Wednesday, December 27, 2017

[NJFAC] "Radical economic populism is the only thing that can save the Democrats now" The Week

"Duke economist William Darity Jr. has recommended guaranteeing public-sector employment at dignified wages to every American willing to work, providing a federally financed trust fund to every newborn, and rebuilding education infrastructure to offer gifted-quality K-12 education to all. What's especially instructive about Darity's plan is it's designed to be universal, while also getting to the root of the labor market exploitation and exclusion that plagues African-Americans more than anyone. Precisely because of that bottom-up design, these policies would also address the basic challenges facing working-class whites as well. That would lay the economic foundation for a multi-ethnic coalition that could appeal to white workers' livelihoods, while also actively challenging the bigotries and resentments that convinced so many of them to vote for Trump."


Prof. William Darity, Jr. is on the NJFAC Board of Directors. 

https://njfac.org/index.php/education-tools/noted/

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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Coalition
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Tuesday, December 12, 2017

[NJFAC] Webcast of "A New Deal for NYC & the USA "

View Webcast of "A New Deal for NYC & the USA (10-27-17) at the New School"   Part 1    Part 2
A New "New Deal" for NYC & the USA – The New School

Event Program October 27, 2017

Welcome
Dean William Milberg, New School for Social Research
Prof. Robert Pollack, Director, Columbia University Seminars
Prof. Franklin D. Roosevelt, III, Economics Emer., Sarah Lawrence College

Introduction: The Dual New Deal Legacy: Celebrate, Advocate
Prof. Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg, Emer., Adelphi University; Chair, National Jobs for All Coalition;
Co-Chair Columbia University Seminar on Full Employment, Social Welfare, and Equity

The New Deal Legacy in New York City and a Call for a New, New Deal
Gray Brechin, Geographer and Founder, Living New Deal

A 21st Century Civilian Conservation Corps
Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Chief Sponsor, H.R. 2206, 21st Century Civilian Conservation Corps Act and
Co-Sponsor H.R. 1000, 21st Century Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and Training Act

Political and Economic Prospects for Achieving a Federal and a New York City Job Guarantee: A Panel Discussion
Prof. Darrick Hamilton, The New School
Prof. Philip Harvey, Rutgers Law
Prof. Stephanie Kelton, former Chief Economist, Senate Budget Committee & Stony Brook University
Prof. Randall Wray, Levy Institute, Bard College

Creating Jobs and Building Great Things Again in New York City
Bich Ha Pham, Director of Policy, Office of NYC Public Advocate Letitia James

 

PUBLIC PROGRAM SPONSORS:
Columbia University Seminar on Full Employment,
Social Welfare, and Equity
National Jobs for All Coalition
New School for Social Research

CO-SPONSORING ORGANIZATIONS:
CELEBRATING A NEW "NEW DEAL" for NYC & the USA
(in formation)

1Future
Columbia University Seminar on Full Employment,
Social Welfare, and Equity
CWA Local 1180
Designing the WE
District Council 37, AFSCME
Four Freedoms Democratic Club
Greater New York Labor-Religion Coalition
Harlem Congregations for Community Improvement
Judson Memorial Church
Levy Economics Institute, Bard College
Metro NY Health Care for All Campaign
Modern Money Network
National Jobs for All Coalition
New School for Social Research
New York City Department of Records
New York Labor History Association
Professional Staff Congress/CUNY, AFT
The Labor Council for Latin American Advancement NYC
The Living New Deal
WeAct for Environmental Justice
Worker Institute at Cornell ILR
Workers Defense League

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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Coalition
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Monday, November 20, 2017

[NJFAC] Republican Tax Cuts. You’re Right, They’re Not About Economic Growth or Lifting Working-Class Incomes Frank Stricker

            Will average household incomes rise if Republican tax cuts become law? Not for long. Average cuts will be small and they won't last. In the House version, the middle fifth of the households may see their after-tax income rise by 1.5% in 2018, but most of that increase will be gone by 2027. The richest 1% of households get a larger increase--2.5%--and they still be getting most of it in 2027.[1]
            But won't tax cuts for the rich and the corporations generate many more jobs and higher pay?  Probably not. There is no evidence that tax burdens on businesses and investors are the reason that job growth is not faster or that wages are never on the up-escalator for very long.
            The purchasing power of an hour's work for average employees increased 53% from 1950 through 1975. But wages took a U-turn in the 70s and they fell or stagnated in the 1980s. The latter occurred despite the fact that rich people were gifted with much more after-tax income in the Reagan era. Between 1980 and 1982 the top marginal tax rate was cut from 70% to 50%; from 1986 to 1988, it fell to 28%, the lowest level since 1931. The corporate tax rate was also slashed. Despite these incentives, average hourly pay fell 4% (1980-1990).[2]
            Dropping individual tax rates for rich people does not lift average Americans. Neither does cutting corporate taxes, as long as there is a plentiful supply of jobless workers and few strong unions. Don't expect a big jump in real business investment when many companies already have more money than they know what to do with. How much more stuff can they sell if household incomes don't increase substantially? [3]
            But I am engaging in a fact-based discussion of economic policy and social justice. That's not what Republican promises are all about. The new tax cuts may add a little economic boost as government revenues don't grow as fast as spending--it's Keynesian deficit spending, and Republicans do it all the time--but it's unlikely that there will be sustained wage increases. Higher pay for workers has never been a Republican goal, and nor is it for quite a few Democrats. Republicans are in charge and if they really cared about workers, they could raise the federal minimum wage to $15 and start infrastructure programs today. They might actually help unemployed left-behinds in Ohio, West Virginia, Detroit, and Chicago. And they'd win Democratic support on both issues. But most Republicans aren't interested in good-job policies or cooperation across the aisle. Many, especially members of the Tea-Party/Freedom Caucus, have a gimme world-view that elevates the capitalist ethic of greed into a moral code. They're for YOYO (You're On Your Own),  not WITT (We're In This Together).
            If a right-wing House Republican leader were talking privately to his colleagues in an honest and realistic way, he might sound like this:
            "Just among ourselves--doing things to create more jobs and more income for the lower half--that's not important. Talking about it is good, but I haven't thought much about it. We are doing the tax cuts to reward corporations and our big donors; we need their money--that's politics. But we also have idealistic motives--our own moral theory. Affluent and rich Americans deserve everything they can get their hands on, regardless of how they do it and how many jobs they kill. They work hard amassing wealth. Sometimes they create a lot of jobs; sometimes they get rich by destroying jobs. Often they make money by employing lawyers and lobbyists to evade taxes and rig legislation. Hey, that's life; more power to them. It's good that their kids start out way ahead of John and Jane Doe's kids, and the kids will have more of a head start when we get rid of the Estate Tax. And why not? These are obviously people of good stock.
            "Think of it this way. We are cutting government to boost Social Darwinism. That's the struggle that lifts everyone…well, everyone who has what it takes. The federal government is 90% burden. We know it never creates jobs. Market competition is what makes America great. American was greater in the 1800s when the Robber Barons and their servants could tell the truth about defective workers and did not have to be dainty about crushing worker rebellions. We need more of that. Selfishness is good. You should all read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. It was published in the 1950s but it is still relevant. However, it's longer than our tax bill. If you are too busy for Atlas, here's a short variation that comes with God's approval. In many public lectures he gave in the late 1800s, a man named Russell Conwell said this: a poor man is one 'whom God has punished for his sins... remember that there is not a poor person in the United States who was not been made poor by his own shortcomings or the shortcomings of someone else. It is all wrong to be poor anyhow.' Invigorating, right?  We need more of that today. Here's a motto for us: Selfishness good. My money going to help average Americans bad."  By the way, this statement may not be appropriate for all audiences.
 

[1] On the House bill, Tax Policy Center, "Preliminary Distributional Analysis of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act," November 8, 2017, especially Figure 1. On the Senate proposal, check the graphic in David Leonhardt, "The G.O.P. Is Fooling Itself on Taxes," New York Times, Sunday Review, November 19, 2017, 3.
[2] Wage information based on The Economic Report of the President, 2016, Table B-15.
[3]  Josh Bivens, "Real World Data Continue to Show No Link Between Corporate Cuts and Wage Increases," from Economic Policy Institute, November 3, 2017, found at https://portside.org, November 12, 2017; and Eduardo Porter, "Tax Cuts, Sold as Fuel for Growth, Widen Gap Between Rich and Poor," New York Times, October 3, 2017, accessed November 15, 2017, at nytimes.com.
___________________________________________________________________________
Frank Stricker is on the board of the National Jobs for All Coalition and is emeritus professor of history and labor studies at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He has just finished What Ails the American Worker? Unemployment and Crummy Jobs: History, Explanations, Remedies.
 
 
 
 
 

 

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Wednesday, November 8, 2017

[NJFAC] good arguments on proposed tax cuts


  • Democrats are opposing Republican tax cuts partly on the basis that they will expand the US budget deficit.
  • That's the wrong argument to make — not just now but in any low-inflation environment.
  • The right argument against the plan is that it's skewed toward the wealthy and includes changes that won't benefit the economy.
  • "There are better ways to invest in our economy," says Stephanie Kelton, a former chief economist for the Senate Budget Committee's Democratic staff. "Investing in our nation's infrastructure, education, and R&D would do more to boost future productivity than trickle-down tax cuts for the rich."....
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National Jobs for All Coalition
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Tuesday, October 31, 2017

[NJFAC] If You’ve Never Lived In Poverty, Stop Telling Poor People What They Should Do

If You've Never Lived In Poverty, Stop Telling Poor People What They Should Do, Olsen, Everyday Feminism 7/17
....

The Most Common Advice Doesn't Add Up

The over-simplification of poverty is often apparent in the advice that gets disseminated by people who have money and companies who make money off of other people's financial predicaments.

Earlier this yearan infographic circled around which underscored this fact. Created by a company called InvestmentZen, the infographic showed how to "build wealth on the minimum wage."

Aside from the fact that it contained numerous logistical issues – it used the federal minimum wage, which isn't accurate in most states, either because their wage is higher or lower due to tip-crediting – the graphic also seemed to be concerned about moralizing the decisions of poor people and less about actually helping anyone.

Advice from the graphic included "learning skills on YouTube," only eating in-season produce, and remembering that "the best things in life are free."

"You can make excuses, or you can do something about it," the graphic chided. "It's your choice to make."

Twitter instantly took it to task; the response was so heated that it eventually led one of the men responsible for circulating to issue a retraction, calling many of the criticisms "fair."

I suspect that the graphic was so easily mocked because the advice it selected was familiar. Despite the myriad systemic reasons that many people live in poverty, there are a handful of "tips" that well-meaning (most of the time) folks recycle with alarming regularity.

Move somewhere cheaper. Buy in bulk. Get rid of your car. Get a roommate. Eat out less.

....

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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Coalition
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Friday, October 13, 2017

[NJFAC] Oct 27-28: NEW “NEW DEAL” FOR NYC & THE USA; We Can Guarantee Jobs and Build

 A NEW "NEW DEAL" FOR NYC & THE USA/WE CAN GUARANTEE JOBS AND BUILD GREAT THINGS AGAIN
       
Upcoming Event
The New New Deal
October 27–28, 2017
The New Deal's Forgotten Legacy: Then and Now
The New School and Columbia Law School
New York, N.Y.


Sponsored by Columbia University Seminars, National Jobs for All Coalition, New School for Social Research, with support from the Levy Institute

New "New Deal" for NYC & the USA
The New School, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center
55 West 13th Street, Room I-202, Manhattan
October 27, 5:00–8:00 pm

Strategizing for a New "New Deal" for NYC & the USA
Columbia Law School  
October 28, 10:00 am–4:00 pm

For information, reservations, or to RSVP, please visit NJFAC.eventbrite.comwww.NJFAC.org
Download Event Poster and Program 
To register through eventbrite, please go to https://njfac.org/index.php/2017/07/29/strategizing-new-new-deal-nyc/

The publication in Spring 2017 of a Map and Guide to New Deal Public Works and Art: New York City by Living New Deal, is an occasion to Celebrate the "dual legacy" of the New Deal—employment of millions of jobless workers whose work vastly expanded the nation's physical, environmental, and cultural resources. It is also an opportunity to Advocate a Job Guarantee implemented through an updated model of the New Deal Job Creation programs. Clearly, the nation, with its infrastructure given a grade of D+ from the American Society of Civil Engineers, deficient human services, out-of-reach affordable housing, and a looming environmental crisis could use the work of the millions of men and women, especially minorities in lower-income neighborhoods, who are jobless and often not counted.
 
This Public Meeting is the culmination of a series of events to Celebrate and Advocate. The planning group has worked with the staff of the NYC Public Advocateon a Job Guarantee for this City. NYC Public Advocate Letitia James will speak at the meeting of her plans to introduce Job Guarantee legislation. Gray Brechin, founder of Living New Deal (Dept. of Geography, University of California, Berkeley) will present highlights from the NYC Guide and Guide showing how many of the landmarks and cultural treasures that we associate with New York City are New Deal legacies.  A panel of outstanding economists will discuss current conceptions of full employment or job guarantees….
 
In the currrent issue of Dollars & Sense (p. 6), NJFAC Chair Trudy Goldberg has an article on the Living New Deal and the need for a New, New Deal based on an upgraded model of the job creation programs.   http://dollarsandsense.org/d&;s-sept-oct17-full-color-FINAL--high-res.pdf 

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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Coalition
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Thursday, October 5, 2017

[NJFAC] "Poverty Down, Jobs Up: It's All Good," by Frank Stricker

Poverty Down, Jobs Up, Everyone Earning More: What's Not to Like?  A Father and Son Discuss the News                                       by Frank Stricker                     
The Son, a college student home for the weekend:  We always have different viewpoints. You are never happy, you're always criticizing President Trump who's bringing more jobs to America. You criticized Obama a lot and you said you liked him. What's the deal? Never happy, are you, Dad.
The Father, a college professor: I am happy you are getting your own ideas about the economy, even if everyone of them is wrong.  But hey, I was a conservative for a couple of years in college. I'm hoping it's just a phase.
Son: I read the paper. I keep track of the unemployment report and saw the latest poverty report. Unemployment is so low that we are really at full employment.  A professor at UC Riverside's Business School said that we have 5.1% unemployment in California and that's full employment. People do need a little time to find a job. That's the 5%. Everyone is making more money. The poverty rate is falling and has fallen for several years. What's your problem?
Father: You've got a point. I am trying to be supportive. But we had 40,000,000 poor people last year and the poverty rates for black people and Hispanics were 22% and 19%. Sounds bad. And here are two more depressing facts. We have a fair number of programs that help poor people, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, but they have not been enough to reduce the overall rate of poverty. The economy stinks for many people. That's one eason we have not been able to get the poverty rate under 11%. We came closest in the 1970s and the late 90s.  
 Son: Hold on. We studied some of this in one of my economics classes. America has some of the richest poor people in the world. Our teacher told us that a guy named Rector discovered that poor people have cars and even air conditioners. How poor is that?
Dad: Is having an air conditioner an indicator that living in poverty is pretty soft? It's almost a necessity if you live in Indio, California where the temps hit 115 in the summer. Or if you live in hot and muggy southern states. It's like needing heat in the winter. One more thing: the poverty line for a family of 4 was about $25,000 a year. So a family that has $26,000 of annual income is not poor, according to our government.  Really? Think about living in a big city, trying to find a decent apartment for four people. You could easily pay $1500 a month. That's $18,000 a year. There goes your income. Not much left for food, transportation, clothing, and other stuff. You're ok with skimping on those things? We should raise our poverty lines by 50% right away. The lines have not been lifted in fifty years, except for inflation. So while the average American, and rich people especially, have seen their incomes rise, poor people are relatively poorer--much farther from the middle.
Son: Fine, people are poor. They need to go to college, work harder, get better jobs. There are a lot of jobs out there. Employers are having trouble finding workers.  I'll bet you don't believe it.  When you went to grad school, did you major in extreme skepticism? Your always criticizing everything.  
Father: I believe that we need more good jobs. I believe the U.S. undercounts the unemployed. You've heard this before. You might have read one of the articles I sent you. You are probably sick of hearing about it, and you want to believe the opposite of anything I say. I hope that's good for your ego-development. But here goes. I and other people, although not many economists, believe that we are not close to full employment. We think that the real rate of unemployment today is not 4+%, but 10%.  We add part-timers who want full-time work and also people who say they want jobs but haven't looked lately. We think more people would be looking for work if there were more half-way decent jobs out there. I told you about the artichoke farmer who faced a labor shortage; when he raised pay a couple of bucks an hour, he had a labor surplus. 
Son: Heard it. Been there. Done that. Just one guy. Artichokes are not important.
Dad: Ok, smarty pants. How about this. Just an example, but think about it. There are quite a few men 25 to 54 years old who we'd expect to be working or looking for work--maybe 7 million. Some are truly disabled. Some have other things to do. But a lot of them are reacting to lousy job markets. If you can only find a job that pays 8 or 9 or 10 dollars an hour, and it is part-time too, you might try to find other ways to get by. Say you have a back problem. Not terrible but a problem. You'd work if it paid off, but it doesn't, so you are trying to get disability benefits.
Son:  Except in the big cities, it's cheap to live. Look at the cost of computers--you could buy a new one for a couple of hundred dollars. Eggs? Sometimes only 99 cents for a dozen. And a lot of people are making more money. Here's a headline from the Los Angeles Times--you know, the one you still have delivered out on the porch every morning. I printed it from the on-line edition because I figured you'd try to forget it. Here it is: "Household Income Rises to New High." Got it?  Taking out the effects of inflation, which I know you love to do, household incomes have risen by 8% in two years. And the median is $59,000. What's your problem with that, Doc?
Dad: I like it. I am happy. I want average incomes to grow. I don't like poverty.  I want fewer poor people--none, really. But there are three things I hope you remember. First, I am always right. You will figure that out some day. Second, a $59,000 median is better than $55,000; but if it is the median, half the households are below it. A lot of people are not doing very well at all. They are making maybe $10 an hour or less in Alabama and South Dakota and dozens of other low-wage states. Even in California many people aren't paid well. Talk to some of the employees down at the grocery store where you buy your organic kale. Or the coffee shop you love. Find out how much they earn. And the third thing to remember. I don't think everyone has to be rich--in fact I don't think anyone should be extremely rich--but $59,000 is not much money if you have a family and especially if you live in an urban area. If you bought a house, and had a low down payment, you may have a monthly payment of $2000, maybe more, so right off the top almost half your income is gone. Then you have Social Security and income taxes taken out of your paycheck, and so on. You get the idea. 
Son:  I do, I really do. For you it's always, "Accentuate the negative." You should write a song about it and sing it. Might cheer you up.
Dad: I think we've had a fruitful discussion.
******************************************************************************
Frank Stricker is emeritus professor of history and labor studies at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He has written What Ails the American Worker? Unemployment and Crummy Jobs: History, Explanations, Solutions. This article uses the United States Census Bureau publication called Income and Poverty in the United States: 2016 (September,2017). For encouraging information, check out Isaac Shapiro and Danilo Trisi, "Child Poverty Falls to Record Low, Comprehensive Measure Shows Stronger Government Policies Account for Long-Term Improvement," October 5, 2017, at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities site.  
 
 

 

 

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Tuesday, September 19, 2017

[NJFAC] What if we had a job guarantee

What America would look like if it guaranteed everyone a job Dylan Matthews 
Imagine if a well-paying job, with benefits and a high enough salary to pay for rent, transportation, and food, were a human right.

Imagine the US federal government established a policy whereby anyone who didn't have a job and wanted one could go into a local office for a government agency — call it the Works Progress Administration — and walk out with a regular government position paying a livable wage ($15 an hour, perhaps) and offering health, dental, and vision insurance, and retirement benefits, and child care for their kids.

Different people would do different things: teaching or working for after-school programs or providing child care or building roads and mass transit or driving buses and so on. But everyone would be guaranteed a job, including during recessions. Involuntary unemployment would be a thing of the past. No one who works would be in poverty.

That's a truly radical policy idea. But it has deep roots in the Democratic Party's past, from the New Deal's emergency employment programs to the Humphrey-Hawkins Act, a 1970s proposal that, as originally written, would have given unemployed Americans the right to sue the government.

Today, there are even some actual proposals on the table. In May, the Center for American Progress issued a report calling for a "large-scale, permanent program of public employment and infrastructure investment."

....

An effective job guarantee that eliminated unemployment and boosted wages without negative side effects could be a very good thing. But an ineffective job guarantee that amounts to a welfare check plus onerous work requirements wouldn't just be bad policy — it would also be politically toxic.

Why liberals are flocking to job guarantee plans in 2017

It might seem strange to be debating how best to solve mass joblessness at a time when the US unemployment rate is 4.3 percent, the lowest in over a decade.

....there are both political and policy reasons for why the job guarantee is suddenly a hot topic.

In the wake of the 2016 election, liberal commentators have latched onto the job guarantee — an idea pushed by some left-wing economists for years — as a way to forge a cross-racial working-class coalition. They need a plan that appeals to both to the white Wisconsin and Michigan voters who switched from Obama to Trump and to black and Latino workers left behind by deindustrialization. The ideal plan would both improve conditions for lower-income Americans while supporting Americans' strong intuition that people should work to earn their crust.

"A federal job guarantee is both universal—it benefits all Americans—and specifically ameliorative to entrenched racial inequality," Slate's Jamelle Bouie notes.

"The job guarantee asserts that, if individuals bear a moral duty to work, then society and employers bear a reciprocal moral duty to provide good, dignified work for all," Jeff Spross adds in the influential center-left journal Democracy.

"If Democrats want to win elections, they should imbue Trump's empty rhetoric with a real promise: a good job for every American who wants one," writes Bryce Covert in the New Republic. "It's time to make a federal jobs guarantee the central tenet of the party's platform."

But there's also a policy rationale for the idea's resurgence. Many experts think the unemployment rate makes the economy, or at least the labor market, look better than it really is. The unemployment rate only counts people looking for work, and the most recent recession and slow subsequent recovery forced some people out of the labor force. In January 2007, 80.3 percent of people ages 25 to 54 were employed; in July 2017, only 78.7 percent were.

If the rate had stayed at its prerecession peak, there'd be 2 million more people employed today. If the rate were at its all-time peak (81.9 percent, in April 2000), there'd be 4 million more people employed....


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National Jobs for All Coalition
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Tuesday, August 29, 2017

[NJFAC] update on employer who set $70,000 wage


....There had been bumps in the road, notably a dispute with his brother who also held some Gravity stock. Two experienced employees quit, because their raises weren't as big as those for people lower on the scale. A few customers cut their ties, as well.

The upside, though, was far greater. The publicity landed Price many new customers. Revenue and profits went way up, plus Price was flooded with thousands of applications from talented job candidates.

Another year has passed, so now it's time to check in again. The news continues to be strongly positive on two different fronts. On the business side revenue continues to grow, as the company has rapidly expanded its customer base. The number of employees has climbed by 40 percent.

I recently asked Ryan Pirkle, Gravity's head of marketing, how it is that they prosper, in spite of their higher labor costs. "We don't compete solely on price," he said, (though they charge significantly less than the industry average.)

"We're old school," says Pirkle. "No robots. No telephone trees. Instead, real people are our infrastructure." The key to the company's success is a dedicated, engaged support team. When one of their customers—a restaurant, let's say—is having credit card problems on a busy Friday night, its manager will talk directly with a knowledgeable Gravity person who can solve their problem.

In the long run, it's not just a matter of landing more customers. Keeping them is the critical factor. And Gravity's retention rates are very high.....

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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Coalition
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Wednesday, August 23, 2017

[NJFAC] The Affordable Care Act as a Job-Creation Program by Frank Stricker

         Despite conservative assertions, there is not much evidence that employers decided not to grow their businesses because of the mandate that all but small businesses provide health insurance. Nor does it seem that employers disrupted their organizations by shifting employees from full to part-time to limit the reach of the mandate. There is at least anecdotal evidence that Obamacare made it easier for some people to work as independent entrepreneurs because they did not have to join a large company to get a deal on health insurance. 
 
        The big-picture on jobs is that the ACA can be considered as something of a model of a centrist job-creation program. First, it subsidizes useful activities that improve the quality of life for dozens of millions of people. Second, in a saner political atmosphere than the one we inhabit today, the ACA would have broad appeal, even to centrist-conservatives. It does not eliminate private-sector insurers and it includes mandates that were once championed by the extremely conservative Heritage Foundation and by Republican Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts. Third, the left should be happy that the ACA is partly financed by progressive taxes on the wealthy; from the most affluent it takes dollars that may be doing nothing useful and uses them to expand health care access and create new jobs. And that brings us to the fourth point: the ACA gave an already expanding job sector a shot of adrenaline, adding as many as 500,000 health-care jobs.  
 
         On the profoundly negative side is the fact that the ACA did nothing to control the costs of health insurance, drugs and medical care. And as a job program the ACA creates many good jobs for nurses and doctors but also many that are not so good. A $15 federal minimum wage would be a good start here and it would help many more people than trying to open a couple of coal mines.  Democrats ought to present a program to lift health care workers, control the cost of drugs, and lift the income levels at which families get a subsidy of some kind. Some day the Trumpian dirt and dust might settle. Democrats ought to be ready. They should be broadcasting a strong message about the minimum wage and about useful reforms to Obamacare in preparation for the 2018 elections. Not having much of an economic program did not work in 2016. 
  
Notes: Nelson D. Schwartz and Reed Abelson, "Health Act Repeal Could Threaten Job Engine," New York Times, May 7, 2017, 1, 14; Dan Mangan, "500,000 Jobs Added to Health-Care Sector under Obamacare, Goldman Sachs Estimates," March 23, 2017, accessed 8/5/2017, at cnbc/2017/03/23/500000-jobs-added-to-health-sector-under-obamacare-goldman; and Vann R. Newskirk II, "Repealing Obamacare Could Kill Jobs," The Atlantic, January 10, 2017, accessed 8/5/2017, at theatlantic.com/politics/archive/ 2017/01/obamacare-economic-effects-repeal.
 
Frank Stricker has just completed What Ails the American Worker? Unemployment and Crummy Jobs: History, Explanations, Solutions.  He is a member of NJFAC and Emeritus Professor of History, Labor Studies, and Interdisciplinary Studies, California State University, Dominguez Hills.
 

 

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Tuesday, August 8, 2017

[NJFAC] The poor need a good job

....

full-time work is responsible for the low-poverty results of the various Success Sequences [Graduate high school; Get a full-time job; Get married before having children] But you don't even need to do that. It's perfectly obvious if you just think about it for a second.

A full-time worker who is paid the $7.25 minimum wage has an annual income of $15,080. If they live alone, the poverty line for their one-person family is $12,486. Since $15,080 is greater than $12,486, no full-time worker who lives alone is in poverty, at least as poverty is measured in the official statistics. What this means is: a person can only be in poverty (1) if they do not work full time or (2) if they live with other people who do not work full time.

If the Success Sequence was not just a vehicle for litigating cultural beefs, what it would really say is that individuals wanting to minimize their risk of poverty should work full time and live alone. Or, if individuals insist on living with others, they should only live with other full-time workers, such as in a double-income-no-kid (DINK) arrangement. Stay away from children, individuals with a work-limiting disability, elderly people, students, unpaid family carers, and those prone to joblessness. If you keep these types of people out of your household and make sure you work full time, you will never be in poverty. That's the truth.

Despite what the Success Sequence says, marriage does not help you except insofar as marrying adds another full-time worker to the family. If it does not do that because the person you are marrying has a disability or some other work limitation, then marriage will actually increase your risk of poverty.

A high school degree does not do much for you either. It might help you get a higher wage, but minimum wage keeps you out of poverty anyways. A minimum wage could leave you in poverty if you have dependents you are caring for (such as children), and in those cases a higher wage driven by a high school degree might pull you out of poverty. But if you have found yourself in a household with dependents, you are already ignoring the most correct wisdom about staying out of poverty, which is to never live with non-workers.

To be clear, I am not actually saying people should pursue a life where they either live alone or only with other full-time workers. My personal view here is that our economic institutions, and especially our welfare state, should be designed to ensure that nobody is in poverty and that people can form the families they would like. But in our current economic system, it is the no-dependent lifestyle described above that actually minimizes your risk of poverty, not the lifestyle envisioned by the Success Sequence.

What About the System?...

 the way we have set up the economic system to distribute income in society is a necessary cause of any observed poverty.....

Fifty years from now, conservatives will write op-eds saying the real trick to staying out of poverty is a college degree, cohabitation, and delaying child birth to age 30. No Success Sequence will stay around if it stops describing most middle class lives or if it begins to describe too many poor lives. The goalposts will shift constantly but the conclusion will always remain the same: the poor did this to themselves and the rich should be spared from higher taxes.

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

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Tuesday, July 25, 2017

[NJFAC] 80% of US households had stagnant incomes from 2005 to 2012-14

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Tuesday, July 18, 2017

[NJFAC] Are Real Wages Finally Taking Off? By Frank Stricker

Are Real Wages Finally Taking Off?                                            By Frank Stricker
            Journalists keep searching for an affirmative answer, and sometimes they find a little evidence and sometimes they cannot.           What are the facts, measuring real (after-inflation) pay from June to June in recent years?  Since 2008, when the Great Recession began, real hourly wages have gone this way: a little jump in 2009, stagnation or decline from 2010 through 2013, and then increases of almost 2% a year until this last year. From June 2016 to June 2017, real average hourly wages increased 0.9%. That's better than falling wages, but surely, at less than 1%, it is nothing to write home about.
            And there is so much catching up to do. When we look at the bigger picture, things are about as bad as many people feel they are. Despite recent increases, the average wage for average workers in June of 2017 was about $22 an hour. Not great, not terrible. But dozens of millions of people are below even that so-so level of pay. And the story is worse if we look at the historical evidence. In terms of an hour's worth of purchasing power, the average worker is earning almost exactly what he or she earned in 1972. It's true. No progress for workers in forty-five years. Despite brilliant successes for the minimum wage movement, despite the fact that we are beginning the ninth year of economic recovery, and in part because high income households have been doing very, very well for decades, average workers are right where they were in 1972.
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Based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, including "Current and real (constant 1982-1984 dollars) earnings for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls, seasonally adjusted," and the annual Economic Report of the President, for historical tables including "Hours and Earnings in Private Nonagricultural Industries."
Frank Stricker is on the board of NJFAC and has just written What Ails the American Worker? Unemployment and Crummy Jobs: History, Explanations, and Remedies.
 
 
 

 

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