Centrists, Progressives and Europhobia [feedly]

Krugman: Centrists, Progressives and Europhobia
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/opinion/europe-economy.html

PK on progressives vs centrists reads my mind, but the EU skew in the article is a tricky defense, IMO.

TEXT ONLY

Will the Democratic presidential nomination go to a centrist or a progressive? Which choice would give the party the best chance in next year's election? Honestly, I have no idea.

One thing I can say, however, is that neither centrism nor progressivism is what it used to be.

There was a time when arguments between centrists and progressives were framed as debates between realism and idealism. These days, however, it often seems as if the centrists, not the progressives, are out of touch with reality. Indeed, sometimes it feels as if centrists are Rip Van Winkles who spent the last 20 years in a cave and missed everything that has happened to America and the world since the 1990s.

You can see this in politics, where Joe Biden has repeatedly declared that Republicans will have an "epiphany" once Donald Trump is gone, and once again become reasonable people Democrats can deal with. Given the G.O.P.'s scorched-earth politics during the Obama years, that's a bizarre claim.

You can also see it in economics. There are many reasonable criticisms you could offer of Elizabeth Warren's economic proposals. But the one I keep seeing is that Warren would turn America into (cue scary music) Europe, maybe even (cue even scarier music) France. And you have to wonder whether people who say such things have paid any attention to either Europe or America over the past few decades.

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Just to be clear, Europe does have big economic problems. But they're not the ones such people seem to imagine.

When people say such things, they seem to have in mind a picture of the U.S.-Europe comparison that did seem to have some validity in the 1990s. In that picture, nations with large social spending and extensive government regulation of markets suffered from "Eurosclerosis," persistent lack of jobs.

Employers, the story went, were reluctant to expand both because of high taxes and because they feared not being able to fire workers once hired. At the same time, workers had little incentive to accept jobs because they could live off generous social programs.

Europe also seemed to be lagging in the adoption of new technology: For a while, the U.S. surged ahead in making use of the internet and information technology in general, leading to arguments that Europe's high taxes and regulation were discouraging innovation.

But all of that was a long time ago. The jobs gap has largely vanished; adults in their prime working years are actually more likely to be employed in Europe, France included, than they are in America.

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Any gap in the adoption of information technology has also long since vanished; households in much of Europe are as or more likely to have broadband than their U.S. counterparts, partly because the U.S. failure to limit providers' monopoly power has led to much higher prices for internet access.

It's true that European nations have lower G.D.P. per capita than we do, but that's largely because, unlike most Americans, most Europeans actually have significant vacation time and hence work fewer hours per year. This sounds like a choice about work-life balance, not an economic problem.

And on that most fundamental of indicators, life expectancy, the U.S. has fallen far behind: French residents can expect, on average, to live more than four years longer than Americans. Why? Universal health care and policies that mitigate extreme inequality are the most likely explanations.

Now, I don't want this to sound like praise of all things European. The nations on the euro remain terribly vulnerable to financial crises, because they've adopted a shared currency without a shared banking safety net; only the heroic leadership of Mario Draghi, the former president of the European Central Bank, avoided a catastrophic collapse of the euro in 2012.

Europe also suffers from persistent weakness in demand because key players, Germany in particular, have an obsessive fear of deficits, even when the European economy desperately needs stimulus.

These are big problems, severe enough that I wouldn't be surprised if Europe is the epicenter of the next global crisis. But the problem with Europe is not that its social programs are too generous and its governments too intrusive. If anything, it's almost the opposite: Europe's economy is vulnerable because a combination of political fragmentation and ideological rigidity has left its politicians unwilling to be Keynesian enough.

The point is that centrists who point to Europe as an illustration of the bad things that happen when you're too enthusiastic about pursuing social justice are stuck decades in the past. Modern European experience actually vindicates progressive claims that we can do a lot to make America fairer without destroying incentives. And even Europe's problems make the case for more government intervention, not less.

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By all means, let's talk about whether "Medicare for all," wealth taxes and other progressive proposals are actually good ideas. But trying to shoot them down by going on about how terrible things are in France is a sure sign that you have no idea what you're talking about.
 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Minimum Wages and Overtime Rules -- recent history [feedly]

Minimum Wages and Overtime Rules 
http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2019/11/minimum-wages-and-overtime-rules.html

Perhaps the best-known provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 is that it set a federal minimum wage for the first time. In addition, this is the law that established the overtime rle that if you are a "nonexempt" work--which basically means a worker paid by the hour rather than on a salary--then if you work more than 40 hours/week you must be paid time-and-a-half for the additional hours. 

Charles C. Brown and Daniel S. Hamermesh take a look at the evidence on both provisions in "Wages and Hours Laws: What Do We Know? What Can Be Done?" (Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, December 2019, 5:5, pp.  68-87). They write:

Although wages and hours are regulated under the same law, policy developments and research on the law's impacts could not be more different between the two areas. The federal minimum wage has been raised numerous times; and many subfederal jurisdictions impose their own wage minima that, where they exceed the federal minimum, supersede it. Perhaps because of this variation, a huge literature examining the effects of minimum wages on the U.S. labor market has arisen and has continued to burgeon. A fair conclusion is that American labor economists have spilled more ink per federal budgetary dollar on this topic than on any other labor-related policy. The opposite is the case for regulating hours. The essential parameters of hours regulation have not changed since passage of the act; and perhaps because of this, the dearth of research on the economic impact of hours regulation in the United States, especially recently, is remarkable.

(In the shade of these parentheses, I'll also mention this issue of the the RSF journal, edited by Erica L. Groshen and Harry J. Holzer, is especially rich in content, including 10 articles on the general theme of "Improving Employment and Earnings in Twenty-First Century Labor Markets." I'll list the Table of Contents for the issue, with links to the articles, at the bottom of this post.)

Minimum Wages

The US minimum wage situation has changed dramatically in the last decade or so in a particular way: a much larger share of workers live in states with a minimum wage above the federal level. Brown and Hamermesh write:

Over the past thirty years, however, states' decisions to increase their minimum wages have become increasingly important given that the federal minimum has changed less frequently. For example, in 2010 (after the 2007 federal increases had become fully effective) only one-third of the workforce was in states with state minima that exceeded the federal $7.25. By 2016, with the federal minimum still at $7.25, that fraction had risen to nearly two-thirds. As of 2018, twenty-nine states ... had minimum wages above $7.25. States that have raised their minimum wages above the federal minimum have tended to be high-wage states, and the result has been a minimum wage much more closely (though still imperfectly) aligned with local wages.

 Brown and Hamermesh focus on the studies that try to estimate the effects of a minimum wage by looking at these differences in minimum wages that have arisen across states (leaving the issues involved in studying city-level minimum wages for another day). Here are some of the points they make: 

There are basically three ways to take advantage of the state-level changes and variations in minimum wage: comparisons between states; comparisons between border counties of states; and comparisons with states and "synthetic" control groups, which basically means finding a combination of other areas that had economic patterns to a certain state before the minimum wage was changed.

When doing these comparisons, a researcher will want to adjust for other factors that might affect state economies: for example, a natural disaster that hit one state but not another, or a change in the price of oil would affect an oil-producing state. A researcher can allow for each state or border-county to be following its own time trend, or for the effect of the minimum wage on employment to be different in every state. Is the relationship between a changing minimum wage and employment a straight line or a curved line--and if it's a curved line, how curved is it? The more variables like this you include, the smaller the effect of a minimum wages on employment is likely to be. There is considerable disagreement and controversy over what variables should be included.

It's been typical in many of these studies to focus on either teenagers or restaurant workers, because they are both groups that are presumably affected by the minimum wage.

A common finding is that a rise in the minimum wage of 10% raises the wages of teenagers as a group or restaurant workers as a group by about 2%--presumably because some teenagers or restaurant workers were already earning more than the minimum wage and thus weren't affected.

Estimates of the effect of a raising the minimum wage on either employment of teenagers or restaurant workers are all over the place, depending on exactly how the estimation process is done, usually "small"--which in this case means "small enough that the earnings gains caused by a minimum wage increase are only partially offset by employment losses."

Of course, showing that past minimum wage increases had small effects in reducing employment doesn't prove that additional minimum wage increases would also have small effects. The usual belief of economists is that the effects of a rising minimum wage on employment would be small up to some point, but then start getting larger. That point is likely to vary according across states--which is why it makes some sense to have a different minimum wage across states.

At least one recent study has tried to focus on workers age 16-25 who have not completed high school--rather than teenagers in general. There some evidence a higher minimum wage might have a bigger effect on low-education workers in particular, rather than looking at teenagers or restaurant workers.

It's plausible that the effects of a higher minimum wage on employment might be larger in the long-term. For example, perhaps a firm doesn't fire anyone when the minimum wage rises, but instead just slow down on hiring. Or perhaps a minimum wage causes certain kinds of firms to be more likely to exit the market over time, or less likely to enter, or more likely to invest in labor-saving technology. Some studies have found support for these effects; others have not.

For some complementary discussion of the evidence on raising minimum wages in previous posts, see:

• "Raising the Minimum Wage: CBO Weighs In" (July 9, 2019)
• "Characteristics of US Minimum Wage Workers" (April 18, 2017)
• "Minimum Wages and the Law of Many Margins" (February 27 2013)

Overtime Rules

In contrast to minimum wage laws, overtime rules haven't changed much over time. Brown and Hamermesh write: "In the eighty years since the FLSA was enacted, the specification of its crucial parameters regulating hours—a penalty rate of 50 percent extra wages on hours beyond the standard weekly hours (HS) of forty—has not changed." Maybe the main way it has come up in recent policy disputes is when laws are proposed that employers should be able to give "comp time" for overtime work, meaning extra vacation time, instead of paying higher wages. 

But a big change in the overtime rules has been happening in a subtle way. Back in the mid-1970s, the rule was that a salaried worker had to be paid at least $455/week to be exempt from the requirement to get paid time-and-a-half for overtime. But that $455/week hasn't been changed since then, even though it's value has been eaten away by inflation. Brown and Hamermesh calculate that $455/week was about double the median weekly earnings in the US economy back in the mid-1970s; now, it's about 50% of median weekly earnings. 

To put this another way, it used to be that you had to be earning a salary of double the typical weekly earnings before you were exempt from overtime rules. Now, you can be paid a much lower salary, half of typical weekly earnings, and you are still exempt from the overtime rules. The rules requiring overtime pay thus have gradually come to apply to many fewer workers over time. The Obama administration tried to raise the limit to $913/week by using an administrative rule, but the courts held (reasonably enough, in my view) that this kind of decision needed to be made by Congress passing a law. Apparently the Trump administration has now proposed raising the limit to $679/week.

What would happen if the rules were changed so that dramatically more workers needed to be paid overtime for working more than 40 hours/week? Presumably, some of these workers would get paid overtime, but in addition, employers would try to reduce the number of workers who ended up above that weekly limit. Brown and Hamermesh run through various calculations and look at some international evidence. They write: "We can conclude that increasing the exempt limit would have raised some salaried workers' earnings and reduced their weekly hours. One exercise suggested that 12.5 million workers would have been affected ..." 

The effects of changing the rules so that more workers are eligible for overtime pay aren't enormous. Still, for workers who are being paid salaries below the median weekly wage, and thus aren't eligible for overtime, it could be a meaningful gain. They write:

If we are interested in spreading work among more people and removing the United States from its current position as the international champion among wealthy countries in annual work time per worker, minor tinkering with current overtime laws will do little. We might borrow from some of the panoply of European mandates that alter the amount and timing of work hours. Among these are penalties for work on weekends, evenings, and nights and limits on annual overtime hours, while lengthening the accounting period for overtime beyond the current single week. If our goal is to spread work and make for a more relaxed society, these changes will help but their effects will also be small.

____________

Table of Contents
RSF: Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
December 2019; Volume 5, Issue 5
"Improving Employment and Earnings in Twenty-First Century Labor Markets"

• "Improving Employment and Earnings in Twenty-First Century Labor Markets: An Introduction," by Erica L. Groshen and Harry J. Holzer (pp. 1-19).
• "From Immigrants to Robots: The Changing Locus of Substitutes for Workers," by George J. Borjas and Richard B. Freeman (pp. 22-42), 
• "Public Universities: The Supply Side of Building a Skilled Workforce," by John Bound, Breno Braga, Gaurav Khanna, and Sarah Turner (pp. 43-66). 
• "Wages and Hours Laws: What Do We Know? What Can Be Done?" by Charles C. Brown and Daniel S. Hamermesh (pp.  68-87)
• "Unions, Worker Voice, and Management Practices: Implications for a High-Productivity, High-Wage Economy," by Thomas A. Kochan and William T. Kimball (pp. 88-108)
• "Making Ends Meet: The Role of Informal Work in Supplementing Americans' Income," by Katharine G. Abraham and Susan N. Houseman (pp. 110-131)
• "Understanding Trends in Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States," by Lawrence F. Katz and Alan B. Krueger (pp. 132-146) 
• "Understanding the Present and Future of Work in the Fissured Workplace Context," by David Weil (pp. 147-165)
• "Gender in the Labor Market: The Role of Equal Opportunity and Family-Friendly Policies," by Elizabeth L. Doran, Ann P. Bartel, and Jane Waldfogel (pp. 168-197)
• "Race in the Labor Market: The Role of Equal Employment Opportunity and Other Policies," by William M. Rodgers III (pp. 198-220) 
• "Disconnected Young Adults: Increasing Engagement and Opportunity," by Pamela Loprest, Shayne Spaulding, and Demetra Smith Nightingale (pp. 221-243

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

EPI: Welcome developments on limiting non-compete agreements: A growing consensus leads to new state laws, a possible FTC rule making, and a strong bipartisan Senate bill [feedly]

This is a big deal in all "human capital" occupations where the employer plunges the employee into indentured servitude as long a "proprietary idea" resides in his head -- even if the employee is the author or co author of the IDEA. Ideas should NOT be property.

Welcome developments on limiting non-compete agreements: A growing consensus leads to new state laws, a possible FTC rule making, and a strong bipartisan Senate bill
https://www.epi.org/blog/welcome-developments-on-limiting-non-compete-agreements-a-growing-consensus-leads-to-new-state-laws-a-possible-ftc-rule-making-and-a-strong-bipartisan-senate-bill/

There is a growing bipartisan consensus that non-compete agreements harm workers and the economy. This bipartisanship scarcely seemed possible back in 2015 when we were government lawyers coordinating investigations by the Offices of the Illinois and New York Attorneys General into Jimmy John's use of non-compete agreements for sandwich makers and delivery drivers. But earlier this month, in what seems like the first bipartisan federal effort in far too long, Senators Todd Young (R-Ind.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) introduced a bipartisan bill that would effectively stop the abuse of non-compete agreements. This builds on a year in which six state legislatures also passed significant non-compete reforms.

The growing use of non-compete agreements

Employer use of non-compete agreements has mushroomed in recent years. These agreements prevent people from working for their former employer's competitors, and they were once used sparingly to prevent, for example, executives with trade secrets or confidential business information from sharing them with new employers. Now, they're often used indiscriminately to chill job mobility for employees with no access to such information. A 2015 study found that 40% of Americans have had a non-compete agreement at some point in their career. As lawyers, we've worked on cases involving non-compete agreements used for janitors, receptionists, customer service workers, fledgling journalists, even employees of a day care center.

Why are non-compete agreements so bad? They fly in the face of our fundamental American belief that anyone can work hard, gain skills, and move on to a better opportunity to build a better life. Non-compete agreements can trap workers in jobs they want to leave—whether because of sexual harassment or other poor working conditions, or even just a bad boss. They limit the talent pool, preventing employers from hiring the best worker for the job. Non-compete agreements can also stifle economic dynamism, blocking people from starting their own businesses.

Workers' inability to leave their jobs because of non-compete agreements and similar limitations has also contributed to the wage stagnation of recent decades. Two studies released just last month found that non-compete agreements adversely affected wages and job mobility. This makes sense, given that the agreements erode the leverage that workers typically get from the threat of leaving their jobs to work elsewhere. That threat is now empty for millions of Americans subject to these provisions, showing that non-compete agreements aren't really about trade secrets anymore. They're about limiting workers' bargaining power.

A new Senate bill could restore bargaining power

The new Senate bill, the Workforce Mobility Act of 2019, is notably robust, and should attract bipartisan support, from legislators motivated by concerns about economic liberty and entrepreneurialism as well as those focused on job quality and workers' rights. The bill contains the following key provisions:

• Prohibition of non-compete agreements: The bill would prohibit use of non-compete agreements in almost all situations. The bill also declares that non-compete agreements are unenforceable. (While the bill does not explicitly address whether non-compete agreements already entered into would be automatically rendered unenforceable on the effective date, the plain language suggests that they would not be grandparented in.)
• Limited exceptions: The bill contains limited exceptions that in our view are minimal and sensible, allowing for use of non-compete agreements with regard to owners and senior executives in the sale of a business.
• Trade secrets: The bill explicitly permits employers to protect trade secrets by requiring workers to sign more limited agreements not to disclose such secrets.
• Enforcement: If enacted, the law against non-compete agreements would be enforced collaboratively by both the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the United States Department of Labor (DOL). The bill also provides for civil fines of $5,000 per week of violation, and creates a private right of action, with damages and attorneys' fees available for successful lawsuits.
• Public education and outreach: Given the lack of knowledge of many workers about workplace rights, the bill sensibly contains outreach and public education provisions, requiring employers to post a notice and also requiring the Labor Secretary to conduct outreach specifically on this issue.
• Regulations: The bill would allow the Labor Secretary to promulgate regulations.
• Reporting: The bill requires a report from the two enforcement agencies one year after the Labor Secretary issues regulations.

Other efforts to curb non-compete agreements

This strong bill comes in the context of many other efforts to curb non-compete agreements. At the federal level, the FTC is reviewing a petition submitted by the Open Markets Institute along with numerous labor groups and law professors, seeking a rule prohibiting non-compete agreements; a group of senators also urged the FTC to take this action. The FTC appears to be seriously considering the petition. Although last month in congressional testimony, FTC Chairman Joseph Simons saidhis team "couldn't find enough existing economic literature to justify a rulemaking," he also noted that the Commission would continue to examine the issue.

Meanwhile, in the past several years, over 10 states have passed laws limiting employers' ability to impose non-compete agreements on their employees. Many of these laws, including those reforms passed in Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington, ban non-compete agreements or make them unenforceable for some or most workers in the state based on their income. States like Illinois exclude only low-wage workers while others, like Washington, bar non-compete agreements for any worker earning up to $100,000 annually. Other states have recently limited use of non-compete agreements for certain professions such as physicians (like in Florida), broadcasters (like in Utah), and home health care aides (like in Connecticut). State reforms also vary in terms of whether they specify a time limit for the duration of non-compete agreements and whether an employer has to pay money to workers while a non-compete agreement is in effect.

In addition, some states have other types of limitations for non-compete agreements. They've long been unenforceable in California; also, in most states, even without a statute on point, courts will generally only uphold a non-compete agreement if it protects an employer's legitimate business interest and is reasonably limited in duration and geographic scope. The issue, of course, is that non-compete agreements are rarely reviewed by courts so this case-by-case approach is insufficient.

State and federal policy recommendations

At the federal level, the Senate bill and FTC petition are both positive developments that have the potential to address the abuse of non-compete agreements in a nationwide and holistic way that addresses both their individual and market harms.

Meanwhile, more states can and should continue to act on this issue. Indeed, a bill was just introduced in the District of Columbia to ban non-compete agreements for individuals paid below $87,654 (3 times D.C.'s minimum wage). Here are some important considerations as policymakers consider their options:

• Non-compete agreements should be prohibited, not just unenforceable. This distinction is important, because if they are unenforceable, this just means that they won't be upheld if they are challenged in court. But most non-compete agreements never make it to court: workers assume they are valid or, even if they suspect the non-compete is too broad, most workers can't afford to take on the risk and expense of possible litigation. This results in a chilling effect, as workers stay in their jobs regardless of the actual legality of their non-compete agreement. It also fails to disincentivize employers from using overly broad non-compete agreements; the worst that can happen is that the provision would be found invalid.
• For this same reason, there should be penalties available for employers that include illegal or unenforceable non-compete agreements in their employment contracts.
• Non-compete agreements should be prohibited ideally for all workers, or for the vast majority of workers. Some states have limited the prohibition only for very low-wage workers. This approach does not address the larger impact on job mobility and competition, as well as basic fairness, as we have previously written. Non-compete agreements should also be prohibited for independent contractors and interns, as states like Washington have done.
• Given limited public enforcement resources, laws should include a private right of action with attorneys' fees. Legislators concerned about excessive litigation should note that this is not a complex topic and should be easy for employers to comply with: all they have to do is not include a non-compete agreement in their employment contracts.
• States that do decide to permit non-compete agreements for certain categories of workers or in certain circumstances, should consider:
  • Adopting a relatively high, and also very clear, income cutoff below which employees cannot be subject to a non-compete agreement. This kind of bright-line rule is much more administrable for employers, workers, and enforcers, and leads to less litigation.
  • Specifying that non-compete agreements must be clearly and fully disclosed to workers at the time a job offer is made, not after a job is accepted or after work has begun.
  • Requiring, as Washington does, that employers pay workers a mandatory set amount (a reasonable percentage of their salary) during the time any non-compete agreement is in effect. This type of payment, known as "garden leave," serves two important purposes: it provides income to a worker whose earnings are limited or nonexistent because of a non-compete agreement, and it creates a disincentive for employers to include such terms in their contracts, causing them to actually consider whether a non-compete agreement is truly needed to protect business interests.
  • Clarifying that all non-compete agreements must still conform to that state's case law, used only to protect a legitimate business interest, and reasonable in terms of duration and geographic scope.

Whether the new federal proposals gain traction or the states continue to lead on non-compete agreements, it's good to see that there are still some issues so fundamental to our economic well-being that policymakers can find allies across the aisle.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Larry Summers: Warren’s plan to finance Medicare-for-all pushes into dangerous and uncharted territory [feedly]

This post is a perfect illustration of why it is always a mistake NOT to read Larry Summers. His critique is highly skeptical of Senator Warren's (and also Senator Sanders and other M4A advocates) health care universality programs. Further he is just as skeptical of the other very large regulatory, financial and labor market shocks embedded in the large scale economic restructuring envisioned in the emerging progressive Democratic Party platform agenda. The blowback from markets, it can be inferred, is not going to be abstract or academic.

On the other hand, Summers, kinda like Biden, has really ONLY a return to Obamacare enhanced with a public option. I am good with that as a pause in the DROP in coverage going on now. But is there really a path back to that state that the Rs cannot sabotage in the manner already demonstrated?

Summers cautions should be taken VERY seriously. He knows what he is talking about to the Nth degree. But there is no challenge here greather than that faced by the depression and World War II, is there? If the country is mobilized to reform, train, defend against climate change, bring MORE equality and lift all boats, mountains can be climbed and crossed. But THATS what its gonna take, seems to me.

Warren's plan to finance Medicare-for-all pushes into dangerous and 

uncharted territory
Larry Summers

http://larrysummers.com/2019/11/07/warrens-plan-to-finance-medicare-for-all-pushes-into-dangerous-and-uncharted-territory/

Warren's plan to finance Medicare-for-all pushes into dangerous and uncharted territory

0

 

 

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November 5, 2019

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren last week mounted a passionate defense of universal government-provided health care and made a detailed case that it can be paid for without burdening the middle class. The vision of Medicare-for-all is immensely attractive and evokes health systems in other countries that perform much better than ours does. I could easily imagine supporting a well-designed Medicare-for-all plan.

However, no other country offers as broad coverage as Medicare-for-all would or claims to provide universal health insurance without taxing its middle class. With respect to the admirably detailed plan the Massachusetts senator laid out, there will, I suspect, be serious questions about the accuracy of her arithmetic, the impact on labor markets, the feasibility of applying Warren's full set of proposed taxes to the rich, and the financial and economic impacts of the plan.

Campaign arithmetic is always optimistic, but errors are highly consequential with respect to a program that on some measures is eight times as large as the Trump tax cut. Warren estimates the revenue potential of increased Internal Revenue Service enforcement as being about 65 times as large as the Congressional Budget Office's enforcement proposal. The University of Pennsylvania's Natasha Sarin and I have been working to make the case that the CBO is far too pessimistic in its estimates of the potential for better enforcement to generate revenue. But the most optimistic scenario we can envision is still more than $1 trillion short of the Warren estimate.

Further, Warren's plan would double the 3 percent tax on wealth over $1 billion that she has already proposed. Many experts believe the Warren wealth-tax revenue estimates are too high, perhaps by a factor of two, because they overestimate the wealth of the very rich and, as Sarin and I have argued, underestimate potential avoidance. Whatever the merits of these arguments, it is hard to see a defense for assuming — as the Warren proposal does — that wealth taxes can be doubled with no impact on avoidance, or that annual capital gains taxes can be levied without reducing the wealth tax base. The estimates are also infected by erroneous transcription of the CBO's 10-year growth estimates and by a general failure to take account of interactions between the different tax measures proposed.

Second, there will be large labor market effects: Warren's plan will discourage hiring, particularly of low-skilled workers, by firms that currently provide generous benefits. These firms will face the most burdensome taxes when they increase hiring and will gain the greatest cost savings by laying off workers. In addition, workers' incentives to take jobs will be dulled because they will no longer be compensated with health benefits (which will become available regardless of what they do). There are further potential economic perversities as well: To cut costs, firms will be incentivized to get below the 50-employee threshold and scale back on current health benefits. And all the efforts that employers have engaged in to contain costs and to encourage prevention will become pointless.

Third, the combined tax impact of Warren's various plans is extreme. While the case for more tax progressivity is compelling, and each of the Warren measures can be defended in isolation, there is the concern that their cumulative impact may be excessive should, as the Warren campaign repeatedly claims, they be borne only by the very wealthy. Here is a suggestive comparison: The total after-tax adjusted gross income of all those earning more than $1 million or more, as last reported by the IRS in its Statistics of Income publication, was under $1.1 trillion. The sum of all the new taxes on the wealthy proposed by Warren is of comparable magnitude: adding together around $310 billion a year in new wealth taxes; $330 billion a year in corporate taxes from her new proposals and her previous real corporate profits taxes; $240 billion a year from her new capital gains and finance tax proposals; at least $90 billion from her across-the-board 14.8 percent taxes of labor and investment income; and $190 billion in increased compliance. This totals nearly $1.2 trillion — more than millionaires' total after-tax income.

Of course, this calculation is an oversimplification. Different taxpayers are situated differently and will be affected differently by any set of proposals. There will be tax collections from those who are not middle class but still earn less than $1 million a year. There are sources of "income" that will be taxed under the Medicare-for-all proposal that do not show up in current adjusted gross income — unrealized capital gains or corporate retained earnings, for example. On the other hand, it's highly problematic given the avoidance and other bad incentives likely to result, to be anywhere in the ballpark of confiscatory taxation of high-income taxpayers.

Finally, what of the economic and financial effects of Warren's proposals? A place to start is by thinking about the potential impact on the stock market. The market is valued as investors' claim on future corporate earnings, which the Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates are about $1.8 trillion this year. As a result of all the tax claims just described, the Warren program would reduce investors' claim on these earnings. Recognizing that some of these taxes fall on salary income or non-corporate business, it is reasonable to estimate that investors will pay an extra $500 billion to $600 billion in taxes related to corporate profits. Then, Medicare-for-all proponents cite a severe hit to health industry profits, currently on track to be over $200 billion this year. Then, there will be the broader impacts of overhauling regulation, often to serve vital social interests, in initiatives such as banning fracking and reforming the energy industry, stepping up financial regulation, a major increase in antitrust enforcement and the regulation of technology companies, and filling corporate board seats with labor representatives. It is hard to see an argument that investors' claim on profits would fall less than a third. The figure could be considerably greater.

Because of abnormally high valuations, along with increased uncertainty and volatility, loss of business confidence and selling pressure from those in distress, the market would likely fall more than proportionally to earnings. Accurate market predictions are impossible and will in any event depend not on what is proposed but on what the market expects will actually take place. There is, however, the real risk of economic contraction following a sharp market decline, especially given that the current very low level of interest rates puts the Fed in a weak position to pursue counter-cyclical policy.

For decades, I have emphasized that corporate profits and the market do better when progressives are in power and have dismissed conservative fear-mongering about progressive policies.

This time seems different. Judged relative to gross domestic product, the Medicare-for-all program dwarfs the federal spending hikes of the New Deal and the Great Society. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson emphasized that their new benefits would be paid for by contributions from their middle-class beneficiaries. With Warren's plan, it is the combination of vast new entitlements with total reliance on the top 1 percent for revenue that puts us in uncharted and, I fear, dangerous territory.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

The Roundup Case: Problems with Implementing Science-Based Policy [feedly]

The Roundup Case: Problems with Implementing Science-Based Policy
http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-roundup-case-problems-with.html

The Roundup Case: Problems with Implementing Science-Based Policy

Imagine, just for the sake of argument, that you are open-minded about the question of whether the weed-killer Roundup (long produced by Monsanto, which was recently acquired by Bayer AG) causes cancer. You want to make a decision based on scientific evidence. However, you aren't a scientist yourself, and you don't feel competent at trying to read scientific studies.

Geoffrey Kabat asks "Who's Afraid of Roundup?" in the Fall 2019 issue of Issues in Science and Technology. More broadly, he uses the controversy over Roundup as a way to ask about the role of science in decision-making.

When it comes to Roundup and its active ingredient glyphosate, the Environmental Protection Agency has continually said that "there are no risks to public health when glyphosate is used in accordance with its current label and that glyphosate is not a carcinogen." As Kabat points out:

The US Environmental Protection Agency's recent assessment is only the latest in a succession of reports from national regulatory agencies, as well as international bodies, that support the safety of glyphosate. These include Health Canada, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the European Chemicals Agency, Germany's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, as well as health and regulatory agencies of France, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Brazil.

But just when you find yourself deeply relieve that the experts have reached a consensus, you ind that one agency disagrees. In 2015, International Agency for Research on Cancer listed glyphosate is a "probable carcinogen." There are lots of reasons to be dubious about the IARC decision, and to believe the consensus of all the other agencies around the world, and Kabat runs through quite a list. Here are a few of his points:

• Unlike the other health-and-safety agencies, the IARC ignores the size of the dose. Thus, for example, when IARC evaluated 500 agents and chemicals while ignoring the size of the dose, it found that 499 of them were possible carcinogens. Other agencies take the dose into account.
• The IARC evaluation looked only at certain parts of some studies of how glyphosate affected rodents. Reanalysis of the same studies found that the "IARC Working Group that conducted the assessment selected a few positive results in one sex and used an inappropriate statistical test to declare some tumor increases significant."
• There is a major study funded by the National Cancer Institute looking at 54,000 pesticide applicators in Iowa and North Carolina. " Indeed, when the results for glyphosate and cancer incidence  ... were finally published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, in 2018, the paper reported no significant increases ..." 
• A key scientist for the IARC process both led the way in designating glyphosate as a substance to be studied and in writing the IARC report. Then two weeks after the report came out, this scientist "signed a lucrative contract to act as a litigation consultant with a law firm—Lundy, Lundy, Soileau, and South—engaged in bringing lawsuits against Monsanto for Roundup exposure."

In a bigger picture sense, the actual science over Roundup and glyphosate becomes almost irrelevant  to the public disputes. The scientific question of whether glyphosate is a carcinogen is treated as identical to the question of whether one is anti-pesticide, anti-genetic modification, and anti-Big Agriculture.

The result is  what the head of the European Food Safety Authority called "the Facebook age of science." As background, the European agencies are well-known for their willingness to invoke the "precautionary principle"--basically, if we aren't sure and it might cause a problem, we should prohibit it. In this spirit, a group of almost 100 scientists wrote to EFSA to complain about their decision allowing glyphosate. Here's how Bernhard Url, the head of EFSA, responded:

You have a scientific assessment, you put it on Facebook, and you count how many people 'like' it. For [EFSA], this is no way forward. We produce a scientific opinion, we stand for it, but we cannot take into account whether it will be liked or not. ... People that have not contributed to the work, that have not seen the evidence most likely, that have not had the time to go into the detail, that are not in the process, have signed a letter of support [for a ban on glyphosate]. Sorry to say that, for me, with this you leave the domain of science, you enter into the domain of lobbying and campaigning. And this is not the way EFSA goes.

Roundup is of course just one product, but the issue of how science will be used in public policy is of course much broader. For example, if a lawsuit alleges that Roundup causes cancer, the truth of that accusation presumably matters. As Kabat points out, it "should come as no surprise that the same factors that are at work here are at work in many other areas, whether electromagnetic fields, cell phone `radiation,' so-called endocrine disrupting chemicals, numerous aspects of diet, cosmetic talc, GMOs, vaccines, nuclear power, or climate change."

In my own contentious way, I find it especially interesting when people make strong appeals to a  scientific consensus in one area, but then dismiss it in other areas. For example, those who  believe that action should be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sometimes accuse their opponents of denying "the science." But on occasion, it then turns out that those who wrap themselves in the mantle of "the science" when it comes to climate change turn out to oppose vaccinations or Roundup. The idea of whether to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline across Canada and into the United States went through multiple environmental reviews during the Obama administration, each one finding it would not have a negative effect. For those protesting the pipeline, like for those writing group letters to the European regulators about glyphosate, the "science" was only acceptable if it supported their prior beliefs.

One of my favorite examples about the "science" and popular beliefs involves the irradiation of food. For a quick overview, Tara McHugh describes "Realizing the Benefits of Food Irradiation" in the September 2019 issue of Food Technology Magazine. As she notes, the Food and Drug Administration recently approved irradiation for fresh fruits and vegetables, and it had already been approved for a range of other food products. McHugh writes:

The global food irradiation market was valued at $200 million in 2017 and was projected by Coherent Market Insights to grow at a 4.9% combined annual growth rate from 2018 to 2026. This projects the market size to rise to $284 million by 2026. This high growth rate was envisioned due to increased consumer acceptance since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved phytosanitary treatment of fresh fruits and vegetables by irradiation. The food irradiation market in Asia is also growing very rapidly owing to approval of government agencies in India and other countries. Presently over 40 countries have approved applications to irradiate over 40 different foods. More than half a million tons of food is irradiated around the globe each year. About a third of the spices and seasonings used in the United States are irradiated.

It would be interesting to see a Venn diagram showing how many of those who believe in "the science" when it comes to climate change also believe in "the science" when it comes to the safety of Roundup, vaccinations, or irradiating food. Or perhaps there is a human cognitive bias which is more prone to believe "the science" when it warns of danger, but less likely to believe "the science" when it tells us that something we believe to be dangerous (or something that we oppose on other grounds) is actually safe. 

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

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Dean Baker: Elizabeth Warren's Excellent Opening Gambit on Medicare for All [feedly]

Elizabeth Warren's Excellent Opening Gambit on Medicare for All
http://cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/elizabeth-warren-s-excellent-opening-gambit-on-medicare-for-all

Dean Baker
CNN, November 1, 2019

See article on original site

Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have set themselves apart from the Democratic presidential field in explicitly advocating Medicare for All proposals. Under their plans, an expanded Medicare system would fully cover everyone in the country. There would be no co-pays, deductibles and premiums — and no private insurance.

Warren has repeatedly been asked how she would pay for this plan. She had resisted saying that she would raise taxes and insisted that costs for the middle-class would go down. On Friday she outlined how this can be done.

The first part of her plan proposes cutting administrative costs. The administrative costs of private insurers are more than 25% of what they pay out in benefits each year. By contrast, the administrative costs of Medicare are less than 3% of what is paid in benefits. The potential savings from getting administrative costs for the whole system down to that of Medicare is close to $3 trillion over the next decade.

The current system imposes large administrative costs on hospitals, doctors' offices, nursing homes and other facilities that need additional staff to deal with complex billing arrangements. These unnecessary administrative expenditures can exceed 20% of total payments. If administrative costs at providers were reduced to Canada's levels (a country with universal coverage), it could save another $2.1 trillion over the next decade.

Warren also proposes large reductions in payments to health care providers. Patients in the US pay drug companies, medical equipment manufacturers, doctors and other providers on average roughly twice as much as in other wealthy countries.

The biggest chunk of her projected savings is on prescription drugs, where she proposes to reduce prices for brand drugs by 70% and generic drugs by 30%. She has likely underestimated the potential savings from these price reductions, since her calculations leave out the roughly $100 billion spent annually on drugs by hospitals, nursing facilities and other providers.

Even with these and other cost savings, Warren projects that the federal government will need another $20 trillion to cover her Medicare for All proposal. She calculates that $9 trillion of this gap will come from the premiums that employers now pay for their workers' health insurance. Employers, she reasons, should not care whether they are paying this money to insurers or the federal government.

This still leaves a gap of $11 trillion, or roughly 5% of GDP. She proposes to fill it with a financial transactions tax, an increase in the corporate income tax, reduced tax avoidance and a wealth tax on the country's very richest people.

Does it all add up?

There are a lot of moving parts here, each of which involves practical as well as political problems. Squeezing payments for pharmaceutical companies (we should do the same for medical equipment companies) will lead to lower spending on research. The government can make this up with additional funding to the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies. Still, the prospect of reduced privately funded research is an issue.

Similarly, lower payments for doctors may lead some to try to practice outside the system. Warren would want to make this difficult, but most likely doctors will have the legal option to practice on their own and charge whatever they want. Some well-connected doctors will likely do this.

There are issues with the planned funding mechanisms. It makes more sense just to charge employers a set percentage of wages rather than base payments on historic insurance premiums. In addition, a wealth tax may prove problematic for a variety of reasons.

However, we should realize this is an opening gambit, not a finished product. The final version of the Affordable Care Act was 2,300 pages when it went to a vote. It is unlikely that a Medicare for All bill will be any shorter.

Warren's proposal is not the final word. But it is an excellent first draft that provides a basis for future debate.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed