1116 replies to this topic

[LFC]

 AnBr, on 06 February 2021 - 10:41 PM, said:

According to a study by the London School of Economics and Political Science, 50 years worth of tax cuts contributed absolutely nothing to boost the GDP and employment rates across 18 nations that tried trickle down economics since the wealthy hoard far more than they spend.

Tinkle Down Economics didn't work? Say it ain't so!

[Beelzebuddy]

[AnBr]

Why Countries Never Thrive Without Activist Government Investment

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History shows that economies have never grown by minimizing government involvement in the economy.

There are two reasons why laissez faire policies have survived against the weight of contrary evidence. First, though simply reducing taxes fails to increase opportunity for all, many other factors are also involved in economic growth and income equality. The distinctive contribution of tax reductions or tax increases is not easy to disentangle. Further, the relationship between economic models and economic reality never has been as clear and decisive as between theory and reality in the natural sciences. This fuzziness of economic theory has meant that there have been few knock-out punches against economic theories by evidence. And that has left the door open for arguments among economists that are, at least to the general public, arcane and inconclusive.

The second and more important reason for the survival of tax-cutting “free market” policies is that progressives have had no coherent rival theory or vision for promoting economic growth

[LFC]

AnBr, on 15 February 2021 - 08:04 PM, said:

Why Countries Never Thrive Without Activist Government Investment

Randian / Austrian economics crumble in the face of reality and yet one major American political party is wed to the lies. Good thing they are strongly realist about every other topic. [/snark]

[LFC]

The CBO score is out on hiking the minimum wage to $15/hr and it costs a LOT less than multiple Republican bills. This makes it a lot easier to pass through reconciliation.

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The Congressional Budget Office said Monday that raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour would have a significantly broader budgetary impact than two provisions of the 2017 Republican tax cut legislation that passed through reconciliation, a finding that provides another boost to Sen. Bernie Sanders' effort to include the pay increase in the Senate coronavirus relief package.

In response to a request by Sanders—the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee—for a comparison of the budgetary effect of the Raise the Wage Act of 2021 with that of the GOP tax bill's zeroing out of Obamacare's individual mandate penalty and the measure's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) drilling provision, the CBO found that the $15 minimum wage legislation would have a more sweeping impact.

"The analysis of the Raise the Wage Act encompasses a much broader range of behavioral effects than that of the 2017 tax act, and the increased minimum wage would in turn affect a broader range of budget functions than CBO estimated that the change in the mandate penalty would," the budget office noted in a letter (pdf) to Sanders. "Increasing the minimum wage would affect more budget functions than CBO estimated that the ANWR provisions would."

Under the Senate's so-called Byrd Rule, each provision of a reconciliation bill must have a direct—not "merely incidental"—impact on the federal spending and revenue. The CBO's latest analysis—which comes a week after the budget office found the wage hike would add $54 billion to the deficit over ten years—was viewed as additional confirmation that the wage increase should qualify under reconciliation.

"Sounds like a passing grade to me, folks," said Elizabeth Pancotti, policy director at Employ America, in response to the CBO analysis.

Warren Gunnels, Sanders' staff director, also welcomed the CBO's new findings in a tweet late Monday.

"Raising the minimum wage to $15 would have a much bigger impact on the federal budget than oil drilling in the Arctic and the repeal of individual mandate penalties," Gunnels noted. "Both of those provisions were deemed permissible under reconciliation. Let's go."

The CBO analysis came as Sanders is working to make the case to the Senate parliamentarian—and to skeptical Democrats, including President Joe Biden and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.)—that the Raise the Wage Act complies with reconciliation rules and thus can and must be included in the Senate's coronavirus relief package.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is possibly the biggest obstacle right now and he's under brutal pressure. I don't know if he thought his position would give him great power to shape legislation or not but it sure seems like the reality of it is "fall the f*** in line if you hope to get reelected."

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Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia is under sustained fire—including from low-paid workers in his own state—for his resistance to a provision in the Senate's coronavirus rescue package that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

"I'm speaking to you, Senator Manchin," Jean Evansmore of the West Virginia Poor People's Campaign said at an online event Monday. "You know that in West Virginia the minimum wage needs to be $23 in order for people to live, not wonder where their next meal is coming from."

"Enough's enough," added Pam Garrison, also with the West Virginia Poor People's Campaign. "When will you give us a living wage?"

[Traveler]

Manchin needs to grow a pair. Holding up MW will backfire on him. What he can do is try to put together a "prevailing wage" type of adjustment. If they can do that for infrastructure projects, no reason it cannot be adapted to the MW schedules. Has anyone heard of this idea? Seems like a no brainer to me.

[AnBr]

[andydp]

If you've followed the news, it appears the $15 minimum wage increase will not be part of the stimulus bill. This was decided by the parliamentarian. Everyone is sounding like that's the end of the attempt. I'm thinking the only thing the parliamentarian did was tell them putting the increase in the bill wouild be a mistake. If it was a mistake then someone could take the case to the courts and do their usual blocking.

Take the wage increase out of the bill, make it a separate bill and pass it by itself. Be sure it gets vetted so it can't be negated by a court for some techicality.

Bonus: the stimulus bill gets passed without a possible constitutional argument

[LFC]

andydp, on 26 February 2021 - 09:47 AM, said:

Take the wage increase out of the bill, make it a separate bill and pass it by itself. Be sure it gets vetted so it can't be negated by a court for some techicality.

Bonus: the stimulus bill gets passed without a possible constitutional argument

Full-loaf Democrats start screeching in 3, 2, ...

[AnBr]

LFC, on 26 February 2021 - 11:03 AM, said:

Full-loaf Democrats start screeching in 3, 2, ...

You, you... incrementalist!!!!

[andydp]

LFC, on 26 February 2021 - 11:03 AM, said:

Full-loaf Democrats start screeching in 3, 2, ...

Bernie is already screaming.

[LFC]

andydp, on 26 February 2021 - 07:59 PM, said:

Bernie is already screaming.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: "Buck, Fernie!"

And I've already seen liberal friends who are whining about this and saying things like "he already managed to attack Syria but...". It sickens me to see just how absolutist people I generally like and respect can be. Biden has been in office for just over 5 weeks and it's already all about what he HASN'T done.

[pnwguy]

LFC, on 26 February 2021 - 08:05 PM, said:

I've said it before and I'll say it again: "Buck, Fernie!"

And I've already seen liberal friends who are whining about this and saying things like "he already managed to attack Syria but...". It sickens me to see just how absolutist people I generally like and respect can be. Biden has been in office for just over 5 weeks and it's already all about what he HASN'T done.

"Biden has allowed Covid to spread and kill 100,000 Americans!"

[AnBr]

Nick Hanauer said:

We have confused a symptom—educational inequality—with the underlying disease: economic inequality. Schooling may boost the prospects of individual workers, but it doesn’t change the core problem, which is that the bottom 90 percent is divvying up a shrinking share of the national wealth. Fixing that problem will require wealthy people to not merely give more, but take less.

https://www.theatlan...-enough/590611/

[LFC]

Senate Dems are working on ways to pass the minimum wage provision.

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After the Senate parliamentarian dashed Democrats’ hopes of crowbarring a $15 federal minimum wage into the COVID-19 relief package Thursday night, members and their staffs have been scrambling to figure out a way around the ruling.

Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Bernie Sanders (D-VT), who chair the Senate Finance and Budget Committees respectively, have proposed a backdoor approach that the parliamentarian might approve of, one that would involve changing tax policy.

Wyden put out a statement saying that his proposal would impose a 5 percent penalty on the payrolls of big corporations if workers earned less than a certain amount. He also called for a tax credit equal to up to 25 percent of wages for small businesses that pay their workers higher wages. Many of the specific numbers, however, have not yet been made public.

While the proposal is a good faith effort to salvage raising the minimum wage in the current political landscape — it seems unlikely that a standalone bill to raise the minimum wage would attract the 60 Senate votes needed to overcome a filibuster — experts on and off the Hill are already expressing concerns about whether Plan B would be a fitting replacement.

“Proponents of this approach would like nothing better than if everyone paid at least the minimum wage, but we fully expect that some employers will still rather pay the tax,” one Democratic aide told TPM.

The workaround simply wouldn’t reach as many people as raising the minimum wage wholesale. The Washington Post noted research by Arindrajit Dube, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who found that only 20 percent of minimum wage workers in Oregon are employed by firms with more than 500 employees.

“There must be penalties for all businesses, regardless of size,” said Kayla Blado of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.

[AnBr]

I'd be in favor of indexing minimum wage in a business to the earnings of the top of the business. If a CEO wanted greater compensation they would have to give a raise to all those under him, especially those at the bottom of the company. And that ratio should be closer to what it was, say 40-50 years ago.

[LFC]

Biden is backing Amazon workers in Alabama looking to unionize.

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President Joe Biden has voiced his support for workers in Alabama who are pushing to form the first union in Amazon’s vast U.S. empire. In a video posted on Twitter on Sunday night, the president didn’t mention Amazon by name, but told workers “in Alabama and all across America” that he backs their right to join a union if they choose to do so. Warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama, have started voting on the option to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union—if approved, they would be the first group of Amazon workers in America to unionize. Biden said: “Let me be clear: It’s not up to me to decide whether anyone should join a union. But let me be even more clear: It’s not up to an employer to decide that either. The choice to join a union is up to the workers—full stop.” Last month, The Daily Beast reported on Amazon’s increasingly creepy attempts to persuade its workers to vote down the unionization effort.

From that second link:

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Joseph Jones, a 35-year-old father who works in the fulfillment area on the weekends, said he felt the company was engaging in “bad faith arguments” to dissuade people from joining the union.

Jones shared photos with The Daily Beast of anti-union signs posted throughout the warehouse. “Unions can’t. We can!” one sign said. “Why pay for what you get for free?” read another sign.

Another sign simply told workers, “Vote no!”

Workers say they are obligated to go to mandatory weekly meetings where they are subject to anti-union PowerPoint presentations that are rampant with misinformation. (The company didn’t respond to specific questions about their anti-union campaign.)

Jones said he doesn’t think Amazon is inherently evil, but it’s not lost on him that the company has never bothered to hold mandatory weekly meetings on safety. “We don’t have mandatory meetings to go over, ‘Hey, how’s your mental health during this pandemic?’” he said. “But you better believe we’re gonna talk about how bad and how crazy the union is at these weekly meetings we have to go to.”

Workers reported receiving constant text messages with anti-union messages, and even seeing pressure-laden signs in the bathroom stalls. “Above the sinks… right beside the stalls,” Connelly said. “[The sign] will say, ‘Every vote counts.’ But then it’ll say, ‘Vote no.’”

And the company set up the website, DoItWithoutDues.com, with a message on the homepage that says: “There’s so much MORE you can do for your career and your family without paying dues.” Linked pages have misleading information about union membership labeled as “fact.”

Amazon has been accused of firing workers in other cities who protested working conditions—a fear Connelly says is playing on Bessemer employees. Alabama is an at-will state, meaning employees can be fired at any time for almost any reason, but terminating an employee as a form of retaliation or because they are a union member is illegal.

“Some of the younger workers there, they are taking some... convincing [to join the union],” said Connelly. “They are being told they will be fired if they sign the registration forms about the union.”

Jones said the company is insisting that unionization would mean employees can no longer negotiate directly with managers. “There’s no negotiating currently,” he said. “So the fact that we would have someone negotiating on our behalf, how is that a bad thing?”