“It’s Always Black Friday For Clerks”: The Result Of Decisions And Policies That Have Had A Hideous Impact
Contrary to what you may assume about me, I actually enjoy the occasional trip to the mall. It’s a kind of a sociological expedition of the sort I find instructive and entertaining—I love watching the gangly teens, for example, as I recall going to the mall myself when I was 16, combing my hair and hoping to run into the girl of the moment. I find the big-box stores similarly interesting. The biggest downside these days is the parking, an already Hobbesian horror that has been exacerbated in the smart phone era by this new thing whereby now when you see a person get in his or her car, you can’t assume they’re leaving immediately because they’re probably going to sit there and check their phone for at least two minutes, and thus your search continues.
So I don’t want to be a killjoy here. I’m good with commerce, I’m fine with Christmas, and I will even defend Christmas music up to a point, a topic to which I may devote a column sometime between now and the fateful day.
But just take a few minutes with me to ponder the side of all this that most people don’t bother to think about. On Thanksgiving morning, I awoke to a batch of emails like the Nordstrom “Black Friday Is Here Early” one; when I brought in my Washington Post, I flipped through the circulars and really was gobsmacked the number of stores from Macy’s to Sears to H.H. Gregg and loads of others opening Thanksgiving night at 5 or 6 or 7 pm. Yes, I was aware that this is a thing, but I guess I’d thought it was an unpopular thing and had peaked a couple of years ago. Evidently not.
Who’s working at Sears or wherever on Thanksgiving evening? Maybe she doesn’t mind. Maybe it’s the most ironclad excuse going to escape the family. But…is she getting overtime? Does she make decent money to begin with?
On the overtime question, chances are she is not, and this is a huge and hugely overlooked issue that has had a dramatic effect on stagnating middle-class incomes over the last three decades and has surely contributed, in turn, to our growing inequality. Nick Hanauer, the Seattle venture capitalist and admirable class traitor (and friend of mine, I guess I should say), laid it out last week in a terrific column he wrote for Politico.
“In 1975,” Hanauer wrote, “more than 65 percent of salaried American workers earned time-and-a-half pay for every hour worked over 40 hours a week. Not because capitalists back then were more generous, but because it was the law. It still is the law, except that the value of the threshold for overtime pay—the salary level at which employers are required to pay overtime—has been allowed to erode to less than the poverty line for a family of four today. Only workers earning an annual income of under $23,660 qualify for mandatory overtime.” He then cited a study from the Economic Policy Institute calculating that just 11 percent of American workers, well down from that old 65 percent, qualify for overtime pay today.
In an issue paper it released in June, the Center for American Progress suggested that the overtime threshold be increased from the current poverty-level maximum to $960 a week, which would match the 1975 levels after adjusting for inflation. This would restore overtime rights to workers earning up to around $50,000 a year, which is roughly the current median. Remember—American workers work longer hours and are more productive today than they were in 1975. But they are paid less, and the vanishing overtime pay is a big part of why. The CAP paper estimates that if current trends continue unabated, overtime pay will disappear entirely by 2026.
If it were raised, who would be covered? Well, a hell of a lot of people. There’s this web site glassdoor.com that lists typical salaries. Wow, are these salaries terrible in some cases! A Best Buy sales associate makes, according to glassdoor’s information, $10.36 an hour, which (assuming a 35-hour week and 50 paid weeks a year) comes out to $18,130. So that person would qualify for some overtime now. But that’s a poverty wage. Try to keep that in mind the next time you start fuming when you can’t get the young man’s attention.
Over at Sears, a sales associate makes just $8.44 an hour, $14,770. Managers of course do better—an assistant manager pulls down $46,629, so she or he would still qualify for overtime if it were brought up to 1975 levels. A sales manager at Macy’s gets $47,324. Even at the higher-end Nordstrom, a department manager hauls in a mere $41,828. All of these people, and millions more like them, deserve a little overtime.
I know the counter-arguments. Yes, it would cost businesses more. Tough. Businesses have been cheating American workers for three decades. Would businesses merely lay off workers? Some would, some would not. Every capitalist isn’t Ebenezer Scrooge. Communities and society as a whole would reap huge benefits if we had a larger and more prosperous middle class that had more money to spend, as capitalists like Hanauer know well and preach regularly.
So just remember this season that if you’re purchasing anything that costs north of $300 or so, the person who’s selling it to you probably can’t afford to buy it herself. And that this state of affairs is not just the way things are. It’s the result of decisions and policies that have had a hideous impact. They can be reversed, too, someday.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, November 28, 2014
“Pretending To Be Something They’re Not”: Election Season; Time For GOP Halloween Masquerade Ball
It’s lucky for the Republicans that most general elections fall so close to Halloween. That gives them an excuse for their great bi-annual GOP Halloween Masquerade Ball.
This year the Republicans are doing their very best to prevent the voters from remembering who they really are and what they really stand for. They’re putting on their “moderate masks” and the costumes of ordinary middle class Americans.
Why do they have to pretend to be something their not? Their problem is that most Americans disagree with their positions on just about every economic and social issue of the day. Voters disagree with Republicans on economic issues like:
GOP opposition to raising the minimum wage;
GOP refusal to renew unemployment benefits to the long-term unemployed;
GOP obstruction of Democratic proposals to lower payments and cut interest rates on student loans;
The incredibly unpopular GOP proposal to eliminate the Medicare guarantee and replace it with a voucher for private insurance;
The failed GOP proposal to privatize Social Security;
GOP opposition to making oil companies, CEO’s of big corporations and Wall Street Banks pay their fair share of taxes;
GOP proposals to cut funding for public education;
GOP proposals to cut funding for medical and scientific research and development;
Republican support for eliminating and weakening regulations that limit the ability of Wall Street speculators to cause another financial collapse like the one that created the Great Recession;
Republican support for tax laws that provide an incentive for corporations to outsource U.S. jobs to other countries;
The Republican refusal to do anything that would address the fundamental economic fact that even though Gross Domestic Product per person in the U.S. has increased 80% over the last 30 years, all of that increase went to the top 1% and left everyone else with stagnating incomes.
Dressing up Republican candidates to disguise these positions is especially difficult because so many of their candidates personally embody these deeply unpopular stances.
Take the GOP candidate for Governor of Illinois, Bruce Rauner. Rauner made $61 million last year — that’s $29,000 an hour. Yet he said he would like to abolish the minimum wage or at the very least get the Illinois legislature to cut the Illinois minimum wage from $8.25 to the national rate of $7.25 per hour.
Rauner made his money as a Wall Street speculator who basically took over companies and bled them of cash. Along the way his 200-facility nursing home chain was accused of malpractice for patient neglect. Rather than apologize and pay the claims, Rauner’s investment firm sold the firm to a shell company that was actually owned by a nursing home resident and declared bankruptcy so Rauner’s investment firm could dodge paying the claims of abused residents.
That’s just one of many stories about how Rauner made his money. Rauner owns nine residences — including a penthouse on Central Park in New York and three ranches. Pretty tough to put a “middle class” costume on Rauner and pretend he has the interests of ordinary Americans at heart.
Or then there’s the GOP Senate candidate in Georgia — David Perdue. Early in the campaign — and well before the GOP masquerade ball — Perdue actually admitted that he had “spent most of his career outsourcing” American jobs to other countries.
Those pesky electronic media that save comments like that make it awfully hard to dress up people like Perdue as a “neighborhood businessman” when elections come around.
The economy may be the issue that is most important to the majority of voters, but women’s health isn’t far behind. And there the GOP has candidates that look downright weird in their “hi, I’m a moderate” Halloween outfits.
Jodi Ernst, the Republican candidate for Senate in Iowa supports the “personhood” amendment. That’s a proposal that would make most forms of hormonal birth control — like the birth control pill and the IUD — illegal.
Cory Gardner, the GOP candidate for Senate in Colorado also supports the “personhood” amendment.
Earth to Jodi and Cory — your positions are way out of the mainstream in the United States, since over 98 percent of American women use birth control sometime in their lifetime. If they really wanted to wear something appropriate to the GOP Halloween masquerade ball this year they would wear space suits — since their positions are pretty much in outer space. But in fact they have donned costumes aimed at making them look every so “mainstream.” Don’t bet on closing ads from these guys asking voters to support them because they would ban the most popular forms of birth control.
Then there are candidates like GOP House Members Tom Cotton and Bill Cassidy, running for Senate in Arkansas and Louisiana, respectively. These guys voted for the Ryan budget that would eliminate Medicare and replace it with a voucher for private insurance — costing seniors thousands per year in increased out-of-pocket costs.
They try to hide their positions behind a “Big Lie” mask that Democrats voted to “cut $700 billion” from Medicare with the Affordable Care act. In fact, far from cutting benefits for seniors, the Affordable Care Act closed the “donut hole” for prescription drug coverage and provided free preventive care to complement guaranteed Medicare benefits. It paid for these benefits partially by cutting subsidies to big insurance companies. Those are the “cuts to Medicare” Cotton and Cassidy are talking about. Not one senior had benefits cut. It’s nothing but a big lie. But what do you do if your real position is as unpopular as their vote to eliminate the Medicare guarantee?
And we can’t forget about Thom Tillis, the Speaker of the state house who is running for Senate in North Carolina. He led passage of an incredibly unpopular series of measures to curtail voting rights and also prevented the expansion of Medicaid that would provide health care to many in the state. Now he’s trying to weave and bob to disguise his position on these and other way-out GOP positions.
And of course, there is the unpopular Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who is running for his political life in Kentucky. He claims to want to rip out “Obamacare root and branch” while maintaining he would support continuation of the very popular and effective Kentucky version of “Obamacare” — “Kynect.” This, of course, is an impossibility. Guess he’s counting on a magician’s costume to make the contradictions in his positions disappear.
These are just the highlights from the “red carpet” at the GOP Halloween Masquerade Ball. There are many other attendees:
Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin — now desperately trying to explain how his state’s austerity program could have failed to produce its promised 250,000 new jobs, when neighboring Minnesota progressive policies have led to a much more robust recovery.
Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan — whose “emergency manager” program stripped democratic local government from much of the state’s minority population.
Michigan Senate Candidate Terri Lynn Land, whose conservative economic policies are very popular among plutocrats on Wall Street, but have landed her well behind her Democratic opponent in the polls of ordinary citizens.
Governor Mike Rounds of South Dakota whose Wall Street-oriented economic policies have run into trouble among the prairie populists of South Dakota where he’s now running for Senate.
Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas whose tax cuts for the wealthy have almost bankrupted the state government and are helping to drag down long-time Republican Senator Pat Robertson.
And there’s Florida’s multi-millionaire governor Rick Scott. Scott has dutifully taken the side of the oil industry and the billionaire Koch Brothers even though their opposition to proposals to curb carbon pollution could sink a good portion of Florida’s most populous communities into the ocean.
And there are dozens of Republican House Members who are trying desperately to get voters to forget about their votes to shut down the government, end the Medicare guarantee, and cut funding for education.
Of course economic, social and environmental issues aren’t the only turf where the GOP has the low political ground.
Almost 90 percent of Americans support universal background checks when someone buys a gun. Not the Republicans.
Most Americans support campaign finance reform that would prevent a few dozen billionaires from dominating our elections. Not the Republicans.
Most Americans want us to invest more funds in health research to protect us from diseases like Ebola, cancer and the flu. Not the Republicans.
Most Americans support comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship. Not the Republicans. This year, the GOP even prevented a vote in the House on a bill that overwhelmingly passed the Senate. House GOP Speaker Boehner wouldn’t allow a vote because he knew it would pass. Basically he is thwarting the will of Congress.
Will the Republican Halloween Masquerade Ball deceive enough Americans into thinking the GOP represents them, instead of the coalition of Wall Street Bankers and radical extremists who want to ban birth control and scapegoat immigrants that provide the foundation for the Republican Party? Will their costumes and masks convince enough voters to allow them to gain control of the Senate, win more seats in the House and overcome Democratic leads for key Governor’s mansions around the country?
We’ll all know a week from Tuesday. But the truth is that there would not be a chance that their disguises would succeed if everyone in America went to the polls.
The truth is that, in the end, this election is all about who votes and who stays home.
The big Wall Street banks and CEO’s don’t want ordinary people to wake up. They want us to sleep through the election so they can elect Republicans who will allow them to siphon more and more of the fruits of our economy into their own pockets.
Don’t let them steal your family’s security while you sleep through the election. It’s really up to us. Vote early. Vote by mail. Vote November 4.
But whatever you do, don’t let them win their game of deception. Vote.
By: Robert Creamer, Political Organizer, Strategist, Author; Partner Democracy Partners; The Huffington Post Blog, October 26, 2014
“Inequality Starts In The Crib”: The United States Is Not A Meritocracy
The entire conservative ideological program on economics depends on cosmic justice: the idea that those who develop talent and work hard will succeed as they deserve, while those who are lazy and without skills will fail as they ought. That meritocratic concept is the justification for slashing all forms of assistance to the poor and the middle class from food stamps to healthcare. Further, if the rich got there by just deserts, then they should get even more money to keep being so productive for everyone else.
But if it turns out that there is no meritocracy–if the rich get there through privilege and luck rather than industry and talent–then the entire rest of the conservative agenda morally falls apart.
It just so happens that a new study shows that the United States does not, in fact, have a meritocracy:
America is the land of opportunity, just for some more than others. That’s because, in large part, inequality starts in the crib. Rich parents can afford to spend more time and money on their kids, and that gap has only grown the past few decades. Indeed, economists Greg Duncan and Richard Murnane calculate that, between 1972 and 2006, high-income parents increased their spending on “enrichment activities” for their children by 151 percent in inflation-adjusted terms, compared to 57 percent for low-income parents….
Even poor kids who do everything right don’t do much better than rich kids who do everything wrong. Advantages and disadvantages, in other words, tend to perpetuate themselves. You can see that in the above chart, based on a new paper from Richard Reeves and Isabel Sawhill, presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s annual conference, which is underway.
Specifically, rich high school dropouts remain in the top about as much as poor college grads stay stuck in the bottom — 14 versus 16 percent, respectively. Not only that, but these low-income strivers are just as likely to end up in the bottom as these wealthy ne’er-do-wells. Some meritocracy.
What’s going on? Well, it’s all about glass floors and glass ceilings. Rich kids who can go work for the family business — and, in Canada at least, 70 percent of the sons of the top 1 percent do just that — or inherit the family estate don’t need a high school diploma to get ahead. It’s an extreme example of what economists call “opportunity hoarding.” That includes everything from legacy college admissions to unpaid internships that let affluent parents rig the game a little more in their children’s favor.
But even if they didn’t, low-income kids would still have a hard time getting ahead. That’s, in part, because they’re targets for diploma mills that load them up with debt, but not a lot of prospects. And even if they do get a good degree, at least when it comes to black families, they’re more likely to still live in impoverished neighborhoods that keep them disconnected from opportunities.
Everything about the conservative economic agenda is wrong not only on the merits (supply-side economics is a proven logistical failure, for instance), but from its very philosophical underpinnings.
There is no meritocracy. The rich do not get ahead by their industry and talent, but by luck and connections. It’s more about who you know, than what you know. Which means that anyone defending the right of the rich to take even more money is exalting a system as indefensible as the divine right of kings.
By: David Atkins, Political Animal, The Washington Monthly, October 20, 2014
“How Not To Get Your Country Back”: Americans Who Want Their Country Back Should Follow Their Elders’ Example
The Tea Party mantra, “I want my country back,” resonates with many. The racial undertones can be ugly (as well as pointless). But the longing for an economically secure America centered on a strong middle class is on point and widely shared.
Older and mostly white members of the far right tend to see themselves as model Americans who worked hard, saved up and played by the rules. They may have done all the above, but many also have no idea of how easy they had it.
After World War II, Americans with no college could walk into a factory and obtain a job paying middle-class wages. Global competition was a future threat. Today’s retirees are among the last Americans to enjoy the most golden of benefits, including a defined pension check, guaranteed for the rest of their lives.
More troubling than the tunnel vision, though, is the right’s program for restoring the country it purports to miss. The ideological obsession with slashing taxes, shrinking government and keeping labor as cheap as possible is downright destructive.
The America of yore did not build its middle class that way.
When President Dwight Eisenhower backed the construction of the interstate highway system in 1956, the top marginal rate for individual income taxes was 91 percent. Older taxpayers bore their burdens more or less stoically (and there wasn’t Medicare to pay their parents’ doctor bills). Building America was the public-spirited thing to do.
Fast-forward to the economic crash of 2008. The infrastructure was in shambles and unemployment high. Robust stimulus spending was the ticket out of both dilemmas. But even though the top marginal rate was only 35 percent, fringe conservatives controlling the Republican Party fought against government intervention every inch of the way — lest Congress raise taxes one dime.
Kansas has become the patient on which to conduct this experiment at its most extreme, and the results are disastrous. Gov. Sam Brownback pushed through wild tax cuts, mainly benefiting the well-to-do, while placing Kansas classrooms, libraries and other public services on a starvation diet.
And what do Kansans have to show for it? The tax cuts drained their state of $300 million in expected revenues for the recent fiscal year. (Where’s that explosion of economic activity that the theorists said would make up the difference?) Meanwhile, earnings are falling faster and jobs growing more slowly than the national average.
The bond rating agencies remain unimpressed. Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s have lowered Kansas’ credit rating, making it more expensive for the state to borrow.
Study after economic study shows the 21st-century spoils going to the educated. And here we have Kansas cannibalizing its schools just as competing states are restoring their education spending.
One wishes older conservatives opposed to raising the minimum wage, now $7.25 an hour, took an honest look at the wages government guaranteed them back when. The minimum wage in 1968 was the equivalent of $10.90 in today’s dollars.
A new study of the 20 major economies finds the U.S. minimum wage among the lowest relative to the country’s average wage. China, Brazil and Turkey did better.
The minimum wage helps less skilled workers but also influences the pay levels higher up the scale. Putting more money in the pockets of those likeliest to spend it fuels economic demand.
Tax policy does matter, and there is such a thing as government waste. But in the end, a middle class is nurtured on good schools, roads and other public services. They cost money.
Americans who want their middle-class country back should follow their elders’ example. A little gratitude would be nice, too.
By: Froma Harrop, The National Memo, September 16, 2014
“Rand Paul’s Trick”: Big Emphasis On Middle-Class Voters At The Expense Of Po’ Folks
Mike Gerson pulls off a nice two-cushion shot in a WaPo column on GOP minority outreach. First off, he spanks reformicons for their big-emphasis on middle-class voters, arguably at the expense of po’ folks:
They consistently pitch their approach toward the middle class — in part to distinguish it from previous iterations of compassionate or “bleeding heart” (Kemp’s phrase) conservatism. The cover of the reform-conservative manifesto — “Room to Grow: Conservative Reforms for a Limited Government and a Thriving Middle Class” — features a lawn mower on fresh-cut grass. The conservative rebirth will evidently spring from suburban yards on a lazy Saturday morning….
A party that does not forthrightly address the largest source of division in U.S. history and American life — now dramatized in the tear gas haze of Ferguson, Mo. — is not morally or intellectually serious. And even as a political matter, women voters, Catholic voters and younger voters would prefer a chief executive who seeks the interests of all Americans, including those unlikely to vote for him or her. A commitment to national unity is an indicator of public character. The Kemp project has never been more urgent for Republicans.
So Gerson should be pleased by Rand Paul, with his particular focus on African-American outreach, right? No, not so much. He considers Paul’s ability to come up with selective libertarianish positions that sound attractive to non-government-haters a “trick.”
Paul has risen to prominence by employing a political trick, which is already growing old. He emphasizes the sliver of his libertarianism that gets nods of agreement (say, rolling back police excesses) while ignoring the immense, discrediting baggage of his ideology (say, discomfort with federal civil rights law or belief in a minimal state incapable of addressing poverty and stalled mobility).
As a senator, this tactic has worked. But were Paul to become the GOP presidential nominee, the media infatuation would end, and any Democratic opponent would have a field day with Paul’s disturbing history and cramped ideology. On racial issues, the GOP needs a successor to Kemp — and an alternative to Paul.
Get used to these sort of attacks if Paul’s viability grows. At some point, of course, they would vanish altogether if the man gets close to the GOP nomination.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, August 19, 2014
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