Monday, July 31, 2017

Links for 06-30-17



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Links for 06-30-17 // Economist's View
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2017/06/links-for-06-30-17.html

Thoughts on Improving Academic Journals - Douglas Campbell Selecting for groupthink - Stumbling and Mumbling Economists and the Euro: for the record - mainly macroThe hype, reality, and causes of the global trade slowdown - VoxEU Macro Model Comparison Research Takes Off - John Taylor Markups in a monopolistically competitive macroeconomy - Nick Rowe The Future of Countercyclical Regulation - The Regulatory Review Monetary policy, credit, and economic activity in developing countries - VoxEU The E.U.'s Antitrust Fine Against Google - Adam Davidson
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Enlighten Radio:The Poetry Show: Peggy Shumaker is Poet of the Week

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Blog: Enlighten Radio
Post: The Poetry Show: Peggy Shumaker is Poet of the Week
Link: http://www.enlightenradio.org/2017/07/the-poetry-show-peggy-shumaker-is-poet.html

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Saturday, July 29, 2017

Enlighten Radio:Enlighten Radio Podcasts: Winners and Losers -- 2 Podcasts on the week that ...

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Blog: Enlighten Radio
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Friday, July 28, 2017

Enlighten Radio Podcasts:Winners and Losers -- 2 Podcasts on the week that gave most people a headache that won't go away.

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Blog: Enlighten Radio Podcasts
Post: Winners and Losers -- 2 Podcasts on the week that gave most people a headache that won't go away.
Link: http://podcasts.enlightenradio.org/2017/07/winners-and-losers-2-podcasts-on-week.html

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Is the Democratic Party’s 'Better Deal' Good Enough? [feedly]

Is the Democratic Party's 'Better Deal' Good Enough?
http://prospect.org/article/democratic-party%E2%80%99s-better-deal-good-enough


AP Photo/Cliff Owen

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, accompanied by Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Senator Amy Klobuchar, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, unveil the Democrats new agenda. 

It's a good thing for Democrats that the "Better Deal" agenda that party leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi unveiled on Monday will not be their only campaign message as they head into the 2018 midterms.

There's nothing exactly wrong with Democrats' plan to raise wages, train workers, invest in infrastructure, and break up monopolies that hurt competition. It's just that the whole rollout, staged in the white, working class town of Berryville, Virginia, had a self-consciously scripted air about it. It's easy to see why voters at the party's base want their leaders to show more passion and grit.

That's why House Democrats' recent moves to force debates on ethics and accountability issues deserve special notice. In a new package of bills and in a series of aggressive procedural maneuvers, Democrats in the House are sounding themes that have the potential to resonate powerfully across the ideological spectrum. These themes include the message that the system is rigged in favor of moneyed interests, and that ethics abusers must be held to account.

"This sense of frustration with government and elites and insiders now runs broad and deep across the American electorate, and there's no question it was a factor in Donald trump's election," says House Democrat John Sarbanes, of Maryland. "He tapped into this sense of resentment that people have about the current political system, and the undue influence that big money and special interests have."

Sarbanes chairs a House Democracy Reform Task Force that recently announced a package of bills focused on campaign-finance fixes, tougher ethics and disclosure rules, curbs on gerrymandering, and plans to strengthen the Federal Election Commission. A key element of the "By the People" plan is a proposal to match low-dollar campaign donations with public funds. The package draws a sharp line between Democrats who have spelled out a proactive democracy agenda, says Sarbanes, and Republicans who reject such reforms. Democrat Dick Durbin, of Illinois, has also introduced small-donor legislation in the Senate.

The "Better Deal" agenda unveiled by Schumer and Pelosi this week does gesture to big money and special interest abuses. "Corporate interests, the super wealthy, are allowed to spend unlimited, undisclosed amounts of money on campaigns and lobbying so they can protect their special deals in Washington," declared Schumer in Berryville. But the plan made no mention of the need to rein in Wall Street banks—long perceived as closely allied with Schumer. The Senate Minority Leader is arguably treating Wall Street with kid gloves, despite the fact that most Americans side with Democrats on Dodd-Frank. And though Democrats are stacking all their chips on the economy, Americans care less about it than they did six months ago, and are more worried than ever about government dysfunction. The number of Americans who think economic troubles are the most important problem facing the country today has actually fallen in recent months, according to Gallup, from 30 percent in January to 21 percent in July.

In the meantime, public concern over an issue Gallup identifies as "Dissatisfaction with government/Poor leadership" is soaring, with 19 percent identifying it as the nation's biggest problem—ahead of health care (16 percent), "Immigration/Illegal aliens" (7 percent), and "Unifying the country" (also 7 percent.) The phrase "dissatisfaction with government" and "poor leadership" could be read a number of ways, but it spells frustration and anger with Washington elites no matter how you slice it.

House Democrats have set out to tap that anger not only through legislation, but through a series of procedural moves designed to force Republicans to act on the many ethics allegations dogging the Trump administration. The most aggressive of these is a bid to make full use a little-known parliamentary tool known as a resolution of inquiry. Under House rules, if such a resolution is filed in a committee—even by a member of the minority—the full committee must act on the measure within 14 days, or it must move to a vote on the House floor.

"There are any number of things—the president's failure to divest, the violation of the Emoluments Clause, the Russian intervention in the election, the possible obstruction of justice, the firing of James Comey—all of which richly deserve congressional investigation and elucidation so the public knows what's going on and so that improper behavior is deterred," says House Democrat Jerrold Nadler, of New York.

Nadler pioneered the resolution of inquiry tactic in February when, buoyed by 838,000 petition signatures, he forced a GOP vote on his resolution asking the Justice Department to turn over information on Trump's business conflicts and his contacts with Russia. As expected, Republicans rejected Nadler's resolution.

This week, House Democrats filed four additional resolutions of inquiry in the House Judiciary, Financial Services, Homeland Security, and Transportation and Infrastructure Committees, all dealing in one way or another with Trump-related ethics matters, including Comey's firing as FBI head, and the lease on the Trump International Hotel. GOP no votes were inevitable, but the resolutions forced Republicans to go on the record against ethics and accountability, says Nadler.

"When they vote against the resolution of inquiry, they are, in effect, voting for a cover-up," says Nadler, noting that the House Judiciary panel is the only committee of jurisdiction that is not investigating the widening Russia probe. This is significant because only the House has the power to impeach a president, and it would be the Judiciary Committee's job to draft impeachment articles should lawmakers ever move in that direction.

Democrats will continue to refine their message in the months ahead, and it remains to be seen whether ethics, accountability, and special interest money ever move closer to the top of their agenda. But party leaders overlook such issues and possible reforms at their peril. "Unless you un-rig the game," says David Donnelly, president and CEO of the campaign reform group EveryVoice, "you are not going to get the kinds of comprehensive and far-reaching proposals that the Democrats suggested this week."


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What We Talk About When We Talk About the Gig Economy [feedly]

What We Talk About When We Talk About the Gig Economy
http://prospect.org/article/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-gig-economy

(AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Capital & Main is an award-winning publication that reports from California on economic, political and social issues. The American Prospect is co-publishing this piece.

"I have a nostalgia for the golden age of Craigslist," says Morgan Jones between sips at a coffee shop on Oakland's Telegraph Avenue. Jones, who is tall and thin with a bushy goatee, lets out a faint sigh. For the 51-year-old, the golden age occurred from the late 1990s to the mid-2000s, when someone like him—smart, but without a college degree—could land a decent job through the listings website. "I would show up to interviews willing to work hard, and I'd get hired," he tells me.

Jones returned to his native Bay Area in 1999, after a decade in the Midwest. He found work at an architectural journal, which led to a communications position at a design firm and a salary in the mid-60Ks. Then came the financial crisis of 2008. The company laid off most of its communication staff; Jones was let go in 2010, two months after he learned that his partner was pregnant. He collected unemployment for the first time in his life, and used the downtime to paint their house and focus on his baby daughter. Jones had always worked, and he figured he'd get a new job soon enough. But the recession dragged on, and companies weren't building like they had before. Months went by without an offer. It also dawned on him that he was quite a bit older than the other job applicants.

"I'm figuring out that the market has changed, that the elbows have gotten sharper, and I'm starting to wonder where I have failed," he tells me. He was hired for two short-term jobs, but other than that, spent most of his time sending resumes and waiting to hear back. Late in 2015, while returning from a job interview, he saw an ad for a courier service in Oakland. It didn't pay much above the minimum wage, but Jones was desperate, so he applied to be a driver. He didn't mind the work, calling it "disorganized but fun," though he was laid off several months later, after the company lost a contract.

That's when he saw a posting on Craigslist for Rev, an online transcription and caption-writing service company. It seemed ideal. Jones could work from home, choose assignments that interested him—like a documentary about a mining disaster in Canada—and set his own schedule. Best of all, as an independent contractor, he wouldn't have a boss. Jones, who can type 60 words a minute, figured he'd make around $25 an hour.

A month later, having written captions for the Rachael Ray show and various MTV programs, he calculated his earnings. They came to roughly $5 an hour. On the best assignments, the rate could rise to $7—still 40 percent less than Oakland's minimum wage. He was his own boss, but the work he was doing, he said, felt "close to volunteerism." With such low wages, it was no longer possible to avoid the fact that, as he settled deeper into middle age, he was "falling out of the middle class."

 

JONES, OF COURSE, isn't alone. During the last several years, stories about the rapid growth of the gig economy have saturated the media, often focusing on behemoths like Uber. These contractor jobs are different than those of a traditional employee, providing no guarantees of a minimum wage or benefits like unemployment insurance or workers' compensation. But if we zoom out from Jones, how much do we actually know about this workforce? Are their ranks growing? Is our country undergoing a revolution in how we work?

To try to find out, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center published a report last month called "What Do We Know About Gig Work in California?" They sifted through government statistics and recent industry studies, and came away with many more questions than answers.

"For a group of workers that is seen as the archetype of the 21st century economy," they write, "what we don't know about independent contractors far exceeds what we do know."

Consider that most basic of questions, the size of the gig workforce. Estimates of the number of independent contractors in the United States range widely, from 600,000 to 55 million. Part of the challenge has to do with differing definitions. Some datasets focus on those who earn the majority of their money as freelancers. Other surveys consider a gig worker to be someone who has earned any amount of money as an independent contractor—for example, a schoolteacher who also sold $300 worth of jewelry on Etsy last year.

A related question is whether the ranks of full-time independent contractors have grown, or whether more people are simply supplementing their regular jobs with small gigs. (Another option is that both are true.) The data here isn't conclusive, though there are indications that—despite numerous articles to the contrary—the number of full-time gig workers has remained relatively steady in recent years. Last year, according to the Census Bureau, these independent contractors made up 6.3 percent of the workforce. So one hypothesis is that any rise in gig workers is due to traditional employees taking on extra work.

"There's an important question here of whether gig work is the way people are making up for low wages at their W-2 jobs," says Sarah Thomason, a co-author of the study. "In other words, is gig work becoming the new safety net? And what does that say about our public programs meant to play that role?"

The report, while national in scope, pays special attention to California, the fount of much of the excitement—and anxiety—about the gig economy. In California, the study finds, independent contractors are more likely to be like Jones: white, male, 50 years or older, and with some college under their belt. (Jones attended but didn't graduate from Antioch College.) An estimated one in five, like Jones, don't have health insurance, twice the rate of traditional employees. Data on income, due to underreporting, is notoriously unreliable; the report puts typical wages anywhere from $24,000 to $66,667.

That California's gig workers skew older might be surprising to those who associate the industry with millennials. But perhaps the most counterintuitive finding in the report is that on-demand platform jobs—think Uber and TaskRabbit—represent just 0.5 percent of the workforce. That number is a bit higher in select California cities like San Francisco, which tops the list at 1.2 percent. Yet even in the Bay Area, the growth of such jobs has been slowing dramatically.

"We've reached the point of diminishing returns in running the gig economy discussion through the lens of Uber," says Annette Bernhardt, a co-author of the report who directs the Labor Center's Low Wage Work Program. "Policymakers need to understand that this is a much more diverse workforce."

 

FROM THE BEGINNING, one of the challenges to understanding the gig economy has been to see past its triumphalism. "The sharing economy isn't an app, it's a mindset based on trust and cooperation," wrote Sara Horowitz, the founder of the Freelancers Union. Way back in 2001, Daniel Pink penned Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself. "Free agents are the marketing consultant down the street, the home-based 'mompreneur,' the footloose technology contractor," he proclaimed. The book promised that we were about to enter an "exhilarating new world." On the back cover, in capitalized red font, Pink listed three characteristics of the coming employment revolution: FULFILLMENT, FREEDOM, and TIME.

For Jones, it has often felt like the opposite. He recently worked at Instacart for several months, loading up shopping carts for well-heeled customers at a Whole Foods in San Francisco. You've been to a grocery store. Now imagine spending eight hours of your day walking the aisles and picking out products for people you'll never meet: Fulfillment isn't the first word that comes to mind. For another gig, Jones delivered packages for an Amazon subcontractor, using a vehicle that was monitored in real time by supervisors. So much for freedom. And time? At $5 an hour at the transcription job, he'd need to work 100 hours a week to clear $2,000 a month. That's not even enough to rent a typical one-bedroom apartment in Oakland.

Jones is relatively fortunate. His partner is an arts instructor with a steady income, and she purchased their modest house long before the Oakland housing market boomed. But his search for stable work continues. He still has an active account with Rev, the transcription service company, and each day wakes up to scan a number of job sites. Recently, he applied for a position as a gas station attendant at Chevron.

"It's not the kind of job I would have looked at before," he says. "But now, having done my share of jobs in the sharing economy, being a gas station cashier looks very attractive."


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