US Consumer Spending Climbs At Fastest Pace in Seven Years

May 31, 2016 Nick Cassella

Off

Personal consumption in our economy accounts for roughly 70 percent of our gross domestic product. And the consumption economy seems to be kicking back in, as “ US consumer spending recorded its biggest increase in more than six years in April .” Consumer spending went up 1 percent last month, in large part due to the “ strengthening labor market, which is steadily pushing up wages .” In the words of our plutocratic overlord Nick Hanauer, “when customers have more money, businesses have more customers.” You don’t say! This virtuous cycle of consumption and demand is known by many : Economists generally accept the idea that Americans who make more will be prone to spend more. While consumer savings preferences don’t always add up to an exact 1-to-1 ratio between income and spending, it’s generally believed that compensation gains ultimately help stimulate consumption. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the month’s solid spending totals, disposable personal income – or Americans’ earnings after taxes – climbed 0.5 percent last month for the metric’s best showing since January. An economy’s purpose, after all, is to provide solutions via market forces for citizens. Naturally, a citizen is going to be more active in the economy if he or she has enough money to participate in the economy. That’s why today’s news is good news. With the velocity of money in our society so beleaguered , any uptick in consumer spending is cause for celebration.

+ Read More

Daily Clips: May 31st, 2016

May 31, 2016 Nick Cassella

Off

Daily Clips

A basic income is smarter than a minimum wage: It really is remarkable how quickly basic income has ascended the policy ranks. While it has academic cover from both the right and left, the very idea of unconditionally giving money to citizens seems so much more revolutionary than the concept of a minimum wage. The author here notes how basic income has a “libertarian flavor”: By guaranteeing basic survival, a government provides a service as necessary as, say, policing the streets or fighting off foreign enemies. At the same time, once this service is provided, the government can get out of trying to regulate the labor market: Its goal of keeping people fed and clothed is already achieved. In one sense, a basic income provides a negative form of liberty (in that there is no interference needed post-basic income), but in order to allow for no interference it requires a positive form of liberty (giving citizens money with no conditions). It’s a very interesting relationship, that makes the future of this policy choice extremely important to monitor. Democrats have more work to do with Latinos than you may think: An informative piece on naturalizations and voter turnout from Vox. German unemployment falls to record low in May: I usually don’t cover international news in these clips, but I saw this headline and thought it was worth sharing. Did you know that the German unemployment rate is at 6.1%, its lowest level since 1990? I didn’t. US struggles with goal of admitting 10,000 Syrians: To put that pathetic number in perspective, Australia (a country with a little over 20 million people) is admitting 12,000 Syrians. Tweet of the day: Per April NBC/WSJ poll, just 12% of voters gave Trump high marks on having "the right temperament" to be president pic.twitter.com/MWiCZ0133f — Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) May 31, 2016

+ Read More

Daily Clips: May 27th, 2016

May 27, 2016 Nick Cassella

Off

Daily Clips

What is the Presidential Election Campaign Fund? I had never heard of this fund before today, but its history is intriguing. The Presidential Election Campaign Fund was conceived 40 years ago to level the presidential playing field and to give political unknowns a fighting chance…The program boosted outsiders like Democrat Jimmy Carter and Republican Ronald Reagan, and for years, it helped limit campaign costs. But with the explosion of campaign spending, fewer and fewer candidates have embraced the program. Today, it has become irrelevant. What should we call the “sharing” economy? In our podcast on the “sharing” economy , we outlined just how many terms were used to describe this modern economic situation. Similarly, this Atlantic piece looks at the power of naming. ‘Obviously ‘the sharing economy’ is a misnomer, which the industry no doubt likes a lot,’ said Dean Baker, an economist and the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. ‘It’s got nothing to do with sharing. They’re profit-making companies.’ David Brooks speaks for my generation…again: I have written in the past about David Brooks’ capacity for condescension towards young people and his latest article does not disappoint! This creates a tension in the minds of some students. On the professional side they are stressed and exhausted. On the political, spiritual and moral side they are unfulfilled. On the professional side some students are haunted by the anxiety that they are failing in some comprehensive but undefinable way. On the spiritual side they hunger for a vehement crusade that will fulfill their moral yearnings and produce social justice. This situation — a patina of genteel progressivism atop a churning engine of amoral meritocracy — is inherently unstable and was bound to produce a counterreaction. “A patina of genteel progressivism” – looks like someone pulled out the thesaurus for their latest column! US economic growth revised higher in first quarter: Not a perfect measurement of our economy’s strength, but at least it provides a useful talking point for Democrats as the incumbent
+ Read More

+ Read More

It’s Time for Washington State to Get Rid of Caucuses

May 26, 2016 Russ Daggatt

Off

2016

Bernie Sanders had a big win in the Washington caucuses on March 26th. In fact, it was his biggest single delegate win of the entire primary process. He netted a 47-delegate advantage over Hillary Clinton. His next-best delegate haul was the Utah caucuses, where he won with a 21-delegate advantage. There is no official vote count in the Washington State caucuses, but the state Democratic Party estimated that 230,000 people turned out. Sanders won 72.7 percent, which translates to roughly 167,000 votes. To put that in perspective, in the caucuses Sanders won less than 10 percent of the 1,755,396 votes President Obama received in the state in the 2012 general election. But Washington State also has a presidential primary. Republicans use the results of the primary to allocate delegates to their national convention, but Democrats don’t. John Oliver ridiculed that practice on Last Week Tonight last Sunday: Generally, you are lucky if you live in a state that has a primary … unless you are a Democrat in Washington State, where things get a little more complicated: [voice over] “In Washington State we have both caucuses and presidential primaries, where you actually cast a ballot in private. But Democrats have never liked the primary and have ignored it from Day One.” It’s true. The Democrats’ presidential primary in Washington doesn’t count. They have one, and it’s this Tuesday, but all the pledged delegates were decided in their caucus months ago. So, you know that awful friend who says he doesn’t vote because he doesn’t feel like his vote counts? If he’s a Washington Democrat participating in the primary, he’s right. He’s still awful, but he’s right. There is a long history behind this. But to summarize: Before 1988, both parties allocated their delegates using a combination of caucuses and conventions. After 1988, the state instituted a presidential primary. Republican rules
+ Read More

+ Read More

Paul Ryan Releases Bizarre Anti-Trump Ad That Never Mentions Trump By Name

May 26, 2016 Paul Constant

Off

2016, Donald Trump, Paul Ryan

Yesterday, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s office published a very strange video. Titled “The Choice,” the video features Ryan speaking very vaguely about something that he thinks is a real problem today. He doesn’t really name the problem he’s discussing, but it’s pretty obvious that he’s talking about Donald Trump. Here’s the video: And here’s the transcript: I have not seen the kind of bitterness in our discourse, our politics, like we have today, and I gotta say I think it’s both sides — I’d love to say it’s just Democrats, but it’s not, it’s both. And it doesn’t have to be this way. America can do better. This anxiety has got to be channeled, and dealt with with solutions instead of just amplified and accelerated and exacerbating it. How do you fix that? I think leaders fix this. We haven’t had that kind of leadership lately. Leaders need to say, “Here’s my principle, here’s my solution and let’s try and do it in a way that is inclusive, that’s optimistic, that aspirational and that’s focusing on solutions.” And so that’s the choice you’ll have, far more than personality. Republicans lose personality contests anyway. We always do. But we win ideas contests. We owe you that choice. So a little Ryan-to-English translation is necessary: by “it’s both sides” who participate in bitterness, Ryan is really just calling out Donald Trump. When he says that we “haven’t had that kind of leadership lately,” he’s likely calling out both President Obama and Donald Trump. This is exceptionally weird, right? I can’t recall another time when a prominent elected official has put out a commercial trashing the presumptive presidential nominee of his own party. Also interesting? Ryan’s idea of what leaders do. Nobody, really, can argue with his claim that leaders should be
+ Read More

+ Read More

Daily Clips: May 26th, 2016

May 26, 2016 Nick Cassella

Off

Daily Clips

Marijuana smuggling is declining in the the era of legal weed: Good news for marijuana advocates, who often combat with the idea that interstate smuggling has increased since Washington and Colorado legalized the devil’s lettuce. Econ 101ism, overtime pay edition: The Noahpinion blog has put out an excellent piece on overtime and how critics of the rule have responded. He writes: In the Econ 101 model of labor supply and demand, there’s no distinction between the extensive and the intensive margin – hiring the same number of employees for fewer hours each is exactly the same as hiring fewer employees for the same number of hours each. But with overtime rules, those two are obviously not the same. For a given base wage, under overtime rules, hiring 100 workers for 40 hours each is cheaper than hiring 40 workers for 100 hours each, even though the total number of labor hours is the same. That breaks the 101 model. Immigration isn’t that bad for native workers: Some may find this headline (and article) surprising, but this conclusion follows from a lot of research. Indeed: These and other surveys and meta-analyses all reach one overwhelming conclusion: “Immigration has at most only a small harmful effect on the native-born.” Tweet of the day: Political science and history classes will spend years studying the Trump phenomenon as will communications and journalism classes — Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) May 26, 2016

+ Read More

Daily Clips: May 25th, 2016

May 25, 2016 Nick Cassella

Off

Daily Clips

Paternity leave and family responsibility: Good, long read from the Atlantic. Their 6-year-old was killed with a neighbor’s gun. A court just decided how much his life was worth. Workers get a little more of the income pie: Good news! Labor’s share of national income, which has been declining since the early 1990s, and which took a big hit in the 2008 recession, has been rising for two years. Asian-Americans increasingly identify as Democrats: Asian-Americans are the fastest-growing immigrant group in the country, but they’re rarely polled and remain somewhat of a political enigma.

+ Read More

Just Another Day in Trickle-Down America

May 24, 2016 Paul Constant

Off

Economics, Minimum Wage

Part of the reason why we’re finally recognizing trickle-down economics as a scam is that we have so many examples of its failures. The clearest and most obvious failure, of course, is Kansas, which is maybe the purest laboratory of trickle-down economics ever devised by politicians. Governor Sam Brownback and his conservative legislature pushed through tax cut after tax cut, driving more and more money to Kansas’s top one percent. They cut regulations for corporations, and they did as much trickle-down triage as possible. As we all know by now, the trickle down motto is that if you give enough money to the wealthiest Americans, that money will then trickle down (often in the form of jobs) for everyone else. How’s it working out? The Chicago Tribune‘s Eric Zorn did a little check-in on Kansas last week . Seems that Governor Brownback is the least popular governor in America right now—yes, even lower-rated than Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, who is largely viewed as responsible for Flint’s over-leaded water supply. Zorn continues: The Congressional Joint Economic Committee reported earlier this year that Kansas had just 9,400 new private-sector jobs in 2015 (out of 2.6 million nationwide). U.S. Department of Commerce data show that, prior to Brownback’s tax cuts, Kansas ranked 12th in the nation in personal income growth; after the tax cuts it fell to 41st. A handful of school districts in the state had to close early last year for lack of funds, and the state Supreme Court has had to issue orders requiring Kansas to cough up enough money to pay for K-12 education. In March, Brownback cut $17 million in funding, 3 percent, from the state’s six public universities in response to revenue shortfalls. In April, he announced that he was going to have to delay a $93 million contribution to the state pension fund, prompting Moody’s Investors Services to downgrade
+ Read More

+ Read More

Daily Clips: May 24th, 2016

May 24, 2016 Nick Cassella

Off

Daily Clips

Why is Clinton disliked: In his latest column, David Brooks asks the very fair question: Why is Hillary Clinton disliked as much as a raving bigot? Honestly, I haven’t devoted a lot of thinking to this subject. Like gravity, I just assume its presence. Hillary is despised by a large portion of our body politic. Certainly there has been a concerted right-wing effort to make her sound like the anti-Christ, but even outside of Fox News, many liberals do not care for her at all. Brooks makes a cogent point when he asks, “Can you tell me what Hillary Clinton does for fun?” I certainly can’t. I know Bill Clinton loved McDonalds and jogging with excessively short shorts. I know that Barack Obama probably craves cigarettes and enjoys a game of golf. But what about Hillary? Outside of her professional domain, she doesn’t really let anyone into her personal life. Obviously, this is not the only reason why people find her “untrustworthy” or “dishonest,” but Brooks’ point does have serious merit, in my opinion. US new home sales race to eight-year high : While that sounds great on face value, remember that everyone’s paychecks have actually lost value since 2007 . “ Americans in small towns and rural communities are dramatically less likely to start new businesses than they have been in the past, an unprecedented trend that jeopardizes the economic future of vast swaths of the country. “ Tweet of the day: Anything on ABC, CBS, FOX, CNN, MSNBC on the two legal cases where women accused Trump of rape or sex assault under oath? Just checking. — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 24, 2016

+ Read More

Watch Elizabeth Warren Explain Why America Needs to Have a Conversation About the Future of Work

May 23, 2016 Paul Constant

Off

2016, Economics, shared security, Shared Security System, workers

Last week, Elizabeth Warren gave an important speech at New America , a progressive policy institute in Washington DC. Titled “Strengthening the Basic Bargain for Workers in the Modern Economy,” the speech addressed ways workers and employers can adapt to the gig economy while still keeping America’s middle class strong. It’s important to note that Warren did not attack Uber or Lyft for their employment practices, and she was not advocating a return to 1950s work standards. In fact, Warren praised those two companies for the way they encouraged “more rides, cheaper rides, and shorter wait times” than the taxicab industry. But she acknowledged that the disruption caused by gig economy employers was affecting the nature of work in America today: fewer workers now enjoy the security of a middle-class life because their jobs have changed .”While their businesses provide workers with great flexibility,” Warren said, “companies like Lyft and Uber have often resisted the efforts of those same workers to access a greater share of the wealth generated from their work. Their business model is, in part, dependent on extremely low wages for drivers.” This is a problem: America is built on the strength of its middle class, and if we exclude low-wage workers from the economy, the economy will suffer. So what should we do about this? We can’t (and in fact we shouldn’t want to) turn back the clock to a pre-gig economy time. Warren rightly compared the gig economy with the industrial revolution, which was another period of massive disruption: America’s response wasn’t to abandon the technological innovations and improvements of the industrial revolution. We didn’t send everyone back to their farms. No. Instead, we came together, and through our government we changed public policies to adapt to a changing economy – to keep the good and get rid of much
+ Read More

+ Read More

Civic Ventures