Political Roundtable Part XXVII

[Ruzious]

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So basically, they're stopping even pretending to care about The Constitution.

[dckingsfan]

So basically, they're stopping even pretending to care about The Constitution.

Until the day a D get's elected anyway...

[queridiculo]

Boostraps yo!

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minimum-wage-2019-almost-half-of-all-americans-work-in-low-wage-jobs/

America's unemployment rate is at a half-century low, but it also has a job-quality problem that affects nearly half the population, with a study finding 44% of U.S. workers are employed in low-wage jobs that pay median annual wages of $18,000.

Contrary to popular opinion, these workers aren't teenagers or young adults just starting their careers, write Martha Ross and Nicole Bateman of the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program, which conducted the analysis.

Most of the 53 million Americans working in low-wage jobs are adults in their prime working years, or between about 25 to 54, they noted. Their median hourly wage is $10.22 per hour — that's above the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour but well below what's considered the living wage for many regions.

So the US is practically at full employment and we have nearly half of the working population making less than a livable wage.

Cool.

[TGW]

Boostraps yo!

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minimum-wage-2019-almost-half-of-all-americans-work-in-low-wage-jobs/

America's unemployment rate is at a half-century low, but it also has a job-quality problem that affects nearly half the population, with a study finding 44% of U.S. workers are employed in low-wage jobs that pay median annual wages of $18,000.

Contrary to popular opinion, these workers aren't teenagers or young adults just starting their careers, write Martha Ross and Nicole Bateman of the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program, which conducted the analysis.

Most of the 53 million Americans working in low-wage jobs are adults in their prime working years, or between about 25 to 54, they noted. Their median hourly wage is $10.22 per hour — that's above the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour but well below what's considered the living wage for many regions.

So the US is practically at full employment and we have nearly half of the working population making less than a livable wage.

Cool.

Bernie Sanders has been saying this for lord knows how long, but unfortunately the uber-rich talking heads in our media (and not just Faux News) are promoting the same nonsense--the economy is strong. Even fake news MSNBC does it. In effect, many Americans think the economy is strong because the news people tell them it is. In reality, the average American can't afford a $400 emergency.

[pancakes3]

the economy *is* strong. the money's there. the problem's in the distribution. wealth disparity is a different conversation than productivity.

[Zonkerbl]

Yeah the unemployment rate is a very problematic metric

[dckingsfan]

Yeah the unemployment rate is a very problematic metric

Agreed, chatted with an individual at a federal bank last week (sits in on the Fed board meetings). They are still puzzling over the lack of rise in wages given the unemployment rates. And even looking at the employment rates of 25-54 (vs. unemployment) they are still puzzled.

There was an interesting article out recently that posited that folks need to have a higher job switching rate before wages will really be impacted.

From listening to the D candidates - I don't think that any of them are able to articulate a way forward on this... I guess that makes sense as it is a tough issue to grasp.

Most come up with price controls (in the form of a minimum wage) and that never works well (although feels good). Probably Yang is the closest to an actual solution (federal transfers not tied to anything).

[I_Like_Dirt]

There was an interesting article out recently that posited that folks need to have a higher job switching rate before wages will really be impacted.

Which is a great way of saying that individuals need to try to play competing employers against each other as individuals against much larger entities. If only there was some sort of way that people could band together and collectively insist on higher wages. A friendly term showing unification from the latin root "unio". We could call it a funion!

There are problems with unions but that doesn't mean you throw the baby out with the bathwater. Or wait... maybe I've been wrong all this time and unions are simply holding back the true competitive nature of employees and they are clearly much better off without them. Whew! Glad we cleared that up.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/why-unions-are-harmful-to-workers


On a serious note, the idea that in order to benefit from higher productivity, employees should be working to constantly change jobs, creating less efficiency within the system by creating a greater need for additional training, less knowledge retention in any given position and a greater need for HR to weed through all the constant applications, well... let's just say I don't buy it. What this kind of argument is, is a great way to push towards offloading costs of non-stop training in an ever-more-rapidly evolving job market onto individuals rather than employers that require such constant retraining but don't actually want to pay for it. What it isn't is a great way to actually raise wages because we have a time where people are starting to scrape by less and less as wages struggle to keep up with the cost of living and one accident or unfortunate/unpreventable situation can lead to financial ruin. People desperately need jobs so quitting one to take another is likely going to walk them right into another job hiring for the same wage that someone else abandoned.

[queridiculo]

There was an interesting article out recently that posited that folks need to have a higher job switching rate before wages will really be impacted.

Which is a great way of saying that individuals need to try to play competing employers against each other as individuals against much larger entities. If only there was some sort of way that people could band together and collectively insist on higher wages. A friendly term showing unification from the latin root "unio". We could call it a funion!

There are problems with unions but that doesn't mean you throw the baby out with the bathwater. Or wait... maybe I've been wrong all this time and unions are simply holding back the true competitive nature of employees and they are clearly much better off without them. Whew! Glad we cleared that up.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/why-unions-are-harmful-to-workers


On a serious note, the idea that in order to benefit from higher productivity, employees should be working to constantly change jobs, creating less efficiency within the system by creating a greater need for additional training, less knowledge retention in any given position and a greater need for HR to weed through all the constant applications, well... let's just say I don't buy it.

On that note, a piece I wanted to mention earlier this week.

https://time.com/5685528/koch-industries-corporate-power/

The election season of 2015 and 2016 was defined by chaos, infighting and a pool of deep resentment that came boiling over when votes were cast. But this election was barely noticed. It happened on February 17, 2016, in a rundown labor union hall in Portland, Oregon. Union members were voting on a new contract with their employer, Koch Industries. The union members felt powerless, cornered, and betrayed by their own leaders. The things that enraged them were probably recognizable to anyone who earns a paycheck in America today. Their jobs making wood and paper products for a division called Georgia Pacific had become downright dangerous, with spikes in injuries and even deaths. They were being paid less, after adjusting for inflation, than they were paid in the 1980s. Maybe most enraging, they had no leverage to bargain for a better deal. Steve Hammond, one of the labor union’s top negotiators, had fought for years to get higher pay and better working conditions. And for years, he was outgunned and beaten down by Koch’s negotiators. So even as the presidential election was dominating public attention in late 2015, Hammond was presenting the union members with a dispiriting contract defined by surrender on virtually everything the union had been fighting for. He knew the union members were furious with his efforts. When he stood on stage to present the contract terms, he lost control and berated them. “This is it guys!” his colleagues recall him yelling. “This is your best offer. You’re not going to strike anyway.”

Worker's have been beaten down so much they can't really afford to leverage their labor power, and even if they do, they just risk losing everything since employers can just up and move on a whim without any fear of reprisal.

Legislators are not in a position to do anything either since they've essentially surrendered to the money in the system.

Case in point:

To take another example: In 2017, Koch helped kill part of the Republican tax reform plan to impose a “border adjusted” income tax that almost certainly would have hurt Koch’s oil refining business. The plan was being pushed by none other than Paul Ryan, a onetime Koch ally who was then Speaker of the House. Ryan wanted to include the border adjustment in President Trump’s tax overhaul because it would have benefited domestic manufacturing and would have allowed the government to cut corporate taxes without exploding the deficit. But former Koch oil traders told me that the border adjustment tax would have hurt profits at the Kochs’ Pine Bend refinery in Minnesota. Koch played a vital role in killing the border adjustment tax before a vigorous public debate about it could even begin (A Koch Industries spokesman insisted that the Koch political network opposed the border-adjustment measure only on ideological grounds, because it was basically a tax, and not to protect profits at Koch’s oil refineries) . By the time most people started paying attention, Paul Ryan admitted defeat and jettisoned the border adjustment.

[dckingsfan]

There was an interesting article out recently that posited that folks need to have a higher job switching rate before wages will really be impacted.

Which is a great way of saying that individuals need to try to play competing employers against each other as individuals against much larger entities. If only there was some sort of way that people could band together and collectively insist on higher wages. A friendly term showing unification from the latin root "unio". We could call it a funion!

There are problems with unions but that doesn't mean you throw the baby out with the bathwater. Or wait... maybe I've been wrong all this time and unions are simply holding back the true competitive nature of employees and they are clearly much better off without them. Whew! Glad we cleared that up.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/why-unions-are-harmful-to-workers

Hmmm, a black and white argument from you... a bit unexpected.

I think that not only do businesses need to be monitored but so do unions. A lot of the demise of unions came from their own corruption and lack of competition. Not all mind you but a good chunk of the problem can be laid back at union management's feet.

[I_Like_Dirt]

Hmmm, a black and white argument from you... a bit unexpected.

I think that not only do businesses need to be monitored but so do unions. A lot of the demise of unions came from their own corruption and lack of competition. Not all mind you but a good chunk of the problem can be laid back at union management's feet.

Oh c'mon now. That wasn't a black and white argument unless you wilfully choose to add to it and read it differently. Nowhere did I say that unions couldn't be improved. What I'm saying is that getting rid of them isn't the answer whatsoever unless we actually have a better idea to replace them. I'm absolutely all for accountability with respect to unions. I find it hilarious that the accountability finger gets pointed at unions so much more than employers in general, as though employers are somehow negotiating in good faith or offloading costs elsewhere.

But we can draw your argument out further. I'm suggesting sanity in numbers here because we all lose when we compete against each other and suggesting that an individual is singularly responsible for their own situation is missing the larger point by a mile. If we don't like union contracts and such, the answer is simple: every individual voter should inform themselves on the unique situation of every union and take action accordingly both at the ballot box, with respect to where they shop, etc. It's an outrageous and totally unworkable answer to a much more complicated question. Organization absolutely helps and just because we're failing at monitoring it doesn't mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The reality is that unions absolutely tipped the balance of power far more equally between employers and employees for decades. As we eroded their power, we eroded the employees position and the results have been predictable. At the same time, we've also tipped things very strongly towards the investor as a power center which has increasingly strengthened employer positions. Unions tended to cause problems where there was poor management or corruption within unions, for example. The answer is to crack down on corruption and identify where weak managers are failing. Or alternatively, come up with an even better mechanism for empowering employees than unions and going with that, not just abolishing unions and replacing them with nothing and then blaming individual employees for not being able to effectively playing a bunch of major employers against themselves while starving in the meanwhile.

[pancakes3]

::whispers:: UBI

[dckingsfan]

Hmmm, a black and white argument from you... a bit unexpected.

I think that not only do businesses need to be monitored but so do unions. A lot of the demise of unions came from their own corruption and lack of competition. Not all mind you but a good chunk of the problem can be laid back at union management's feet.

Oh c'mon now. That wasn't a black and white argument unless you wilfully choose to add to it and read it differently. Nowhere did I say that unions couldn't be improved. What I'm saying is that getting rid of them isn't the answer whatsoever unless we actually have a better idea to replace them. I'm absolutely all for accountability with respect to unions. I find it hilarious that the accountability finger gets pointed at unions so much more than employers in general, as though employers are somehow negotiating in good faith or offloading costs elsewhere.

But we can draw your argument out further. I'm suggesting sanity in numbers here because we all lose when we compete against each other and suggesting that an individual is singularly responsible for their own situation is missing the larger point by a mile. If we don't like union contracts and such, the answer is simple: every individual voter should inform themselves on the unique situation of every union and take action accordingly both at the ballot box, with respect to where they shop, etc. It's an outrageous and totally unworkable answer to a much more complicated question. Organization absolutely helps and just because we're failing at monitoring it doesn't mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I did read it that way. Probably because of the lens I look through - I see unions (we can discuss businesses in a different sub-topic) not being held to a very high standard of accountability, being very monopolistic, not representing their constituents well and having a high-level of corruption. I don't think it is a "we do better with them regardless" argument.

Basically, they got arrogant, corrupt and uncompetitive (hence their relative demise). Until there is choice (competition) and standards I don't see unions being that effective.

[I_Like_Dirt]

I did read it that way. Probably because of the lens I look through - I see unions (we can discuss businesses in a different sub-topic) not being held to a very high standard of accountability, being very monopolistic, not representing their constituents well and having a high-level of corruption. I don't think it is a "we do better with them regardless" argument.

Basically, they got arrogant, corrupt and uncompetitive (hence their relative demise). Until there is choice (competition) and standards I don't see unions being that effective.

We wouldn't have weekends without unions. Their demise is entirely about political gamesmanship to vilify the idea rather than the individuals. Crack down on corruption. Don't crack down on unions. There have been corrupt judges and we don't do away with the legal system. Unions have been incredibly effective but yes, they have also caused problems. Forcing competition amongst employees while one large entity, an employer, doesn't have to treat each individual hire as a separate competitive entity competing against other internal hires is totally illogical. That said, it's also unavoidable which is why the power balance needs to be tipped a bit. Unions aren't perfect but unless there's a better idea, the notion that pre-union labour in the industrial revolution or any other age was somehow better off is entirely disingenuous and the fact that people might be temporarily better off outside of a union because employers trying to break unions set things up as such doesn't mean the fallout won't be universally worse once unions finally die off for good.

More than that, though, think about the argument you just proposed a bit more. We once had a discussion in one of these threads about how people could get ahead if only they effectively worked 80 hour work weeks in multiple jobs, didn't spend anything and worked/saved their way into the investor class. Your response to that (rightly so, I might add) was that it wasn't scalable because not everyone could do that and even if everyone was doing that we'd be right back to square one. I suggested at the time (and still do) that there would also be all sorts of added costs that would go ignored in such a situation, such as breakdown of civil society as people work more and participate less, divorces, mental health problems, etc.

Now? You're effectively proposing that a potential solution to wages not rising along with productivity and financial gains is that all employees should work more because constantly applying for new jobs and negotiating is absolutely work - only that work should be of the unproductive variety since we don't necessarily gain anything from people constantly applying for different jobs and we just create a bunch of added organizational costs. And beyond that the work wouldn't even be paid, only hopefully paid in the form of a higher wage with a different employer at some unknown point in the future. That isn't a reliable mechanism because there is no guarantee of increases at any point for any individual, even were it to work on the average level. I mean, technically, wages are rising right now on average, the average is just skewing really, really high for CEOs and a few select positions here and there. You've just moved every worker closer to the 80-hour work week without paying them for it and putting them in an even tougher situation and that's supposed to somehow create a better balance? Yeah, I'm skeptical.

And yes, I'm aware of the studies of how people who switch employers repeatedly tend to see higher wages over the long run. Well... yeah... That's no different than the person who works an 80 hour work week making more money in the long run, though, and if everyone is suddenly applying for different jobs to negotiate for higher wages at the same time, there are way fewer employers than employees looking for raises out there. It's not even remotely close to scalable. But yes, I imagine banks and such would miss this sort of thing because they don't actually care about productivity beyond their own financial productivity. Offloading costs (time is a cost) onto the working poor isn't a cost that gets factored into the equation anywhere. Of course it confuses anyone with that viewpoint because they're only factoring in immediate financially specific costs. It's no different than creating a bunch of pollution to increase productivity and enhance the bottom line.

[Zonkerbl]

Unions can only exist if there is monopoly power both on the corporation's side (there's monopoly rents to be shared) and on the union side (corporation can only do business with the union). Globalization has eliminated the second side of that equation and somewhat eroded the first side as well. Unions are no longer a viable tool to use to combat the problem of capitalists using monopoly power to siphon wealth from the poor. The problem Marx thought would lead to worldwide proletariat revolution, except that there was much more competition than Marx thought for capital, leading to a lot of opportunities for talented entrepreneurs to break into the market and make small businesses nimble and innovative enough to compete with the big boys, and the big corporations' monopoly power worked against them by creating an environment that enabled unions to exist.

Now technology companies are absorbing all competing entrepreneurs, and globalization pressure has destroyed the environment that allowed unions to exist. Under these circumstances Marx' criticisms of capitalism seem much more relevant now.

[Zonkerbl]

::whispers:: UBI

yeah this is what we're left with

[TGW]

the economy *is* strong. the money's there. the problem's in the distribution. wealth disparity is a different conversation than productivity.

Agreed.

[Zonkerbl]

see it's possible to have an interesting discussion in this thread without it being a partisan feces throwing contest

[payitforward]

I check in only once in a while (most often when the current post is from Zonk). I find myself shocked by the high level of actual thoughtful content in the current discussion -- not to mention the low level of name-calling!

Keep it up!!

[payitforward]

::whispers:: UBI

yeah this is what we're left with

Not only what we're left with but altogether the most sensible direction of policy.