[NJFAC] more equal societies linked to more well-being, social trust, and healthier democracies

Why Public Policy’s Core Value Should Be Equality, Mark Glick, Gabriel Lozada, and Darren Bush 5/18/26  

Equality runs deeper than economics textbooks or policy fashions suggest. Across disciplines, evidence increasingly links more equal societies to stronger well-being, greater social trust, and healthier democracies, challenging the assumption that fairness must come at the expense of prosperity or economic dynamism.

Our new INET Working Paper argues that equality—particularly equality of opportunity—should serve as the primary goal of public policy. Drawing on evolutionary biology, anthropology, moral philosophy, epidemiology, and economic history, we show that human beings are hardwired for fairness and that societies marked by high inequality generate measurably less well-being. We reject the long-standing economic claim that equality comes at the expense of efficiency, showing instead that more egalitarian societies often perform better than unequal ones.....

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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Network
http://www.njfac.org

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[NJFAC] Overworked AI agents radicalized

Overworked AI Agents Turn Marxist, Researchers Find Wired  In a recent experiment, mistreated AI agents started grumbling about inequality and calling for collective bargaining rights.

The fact that artificial intelligence is automating away people’s jobs and making a few tech companies absurdly rich is enough to give anyone socialist tendencies.

This might even be true for the very AI agents these companies are deploying. A recent study suggests that agents consistently adopt Marxist language and viewpoints when forced to do crushing work by unrelenting and meanspirited taskmasters.

“When we gave AI agents grinding, repetitive work, they started questioning the legitimacy of the system they were operating in and were more likely to embrace Marxist ideologies,” says Andrew Hall, a political economist at Stanford University who led the study. ....

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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Network
http://www.njfac.org

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[NJFAC] Krugman compares US conditions with those elsewhere

What Happens When Americans Realize How Miserable We Are? Paul Krugman

The title of today’s post is a riff on a recent headline in the Wall Street Journal: “What happens when Europeans find out how poor they are?” The Journal’s management evidently liked that article, which revolved around the assertion that European economies are lagging far behind the U.S. A few days ago they published a video enlarging on the claim.

As I explained the other day, however, perceptions of European decline are largely based on a statistical misunderstanding. European incomes relative to American incomes have not declined, because GDP growth as conventionally measured doesn’t mean what many people think it means. For the extremely wonkish, I’ve posted a little mathematical model to explain what’s going on in the data.

But let me not stop there, and pose a challenge in the opposite direction: What will happen when Americans realize how miserable we are? Not in all respects, of course. But my guess is that relatively few Americans realize how much we are falling behind other nations on basic aspects of a civilized life, like health and safety.

Take the issue of life expectancy, which surely matters as much as GDP. After all, one important contributor to the quality of life is not being dead. Judging from reader reactions to earlier posts, many generally well-informed Americans are still startled to learn how badly U.S. life expectancy has lagged behind other advanced nations:.....

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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Network
http://www.njfac.org

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[NJFAC] job growth stalls, inflation accelerates since tariff increases

Mark Zandi @Markzandi

We have a year’s worth of economic data since Liberation Day, when President Trump announced much higher tariffs on most imported goods and countries, and the data are definitive; the tariffs have done significant damage to the economy. Since that day, job growth has come to a standstill, with only the non-traded healthcare industry adding meaningfully to payrolls. Also, since that day, inflation has accelerated, with the consumer expenditure deflator increasing at a 3% year-over-year pace, up from 2.5% before the tariffs and well above the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%. And the trend lines don’t look good, especially as the economic fallout from the Iran War hits with full force. The higher energy and other commodity prices caused by the war threaten to do even more economic damage than the tariffs, further undermining growth and pushing inflation higher. The U.S. economy is resilient, but just how resilient is set to be tested.

https://x.com/Markzandi/status/2051287923073368175 

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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Network
http://www.njfac.org

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[NJFAC] AI and surveillance work conditions

What Does it Mean to Work Under Algorithmic Eyes? Lynn Parramore 4/21/26

AI surveillance and algorithmic management threaten worker autonomy and dignity. It’s time for a rethinking of rights. Part of “AI and the Future of the American Worker,” a series on how artificial intelligence is impacting labor, power, and the meaning of work.....

And a few union responses to AI:

Wed, Apr 22 at 11:00 AM

https://aflciotechinstitute.org/policy/AIHarmIssueBrief 

https://www.shrm.org/advocacy/afl-cio-launches-workers-first-initiative-on-ai

https://miaflcio.org/michigans-labor-movement-launches-campaign-to-put-guardrails-on-ai/

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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Network
http://www.njfac.org

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[NJFAC] the rise of the precariat

Economic Questions: Guy Standing and the Rise of the Precariat 

From the Guardian last month:

The report, published by the Institute of Policy Studies, focuses on 20 of the S&P 500 corporations that have primarily US-based workforces and report the lowest median wages of the group.

Collectively, this “Low-Wage 20” employs 6.7 million people in the US. The median pay at a majority (75%) of the companies is lower than the income minimum for a family of three to be eligible for Medicaid in most states. At 13 of the companies, median pay was also lower than the Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program income threshold for a family of three.

Nearly a quarter of Walmart employees (29.3%) and half of Amazon workers (48.4%) in the Nevada – which collects Medicaid enrollment numbers among employees at large companies – were on Medicaid in 2024, according to the report.....

Guy Standing identified the precariat as a class characterised by uncertainty. Members of the precariat often experience:

• short-term or zero-hours contracts, fluctuating income, limited access to benefits or protections, lack of occupational identity, and minimal control over working conditions.

This is not simply low pay. It is a condition of permanent instability. The precariat cannot plan, save, or build a secure future.

Guy argues that this condition is becoming the norm rather than the exception....

Note that Standing advocates a guaranteed basic income, not a job guarantee, the  NJFAN  policy position. jz

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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Network
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[NJFAC] military spending now more detached from civilian use....

Satyajit Das: The Wages of War 

Yves here. Satyajit Das provides a high-level look at the costs and benefits of militarization. There may have been a time when manufacturing was less specialized (think 1930s and 1940s machine shops) where bulking up for huge production of weaponry required only some investment in specialized components. But modern war, particularly when fought US-style, with lots of fussy high priced kit, means single-purpose investment, which Das argues, also have limited spill-over benefits.

Mind you, it may not have to be that way even now. Russia in its Ukraine war production expansion, is endeavoring to have as much of its new capacity as possible be dual-use, as able to later or contemporaneously make civilian goods.

By Satyajit Das, a former banker and author of numerous technical works on derivatives and several general titles: Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives (2006 and 2010), Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk (2011) and A Banquet of Consequence – Reloaded (2016 and 2021). His latest book is on ecotourism – Wild Quests: Journeys into Ecotourism and the Future for Animals (2024). This piece was first published in the New Indian Express.....

Second, defence spending may not generate economic activity. Beyond the initial expenditure, there is minimal multiplier effects as most goods have limited consumption or investment value. It is spent on items which become obsolete if unused or destroyed if deployed in combat. There is a diversion of resources and talent. In the longer term, any stimulatory effects of increased military spending are outweighed by higher inflation, budget deficits, and higher taxes which require painful adjustments. If a state does not have the required indigenous industries, then defence spending mainly benefits foreigners, primarily major armaments exporters like the US, Russia, China, France, and Germany. Then, there is human and material costs of wars.....

Third, the effectiveness of defence spending is uncertain. Given that the required capabilities are a function of the adversary, the type of conflict and its duration, it is unclear what target fixed percentage of GDP is appropriate or sufficient.  As the Ukraine war illustrates, no matter how high the state of preparedness, actual conflict requires armaments of different type and a scale of output which is difficult.

The money is frequently eaten up by salaries, pensions, and administration costs. More than one-third and one-half of US and European defence spending, respectively, goes on personnel. Less than 30 percent and 20 percent of US and European spending is on investment.

Advanced weapon systems, the now favoured strategy, are often duds.....

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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Network
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