Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[johnu]

The coolest parts of Biden's expansive infrastructure plan by David Roberts

I am in favor of an infrastructure bill after dozens of "FAKE" infrastructure months announced by the Manchurian President following major scandals that erupted in the press. And I'm not saying that just because the bridge connecting my neighborhood to the rest of Seattle has been broken for a year and won't be open for another year or two. :lol:

 

However, that $2 trillion bill is spread over 8 years, so basically $250 billion/year, around 5% of the Federal budget. When you look at the cost of the bill as an annual percentage of the Federal budget, it doesn't seem like such a big deal. Of course, compared to the nonexistent Seditionist in Chief's infrastructure bill which was never written up nor introduced as an actual bill, 5% is a hell of a lot more than 0%.

 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, among others, has suggested a $10 trillion bill. Others have suggested at least a doubling of scope, so $4 trillion. Administration spokespeople for the bill avoid answering questions when asked whether the $2 trillion price tag is very inadequate considering the amount of work required for the entire USA.

[Winstonm]

I am in favor of an infrastructure bill after dozens of "FAKE" infrastructure months announced by the Manchurian President following major scandals that erupted in the press. And I'm not saying that just because the bridge connecting my neighborhood to the rest of Seattle has been broken for a year and won't be open for another year or two. :lol:

 

However, that $2 trillion bill is spread over 8 years, so basically $250 billion/year, around 5% of the Federal budget. When you look at the cost of the bill as an annual percentage of the Federal budget, it doesn't seem like such a big deal. Of course, compared to the nonexistent Seditionist in Chief's infrastructure bill which was never written up nor introduced as an actual bill, 5% is a hell of a lot more than 0%.

 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, among others, has suggested a $10 trillion bill. Others have suggested at least a doubling of scope, so $4 trillion. Administration spokespeople for the bill avoid answering questions when asked whether the $2 trillion price tag is very inadequate considering the amount of work required for the entire USA.

 

I think the best way to get Republican evangelical support is to make the bill 10% of the federal budget and frame it as "tithing".

[kenberg]

I have long held the view that people are different from physical objects such as bridges. For example, it should be easier to get a person to wear a mask than it is to build a bridge over a river, but apparently, that's not the case.

 

This came to mind while browsing info about the infrastructure plan. Biden proposes to build some better schools, meaning that things like ventilation will be better. Yes, we should be able to do that. Much easier than it is to get the students to actually pay attention and to learn the material.

 

Very realistic plans.

[pilowsky]

I have long held the view that people are different from physical objects such as bridges. For example, it should be easier to get a person to wear a mask than it is to build a bridge over a river, but apparently, that's not the case.

 

This came to mind while browsing info about the infrastructure plan. Biden proposes to build some better schools, meaning that things like ventilation will be better. Yes, we should be able to do that. Much easier than it is to get the students to actually pay attention and to learn the material.

 

Very realistic plans.

 

Sad, hopeful and funny all at the same time.

You would also think that it would be easy to convince people not to smoke, not eat bad food, not buy automatic weapons, wear sunblock and a hat, look both ways before crossing the road, and on and on.

But then, 1/3 of the eligible population voted for Trump - twice. Even more unnerving, 1/3 of the eligible population decided that it was in their best interests not to participate in the democratic process at all.

I believe that there is a concept called the "reasonable person" - My ideas about what such a person might look like are being sorely tested.

Looks like the "absurdists" were right all along.

"And as for seeking help from any other – no, that he will not do for all the world; rather than seek help he would prefer to be himself – with all the tortures of hell, if so it must be." Kierkegaard S.

[y66]

Fun read: Panic Rooms, Birth Certificates and the Birth of GOP Paranoia by John Boehner. Adapted from his book ON THE HOUSE.

[pilowsky]

One of the reasons that Putin - and other enemies - are so easily able to destroy the system of government is that in the USA all "Speech is free".

Below is a piece I just found in Newsweek.

Everything about it is alarming, but the part that concerns me the most is the comment by the Police that this is a "Free speech 'demonstration'" and therefore is OK by them.

 

What sort of civilised country allows people to threaten the lives of others and promote the superiority of one group of people over another based on skin pigmentation?

 

 

 

Police Prepare for Weekend 'White Lives Matter' KKK Rally in Orange County

BY DANIEL VILLARREAL ON 4/6/21 AT 12:17 AM EDT

 

The Huntington Beach Police Department is preparing to monitor and respond possible (sic) unrest at a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) "White Lives Matter" rally in Orange County, California this Sunday.

 

Fliers announcing the rally appeared in plastic sandwich bags weighted with rocks on the streets of Huntington Beach on Easter morning, according to The Los Angeles Times.

 

A group calling itself the Loyal White Knights of the KKK emblazoned its name on the fliers.

 

"White Lives Do Matter: Say NO to cultural geNOcide," one flier with a KKK insignia stated. The flier accused white people of too cowardly to "stand up" for their culture over the fear of being called "racist."

 

"White civil rights! Our ancestors settled the land, established the country, made the laws—we're the majority. Why shouldn't we control our own destiny???" the fliers said. "If you hate American history we would like to kindly ask you to get out of America!"

 

Lieutenant Brian Smith told the Times that a Huntington Beach resident notified police of the fliers on Sunday morning. Smith said that free speech demonstrations, such as this one, don't require a city permit as long as organizers don't erect structures or interfere with traffic and access to public spaces.

 

"Hopefully it is a peaceful, 1st Amendment-protected type of event that doesn't get to the point where it's affecting public safety," Smith said. "We'll staff it accordingly and have contingency plans in place in case there are issues that arise."

 

Huntington Beach city officials planned a community meeting on Monday to discuss the rally along with racism and hate crimes in general, according to KTLA.

 

 

[y66]

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-04-06/it-won-t-be-long-before-the-filibuster-goes?sref=UHfKDqx7

 

Senate Democrats now have a green light from the chamber’s parliamentarian to extend their use of the reconciliation procedure, which allows them to avoid filibusters on some bills. Previously, majorities have used reconciliation no more than once per budget year, but the plain language of the law has always allowed additional uses. Now the parliamentarian has confirmed that she would rule such use kosher.

 

In practical terms, this may not mean that much. Democrats had the ability to pass three reconciliation bills during the current Congress anyway, and it’s far from certain they’ll use all three, let alone the additional ones that they’re now talking about. But more important, we’re continuing to see the erosion of the filibuster. Historically, the filibuster was only used occasionally, and usually as a means of negotiation rather than as a method of simply obstructing whatever the majority party wanted. Over the past 40 years or so, both parties have resorted to it more, with 1993 and 2009 — both years of unified Democratic government — key markers where the procedure’s increased use was most notable.

 

Each action by the minority to exploit the rules in its favor, however, sparks a reaction by the majority. The bottom line is that any strict supermajority legislative body is inherently unstable, at least if the chamber sets its own rules, as both the House and Senate do. The only reason the 60-vote Senate has lasted this long is that Democrats had 60 senators or came close in 2009-2010, and therefore could beat the filibuster; then divided government made the procedure less important; then Republicans had two years of unified government with a slim majority and a narrow agenda, followed by two more years of divided government; and now Democrats have an extremely narrow majority.

That’s for legislation; for nominations, the end came much quicker, largely because there have been more years where the president and the Senate majority have been from the same party than years of fully unified government.

 

But even without the votes to eliminate the filibuster, majority parties are fighting back, as Republicans did in 2017 and Democrats plan to do now by using reconciliation. Democrats may also decide to force Republicans to stay on the Senate floor for a “talking” filibuster, at least if they can find a way to do so that is acceptable to West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and other Democrats who are reluctant to impose new rules. We’ll also hear talk of carving out new exceptions to which legislation can be filibustered. Eventually — maybe in this Congress, maybe the next time there’s unified government, but before long — the whole house of cards will come down. The current situation just isn’t stable.

 

And I’ll say it again: That’s what senators seem to want. Republican leader Mitch McConnell could keep the filibuster safe if he agreed to use it only for some bills, not all of them. But he clearly isn’t looking for such a deal and there appears to be no interest among other Republican senators — just as there was no interest among Democratic senators for cutting deals with the Republican majority in 2017 and 2018. Yes, a lot of lawmakers, usually those in the minority, talk about preserving Senate traditions and so forth. But it’s been years since any of them acted as if that’s what they really wanted.

[y66]

https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20210407&instance_id=28950&nl=the-morning&productCode=NN®i_id=59211987&segment_id=55022&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F55ccff3e-60b9-5fa0-a365-dca655e352f6&user_id=2d8b72dd84a9ff194896ed87b2d9c72a

 

The fight over Georgia

 

Georgia’s new voting law has inspired a heated national debate, involving President Biden, top Republicans and major companies. It has led to a furious exchange of charges and countercharges, sometimes about basic facts.

 

This morning, I want to try to clarify the fight, by focusing on a few overarching points.

 

Make voting harder

 

The Georgia law is part of an ongoing effort by the Republican Party to make voting more difficult, mostly because Republicans believe they win when turnout is low.

 

There is no accurate way to describe this effort other than anti-democratic.

 

The Republican Party’s justification is “election integrity” — that is, stopping voter fraud. But voter fraud is exceedingly rare. There is no reason to believe it has determined the outcome of a single U.S. election in decades. If anything, the most high-profile recent examples of fraud have tended to involve Republican voters. Yet former President Donald Trump and other Republicans have repeatedly and falsely claimed otherwise.

 

In truth, the spate of “election integrity” laws over the past decade are mostly a response to Barack Obama’s presidential victories. They created a consensus, among both parties, that Democrats benefited from high turnout (which may not be true). Republicans in many states have responded by trying to make voting harder, especially in cities and heavily Black areas — through onerous identification requirements, reduced voting hours, reduced access to early voting and more.

 

The new Georgia law largely fits this pattern. It is a response by Republican legislators and Gov. Brian Kemp to their party’s close losses there in the 2020 elections. The law reduces hours for absentee voting, increases ID requirements, and limits the distribution of water and food to voters waiting in line.

 

One provision seems obviously targeted at Atlanta, the Democrats’ most important source of votes: a new limit on absentee-ballot drop boxes. It is likely to reduce the number of drop boxes in metropolitan Atlanta to fewer than 25, from 94 last year. (My colleagues Nick Corasaniti and Reid Epstein have written a helpful summary of the law.)

 

“There is no rational motivation for the passage of its new election law other than demonstrating fealty to the false claims elevated by Trump,” The Washington Post’s Philip Bump wrote. Perry Bacon Jr. of FiveThirtyEight put it this way: “The enactment of this law in that state is a particularly alarming sign that the Republican Party’s attacks on democratic norms and values are continuing and in some ways accelerating.”

 

A voter placed a ballot in a drop box in Athens, Ga., shortly before Election Day last November.John Bazemore/Associated Press

What will the impact be?

 

But some Democrats have misrepresented parts of the law — and may be exaggerating its likely effects.

 

Biden, for example, suggested that the law would close polling places at 5 p.m. It won’t. As is already the law, local governments must keep polling places open until 5 p.m. and can keep them open until 7 p.m. (CNN’s Daniel Dale and The Post’s Glenn Kessler have both laid out Biden’s incorrect assertions.)

 

“The entire existence of the legislation in question is premised on a pernicious lie,” The Bulwark’s Tim Miller wrote. “But for some reason Biden & many other Dems are grossly exaggerating the specifics of what it actually does.” In some cases, Democrats appear to be talking about provisions that the Georgia legislature considered but did not include.

 

What about the impact of the provisions that really are in the law? That’s inherently uncertain. But The Times’s Nate Cohn has argued that the effects will be smaller than many critics suggest. He thinks it will have little effect on overall turnout or on election outcomes.

 

He points out that the law mostly restricts early voting, not Election Day voting. Early voters tend to be more highly educated and more engaged with politics. They often vote no matter what, be it early or on Election Day. More broadly, Nate argues that modest changes to voting convenience — like those in the Georgia law — have had little to no effect when other states have adopted them.

 

Of course, Georgia is so closely divided that even a small effect — on, say, turnout in Atlanta — could decide an election. And the law has one other alarming aspect, as both Nate and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Patricia Murphy have noted: It could make it easier for state legislators to overturn a future election result after votes have been counted.

 

The bottom line

 

The new Georgia law is intended to be a partisan power grab. It is an attempt to win elections by changing the rules rather than persuading more voters. It’s inconsistent with the basic ideals of democracy. But if it’s intent is clear, its impact is less so. It may not have the profound effect that its designers hope and its critics fear.

 

Substack’s Matthew Yglesias offers a helpful bit of context: Georgia’s law is based on “a big lie,” he writes, which certainly is worrisome. But the impact is likely to be modest, he predicts. And for people worried about the state of American democracy, laws like Georgia’s are not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that the Electoral College, the structure of the Senate and the gerrymandering of House districts all mean that winning public opinion often isn’t enough to win elections and govern the country.

 

“These big skews,” Yglesias writes, “matter much more than the marginal impact of tinkering with voter ID or absentee ballot rules.”

[Winstonm]

Words matter. https://itstartedwithwords.org/

[Winstonm]

I see that the RNC has now adopted the same opt-in prechecked box to make contributions monthly - with a threat attached. I'm surprised the threat isn't like this:

 

It would be a shame if something happened to you and your wife and kids after you unchecked this box, you know, like an accident or something. Capisce?

[y66]

What is the quintessential American act? It is the leap of faith. The first European settlers left the comfort of their old countries and migrated to brutal conditions, convinced the future would be better on this continent. Immigrants all crossed oceans or wilderness to someplace they didn’t know, hoping that their children would someday breathe the atmosphere of prosperity and freedom.

 

Here we are again, one of those moments when we take a leap, a gamble, beckoned by the vision of new possibility. The early days of the Biden administration are nothing if not a daring leap.

 

I asked Anita Dunn, one of President Biden’s senior advisers, to reflect on the three giant proposals: Covid relief, infrastructure and the coming “family” plan. What vision binds them together? What is this thing, Bidenomics? Interestingly, she mentioned China.

 

This could be the Chinese century, with their dynamism and our decay. The unexpected combination of raw capitalism, authoritarianism and state direction of the economy could make China the dominant model around the globe. President Biden, Dunn said, believes that democracy needs to remind the world that it, too, can solve big problems. Democracy needs to stand up and show that we are still the future.

 

I asked Cecilia Rouse, the chair of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, where our vulnerabilities lie. It is in our public goods, she said, the degradation of our common life.

 

“The model of the past 40 years has been to rely on the private sector to carry the load, but that sector is not best suited to deliver certain public goods like work force training and infrastructure investment,” she told me. “These are places where there is market failure, which creates a role for government.”

 

Brian Deese, the director of Biden’s National Economic Council, said that Bidenomics has three key prongs: an effort to distribute money to those on the lower end of the income scale, an effort to use climate change as an opportunity to reinvent our energy and transportation systems, and an effort to replicate the daring of the moon shot by investing big-time in research and development.

 

Some people say this is like the New Deal. I’d say this is an updated, monster-size version of “the American System,” the 19th-century education and infrastructure investments inspired by Alexander Hamilton, championed by Henry Clay and then advanced by the early Republicans, like Abraham Lincoln. That was an unabashedly nationalist project, made by a youthful country, using an energetic government to secure two great goals: economic dynamism and national unity.

 

Bidenomics is a massive bid to promote economic dynamism. It’s not only the R&D spending and the green energy stuff; it’s also the massive investment in kids and human capital.

 

If, as expected, Biden’s American Family Plan includes universal pre-K education and free community college, that would mean four more years of free schooling for millions of young Americans. As Rahm Emanuel said to me, when was the last time we achieved something as big as that?

 

It’s also a unifying agenda. For the past several decades the economy has funneled money to highly educated people who live in large metro areas. That has created a ruinous class rift that divides the country and fuels polarization. The Biden measures would funnel money to the roughly two-thirds of Americans without a bachelor’s degree — who work on road crews, in manufacturing plants, who care for the elderly and are disproportionately unemployed.

 

It’s kind of interesting to me that the Democrats, the party of the metro educated class, are promoting policies that would send hundreds of billions of dollars to, well, Trump voters.

 

Because the Biden plan owes more to Hamilton than to socialism, it’s not only progressives who love it, but moderates, too. Jim Kessler, an executive vice president at the moderate Democratic group Third Way, sent me an email this week with the subject line, “Why Mods Love Biden Jobs Plan.”

 

Is it a risk? Yes, a big one. If your historical memory goes back only to 2009, then you think there’s no risk to going big on spending and debt. But history is filled with the carcasses of nations and empires that declined in part because they took on too much debt: imperial Spain, France in the 18th century, China in the 19th.

 

The Biden plan would have us pouring money into some of our least efficient sectors. As Fareed Zakaria noted recently, American infrastructure projects often cost several times more than European projects. Adding just two miles of new track and three stations to the New York subway system ended up costing $4.5 billion.

 

You can pour a lot of money into American infrastructure and get relatively little back.

 

But we’ve had 20 years of anemic growth and a long period of slow productivity growth. The current trendlines cannot continue. These are necessary and plausible risks to take if America is not to drift gentle into that good night. Look at the cities, like Fresno, Calif., and Greenville, S.C., that have surged back to life in recent years. What did they do? They invested in infrastructure and community colleges. The Biden plan is what has already worked locally, just on a mammoth scale.

 

Sometimes you take a risk to shoot forward. The Chinese are convinced they own the future. It’s worth taking this shot to prove them wrong.

[y66]

A huge rise in US government spending will boost the world’s largest economy over at least the next two years, said the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase.

 

Jamie Dimon offered the upbeat outlook in his annual letter to shareholders, in which he asserted that high savings rates, stimulus programmes, a potential infrastructure package and “euphoria around the end of the pandemic” were likely to jump-start the US economy.

 

“It is possible that we will have a Goldilocks moment — fast growth, inflation that moves up gently (but not too much) and interest rates that rise (but not too much),” Wall Street’s leading banker said, adding that sustained spending could fuel a years-long hot streak.

 

Both consumers and companies appeared to be in great financial health as the country starts to emerge from the health crisis, said Dimon, who heads the largest US bank by assets.

 

Even before Joe Biden’s $1.9tn stimulus package was passed last month, JPMorgan estimated that retail customers had roughly $2tn in excess savings. Large companies, meanwhile, are carrying a sizeable $3tn cash cushion on their balance sheets.

 

Additionally, expansionary actions taken by monetary authorities around the world should have “a compounding global effect”, Dimon said.

 

If such a boom emerges, high-flying valuations in equity markets could be justified, though an oversupply of US debt would make it hard to support the price of Treasury bonds, he added.

 

Dimon repeatedly advocated in his 34,000-word missive for higher government spending to address some of the country’s glaring issues, such as ageing infrastructure, unaffordable healthcare and widening economic inequality.

 

“Spent wisely, it will create more economic opportunity for everyone,” he said, acknowledging that sometimes too much money was jammed up in inefficient bureaucratic programmes.

 

His comments came as the Biden administration has turned its attention to passing a $2tn infrastructure plan on the heels of roughly $5.8tn in stimulus spending throughout the pandemic.

 

Supporters have cheered the infrastructure proposal as a long-overdue investment, while critics have said the additional spending, in the wake of costly stimulus packages, risked overheating the economy and sending the US into recession.

 

Though the “Goldilocks” scenario was probable, Dimon assured investors that JPMorgan was also prepared for the possibility of runaway inflation or yet another wave of lockdowns. 

 

“And, of course, being who we are, while we are going to hope for the Goldilocks scenario — and we think there is a chance for that to happen — we will anticipate and be prepared for two other negative scenarios,” he said. 

 

Though Dimon did not directly address the most controversial aspect of the US president’s infrastructure plan — an increase in the corporate tax rate to 28 per cent from 21 per cent to help pay for the measures — he maintained that the country needed a globally competitive tax structure.

 

“Even if that capital is distributed in dividends or stock buybacks, it is simply being put to a higher and better use — this is completely normal capital reallocation,” he said.

[pilowsky]

I've been watching the Floyd murder trial, and a key pillar of the defence appears to be something along the lines of:

"Yes, there was a knee on his neck, but if he didn't have an underlying condition (in this case, drugs in his system), then he would have survived.

I'm not a lawyer (caveat) but,

I thought that (certainly in Australia) it is NOT a defence in a murder trial to assert that the victim was to blame.

I thought there was a legal principle that said (something along the lines of) "you take your victim as you find them".

I can see where they might argue that he was a police officer who is entitled to use force to restrain a person, but isn't it still the case that the policeman needs to apply only the amount of force needed to achieve the purpose of restraint.

 

Even in wartime, the ROE do not permit the killing of restrained combatants - or anyone else that is restrained adequately.

 

Any lawyers out there?

[kenberg]

I've been watching the Floyd murder trial, and a key pillar of the defence appears to be something along the lines of:

"Yes, there was a knee on his neck, but if he didn't have an underlying condition (in this case, drugs in his system), then he would have survived.

I'm not a lawyer (caveat) but,

I thought that (certainly in Australia) it is NOT a defence in a murder trial to assert that the victim was to blame.

I thought there was a legal principle that said (something along the lines of) "you take your victim as you find them".

I can see where they might argue that he was a police officer who is entitled to use force to restrain a person, but isn't it still the case that the policeman needs to apply only the amount of force needed to achieve the purpose of restraint.

 

Even in wartime, the ROE do not permit the killing of restrained combatants - or anyone else that is restrained adequately.

 

Any lawyers out there?

 

Of course I am not a lawyer and I try hard not to need the services of a lawyer. But the jurors are probably not trained in law either. The judge will presumably be explaining relevant laws to the jurors, but then judgment will be required.

 

 

 

If I see someone violating the law, or if someone tells me about it, I have the option of walking away. A policeman has been hired to not walk away. And, basically, I have (through my government) hired him to not walk away. His job is inherently dangerous, his job is to do things I would not do. We have to consider this when we judge. But it of course does not give him carte blanche. So judgment is needed by the jurors.

 

I have life experiences that I could bring to bear, no doubt the jurors have as well. For me, this case is clear-cut. If I were on the jury, I would listen to the testimony and to the arguments. But I find it very hard to see a justification. Floyd's ill health or drug use, if these are facts, are irrelevant. If you put your knee on someone's neck for nine minutes you really can't claim surprise that it kills him.

 

 

I think that supporting the police, and I often do support the police, includes recognizing when an action is clearly wrong.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[y66]

Europe has a lot to learn from Joe Biden’s audacity

 

https://www.ft.com/content/a8bada13-4cc8-41c7-8f1b-c83b33e6d63c

 

Politics throws up two sorts of leader. There are those forever reaching for an umbrella and others, far fewer in number, who set out to change the weather. Western democracies have lately boasted a superabundance of politicians sheltering from the storm.

 

Youth and energy are supposed to be synonymous. But it seems the task of rediscovering the power of agency has fallen to the 78-year-old who has moved into the White House. Still short of his first 100 days in office, Joe Biden has already shown that government can change things.

 

The west’s story has become one of democracies at the mercy of what British prime minister Harold Macmillan called “events”. The global financial crash, the rise of China, Russia’s military adventurism, populist insurgencies and most recently Covid-19 — all have elicited defensive responses. Ambition has been replaced by damage limitation. And then politicians wonder why voters have lost faith.

 

Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 promised to mark a break. As it turned out, presidential audacity did not measure up to hope. How strange then that it is Biden, his loyal, scarcely visible vice-president, who is now summoning up the energy and resolve that often eluded Obama. 

 

This was not in last year’s election script. Former president Donald Trump dubbed his opponent “sleepy Joe”, mocking his opponent’s age and linguistic snarl-ups. Many of those cheering Biden from the sidelines harboured concerns of their own. Biden’s designated role was narrowly defined: beat Trump, restore a measure of integrity to American democracy and rebuild old alliances. A return to normality would be enough.

 

Instead, we have seen the most ambitious economic expansion programme since Lyndon Johnson’s 1960s Great Society. Biden wants the $1.9tn economic stimulus bill already passed by Congress to be followed by an infrastructure and education package that could be worth $3tn. Comparisons with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal look anything but fanciful.

 

The eye-wateringly large sums of money are only part of the story. The real significance, symbolised at once by a new federal allowance to alleviate child poverty and a plan to raise the taxes paid by global multinationals, lies in a bold reassertion of the responsibilities of government. “There’s so much we can do,” Biden said at his first White House press conference, nailing down the coffin on swim-or-sink laissez-faire.

 

Sceptics might say Biden has done no more than capitalise on the Covid “moment”. The havoc wrought by the pandemic has brushed aside fears about “big” government. It is true that the president has seized a moment. The goal, though, is anything but fleeting. It amounts to a fundamental rebalancing of the market economy.

 

Ironically, Europeans, long cheerleaders for a softer-edged capitalism, have the most to learn. The defensive incrementalism of the recent past has had no truer champion than Europe’s most powerful leader, Angela Merkel. The German chancellor’s approach to politics has been to drain it of energy.

 

France’s president Emmanuel Macron has been alone in challenging the status quo — and been thwarted at every turn by Berlin. True, Merkel consented to a €750bn Covid recovery fund, but in scale and timing, this pales against Biden’s plans. Germany still marches under the banner of fiscal fundamentalism. Never mind that weak growth, insecure employment and stagnant incomes provide rich feedstock for the populist politics of grievance.

 

There is no guarantee that Biden will succeed. The divisions in American society run deep. Trump still stalks a Republican party in the embrace of identity politics. As with Roosevelt’s New Deal, the rich will fight back against proposed tax increases. And piling such a fiscal expansion on to historically loose monetary policy will surely carry some risks.

 

Biden’s audacity, though, must be measured against the dismal results of the politics of inaction. Democracy is under siege because its elites have allowed unfettered markets to ride roughshod over the postwar social contract, leaving voters trapped in a lethal equilibrium of low growth and rising inequality. 

 

Liberals never cease fretting about how to meet the threat from the world’s autocrats. Whatever the eventual fate of his experiment, Biden has come up with the answer. Democracy flourishes when the system works for everyone.

[pilowsky]

"Democracy flourishes when the system works for everyone."

Good grief - who writes trite drivel like this.

Why is so much political commentary just anodyne drivel?

[kenberg]

Your posts convinced me some time back to get a digital subscription to the NYT. And now perhaps the FT? Where will it end?

I was just reading

https://www.ft.com/content/84f0a9f2-2c1e-42e3-a8ee-82e64ba9c6c3

 

The prospect of actually having to understand this stuff is daunting.

 

 

 

[y66]

Your posts convinced me some time back to get a digital subscription to the NYT. And now perhaps the FT? Where will it end?

I was just reading

https://www.ft.com/content/84f0a9f2-2c1e-42e3-a8ee-82e64ba9c6c3

 

The prospect of actually having to understand this stuff is daunting.

I enjoy FT's perspective and Martin Wolf's commentary. In today's paper, Wolf and Larry Summers discuss Summers' take on Biden's fiscal policy which Summers worries is "substantially excessive" and "could lead to overheating and wasted resources" (these points are well covered in previous WC posts).

 

If Summers is wrong, it will matter little. If he is right, the hopes for a transformative presidency are likely to end in catastrophic economic and political disappointment. It is an immensely important argument.

 

https://www.ft.com/content/380ea811-e927-4fe1-aa5b-d213816e9073

[y66]

https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20210412&instance_id=29131&nl=the-morning&productCode=NN&regi_id=59211987&segment_id=55394&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F12038950-f7f3-5119-b27c-eabbf0536cc6&user_id=2d8b72dd84a9ff194896ed87b2d9c72a

 

Alec MacGillis, the author of an excellent new book about Amazon, called “Fulfillment,” points out that Amazon’s warehouse jobs have a lot in common with the industrial jobs of the past. They are among the main options for people who graduate from high school or community college without specific job skills. They are also physically demanding and dangerous.

 

MacGillis is careful to remind people about the injuries and deaths that came with old factory jobs, and he documents the similar risks that warehouse jobs can bring. Jody Rhoads was a 52-year-old mother and breast cancer survivor in Carlisle, Pa. Her neck was crushed by a steel rack while she was driving a forklift in an Amazon warehouse, killing her. (“We do not believe that the incident was work related,” an Amazon manager reported to the federal government, falsely suggesting her death was from natural causes.)

 

As Spencer Cox, a former Amazon worker who’s now writing a Ph.D. thesis at the University of Minnesota about the company, told my colleague David Streitfeld, “Amazon is reorganizing the very nature of retail work — something that traditionally is physically undemanding and has a large amount of downtime — into something more akin to a factory, which never lets up.”

 

But for all of the similarities to factory work, Amazon jobs also have crucial differences. They are more isolating, as MacGillis explained to me. Rather than working in teams of people who are creating something, warehouse workers often work alone, interacting mostly with robots. Amazon jobs also pay less than many factory jobs did.

 

MacGillis tells the story of three generations of Bodani men who worked in the Sparrows Point steel mill, near Baltimore. The youngest, William Bodani Jr., was making $35 an hour in 2002 (about $52 in today’s dollars), along with bonuses. That’s enough for a solid middle-class income.

 

With the steel mill gone from Sparrows Point, Bodani instead took a job at the Amazon warehouse that occupies the same land. He was in his late 60s at the time and was making a fraction of what he once had.

 

It would be one thing if this sort of downward mobility were a reflection of the U.S. economy’s overall performance. But it’s not. Economic output is much higher, per person, than it was two decades ago and vastly higher than it was in Bessemer’s 20th century heyday. The bulk of the gains, however, have flowed to a narrow slice of workers — among the upper middle class and especially the affluent.

 

For many others, an Amazon job looks preferable to the alternatives, even if it is also part of the reason that so many American families are struggling.

[kenberg]

I looked at that article by Leonhardt. There is a graph that I am not sure I am understanding correctly, reproduced below. And I was not understanding it correctly.

 

 

By The New York Times | Source: Federal Reserve

[y66]

What I think you may be missing is that real median family income has not increased at the same rate as real GDP per capita since 1980. If it had, it would be more like $126,000 than $86,000.

 

Did something happen in 1980? Perhaps our friend from Oklahoma has a theory?

 

Real median family income was $35,650 in 1953 and $86,011 in 2019.

 

Real GDP per capita was $16,574 in 1953 Q4 and $58,490 in 2019 Q4.

[kenberg]

What I think you may be missing is that real median family income has not increased at the same rate as real GDP per capita since 1980. If it had, it would be more like $126,000 than $86,000.

 

Did something happen in 1980? Perhaps our friend from Oklahoma has a theory?

 

Real median family income was $35,650 in 1953 and $86,011 in 2019.

 

Real GDP per capita was $16,574 in 1953 Q4 and $58,490 in 2019 Q4.

 

No, I got the part about family income increasing more slowly than the GDP. But, roughly speaking, so what? I was 14 in 1953 and I cannot recall ever thinking "Gee, I wonder how my family income compares with the GDP".

 

Also, you must have misplaced a comma. $35,650 in 1953? I never thought of my family as poor, or as rich either, but in the mid-50s a friend was dating a girl whose family made 20K a year and, he said, they were having financial problems. I thought that was impossible. In the mid-50s no one could make 20K a year and have financial problems, other than figuring out what to do with all that money.

The minimum wage in 1953 was 75 cents an hour, which gives $1,500 a year.

Anyway, I am at least a bit serious in hoping to understand this. I understand that part of it could be expectations. Still, I don't get it.

[pilowsky]

What I think you may be missing is that real median family income has not increased at the same rate as real GDP per capita since 1980. If it had, it would be more like $126,000 than $86,000.

 

Did something happen in 1980? Perhaps our friend from Oklahoma has a theory?

 

Real median family income was $35,650 in 1953 and $86,011 in 2019.

 

Real GDP per capita was $16,574 in 1953 Q4 and $58,490 in 2019 Q4.

 

These 'posts' that you keep dumping here are extremely frustrating.

Throwing out numbers without a denominator is a well-known journalist trick to excite readership.

It's just clickbait.

Dropping slabs of text into a Forum without meaningful analysis is uninteresting - if you want to use them to make a point, fine - otherwise, I don't bother reading them.

But, thanks for telling me that other people are thinking.

The real question is not "real median income" but purchasing power.

Other important factors are access to education and health care.

 

A common metric is to look at the multiple of median income and compare that with median home cost.

In 1938 it cost $3900 to purchase a new house with an average income of $1731 - or to put it another way, roughly double.

 

Today the price is about $65,000 compared with an average income of $28,671 - or to put it another way, roughly double.

 

Remember that in 1938 families were larger, women - and anyone that was not a white male from an English-speaking background - were treated like s**t and families were much larger.

 

Do you think about data or just look at it?

 

Would you rather be alive in 1938 or now?

 

The absolute last, bottom of the barrel crisis that we face at the moment in 1st world countries is real median income.

 

In Australia, successive conservative governments have so eviscerated science (and scientific thinking) that nobody here can produce a vaccine - or deliver one.

At the same time, I hear the same people on the radio rambling about how we must do more to attract people from overseas who have skills.

 

I find many of these people in Australian Bridge Clubs - they think they know everything because they can play a card game.

Give me a break.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[johnu]

Also, you must have misplaced a comma. $35,650 in 1953? I never thought of my family as poor, or as rich either, but in the mid-50s a friend was dating a girl whose family made 20K a year and, he said, they were having financial problems. I thought that was impossible. In the mid-50s no one could make 20K a year and have financial problems, other than figuring out what to do with all that money

 

The Y-axis of the graph says "2019 CPI-U-RS Adjusted Dollars". So, they've taking the actual 1953 median family income, and made an adjustment for inflation to project what that would have been in 2019. The CPI-U-RS series is AKA IRS CPI for Urban Consumers Retroactive Series from 1978 to the present. It's not clear what index they are using for years before 1978.

[kenberg]

Yes, as I was making tea it struck me: $35,650 in 1953 means the 1953 median income brought up to modern dollars. Maybe 2019, maybe 2021, Anyway, yes now that number seems plausible. The graph said they had adjusted for inflation but the numbers were just percentages.

If we use https://www.aier.org/cost-of-living-calculator/ to convert we get a factor of about 10. So a family 1953 income of $3,565 seems like a reasonable median family income The family income in my family was about $5,000. More than $3,565, but far short of the $8.700 or so that would be two and a half times $3,565 .

We lived comfortably.

So what's going on?

If we multiply that $8.700 by 10 we get 87K, very close to the 86K you quote.

So are we really saying that my family in the 50s could live comfortably on 5K, equivalent to 50K today, but people are really finding it tough to live on 87K today?

As I said, I am really not trying to argue here, I am trying to understand just what is being said.