Daily Clips: September 21st, 2016

September 21, 2016 Nick Cassella

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How to protect workers from job-stealing robots: Economists and politicians have been talking about robotics and their potential to displace jobs. Jason Furman, Obama’s Chief Economist, does not believe that is an inevitability: Of course, advanced economies have seen vast amounts of innovation in the last three centuries without rendering human labor obsolete. Most of the types of jobs that existed in the 1700s do not exist today, but new types of jobs that no one could have imagined then have taken their place—all because of technological advances. A different trajectory is unlikely to emerge this time around because even though AI has the potential to replace certain human tasks, it will likely also create entirely new fields of jobs. Are firms that discriminate more likely to go out of business? The short answer: yes. “Results suggest that employers who engage in hiring discrimination are less likely to remain in business six years later.” Inclusion>exclusion. Ross Douthat complains about how society is moving to the left: Conservatives are a remarkably…reactive bunch. They very rarely push society in new ways of thinking. They are almost always complaining about how a society is moving away from what it used to be. Donald Trump says it’s worse than ‘ever, ever, ever’ for black people in the United States : The man is clearly not a historian. Tweet of the day: Remember how Republicans like Trump said minimum wage increases hurt the economy and cost jobs? https://t.co/Tdt5xYc0T4 — Daily Kos (@dailykos) September 18, 2016

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Daily Clips: September 20th, 2016

September 20, 2016 Nick Cassella

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Daily Clips

Seattle City Council approves worker-scheduling law: A big win for Seattle workers! If you have no idea what secure scheduling entails, listen to our podcast episode on the subject. David Brooks tells us about meeting a working-class person: There’s really no other way you could summarize Brooks’ latest piece. He comes off as a snob desperately trying to understand the “sad, noncumulative pattern to working-class lives.” (Tip to David: maybe don’t use those phrases when speaking to the working class.) As you can tell, he has a thing for buzz phrases with no inherent meaning: my favorites in this column were “nurture webs of mutual dependence” and “stochastic, episodic nature”. US companies are ‘hoarding’ a record $2.5 trillion in cash overseas House GOP’s ‘Better Way’ Tax Plan A Much Better Way For Richest 1% Clinton hasn’t won over millennials. And no sexism isn’t to blame: Excellent article which accurately identifies my generation’s feelings towards Clinton. Here’s a particularly strong point: Since the Democratic national convention, Clinton and Trump have peddled their own politics of fear. Hers: of an ascendant far-right. His: of immigrants and the prospect of a truly multi-racial democracy. If Bernie Sanders’ primary campaign showed anything, though, it’s that young Americans are eager to vote for something – not against it. Tweet of the day: Pretty spot-on headline from the Seattle Times on secure scheduling. #ourtimecounts pic.twitter.com/Yeslw7eouW — Working Washington (@workingwa) September 20, 2016

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Daily Clips: September 19th, 2016

September 19, 2016 Nick Cassella

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Daily Clips

Best headline of the day: Brought to you by Tim Worstall who seemingly cannot let the minimum wage ever score a point. California Added 42% Of All US Jobs Last Month – But That $15 Minimum Wage Is Still A Big Problem That is Onion-like. Millennial voters may cost Hillary Clinton the election: In state polling, where the Millennial sample can be very small, there is not as clear a pattern of Johnson and Stein pulling more voters from Clinton than Trump. But state polls do reaffirm the trend of Clinton’s vote among Millennials running well below the proportion of them who view Trump unfavorably. The US infrastructure investment debate: Is infrastructure a “progressive romance” that has become too widely accepted? Here, the author goes through a variety of thinkers who all have different takes on infrastructure and the next moves for the USA. Everybody thinks they’re the middle class: I guess that’s what happens when politicians lionize this American group over and over and over again. It’s Not Too Late to Fix Fox News: The sealed universe of Fox News might be an excellent strategy for a niche television audience, but it’s a disastrous one for presidential candidates who have to appeal to swing voters. Mr. Trump continues to double down on his most outrageous opinions and proposals, like the Mexican wall, cutting his campaign off from the support of moderate Republicans, undecided voters and disaffected Democrats. Tweet of the day: Two things that keep coming out in poll after poll: Old white guys have gone feral, & a whole lot of younger voters are fed up with duopoly. — Billmon (@billmon1) September 19, 2016

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The Seattle Times Editorial Board Gets Everything Wrong on Secure Scheduling

September 16, 2016 Paul Constant

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Economics, Policy, Scheduling

On Monday at 2 pm, the City Council will finally vote on secure scheduling . A majority of the council has already voted the bill out of committee, so the legislation is expected to become law. This is great news for workers in Seattle, who will finally enjoy predictable scheduling, allowing them to balance their work and personal lives. It will enable them to plan doctor’s appointments, family time, school schedules, and all the other everyday activities that so many Seattle office workers take for granted. Secure scheduling makes sense from a business perspective, too: this law will allow these workers to reinvest themselves in their communities as consumers who can plan their finances more than five days in advance. We’ve already agreed in Seattle that when restaurant workers have more money, that’s good for restaurants. Secure scheduling is a continuation of that idea; it ensures that restaurant workers have the time (and the sense of financial stability) to spend their money in restaurants. It’s just good sense. So, naturally, the Seattle Times Editorial Board fucking hates it. They published an editorial this morning titled “Seattle’s scheduling rule is counter to our innovative business culture,” and it’s so packed with bullshit that I have no recourse but to fisk the thing—go through line by line to unspool all the lies and misdirections stuffed inside. Ready? Here we go, from the very beginning: Mayor Ed Murray and the Seattle City Council are moving at breakneck speed, for them, on new legislation this month. This push for legislation started back in February , so it’s not exactly the 2 Fast 2 Furious frenetic road race that the Times is disingenuously depicting here. There have been plenty of committee meetings where citizens on both sides of the issue have spoken out, there have been community events, there have been many opportunities for everyone to comment. Not to
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Daily Clips: September 16th, 2016

September 16, 2016 Nick Cassella

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Daily Clips

The race is tightening for a painfully simple reason: A remarkably well-argued piece from Yglesias. He uses his historical knowledge to great effect. His analysis on Stein stunned me: To find a fourth-place candidate polling higher than Stein’s current results, you need to dial all the way back to the 6 percent of the vote Eugene Debs earned in the bizarre 1912 election that saw the GOP nominee (the incumbent, no less!) finish in third place behind a third-party bid spearheaded by ex-president Teddy Roosevelt. For what it’s worth, I’d highley recommend Sidney Milkis’ book on that historic 1912 race. Mayor Murray changes course, shelves North Precinct police station plan: Wow, huge victory for the #BlockTheBunker movement in Seattle. Seattle area jobless rate dips to 8-year low : I’ll give Goldy the stage. Damn you, $15 an hour minimum wage! https://t.co/wJaRAkoh72 — (((Goldy))) (@GoldyHA) September 14, 2016 Good news! We’re as rich as we were in 1998: And we’ve only lost a few major wars in between that time, too! Tweet of the day: "The good news is that my pneumonia finally got some Republicans interested in women’s health.” —Hillary — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 16, 2016

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Donald Trump’s New Economic Agenda: More Food Poisoning, More Government Subsidies of Low-Wage Employers

September 15, 2016 Paul Constant

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2016, Economics, Policy

Donald Trump unveiled a new economic agenda today, marking his third attempt at a tax plan in less than a year . But this was more than just taxes—it’s an “agenda” that aspires to serve a bunch of conservative masters while never once aspiring to coherence. It must be said, though, that Trump’s conservative masters are pretty happy with the plan. The Wall Street Journal has gone gaga over it, running an editorial from Michael Saltsman titled “ Don’t Raise the Minimum Wage: Trump Has a Better Plan .” That better plan? It’s to increase the Earned Income Tax Credit, which basically would pay out based on how much or how little a taxpayer earns. According to Saltsman, this is a pro-business idea. Which is true, but artificially so. By not raising the minimum wage and offering a higher EITC in its place, government is basically subsidizing low-income employers. ( Nick Hanauer wrote about this at length back in May .) So much for small government. So much for the free market. Anyway, a s I just told you yesterday , proponents of trickle down economics employ three major tactics to ensure that the top one percent benefits from inequality: 1. Tax cuts for the rich. 2. Deregulation for the powerful. 3. Wage suppression for everyone else. You’ll see these three tactics throughout Trump’s economic agenda . Especially the deregulation bit. Here’s the part of the plan that’s getting the most attention right now: Specific regulations to be eliminated include: …The FDA Food Police, which dictate how the federal government expects farmers to produce fruits and vegetables and even dictates the nutritional content of dog food. The rules govern the soil farmers use, farm and food production hygiene, food packaging, food temperatures, and even what animals may roam which fields and when. It also greatly increased inspections of food “facilities,” and levies new taxes to pay for this inspection overkill. Yeah, you read that right. Donald Trump wants to save government money by cutting the regulations that keep our food safe
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Daily Clips: September 15th, 2016

September 15, 2016 Nick Cassella

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Daily Clips

5 ways the census income report misleads us about the real state of the economy: Random thought, I just realized that Vox is like the BuzzFeed for politically-minded individuals. Weak US retail sales dampen interest rate hike prospects: I wonder if this is because Americans are taking their increased wages and saving (what little they can). America’s cultural civil war: That gap between the largest places and everywhere else was nearly 50 percent bigger than it was as recently as the 2000 election. Few observers would be surprised if Trump suffers even greater repudiation in the largest metros and outpaces Romney beyond them—thus widening the electoral distance between town and country. Study says Americans blame Washington gridlock for slow economic growth: ‘Only a minority of members of either party felt that their own party was acting in a way that supported economic growth,’ said Jan Rivkin, a professor at Harvard Business School and co-author of the report. The normalization of evil in American politics: [The] mainstream media are also complicit in this normalization of hatred, allowing it to masquerade in the guise of political positions. For decades, when reporting on the Christian right, for example, media have treated it as a religious movement, barely mentioning—if at all—the roots of movement positions in the segregationist backlash of the South. Instead, media executives allowed themselves to be cowed by the right wing’s outrage machine, every time it cranked up its conveyor belt of allegations of the anti-religion bent of reporters. Tweet of the day: If your household earns less than $80,000, you're now in the minority in Seattle: https://t.co/8gzR5IeosI pic.twitter.com/fLjfsw5D78 — gene balk (@genebalk) September 15, 2016

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Uh, OK: The Republican Running for Governor of Washington State Wants to Regulate Regulations

September 14, 2016 Paul Constant

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2016, Economics

Yesterday morning, we woke up to great news: household income in the United States has finally begun to rise, after eight years of stagnation. Reuters reports : The Census Bureau said on Tuesday that median household income surged 5.2 percent last year to $56,500, the highest since 2007, in large part due to solid employment gains. The jump was the biggest since record keeping began in 1968. But that’s not all: the poverty rate saw its largest drop since 1968 , among other assorted pieces of good news. And today we learned that Seattle’s jobless rate is now lower than it’s been in eight years . Of course there’s more work to be done—housing costs are out of control, we have decades of inequality to overcome, and the fact that we still have as much poverty as we do in the 21st century is ridiculous—but the numbers indicate that we are finally, eight years after the financial collapse, on the right track. More people, and not just the top one percent, are seeing more income. So yesterday was kind of a rough day for Washington state Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Bryant to deliver a jobs speech. But that’s what he did, and it was broadcast on Facebook live to an audience of somewhere between two and three dozen people. I was one of those viewers. Between frequent drops in the streaming service and the crappy sound quality of the stream, I was able to discern that Bryant offered a six-point plan to improve jobs in Washington state. And if you’ve been paying attention to any Republican gubernatorial candidate in Washington state over the last four decades, you know what it contained. As Nick Cassella recapped this morning in Daily Clips , the three demands of candidates who promote trickle down economics are as follows: 1. Tax cuts for the rich. 2. Deregulation for the powerful. 3. Wage suppression for everyone else. And that’s exactly what Bryant offered. Aside from
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Daily Clips: September 14th, 2016

September 14, 2016 Nick Cassella

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Daily Clips

And now, a case of really bad Republican timing: Here is an excellent article on the failed economics of Paul Ryan and his #BetterWay crew. What is best about this piece, however, is how the author neatly defines the GOP’s economic agenda: [Ryan’s] “ Better Way ” agenda — [is] basically tax cuts for the rich, spending cuts for the poor and deregulation for big business… That sure sounds a lot like our definition of trickle-down economics as tax cuts for the rich, deregulation for the powerful, and wage suppression for the 99%. NRA ad against background checks in Maine completely misses the mark: Wow, this ad is bad. Not only does it depict the San Francisco skyline (while claiming it is New York), they also employ some voice actor to do a Maine accent…that doesn’t sound anything like a Mainer. Our own Paul Constant (who grew up in Maine) gave his own take on the entire kerfuffle. Economic expansion is finally benefiting the middle class: The 5.6 percent rise in median household income from 2010 to 2015 is a great deal better than in the mid-2000s expansion and somewhat worse than in the mid-1990s recovery. Using inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings for nonsupervisory workers, the mid-1990s and current expansion are about the same, compared with no gain in the mid-2000s. Both the poorest and richest Americans did better in the 1990s but worse in the mid-2000s. Tweet of the day: . @SpeakerRyan Gun violence victims NEVER get a day off. #DoYourJob Give us a #GUNVOTE ! pic.twitter.com/7nJiOXuCpv — WomenAgainstGunViol (@WAGV) September 14, 2016

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Why Would the NRA Pay for this Embarrassing, Error-Riddled Ad?

September 14, 2016 Paul Constant

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Guns

I spent the first twenty years of my life in Maine. I visit my family in Maine once a year. And though I choose to live in Seattle, I take a lot of pride in being from Maine, born and bred. It’s a culture unlike anywhere else in the United States: indpendent, reliant on common sense, and proudly insular. There’s a term Mainers use for people who were born elsewhere and move to Maine: they’re From Away. I had a friend who spent the first three months of his life in Connecticut before his mom moved home to Maine. He’s From Away, and he’ll always be From Away. Even if he lived in Maine for the rest of his natural life, my friends and I joked, he’d have to put “From Away” on his gravestone. I share all this because the National Rifle Association just debuted a new advertisement opposing Question 3, a commonsense background check initiative. And here it is: Okay. So many issues with this ad. First of all, that’s not even the New York City skyline they use in the beginning of the ad; it’s the San Francisco skyline with a Statue of Liberty stapled into it. Second of all, they got Maine’s shape wrong. This is not what Maine looks like: They lopped off the whole western side of the state that borders New Hampshire. Third, and perhaps most importantly: what kind of ridiculous Maine accent is this voiceover supposed to be? None of my aunts and uncles sound like this guy; this is the kind of exaggerated, Hollywoodized Maine accent you see in a bad episode of Murder She Wrote. It’s almost as bad as Freddy Quimby’s intentionally terribad Boston accent . Mainers are used to hearing people From Away mangle our accents—tourists do it every summer, and we fake a smile and
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