Some things that states with Blue power can do to dodge some of the worst effects of Trump policies. Can’t start soon enough, imo.
WaPo By Steven Pearlstein December 4
“If the Trump administration makes good on its promise to pull back on environmental regulation, states can step up their own regulation of power plant emissions and oil and gas drilling. To combat climate change, they could impose a refundable carbon tax or, as California has done, create a cap and trade system for carbon emissions.
“If Republicans repeal the Dodd-Frank financial regulations, many of those same regulations could be written into state law, either by legislatures or by state banking, securities and insurance regulators and consumer protection agencies. Taking a page from Louis Brandeis and the Progressive era, states could also provide incentives for the creation of state-chartered mutual banks, insurance and investment companies, financial institutions that are owned by their customers. The few mutuals that still exist offer competitive products and superior service at lower cost, all of it with less risk that the Wall Street mega-firms have turned finance into a head-I-win, tails-you-lose casino.
“Nobody expects a Republican Congress and White House will move to increase the federal minimum wage but there is nothing to prevent states from raising theirs. Nor is there anything preventing states from restoring within their borders many of the workers rights that the Republican Congress and President-elect Donald Trump are poised to eliminate.”
There is more…
Red/Purple states may be a bigger dangers to their residents than the Trumpster. NPR — Ohio Legislature Moves To Ban Abortion As Early As 6 Weeks After Conception
Guess OH legislators have concluded that OH isn’t birthing enough poor people. Odd considering that white Ohioans voted for Trump because there aren’t enough jobs.
Indeed, a much ignored factor by our DNC betters. States can kill you at the granular level.
NationalPost (WaPo reprint) – Meet Patton, the Goldendoodle who might become Trump’s First Dog: `It goes with the presidency’. A photo-op prop bc — well the Obama’s got a dog. And just because a First Family may include the family pets when they move to the WH, they should be members of the family and not a decorator item acquired to look good. That’s fake PR BS, and animal cruelty.
(I’ll cut the Obama’s some slack because Sasha was promised a dog at the end of the 2008 campaign. The reality for her didn’t seem to live up to her dream as neither she nor Malia ever appeared comfortable with the dog. Michelle was a trooper with Bo, but it didn’t appear to be natural for her. OTOH, not quite as awkward as Bill Clinton with the dog he got to replace …)
Patton, huh? Named after the military General, no doubt. Pure Trump.
Most likely, but didn’t want to speculate or read the article to see if that had been disclosed. Not the best name to choose for publicity purposes because few people alive today have a living memory of Patton, the movie is now forty-six years old, and a high percentage of his troops loathed him.
I doubt there’s any hope for us here in Penceland.
Raising state minimum wages will just accelerate out sourcing.
How are they going to outsource hotel maids and burger flippers?
Robots will be employed instead. Simple enough solution…and way, way cheaper.
That’s called automation not out-sourcing. Although it could be both if the machines are manufactured in a low wage country. And when the machine/robot goes on the fritz, the place will just have to close down until it’s fixed or replaced.
Then there’s the question of public acceptance of the non-human “worker.” In my area, the self-checkout (machine) option is generally idle while people line up for the real (human) checkout clerk.
Outsource to neighboring states. When there are fewer jobs overall, there is no (or reduced) need for maids and burger flippers. Hotel business is driven by tourism and business travel. Chicago is hurting for these. fast food business relies on excess cash willing to avoid buying groceries and cooking. Both are expendable. raise Illinois minimum wage and business (and customers) will move across the border to Wisconsin and Indiana. I notice that instead of having stock in the Chicago metro area, Amazon has it’s centers due North, just over the border and due East just over the border. Often they ship from Kentucky to Wisconsin, then transship due South, retracing their rout to deliver the package to my USPS facility that they passed on their way North! California is different. You don’t have nearby Red states hungry to get your businesses to move there. They kill minimum wage, workmen’s comp, business taxes and all sorts of worker’s rights to get the business. Why are credit cards not issued out of New York and Illinois? consumer protection is the answer. Instead the banks move the subsidiary to South Dakota and Delaware (Hello! Joe Biden!, the Senator from Citibank) where the legislatures let them do what they want in exchange for a tax that’s less than the costs they avoid. When the (R)’s allow cross-state insurance sales, the same will happen to insurance. We need national laws!
Bollocks. Plenty of states have been angling to get their hands on the CA movie/TV/entertainment industry. BofA moved (through a merger) to NC. Aircraft manufacturing — gone.
And business travelers and tourists are going to Milwaukee instead of Chicago? bc hotel housekeepers are cheaper?
Why do you think it’s okay for employers to pay poverty wages? So low that without government supplied food stamps and health insurance (and in some places housing assistance), these workers would starve to death.
When did I say that? Don’t put words in my mouth!
I know you didn’t mean that, but sometimes your words have a decidedly rightwing bent. Takes a bit of editing on the part of readers to understand what you mean and as you might have noticed, many people here aren’t good at the editing.
Well if they can’t understand simple Midwest English, then it’s probably by choice or genetic defect.
What part of “We need a national solution.” even implies that I want poverty wages rather than the opposite?
Actually, I suspect we need an international solution, although a national solution would work with sufficient tariff or other controls on exporting jobs to low-wage countries. By that I mean country wage level based tariffs. Note that also means NO tariffs on Germany and only small tariffs on other European countries. Indeed if national health care were folded into the wage base, probably no European tariffs, but they would be justified to tariff our goods. Asia is the major problem.
The federal minimum wage is a “national solution” that is a poverty wage. Technically, it could be indexed for cost of living by states and regions (as many national corporations do for the same jobs in different locations), but it’s probably unconstitutional even if it were politically feasible.
Don’t disagree that tariffs can be effective national solutions, but (and here’s the key) US based multi-national corporations have been rejecting this for many decades bc manufacturing abroad for US consumers is how they earn more and get monopoly control. The current arrangement, including use of the US military to protect their overseas markets and assets and the US Treasury to issue debt to prop up the consumption habits or Americans, suits them just fine. The early and end points of capitalism are about the same — austerity/poverty/hard work for the masses and unimaginable levels of wealth for the owners. It’s the middle period that is better and therefore, seductive to the masses.
Technically, the US Government could be run for the benefit of the voters instead of a ruling class with flunkies that specialize in bamboozling voters.
If we give up fighting for ideals, why bother? The only other reason to engage in politics is to engage in the spoils.
Further, you seem to fail to appreciate that labor unions and minimum wage laws interact and strengthen each other. No surprise that with Reagan’s union busting actions that the minimum wage wasn’t increased even once during his term in office. Reduced the floor on the minimum wage and that lower floor has continued through all the subsequent increases in the minimum wage. Thus, organized labor also became weaker over these decades.
Not only that…tax receipts have not kept up either. Lower wage pool to tax and slower circulation of money is felt in the state budgets that have to balance.
That’s merely a technical issue. While it’s preferable (IMHO) for people to earn enough that can they contribute their fair share to income taxes and thus, have an ownership stake in our governments, no or lower tax receipts from the working poor is easy to offset with increases in the tax rates from the beneficiaries of the cheap labor.
NO. That is how productivity gains are siphoned upwards to inflate corporate salaries and public subsidies become necessary for ill-paid workers that produce the goods. Unhealthy economy.
Not if there is no net difference. If corporations/business owners want to be bad employers, there’s nothing that stops the government from acting as the funds transfer agent. The New Deal employed a multi-prong method to get the income and profits from productivity gains into the hands of the workers. 1) steeply progressive taxation 2) unionized workforce 3) minimum and prevailing wage rates and 4) minimal safety net for those not protected by the other measures. And the GOP has attacked each of those methods in various ways beginning in 1947 and succeeded in getting cuts and reductions on all of them. Part of their effort was pure propaganda to delude the rubes into believing that the capitalists were on their side.
Picketty just showed that transfer payments do NOT do the job. The lower 50 fall farther and farther behind, DEBT traps capture them, and our former productive economy turns into the paper(or byte) factory of financialization.
I’m not arguing that transfer payments are the optimal means to decrease income inequality. Only that conceptually, there’s no difference because money is fungible. Piketty’s data and analysis is based on what exists which is low taxes on the wealthy and stingy transfer payments. That existing situation only proves that those with high incomes have the political clout to reduce/keep their taxes low and then to somehow “balance the books,” politicians disburse the lowest possible amount for social safety net programs. Conceptually, Social Security is a mix of transfer payments (but based on the entire working population and not high earners to low earners) and social safety net based on the earnings of beneficiaries. No surprise that Piketty found that SS beneficiaries have done better than lower income workers in the past few years.
A cleaner form, conceptually, of transfer payments is the earned income tax credit (Nixon era), but it too suffered from being a far too low dollar transfer. For example, if it were determined that the minimum necessary to cover very basic living expenses is $20/hour net (full time employment) and employers are only paying $10/hour, government can tax and transfer the additional $10/hour to those workers.
It’s a political question and not one of economics. And in the US people are more concerned about someone getting an undeserved free lunch than the wealthy making off with Fort Knox. Most people base their self-worth on their income. The higher it is, they better they are in comparison to others. People also self-identify their class by their perception of where they are on the income ladder. As most people say, “middle class,” their perception isn’t based on reality.
The minimum wage, again conceptually, is a means for government to broadly reduce income inequality and not have to engage in the messiness of income transfer pay-outs. Automatic indexing for inflation on the minimum wage would make for smoother adjustments for employers and employees and most importantly take the issue away from politicians that politicize it for their own advantage. However, the federal minimum wage is broad brushed for a country with wide disparities in cost of living by regions and states. That’s where state and local based goo-goo comes into the picture. For example, the federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour. In CA, that’s far below poverty level everywhere. So, the CA minimum wage is now $10/hour. That works for many areas in the state but is inadequate for many other areas. Hence, a $13/hour minimum wage in San Francisco (which is also still too low).
The AZ, NV, and FL economies were built on an informal method of government transfer payments. Retirees from high income states take their higher income SS benefits (and for many their higher amount of wealth accumulation) and move to low income states. This also essentially insulates them from the broader communities of people of all stripes. Which makes it much easier for them to suck on a FoxNews hookah.
Indeed. It is a feature of US policy to “poor shame” recipients of those transfer payments, too. Contrast with EU universal benefits.
There is a reason why minimum wage disparity has grown along with income disparity. Wealth distribution.
Except for a brief period of time — say 1933-1960 — Americans have never bought into the notion of “freedom from want” for all. (Might need updating because in 1941 there wasn’t much difference between “want” and “need.” Consumer materialism has since so greatly expanded that people mistake “wants” for “needs.”) Also need to note that even during that brief period, “freedom from want” was reserved more for white people than those of color. When LBJ pushed freedom from want “for all,” it initiated a backlash rather quickly and one we continue to live with.
Robot takeover begins? Corporate giant Capita replaces staff with automatons . Peter Drucker observed decades ago that when business/government began looking at computer automation that the first function that the computer folks pitched was taking over the payroll operation. Eliminated the armies of payroll clerks and replace them with computers and computer programmers, operators, etc. Why? Because payroll was an easy function to automate. However, replacing the low paid clerks with machines and higher paid computer folks didn’t produce any cost savings. The computers probably make fewer errors than the clerks did, but when they do, they are more difficult and costly to correct.
Health insurance — say back when Medicare and Medicaid kicked in which meant a very high percentage of people had health insurance — was reasonably straight-forward and didn’t present many time-consuming and personal record keeping obstacles. Year by year it became more and more complex as the “pros” took on more of the administration. Exacerbated by the health providers that wanted their fair share in the expansion of income inequality. Japan has added all the high-tech health services the US has over all those decades and at a fraction of the additional costs to provide them, but their culture accepts that “needs” should be for all.
So you’re against minimum wage increases now? Let’s make it illegal to organize altogether! Wouldn’t want to give them a reason to outsource:
Anti-union bills pass Michigan House of Representatives
See my reply to Marie. I’m against feel good laws that make worker’s plight worse. In particular we need national laws.
Alabama did just that in the last election, enshirining Right to work in their State Constitution.
The problem with depending on state regulation is the corrupting influence of local businesses exerting pressure to weaken such regulations.
For example: stricter banking regulations would only be directly effective against small town banks. Large conglomerate and even regional banking companies may be exempt or make the argument that since the span state lines, they should be immune. I guess the Fed Reserve and FDIC would regulate them.
I think much more effective, or at least would open the conversation, would be to examine and revoke corporate charters within the states. Most have boilerplate about “forming and acting in the public interest”. If it can be proved, in open court, that a corporation’s actions is damaging to the public good. then the charter could be revoked and the owners themselves could become legally liable for any actions.
That would really put the fox among the chickens and watch them squawk.
Ridge
I would LOVE to see a few corporations get the death penalty! To instruct the others.
Moar on the subject…
The election of Trump has not occurred in a vacuum. Across the West, we are witnessing a wholesale breakdown of the existing political order; the neoliberal project is broken, the center-left is vanishing, and the old left is at a loss for what to do. In many countries, it is the far right that is most successful in harnessing people’s desire to regain a sense of control over their lives. Where progressives have tried to beat the right at its own game by competing on the battleground of the nation state, they have fared extremely poorly, as recent elections and referenda across Europe have shown. Even where a progressive force has managed to win national office, as happened in Greece in 2015, the limits of this strategy have become abundantly clear, with global markets and transnational institutions quickly bullying the Syriza government into compliance.
In Spain, however, things are different. In 2014, activists in the country were wrestling with a similar conundrum to their counterparts in the US today: how to harness the power of new social and political movements to transform institutional politics. For pragmatic rather than ideological reasons, they decided to start by standing in local elections; the so-called “municipalist wager”. The bet paid off; while citizen platforms led by activists from social movements won mayoralties in the largest cities across the country in May of 2015, their national allies, Unidos Podemos, stalled in third place at the general elections in December later that same year.
In Spain, this network of ‘rebel cities’ has been putting up some of the most effective resistance to the conservative central government. While the state is bailing out the banks, refusing to take in refugees and implementing deep cuts in public services, cities like Barcelona and Madrid are investing in the cooperative economy, declaring themselves ‘refuge cities’ and remunicipalizing public services. US cities have a huge potential to play a similar role over the coming years.
America Needs a Network of Rebel Cities to Stand Up to Trump (http://www.hamptoninstitution.org/america-needs-rebel-cities.html#.WErI6bmVTZI)