Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Federal Budget and Social Security
a viewpoint. Social Security Works.
If there’s one takeaway from Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address, it’s that he’s just another Republican. Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell … Donald Trump.
Throughout the 2016 campaign, Trump claimed that he’d defend Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But in his first year in office he, Paul Ryan and Congressional Republicans have attempted to destroy Medicare and Medicaid. And now they’re threatening to pass a budget that will slash $492 million from the Social Security Administration―undermining the most successful social insurance program in our country’s history.
In a new op-ed, Robert Reich says:
"Fresh off passing massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, Trump and congressional Republicans want to use the deficit they’ve created to justify huge cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid."
|
Monday, January 29, 2018
Robert Reich: Trump Is Sabotaging the U.S. Economy @alternet
Robert Reich: Trump Is Sabotaging the U.S. Economy @alternet: The president has no idea what made the country so successful in the first place. Trump to global CEOs and financiers in Davos, Switzerland: “America is open for business.” We’re now a great place for you to make money. We’ve slashed taxes and regulations so you can make a bundle here. Trump to ambitious young immigrants around the world, including those brought here as children: America is closed. We don’t want you. Forget that poem affixed to the Statue of Liberty about bringing us your poor yearning to breathe free. Don’t even try.In Trump’s America, global capital is welcome, people aren’t.
Saturday, January 27, 2018
What is neoliberalism ?
What is neoliberalism ?
Jeremy Schahil: I’m so glad that you brought up the neoliberal
ideas. The term neoliberal is thrown around so much these days by people that I
think have literally no clue what neoliberal economic policy is or
neoliberalism is in general. I think would be fantastic: give people a
definition. What does neoliberalism mean?
David Harvey: I took it to be a political project, which
originated in the 1970s with the Business Roundtable and the Rockefellers and
everybody else, which is to reorganize the economy in such a way as to restore
power to an ailing capitalist class. The capitalist class was in difficulties
in the late 1960s, early 1970s, because the worker movement was rather strong,
there were lot of community activists, the environmental, there were all of
these reform things coming through, the formation of the EPA and all those
kinds of things. So they decided, through the Business Roundtable, that they
were going to really try to recuperate and accumulate as much economic power as
they could amongst themselves.
Friday, January 26, 2018
California Economy
Brown’s final State of the State address Thursday was chock full of numbers and statistics. Among them:
- 2.8 million: Jobs created in the past eight years; “Very few places in the world can match that record,” Brown said.
- $27 billion: Budget deficit in 2011
- $154 billion: California’s personal income in 1975
- $2.4 trillion: California’s personal income now
- 78: Days added to California’s fire season over the last 40 years.
- 331: Prisoners per 100,000 California residents
- 125: Prisoners per 100,000 California residents in 1970
- 5,000: Separate criminal provisions in California that specify “what is criminal, what the penalties should be, what enhancements should be added and what credits might be earned”
- $5.8 billion: Increase in annual higher education funding since 2011
- 2.5 million: Californians between 25 and 34 who are in the workforce but lack a postsecondary degree or certificate.
- 17: Sites that more than 1,500 construction workers are working at to build the state’s high-speed rail system.
- 3: Percent of 1970 budget spent on prisons
- 8.9: Percent of current budget spent on prisons
- 234,000: Words in the California Penal Code in 1965
- 1.2 million: Words in the California Penal Code today; “By comparison, the Ten Commandments run just under 300 words.”
- 10: Commandments; “There are still ten,” Brown confirmed.
Thursday, January 25, 2018
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
Acting consumer bureau chief declares 'new mission' in rebuke of predecessor | TheHill
Acting consumer bureau chief declares 'new mission' in rebuke of predecessor | TheHill
This consumer protection bureau was one of the major responses to the economic crisis of 2007-2012.
This consumer protection bureau was one of the major responses to the economic crisis of 2007-2012.
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Taxes and Davos
Another year, another Davos, another wildly divergent set of articles on what the super-rich have planned for the rest of us.
Consider the contrasting takes in two news stories today, one in The New York Times, the other in The Washington Post. The contrast is clear even before you read the stories, since they’re expressed in the headlines. “Ahead of Davos, even the 1% are worried about inequality,” reads the headline in the Post. Au contraire, says the Times headline: “Populism is Waning, Which is Reason to Party in Davos.”
Worried? Indifferent? Either way, the Davosites do agree on a common fact: Capital income has been soaring, while wage income has been lagging farther and farther behind. In the United States, that gap has just been pried wider by the GOP’s new tax law. As yet another story in today’s Times documents, the bonuses that Bank of America will pay its employees come to just 5 percent of the savings it will realize this year from the tax cuts. Apple’s bonuses to its workers will come to $300 million; its estimated tax savings this year on just one provision in the new law will come to $40 billion. An S&P Global report says that 75 percent of banks’ reduced taxes will be returned to shareholders through additional buybacks or higher dividends.
So if those Davos Men (and Women, of whom there are fewer) who are concerned about rising inequality are even remotely serious about narrowing the gap between themselves and everyone else, here are a couple ideas they might consider in the intervals between their deal-making and sybaritic pleasures: How about taxing capital at a higher rate than earned income? How about requiring worker representation on corporate boards, at a minimum of half the board seats? How about a new law setting aside a share of capital income to build worker-controlled organizations?
Of course, the Davos intervals between deal-making and sybaritic pleasures can only be measured nanoseconds. ~ HAROLD MEYERSON
Sunday, January 21, 2018
There Is a Major CEO Tax Con-Job Going On @alternet
There Is a Major CEO Tax Con-Job Going On @alternet: CEOs are giving out one-time bonuses instead of the salary increases Trump promised workers. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced this week that the company would repatriate $252 billion, give or take a few billion, then create some American jobs and invest in America – for a change.This is a result of the massive tax cut Congressional Republicans awarded corporations like Apple that were hoarding trillions in profits overseas.
Thursday, January 18, 2018
Ten actions that hurt workers during Trump’s first year: How Trump and Congress further rigged the economy in favor of the wealthy
Ten actions that hurt workers during Trump’s first year: How Trump and Congress further rigged the economy in favor of the wealthy: The tax cut law that President Trump boasts will make his wealthy friends “a lot richer” is just the latest in a series of betrayals of working people by the administration and Congress since Trump took the oath of office on January 20, 2017.
Apple to Bring $ Billions Back to U.S.
Apple to Bring Billions Back to US after new tax law
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/technology/apple-tax-bill-repatriate-cash.html?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/technology/apple-tax-bill-repatriate-cash.html?
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
A Powerful Economic Justice Movement Is Brewing, Even in This Dark Time @alternet
A Powerful Economic Justice Movement Is Brewing, Even in This Dark Time @alternet: An American Democracy Movement is fighting brutal capitalism and the culture of blame. In this tumultuous world, one thing seems certain: today’s dire threats to our democracy did not arise out of nowhere. Every culture thrives, or not, on whether its core narrative—the causation story we tell ourselves—enhances mutual gain or spurs division. And, the narrative driving today’s unfolding catastrophe feeds the latter.It begins with a deep distrust of human nature.
Monday, January 15, 2018
Saturday, January 13, 2018
Remembering Martin Luther King and His Roots in the Labor and Socialist Movement
By Nathan Newman
As we celebrate Martin Luther King
Jr. weekend, it’s worth remembering that his legacy was based firmly in the
labor and the socialist movements of the 20th century. It takes nothing away
from King to highlight how his work built on those movements and his voice was
magnified by his association with them.
Martin Luther King Jr. was
recruited in Montgomery by a labor organizer, gave his most famous speech at a
DC rally funded by labor unions, was bailed out of a Birmingham jail with union
dues and would die in Memphis fighting for a union.
E.D. Nixon and Montgomery
Most people know at this point that
Rosa Parks was not some random woman sitting down on a bus because she was
tired, but was a civil rights activist in the Montgomery community who had
become chapter secretary of the local NAACP chapter. Less known to many
is Edgar Daniel (“E.D.”) Nixon who was a long-time leader of the
NAACP chapter and who in fact launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott and recruited
the young Martin Luther King Jr. to help lead the campaign.
Friday, January 12, 2018
National Debt
National Debt is Our National Asset
© by Mark Dempsey
Conservative pundits like George Will and his colleagues from the Koch-funded American Enterprise Institute want the Federal government’s budget to balance, just like a household budget. But there’s a fundamental distinction between Federal and household budgets. The Federal government makes dollars; households use them. Federal “Debt,” if we can call it that, is completely different from household debt if only because that obligation is to pay something the government can make virtually without limit or cost: dollars.
Federal “debt” is also the inverse of household debt, just as your assets in bank accounts are the bank’s liabilities. The headlines never read: Bank Depositors say ”Your debt to us [i.e. our accounts] is going to crush our grandchildren!”--that would be crazy. Nevertheless, there’s a well-funded campaign to persuade the American public that National “Debt” is harmful, even though that “debt” is, in fact, the population’s savings.
Thursday, January 11, 2018
The 'Vicious But Brilliant Exploitation' That Drives Right Wing Economics | Portside
The 'Vicious But Brilliant Exploitation' That Drives Right Wing Economics | Portside
Splinter: Do you think the rise in economic inequality is at the heart of our current political insanity?
Lee: I think it is. What’s happened is there has been a really vicious but brilliant exploitation of that inequality to create racial and other divisions within the working class. And that’s been remarkably successful, unfortunately. It’s an age-old thing, and we’ve seen historically that when the working class is divided amongst itself and set to squabbling between immigrants and native-born, and black and white, and Latino and Asian, that’s something that never benefits workers in the long run. And that’s something that we’re seeing now in a really grotesque version.
Splinter: Who’s driving that exploitation? Is it just the investor class trying to enrich itself, or is there more to it?
Lee: At the end of the day, if you look at who the big beneficiaries are of the recent tax reform bill, it does feel like the investor class not just tolerated Donald Trump, but was complicit in that trend because they saw that there was a personal and class benefit. They couldn’t win fair and square—an establishment Republican like Mitt Romney wasn’t able to win an election, but the toxic sludge of racist, xenophobic, fake populist rhetoric succeeded where the Republican establishment, Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable had failed.
Splinter: Were you surprised that the tax bill passed, given the fact that it seems to be the exact opposite of the policies that would benefit most Americans?
Lee: Not really. The basic hypocrisy at the core of the Republican Party is that they give a hoot about the deficit—that there’s any kind of fiscal responsibility. When you have that kind of Republican control of the House, the Senate, and Presidency, and they failed to do everything else they were trying to do, the stakes were so high for the Republican Party that they would have passed almost anything. This particular bill is so egregious, so bad for the economy, so bad for the middle class, so bad for workers, that the key question now is whether that can be made relevant in the next election.
Splinter: How much of the rise of inequality in America is a result of a political agenda, and how much of it is us being at the mercy of broader global trends like technological change and globalization?
Trump Waives punishment for Bank He Owes 130 M
Trump Waives Punishment For Bank He Owes $130M
Crony Capitalism
Trump administration waives punishment for convicted banks. International Business Times:“The Trump administration has waived part of the punishment for five megabanks whose affiliates were convicted and fined for manipulating global interest rates. One of the Trump administration waivers was granted to Deutsche Bank — which is owed at least $130 million by President Donald Trump and his business empire, and has also been fined for its role in a Russian money laundering scheme… Trump’s financial relationship with the firm has prompted allegations of a conflict of interest. The bank has not only sought the Labor Department waiver from the administration, it has also faced Justice Department scrutiny and five separate government-appointed independent monitors. Meanwhile, the New York Times recently reported that federal prosecutors subpoenaed Deutsche for ‘bank records about entities associated with the family company of Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser.’ All of these interactions with the Trump administration and the federal government are transpiring as Deutsche serves as a key creditor for the president’s businesses.”
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
Social Security
| |||||||||
|
Saturday, January 6, 2018
Friday, January 5, 2018
Minimum Wage Increase in California
California Today
Raises come with new minimum wage law.
Raises come with new minimum wage law.
Jan. 8, 2018.JOB GROWTH DECELERATED IN DECEMBER: Passage of a tax cut late last month failed to accelerate job growth, according to the latest numbers from the Labor Department, though wage growth ticked up slightly.
The tax bill's passage prompted AT&T and other companies to pledge $1,000 bonuses to workers, but the Labor Department reported Friday that 148,000new jobs were created in December, down from 252,000 jobs in November.
The new job-growth number was still relatively robust, and it's early days yet. Friday's report showed that the economy continues to expand in its ninth year of recovery.
The year 2017 saw the creation of 2.1 million jobs, slightly below 2016's 2.2 million, when Barack Obama was president. President Donald Trump didn't take office until Jan. 20 last year, but his supporters frequently cite the stock market's rise after his November election as evidence of Trump's favorable impact on the economy. More here.
Politico.
Monday, January 1, 2018
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)