"Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said President Barack Obama was likely to 'use the platform to renew his call for a national energy tax. And I'm sure he'll get loud cheers from liberal elites — from the kind of people who leave a giant carbon footprint and then lecture everybody else about low-flow toilets.'"
That's clever and not entirely unfair (he said from his private jet). But the same could be said of the jeers coming from the capitalist elite--the kind of people who get giant tax subsidies and then lecture everybody else about mooching off the system.
Ultimately, how do we get past the accusations of hypocrisy to address what are our biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, including those that are driven by the wealthy, such as air travel?
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Hand Out vs. Hand Up
From a November 2013 National Review piece by Oren Cass:
"But simply transferring enough resources to someone so that he is no longer 'poor' treats only the symptom; it does not move him toward self-sufficiency or a foothold at the bottom of an economic ladder that could lead to better opportunities. To the contrary, it hinders that process. Therein lies the paradox at the heart of anti-poverty policy. Every dollar spent to reduce the suffering of an impoverished person reduces the incentive for that person to improve his own condition by earning an income — not only because the need has become less pressing, but also because the system will in fact punish him for any success by taking the dollar away once he earns one of his own. The 'handout is locked in perpetual battle with the 'hand up.'"
Unless one takes the view that the symptoms themselves become causes and treating them can help break the vicious cycle. In that case, even if "every dollar spent to reduce the suffering of an impoverished person reduces the incentive for that person to improve his own condition by earning an income," every dollar withheld reduces the ability of that person to do so.
The rest of the article is problematic in its comparisons of a welfare package to a median earned income, primarily in that many of the benefits counted expire and so the gap between welfare and work is not static but rather expands over time (the article also implies the problem with the gap is that welfare is too high, not that pay for entry-level work is too low).
However, this passage speaks to the previous post about the war on the poor:
"Society’s definition of a minimum standard of living is expanding to include higher education, health coverage for everything from birth control to the most advanced therapies, and even cell phones and broadband Internet access. Ensuring that every American has access to these things is an admirable goal, but if every American is entitled to them, then those who work hard to earn a middle-class living will find themselves doing little better than those who do not work at all."
I believe this is a legitimate problem that Progressives must find a better way to address than treating it as some other lobby's problem to get the economy to produce more gains for the middle class and provide more pathways upwards toward the well-to-do.
Finally, despite some of the flawed support for his premise, Cass does get around to some good ideas for reform at the end of the article. He ultimately acknowledges that:
"There are several paths one might take to increase the value of an entry-level job relative to the value of welfare benefits. One could simply refuse to give benefits to those who do not work, but that approach ignores both the political realities of what American society is committed to providing and the everyday realities of millions of Americans who struggle to find or keep a job. Proposals to impose work requirements on food stamps sound like easy fixes but imply that America could or should strip a significant number of people of their access to food. One might also question the wisdom of striving for a system in which people with jobs not only need food stamps but are indeed the program’s only constituency."
"But simply transferring enough resources to someone so that he is no longer 'poor' treats only the symptom; it does not move him toward self-sufficiency or a foothold at the bottom of an economic ladder that could lead to better opportunities. To the contrary, it hinders that process. Therein lies the paradox at the heart of anti-poverty policy. Every dollar spent to reduce the suffering of an impoverished person reduces the incentive for that person to improve his own condition by earning an income — not only because the need has become less pressing, but also because the system will in fact punish him for any success by taking the dollar away once he earns one of his own. The 'handout is locked in perpetual battle with the 'hand up.'"
Unless one takes the view that the symptoms themselves become causes and treating them can help break the vicious cycle. In that case, even if "every dollar spent to reduce the suffering of an impoverished person reduces the incentive for that person to improve his own condition by earning an income," every dollar withheld reduces the ability of that person to do so.
The rest of the article is problematic in its comparisons of a welfare package to a median earned income, primarily in that many of the benefits counted expire and so the gap between welfare and work is not static but rather expands over time (the article also implies the problem with the gap is that welfare is too high, not that pay for entry-level work is too low).
However, this passage speaks to the previous post about the war on the poor:
"Society’s definition of a minimum standard of living is expanding to include higher education, health coverage for everything from birth control to the most advanced therapies, and even cell phones and broadband Internet access. Ensuring that every American has access to these things is an admirable goal, but if every American is entitled to them, then those who work hard to earn a middle-class living will find themselves doing little better than those who do not work at all."
I believe this is a legitimate problem that Progressives must find a better way to address than treating it as some other lobby's problem to get the economy to produce more gains for the middle class and provide more pathways upwards toward the well-to-do.
Finally, despite some of the flawed support for his premise, Cass does get around to some good ideas for reform at the end of the article. He ultimately acknowledges that:
"There are several paths one might take to increase the value of an entry-level job relative to the value of welfare benefits. One could simply refuse to give benefits to those who do not work, but that approach ignores both the political realities of what American society is committed to providing and the everyday realities of millions of Americans who struggle to find or keep a job. Proposals to impose work requirements on food stamps sound like easy fixes but imply that America could or should strip a significant number of people of their access to food. One might also question the wisdom of striving for a system in which people with jobs not only need food stamps but are indeed the program’s only constituency."
Friday, November 1, 2013
The War on the Poor
First, a couple of quotes:
"Republican hostility toward the poor and unfortunate has now reached such a fever pitch that the party doesn’t really stand for anything else — and only willfully blind observers can fail to see that reality." --Paul Krugman, "The War on the Poor," The New York Times (October 31 2013)
"One piece of the puzzle seems to come down to ideology and a passionate and unquestioning faith in "the market". If you are poor in a market system, this ideology implies you've done something wrong; you aren't productive; you don't deserve a better quality of life. You are probably a drug addict, a welfare queen, a slacker." --Daniel Little, "Why a War on the Poor?" (October 8, 2013)
"In other words, low- or middle-income families may see their tax rates go up as they lose eligibility for benefits, but if they continue to work and earn more they may well reach a point at which this rate will decline." --Nancy Folbre, "The Marginal Tax Rate Mess," The New York Times (October 30, 2013)
Little and Folbre I think have hit upon a potent recipe not only for the Republican hostility toward the poor that Krugman sees on the right, but also the failure of both right and left to craft a compelling political case for what essentially boils down to the welfare state. Perhaps the loss of that political functionality to create a theory that makes sense of a complex world can be chocked up to the decline of the humanities and an unfortunate side-effect of our data-obsessed policy space right now. Numbers and data are cold comfort for the working family with supposedly "good jobs" at $16/hr that doesn't have significantly more disposable income than the working poor family. Reinvigorating the philosophical case for the "means-testing compromise" is a primary leadership challenge for public officials today.
Closing with another quote from Folbre: "Any worker who can estimate her own net effective marginal tax rate (a detailed calculation that exceeds the capacity and curiosity of many economists with Ph.D.’s) can also figure out that the labor market often rewards effort and experience more generously in the long run than in the short run. As any college student seeking an internship can explain, it is economically rational to work many hours for a zero wage if that effort will improve future job market opportunities.
Workers’ perceptions of their future opportunities in the labor market may affect their labor supply as much as, if not more than, their current marginal effective tax rate."
"Republican hostility toward the poor and unfortunate has now reached such a fever pitch that the party doesn’t really stand for anything else — and only willfully blind observers can fail to see that reality." --Paul Krugman, "The War on the Poor," The New York Times (October 31 2013)
"One piece of the puzzle seems to come down to ideology and a passionate and unquestioning faith in "the market". If you are poor in a market system, this ideology implies you've done something wrong; you aren't productive; you don't deserve a better quality of life. You are probably a drug addict, a welfare queen, a slacker." --Daniel Little, "Why a War on the Poor?" (October 8, 2013)
"In other words, low- or middle-income families may see their tax rates go up as they lose eligibility for benefits, but if they continue to work and earn more they may well reach a point at which this rate will decline." --Nancy Folbre, "The Marginal Tax Rate Mess," The New York Times (October 30, 2013)
Little and Folbre I think have hit upon a potent recipe not only for the Republican hostility toward the poor that Krugman sees on the right, but also the failure of both right and left to craft a compelling political case for what essentially boils down to the welfare state. Perhaps the loss of that political functionality to create a theory that makes sense of a complex world can be chocked up to the decline of the humanities and an unfortunate side-effect of our data-obsessed policy space right now. Numbers and data are cold comfort for the working family with supposedly "good jobs" at $16/hr that doesn't have significantly more disposable income than the working poor family. Reinvigorating the philosophical case for the "means-testing compromise" is a primary leadership challenge for public officials today.
Closing with another quote from Folbre: "Any worker who can estimate her own net effective marginal tax rate (a detailed calculation that exceeds the capacity and curiosity of many economists with Ph.D.’s) can also figure out that the labor market often rewards effort and experience more generously in the long run than in the short run. As any college student seeking an internship can explain, it is economically rational to work many hours for a zero wage if that effort will improve future job market opportunities.
Workers’ perceptions of their future opportunities in the labor market may affect their labor supply as much as, if not more than, their current marginal effective tax rate."
Monday, April 15, 2013
Restructuring the Household and the Workplace
After I got past the introductory rehash of decline of marriage laments, this NYTimes article got me thinking of a slightly different way to frame the issue that, as Robert Samuelson puts it, "marriage has lost much of its pecuniary pull."
In earlier times, men and women both brought something to the table: women, shut out of the workplace, needed financial support, and men, in theory, needed children and the attendant child care, creating the conditions for mutually beneficial relationships.
These days, women have better adapted to the changing workscape, well men have lost ground. What neither gender has adapted to is the changing household composition. Men and women can both bring financial support to the table, while it is largely still women who must bring the childrearing.
The traditional narrative from the right is that the welfare state has created marriage disincentives, which may be true, but when taking into account the basic structure of self-interest engendered by the new economy, it hardly seems plausible that this accounts for the decline, or can be expected to solve it with a simple change in welfare policy.
In earlier times, men and women both brought something to the table: women, shut out of the workplace, needed financial support, and men, in theory, needed children and the attendant child care, creating the conditions for mutually beneficial relationships.
These days, women have better adapted to the changing workscape, well men have lost ground. What neither gender has adapted to is the changing household composition. Men and women can both bring financial support to the table, while it is largely still women who must bring the childrearing.
The traditional narrative from the right is that the welfare state has created marriage disincentives, which may be true, but when taking into account the basic structure of self-interest engendered by the new economy, it hardly seems plausible that this accounts for the decline, or can be expected to solve it with a simple change in welfare policy.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Unemployment Among Female Veterans
I'm looking into data on veterans today, and came across a piece of information that seems to be absent from most of mainstream reporting. The media frequently notes that the unemployment rate for Gulf War II veterans plummetted between 2011 and 2012, falling from 12.1% to 9.9%--still too high, but a stunning decrease in my view given the stickiness of unemployment overall these last 4 years. However: the unemployment rate for female veterans actually increased, from 12.4% to 12.5% according to the BLS. While yes, men still make up the vast majority of the veteran population, this statistic is troubling for a number of reasons:
- The unemployment rate for women was significantly higher for women than for men in both 2011 (+0.4%) and 2012 (+3.0%);
- Female veterans are being left behind in the veterans jobs recovery;
- This represents 37,000 women across the country.
Friday, January 11, 2013
GLAESER: Why government spending cuts won’t kill too many jobs. “[T]he U.S. is far enough along in its recovery that it can begin balancing its books. An impressive new series of papers has estimated the impact of public spending on jobs during the recession, and concluded that we can make moderate budget cuts without sending the economy into a tailspin…If we cut only $50 billion, this should mean 400,000 fewer jobs, and possibly less if the effect of public spending on employment is weaker today than it was during the recession. That's a serious loss, but if private-sector job creation continues at its current annual rate of 1.9 million a year, private-sector growth could offset that loss in less than three months.” Edward Glaeser in Bloomberg.
Doesn't the multiplier estimate job loss across the economy, including the private sector? So if there are 400,000 fewer jobs, some of those will be lost in the private sector (federal contractors, for instance, or companies that had benefitted from cut government programs) and therefore the private sector won't be creating jobs at its current annual rate of 1.9 million
Doesn't the multiplier estimate job loss across the economy, including the private sector? So if there are 400,000 fewer jobs, some of those will be lost in the private sector (federal contractors, for instance, or companies that had benefitted from cut government programs) and therefore the private sector won't be creating jobs at its current annual rate of 1.9 million
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Vermont: The Most Politically Interesting State
Add "Most Politically Interesting State" to Vermont's long list of accolades. Among our many quirks: we are home to two-member State House districts, the only state capital without a McDonald's, and the only Socialist member of the U.S. Senate. Our State House passed the first Marriage Equality law and the first Single-Payer Healthcare law in the Union. Democrats usually run as candidates for both the Vermont Democratic Party and the Vermont Working Families Party. In spite of our progressive reputation, we have a split ticket with a Democratic governor and a Republican lieutenant governor. Our Lt Govs are in fact quite interesting: our current Lt Gov races stock cars at Thunder Road, and our previous Lt Gov is a commercial pilot. Vermont also has a fairly prominent secessionist movement including the Second Vermont Republic and a Vermont Independence Party that convened in the State House (free of charge--it's the People's House afterall) this fall to celebrate Vermont independence from the "US Empire." On the wonkier side of things, the newly elected state auditor recently got into a policy debate over a Livable Wage Ordinance (which he authored) with a young small business owner in the local foods industry--in the comments section of a local blog! Even Bill McKibben chimed in on the thread to say, "I love Vermont." And of course, "the Great State of Vermont will not apologize for its cheese!"
Further Reading:
Further Reading:
- Five VT Towns vote to impeach Bush: http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-250_162-1381497.html
- Fun Fact: The Almanac of American Politics says that our single U.S. Rep, Peter Welch, got married at the setting of the Stratford Inn in the show "Newhart." While Welch did get married at the Norwich Inn, and Newhart is supposed to take place near Dartmouth, the external shots of the Inn are actually of the Waybury Inn in East Middlebury, Vermont.
- Vermont was one of two states to go for Alf Landon over FDR in the 1936 Presidential Election, spawning the riff on Maine's hithertofore reputation as a Bellweather, "As Maine, so goes Vermont."
- Update: We got a shout out in Daily Kos! "It's important to remember that the definition of a Some Dude operates on a sliding scale. If you're running for dogcatcher (an elected position in Duxbury, VT!), no one's a Some Dude."
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