Krugman: Gnawing Away at Health Care [feedly]

Gnawing Away at Health Care
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/07/opinion/republicans-obamacare-health-care.html

At the beginning of 2017, Republicans promised to release the kraken on Obamacare — to destroy the program with one devastating blow. But a funny thing happened: Voters realized that repealing the Affordable Care Act would mean taking health insurance away from tens of millions of Americans. They didn't like that prospect — and enough Republicans balked at the backlash that Obamacare repeal fizzled.

But Republicans still hate the idea of helping Americans get health care. So instead of releasing the kraken, they've brought on the termites. Rather than trying to eliminate Obamacare in one fell swoop, they're trying to undermine it with multiple acts of sabotage — while hoping voters won't realize who's responsible for rising premiums and falling coverage.

Which is why it's important to place the blame where it belongs.

The first thing you need to understand is that Obamacare has been a highly successful program. When the legislation was passed, Republicans insisted it would fail to cut the number of uninsured and would blow a huge hole in the federal budget. In fact, it led to major gains in coverage, reducing the uninsured rate to its lowest level in history, at relatively low cost.

It's true that the coverage expansion was somewhat less than originally predicted, although the shortfall was much less than you may have heard. It's also true that after initially offering surprisingly cheap policies on the Obamacare exchanges, insurers found that the people signing up were sicker, on average, than they expected, leading to higher premiums. But as of last year, the markets appeared to have stabilized, with insurers generally profitable.

Nobody would claim that Obamacare is perfect; many Americans remain uninsured, and too many of those with coverage face troublingly high out-of-pocket expenses. Still, health reform delivered most of what its advocates promised and caused none of the disasters its opponents predicted.

Yet Republicans still want to destroy it. One reason is that much of the coverage expansion was paid for with taxes on high incomes, so repeal would be a way to cut taxes on the wealthy. More broadly, conservatives hate Obamacare precisely because it works. It shows that government actually can help tens of millions of Americans lead better, more secure lives, and in so doing it threatens their low-tax, small-government ideology.

But outright repeal failed, so now it's time for sabotage, which is taking place on two main fronts.

One of these fronts involves the expansion of Medicaid, which probably accounted for more than half the gains in coverage under Obamacare. Now a number of Republican-controlled states are trying to make Medicaid harder to get, notably by imposing work requirements on recipients.

What is the point of these work requirements? The ostensible justification — cracking down on able-bodied Medicaid recipients who should be working but aren't — is nonsense: There are very few people meeting that description. The real goal is simply to make getting health care harder, by imposing onerous reporting and paperwork requirements and punishing people who lose their jobs for reasons beyond their control.


The other front involves trying to reduce the number of people signing up for private coverage. Last year the Trump administration drastically reduced outreach — the effort to let Americans know when and how to get health insurance.

The administration is also promoting various dodges that would in effect let insurance companies go back to discriminating against people in poor health. And when Congress passed a huge tax cut for corporations and the wealthy, it also eliminated the individual mandate, the requirement that people sign up for insurance even if they're currently healthy.

Preliminary evidence suggests that these efforts at sabotage have already partially reversed the coverage gains achieved under Obama, especially among lower-income Americans. (Curiously, all the coverage losses seem to have happened among self-identified Republicans.) But the worst is yet to come.

You see, G.O.P. sabotage disproportionately discourages young and healthy people from signing up, which, as one commentator put it, "drives up the cost for other folks within that market." Who said that? Tom Price, President Trump's first secretary of health and human services.

Sure enough, insurers are already proposing major premium hikes — and they are specifically attributing those hikes to G.O.P. actions that are driving healthy Americans out of the market, leaving a sicker, more expensive pool behind.

So here's what's going to happen: Soon, many Americans will suffer sticker shock from their insurance policies; federal subsidies will protect most of them, but by no means everyone. They'll also hear news about declining insurance coverage. And Republicans will say, "See, Obamacare is failing."

But the problem isn't with Obamacare, it's with the politicians who unleashed this termite infestation — who are doing all they can to take away your health coverage. And they need to be held accountable.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

May Day 2018: A Rising Tide of Worker Militancy and Creative Uses of Marx [feedly]

May Day 2018: A Rising Tide of Worker Militancy and Creative Uses of Marx
https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/07/05/2018/may-day-2018-rising-tide-worker-militancy-and-creative-uses-marx

International Workers' Day grew out of 19th century working-class struggles in the United States for better working conditions and the establishment of an eight-hour workday. May 1 was chosen by the international labor movement as the day to commemorate the Haymarket massacre in May 1886. Ever since, May 1 has been a day of working-class marches and demonstrations throughout the world, although state apparatuses in the United States do their best to erase the day from public awareness.

In the interview below, one of the world's leading radical economists, Jawaharlal Nehru University Professor Jayati Ghosh, who is also an activist closely involved with a range of progressive and radical social movements, discusses the significance of May Day with C.J. Polychroniou for Truthout. She also analyzes how different and challenging the contemporary economic and political landscape has become in the age of global neoliberalism, examining the new forms of class struggle that have surfaced in recent years and what may be needed for the re-emergence of a new international working-class movement.

C.J. Polychroniou: Jayati, each year, people all over the world march to commemorate International Worker's Day, or May 1. In your view, how does the economic and political landscape on May Day, 2018, compare to those of past May Days?

Jayati Ghosh: Ever since the eruption of workers' struggles on May 1, 1886, commemorating May Day each year reminds us of what organized workers' movements can achieve. Over more than a century, these struggles progressively won better conditions for labor in many countries. But such victories -- and even such struggles -- have now become much harder than they were. Globalization of trade, capital mobility and financial deregulation have weakened dramatically the bargaining power of labor vis-à-vis capital. Perversely, this very success of global capitalism has weakened its ability to provide more rapid or widespread income expansion. As capitalism breeds and results in greater inequality, it loses sources of demand to provide stimulus for accumulation, and it also generates greater public resentment against the system.

The trouble is that, instead of workers everywhere uniting against the common enemy/oppressor, they are turned against one another. Workers are told that mobilizing and organizing for better conditions will simply reduce jobs because capital will move elsewhere; local residents are led to resent migrants; people are persuaded that their problems are not the result of the unjust system but are because of the "other" -- defined by nationality, race, gender, religion, ethnic or linguistic identity. So this is a particularly challenging time for workers everywhere in the world. Confronting this challenge requires more than marches to commemorate May Day; it requires a complete reimagining of the idea of workers unity and reinvention of forms of struggle.

There is a rising tide of worker militancy in many parts of the world, including the US, which is the capital of neoliberalism, although labor unions seem to be on the decline. Do you think that we are in the midst of new forms of class struggle in the 21st century?

I believe that everywhere the neoliberal economic model has lost popular legitimacy, and the rise of worker militancy in many parts of the world reflects this. But there are simultaneously many other conflicting strands emerging that seek to divert public discontent into other avenues, such as extreme nationalist positions that blame foreigners for many social ills. Mass media (including new social media) have to take a very large share of the blame for this: They feed into systems of resentment that are directed against other people rather than against capital or against systemic injustice.

But also, while there is no doubt that the decline of labor unions has had devastating effects on both societies and possibilities of inclusive economies, there was much that was wrong with the traditional unions -- which may explain why they find relatively little traction today. Typical unions in much of the world tended to be male-centric and oblivious to other forms of social discrimination. They focused on men working in defined workplaces and rarely took up the issues and concerns of more casual workers who did not have clearly defined work locations or employers. They did not even recognize the crucial economic activities performed by (unpaid) women within households and communities as work. They rarely bothered about differentials in wages and working conditions for different social categories, and therefore often accentuated these differences across workers.

Reviving such unions would hardly be in the interest of the mass of workers today. Indeed, such unions are even now far more likely to fall into the trap of socially revanchist, nationalist and regressive political forces that generate more unpleasant and more unequal societies. The progressive associations of workers that are necessary in the contemporary world must be quite different: They must recognize, appreciate and value social and cultural differences across workers without allowing those differences to feed into economic inequalities; they must oppose the gender construction of societies and economies by recognizing all those who work to be workers, whether or not they get paid in monetary terms; they must operate in more democratic and accountable ways to keep the trust of their membership; they must take note of inter-generational inequalities in order to attract the youth and respond to their concerns.

This is the context in which the recent eruption of often spontaneous and wildcat strikes in the US and parts of Europe -- as well as farmers movements and other mass protests in many parts of the developing world -- provides a source of optimism. What is even more encouraging is that often these protests are finding wider social resonance, as public sympathy shifts increasingly in favor of the valid demands of protesters. While all of this is still very incipient, these could be straws in the wind for broader movements for progressive economic and social change.

Is Marxism still relevant in understanding and explaining global economic developments in the 21st century?

Some concepts developed by Marx are more relevant than ever in understanding contemporary capitalism. The most significant may be commodity fetishism: the idea that under capitalism, relations between people become mediated by relations between things -- that is commodities and money. The overwhelming focus on exchange value (rather than use value) means that exchange value gets seen as intrinsic to commodities rather than being the result of labor. Market-based interaction becomes the "natural" way of dealing with all objects, rather than a historically specific set of social relations. This is what creates commodity fetishism, which is an illusion emerging from the centrality of private property that determines not only how people work and interact, but even how they perceive reality and understand social change. The urge to acquire, the obsession with material gratification of wants and the ordering of human well-being in terms of the ability to command different commodities can all be described as forms of commodity fetishism. The obsession with GDP growth per se among policy makers and the general public, independent of the pattern or quality of such growth, is an extreme but widespread example of commodity fetishism today.

In terms of geopolitics, several Marxist notions are still hugely insightful. Marx spoke of the creation of the world market, which we now call globalization, as the natural result of the tendency of the capitalist system to spread and aggrandize itself, to destroy and incorporate earlier forms of production, and to transform technology and institutions constantly. Uneven development persists, even though the locations of such development may have changed. Similarly, "primitive accumulation" is a hugely useful concept, not just for understanding the past, but for interpreting the present.

The tendencies for the concentration and centralization of production have very strong contemporary resonance, even when such centralization and concentration is expressed through the geographical fragmentation of production (as in global value chains driven by large multinational companies) or in the sphere of non-material service delivery, or even through the commodification of knowledge and control of personal data for purposes of making profits.

Another concept that is still relevant is that of "alienation." For Marx, this was not an isolated experience of an individual person's feeling of estrangement from society or community, but a generalized state of the broad mass of wage workers. It can be expressed as the loss of control by workers over their own work, which means that they effectively cease to be autonomous human beings because they cannot control their workplace, the products they produce or even the way they relate to each other. Because this fundamentally defines their conditions of existence, this means that workers can never become autonomous and self-realized human and social beings under capitalism. Such alienation is blatantly obvious in factory work, but it also describes work that is apparently more independent, such as activities in the emerging "gig economy" that still deny workers effective control despite the illusion of autonomy.

How do you explain the decline of Marxism as an ideology?

It's interesting that you use the word "ideology" for Marxism, as this is quite different from the way Marx himself used the word -- he saw ideology as "false consciousness" in contrast to the objectively true "science" that he felt was embodied in his own work. Whatever one may think of that particular position, it is unfortunately the case that for some time Marxism also became an ideology in the Marxian sense, with quasi-religious overtones and an emphasis on canonical interpretations.

The decline of Marxism as a framework of thought and even belief is the result of a long process. Some factors are the result of the way Marxism itself evolved. For example, there was the reification of Marxist positions, the conversion of Marxist writing into a "canon" around which there have been endless often very esoteric (though no less passionate) debates about precise meanings of terms. In the English-speaking world, such hair-splitting has been all the more bizarre because the arguments were based on English translations from the German original, which was itself often prone to multiple interpretations. This overly scholastic approach made the ideas very rigid and therefore less interesting. It also possibly dampened the intellectual creativity that characterized so much of Marx's own work.

Another -- possibly more powerful -- reason, was the very political use of Marx to justify particular strategies by those ruling different countries. This meant that particularly over the course of the 20th century, major political movements, dramatic changes in economic strategy, massive socio-political upheavals and drastic attempts at social engineering were all carried out in the name of Marx. As a result, both good and bad elements of such strategies all became identified with Marxism. Many people across the world who had little or no knowledge of Marx or his writing nevertheless associated him with not just revolutions but also their aftermath, and with particular social and political systems that operated in his name.

This tendency to pay lip service to a particular iconic figure or a set of well-known ideas is scarcely new or unusual. In India, for example, political parties and leaders of all persuasions routinely invoke the name of Mahatma Gandhi even when they indulge in activities that he would have abhorred and condemned. But because so many states in the second half of the 20th century defined themselves as Marxist, all their actions (and particularly their mistakes) then tainted the public image of Marxism. The invocation of his name still continues in some countries like China and Vietnam today, where officials and some scholars refer constantly to Marx without really using his concepts, and declare that because of their adherence to Marxist thought, socialism is inevitable -- even as they put in place the most blatantly neoliberal economic policies.

This use of the label of Marxism is hardly designed to attract the intellectually curious, the progressively-minded person in search of radical change or even the young. But what I find interesting is that -- despite such misappropriation -- the interest in Marx and his work has not completely died down or disappeared. Das Kapital (a huge, fiendishly difficult and often barely readable tome) is still in print almost everywhere in the world more than 150 years after its first volume was published. Generations of young people have picked up and still continue to pick up The Communist Manifesto and find arguments that appeal to them. The point is to stop thinking of Marxism as equivalent to a religion with irrefutable truths, and instead allow some of the more insightful concepts to inform our thought and analysis in creative ways.

The latest wave of resistance against capitalist globalization seems to be coming from the forces of the right and extreme nationalism. Why did the anti-globalization left movement fail, and should the left fear nationalism?

I hope that it is too early to say that the progressive/left anti-globalization movement has failed. It is true that currently, the forces ranged against globalization are dominated by unpleasant, divisive, extreme right movements that bring to mind (and typically celebrate) the fascist movements of interwar Europe. But they are not the only social/political forces around, and many people flock to these not because they inherently support them but because social democracy has failed so spectacularly in protecting people against the depredations of unregulated capital. History moves in cunning and complicated ways, so we may not always see other, more progressive forces beyond the bend in the river. This makes it easy to despair, but that is neither productive nor necessarily accurate.

One important aspect for progressives to bear in mind is that, while internationalism is essential, nationalism cannot be wished away. Most importantly, the nation-state is still the terrain on which citizenship is defined, which in turn determines the fights for all kinds of rights, including workers' rights, and the possibility of success in realizing such rights. Nation-states must also be the bulwark of the fight against imperialism, which remains as strong as ever despite its predicted demise. Nation-states allowed, enabled and drove neoliberal globalization, and gave greater power especially to large capital; nation-states must be used to claw back the rights of people, and be made more democratic and accountable to the citizenry. Workers of the world (of all kinds: paid and unpaid, recognized and unrecognized) must still unite, but they must first unite within the spaces (the nations) within which they can hope to achieve their rights. The basis for proletarian internationalism therefore has to be progressive and democratic nationalism.

 

 

 

C.J. Polychroniou is a political economist/political scientist who has taught and worked in universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. His main research interests are in European economic integration, globalization, the political economy of the United States and the deconstruction of neoliberalism's politico-economic project. He is a regular contributor to Truthout as well as a member of Truthout's Public Intellectual Project. He has published several books and his articles have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news websites. Many of his publications have been translated into several foreign languages, including Croatian, French, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish. He is the author of Optimism Over Despair: Noam Chomsky On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change, an anthology of interviews with Chomsky originally published at Truthout and collected by Haymarket Books.

This post first appeared on Truthout. 

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

The Crisis of the State in the Arab Region and the Rise of the Islamic State [feedly]

The Crisis of the State in the Arab Region and the Rise of the Islamic State
https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/08/05/2018/crisis-state-arab-region-and-rise-islamic-state

Islamic radical groups, such as the Islamic State, seem to have become the substitute for a failed regional order and failing domestic conditions.

The Middle East and North Africa is a competitive, fragmented and highly penetrated regional system. However, it is a place that lacks a security system and is unique for its absence of a region-wide architecture. 

The Arab League – the region's largest IGO – has been mobilized on numerous occasions, for a number of structural, political and ideological reasons but these efforts have failed. At the state level, the post-colonial state has failed to establish a fair model of governance. The region is dominated by authoritarian regimes and yet is also bereft of a hegemonic power able to impose its own will on the subsystem and therefore awash with rivalries. 

Thus, the region is characterized by inter-state rivalries and increasingly exposed to identity politics which is manifesting itself in inter-confessional and inter-communal conflicts. Consequently, signs of deep social trauma and crisis of identity and governance at both state and society levels are visible. 

Sub-communalization is taking place across the region, thus gradually eroding the hard won century-old national societies that independent states forcefully but carefully have put together. In addition, the region's 'contested' states seem to be unravelling into smaller communities of sects, religious affiliations, tribal groups, and ethnicities. 

The MENA region is suffering from an imbalance in the forces pushing for change – the peaceful mass mobilizations and the violent nihilistic ones. This is a region, which is at once both post-modern and pre-modern. Both post- and pre-modern forces compete for power.

The regional system is vulnerable to the actions of these sub-state and non-state actors and many of its states are suffering at the hands of violent jihadi groups who have stepped into the vacuum created by the weakening of the iron grip of the central government in several Arab countries.

Modernity as the norm for much of the twentieth century – in terms of rationality as a driver of decisions, transparent institutions of governance, rule of law, reliable public services (education, health, etc.), accountable public servants, functioning state institutions, enhancement of opportunity – has been taking a back seat in driving change in the region.

Power is fluid, unevenly distributed, and does not necessarily manifest itself in terms of such traditional indicators as the size of population, territory, economy (GNP), or geography; nor does the size of military budgets, of the armed forces, or military hardware provide sufficient indicators of power and influence. Indeed, in the twenty-first century, it seems to be the smaller Arab states who are outperforming their larger counterparts; and non-state actors making waves.

The region is still lacking alternative political forces able to fulfill the expectations of the people and achieve development and security. Eventually, the Islamic radical groups, such as the Islamic State, seem to have become the substitute for the past political forces in doing this mission.

Thus, violent-Salafism seems to be one of the most challenging issues that face the region. Salafism in the Islamic tradition was a reformist movement. It emerged at the end of the Abbasid Caliphate in the eleventh century. All called for the return to the true Islam, where the law of the divine is represented in Quran and Hadith (the teachings of the Prophet Mohammad).

Violent-Salafism is a relatively contemporary phenomenon. It was arguably introduced in the writings of the Egyptian Sayyid Quṭb (October 1906 – 29 August 1966), who came at a time when leftist radical movements were rising in Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. Sayyid Quṭb resented pan-Arab policies of the Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and called for regime change. Qutb introduced what is known as Global Jihad and was later arrested for plotting against President Nasser and executed in late August 1966.

The Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union in the 1980s became the life blood of violent-Salafism in the region. Yet the milestone arguably is the Kuwait crisis in 1990-1991. The occupation of Kuwait divided the Arab world. Furthermore, American soldiers were not welcomed in the Holy Land by the Arab mujahidin of Afghanistan who established their group, al-Qaeda, just two years earlier, in 1988. As a result, the Kuwait crisis provided the opportunity for these jihadi groups to operate in the region. When House of Saud rejected Osama Bin Laden's offer to defend the Holy Shrine, the latter vowed to attack the US and its allies.

The Algerian civil war (1991-2002) and the Bosnian war (1992-1995) had also their own share in the rise and the development of violent Salafism. However, the establishment of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan witnessed the birth of a new trend of global Jihad following Sayyid Quṭb's school of global Jihad. While the Taliban, the Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA) and Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) had locally based agendas in Afghanistan, Algeria and France, al-Qaeda unleashed radicalism onto the international scene. Al-Qaeda began to attack the US and its allies in the world. The first attack was on the US army residence Gold Mohur hotel in of Aden in 1992, followed by the bombing of the World Trade Centre in 1993, and the bombing of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar al-Salam in 1998. The most disastrous attacks were the attacks of 11 September 2001 in New York and Washington, DC.

The war on Iraq in 2003 brought about a new wave of global Jihad. The occupation of Baghdad was a major turning point for the pan-Arab and revolutionary forces in the region one that compares to the defeat of 1967 and the Israeli occupation of Beirut in 1982. 

The collapse of the Iraqi state provided the space where Jihadists can operate and attack the US and its allies in the region. Al-Zarqawi, an ex al-Qaeda member in Afghanistan, travelled to Iraqi Kurdistan in 2002 and established his network with the Jihadists there. In 2003, he and his followers began to attack the Americans and the Shiites. They called themselves Jamāʻat al-Tawḥīd wa-al-Jihād (The Organization of Monotheism and Jihad, initially established in 1999 by al-Zarqawi in Afghanistan). In 2004, the group pledged allegiance to Osama Bin Laden and changed its name to Tanẓīm Qāʻidat al-Jihād fī Bilād al-Rāfidayn, al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). 

The group played on sectarian tensions between the Shiite and the Sunni communities inside Iraq. It was calculating that if they attack the Shiite, which they did, they would retaliate by attacking the Sunnis, which they did. The Sunnis would then seek protection from al-Zarqawi and his followers, which they also did. This has been the group's usual strategy since the days of al-Zarqawi's leadership. By doing this, it would gain Sunni sympathy and it did so quite dramatically (see al-Zarqawi letter to Osama Bin Laden, 2004).

Al-Zarqawi was killed in an American air strike in June 2006. His death, though, did not decrease the group's vision of statehood. The Egyptian militant Abu Hamza al-Muhajir took over the lead. Later he will pledge allegiance to Abu Omar al-Baghdadi as the leader of what later became known as the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI), arguably to give the group an Iraqi flavor. Yet, as soon as the Sahawat were established by the Iraqi government and the US and composed of Sunni tribes that had cooperated with ISI, the Islamic State was driven out of the Sunni areas in 2006.

The civil war in Syria helped ISI to expand and flourish again. The armed conflict between al-Assad and the opposition, which started a few months after the peaceful protests in 2011 turned into what many Syrians now perceive as a sectarian war. The chaos attracted ISI. The group began to control areas in Syria between 2012 and 2013. As soon as it controlled Raqqa in 2013, it changed the name of the group to the Islamic State in Iraq and a-Sham (ISIS). And once Mosul fell under their control in the summer of 2014, the group began to call itself the Islamic State (IS).

IS transformed the Islamic Jihad within a short space of time. What al-Qaeda could not do in years, IS did in months, in terms of political and military successes and in terms of recruitment. This was partly due to the use of technology and social media, but also to the adoption of offensive Jihad, or Jihad al-Shauka, rather than defensive Jihad, or Jihad al-Nikaya as in the case of al-Qaeda, thus attracting scores of young people worldwide. 

The difference between the two forms of Jihad is that defensive Jihad aims to deter impairment, offensive Jihad on the other hand, features the work of Machiavelli in terms of land-control, the ends justify the means, and most importantly, fighting the near enemy – essentially any local or regional group that opposes the jihadi group or refuses to pledge allegiance to it.

Although IS has lost most of the territory it controlled in Syria and Iraq, it has not been defeated. The group rose on the aches of the regional disorder and the failure of the state, and these fertile conditions have not changed. Furthermore, violent Salafism acts as a catalyst for the entrenchment of other sub-state actors, like the Shiite militias, Iran's proxies in the region, mainly Hezbollah in Lebanon and recently operating in Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Popular Mobilization Units in Iraq. These Iranian-backed militias pose threats not only to the security of those countries they are operating in, but also to the stability of the entire region.

Leadership is still lacking and no solutions for the many regional problems are in sight. Meanwhile, with the lack or weakness of alternative forces able to fulfill the expectations of the people in the region, Islamic radical groups, such as the Islamic State, are appealing to the masses, and seem to have become the substitute for a failed regional order and failing domestic conditions. Thus, violent Salafism is a phenomenon that will continue to shape the politics of the region, irrespective of military offensives against its different adherers.

 

 

 

Anoush Ehteshami is professor of international relations and head of the school of government and international affairs at Durham University. His many book-length publications include Globalization and the Middle East: Old Games, New Rules (Routledge, 2007); (co-author) Iran and the Rise of its Neoconservatives (IB Tauris, 2007); (co-editor) The Middle East's Relations with Asia and Russia (RoutledgeCurzon, 2004); The Foreign Policies of Middle East States (co-editor) (Lynne Rienner, 2002); (co-author) Iran's Security Policy in the Post-Revolutionary Era (Rand, 2001).

Amjed Rasheed is Research Associate in the School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University. Twitter @amjedrasheed

Juline Beaujouan is General Sir Peter de la Billière Doctoral Research Student in the School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Economic Update - Socialism: Past, Present, Future - 05.06.18 [feedly]

Economic Update - Socialism: Past, Present, Future - 05.06.18
http://economicupdate.podbean.com/e/economic-update-socialism-past-present-future-050618/

Updates on critique of Uber and gig economy; WI Sen Johnson endorses inequality; Norway to pay male and female athletes same; corporations buy back their own shares; deaths of overworked Japanese; 10% NY school kids homeless; and majority of major US corporations already pay much below official 35% tax rate. Major discussion of changing economics of socialism.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Employer Concentration and Stagnant Wages [feedly]

Employer Concentration and Stagnant Wages
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2018/05/employer-concentration-and-stagnant-wages.html

From the NBER Digest. "Two studies suggest that an increase in employers' monopsony power is associated with lower wages.":

Employer Concentration and Stagnant Wages: Stagnant wages and a declining share of labor income in GDP in recent decades have spawned a number of explanations. These include outsourcing, foreign competition, automation, and the decline of unions. Two new studies focus on another factor that may have affected the relative bargaining position of workers and firms: employer domination of local job markets. One shows that wage growth slowed as industrial consolidation increased over the past 40 years; the other shows that in many job markets across the country there is little competition for workers in specific job categories.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

House Bill Would Allow Sharp Rent Increases on Struggling Low-Income People [feedly]

House Bill Would Allow Sharp Rent Increases on Struggling Low-Income People
https://www.cbpp.org/blog/house-bill-would-allow-sharp-rent-increases-on-struggling-low-income-people

A bill from Rep. Dennis Ross would allow large rent increases for low-income people assisted through the Housing Choice Voucher and Public Housing programs, including working families, the elderly, and people with disabilities. The great majority of those affected have incomes below the poverty line.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

The Supreme Court is poised to make forced arbitration nearly inescapable [feedly]

The Supreme Court is poised to make forced arbitration nearly inescapable
https://www.epi.org/blog/the-supreme-court-is-poised-to-make-forced-arbitration-nearly-inescapable/

The Supreme Court will soon decide whether employers can lawfully require workers to sign mandatory arbitration agreements that include class and collective action waivers. A ruling in NLRB v. Murphy Oil USA, Inc., Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, and Ernst & Young LLP v. Morris will have significant impacts on working people. If the Court sides with employers and the Trump administration, it is likely that the majority of workers in this country will be required, as a condition of employment, to sign away their right to pursue workplace disputes on a collective or class basis. In fact, available data suggest that it may take only six years for more than 80 percent of workplaces to adopt mandatory arbitration with class and collective action waivers.

Last year, EPI commissioned a survey that found that 53.9 percent of nonunion private-sector employers already have mandatory arbitration procedures. Prior to that study, the one major governmental effort to investigate the extent of mandatory arbitration was a 1995 GAO survey. That survey, conducted between April 1994 and April 1995, found that just 7.6 percent of employers had mandatory arbitration agreements. In other words, the use of mandatory arbitration agreements grew by more than 600 percent between 1994 and 2017. Using the growth rates between the two surveys to forecast future expansion suggests that by 2024, more than 80 percent of private sector, non-union establishments will adopt mandatory arbitration with class and collective action waiver of employment disputes, if the Court finds that such agreements are lawful.1 That will leave more than 85 million workers subject to mandatory arbitration agreements with class and collective action waivers. This means that the vast majority of workers will be forced to sign away their right to act with their colleagues to resolve workplace disputes—as well as their right to go to court for these matters. As a result, even if many workers face the same type of issue at work, each individual worker will be forced to hire their own lawyer, and resolve their dispute out of court, behind closed doors, with only their employer and a private arbitrator.

Workers depend on collective and class actions to enforce many workplace rights. Employment class actions have helped to combat race and sex discrimination and are fundamental to the enforcement of wage and hour standards. Without the ability to aggregate claims, it is very difficult, if not impossible, for workers to find legal representation in these matters. This is particularly true for low-wage workers, whose cases are unlikely to involve large enough awards to attract attorneys to invest time in the case. Class and collective action suits allow workers to pool their claims, making it possible for an attorney to earn enough to make the case worth pursuing.

But NLRB v. Murphy Oil USA, Inc., Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, and Ernst & Young LLP v. Morris have implications beyond class action suits. If the Court is persuaded by the Trump administration, the decision could prohibit a broad category of workers' collective action guaranteed to U.S. workers since 1935 with the passage of the National Labor Relations Act. The right of working people to join together—whether through a union or not—to improve their wages and working conditions is at the heart of the NLRA. This right is as important today as it was when the Act was passed.

We are at a critical moment as a country. If we are going to address economic inequality, combat employer practices that perpetuate race and sex discrimination, and change the epidemic of sexual harassment that has been exposed by the #metoo and #timesup movements, we must be able to use our collective voice and our collective power to do so. It is only when we act together, whether as working people demanding fair pay—as the workers did in Murphy Oil—or as citizens speaking out collectively against injustice, that we are able to produce meaningful change. If the Court issues a decision that erodes our right to collective action, we must join together to demand Congress act to protect this right. After all, it was collective action that convinced Congress to pass the NLRA over eighty years ago.

1. The rate of growth of mandatory arbitration between 1994 and 2017 in percent terms was 8.9 percent per year on average, and in percentage point terms it was 2.0 percentage points per year on average. Lacking additional information to about the true growth function, we simply projected the incidence of mandatory arbitration going forward using both rates and took the average of the two. It should be noted that the 2017 survey commissioned by EPI showed that just 30.1 percent of employers who required mandatory arbitration also explicitly included class and collective action waivers in their procedures. It is likely that the lack of explicit class and collective waivers within many mandatory arbitration agreements was due to uncertainty about their legality. If the Court finds that such waivers are lawful, we expect that going forward, mandatory arbitration agreements will be highly unlikely not to include explicit class and collective action waivers.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed