“From Someone Who Was Raised In Privilege”: Jeb Bush Wants Us To Work More For The Collective Good. Who’s The Socialist Now?
Former governor Jeb Bush’s announcement this week that he thinks people should work more hours puts him in direct opposition to the two leading contenders on the Democratic side – both of whom are pushing proposals that will allow people to work less. This could mean that 2016 will be an election in which work hours play a central role.
Bush’s comment came during a speech in which he listed the things that Americans need to do to reach his target of 4.0% annual GDP growth “as far as the eye can see”: increase labor force participation, work longer hours, and increase productivity. (It was not the first time that Bush said that he thought people should work more – he previously argued for raising the normal retirement age for Social Security.)
The sight of someone who was raised in privilege and relied on family connections to make his careers in business and politics telling the rest of the American public that they have to work more will make good fodder for Bush’s political opponents. But this position is actually held by many people in policy circles in both political parties.
Even if almost no one thinks that Bush’s 4.0% permanent growth target is remotely plausible, those that agree with his premise that Americans need to work more argue that we need more workers in order to sustain economic growth at all. In particular, they posit that, as our population ages, we will have to keep people in the work force beyond the current retirement age and get more hours of work from them each year until they do retire.
This view is striking given that the United States – and most of the rest of the world – has been suffering from the opposite problem for the last eight years: we don’t have enough jobs for the people who want them. The United States, Europe, and Japan all have fewer people working than would like to work because there is insufficient demand in the economy. Obviously we can’t both have a shortage of workers and a shortage of jobs at the same time.
One of the theories that is getting widely (and wrongly) repeated is that none of us will have work because robots are taking all the jobs. But, while the robots taking all our jobs story is an exaggeration, the basic point is right: we are seeing rising productivity, which means that we can produce more goods and services with the same amount of labor. Productivity, including that spurred by technological innovation, is the basis for rising living standards.
Historically, the benefits from higher productivity are higher pay and more leisure – if we go back a century, for instance, work weeks of 60 or even 70 hours a week were common. But while the American work week has been largely fixed at 40 hours a week for the last 70 years, other countries have pursued policies to shorten the work week and/or work year through paid sick days, paid family leave, and paid vacation.
Several European countries have actively pushed policies of work sharing as an alternative to unemployment: the government compensates workers, in part, for a reduction in hours rather than paying unemployment insurance to someone who has lost their job. Germany has led the way in pushing work sharing policies, which is an important factor in its 4.7% unemployment rate. And, as a result of work sharing and other policies, the average worker in Germany puts in almost 25% fewer hours each year than workers in the United States, according to the OECD. Most other wealthy countries are similar to Germany: in the Netherlands, the average work year is 21% shorter than in the US and, in Denmark, it is 20% shorter.
The leading Democratic contenders are proposing policies to bring the US more in line with the rest of the world’s work weeks. Secretary Clinton indicated that she will support paid family leave and paid sick days, although she has not yet produced specific proposals. Senator Bernie Sanders, the other leading contender, also supports paid family leave and paid sick days, and he recently offered a proposal that would guarantee all workers two weeks per year of paid vacation. That might seem like small change compared to the five to six weeks a year that is now standard in Europe, but it would be a huge gain for tens of millions of workers.
There is a long way yet before the parties select their nominees, but if the general election ends up being a contest between Jeb Bush and either Clinton or Sanders, it will present the country’s workers with an unusually clear choice. We will have one candidate who wants to ensure that people can work less but keep the same standard of living, and another who wants people to work more hours and retire later for the good of the country’s economy – and the latter candidate is the one who doesn’t identify as a socialist.
By: Dean Baker, The Guardian, July 12, 2015
“A Palpable Authenticity”: The Non-Clinton Alternative For Democrats
Is Bernie Sanders the political reincarnation of Eugene McCarthy? I doubt it, but let’s hope he makes the Democratic presidential race interesting.
I don’t know if front-runner Hillary Clinton shares my wish, but she ought to. I’m not of the school that believes competition for competition’s sake is always a good thing. But Sanders has an appeal for younger, more liberal, more idealistic Democrats that Clinton presently lacks. If she competes for these voters — and learns to connect with them — she will have a much better chance of winning the White House.
Sanders, the Vermont independent and the only self-described socialist in the Senate, drew packed houses during a weekend barnstorming tour of Iowa. The 2,500 people who attended his rally in Council Bluffs were believed to be the largest crowd a candidate from either party has drawn in the state. This followed last week’s triumph in Madison, Wis. , where Sanders packed a 10,000-seat arena with cheering supporters — the biggest event anywhere thus far in the campaign.
At the same time, Sanders is rising in the polls. The latest Quinnipiac survey showed Clinton with a 19-point lead in Iowa, 52 percent to 33 percent. As recently as May, Clinton had a 45-point advantage.
Comparisons have been made to McCarthy, the Minnesota senator whose opposition to the Vietnam War galvanized support on college campuses and stunned the Democratic Party establishment. McCarthy’s showing in the 1968 New Hampshire primary — he received 42 percent of the vote — helped lead incumbent Lyndon Johnson to pull out of the race.
But let’s not get carried away. A lead of 19 points is a problem any politician would love to have. Sanders’s numbers had nowhere to go but up, and Clinton’s nowhere but down. What’s safe to say at present is that Sanders — not Martin O’Malley, Jim Webb or Lincoln Chafee — has become the non-Clinton alternative for Democrats who, for whatever reason, are suffering some Clinton fatigue.
One thing Sanders has going for himself is palpable authenticity. He is the antithesis of slick. To say there’s nothing focus-grouped about the man is to understate; one doubts he knows what a focus group is. “Rumpled” is the word most often used to describe him, but that’s not quite right; it’s not as if his suits are unpressed or his shirttails untucked. He’s just all substance and no style — which, to say the least, makes him stand out among politicians.
Clinton, by contrast, has always struggled to let voters see the “authentic” her rather than the carefully curated, every-hair-in-place version her campaigns have sought to project. Part of the problem, I believe, is that women in politics are held to an almost impossible standard; no male candidate’s wardrobe choice or tone of voice receives such microscopic scrutiny. But she also distances herself by campaigning as if she’s protecting a big lead — which she is — and wants to avoid offending anyone. Last, when asked her favorite ice cream flavor, she replied, “I like nearly everything.” What, vanilla lovers were going to abandon her if she had said chocolate?
Sanders’s main appeal, however, is that he speaks unabashedly for the party’s activist left. He is witheringly critical of Wall Street, wants to break up the big banks, proposes single-payer health care and promises to raise taxes. He voted against the 2003 invasion of Iraq; Clinton, then a senator, voted for it but now says that she made a mistake.
Eight years ago, Barack Obama made opposition to the Iraq war his signature issue and rode it to victory in Iowa and beyond. Will lightning strike the Clinton machine twice?
Not the same kind of lightning, surely, and not in the same manner. Obama is a uniquely gifted politician whose appeal went beyond the issues. He was able to make voters believe not just in him but also in themselves and their power to reshape the world. And as the first African American with a legitimate chance to become president, he gave the nation a chance to make history.
This time, Clinton is the candidate with history on her side. The fact that she could be the first woman elected president is not enough, by itself, to win her the nomination. But it does matter. She, like Obama, offers voters the chance to feel a sense of accomplishment.
And nothing about Clinton’s past remotely compares with the millstone of Vietnam that weighed LBJ down and ultimately caused him to give up. I just don’t see a McCarthy scenario brewing — or an Obama scenario, either.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, July 7, 2015
“The Mainstream Media’s Bernie Sanders Trap: Deranged Clinton Hate Turns Them Into America’s Socialist Vanguard
If only the great Michael Harrington had lived to see this. So many brave Americans fought in vain to spread socialism in the United States, but it’s advancing in the summer of 2015 thanks to an unlikely vanguard: lazy and apolitical political reporters who love horse races and hate the Clintons.
Yes, the MSM is making sure that socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders is taken seriously in his uphill run against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. He’s surging in Iowa and New Hampshire, polls tell us, and attracting 10,000 people at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Wednesday night.
This lifelong lefty who attended Madison is thrilled to see it – and yet a little cynical, too.
I mean really, folks: If Sanders had a chance to become president, Mark Halperin would be the first in line to red-bait him, rather than shaming Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Clinton supporter, into doing it on Morning Joe.
But the rise of Sanders, alongside that of the GOP’s surging star, blustering racist Donald Trump, also shows the media the difference between the ideological moorings of the folks who make up the Democratic and Republican base. The Democrats have a lot of lefties, FDR Democrats, folks who want single payer health insurance, people who think we can learn from Western Europe not stigmatize it — and yes, Sanders excites them. On the GOP side, there is a loud, large, angry segment of the GOP base that’s frankly xenophobic, nativist, even racist. Trump speaks to them.
Sanders and Trump thus offer different kinds of challenges to their party rivals. So far only George Pataki has tried to galvanize a Trump backlash, while Sen.Ted Cruz has defended him. Jeb Bush has said nothing, so far, which is a little weird, given that his wife is Mexican and his kids are of Mexican descent. But Trump is a stand-in for that portion of the GOP base — and these guys haven’t been terribly courageous in rebuking the nativist, racist element in their base. So they apparently think they have to be careful in the way they treat Trump, too. Of course, whoever gets the nomination may regret cozying up to Trump and his extremism, if they do so, when they get to a general election.
By contrast, Hillary Clinton can afford to welcome Sanders’ candidacy, and even endorse a lot of his platform. As Jim Newell points out here, she’s enormously popular even among Sanders supporters in Iowa. And Sanders isn’t the polarizing figure that Trump is. He’s good for the Democratic Party — and for socialism too. He explains it in simple terms. He points to the strong, social democratic economies of Western Europe, not the USSR. And his rising popularity shows that millennials and other voters too young to remember the Cold War aren’t going to be red-scared away from Sanders because of the socialist label.
Meanwhile, as Republicans compete to see who can abolish Obamacare most cruelly, Democrats will be debating whether the system should move to a single payer approach. This is all great.
Now, if Clinton endorses too much of what Sanders supports, you can bet that media figures hailing the Vermont senator’s campaign today will be red-baiting him, and Clinton, when the fall of 2016 comes around. That’s how they roll. So progressives should be a little wary of the media’s Bernie-mentum. The Clinton-hate that inspires admiring Sanders takes today will turn him into Clinton’s problem once she defeats him for the nomination, as she almost certainly will. Still, it’s fun to see the MSM so excited about socialism. Michael Harrington would be smiling.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, July 2, 2015
“Propelling His Long-Shot Bid”: The Real Reasons Bernie Sanders Is Transforming The Election; Here’s Why He Galvanizes The Left
CNN dubbed this “the summer of Sanders” as media outlets finally picked up on the large crowds Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has attracted during campaign stops. His rocketing poll numbers in early primary states like Iowa and New Hampshire led to countless stories heralding a Sanders surge — but the story is as much about the issues as it is about the man.
Even Republican candidates have taken notice of Sanders’ rise. Ahead of a recent stop in Madison, Wisconsin, likely 2016 contender and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker welcomed Sanders to the state with a series of tweets attacking the democratic socialist once dismissed as too fringe. Walker may not have taken too fondly to Sanders attracting a record 10,000 people in his home state.
But Sanders’ campaign, surely more so than that of any of the Republican candidates, seems to be gaining traction more for the ideas he espouses than because of a cult of personality.
Granted, many supporters have pointed to Sanders’ straightforward manner and willingness to call out bad actors as refreshingly appealing, but unlike with Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Chris Christie, it isn’t just a brash style that’s being sold. Sanders makes a direct effort to address many of the issues that have arisen since the Hope & Change campaign of 2008 and it appears as though he is tapping into very real and long-simmering sentiments in the Democratic base.
More than a protest vote against Hillary Clinton, as some have suggested, Sanders’ support appears to be support for issues Clinton’s yet to fully address. Here are some of the ways that Sanders is gaining support by leading on issues or movements that other candidates ignore:
VA Scandal
Sanders was chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee when Democrats last controlled the chamber, and following the VA scandal, Sanders worked with Republicans in the House to pass legislation that expands health care access for veterans and makes it easier to fire underperforming officials.
His record and work on veterans’ affairs issues has earned Sanders top awards from the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion and the Military Officers Association of America, and now it appears as though that recognition is translating to support for his campaign.
The Boston Globe writes that Sanders’ “surge is partly fueled by veterans,” citing “entire Reddit threads [that] are dedicated to how veterans can best pitch Sanders to other veterans” and “a Facebook page promoting Sanders to veterans.” As the Globe notes, in the early voting state of South Carolina veterans make up about 11 percent of the electorate.
Occupy Wall Street
The short-lived global protest movement suddenly shifted the national debate in the aftermath of the recession from talk of austerity to a focus on growing income inequality by introducing terms like the 1 Percent to national prominence in time for the 2012 campaign. But the Occupy Wall Street movement achieved no great legislative win, and after the encampments were broken down many of the grievances remained unacknowledged, let alone addressed.
Sanders’ 2016 campaign embodies much of the demands of the OWS movement. Speaking to the largest campaign crowd of this cycle in Wisconsin this week, Sanders said, “The big money interests — Wall Street, corporate America, all of these guys — have so much power that no president can defeat them unless there is an organized grassroots movement making them an offer they can’t refuse.” For activists who organized, protested and camped out in Zuccotti Park and squares across America, this message of unfinished business is powerful. The acknowledgement of a continued struggle and willingness to put up a fight is what was galvanized the Draft Warren movement and it has now seemingly shifted to Sanders.
Student Debt Movement
Some Occupy Wall Street activists joined a movement against student debt, which has now surpassed $1 trillion in the U.S. The activists, some of whom had refused to make any more payments on their federal student loans, achieved a major victory this year when Corinthian colleges (you know them by their annoying commercials hawking their schools like Everest, Heald and WyoTech) shuttered the last of their remaining U.S. campuses, and the erasure of $13 million in debt. The movement has successfully overseen the closure of campuses in Canada the year before.
Sanders has proposed the College for All Act, a plan to provide tuition-free education at public colleges funded by a small tax on Wall Street transactions.
Citizens United
Since the 2010 Supreme Court ruling allowing unlimited political contributions by corporations and unions saw the rise of the Super PAC in electoral campaigns, Americans are shockingly united in their opposition to such obscene levels of money in politics. The overwhelming majority of Americans, including Republicans, support limits on campaign contributions.
Sanders is the only candidate to have completely sworn off all Super PAC funds, although a couple of independent political action committees have formed in support of his candidacy.
But Sanders has objected to their existence, saying, “A major problem of our campaign finance system is that anybody can start a super PAC on behalf of anybody and can say anything. And this is what makes our current campaign finance situation totally absurd.”
Obamacare
The Supreme Court may have upheld the Affordable Care Act twice, but the political battle over the health care law promises to rage on five years after its passage. With health care costs rising only marginally more slowly than they did before the law’s passage and a continuation of premium increases, even Democrats who support the law have called for marked improvements as millions of Americans are left uninsured because Republican lawmakers refuse to expand Medicaid.
Sanders has promised to return the debate to early 2007, when during the Democratic presidential primary the public option was on the table. Sanders has long called for a “Medicare-for-all” single-payer health care plan similar to what was tossed aside as too radical shortly after the talks began on health care reform once Obama took office.
By: Sophia Tesfaye, Salon, July 3, 2015
“Jollying The Wingnuts”: Governor Abbot Mobilizing State Resources, At Taxpayer Expense, Because Of A Bizarre Conspiracy Theory
I got a little ahead of the game by posting yesterday about the bizarre situation of right-wing folk in Texas convincing themselves that Army exercises in the area were the beginning of a military coup aimed at their own selves, or at least their shooting irons. But I didn’t emphasize the fact that the Governor of Texas had formally asked the Guard to “monitor” the exercises to ensure no hostile action against the Citizenry by the supposed agents of the secular-socialists in Washington.
Paul Waldman had an apt comment about that little detail of the saga:
[I]n response to the fact that some of Texas’s dumbest citizens emerged from their doomsday prepper shelters long enough to harangue a colonel about their belief that martial law is coming to their state, Governor Abbott issued an order to the National Guard to monitor the movements of the U.S. military just to make sure they aren’t herding citizens into re-education camps or dropping Islamic State infiltrators into Galveston. I guess we’re safe from that, for the moment anyway.
Every politician encounters nutballs from time to time, and it isn’t always easy to figure out how to respond to them. But what’s remarkable about this is that we aren’t talking about an offhand remark Abbott made, or an occasion in which a constituent went on a rant to him and he nodded along to be friendly instead of saying, “You, sir, are out of your mind.” This is an official action the governor is taking. He’s mobilizing state resources, at taxpayer expense, because of a bizarre conspiracy theory that has some of Texas’s more colorful citizens in its grip.
It’s really hard to keep people from believing outlandish things. But you don’t have to indulge them. And that’s what so many Republicans do with the crazies on their side: They indulge them. Doing so doesn’t reassure them or calm them down, it only convinces them that they were right all along and encourages them to believe the next crazy thing they hear.
That’s true, though you would like to hear a “You, Sir, are out of your mind” comment now and then. Or perhaps something a bit more indirect, like Woody Allen’s response to a confession of thoughts about driving into oncoming traffic by the Christopher Walken character in Annie Hall: “Excuse me, Duane, I have an appointment back on Planet Earth.”
By: Ed Likgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, April 30, 2015
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 