Today's Must-Read: A Twofer

First, from Politico:

Views on how to respond to the coronavirus pandemic have become increasingly polarized, yet another political issue that for many culture war combatants is filtered through an ideological lens. The left has been almost uniformly — and loudly — in favor of sacrificing many personal liberties in exchange for containing the virus’ spread. The right has been divided, but the vocal activist wing of conservatism that has enormous influence on social media and Fox News, has been far more willing to attack the various infringements on where people can go and what they have to wear. . . .

For progressives, masks have become a sign that you take the pandemic seriously and are willing to make a personal sacrifice to save lives. Prominent people who don’t wear them are shamed and dragged on Twitter by lefty accounts. On the right, where the mask is often seen as the symbol of a purported overreaction to the coronavirus, mask promotion is a target of ridicule, a sign that in a deeply polarized America almost anything can be politicized and turned into a token of tribal affiliation.

Hide your irony meter:

Laura Ingraham warned that “social control over large populations is achieved through fear and intimidation and suppression of free thought” and “conditioning the public through propaganda is also key, new dogmas replace good old common sense.”

This from Fox's reigning Nazi Barbie, who has certainly done her share to effect just what she attributes to the left. It's called "projection".

Via Digby.

And from Digby herself:

Between McConnell making it clear he wants business to be given a pass on liability for failing to protect their workers if the blue states want to avoid bankruptcy and Trump demanding that the states succumb to his unhumane immigration policies if they want any federal aid, I think we are officially no longer one country.

This is now America, which is living under the US Constitution and Trumplandia, living under Dear Leader. Unfortunately Trumplandia, for the moment has the purse strings. It’s very important that America wins next November.

Ah, yes -- President Quid-Pro-Quo, who, as usual, is living in his own fantasy: It's not only blue states that are going to suffer:

Honestly, I think they’ll happily let people in their own states suffer if it means breaking public employee unions and their pensions. They aren’t even thinking about the rmifications. They just see an opportunity to advance their agenda and they’re going for it.

That's been the Republican party ever since Reagan -- "By any means necessary" might as well be their official motto. In that regard, I recommend this post by Tom Sullivan (OK, so it's a three-fer):

Watching workers go back to their jobs in life-threatening conditions to serve the economy punctuates the degree to which American myths are killing us. If the behavior of the acting president’s base seems cultish, it is because cultish behavior permeates the culture. A “deep sickness,” Digby called it the other day.

I frequently refer to the Midas cult, those of a certain economic class who view every human interaction as a potential for-profit transaction, who behave as though anything that might be turned into gold (profit) should be, especially not-for-profit public services such as education. For the Midas cult, anything less than private percentage off the top is a crime against capitalism.

The GOP has been working toward a return to the Gilded Age since forever -- after all, the billionaires own the party, and they are motivated by greed. I have to wonder what's missing in someone's makeup if they think they need five vacation homes or an elevator for their cars. There's something really wrong with these people.

Today's Must-Read: Bad Publicity Helps

I'm sure you're aware that the small-business loan fund under the CARES Act ran out of money very quickly. Why? Because too much of it was going to companies that in no way could be considered "small busnesses".

The Treasury Department issued new guidance on Thursday encouraging publicly-traded companies to return their coronavirus stimulus loans by May 7 as Shake Shack and other public companies have faced backlash for receiving funds meant for small businesses.

While small business owners struggled to secure loans under the Paycheck Protection Program in the two weeks before the $350 billion fund ran dry, dozens of publicly traded companies secured hundreds of millions of dollars in funds, drawing criticism from watchdog groups and lawmakers.

How could these loans have gone to publicly traded companies to begin with? Well, for starters, Trump fired the inspector general who was supposed to be overseeing these programs -- probably to be sure his own companies (which are not publicly traded) could get their hands in the pot.

And then there's this:

Designed for businesses with 500 employees or less, the initiative also included exceptions for big restaurant and hotel chains, along with franchises, with less than 500 employees per location.

That opening allowed some publicly-traded restaurant and hospitality companies to seek and secure millions of low-interest loans from the government.

(Emphasis added.)

Gee, I wonder who wrote that into the bill? Hint: It wasn't Nancy Pelosi.

Via Joe.My.God. The comments on Joe's post are worth reading, particularly this article from NYT, courtesy of commenter corram nobis.

Is Anyone Surprised?

Trump seems to want the economy back on track in spite of the pandemic:

President Donald Trump made clear in an all-caps stroke of midnight tweet he’s done with sacrificing the economy to save millions of lives.

“WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF,” Trump tweeted at 11:50 PM Sunday night.

Now reports from several news organizations are giving that disturbing tweet even more disturbing context.

“President Trump and some of his senior officials are losing patience with the doctors’ orders,” Axios reports. “Senior Trump officials, including the president himself, have only limited patience for keeping the economy shut down. They are watching stocks tumble and unemployment skyrocket.”

\

Maybe if the response had been other than a bunch of tweets downplaying the seriousness of the pandemic, the economy wouldn't be in trouble.

and of course, this just illustrates once again the priorities of Trump and the sociopaths he has surrounding him -- money first, people last.

Some Things Never Change

The Republicans are licking their chops over the prospect of gutting Social Security and Medicare, now that they've created a massive deficit by giving our money to the ultra-rich:

It's hard to imagine at this point that the GOP would try to cut social security and Medicare at this point. They would be attacking their own voters. But with deficits exploding under Trump it's not hard to see the hardcore wingnuts believing that their time has come to get rid of those pesky "entitlements" once and for all. And despite his promises, if Trump wins re-election he won't have to run again. So, who knows how he will see his own self-interest in a second term? (And we know it's all about his self-interest.)

It's an interesting analysis, but, like all the other discussions I've seen on this, it misses one key point: Social Security is not part of the general fund, and Medicare is only part of it for administrative costs (some of them, at least). Which means that neither has any effect on the deficit. (Except that the last time I looked, Social Security was the government's biggest creditor -- most of SS funds are in Treasury bonds.)

Of course, this fact will have no effect on the Republicans' narrative. And the GOP base will believe every lie they come up with and screw themselves because they're "patriotic Americans".

As for the headline -- "Will they hurt their own voters?" -- yes, of course they will. They're already doing it -- American farmers are hurting from Trump's tariffs -- and their voters will remain faithful to the cult the GOP has become.

And do note that this is planned for Trump's hypothetical second term, because to start on it now would guarantee a Blue Tsunami in 2020.

We Are Beset By Idiots

Apparently, everyone in the Trump regime thinks the way he does -- which is to say, not much, if at all. It seems that no one thought about the consequences of an extended government shutdown:

Food stamps for 38 million low-income Americans would face severe reductions and more than $140 billion in tax refunds are at risk of being frozen or delayed if the government shutdown stretches into February, widespread disruptions that threaten to hurt the economy.

The Trump administration, which had not anticipated a long-term shutdown, recognized only this week the breadth of the potential impact, several senior administration officials said. The officials said they were focused now on understanding the scope of the consequences and determining whether there is anything they can do to intervene.

They really had no clue.

And please note that the single largest group, 39% of those who receive government assistance -- i.e., "welfare", including food stamps -- are rural whites: Trump's base, if we are the believe the pundits. (Granted, a chancy proposition.)

And it's going to affect the economy:

Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RMS U.S., an accounting and consulting firm, said a prolonged shutdown would shave an entire percentage point off the U.S.’s economic growth, in part because of an “uncertainty tax” that would freeze spending by households and businesses.

“If one doesn’t know what’s going to happen with respect to their own income . . . there will be a pull back on the purchase of big-ticket items,” he said. “Large firms will pull back on outlays on software, equipment and capital.”

I've been a manager, and most of the people in responsible positions in government are managers. It becomes almost a reflex: if you propose a course of action, you think about the consequences. Those in charge of what we laughingly refer to as "this administration" obviously never think about consequences, just like their boss. The problem is only compounded when Glorious Leader gets a hair up his butt and catches everyone by surprise so that they can't even advise him -- which he doesn't listen to anyway.

Via the New Civil Rights Movement.

Idiot du Jour: "Tariff Man"

He really doesn't understand anything about anything:

President Trump, who has deemed himself “a Tariff Man” and made tariffs a centerpiece of his presidential agenda, incorrectly explained how they work during an interview with Fox News’ Harris Faulkner.

“We have placed tremendous tariffs on China. When China sends things into America now, they’re paying 25% interest on everything they send in.”

Reality check: Tariffs are a tax paid by importers — not by exporters. This is not the first time that Trump has incorrectly suggested that revenue from tariffs comes from foreign countries.

In other words, he's claiming to be tough on China while screwing us. Again.

More Like This, Please

Democrats in general should pay attention to this: Sen. Sherrod Brown laying out what these tax cuts really mean:

Wow, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone explain how wretched the GOP tax bill is for middle America as well as Sherrod Brown explained it pic.twitter.com/m8ooxLGBab

— 𝙋𝙖𝙩𝙧𝙞𝙘𝙠 𝙆𝙖𝙧𝙡𝙨𝙨𝙤𝙣 ⚡️ (@Patrickesque) December 1, 2018

Via Digby.

Today in Stupid: How To Lose Friends and Influence People

In all the wrong ways. Yes, of course this is about Trump, who has now decided to impose tariffs on steel, aluminum, and anything else he can think of imported from our closest trading partners: Canada, Mexico, and the EU.

The United States is likely to impose steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada, Mexico and the EU Thursday, according to a source familiar with the decision.

The source, who preferred to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the situation, said the tariff decision is coming this morning and is "99.9" percent done. The U.S. expects the EU will retaliate in due course.

Because, of course, it's all so unfair:

"People have no idea how badly our country has been treated by other countries. By people representing us who didn't have a clue," Trump said, arguing that trade trends "destroyed" American steel and aluminum industries.

Needless to say, he's totally clueless. Take Canada, for example:

“These tariffs are totally unacceptable. The numbers are clear: The United States has a $2 billion U.S. dollars surplus in steel trade with Canada – and Canada buys more American steel than any other country in the world, half of U.S. steel exports. Canada is a secure supplier of aluminum and steel to the U.S. defense industry, putting aluminum in American planes and steel in American tanks. That Canada could be considered a national security threat to the United States is inconceivable.

“I want to be very clear about one thing: Americans remain our partners, friends, and allies. This is not about the American people. We have to believe that at some point their common sense will prevail. But we see no sign of that in this action today by the U.S. administration.” – Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, speaking at a press conference last night.

That "national security" jab is a response to Trump's cover story: somehow, importing steel and aluminum from our staunchest allies is a threat to "national security."

Canada will retaliate:

Canada will impose retaliatory tariffs on C$16.6 billion ($12.8 billion) worth of U.S. exports and challenge U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs under the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Thursday.

Mexico and the EU will also retaliate:

Europe and Mexico pledged to retaliate quickly, exacerbating trans-Atlantic and North American trade tensions.

The European Commission’s president, Jean-Claude Juncker, said Trump’s decision amounted to trade protectionism and that Europe would respond with countermeasures. “This is protectionism, pure and simple,” Juncker said. Mexico said it would penalize U.S. imports including pork bellies, apples, grapes, cheeses and flat steel.

He's also talking about imposing tariffs on Japanese cars:

President Trump last week launched an investigation into whether auto imports posed a national security risk to the U.S., a justification that might be used to raise the duty on cars from 2.5 percent up to 25 percent.

“It’s hard for Japan to understand and we cannot accept it,” Abe said in a session of the Diet, Japan’s parliament, adding that Tokyo would let Washington know its concern over the direction of U.S. trade policy.

And he wants a total ban on imports of German luxury cars:

President Trump wants to impose a total ban on the imports of German luxury cars, according to a new report from CNBC and German magazine WirtschaftsWoche.

Several U.S. and European diplomats told the news outlets that Trump told French President Emmanuel Macron about his plans last month during a state visit.

Trump reportedly told Macron that he would maintain the ban until no Mercedes-Benz cars are seen on Fifth Avenue in New York.

There's one small problem with that:

A number of German automakers have plants in the U.S., including Mercedes-Benz in Alabama and BMW in South Carolina.

That popping sound you hear is champagne bottles being opened in the Kremlin.

Aside from the fact that Trump is a moron, we're long past the time when any single country can go it on its own. The world just doesn't work that way any more. Tom Sullivan has a good analysis of the whole debacle, and brings up an interesting point that supports my comment:

Catherine Rampell writes in the Washington Post that his view of trade echoes the mercantilists of the 17th and 18th centuries before there was an America to be great:

Like an 18th-century mercantilist, Trump perceives no mutual gains from trade. In any transaction, he sees only a winner and a loser. And the winner is determined by who has the trade surplus.

Since there’s no way everyone could come out ahead, there’s no point in trying to create a system of rules oriented toward that outcome. Plus, he seems to believe everyone’s going to cheat anyway — including, and perhaps especially, our supposed friends.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, countries could engage in this sort of behavior: there was no such thing as the multi-national corporation then, for starters. It was also the beginning of the age of colonialism, when the "great powers" were free to plunder "newly discovered" lands to enrich themselves. It doesn't work that way any more (except that it's those multi-nationals doing the plundering these days, but even that's winding down -- it's gotten to be really bad PR).

The only ones who are going to suffer from this latest round of Trump's idiocy are us. Again.

Today's Must-Read: Krugman on Ryan

Now that Paul Ryan has accomplished what his billionaire donors put him in the House to do -- transfer even more of our national wealth into their pockets, which he calls "tax reform" -- he's retiring to "spend more time with his family." And in case you're unfamiliar with Ryan's background, this, from Bobby Cramer at Bark Bark Woof Woof, should give you some perspective:

Paul Ryan’s personal history — that he came from a low-income background in rural Wisconsin, that he lost his father at a young age, and that he went on to achieve some Capra-esque vision of the American dream — is tarnished by the fact that he’s never held a job in the private sector and he’s spent his entire political career trying to undercut and eventually tear down the support system that got him to where he became Speaker of the House. And now he’s retiring before he’s hit 50 and will, more than likely, never have to work a day in his life thanks to his generous pension from the government. How very Republican.

I should add that his achievement of the "Capra-esque vision" was made possible by Social Security survivor's benefits, which he wants to take away from everyone else. That's a point that Paul Krugman makes in his column:

Look, the single animating principle of everything Ryan did and proposed was to comfort the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted. Can anyone name a single instance in which his supposed concern about the deficit made him willing to impose any burden on the wealthy, in which his supposed compassion made him willing to improve the lives of the poor? Remember, he voted against the Simpson-Bowles debt commission proposal not because of its real flaws, but because it would raise taxes and fail to repeal Obamacare.

"Zombie-eyed granny-starver" is much too nice an epithet.

Krugman also lets the press have it for its role in elevating Ryan to a position he certainly never deserved:

Even now, in this age of Trump, there are a substantial number of opinion leaders — especially, but not only, in the news media — whose careers, whose professional brands, rest on the notion that they stand above the political fray. For such people, asserting that both sides have a point, that there are serious, honest people on both left and right, practically defines their identity.

Yet the reality of 21st-century U.S. politics is one of asymmetric polarization in many dimensions. One of these dimensions is intellectual: While there are some serious, honest conservative thinkers, they have no influence on the modern Republican Party. What’s a centrist to do?

The answer, all too often, has involved what we might call motivated gullibility. Centrists who couldn’t find real examples of serious, honest conservatives lavished praise on politicians who played that role on TV. Paul Ryan wasn’t actually very good at faking it; true fiscal experts ridiculed his “mystery meat” budgets. But never mind: The narrative required that the character Ryan played exist, so everyone pretended that he was the genuine article.

Krugman goes on from there. Read the whole thing.

Via Digby, who calls Ryan a "flim flam fascist".

Today's Must-Read: It's the Economy, Stupid!

It's a given that Republicans don't know how to manage the economy (and you have to manage the economy -- when left to its own devices, we get 1929 or 2008). Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo builds on a piece by Ryan Cooper on how the Democrats have now embraced Republican-style economic management:

After three decades of New Deal programs that gave the country "the greatest economic boom in American history" and broadly shared prosperity, the 1970s began a slow return to the kind of economics that dominated the decades ahead of the Great Depression. That model, which functioned instead "on behalf of a tiny elite," focused on "deregulation, tax and spending cuts, union busting, and free trade." New Deal regulatory structures, Chicago School economists insisted, were "a drag on economic growth."

That in itself is a curious formulation, and an even more curious response to decades of boom that produced the largest middle class in the history of the world. A drag how? It is the [s]ame response that has produced the insistence over the last year of soaring corporate profits that large corporate tax cuts were necessary to kick-start an economy that for titans of industry was already performing brilliantly. After building the largest, most evenly distributed wealth -- lin the world (African Americans would disagree), returning to rule by an oligarchy wasn't happening fast enough?

To answer that last question, No, of course not: they want it all and they want it right now.

So now we have both parties subscribing to an economic philosophy that has been proven, time and again, to be bullshit -- at least, in terms of what the New Deal gave us, and to which politicians of all stripes pay lip service, if nothing else.

Read it. And think about what your life is going to be like in the new Gilded Age.

Déjà vu, All Over Again

Via Balloon Juice:

Party like it's 1928! 🇺🇸🍺 pic.twitter.com/Bg2BQssm3k

— Young Conservatives (@YoungCons) November 17, 2016

It's real.

Job, Jobs, Jobs. . . .

It looks like we may have to rely on the coal industry to keep Americans working.

Fewer international travelers came to the United States during the first few months of this year than over the same period last year, confirming concerns of some in the travel industry.

New figures released by the U.S. Department of Commerce show a drop in international visitors to the United States by close to 700,000 in the first quarter of 2017 compared to the previous year. European countries were down 10.1 percent, and Mexico was off 7.1 percent in the quarter. The largest drops were from the Middle East and Africa, though they represent a much smaller percentage of overall travel to the United States.

Overall, 697,791 fewer foreigners visited the United States in the first three months of the year, down 4.2 percent to 15.8 million. According to Tourism Economics, a branch of Oxford Economics based in Wayne, Pa., that analyzes travel data, the drop represents a loss of nearly $2.7 billion in spending.

It's not only hotels and restaurants that are going to suffer. People visiting the U.S. shop, they visit cultural attractions and national parks, you name it. As a small example, Chicago is a major tourist destination. I was talking to a couple from North Carolina the other day, and they were all set to tour Chicago -- they'd gotten City Passes, which give free admission to a number of attractions, including most of the major museums. (And just a note on museum admissions: regular, nonresident admission to the Field Museum is $22 -- plus up to $25 additional for special exhibitions. The prices for the Art Institute start at $14 for Chicago residents and go up from there.) Granted, these were American tourists, but they were going the full tour -- museums, shopping, restaurants, the trolley system that takes you around to the various attractions without having to figure out the buses (which even some Chicagoans have trouble with, if they're in an unfamiliar part of town). I'd say it's at least comparable to the kind of visit that foreign tourists would plan. Now, think of all the jobs involved in servicing those people, from hotel staff to trolley drivers to retail "associates" (as they call them these days), museum staff, waiters, and on down the line.

As for why --

The question of whether the results prove a ripple effect from President Trump’s proposed travel ban on visitors from six majority-Muslim countries, an expanded wall along the Mexican border and anti-immigrant statements remains unanswered. But the data tracks with a decline in United States favorability abroad: In June, the Pew Research Center found that 49 percent of those surveyed in 37 nations had a positive view of the United States, versus 64 percent at the end of President Obama’s term in office.

Last week, Pew reported that nearly two-thirds of Mexicans held a negative opinion of the United States, more than double the figure of two years ago, which stood at 29 percent.

“It’s not a reach to say the rhetoric and policies of this administration are affecting sentiment around the world, creating antipathy toward the U.S. and affecting travel behavior,” said Adam Sacks, the president of Tourism Economics.

In response to a Facebook post by The New York Times, European readers overwhelmingly cited the Trump administration and its policies as reasons for avoiding or canceling trips to the United States.

Those are the broad, abstract reasons. In terms of real people, the comments at Joe.My.God.'s coverage of this are illuminating. This is from commenter vorpal, who's an American expatriate:

I'm an American citizen and every time I travel through the US, I feel like a criminal based on the way that security treats me. As an expat, my desire to go to the US as a vacation destination is pretty much zero at this point.

Body scans, laptop searches, having to remove my damned shoes?
No, thanks.

And this is an American citizen just visiting home. (A side note: I haven't done any traveling for a while, so I'm a bit out of touch with current conditions at security stations at the airports. I can only guess that they've gotten worse than merely annoying.)

It's not just individual tourists. From commenter Hue-Man:

Canadian schools and their sports teams stopped travel to the U.S. when Muslim students were hauled off the buses at U.S. ports of entry. Conference planners around the world have to consider how many of their speakers and conference attendees might not be able to attend when they read stories like this.

SEVEN entrepreneurs based in the Brussels district Molenbeek, dubbed the 'jihadi capital of Europe' have been denied entry into the US.

There are a lot of comments from Canadians who are going to Europe or South America for their vacations this year, instead of the U.S.

But to get back to the basic premise: The NYT notes that this ("this" being Trump) has cost us $2.7 billion in the first three months of 2017. Given that most overseas vacations are planned well in advance, it's only going to get worse, as people elect not to come here later this year or next.

And it's going to cost jobs.

Way to go, Donnie!

Trumponomics at Work

Great way to create jobs:

In the coming days, the Trump administration will take steps to delay and ultimately rescind an Obama administration rule allowing foreign entrepreneurs to come to the U.S. to start companies, sources familiar with the situation tell Axios.

In real terms, this doesn't make any difference in anyone's present visa status -- the rule hasn't taken effect yet.

But what it says about Trump is -- well, it would be troubling if there weren't so many other negatives clustered around the man. OK, so he hates foreigners. We knew that. He doesn't consider consequences -- we knew that, too. He has no common sense -- yeah, that, too. And he has no clue about how things work.

Via Mock Paper Scissors, which offers this insight:

Entrepreneurs are going to start their businesses somewhere. What if the next Facebook-level success is Russian instead of American? Or what if Elon Musk had gone to the UK instead of here?

But he's going to bring back those coal jobs, for sure.

Quote du Jour: Even Republicans Can Figure It Out

Well, some of them. Eventually.

(Read it -- it's not that long.)

But you came for the quote:

A lot of people read Ayn Rand in high school. Most of them grow up.

The Trump White House: How It Works

This, I think, is symptomatic:

In an interview with CNBC’s John Harwood, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said that he was able to convince Trump to slash the Appalachian Regional Commission and similar programs in his proposed budget because he had no idea what the program did.

“My guess is he probably didn’t know what the Appalachian Regional Commission did,” Mulvaney said of Trump. “I was able to convince him, ‘Mr. President, this is not an efficient use of the taxpayer dollars. This is not the best way to help the people in West Virginia.’ He goes, ‘Okay, that’s great. Is there a way to get those folks the money in a more efficient way?’ And the answer is yes. And that’s what’s we’re going focus on doing.”

Harwood then asked Mulvaney if Trump was aware that his budget cuts might hurt his own voters — and Mulvaney responded that the best way to help all voters was to spur higher economic growth.

“I think what the president will tell you is, ‘The best thing I can do for those folks, whether or not they voted for me, is to figure out a way to get 3.5 percent economic growth,'” he said.

That's it -- combine a president who has no idea what he's doing with a budget director who seems to believe his own bullshit, and you get another attempt to spur economic growth by taking money out of the economy. And that worked so well last time. (Remember the Republican Great Recession of 2008-2009? Yeah, that one.)

Today's Must-Read: The Failure of Economics

Economics has become omnipresent in contemporary society -- we calculate everything in terms of percentage of GDP and don't quite believe in anything that doesn't have a number attached. However, three young economists have called for major revamping of the discipline itself.

Here's a review of their book, The Econocracy -- it's The Guardian, so it is a long, in-depth, and thorough discussion:

In the autumn of 2011, as the world’s financial system lurched from crash to crisis, the authors of this book began, as undergraduates, to study economics. While their lectures took place at the University of Manchester the eurozone was in flames. The students’ first term would last longer than the Greek government. Banks across the west were still on life support. And David Cameron was imposing on Britons year on year of swingeing spending cuts.

Yet the bushfires those teenagers saw raging each night on the news got barely a mention in the seminars they sat through, they say: the biggest economic catastrophe of our times “wasn’t mentioned in our lectures and what we were learning didn’t seem to have any relevance to understanding it”, they write in The Econocracy. “We were memorising and regurgitating abstract economic models for multiple-choice exams.”

Take your time with this one -- it's worth it.

Via Nick's Place.

You Won't Hear About This on Fox News

And probably not much about it from any other major "news" organization. From Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo:

One of the Republicans' campaign talking points this year is that electing Hillary Clinton will be a third term for Barack Obama. The horror.

Upon yesterday's release of two reports by the Census Bureau, Economic Policy Institute president Larry Mishel tweeted:

Larry Mishel ‏@LarryMishel

I can't remember feeling such glee on seeing a new economics data report

• Retweets 98
• Likes 248
• 

8:03 AM - 13 Sep 2016

98 retweets 248 likes

Census described its findings in a press release:

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that real median household income increased by 5.2 percent between 2014 and 2015 while the official poverty rate decreased 1.2 percentage points. At the same time, the percentage of people without health insurance coverage decreased.

Median household income in the United States in 2015 was $56,516, an increase in real terms of 5.2 percent from the 2014 median income of $53,718. This is the first annual increase in median household income since 2007, the year before the most recent recession.

The nation’s official poverty rate in 2015 was 13.5 percent, with 43.1 million people in poverty, 3.5 million fewer than in 2014. The 1.2 percentage point decrease in the poverty rate from 2014 to 2015 represents the largest annual percentage point drop in poverty since 1999.

The percentage of people without health insurance coverage for the entire 2015 calendar year was 9.1 percent, down from 10.4 percent in 2014. The number of people without health insurance declined to 29.0 million from 33.0 million over the period.

This will get buried and the press will continue to let Trump get away with his lies about how the country is sinking.

Sullivan goes on to analyze what effect this will have on the election, which is, to put it bluntly, none:

The stunning economic news might not actually boost Clinton's numbers any time soon. For one, it takes time for macroeconomic news to filter down to average voters, a former Sanders pollster told the San Francisco Chronicle. It may take several positive reports before voters notice. Plus, John Powell, director of UC Berkeley's Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, observed:

“Trump feeds off of people feeling bad, feeling angry. Then he says, ‘I can save you,’” Powell said. “Much of their effort — by Republicans and Trump — is that they need to say that things are bad. Their campaign is one of deep anxiety and polarization, that the country is going to hell in a handbasket.”

And that's the message that people will keep hearing -- if the press can find room to fit it in between Clinton being near death and E-Mails!!1!.

And we should know by now that, after Republicans have screwed up the economy with their voodoo economics, it takes a Democratic administration to fix it.

Punishment

I've been sort of following the news from Greece, but not in any great depth. If you'll recall, the European central banking authority and the IMF imposed, or attempted to impose, austerity measures on those countries that got caught in the Bush Economic Disaster of 2008. Iceland, wisely, told them to take a hike, Ireland and Spain somehow survived it, but the Greek government tried to follow the dictates of the Powers That Be -- and got kicked out of office.

Paul Krugman has a terrific column on the latest wrinkle in the Greek situation and how it's likely to affect the European Union:

Suppose you consider Tsipras an incompetent twerp. Suppose you dearly want to see Syriza out of power. Suppose, even, that you welcome the prospect of pushing those annoying Greeks out of the euro.

Even if all of that is true, this Eurogroup list of demands is madness. The trending hashtag ThisIsACoup is exactly right. This goes beyond harsh into pure vindictiveness, complete destruction of national sovereignty, and no hope of relief. It is, presumably, meant to be an offer Greece can’t accept; but even so, it’s a grotesque betrayal of everything the European project was supposed to stand for.

Can anything pull Europe back from the brink? Word is that Mario Draghi is trying to reintroduce some sanity, that Hollande is finally showing a bit of the pushback against German morality-play economics that he so signally failed to supply in the past. But much of the damage has already been done. Who will ever trust Germany’s good intentions after this?

Key phrase: "morality play economics." That perfectly describes the economic theories of the right. There's an element of punishment in conservative economics, but it's not directed at those who actually caused the problem -- if that were the case, a lot of bank executives in this country would be in jail right now.

And the whole austerity idea is crap, even though it probably makes sense to those who aren't thinking very deeply: if you're incurring massive debt, you should cut spending. That might work with a household budget, but to think it's going to work with a national economy is lunacy: as we learned here in 2009-2010, and as the British learned, the last thing you want to do when your economy is tanking is take money out. National economies just don't work that way.

And the Greek situation stands a very good chance of bringing the whole Eurozone toppling down, according to Krugman -- who has committed the politically unpardonable sin of so far being right, all the way down the line.

Via Digby, who has this to say:

Margaret Thatcher is laughing in hell. Along with some other memorable historical figures.

This just appeared in my mailbox from The Guardian:

The government in Athens and its creditors have reached a deal that will shore up Greece’s place in the eurozone after marathon overnight talks.

After 31 hours of acrimonious discussions spread over one tense weekend, a breakthrough came early on Monday morning. Donald Tusk, the head of the European Council, announced that the 19 leaders of the eurozone had unanimously reached agreement.

He said they were “all ready to go” on a new programme for Greece under the eurozone bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, adding that Athens had signed up to “serious reforms”. . . .

In order to get these desperately needed funds, the radical left government of Alexis Tispras had to submit to draconian economic reforms that the Greek people had rejected in a referendum barely a week before.

This is not going to be pretty.

Just Work Harder

That's Jeb! Bush's solution to income inequality:

“My aspiration for the country and I believe we can achieve it is 4% growth as far as the eye can see. Which means we have to be a lot more productive. Workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. Means that people need to work longer hours and through their productivity gain more income for their families.”

And he's supposed to be the smarter brother. He's certainly no better informed. A little dose of reality:

With the early stages of the 2016 presidential campaign underway and millions of Americans still hurting financially, both parties are looking for ways to address wage stagnation. That’s the good news. The bad news is that both parties are offering tax cuts as a solution. What has hurt workers’ paychecks is not what the government takes out, but what their employers no longer put in — a dynamic that tax cuts cannot eliminate.

Wage stagnation is a decades-long phenomenon. Between 1979 and 2014, while the gross domestic product grew 150 percent and productivity grew 75 percent, the inflation-adjusted hourly wage of the median worker rose just 5.6 percent — less than 0.2 percent a year. And since 2002, the bottom 80 percent of wage earners, including both male and female college graduates, have actually seen their wages stagnate or fall.

The Times article is pretty interesting, even for those of us who get lost outside the bare basics of economics. It seems that the problem -- wage stagnation and economic inequality -- is our focus on tax policy, when we know that cutting taxes -- and, necessarily, cutting government spending, or else the Republicans will pout -- has the opposite effect of what's been touted. (I was going to write "intended," but I'm not at all convinced that would be accurate.)

Via Digby.

Also, courtesy of Mahablog, some graphics from Mother Jones. Here's one that demonstrates vividly the information above:

Check it out at the link -- there's more, and it ain't pretty.

Today's Must Read: It's the Economy, Stupid (Redux) (Update, Update II)

Very good, concise view of a recent study on income inequality and its effects on the economy -- which, of course, anyone who stops to think for a minute will realize is not good:

The United States has a private economy, but relies on public spending to guarantee a (low) floor of economic wellbeing. And it’s no secret that, for decades, private companies have taken advantage of that public floor to pay workers less than what they’re worth.

But now that fact has a number: $153,000,000,000. According to a new study from UC Berkeley, highlighted by the Washington Post, that’s how much taxpayers spend in public assistance every year on families that are also receiving a paycheck.

These are families that don’t want to be on TANF or SNAP, and don’t want to be shamed by the GOP for not qualifying for the federal income tax, but the jobs they hold down aren’t paying them enough in wages to make ends meet on their own.

The favorite targets on something like this are WalMart and McDonald's, and they certainly are egregious scrooges when it comes to paying their employees a living wage, but it's a fairly widespread phenomenon. Apple, for example, brags about creating over a million jobs in the past few years -- and then as you scroll down, you notice that Apple's employees in the U.S. number 66,000. The number is significantly higher -- as in, an order of magnitude higher -- overseas, counting in Apple's suppliers. It makes good sense from their point of view, which has little or nothing to do with the state of the American worker. Come to think of it, it's not so great for the Chinese worker, either. And they're not alone.

Read the whole thing. There are also some good comments.

And add to that this post from Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo which notes a key observation from Robert Reich:

In recent decades Republicans have made a moral case for less government and lower taxes on the rich, based on their idea of “freedom.”

They talk endlessly about freedom but they never talk about power. But it’s power that’s askew in America –concentrated power that’s constraining the freedom of the vast majority.

Update: Factor in this:

It’s hard to comprehend the thinking of people who cut funding for homeless and hungry children. It may be delusion about trickle-down, it may be indifference to poverty, it may be resentment toward people unable to “make it on their own.”

The indifference and resentment and disdain for society reach around the globe. Only two nations still refuse to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: South Sudan and the United States.

Maybe it makes them feel powerful.

Update II: Of course, the Republicans have a solution to the problem:

GOP leaders such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and House Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) have begun to recognize that the vast gap between rich and poor is detrimental — and to blame the problem on President Obama. Their solution, so far, has been to propose cuts of hundreds of billions of dollars from food stamps, Pell grants, Medicaid and other programs for those without means — and, on Tax Day, to give $269 billion to the few who already have the most.

That'll fix it, all right.