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Open thread Jan. 10, 2018

Dan Crawford | January 10, 2018 7:15 am

Tags: open thread Comments (11) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
11 Comments
  • Denis Drew says:
    January 10, 2018 at 11:26 am

    Fifty percent ain’t one-percenters:

    The Minimum Wage, EITC, and Criminal Recidivism
    Amanda Y. Agan and Michael D. Makowsky,
    (Tyler Cohen: “here is an new and important approach”)

    “We find that the average minimum wage increase of 8% reduces the probability that men and women return to prison within 1 year by 2%. This implies that on average the wage effect, drawing at least some ex-offenders into the legal labor market, dominates any reduced employment in this population due to the minimum wage. These reductions in re-convictions are observed for the potentially revenue generating crime categories of property and drug crimes … “
    https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3097203
    * * * * * *

    Something like half of Chicago gang age, minority males are in street gangs (100,000).
    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gang-wars-at-the-root-of-chicagos-high-murder-rate/

    Berkeley professor Martin Sanchez-Jankowski found, upon spending nine years on the street in five NYC and LA poverty stricken neighborhoods, that ghetto schools fail because students (and teachers!) don’t see anything remunerative enough waiting for them in the labor market to make it worth the extra effort. Chicago teachers and their union seem to have cracked this).
    Cracks in the Pavement: Social Change and Resilience in Poor Neighborhoods – 2008

    Fifty percent ain’t one-percenters. Flatly stated, American born workers just wont scramble, full-out all day — the way new Americans bustle through their days at my Micky D’s across the street — for $10/hr. Eventually all such jobs (see an American born cabbie lately?) get “in-sourced” to relatively desperate immigrants (not kicking immigrants here — I want them to benefit from higher pay too).
    * * * * * *

    Super easy way back is restoring healthy labor union density (6% unions outside gov equates to 20/10 bp)? When Democrats take over Congress, we must institute mandatory union certification and re-certification elections at every work place (stealing a page from the Republican’s anti-union playbook — see Wisconsin gov workers). I would add the wrinkle of making the cycle one, three or five years — plurality rules — take a lot of potential rancor out of first time votes in some workplaces.

    Why Not Hold Union Representation Elections on a Regular Schedule?
    November 1st, 2017 – Andrew Strom
    https://onlabor.org/why-not-hold-union-representation-elections-on-a-regular-schedule/

    ADDENDUM
    Simply put, if fast food can pay $15/hr at 33% (!) labor costs, then, other retail should be able pay $20/hr at 10-15% labor costs, and, Walmart (God bless it) may be able to pay $25/hr at 7% labor costs. If this means shifting 10% of overall income to the bottom 40%, that means scratching 14% of their income from the “middle” 59% (who get roughly 70% of overall income) — in higher prices. Which may mean we have been paying the 40% too little for too along. But if the 40% get labor union organized (where this little speech is going) we may find ourselves willing to up if we want them to show up at work.

    I have always been willing to tell any gang banger (not that I ever run into any) that side-ways guns and gang signs and all that would look pretty funny in, say, Germany where they pay people to work. And, that if Walmart were paying $25/hr we wouldn’t be hearing about any of this here.

    As it is, the “middle” 59% can replenish their pockets at the expense of top 1% income whose share has ballooned from 10% to 22.5% over recent (de-unionizing) decades. Just reintroduce confiscatory taxation of the kind existing in the Eisenhower era. Say, 90% over $2 million income — and this time we really mean it — very top incomes (CEOs, news anchors, er, quarterbacks) now 20X what they were since per capita income only doubled. I predict any social inertia (it’s only human nature) on the part of the 59% to jack upper taxes up will be overcome by the friendly persuasion on the part of the 40% — who want to jack up the price of that burger just a bit more. 🙂

  • JimH says:
    January 10, 2018 at 12:43 pm

    The US Congress never passed the Dream Act bill into law.

    US Constitution Article II Section 1:
    “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”

    President Obama implemented DACA with an executive order in June 2012. It did not grant those affected immigrants any new rights at all. It simply focused immigration authorities away from them.

    “The policy was created after acknowledgment that dreamer students had been largely raised in the United States, and this was seen as a way to remove immigration enforcement attention from “low priority” individuals with good behavior.”
    See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_Action_for_Childhood_Arrivals

    I believe that President Obama had the right implement his executive order.

    I believe that President Trump has a right to refocus immigration authorities back on all illegal immigrants by executive order.
    See: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-restores-responsibility-rule-law-immigration/

    But now a US District Judge in San Francisco has decided that the current sitting President may not implement his own executive order. This is litigating minutiae as a delaying tactic. If President Trump is being arbitrary and capricious then so was President Obama.

    There are 2,758 of those appointed district judges. Are they prohibited from arbitrary and capricious rulings?
    See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_judge

    When did we decide that our duly elected government had to be crippled by an appointed judiciary?

  • coberly says:
    January 10, 2018 at 10:36 pm

    Jim H

    “When did we decide…?”

    I think it was in about 1788.

    But as to your real question, I don’t think a country can do well if its laws change arbitrarily with each new election, especially if the change is in the direction of hurting real people who are not by any reasonable standard criminals.

    Pardon me, it’s only my perspective, but Obama’s action was “humane”… almost as if suddenly someone realized there was a terrible injustice going on (and I am not especially a fan of Obama). While everything Trump has done has been in the direction of reversing what progress America has made in terms of justice, human rights, environmental protection, and honest science.

    I’d think he was a madman if it wasn’t so obvious he has the full support of the richest people in the country.

  • coberly says:
    January 10, 2018 at 10:40 pm

    Denis Drew

    thank you for your courage in continuing to present this argument.

    have you consulted the ghost of Walter Reuther about making it happen?

  • Denis Drew says:
    January 11, 2018 at 12:57 am

    Coberly,

    I consult nightly with the ghost of Jimmy Hoffa.

  • JimH says:
    January 11, 2018 at 8:53 am

    Coberly,

    I don’t want to belabor this point too much.

    But this case is not about law, it is about presidential prerogatives. If President Trump is being arbitrary and capricious then so was President Obama.

    Why should President Obama have been allowed to selectively enforce the law. I happen to believe that as the chief executive President Obama had a right to do that. BUT selective enforcement of the law is a legal problem too. Where was this judge then?

    This judge’s ruling will be overturned, but he will have inflicted delay on the executive branch of government.

    These appointed Federal District judges are interfering more and more often as time goes by.

    This would be a less abusive if this power was limited to the US Supreme Court.

    These decisions should be made by elected officials who can lose the next election.

  • coberly says:
    January 11, 2018 at 12:17 pm

    Denis

    that may be the problem.

    as far as i know (not much) Reuther built up the UAW from nothing, and was the money behind MLK. Hoffa ended up in a landfill.

  • coberly says:
    January 11, 2018 at 12:30 pm

    JimH

    no need to belabor the point. i am pretty sure i understood you the first time. but you seem to have paid no attention whatsoever to my point.

    the Constitution was written by people who wished to limit the influence of “the people.” The courts were a big part of the solution they came up with.

    you may not like that… though i suspect you like it fine when it goes your way. but in any case the world is the way it is and you cannot expect it to change just because you have one bright and shining idea of what would make it better.

    i suffer some frustration myself because the world will not let me make it better. i expect it to become worse, but at least i don’t delude myself with magical thinking about what they “should” do.

    they won’t. and we can only be glad when what they do is more humane than what they might have done (or left undone).

    in this case at least Obama changed the law (it’s effect) in the direction of easing the pain and suffering of real humans. you seem to think that it’s all the same if Trump changes the law to increase the pain and suffering of real humans, and are annoyed because a judge does not agree with you.

    so far so good, i guess, or so bad. but you go off the rails when you imagine the judge and the people should act as though your idea of the law was “the constitution” if not “the word of god.”

    look around you. the law and even “the facts” are changed every day in every small court in the land. and there is so much injustice it would choke your heart if you paid attention to it.

    but here you seem to favor injustice because it accords with your bought and paid for idea of the constitution (paid for by those who find it convenient for their purposes, which seem to be “more money for us, the hell with everyone else and everything else.”)

  • JimH, says:
    January 11, 2018 at 6:45 pm

    Coberly,

    I do not want to belabor the point too much. So I won’t.

    We will agree to disagree. Have a good day.

  • Denis Drew says:
    January 12, 2018 at 11:28 am

    Coberly,
    Hoffa built maybe the strongest union (possibly based on highest testosterone membership :-]) in the country and they both ended up in Heaven.

    BTW, the lawyer of the guy (the friend) who killed Hoffa wrote a book about it. Confirmed by the TV show History Detective. The killer was supposed to have taken out Crazy Joe Gallo too. A witness at the Clam House was shown a pic of the killer and she said “that’s him.” Both hit man and Mafia boss who ordered the hit died repentant Catholics.

  • coberly says:
    January 12, 2018 at 11:43 am

    Denis

    first i heard about any of that.

    still leaves you (and me) without a plan to bring unions back.

    doesn’t seem to be enough that it’s a good idea.

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