Four Years
It is four years from now. A lot has changed. Some of the changes have been positive, some negative. What are the changes that in retrospect were the most impactful but also should have been among the most obvious a day or two after Thanksgiving 2016?
My guess: in 4 years the Republican Party platform borrows more from the country club republicans, more from blue collar concerns and more from federalism. Religious issues will get kicked back to the states and we will see more protectionism on trade. The big losers are the neocons so goodbye and good riddance to the Ledeen doctrine. So, no wars of choice. But we may go too far the other way and give tacit approval to a very aggressive act by China or Russia.
More speculative – maybe some forms of welfare get tied to work. Despite being an update to FDR’s WPA, there will be some bloggers calling it slavery.
Mike,
Sounds like you’re rehearsing that old shibboleth about families spending generations on welfare — because of the availability of welfare. I thought we got away from that with the understanding that, say, 100,000 out of maybe 200,000 Chicago gang age, minority males for instance are in street gangs.
Diagnosis — why? In 1968 — almost 50 years ago, half today’s per capita income, a world away — the fed min wage was $11. Today, 45% of the US workforce takes home 10% of income. General upshot: the money is there somewhere to make $400 jobs into $800 jobs — which will leave the Crips and the Bloods stacking shelves (and being AFL-CIOers and Teamsters — much more powerful). Motivational upshot: American raised (me) will not work for $400 (me driving taxi if I still did it today).
Here’s how:
Resurrect the connection between higher productivity and higher wages in the 21st century: re-invent labor organizing at the STATE level?
I presume that states may double up on federal protection of organizing a collective bargaining unit — just as states may add (not subtract) from the minimum wage and/or work safety rules …
… except that there is no FEDERAL protection of organizing (no civil fine, no criminal sanction, no recourse like mandating an election upon finding of unlawful interference, it IS against the law). There is placebo protection for organiz-ers: after waiting years they can get their jobs back only to mostly be fired again for “something else” (with no union protection).
Which brings up the CONSTITUTIONAL factor: a First Amendment right to associate commercially.
Federal preemption may bar states from making up their own labor organizing setup …
… except for farm workers who are left out — not because of anything in the written words of the federal law but because FDR (lied?) and told Congress the law would not apply to them to get it passed — so on the strength of that …
… with a FUNDAMENTAL constitutional right at stake — federal law cannot force that right down a road that is impassable. Federal law cannot preempt something with nothing. Even the 6% union density in private business would not if most of those unions had to start from scratch in today’s conditions.
America has to learn at a basic cultural level that labor markets are just like any commodity market — that it is unfair and unethical for one side in an inherently adversarial process (ALL markets are inherently adversarial processes) to muscle the other out the maximum price the buyer will pay (and has to learn that the REAL buyer in a labor market is the ultimate consumer).
Now, suppose in rush to preempt or in a pang or conscience Congress should make union busting a felony — would that bar states from doing the same or disempower similar state legislation? Wouldn’t that be more like states paralleling bank robbery prohibitions?
Answer may be that even if there were no federal or state organizing setup (prescriptions for certification, etc.) — even if the ONLY pertinent federal law made muscling collective bargaining a crime, there would be no reason states could not mirror that also.
I would go so far as assert that as long as the federal setup remains a road to nowhere that states can make their own certification rules (just like with farm workers) — until and unless the fed comes up with an organizing setup that actually protects the First Amendment right to collectively bargain — INSTEAD OF ACTUALLY BLOCKING IT.
See ya in four years. 🙂
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2016/11/america-is-not-always-like-the-rest-of-the-world.html
“I calculated the growth in real median incomes vs real GDP per capita from about 1980 to 2010. If the two had grown at the same rate, the bar would be 100%- In fact, median post-tax US income only grew by about a quarter of the pace that real GDP per head did- quite unlike other countries. ”
(my close translation of bar chart)
US 25%
Canada 70%
France 75%
UK 125%
Spain 125%
Norway 145%
Eisenhower redux…with the economy booming on cheap energy, Trump has just won reelection in a landslide but has no further interest in governing and spends his second term playing golf, leaving the country’s bridge building in the able hands of Chris Christie…
Dennis Drew,
I don’t disagree with a lot of what you wrote but I do with this:
Not my shibboleth, just my guess as to what Trump will end up doing.
Rjs,
You might be right about energy. Reduce regulations, throw in one big discovery, and oil prices could plummet.
I wonder whether the CAFE standards will survive a Trump admin and what that does to Tesla’s business model.
White-Collar Supremacy
By Kelly J. Baker, NYT, yesterday
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/opinion/white-collar-supremacy.html?ref=opinion
______
Tallahassee, Fla. — Richard B. Spencer is one of the main figures of the alt¬right movement, a former doctoral student from Duke whose movement supports the creation of “an ethno¬state” for white Europeans and “peaceful ethnic cleansing.” The Southern Poverty Law Center describes him as “a suit-and¬-tie version of the white supremacists of old, a kind of professional racist in khakis”; a recent Los Angeles Times profile ran with a photo of him in sunglasses and a black shirt, looking more like a hipster academic than a Klansman.
This sort of image makeover is a big part of the alt¬-right’s game. They want to convince the media that they are a “new form” of white nationalism that we’ve never seen before: clean-¬cut, intellectual, far removed from the unpolished white supremacists of the past. But the alt-¬right is not as new as we might think. In fact, efforts to dress up white supremacy in ideas and middle¬class respectability have been around since the first organized movements emerged in the late 19th century — and once again, people are falling for it.
Part of the problem is a lack of historical awareness. When white supremacist organizations crop up in tellings of American history, they appear and recede from the story quickly, a footnote about racism to be overlooked, not a central component of the American story. Hence, the alt-¬right appears novel only if we ignore the continuum of “intellectual” white supremacy from which it emerged: scientific racism in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the national Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, and the Citizens Councils of the 1950s and ’60s.
While the first Klan emerged among Confederate Veterans in the postReconstruction South, by the end of the 19th century some white supremacists had begun to move into more respectable circles by using science and Darwinism to explain their views. These ideas had proponents across the country, from Southern Bourbons to Boston Brahmins concerned with influxes of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe.
Madison Grant, a lawyer, eugenicist and the author of “The Passing of the Great Race,” wrote that the American “stock” would be jeopardized by these particular European immigrants. Grant established the idea of a superior Nordic race, claiming that immigrants from England, Scotland and the Netherlands founded America, a Nordic nation.
His book became one of the most popular works on scientific racism to originate in the United States; in “The Great Gatsby,” F. Scott Fitzgerald reflected the way the ideas of Grant and other scientific racists worked their way into mainstream thought. “Have you read ‘The Rise of the Colored Empires’ by this man Goddard?” Tom Buchanan asks, in a thinly masked allusion to Grant. “It’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be — will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
The book went through multiple printings and translations into different languages. Adolf Hitler relied on Grant’s ideas about the supremacy of the Nordic race to support sterilization and horrendous medical experiments. He called the book “my bible.”
Middle¬class white supremacy had another wave of popularity in the 1920s, when the second Klan, which had a nationwide following, drew on the ideas of Grant and others to sell white supremacy to both the rural and urban middle classes. It printed newspapers and books, held seminars as well as rallies, and even tried to establish a Klan university in Indiana.
Along with drumming up racial fears, the 1920s Klan relied on scientific and theological racism in The Imperial Night¬-Hawk, its national newspaper. Writing for the paper in 1923, a Louisiana Klansman and minister, W. C. Wright, outlined the Klan’s intellectual position on white supremacy, in which white people were “the leading race,” America was “a white man’s country, discovered, dedicated, settled, defended, and developed by white men,” and the distinctions between the races were scientific and divinely created.
The 1950s saw another surge of “respectable” racism, this time in the form of the Citizens Councils, founded in Mississippi by Robert B. Patterson in response to the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision. Rather than the vigilantism and terrorism of the 1950s and ’60s Klan, the councils relied on more middle¬class methods of opposing civil rights: boycotting black-¬owned businesses and denying mortgages to black people. The sociologist Charles M. Payne describes them as “pursuing the agenda of the Klan with the demeanor of the Rotary Club.”
While it might seem newsworthy that today’s alt¬-right members wear suits and profess academic-sounding racism, they are an extension of these previous white supremacist movements, dressed up in 21st¬century lingo, social media and fashion. We ignore that continuity at our peril: Focusing on their respectability overlooks their racism, but more pressingly, by convincing ourselves that they are taking a new, mainstream turn, it makes white supremacy appear normal and acceptable.
The alt-right is not an example of white supremacy marching toward the mainstream; this has always been the case. It is an example how white supremacy went from an unarguable fact of American culture to a debatable and offensive reality. That’s not novel; it’s American history.
The oligarchs will play red against blue and black against white in more modern terms and techniques. We should all become more aware of this and fight to resist the easy temptation to be drawn into these false and phony ideologies of control of the oligarchs. Trump saw this ,I saw this and so must you. The 25% gain in wage over a 30 year span was no accident. It represents a wage gain of less than 1% per year. The union busting and shipping the work overseas gig is up and we do not need to fight amongst our selves any longer. The man behind the curtain pulling the levers of prosperity and disparity has been revealed but we need people like Beverley Mann to realize and understand where and what our true fight in all this really lies and to not give up the fight is what the oligarchs want us to do…Its all about power,money and control.
@Beverly,
The NYT article quoted Fitzgerald’s Tom Buchanan as referring to “this man Goddard” as a thinly-veiled reference to Madison Grant. Actually it was a virtually transparent reference to Lothrop Stoddard, a white supremacist popularizer very much akin to Grant. This was the book Tom and Daisy were talking about,
Used to be a nice place.
Shame what happened to it.
“Used to be a nice place”
When we had high union density — and if you were white. 🙂
EMichael,
So just as Trump’s supporters in the rust belt view him as a symbol of what was Obama’s motto, hope, you expect to adopt Trump’s motto about making America great again.
William Ryan,
I don’t know how much of it is a conscious movement thing and how much is people acting in their own self interest with little thought about those who are hurt. A CEO might advocate for more unskilled immigration not because he wants to screw over unskilled Americans but simply because it lowers his costs. It isn’t a purposeful divide and conquer. It is self interest blind to others’ interests.
Trump’s canard??? The two meant something very different. Obama is closer to the issue than Trump.
Mike,
My post was about AngryBear.
Mike the latest trend is not for more unskilled labor but for the ever increasing use of automation. As for the divide and conquer issue I feel that it is still live and well with the oligarchs as the near miss of the election and the fast tracking of the current TPP proves this. Therefore I don’t think the oligarchs interest in power, money and control is blind. It is to me more like what Michael Hudson writes and warns us about in his book “Financial Capital and its Discontents” where they have corrupted everything to retain theirs money, power and control at any cost. In the past where we lost the 6M mfg. jobs it was about union busting and cheaper made goods with much higher profit margins gains that did not have to be shared…
The question in the next 4 years is as Franklin observed: “if we can keep it…..”
Mike K.
The past 15 years has shown US influence in the China-Russia heartland to be an illusion.
The Clinton/neocon whim to sunder Russia like Afghanistan is troublesome, and may not fade enough.
Run,
Nothing succeeds like success, and failure does the opposite. Around Drc of 2007 I figured the Republican Party wouldn’t be able to field a successful candidate for President for four or five elections given the disasters that GE bestowed on the American public (Afghanistan, Iraq, the Great Recession). His only success – the only thing that he did that seemed to have produce an outcome just about everyone liked, was the No Call Registry.
And then Obama came around. What has he done that enjoys majority support? Heck, even the Do Not Call registry doesn’t seem to work any more. And the result is, Republicans who became unviable after GW were rehabilitated by Obama’s lack of success, not to say ineptitude.
Gee Mike:
I guess the Republican Congress meeting pre-Obama to decide on a strategy to block everything coming from a Democrat had nothing to do with this superficial vision of Obama by voters, heh??? There was no outcome that was allowed to be successful by Blue Dogs and Repubs alike. They wanted their concessions or nothing at all. Lieberman got his and the Repubs were successful in spite of a perceived majority in the Senate. Obama was successful in spite of the out right lies and blockages put forth by Republicans and people who lack vision. Why is it, I have to list these accomplishments for another who feints allegiance to progressiveness? You should already know this. 400 Obama Accomplishments so far, With Citations. http://pleasecutthecrap.com/obama-accomplishments/ Maybe the real issue is Dems, progressives, and liberals can not align themselves with one particular goal in mind, understand the basics of it, and not be distracted from achieving it by people who oppose them. Blaming Obama for this loss is just another excuse for not really trying.
Oh the link for the 400 Accomplishments? “Please . . . Cut the Crap Blog PCTC” http://pleasecutthecrap.com/obama-accomplishments/
Mike K,
I drew two conclusions this year:
From Romney care to enrich insurance companies to permanent drone war to keep the Saudi royals’ al Qaeda advancing: dreadful disappointment.
Obama was not worthy to be the first African American president. HRC is not worthy to be the first woman president.
Both supported by folks who see arguments against their perfidy as racist or sexist.
Both progressed in a crooked party.
ILSM,
I would simply say that of the candidates running (on all sides this year) none showed signs of coming from strong presidential timber. And eight years of GW and Obama makes apparent neither of them has it either.
I do agree that opposition to Obama and Hikary was attacked as being prejudiced. I mentioned in comments before that I knew people who had voted for Hilary in the primaries in 2008, had voted for Obama twice, and voted against Hilary in 2016.
After witnessing her performance in an executive role (as Sec of State) and knowing she was positioning herself as the third term of a lackluster President, it makes perfect sense for a center left leaning voter to oppose her. But people who took that position are viewed as being part of the basket of deplorable.
Congress makes legislation.
Listening to people who obviously do not understand that simple fact of life in the US talk about politics is harmful to your mental health. Green Lanterns are imbeciles, and right after the deplorables, are the #1 reason the US is well on its way to becoming a third world country.
Defense spending will drive it there much quicker.
EMichael,
The Green Lantern connotation was a new one for me and even the Urban Dictionary” was no help.
What were the signature issues which Obama battled against Congress to enact? And what were the issues that Congress forced Obama to do which turned out poorly? Was the way Libya turned out Congress’ fault? (That’s Obama’s biggest mistake according to Obama.). And since I mentioned how the one signature success of the GW admin was allowed to go to pot, tell me when Congress either rescinded the Do Not Call registry or took enforcement away from the Executive Branch.
From what I can tell, the closest thing to a success Obama has achieved (in terms of positive outcomes) is Obamacare, and it was built in such a way that it didn’t solve the affordability problem for more than a few years. What was Obama pushing for that would have solved the problem?
Mike:
There was nothing directly in the PPACA to resolve the rising cost of healthcare; however, it did slow the cost increases of healthcare to less than what it was percentage-wise pre-PPACA. If you want to resolve the rising cost of healthcare than you have to turn Medicare loose to better negotiate the costs of meds, procedures, hospitals, and doctors. They will lead the way for individual and group insurance.
The PPACA did control costs of “healthcare insurance” by establishing the MLR which is a ratio of what can be charged administratively as compared to actual healthcare costs (80% and 85%). It also established what can be charged for older people and smokers (300% and 150% of the cost for the lowest cost individual). Trump has plans to allow insurance companies to increase the ratio for older people due to rising costs. He and like so many people here on Angry Bear conveniently forget, insurance is mostly a reflection of healthcare costs.
Few countries globally have 100% fully funded government paid healthcare for citizens. Again many people at Angry Bear argue for single payer and the public option when they can not spell out what it means. It is little more than a “slogan” or rallying point for another step. Like calling for the end of the Electoral College when the Repubs own everything and soon SCOTUS and had little to do with the election of Trump. Those of you who fought so viciously against HRC and spent so much time denigrating HRC in wasted space at AB have achieved what they wanted or did not want . . . Trump. Lets see what we get from him now for the 47 percenters and the other 52% who make < $500,000 annually. ilsm conveniently ignores the specifics as so many others do also.
You shouldn’t talk about healthcare. Run has already given you plenty of facts to show you should not do so. I am thinking that is not the only subject wherein that is the case, and see no reason to discuss these subjects with someone who obviously missed the last eight years.
http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2009/12/the-green-lantern-theory-of-the-presidency.html
The PPACA did control costs of “healthcare insurance” by establishing the MLR which is a ratio of what can be charged administratively as compared to actual healthcare costs (80% and 85%). It also established what can be charged for older people and smokers (300% and 150% of the cost for the lowest cost individual). Trump has plans to allow insurance companies to increase the ratio for older people due to rising costs. He and like so many people here on Angry Bear conveniently forget, insurance is mostly a reflection of healthcare costs.
Correct. Except the cut off for older people and smokers is arbitrary and has no basis in actuarial science in determining insurance of healthcare costs. And as for all the ‘wasteful’ admin costs, you may have noticed the ads, PSAs, etc. trying to get people to sign up for PPACA to improve the risk pool. Empirically, since the government has decided that its efficacious to spend money on what was prior to PPACA considered wasteful, i.e., marketing, maybe the less restricted health insurance market (hard to call it ‘free’) prior to PPACA may have had a legitimate reason for a lower MLR.
mj:
You really want to argue about this? Klein, Mahar, and myself all know commercial insurance spends more money on fraud than Medicare and the government. Most countries have commercial insurance besides government sponsored healthcare to pay for the gaps. I have stated the reason silly, now counter it. You can’t legitimately and your citations will lack knowledge I and others have. You do not know what you are talking about Jed and I am growing weary of your trolling here at AB. The issue still remains that the commercial healthcare industry is uncontrolled as determined by Republicans and others who are lobbied hard and silly people such as yourself who make things up.
Some interesting stats from Meet the Press a week ago:
VA: out of 20 million votes since 1992 — Dems and Repubs are only separated by 72,000.
OH: out of 34 million votes since 1992 — Dems and Repubs are only separated 69,000.
FL: out of 50 million votes since 1992 — Dems and Repubs are only separated by 11,000.
***********************************
Out of 12 Michigan counties that went for Trump — 9 voted for Bernie over Hillary.
Out of 22 Wisconsin counties that went for Trump — all 22 voted for Bernie over Hillary.
**************************************
FWIW, as of a week ago:
Hillary was ahead 1,677,041 in the nationwide popular vote.
Trump was ahead 853,094 in the popular vote in 13 battleground states.
Denis:
Are you saying Dems are stupid enough to vote against their beliefs? Michigan still will not send a 50-50 number of Reps to The House with this vote. What does that tell you???
Run,
I made no mention of nor reference to fraud. Please point me to the citations that demonstrate the actuarial basis that 50% surcharge for smoking is the appropriate figure.
No you didn’t make reference to fraud; but, I cited a reason commercial healthcare insurance has a higher administrative cost to answer you. The reasoning behind a pool is to level out the costs otherwise some people could not afford healthcare insurance in a country which does not regulate the costs of healthcare as other countries do. Six states have no surcharge for smokers and three others have levied a surcharge ratio of less than 50%. CT has banned the smoking surcharge ratio through its PPACAS exchange. Lets take this a step further Jed.
32% of the smokers live below the poverty level. Many of them are African American. Many more are below the 138% Poverty level set by the PPACA. Many of them are African Americans too. Those that are on Medicaid have to pay that surcharge ratio as well as those on premium subsidies. All of them have limited incomes except for the lady who drives the pink Cadillac and the ones Trump claims are scamming. So what is your point Jed to penalize them end more and limit their access to healthcare altogether (such bravado)? Smoking is an addiction and even the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association recognizes it as such and also recognizes the people who are mostly struck by the addiction, minorities and the poor. “WE are anti-smoking and not anti-smokers.”
So are you anti-minority and poor with your viewpoints. I already said, the PPACA can not regulate the uninhibited healthcare industry which drives the cost healthcare insurance. At best, the PPACA has slowed the rising cost of healthcare while insuring millions of people more. Uninsured is down to ~11%. Like you are promoting, we could raise that surcharge and drive them out of the market place and into the backdoors of hospitals like it used to be and just hide the cost. Nobody looks there and all hospitals would have to do is stabilize them by law and let them die.
So, are you anti minority and anti poor Jed. Let us all know your stance.
I find it offensive at your implication that certain minority ethnic groups are more prone to addiction than non-minorities.
Perhaps there’s actually something to the complaints levied by eMichael and Bev about changes taking place at AB.
jed:
Keep trying Jed.
Look at the numbers silly. You come out here and make statements with few facts to back yourself up. I point out the PPACA subsidies benefit minorities and the poor in particular of which the larger percentage happens to be minority but who are also out numbered by poor white Americans. Your plan is to increase the percentage for smoking directly impacts these two groups of people. It is no secret smoking is addictive. The “American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association recognizes it as such and also recognizes the people who are mostly struck by the addiction, minorities and the poor. ‘WE are anti-smoking and not anti-smokers.’”
Furthermore, I present the facts behind the subsidies and the ratios and point to your boy “Trump” as wanting to increase the ratio for smoking. I pointed out Commercial Healthcare Insurance spends far more money on Fraud detection (which is administrative cost) than Medicare. I also pointed out healthcare costs are not regulated in the US of which healthcare insurance is a reflection of at 80 t0 85% of price. Finally, the PPACA has slowed the cost of healthcare and has lowered the numbers of uninsured.
And you? you are concerned I used the numbers of minorities utilizing subsidies and Medicaid for insurance and asked if you are against the poor and/or minorities. Have you ever heard of Lee Atwell and the Southern Strategy? You knowingly or unknowing applied the Southern Strategy by attacking programs which directly apply to and help minorities besides poor white Americans. Can’t say n*gger anymore; but, we can attack busing, subsidies for programs, etc. and we can probably get poorer Whites to also support our efforts. Trump is also doing the same with raising the ratio for the elderly.
And you are offended???