Donald Trump’s Economic Plan Is Straight-Up Trickle Down Nonsense

August 8, 2016 Paul Constant

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2016, Donald Trump

Evan McMullin is running for president as an anti-Trump independent candidate. Who the hell is Evan McMullin? Well, he’s a Republican who gave a TED Talk once. That’s about all we know. McKay Coppins at BuzzFeed writes : He has never held elective office before and has spent most of his career as a CIA officer, according to his LinkedIn page. Young and unmarried, McMullin received an MBA at Wharton in 2011, and after a stint at Goldman Sachs, went to work as a policy wonk on Capitol Hill. Unlike National Review writer David French, another conservative courted by anti-Trump Republicans to launch a long-shot third-party bid, McMullin has virtually no public profile. He doesn’t appear regularly on television, and has just 135 followers on Twitter. His most recent high-profile appearance seems to have been a TEDx talk about genocide he gave at London Business School in April. He also delivered a speech in May about the future of the Republican Party. McMullin won’t be able to make it on the ballot in many states, but operatives hope he’ll move the needle, especially, in Utah . (McMullin is a Brigham Young University graduate, and polling indicates that Mormons are very uncomfortable with Trump.) He can’t win the electoral college because he’s missed so many state filing deadlines, but McMullin at least represents a mainstream Republican for anti-Trump mainstream Republicans to vote for. Let’s take a look at McMullin’s campaign website to see where he stands on the economy . His economic plan is made up of four sentences. First sentence: “America should be the best place in the world for innovation, entrepreneurship and opportunity.” Okay! We agree. Next sentence: “We must reform a system that too often benefits the politically connected and the corporate elite, while leaving too many Americans behind.” Also true. Economic inequality is out of control. We’re halfway through the statement and we’re in total agreement! So what’s next? “Our
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There’s Something About Gary: Why a Vote for Gary Johnson Is a Vote for Trickle Down Economics

August 5, 2016 Paul Constant

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2016, libertarianism

I met once-and-current presidential candidate Gary Johnson in 2012 when he was vying for the Washington state Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination. Johnson seemed a decent-enough man—not a horrifying Ron Paul-style libertarian, but more of an affable stoner-type. Unlike the Ayn Rand school of libertarianism, which advocates small government because it expects the worst of people, Gary Johnson’s brand of libertarian often assumes the best: it’s a cheery worldview predicated on the belief that we don’t need regulations because most people won’t violate the societal norms. So maybe it’s an absolutism born of optimism, but it’s still absolutism. It doesn’t account for the extremes of human nature—companies like cigarette manufacturers that put profits over lives, beneficial but unprofitable government programs that help the working poor improve their own standards of living. The fact is, libertarianism just doesn’t work; it winds up benefitting the wealthiest at the expense of the very poor. Gary Johnson might not consciously favor trickle down economics, but his policies would absolutely reward the trickle-down agenda. If you know any Gary Johnson fans, I encourage you to direct them to this post by Benjamin Studebaker , which explains how Johnson’s stated plans would actually damage America worse than a Donald Trump presidency. You think that’s not possible? It totally is: Studebaker walks through Johnson’s policies like the flat tax, deregulation of the banking industry, opposition to basic programs like Medicare and public school and explains why they would leave America in a hole so deep we would never dig ourselves free. It’s easy to look at Johnson, with his cool-college-professor vibe and his chipper talk about marijuana, and assume he’s a harmless guy, a happy warrior to contrast with the dismal hatred of Donald Trump. But always remember that Johnson espouses a political worldview that is dangerously naive: his policies would burn the country down to nothing. Even a fundamentally decent
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What Would Make for a Good Secure Scheduling Law?

August 3, 2016 Paul Constant

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Scheduling

Over the last few months, Seattle has had an ongoing citywide conversation about secure scheduling laws. City councilmembers Lisa Herbold and Lorena González launched the conversation back in February, we published a podcast on the topic , we’ve addressed some of the concerns and threats from small business owners, we’ve talked about the effects of bad scheduling on workers , and we’ve looked at polling that indicated a lot of Seattle workers desperately need secure scheduling in their lives. But what should secure scheduling laws actually look like? What rights should laws protect? We’ll find out soon what Herbold and González are thinking, but Working Washington put together a great list of issues that good secure scheduling laws should cover. Aside from the basics—advance notice of two weeks for schedules, predictability pay if a schedule changes, ending clopenings without additional compensation—a pair of other points are very important. First is a caveat that protects employers: Voluntarily swapping shifts is a key way workers maintain their flexibility, and this must be protected. In order to ensure employers continue this practice for workers who need to create some extra flexibility of their own, there should be no predictability pay for employee-initiated shift swaps. Absolutely! One of the biggest fears we hear from employers is that their workers’ flexibility will decrease under a secure scheduling law, or that employers would be fined if workers wanted to change their schedules. A caveat to protect employee work shifts is absolutely necessary to preserve a flexible workplace that’s good for workers and employers. And lastly, Working Washington suggests that the law provides access to additional hours: “current employees who want to work more hours should have the opportunity to take on newly-posted shifts before additional part-time employees are brought on. ” This is important, and of all the parts of the secure scheduling discussion that have happened in Seattle so far, it’s been by far the least examined. Many employers like to keep a fleet of part-time employees
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Donald Trump Is Wrong. Hiring Workers Isn’t a Sacrifice.

August 1, 2016 Paul Constant

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2016, Donald Trump

In all the Trump-related news that happened over this hellacious weekend, I just wanted to highlight one specific thing that Donald Trump said. When asked by George Stephanopoulos from ABC News to respond to gold star father Khizr Khan’s claim that he has sacrificed nothing, Trump replied: “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures. I’ve had tremendous success. I think I’ve done a lot.” Now. Of the many things Trump said this weekend, this is nowhere near the most shocking. His continued assault on the Khans—implying that Ghazala Khan didn’t speak at the Democratic National Convention because of Islamic law; suggesting that Khizr Khan didn’t have the “right” to challenge him on the Constitution—was so shameful that Republican leaders have had to run away from him. This weekend, in fact, was quite possibly the lowest point in a campaign that is relentlessly pitted with low points. But I want to focus on what Trump said about “creating…jobs” as a sacrifice because it’s something that I see a lot. The 2012 Republican convention famously adopted “You Didn’t Build That” as a theme, and the speaker rotation featured business owner after business owner being applauded for hiring workers. Not featured in the speaking slate at the 2012 RNC? Actual workers. Look: small business is a great thing. We want to create an environment that encourages as many people as possible in America to start businesses, because that’s how you create growth. Saluting employers is a wonderful and meaningful thing for a political party to do. But. Sometimes you’ll find employers in the spotlight who complain about the expense of employing workers. They’ll argue against raising the minimum wage by calling their employees unworthy of a living wage. They’ll describe hiring workers as a
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Donald Trump Is Right, for Once—Let’s Raise the Minimum Wage

July 27, 2016 Paul Constant

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2016, Donald Trump, Minimum Wage

This morning’s press conference was full of what you’d expect from Donald Trump Trump: a few points where he seemed scarily misinformed (he called John Hinkley Jr. “David Hinkley” and he seemed to confuse Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine with former New Jersey governor Tom Kean, a republican) and one point where he seemed to violate the law (when he called for Russia, “if you are listening,” to hack into Hillary Clinton’s email server. That last bit, naturally, got all the press—we have never before seen a presidential candidate publicly beg a foreign power to commit an act of espionage against the United States, so it’s big news. (As Ezra Klein argues convincingly at Vox , Trump has long since blown past any standards of normalcy or decency.) But Trump also made news in another way this morning; in fact, if he hadn’t made history with his incredibly irresponsible Russia comments, perhaps he’d be leading the headlines with some good news for a change: he endorsed a $10 minimum wage. As CNN reports , Trump originally told Bill O’Reilly last night on Fox News that “You need to help people. I know it’s not very Republican to say.” When O’Reilly asked to what level he’d raise the minimum wage, Trump finally settled on ten: “’I would say 10. I would say 10,’ Trump agreed.” And at this morning’s press conference, he doubled down: “Trump said once again that the federal minimum wage should be raised to ‘at least $10’ but that ‘states should really call the shots.’” Let’s be clear that the above quote makes no sense. You can’t raise the minimum wage to at least $10 and then vaguely insinuate that states could make the minimum wage lower than $10, because that flies in the face of what a federal minimum wage is. And in the recent
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A Good Start: REI Announces Employee Pay Raise of Five to Fifteen Percent

July 26, 2016 Paul Constant

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Minimum Wage, Scheduling

Last week, I told you I was cutting up my REI card because the giant retailer wasn’t supporting its retail employees with adequate pay and humane scheduling practices. Yesterday, Daniel DeMay at the Seattle P-I had some good news: In an announcement said to be shared with employees Sunday, REI announced pay hikes for employees at stores in Seattle, Portland, Boston, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco and Washington D.C., the company said in a statement. Stores will see between “pay investments” between 5 and 15 percent…In Sunday’s announcement, REI also said it planned to announce an update to scheduling in October of this year. This is obviously good news. But does it mean I’m becoming an REI member again? Nope. At least, not yet. I want to make sure the retail employees have an opportunity to freely discuss unionization, because that’s the easiest way to make sure employees have a voice in the negotiation for wages and humane scheduling practices. Also, I’m very curious to hear about REI’s “update to scheduling.” Lots of large chains have made big promises, but few have succeeded. Starbucks, most notably, announced that it was going to improve “stability and consistency” by getting rid of clopening shifts back in 2014. Individual stores are still failing to meet that standard . A little over a year after the New York Times announced the new Starbucks scheduling initiative, the New York Times published a story headlines “ Starbucks Falls Short After Pledging Better Labor Practices .” These corporate edicts, while often made with the best of intentions, frequently fail when they’re put to the test around the country, because there are simply no repercussions for violating company policy. This is why we need laws: they reinforce our values and make it possible for employees to defend their rights. By passing a secure scheduling law in Seattle, we would be making a statement that we do not reward exploitative and/or demeaning employment practices. But when will I know it’s okay to return to REI as a customer, if ever? When the employees say so. I
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Self-Selecting Poll Blows Up in Restaurant Lobby’s Face

July 19, 2016 Paul Constant

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Policy, Scheduling

When reading about the results of surveys, you should always, always, always consider the source. Self-selecting surveys—most of which take the form of those online Survey Monkey-style polls you see sometimes on Facebook—are basically meaningless. What they tell us is this: an organization wanted to see a certain set of results, and so that organization pushed its polls out to users who were likely to give them the result they want. With that in mind, our friends at Working Washington uncovered something very interesting in a survey led by the Seattle Restaurant Alliance. The survey is being used to argue against the secure scheduling legislation currently under consideration by the Seattle City Council , but Working Washington discovered that the poll actually made a pretty great case for secure scheduling. To wit: nearly a third of the poll’s anonymous respondents complained about not getting enough notice of their schedules. Nearly a quarter said they wanted more hours on the job, and nearly a quarter complained about a lack of flexibility in their schedules. Of course, the Seattle Restaurant Alliance wants to paint this as a “glass-half-full” kind of situation, but if you look at it by letter grades, a 75 percent score is a borderline C in most schools, and 66 percent would be an D. And, as Working Washington points out, this is a survey which is expected to be about as positive as humanly possible. What would a truly independent polling outfit discover if they were allowed to survey Seattle restaurant workers? But even so, none of these results are an argument against secure scheduling. The Seattle Restaurant Alliance wants us to believe that most employers are great at scheduling their employees. Okay. Then those restaurants should have no problem with new secure scheduling laws, then! If their employees receive their schedules two weeks in advance, and if the employers don’t employ inhumane on-call practices to keep their workers on the hook for hours they
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Innovation Makes America Great. Donald Trump’s Republican Party Is Anti-Innovation.

July 14, 2016 Paul Constant

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Economics, inclusion, innovation

You wouldn’t know it from listening to Donald Trump, or from reading the Republican platform , but Americans love diversity. Yesterday, Pew Research published the results of an international poll finding that a majority of Americans—58 percent!—believe growing diversity makes their nation “a better place to live.” Only seven percent of all Americans think diversity makes the country worse, and about a third don’t perceive a difference. Significantly, Americans were far more in favor of diversity than any of the ten European countries in the same survey. The nearest was Sweden, with 36 percent in favor of diversity and 26 percent believing diversity makes things worse. Look at that chart. It’s striking, isn’t it? Even moreso when you realize that Trump’s Republican Party is betting big on border walls, Muslim travel bans, and anti-LGBT laws this November. These are exclusionary policies that appeal to less than ten percent of all Americans. Hell, nearly half of all self-identified conservatives polled believe that diversity improves the country. Human beings intuitively approve of diversity. And it’s easy to see why: more diversity leads to more choices, which improves the quality of life for everyone. It’s true in economics, too: you see more innovation—which we define around here at Civic Ventures as the way we solve problems—when you have more people coming from a wide variety of backgrounds. Don’t see how this relates to you? Here’s an example: say you’re downtown and you get hungry. That’s a problem. The food you buy to satiate your hunger is the solution to that problem. And speaking as someone who occasionally reviews restaurants, it’s much better to have a diverse variety of solutions to that particular problem than, say, a McDonald’s every three blocks. But you don’t need to take my word for it. This morning, over one hundred self-described “inventors, entrepreneurs, engineers, investors, researchers, and business leaders working in the technology sector”—people
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The Same Business Owners Who Threatened Doom Over the $15 Minimum Wage Are Now Predicting Doom Over Secure Scheduling

July 13, 2016 Paul Constant

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Minimum Wage, Scheduling

The conservative Washington Policy Center notes that—gird your loins, because here comes a shock—some local business owners are threatening doom if Seattle’s City Council passes a secure scheduling law : Now the president and COO of El Gaucho Hospitality, which operates the popular and high-end El Gaucho steak restaurants, has joined the fray. In a letter that was recently emailed to 80,000 El Gaucho customers, a blog posted on the company’s website, and an interview published in the Puget Sound Business Journal, Chad Mackay says the proposed restrictive scheduling regulations are “absurd.” The WPC post says “Mackay warns such micromanagement will harm the very workers the rules are supposed to protect.” Which is the sort of thing that employers always warn when any laws are proposed that might benefit workers. Business owners are always “concerned” that the laws will hurt those the very workers they’re supposed to help. Much in the same way that anti-seat-belt activists (and y es, those do exist ) argue that seat belt laws hurt the very drivers they mean to help, or the way that American business owners used to argue that child labor was for the good of the child . This isn’t the first time that Mackay has spoken up for the supposed “good” of his workers. Mackay warned Payscale.com that “Some will be hurt by” Seattle’s $15 minimum wage increase, and he argued that “What will never really be known is how many people didn’t get a job because it no longer exists or those that lost jobs or hours due to such a dramatic increase.” (Considering that Seattle is within the range of full employment , it’s hard to get nostalgic for all those imaginary underpaid jobs that might have hypothetically been lost.) Why, Mackay apparently cared so much about the workers who would be hurt by Seattle’s $15 minimum wage that he was a top donor for a failed effort to undo it . So when we consider Mackay’s forecast for secure scheduling, we should also take
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Chase, Target, and Starbucks Are Raising Their Minimum Wages. Is That Enough?

July 12, 2016 Paul Constant

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Economics, Minimum Wage

Today, Jamie Dimon, the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, wrote in the New York Times that Chase is giving its lowest-paid employees a raise: Our minimum salary for American employees today is $10.15 an hour (plus meaningful benefits, which I’ll explain later), almost $3 above the current national minimum wage. Over the next three years, we will raise the minimum pay for 18,000 employees to between $12 and $16.50 an hour for full-time, part-time and new employees, depending on geographic and market factors. A pay increase is the right thing to do. Wages for many Americans have gone nowhere for too long. Many employees who will receive this increase work as bank tellers and customer service representatives. Above all, it enables more people to begin to share in the rewards of economic growth. This comes one day after Starbucks announced that their employees will get a raise ranging from five to fifteen percent, in the form of increased wages and stock awards. Of course, Chase and Starbucks are following a business trend; Target announced in April that they’re raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour, and Walmart raised their staff pay in January. The reason why these companies are raising their wages is because the federal minimum wage — that’s $7.25, in case you’re not keeping track — hasn’t gone up since July 24th of 2009, an increase that passed through Congress way back in 2007. Inequality keeps expanding as profits trickle up to the top one percent and never come back down. Of course Chase, Starbucks, Target, and Walmart aren’t doing this because it’s the kind thing to do, or even the right thing to do. They’re doing this because it’s becoming impossible to hire good staffers on the minimum wage. As soon as Dimon’s editorial was published this morning, though, the perennially wrong blogger at Forbes, Tim Worstall, misinterpreted the situation . As is custom, Worstall in a roundabout way attributed Dimon’s actions to
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Civic Ventures

Posts by Paul Constant