Daily Clips: April 28, 2017

April 28, 2017 Nick Cassella

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Trump’s corporate tax cuts would increase deficit, and therefore are very unlike to pass The Republican tax cut myth: It’s worth remembering that the conservative Heritage Foundation made exactly the same argument about the 2001 tax cut that Secretary Mnuchin is making today. It issued a report on April 27, 2001 forecasting that by 2011, federal revenues would be higher with the tax cut than they would have been without it, due to higher economic growth, greater investment, and lower unemployment. In fact, real G.D.P. growth was half of what Heritage predicted and the unemployment rate was 50 percent higher. It predicted that federal revenues would equal $3.3 trillion in 2011 including the effect of the tax cut; revenues actually were $1 trillion less, $2.3 trillion. American Airlines announces pay raises for pilots and shareholders freak Trends in absolute income mobility since 1940 US economy has weakest quarterly performance in three years: So…is this still a part of the Obama economy? Quote of the day: Mr. Obama, who recently accepted a very lucrative speaking engagement on Wall Street, now looks like just one of the fortunate members of historically depressed minorities who mistake their own upward mobility for collective advance.

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The Other Washington is podcast back

April 27, 2017 Nick Cassella

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We’re excited to announce that our podcast, The Other Washington , is coming back for Season 2. In our first episode we interviewed Thomas Frank, the author of Listen, Liberal—and we have quite the conversation. We talk about the failings of the Democratic Party, both electorally and intellectually. Here’s a snippet of what Frank spoke to us about on the episode ( which you can listen to here ): …no political faction gives up its grip on power such as this. The Democrats have no state power anymore. The faction that I described in the book still has the … It has the Democratic Party by the throat. There’s no question about it. They are the dominant faction. Nobody is going to give that up on purpose or without a fight. They have to be forced. They have to be challenged the leadership, and they have to lose. That’s easier said than done. You think that a debacle like last November would help to change people’s minds. For those of you who listened to the podcast last year, you know that we delved into a range of big political ideas and examined how these policies could be practically implemented. We talked paid sick leave with WA legislators, the $15 minimum wage with a venture capitalist, and secure scheduling with Seattle city council members. The big ideas will remain, but Season 2 will be a little different in a couple of ways. First off, the frequency of episodes will be weekly as opposed to monthly — a change that will allow us to explore more subjects and react to breaking news and the latest trends in politics — both here in Seattle and Washington state, and also in that other Washington. We also want to bring in new voices, examine ideas that are new to us, and publicly debate ideas that we don’t all agree on. Our first season was a lecture series where
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Daily Clips: April 27, 2017

April 27, 2017 Nick Cassella

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Daily Clips

Do sweatshops lift workers out of poverty? For poor countries to develop, we simply do not know of any alternative to industrialization. The sooner that happens, the sooner the world will end extreme poverty. As we look at our results, we are conflicted: We do not want to see workers exposed to hazardous risks, but we also worry that regulating or improving the jobs too much too quickly will keep that industrial boom from happening. Economists fear tax plan heightens a ‘mountain of debt’ House Republicans have made a move to avert government shutdown — for at least a week Texas mayor blasted after she says lack of faith in God causes poverty New Trumpcare plan ‘makes bad bill worse,’ AARP says Trump’s tax plan is trickle-down fundamentalism: Experts on the left and right agree there’s no way the White House can cover the cost of those cuts—about $2.4 trillion in lost revenue over 10 years—just by limiting deductions, closing loopholes, or even including dubious revenue raisers like House Speaker Paul Ryan’s border-adjustment tax , which Trump has now ditched. Alas, Trump and his aides are turning to the only argument that politicians can make to justify trickle-down economics: that when the wealthy and corporations pay less in taxes, economic growth surges and make up for the lost revenue.

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If You Care About Growing the Economy from the Middle Out, This Is Required Listening

April 26, 2017 Paul Constant

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Economics, Minimum Wage

Tomorrow, we’re relaunching the second season of our podcast, The Other Washington, with a fantastic interview with author and progressive truth-teller Thomas Frank. Frank, the author of Listen, Liberal, believes that the Democratic Party has been hijacked by a professional class of elites, at the expense of the working class. I can’t think of a better way to kick off a new (weekly!) season of The Other Washington, and I can’t wait for you to hear it. ( You can read a sample of our talk here .) But while we wait for the second season of the podcast to arrive, I’d like to urge you to visit (or revisit) the first season of The Other Washington. “Why would I want to listen to some old political podcast,” you ask? Well, because the first season of the Other Washington was constructed to be an evergreen listen. It establishes the foundation of our beliefs at Civic Ventures, and explains why we promote the policies that we do. The first season is a primer that says what we’re all about. The second season will put those bedrock policies into action and show how here in the other Washington we’re moving forward while leaders over in the other other Washington — that’s Washington DC—keep pushing us back. Here’s a rundown of our first season: Episode 1: The Minimum Wage Our signature issue here at Civic Ventures is the minimum wage. We realized a long time ago that when workers don’t have money to spend, inequality grows and the economy stops thriving. We discuss the history of the minimum wage as an American ideal and why Seattle became ground zero of the $15 minimum wage movement. This is a great podcast to share with friends who think that the minimum wage should be increased, but wonder if $15 seems like too much. Episode 2: Gun
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Daily Clips: April 26, 2017

April 26, 2017 Nick Cassella

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Daily Clips

Tax Cuts Pay for Themselves? Revival of Contested Theory: “Contested” Obama’s getting paid $400k to speak for a Wall St investment bank: This made me so angry. Here’s a guy that clearly has no bloody clue about how to appeal to a nation that is mired in economic inequality. Maybe now that he’s president he doesn’t care, but if that’s the case, he’s half the man I thought. Sanders and 21 Democrats introduce bill to raise minimum wage to $15 an hour The Raise the Wage Act of 2017, which Sanders and Murray will unveil later today, would hike the minimum wage for the first time in a decade, raising it to $9.25 immediately, and inching it up to $15 by 2024, while simultaneously raising the minimum wage for tipped workers. Why regulators won’t confront big banks America’s rich get richer and the poor get replaced by robots The U.S. makes it easy for parents to get college loans—repaying them is another story

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The Latest Poster Children for the Anti-$15 Crowd: Low-Quality Restaurants?

April 25, 2017 Paul Constant

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Economics, Minimum Wage, small business

I simply can’t respond to every single dumb trickle-down take on the $15 minimum wage. If I felt the need to write back to every jerk who took an Econ 101 class and thought it earned them a Nobel laureate in economics, I’d be writing takedowns every hour of every day, with no sleep and no breaks. My fingertips would bleed from all the typing, and I’d need to rent a helper monkey to put drops in my eyes so they wouldn’t dry out as I type. But when I noticed that someone named Peter Heck published a piece titled “ Minimum Wage Hikes are Killing the Poor ” — well, how could I just ignore a title as ridiculous as that? Heck says that the “wealthy liberal city of San Francisco” is facing a “coming disaster” as it’s raising its minimum wage to $15 next year. He quotes a new working paper from Harvard Business school which, according to its abstract, finds that… …lower quality restaurants, which are already closer to the margin of exit, are disproportionately impacted by increases to the minimum wage. Our point estimates suggest that a one dollar increase in the minimum wage leads to a 14 percent increase in the likelihood of exit for a 3.5-star restaurant (which is the median rating), but has no discernible impact for a 5-star restaurant (on a 1 to 5 star scale). Heck then extrapolates from their abstract: Bob’s Burgers may not be able to absorb the cost associated with paying $15 an hour for their entry level employees without coming to economic ruin. But swanky, upscale Eagle’s Nest Steakhouse, on the other hand, can simply jack up the cost of their filet by a few bucks and be okay. In other words, the liberal minimum wage policy lets the rich get richer and the poor lose their job when the business they work
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Daily Clips: April 25, 2017

April 25, 2017 Nick Cassella

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Daily Clips

Ivanka Trump gets booed, hissed at during Berlin event: There’s some sense in the world. Seattle home-price hikes lead U.S. again; even century-old homes command top dollar Washington state relies on a rotten tax system: The top 1 percent in Washington paid 2.4 percent of their income, which is less than half of the national average, 5.4 percent. There have been efforts to introduce an income tax, but in recent times they’ve never gotten far. The idea of a Seattle city income tax on high-income households is going to be an issue in this year’s race for mayor. Current Mayor Ed Murray announced in the first mayoral debate last week that he will send a tax proposal to the City Council. The grim biology of being poor: Why do so few make it out of poverty? I can tell you from experience it is not because some have more merit than others. It is because being poor is a high-risk gamble. The asymmetry of outcomes for the poor is so enormous because it is so expensive to be poor. Imagine losing a job because your phone was cut off, or blowing off an exam because you spent the day in the ER dealing with something that preventative care would have avoided completely. Something as simple as that can spark a spiral of adversity almost impossible to recover from. The reality is that when you’re poor, if you make one mistake, you’re done. Everything becomes a sudden-death gamble. Now imagine that, on top of that, your brain is wired to multiply the subjective experience of stress by 10. The result is a profound focus on short-term thinking. To those outsiders who, by fortune of birth, have never known the calculus of poverty, the poor seem to make sub-optimal decisions time and time again. But the choices made by the poor are supremely rational choices under the circumstances. Pondering optimal, long-term decisions is a liability when you have 48 hours of food left. Stress takes on a
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Daily Clips: April 24, 2017

April 24, 2017 Nick Cassella

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Daily Clips

How ideologues use grade-school economics to distort the minimum wage: The United States has the lowest minimum wage, as a proportion of average wages, of any advanced economy—one reason for our wide gap between rich and poor. But according to economism, raising the minimum wage would only backfire and harm poor people. U.S. Chamber of Commerce Chief expects basic NAFTA deal by mid-2018 Republicans want to muzzle database of consumer complaints Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies It is a myth that the economic challenges that rural and small-town America face are caused by forces largely outside our control, like globalization or improvements in technology. We have the ability to help restore competition and economic vibrancy in rural America and beyond. The government has the authority to ensure markets are once again open and competitive so that communities have a chance to shape their own economic destinies. The question is whether we will recognize the error of our ways and put taking on monopolies high on the economic agenda — for rural and small-town America, and for everyone who wants to ensure our country can once again be the land of opportunity. Watch: Bill Nye rips CNN for treating climate change like theater instead of science

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Daily Clips: April 21, 2017

April 21, 2017 Nick Cassella

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Daily Clips

Trump tax plan to rely on future US growth to fund cuts Republicans believe major tax reform would drive annual U.S. economic growth above 3 percent. But if anticipated improvement fails to materialize, the strategy could rob the Treasury of tax revenue and saddle the economy with bigger deficits and higher debt burdens. Bill Nye Saves the World brings us an updated, unapologetically political science guy Does the government subsidize low-wage employers? America is regressing into a developing nation for most people Seattle Mayor Ed Murray proposes income tax for city’s ‘high-end’ households The end of men? Not in the retail sector

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Daily Clips: April 20, 2017

April 20, 2017 Nick Cassella

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Daily Clips

Happy 4/20. Here’s a quote from Carl Sagan: The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world. Blacks and whites use pot at about the same rate, but blacks get arrested for pot possession a lot more A new high: 61 percent of Americans believe weed should be legalized Nobel Prize-Winning Economist: We’re Headed for Oligarchy Pesticide maker tries to kill risk study The jobless economy Why has growth been so slow? This too is a topic in itself but there are several reasons. One, popular among mainstream economists, is that very deep recessions, like the 2008–9 affair, have historically left deep scars that make recovery slow and difficult. Another, less orthodox, way of interpreting those “scars” is that a very deep recession is itself a sign of serious structural problems beyond the normal ups and downs of capitalist economies.

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