Troy Taylor, the CEO of the Coca-Cola franchise for Florida, was asked at a recent conference of the Federal Reserve’s Dallas branch whether he expected pay raises in the future. The context to the question is that America has ultralow unemployment. In fact, it has even reached what policymakers consider to be full employment, in which essentially everyone who wants a job has one. Wages ought to be rising as workers take advantage. But Taylor said he didn’t see wages going up anytime soon. “It’s just not going to happen,” Taylor said. “Absolutely not in my business.” The reason Taylor can be so confident is that employers — and, belatedly, economists — are waking up to the fact that the old-fashioned supply-and-demand model of the labor market is dead. Employers have gained enough power in the marketplace to permanently hold down wages, even when unemployment is as low as 3.9% in the US and 4.2% in the UK.
The old model was simple. It stated that the price of labor was set by supply and demand. If the supply of workers was restricted, wages would inevitably rise as workers switch jobs for better-paid positions or negotiate pay raises for staying. So this ought to be a golden age for workers. Wages ought to be going up. Employees ought to be able to name their price. “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more” ought to be the national anthem. And yet, in the US and the UK, wages are stagnant. Economists are starting to wake up to this strange phenomenon. Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, wrote recently: “Astonishingly, real wages remain well below where they were a decade ago. We have not experienced anything like it for at least 150 years.”
As I’ve noted before on Business Insider, the part-time gig economy has broken a fundamental link in capitalism that was good for workers. Pay rates no longer move upward as unemployment moves downward because companies like Uber, Just Eat, and Deliveroo can switch their demand for labor on and off on a minute-by-minute basis. Self-employed folks making a living on Etsy, Amazon, Airbnb, or eBay know their clients instantly go elsewhere if they raise their prices by even a few pennies. Unemployment is low because a massive number of new jobs today are part-time gig-economy jobs. Part-time “underemployment” has, statistically replaced the mass unemployment we remember from the 1980s. As Johnson says: “A majority of people who are classified as poor now live in a household where someone is in work. This is a complete turnaround from 20 years ago when two-thirds of the poor lived in workless households.”
Underemployment seems to have settled at a permanently higher level than it was a decade ago. This has obvious political consequences. Working is no longer a guaranteed way of getting ahead. Instead, it may keep you poor. You cannot get rich working for Uber. You cannot get rich working for Deliveroo. The obvious function of the so-called gig economy is to create inequality. “The unemployed” now barely exist. In their place are millions of people stuck in jobs that offer too few hours to get by or jobs that don’t come with a career ladder offering pay advancement. Today everyone has work, yet work no longer offers a ladder out of poverty for people willing to climb it.
All of these companies have decided that their best strategy for raising profits involves getting bigger. Larger companies simply have more power — to compete with other giants, to restrain workers’ pay, to influence government policy and, in the long run, to increase prices. It’s true beyond the media industry, too. Airlines, banks and oil companies have merged in recent decades. So have retailers, hospitals, hotels, manufacturers, drug companies and law firms. The resulting behemoths have then taken advantage of their newfound scale, as well as globalization and digital technology, to grow further.
For everyone else, the consolidation boom hasn’t worked out so well. Since the modern merger era began in the 1980s, corporate profits have surged, while family incomes have stagnated and income inequality has increased. Say this much for the corporate executives who argue that a bigger company can be more profitable: They know what they’re talking about. Since then, though, many small businesses have struggled to keep up with the new corporate giants and with foreign competition. You can probably see a version of the story in your community. The hardware store has given way to The Home Depot. The local hospital and bank are owned by a chain. The supermarket is Whole Foods, which is now owned by Amazon. The family-owned manufacturer may simply be out of business.
The share of Americans working for small companies fell to 27.4 percent in 2014, the most recent year for which data exists, down from 32.4 in 1989. And big companies have grown by almost an identical amount. Today, companies with at least 10,000 workers employ more people than companies with fewer than 50 workers. Big companies, to be fair, have their virtues. They can create jobs, take on ambitious projects and compete around the world. But the balance in the modern American economy is off. Large companies today are often taking advantage of workers, consumers, taxpayers and small businesses.
“This has been a blind spot for the last 20, 30 years,” Ro Khanna, a Democratic member of Congress who represents Silicon Valley, told me. “One of the things that people are rebelling against in this country is large, growing institutions. People feel that individuals don’t control their destiny.” He’s right. The situation will get worse before it gets better, partly because of the AT&T ruling. But corporate consolidation is a problem that’s within our power to fix. A government that wanted to reduce the power of big business — through a combination of new laws, better regulation and different judicial appointments — could do so. Here’s hoping we get such a government sometime soon.
Health Care
On the all-important issue of health care, mental health is a growing concern that needs prioritized: with-so-much-trau
Today, if you’re a self-employed plumber or a farmer or a waitress at a small restaurant, you likely don’t have access to the same kind of lower-cost health insurance, tax breaks and patient protections that employees of bigger companies, such as IBM or Microsoft, enjoy. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta and the Trump administration have come up with a potential solution within existing law. The administration released a new rule Tuesday that will help self-employed Americans and more small businesses to band together to buy health insurance coverage through “association health plans.” Large companies have always had an advantage because they have more employees, which means they can provide health insurance at a lower cost. Expanding association health plans will give more small businesses and self-employed Americans a chance to get a similar bang for their buck, because they’ll be buying health insurance for a larger group of people. They can spread administrative costs, allow employers to bargain for better deals and create ways to bring more people into the market, which brings down costs for everyone.
This new association health plan proposal could help two groups of people who have been particularly hurt by Obamacare. First, the self-employed. For example, a plumber making $60,000 a year may be paying $20,000 a year for health insurance, yet that plumber might not qualify for a subsidy under Obamacare. This rule could allow that plumber to join with others in his profession from all over the country to purchase health insurance at lower cost. Second, employees of small businesses. The rule will allow small businesses of similar trades or geographies to join together and offer insurance to their employees. For example, bakeries and small sporting-goods stores in Chattanooga, Tenn., could come together and purchase a plan for their employees.
Many people have had no attractive option under Obamacare — and 15 million Americans who are self-employed or work for a small business today are uninsured, often because health insurance is too expensive. Association health plans would be required to comply with the same patient protections as plans at larger companies, including prohibitions against charging more or denying coverage because of a preexisting condition, canceling plans because you get sick, and imposing annual or lifetime limits on benefit coverage. Coverage protections also include the requirement to offer coverage to dependent children up to age 26 and the requirement to provide preventive health coverage free of charge to the patient.
Struggling Small Businesses, Factories & Communities
We’ve seen how the Trump tax cuts have so far been mostly a dud, featuring an over-reliance on trickle down, disproportionately feeding further income inequality, & reducing revenue leading to rising federal deficits. With small business, another problem that’s cropped up is confusion: making-tax-reform-work-for-sma
Something certainly needs to change soon in America – or else everyone except the rich will be squeezed out. Alissa Quart wants you to know that it’s not your fault. If you’re one of the growing number of middle-class Americans who is highly educated but underemployed, laden with student debt and struggling to get by, then Quart wants you to know that you shouldn’t blame yourself. “It’s a system failure,” Quart says urgently, leaning across the table. “It’s been going on for decades and it’s culminating now in the American middle class.” I’m sitting in an East Village cafe with Quart, a journalist and author, discussing her new book, Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America. It’s not often that you can call a densely reported work of literary non-fiction about economic inequality a riveting page-turner, but Squeezed is just that. The book takes you on a journey across an America where social mobility has stalled and the presumptions of middle-class life have disappeared. You meet teachers who drive an Uber to get by, kids who go to a 24-hour daycare because their parents work irregular hours, couples who co-parent with other people because they can’t afford to raise a child by themselves. The book takes you into the living rooms and inner lives of what Quart calls the “middle precariat”: people who thought their education or background would mean they would end up comfortably middle class but have, instead, found themselves squeezed by financial insecurity.
While the book is a damning exposé of a deeply inequitable America, it’s also, Quart says, meant to be “almost as a self-help book for people who are struggling with [a financial insecurity] they don’t like to admit to. If there’s any positive message to come out of this it’s that you’re not alone. I’m hoping people will start talking more openly with each other if they find themselves in these conditions, instead of fronting.” Indeed, Squeezed was a form of self-help for Quart herself, who started the book out of a “certain personal distress”. She had found that her life and those of her friends had grown more financially precarious after the recession, particularly after having a child. “Kids don’t come cheap.” They certainly don’t – you could almost say that kids have become a luxury item – one that is out of reach for many Americans. The morning that I met Quart, a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the US birth rate had dipped to a 30-year low. This dip isn’t just explained by how much it costs financially to raise a kid, but the emotional cost of having children in a country which, as Quart says, “is hostile to mothers”.
REP. ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, a Florida Republican, is no bomb-thrower or name- caller. But when President Trump this week said immigrants would “infest” the United States, she called the comment “repugnant, reprehensible and repulsive.” We also try not to toss insults around. We believe in civil discourse and in trying to understand the other side’s point of view. But when it comes to tearing children away from their parents at the southern border, there is only one legitimate side. Mr. Trump’s policy for the past weeks has been repugnant, reprehensible and repulsive. It could be justified only by those who view Salvadorans and Hondurans not as humans who deserve to live but as animals — as pests — who “infest.” We don’t casually use the word “lie,” either. But Mr. Trump and his secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen, have been lying about the crisis at the border. It began April 6, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions declared an immediate “zero-tolerance” policy for everyone crossing illegally from Mexico. At any moment, Mr. Trump had it within his power to reverse that policy. Yet the administration maintained that it was powerless, that Democrats were at fault and that only an act of Congress could keep families together.
Now, faced with so much public opposition that Republicans were fearing for their midterm election prospects, Mr. Trump has taken all that back. On Wednesday he signed an executive order that he says will ensure families remain unified. If this does not just become another way of stockpiling migrants, and if the administration implements the order competently and humanely — which certainly cannot be assumed — it will be an improvement. But all the damage can’t be undone, and certainly all the lessons shouldn’t be unlearned. The zero-tolerance policy was implemented so chaotically, with so little forethought — with about as much care as you would expend on infesting animals — that one former U.S. immigration chief warned that some parents may never find their children again. Even for those who are reunited — and children were being torn away at a rate of some 400 per week — the trauma will cause lasting harm to some. Nor will the injury to America’s reputation abroad be easily repaired.
As to lessons, if this episode of barbarism really is coming to an end, we should take heart that the American people rallied to the side of civilization, and that they could still make their voice heard through Congress. Reporters did the job they are meant to do, dispatching stories in audio, video, photo and written form, and Americans understood that — whatever the complexities of immigration law and immigration reform — this was wrong. Some officials and politicians understood that, too, and some did not. It will be important to remember which was which. And it’s important to note that even now, as he promised on Wednesday to reverse his policy of breaking families apart, Mr. Trump and his administration continued to trade in larger untruths about immigration to dehumanize and spread fear. In fact, immigration rates are not soaring. In fact, dangerous criminals are not streaming in from the Middle East. In fact, immigrants — legal and illegal — commit crime at a lower rate than native-born Americans. In fact, most immigrants are doing what they have always done: helping to build up America and secure a better life for their children. A more honorable president would respect their hard work and humanity.
“I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?”
What the hell is that suppose to mean? I never criticize the First Lady, since she’s probably a lot more upset her husband is president than I am. But when you’re heading for the prison camps to meet with desperate/confused kids, why would you wear a jacket with those words on the back? Her hubby said it was in reference to the fake news. Yeah, right! Or was she mocking the media because they always nitpick about her outfits? Probably not. My guess is she was sending a pointed subliminal message to her husband. It wouldn’t have been a message about the kids, could it? That would be mean-spirited & send exactly the wrong message! Unless her hubby, the master distractor, knew he’d already lost the public narrative on these child kidnappings, so he served this up as a diversion: melanias-i-really-d
Midterm Expectations
For the midterms, despite Trump’s loyal crazed base, overall he looks to be a drag on his party & a source of huge enthusiasm for Dem voters: trump-2018-midterm-elections-a
Four months before casting ballots in November, voters say they are more enthusiastic about showing up to the polls than in any recent midterm election — and they’re more motivated by which party controls Congress than issues like immigration or the Russia investigation. The partisan wars that have ground Washington to a halt, on display each day on cable news channels, are having a stronger effect on the electorate, a new survey from the Pew Research Center shows. More voters say they will use their ballot to send a message for or against the president than in recent midterm elections. Americans are also more likely to say the Election Day outcome is more important to the future of the country than other hot-button issues like the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, or the status of immigrants who came to the country illegally as minors. “In this case, you have both parties that seem to be pretty energized,” said Carroll Doherty, the Pew Research Center’s director of political research. “The voters have a sense, even early on, that the stakes are high in this election.” When asked whether they back a generic Democrat or a generic Republican for Congress, registered voters favored Democrats by a slim 48 percent to 43 percent margin. Democrats hold a 54 percent to 38 percent lead among women, while Republicans maintain a 49 percent to 43 percent edge among men.
The GOP was once considered the moral party of family values. They’ve certainly blown that reputation with their embrace of dishonesty, deception & dehumanization by becoming exclusively the party of Trump: family-values-conservatism-is-
The question then becomes, is it worth doing anything to try to take back the party? Is it worth committing sabotage? And would doing so make one a traitor or a hero? And—challenging the premise here—would losing the House even be enough to force a “come to Jesus” moment on the right? If “Never Trumpers” are perceived to be “throwing the game,” they could become convenient scapegoats. The GOP base might come to believe a midterm loss wasn’t because of Trump’s failures, but rather, because he was “stabbed in the back.” This narrative would only serve to prevent the GOP from making the very internal changes that the people proposing this theory hope that a mid-term spanking might force.
To be sure, sometimes winning is losing and losing is winning. In sports, “tanking” takes place in order to get a better draft pick. The logic says that if you can’t win this time around, being absolutely horrible is better than being mildly horrible. But politics is different. Unless gambling is involved, individual athletes rarely tank a game unilaterally—it’s usually sanctioned (albeit clandestinely) by the team. What is more, while there may be 82 games in a basketball season, whoever wins in November will be in the majority for two full years. It’s one thing to throw a game, but it’s an entirely different thing to throw a cycle.
Still, we’ve come to the point where half-measures haven’t worked. Two years ago, I wrote an essay titled “Jesus Take The Lever.” In that piece, I argued that sitting out the presidential election was an honorable compromise. With Hillary Clinton out of the picture, and with Trumpism reaching new lows, it is increasing difficult to make this argument today. The fact that so many once-loyal Republicans are seriously hoping Democrats win in November tells you all you need to know.
Steve Schmidt Clearly Sees What’s Going On
I too like to think of myself as a Steve Schmidt conservative (& I love his rants on MSNBC, which that network surprisingly does have by far the most perceptive conservative commentators). Much like the conservatives from the previous article, we can no longer support a party totally lacking in honesty, integrity & moral values, so the only hope for saving the GOP is to first destroy it. The party under Trump can’t be called conservatism, it is instead a pseudo-psycho form of extreme radicalism that’s only out for their own nihilistic tribe, completely disregarding the common good for all Americans. See these excerpts from steve-schmidt-mccains-
“The American people are fed a daily diet of nonsense-talk and lies in the form of what is effectively state media on Fox News and nobody should underestimate the threat posed by a political party where conservatism is now defined by absolute obedience to a leader with autocratic tendencies who fetishizes dictators and autocrats all over the world,” he said. “Trump didn’t destroy the Republican Party—it’s the cowardice of the Republican leaders, their complicity in all of it, the lack of courage to stand up for what’s right. “Republican members of Congress are cowed and fearful of Trump and they have abrogated their oaths to defend the Constitution of the United States from Trump’s attacks on the rule of law; on objective truth; his defilement of important institutions; his sundering of the American people; his betrayals of the Atlantic alliance; his racism; and his cruelty. The party has become profoundly corrupt, both financially in the form of men like Scott Pruitt and Jared [Kushner] and Ivanka [Trump], but also intellectually rotten and corrupt.”
Schmidt said he mourns the “heartbreaking” transformation of the Republican Party, not because he believes that the push and pull of a center-left and center-right party is beneficial for any democracy, but he says he has always had respect for both of America’s great political parties. “A mark of stupidity is a belief that one party is totally virtuous and correct on the issues while the other is evil and always wrong. The truth of the matter is that both of these political parties have been essential institutions not just in the country but in the history of the world,” he said. “They have both produced good leaders and bad leaders. But neither has ever produced a leader as profoundly dangerous to the notion of small ‘l’ liberalism, of democracy, of freedom as it has in Donald Trump.”
In the absence of constitutional checks, Schmidt says Americans reluctantly must cast their eyes toward Europe in the 1930s. “What are the hallmarks here? He uses mass rallies to incite fervor and followers who are now more like cult members than voters,” he said. “Every problem has an easy group to blame—minorities, chiefly—he creates a sense of mass victimization, he alleges conspiracy by unseen forces, and he asserts that only he can stop it and protect the victims—and stop the villains, the minorities. The last step of this is an assertion: ‘I’ll just need more powers to do it.’ And that’s how a constitutional republic dies.” “We have in America—right now, at this hour—to understand that you have a lawless president, a vile president, a corrupt president, a mean, cruel president, who is seeking to remake the world order.”
Inside another link about Steve Schmidt gop-strategist-quits-
Veteran GOP strategist Steve Schmidt renounced his Republican Party membership on Wednesday and pledged to vote for Democrats in an effort to preserve “what is right and decent” in the United States. In a series of scathing tweets, Schmidt blasted the GOP as “corrupt, indecent and immoral” and “fully the party of Trump.” “It is filled with feckless cowards who disgrace and dishonor the legacies of the party’s greatest leaders,” tweeted Schmidt, an MSNBC political analyst who has been an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump. “Today the GOP has become a danger to our democracy and our values.”
Thank God For Kids
Central American families brought their kids here fleeing violence, then ran into this guy: time-apos-slams-trump. Kids have the same fears & emotions no matter where they’re from. Please enjoy the song as we meditate & contemplate what distressing circumstances we’ve been seeing in our nation this past week:
(Click on image for full video)
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