win the game. When the winner gets more stuff, eventually a very few winners have to end up with all the stuff.

The Fair Minimum Wage Act

The Fair Minimum Wage Act is up before the Congress. Isaiah J. Poole explains in Time To Demand A Vote To Increase The Minimum Wage:

The Fair Minimum Wage Act would increase the current federal minimum wage, $7.25, to $10.10 in three steps over a three-year period, and then index it annually to inflation from that point forward.

The bill would make an even more significant difference for tipped workers, mostly in the restaurant industry. They currently have a minimum wage of $2.13 an hour that has not increased since 1991. Under the bill, tipped workers would earn a minimum 70 percent of the regular minimum wage.

… House members have in fact had one opportunity to vote on the bill in March, in the form of a motion instructing the House to add the minimum wage increase to a workforce training bill. The motion was unanimously rejected by House Republicans.

The bill, though, deserves a stand-alone vote in its own right. It’s been three years since the minimum wage went up to $7.25, and that increase did not undo the damage done to low-wage workers by decades of congressional failure to keep this wage floor from sinking.

Sign a SignOn.org petition posted by the Campaign for America’s Future calling for “the leaders of the House and Senate to allow an up-or-down vote on the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013, which would raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour and then index it to inflation.”

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF. Sign up here for the CAF daily summary

Will Social Security Cuts Be The Democratic Party’s “New Coke?”

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All the smartest people in the executive suites just knew that the taste of Coca-Cola needed “reform.” Rival Pepsi was advertising to the “New Generation” and Coke’s executives came to believe their product wasn’t what the “cool” people wanted to drink. Everyone they talked to at the executive-level strategery seminars, and all the other executive-level geniuses they spoke with daily agreed. They were the elites, and they all knew better than their old-fashioned, uncool customers what the company needed. So they all drank the Kool-Aid and came up with “New Coke.” We all know what happened next. (Hint: it was bad.)

It couldn’t have gone better for Pepsi if Pepsi had placed those executives there themselves.

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Jobs

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Everyone knows that during the depression the government hired unemployed people to work on the infrastructure, parks, etc., and isn’t doing that this time.

Back then We the People were in charge, at least to more of an extent than today. So We the People did things to make our lives better. We the People doing things together to make our lives better is called democracy.

Now government just makes the lives of the wealthiest even better. This is plutocracy.

Bipartisan Solutions

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Here is how the DC game works:

- One side proposes to kill everyone in Kentucky and Tennessee. 15% of the public supports this (0% in Kentucky or Tennessee.)

- The other side thinks children should have enough food so they can grow up strong. (85% of the public supports this.)

- A Grand Bargain is reached in which they agree to kill everyone in Tennessee and spare the people in Kentucky, and children will get half as much food as they need.

The DC pundits will say that since everyone is angry at this, it must be the right solution because “both sides” only got part of what they want.

Austerity Lovers In D.C., Austerity Haters At Home

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In Washington, austerity-hungry Republicans called the sequester’s “across the board” spending cuts a “victory” – until their districts feel them. Then they complain about the cuts, but still demand cuts somewhere else and add new demands that someone ELSE decide what should be cut. This is because Republicans talk about cuts, but the American Majority doesn’t want cuts.

Please send us examples of sequester supporters in Washington who go home and cry about how it is hurting their constituents.

The Sequester

Some people think the “sequester” has something to do with racing horses. But it’s a technical word for the “across-the-board” budget cuts resulting from when the Republicans took the “debt ceiling” hostage, demanding big cuts in government or they would force the country to default on our promises to pay our debts, which would crash the economy.

They demanded these cuts, and they called the cuts a victory. That is, until the citizens who voted them into office started feeling the cuts.

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Surprising Studies Find DC Does What Wealthiest Want, Majority Opposes

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A new study, Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans, by Professors Benjamin I. Page, Jason Seawright and Larry M. Bartels sought to gauge the political and policy priorities of the wealthy, and how these concerns contrast with the concerns of the rest of us. Amazingly, the priorities of the 1% match up with the priorities of our political class, while the priorities and needs of the vast majorities of us are ignored.

The study questioned people with wealth that placed them in the top 1%. They were asked what they felt were the “very important problems” facing the country. The most common response was the budget deficit, with 87 percent believing this to me the most important problem. This contrasts with the rest of the population, with only 7% saying this is the country’s most pressing problem. Of course jobs and the miserable state of the economy for people what are not in that 1% were cited by regular people as the most important problem.

The 1%’ers want “entitlement programs” like Social Security and healthcare cut while the American Majority want (and need) them expanded.

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The Democratic Wing Of The Democratic Party

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The House voted on budgets yesterday and austerity won. 84 Democrats voted for the jobs and growth “Back To Work Budget” from the Congressional Progressive Caucus. 102 Democrats voted against it. (1 voted “present” and 13 were not voting.) Here is the roll call vote so you can see who voted yes and who voted no.

The Black Caucus budget with some jobs measures and tax increases on the wealthiest got 105 Democrats voting yes and 80 no.

Rep. Mulvaney’s substitute, which was very similar to Senate Committee-backed austerity budget resolution of budget cuts “balanced” with tax cuts got 154 Democrats voting yes and 35 no. The Democratic (Van Hollen) substitute austerity budget that replaced the sequester with targeted cuts and tax increases got 165 Democrats voting yes and 28 no.

The Democratic Wing Of The Democratic Party

Ten years and 6 days ago today: (transcript)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qcQ1XM-Oqk[/youtube]

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Taxes Aren’t Theft, Tax Cuts For The Wealthy Are Theft

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The Speaker of the House last week said that taxing people to pay for government is theft. Let’s look at just where actual theft is occurring.

Michael McAuliff and Sabrina Siddiqui covered the story at the Huffington Post, in John Boehner Compares Tax Proposals Of White House To Stealing,

We don’t have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem,” Boehner added. “How much more money do we want to steal from the American people to fund more government? I’m for no more.”

Yes, the old “taxes are theft” argument again. This is the line of reasoning that says government is bad, that decision-making by We, the People is bad, that people are “takers” and the wealthy are “producers” and “job creators,” and that the people are lazy and “don’t want to work” and if you let them assemble together and vote they become a mob that will steal everything from the rich who are rich by Divine Right, etc…

Keep in mind that in a democracy We, the People make decisions and government spending by definition is We, the People deciding to do things that make our lives better.

In honor of Speaker Boehner’s argument that taxes are theft, this is from August 2010: (even though the post will say June 12, 2012…)

Tax Cuts Are Theft

Conservatives like to say that taxes are theft. In fact it is tax cuts that are theft because they break a long-standing contract.

The American Social Contract: We, the People built our democracy and the empowerment and protections it bestows. We built the infrastructure, schools and all of the public structures, laws, courts, monetary system, etc. that enable enterprise to prosper. That prosperity is the bounty of our democracy and by contract it is supposed to be shared and reinvested. That is the contract. Our system enables some people to become wealthy but all of us are supposed to benefit from this system. Why else would We, the People have set up this system, if not for the benefit of We, the People?

The American Social Contract is supposed to work like this:

virtual_cycle

A beneficial cycle: We invest in infrastructure and public structures that create the conditions for enterprise to form and prosper. We prepare the ground for business to thrive. When enterprise prospers we share the bounty, with good wages and benefits for the people who work in the businesses and taxes that provide for the general welfare and for reinvestment in the infrastructure and public structures that keep the system going.

We fought hard to develop this system and it worked for us. We, the People fought and built our government to empower and protect us providing social services for the general welfare. We, through our government built up infrastructure and public structures like courts, laws, schools, roads, bridges. That investment creates the conditions that enable commerce to prosper – the bounty of democracy. In return we ask those who benefit most from the enterprise we enabled to share the return on our investment with all of us – through good wages, benefits and taxes.

But the “Reagan Revolution” broke the contract. Since Reagan the system is working like this:

virtual_cycle_diverted

Since the Reagan Revolution with its tax cuts for the rich, its anti-government policies, and its deregulation of the big corporations our democracy is increasingly defunded (and that was the plan), infrastructure is crumbling, our schools are falling behind, factories and supply chains are being dismantled, those still at work are working longer hours for fewer benefits and falling wages, our pensions are gone, wealth and income are increasing concentrating at the very top, our country is declining.

This is the Reagan Revolution home to roost: the social contract is broken. Instead of providing good wages and benefits and paying taxes to provide for the general welfare and reinvestment in infrastructure and public structures, the bounty of our democracy is being diverted to a wealthy few.

… read the rest of Tax Cuts Are Theft

Also see see Tax Cuts Are Theft: An Amplification by Sara Robinson.

And while you are at it here are some other posts in the Reagan Revolution Home To Roost series:

Reagan Revolution Home To Roost — In Charts
Reagan Revolution Home To Roost: America Drowning In Debt
Reagan Revolution Home To Roost: America Is Crumbling
Finance, Mine, Oil & Debt Disasters: THIS Is Deregulation

See the Reagan Revolution Home To Roost series.

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF. Sign up here for the CAF daily summary

The Legacy of Sandy Hook: An Unprecedented Opening for Change

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The wholesale slaughter of children sparked an unprecedented opening for change in this country. Killing children broke something fundamental in our culture. On that sad day, it felt as if there was a giant ripping in our society — yielding a gaping hole in all that was sacred and right. It was like watching the Twin Towers collapse all over again, but now it was our children. Many have asked if we have waited too long for action, the answer is simply no. Babies and guns do not belong in the same sentence. Assault weapons must never again be used to kill children.

It’s that opening – the gaping wound — that is inspiring our President Obama and Vice President Biden. This unlikely duo appear to be fueled by the fire of what is possible, and are driving a Mack truck through this opening right now — whether it is to push through the broadest gun safety legislation; or enact comprehensive immigration reform; or to raise the minimum wage; or end violence toward women; or to support gay marriage.

Watching our President Obama the evening of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School – it was clear that he would leap tall buildings to save the children and people of this country. It had become a Holy Crusade and compromise is off the table. Witness the fervor with which this team is working to move their Cabinet nominations forward even for beleaguered Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel. Republican shenanigans are not being tolerated even on their home turf, the House of Representatives. These folks can rant and rave for the cameras (and they do), but are falling flat with no run way. The President’s approval ratings are soaring even in the shadow of the latest, manufactured financial machination of the ‘sequester.’ And it is this fundamental lack of empathy and understanding that may be the down fall of the Republican Party as we know it today.

Frankly, the President is done turning himself into a human pretzel and for this we must rejoice. You just can’t compromise with folks that hate you and all that you stand for. It’s a travesty that it took this horrific loss of lives in Sandy Hook to galvanize the American people – but it did. Unbelievably, today one child still “dies every three hours from gun violence in the United States.” Everyone knows that gun safety legislation is not about the Second Amendment, but rather about sustaining a modern civilization.

The winds of change are upon us. Just witness the President’s news conference today on the impasse over what is called sequestration. He’s not backing down.