Richard Trumpka: message from the president

Please note that the next AFL-CIO Dispatch will be sent on Jan. 7. On behalf of everyone at the AFL-CIO, we wish you a safe and happy holiday season.

MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

President-elect Biden is living up to his word to forge a bold new direction. But his hand will be immeasurably strengthened by winning the two U.S. Senate seats in Georgia. Georgia shocked the nation in 2020. And America's labor movement will be the reason Georgia flips the Senate in 2021. Early voting began this week. The election is on Jan. 5.   Our opponents are expecting us to slow down as the year comes to a close. We can't give that to them because that's how they win. If you are participating in our postcard program, send your cards to Georgia as soon as possible. If you have not signed up to drive calls into Georgia, it's not too late.  If you are already driving calls into Georgia, please make more.   Our Workers First Agenda is on the line. Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock can deliver a pro-worker Senate majority and usher in the PRO Act, which would change the game in union organizing. We need to leave it all on the field.

THE SEASON OF GIVING: LABOR AND THE HOLIDAYS

All across America, working people are preparing for the holidays as best we can amidst the pandemic. But for some families, this holiday season will not be as bright as those in the past because of the loss of income through no fault of their own. The labor movement is joining together with renewed purpose to do what we can to support our communities this holiday season. Labor bodies, local unions and United Way agencies are all getting in on the holiday spirit of giving back.   West Central Florida Labor Council's annual holiday toy drive is officially underway, according to labor council President Shawn McDonnell (IBEW). Every holiday season, the council partners with the Children's Home Society to run a toy drive. In previous years, the labor council would collect thousands of toys for donation. This year, because of COVID-19, it is collecting donations for a virtual gift card drive.   In Illinois, dozens of members of the Bloomington-Normal Trades and Labor Assembly turned out on Saturday for the labor council's annual holiday event for families in need. For the past 38 years, the labor council has sponsored a Children's Christmas Party for low-income families. The unions provide the volunteers and logistics; the local Chamber of Commerce brings volunteers and raises the funds. Traditionally, the event is held at Bloomington High School, featuring a morning of games and a visit from Santa, with about 350–375 children participating. Because of COVID-19, this year's event was shifted to a drive-thru event staged at the Midwest Food Bank in Normal. Some 856 children from 318 families were served.   Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, local unions are also doing their part. Members of the Cheyenne Professional Fire Fighters/IAFF Local 279 in Wyoming held their annual bike drive. The union said it has raised $1,000 and collected some 60 bikes so far to distribute to families this holiday season. The local also sold 150 Christmas trees with the proceeds to be donated to charity. In Boston, Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 103 held its annual toy drive in partnership with Mayor Martin Walsh (LIUNA).   And community service agencies are coping with increased demand from more people than ever. AFL-CIO Community Services Agency, based in St. Joseph, Missouri, is pushing ahead with its annual Adopt-A-Family program to bring holiday joy to families in need. The program pairs donors with families who might otherwise go without Christmas celebrations this year. The United Way chapter said last week that it is halfway toward meeting its goal of adopting some 400 families this year.   Working people are doing what we always do: deliver for our communities. That's especially true this holiday season. The AFL-CIO thanks all those taking part in charitable efforts this season and throughout the pandemic. Your efforts are what make our labor movement so important to our communities.

LABOR PROTECTED OUR DEMOCRACY—EVEN AFTER THE ELECTION WAS OVER

After winning the presidential election and securing the vote count, union members continued to be on the front lines of defending our democracy across the states by making sure vote results were certified. The Michigan State AFL-CIO continued coordinating with our coalition partners, making certain that union members were a critical part of ensuring the will of voters was upheld in Michigan. The state federation has maintained its UnionsDefend.org website with links to important information, events and digital activism in which union members can participate.   The Michigan State AFL-CIO collected and helped drive formal comment submissions from union members to the Michigan Board of State Canvassers in support of vote result certification before the meeting to certify the results. Board Chair Jeannette Bradshaw (pictured above), the secretary-treasurer of the Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO and the recording secretary of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 58, eventually presided over the certification of Michigan's vote results.   And on Monday, the Pennsylvania delegation of the Electoral College met in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to cast the commonwealth's 20 electoral votes for President-elect Joe Biden. Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President Rick Bloomingdale (AFSCME) was proud to serve as an elector and secretary of the Electoral College. Labor leaders Ryan Boyer, business manager of Laborers (LIUNA) District Council of the Metropolitan Area of Philadelphia and Vicinity, and Daisy Cruz, Mid-Atlantic District leader of 32BJ SEIU, also served as electors.   The officers of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, President Bloomingdale and Secretary-Treasurer Frank Snyder (USW), issued the following joint statement: "Our Democracy has been tested at every step throughout this process. Our State Supreme Court, the federal judiciary and the U.S. Supreme Court have all upheld the results of our free and fair elections. And now we move even closer to ringing in a new year and a new White House."   After all the Electoral College votes were counted, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka (UMWA) said, "We can now say with certainty what we've known since early November: Joe Biden will be sworn in as our next president on Jan. 20. This didn't happen by accident. Workers voted in overwhelming numbers and union members came out in the weeks that followed to defend our votes and make sure our voices were heard."

TWU MEMBER PURSUES URBAN PLANNING DEGREE WITH HELP OF UNION PLUS SCHOLARSHIP

This past fall, Transport Workers Union (TWU) member Gregory Harasym began a master's program in city and regional planning with a concentration in transportation. He intends to examine alternative transportation methods to address community-level health and social injustices; and he hopes to eventually be a specialist in this field, focusing on policy for the Department of Transportation. His career direction changed in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which deeply impacted his community and left him passionate about helping communities become resilient to future disasters.   Harasym's father, a New York City transit worker, died when he was 16 and the TWU pension made it possible for his mother to raise him and his younger brother. "My passion for public service has led me to pursue a master's degree in urban planning, and my TWU membership and my father's [membership] have afforded me the ability to do so," Harasym said.   The Union Plus Scholarship Program awards scholarships based on outstanding academic achievement, personal character, financial need, and commitment to the values of organized labor. Union Plus Scholarship awards are granted to students attending a two-year college, four-year college, graduate school, or recognized technical or trade school. Visit UnionPlus.org/Scholarship for applications and benefit eligibility. The application deadline is Jan. 31, 2021.

WE DO THE WORK

Patrick O'Meara (TNG-CWA) is one of our secret weapons in the AFL-CIO's Economic Power & Growth (EPG) Hub. He's a radical certified public accountant and our double agent of corporate finance. Patrick knows how to follow the money in order to understand companies better than they understand themselves. And he uses his superpowers to inform campaign strategies in support of worker organizing. How awesomely subversive is that? Patrick came to the EPG after years in the Advocacy Hub and continues to do work at the intersection of advocacy and organizing. Every year, he compiles the popular AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch feature promoted on our website and he often supports the federation's capital strategies work. He led our analysis of the CARES Act's payroll protection program and is currently focused on monitoring and analyzing the emerging offshore wind industry, supporting the AFL-CIO's recent model agreement between North America's Building Trades Unions and Ørsted, and looking ahead, to establishing union standards throughout this sector.

--

John Case
Harpers Ferry, WV

Enlighten Radio

Socialist Economics

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AOC: NANCY PELOSI NEEDS TO GO, BUT THERE’S NOBODY TO REPLACE HER YET Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks to Jeremy Scahill on the Intercepted podcast.

I like AOCs take in this interview -- the Intercept headline distorts her intent, which is: the Left must raise its game to be worthy of challenging congressional leadership, at this time --- it is a pitch to progressive youth, especially, is to not give up principles, but to fight harder and smarter for them.  

AOC: NANCY PELOSI NEEDS TO GO, BUT THERE'S NOBODY TO REPLACE HER YET

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks to Jeremy Scahill on the Intercepted podcast.

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ believes the Democratic Party needs new leadership, telling The Intercept in an interview that it's time for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to go. But the left, she said, currently has no plan on how to fill the subsequent leadership vacuum.

"If you create that vacuum, there are so many nefarious forces at play to fill that vacuum with something even worse," she told Jeremy Scahill during an interview aired Wednesday on Intercepted this week. Pelosi cruised to reelection in a virtual caucus vote last month and will face a full House floor vote for the speakership in January. She's expected to remain speaker but has almost no room for error, after a disastrous performance in the general election cost the caucus at least a dozen seats. With a single-digit majority, she can only afford to lose a handful of Democratic votes on the House floor or else she'll be short of the required 218, which would then throw the contest back to the caucus. 

The rest of Pelosi's octogenarian leadership team, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip James Clyburn, has held these top positions for over a decade and won their slots without any opposition. On the Senate side, Schumer won reelection unanimously.

Ocasio-Cortez argued that there are no viable alternatives for House or Senate leadership at the moment because the caucus's current leaders spent a number of years concentrating power without any "real grooming of a next generation of leadership." 

"A lot of this is not just about these two personalities, but also about the structural shifts that these two personalities have led in their time in leadership," Ocasio-Cortez said. "The structural shifts of power in the House, both in process and rule, to concentrate power in party leadership of both parties, frankly, but in Democratic Party leadership to such a degree that an individual member has far less power than they did 30, 40, 50 years ago." 

This dynamic is what pushes the "really talented members of Congress that do come along" to leave or run for statewide office instead. But Pelosi has also indicated that this upcoming term could be her last, "and the left isn't really making a plan for that either," Ocasio-Cortez added. "So I do think that it's something that we really need to think about." 

If progressives do threaten to withhold their support from Pelosi, Ocasio-Cortez said, their demand shouldn't be merely for a floor vote on Medicare for All, which is sure to fail. Instead, she believes, progressives should fight some of the bigger structural obstacles in the way of Medicare for All, like pay-go, an austerity provision that makes it difficult for Democrats to pass more ambitious policies, or replacing conservative Democratic Rep. Richie Neal as head of the Ways and Means Committee. "We are currently negotiating to get and work towards real material concessions for the left that can move things into place, to help build power for the next two years," she said. 

The New York congresswoman shot down the possibility of running for the position any time soon. "The House is extraordinarily complex and I'm not ready," she said. "It can't be me. I know that I couldn't do that job."

Asked about President-elect Joe Biden bringing in hawkish members of the Obama administration, as well as officials from companies like Goldman Sachs and McKinsey,  Ocasio-Cortez said: "It's horrible."

"And I think it's also part of a larger issue that we have right now, which is … the Biden administration is bringing back a lot of Obama appointees, which depending on where you are in the party, may sound nice, I guess," she said. "But I think what a lot of people fail to remember is that we now have a Biden administration that's bringing back a lot of Obama appointees, but when Obama was making appointments, he was bringing back a lot of Clinton appointees." 

Dozens of people, including some from Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, Facebook, and Google, have quietly been added to the Biden transition team in recent weeks, Politico reported on Monday. 

This same cast of characters and their way of doing things, she added, is "a huge reason why we got Donald Trump in the first place. In addition to just the racism that was waiting to be reanimated in this country, [there] was just an extreme disdain for this moneyed political establishment that rules Washington."

She also expressed frustration with congressional inaction on coronavirus relief and the failure to provide aid for those who are struggling, pointing to both the GOP's "barbarity" and the Democrats' strategic blunders. Ocasio-Cortez was the only Democrat in Congress to come out against the CARES Act, opposing it for both strategic and policy-related reasons. Democrats lost nearly all their leverage in pandemic relief negotiations, she argued, because the massive bailout gave Wall Street, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and the Trump administration everything they wanted. It was the party's "rage-inducing" hypocrisy on the issues, from military spending and mass surveillance to right-leaning economic stances, that led her to run for office in the first place. 

"For me personally, it was when I was waitressing and I would hear Democrats talk about why the Affordable Care Act was so amazing all the time and how this is the greatest thing ever and the economy is doing wonderfully," she said. "Frankly, it is the same trick that Trump pulls, which is, you know, people touting the Dow as a measure of economic success when we're all getting killed out here."

--

John Case
Harpers Ferry, WV

Enlighten Radio

Socialist Economics

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Mark Gruenberg: Too little, too late COVID aid bill may pass today [feedly]

Too little, too late COVID aid bill may pass today
https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/too-little-too-late-covid-aid-bill-may-pass-today/

WASHINGTON—Today, as California accepted shipments of tens of thousands of extra body bags in which to place its dead, a very stripped-down package of coronavirus aid, we are told, is finally moving ahead in Congress.

Lawmakers are rushing to finish their business so they can go home until the New Year. For all too many Americans, meanwhile, going home is not an option. Home, for them, was lost because of the inability of the Trump administration to properly manage the coronavirus crisis.

But there are problems ahead, both in how much is allotted and who would get it—and, Unite Here pointed out, who got past aid and didn't deserve it.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers from both houses of Congress unveiled two pieces of coronavirus-related legislation. The larger one, worth $748 billion, which they all agreed on, included $300 weekly federal unemployment checks from Jan. 1 through April 30.

That money would top off regular state jobless benefits to workers who still qualify for them, just as prior $600 weekly checks did. For those whose state aid ran out or who legally can't seek regular jobless aid—such as "independent contractors," farm workers, home health care workers, and "gig economy" workers—the $300 would stand alone.

But there are no one-time $1,200 checks for all adults and $500 per kid, as there were in the biggest prior aid bill, the Cares Act, approved in March. Sens. Bernie Sanders, Ind-Vt.,  threatened to hold up everything unless those checks are included, too.

"As a result of the pandemic, tens of millions of Americans are facing economic desperation," Sanders said.  "They can't afford to pay their rent and face eviction, they can't afford to go to the doctor, they can't afford to feed their children and they are going deeper and deeper into debt.

"Congress cannot go home…until we pass legislation which provides a $1,200 direct payment to working-class adults, $2,400 for couples, and a $500 payment to their children. This is what Democrats and Republicans did unanimously in March through the Cares Act. This is what we have to do today."

May not be going home

They may not be going home anyway. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced on Dec. 15 lawmakers would not leave town until they approved a coronavirus aid package.

But there's also no money in the big bill for state and local governments, which have seen their revenues tank since the coronavirus-caused business closures produced a depression that drove joblessness up over 20% at one point.

The smaller $160 billion measure is in return for a two-year version of McConnell's business bonanza: Exempting virtually all firms from lawsuits under coronavirus aid laws, and most labor laws, even if they don't protect workers and consumers from exposure to the sometimes fatal plague.

Senate Democrats, both Democratic-leaning Senate independents, and Republicans Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and John E. Kennedy of Louisiana support the state and local aid and the Democrats and independents, at least, aren't budging. Without it, state and local governments will have to fire even more police, Fire Fighters, aid workers, and nurses—even as those groups must aid pandemic victims.

And trading the state (60%) and local (40%) money for the lawsuit ban, including banning suits when firms break labor laws, is a non-starter, said Service Employees President Mary Kay Henry and other speakers at a telephone press conference against McConnell's scheme.

The larger measure also would extend a student loan repayment moratorium through April 30 and a ban on evictions and mortgage foreclosures through the end of January.

K-12 schools would get $54 billion for anti-virus measures so students forced into Zoom and distance learning by the coronavirus pandemic could eventually come back to class, while colleges would get $20 billion. Governors would get $7.5 billion in extra money for hardest-hit schools, but one-third of that must go to private schools.

Amtrak ($1 billion), mass transit ($15 billion), and the Postal Service (another $10 billion line of credit, without federal conditions) would benefit. So would airline workers.

The Payroll Support Program, which the Association of Flight Attendants pushed for and got earlier this year, ended on August 31, and the carriers have since fired thousands of workers. It'll start again on Jan. 1 and run through March 31, a summary fact sheet on the bigger economic aid bill said. Politico reported it would get $17 billion, and the fact sheet said the money would go directly to workers.

"Flight attendants were promised imminent relief when furloughs began Oct. 1," AFA-CWA President Sara Nelson said on Dec 15. "The stress and strain put on people who can't imagine why 'overwhelming support' doesn't turn into real relief has made the hardship and loss during this pandemic all the more painful. All we need is a vote to save lives and livelihoods. Leadership needs to bring this bipartisan package to a vote as soon as possible."

Includes money to help states

The bigger money bill would include $6 billion to states for developing and distributing coronavirus vaccines and their use, plus $7 billion for coronavirus testing and tracing. Of that sum, $2 billion would go to nursing homes, whose residents and workers are at high risk for coronavirus illness and death.

Those sums, plus the aid to workers, recognize the coronavirus pandemic—which as of 4 p.m. on Dec. 15 has killed 302,294 people, among the 16.64 million who have tested positive and caused the economic depression which produced the need for the aid in the first place.

Businesses would get another $300 billion through the Payroll Protection Program, this time with safeguards, such as limiting the size of eligible individual companies' workforces. That's a congressional attempt to fix problems in the PPP program. Companies got those "forgivable" loans if they kept workers on.

But Unite Here is blowing the whistle on the PPP. It released an analysis showing five Omni Hotels, in New Haven, Conn., Boston, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Providence, R.I., took $15 million in PPP loans but have not rehired 80% of their workers, who are all Unite Here members. The Providence, San Francisco, and Pittsburgh hotels are still closed.

"The failure of these hotels to rehire their employees has financially harmed our members and created great uncertainty for them and their families. So far, we have not received commitments from Omni to use the loans to fully rehire the workers we represent," Unite Here's Carlos Aramayo wrote to the Small Business Administration and the Treasury, which jointly run the loan program.

And buried in the fact sheet about the larger measure is that of the total of $908 billion combined, $429 billion (43%) is unused money from the $3 trillion Cares Act.

"Food banks are overwhelmed with requests, small businesses are being forced to shut their doors again, we are on the verge of a devastating housing crisis and millions of Americans still find themselves unemployed," explained the lead crafter of the two measures, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va.

Manchin called the measures "a compromise that will carry the American people through April 1st to ensure our healthcare crisis doesn't become an economic catastrophe." By then, lawmakers expect but did not say, that new Democratic President Joe Biden will have submitted a further aid package.

Union leaders had a mixed reaction to the economic aid package, but they're still dead set against McConnell's business bonanza scheme, even though Manchin cut it from five years to two, retroactive to Jan. 1, 2020.

Outrageous and immoral

"It's outrageous and immoral but not surprising," SEIU President Henry told the telephone press conference against McConnell's scheme, assembled by Public Citizen. That group's communications director, Derrick Robinson, noted public protest has stopped McConnell's bonanza since he first floated the idea six months ago. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, later crafted it into the wide-ranging lawsuit ban.

Instead, Henry declared, lawmakers must "protect the workers who are keeping us safe, healthy, and fed during this crisis." SEIU includes many of the "essential" workers, such as nurses, janitors, and sanitation workers, forced to toil at increased coronavirus risk to themselves and their families. Those workers have disproportionately sickened and died and are also disproportionately workers of color.

Nelson agreed while saying the aid package is grudging.

"Tens of millions of Americans are on the brink of disaster and we won't make it to the New Year without emergency federal aid. This package is not enough for recovery, but it will keep us from total disaster until a real recovery plan can be put in place," she explained.

"Americans have been waiting seven long months for the Senate to provide COVID-19 relief," the Teamsters tweeted, using the official name for the coronavirus. "The Senate should not go on vacation until they pass comprehensive aid. @senatemajldr: Our states, cities, towns, and schools can't wait around for you to do your job. #FundtheFrontLines," it said.

Then it demanded citizen action to put pressure on lawmakers.

"Evictions Food insecurity Losing health care Snowy, icy roads Dirty water 9-1-1 operators laid off Trash in the streets Winter is coming. Congress must #FundtheFrontLines so we have the public services we need to beat this pandemic. ACT NOW: Call 1-888-981-9704," the union's second tweet said.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Milton Friedman was wrong on the corporation

 

Milton Friedman was wrong on the corporation

Martin Wolf

What should be the goal of the business corporation? For a long time, the prevailing view in English-speaking countries and, increasingly, elsewhere was that advanced by the economist Milton Friedman in a New York Times article, "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits", published in September 1970. I used to believe this, too. I was wrong. The article deserves to be read in full. But its kernel is in its conclusion: "there is one and only one social responsibility of business — to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud." The implications of this position are simple and clear. That is its principal virtue. But, as H L Mencken is supposed to have said (though may not have done), "for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong". This is a powerful example of that truth. After 50 years, the doctrine needs re-evaluation. Suitably, given Friedman's connection with the University of Chicago, the Stigler Center at its Booth School of Business has just published an ebook, Milton Friedman 50 Years Later, containing diverse views. In an excellent concluding article, Luigi Zingales, who promoted the debate, tries to give a balanced assessment. Yet, in my view, his analysis is devastating. He asks a simple question: "Under what conditions is it socially efficient for managers to focus only on maximising shareholder value?" His answer is threefold: "First, companies should operate in a competitive environment, which I will define as firms being both price- and rule-takers. Second, there should not be externalities (or the government should be able to address perfectly these externalities through regulation and taxation). Third, contracts are complete, in the sense that we can specify in a contract all relevant contingencies at no cost." Needless to say, none of these conditions holds. Indeed, the existence of the corporation shows that they do not hold. The invention of the corporation allowed the creation of huge entities, in order to exploit economies of scale. Given their scale, the notion of businesses as price-takers is absurd. Externalities, some of them global, are evidently pervasive. Corporations also exist because contracts are incomplete. If it were possible to write contracts that specified every eventuality, the ability of management to respond to the unexpected would be redundant. Above all, corporations are not rule-takers but rather rulemakers. They play games whose rules they have a big role in creating, via politics. My contribution to the ebook emphasises this last point by asking what a good "game" would look like. "It is one," I argue, "in which companies would not promote junk science on climate and the environment; it is one in which companies would not kill hundreds of thousands of people, by promoting addiction to opiates; it is one in which companies would not lobby for tax systems that let them park vast proportions of their profits in tax havens; it is one in which the financial sector would not lobby for the inadequate capitalisation that causes huge crises; it is one in which copyright would not be extended and extended and extended; it is one in which companies would not seek to neuter an effective competition policy; it is one in which companies would not lobby hard against efforts to limit the adverse social consequences of precarious work; and so on and so forth." It is true, as many authors in this compendium argue, that the limited liability business corporation was (and is) a brilliant institutional innovation. It is true, too, that making corporate objectives more complex is likely to be problematic. So when Steve Kaplan of the Booth School asks how corporations should trade off many different goals, I have sympathy. Similarly, when business leaders tell us they are now going to serve the wider needs of society, I ask: first, do I believe they will do so; second, do I believe they know how to do so; and, last, who elected them to do so? Yet the problems with the grossly unbalanced economic, social and political power inherent in the current situation are vast. On this, the contribution of Anat Admati of Stanford University is compelling. She notes that corporations have obtained a host of political and civil rights but lack corresponding obligations. Among other things, people are rarely held criminally liable for corporate crimes. Purdue Pharma, now in bankruptcy, pleaded guilty to criminal charges for its handling of the painkiller OxyContin, which addicted vast numbers of people. Individuals are routinely imprisoned for dealing illegal drugs, but as she points out "no individual within Purdue went to jail". Not least, unbridled corporate power has been a factor behind the rise of populism, especially rightwing populism. Consider how one goes about persuading people to accept Friedman's libertarian economic ideas. In a universal-suffrage democracy, it is really difficult. To win, libertarians have had to ally themselves with ancillary causes — culture wars, racism, misogyny, nativism, xenophobia and nationalism. Much of this has of course been sotto voce and so plausibly deniable. The 2008 financial crisis, and the subsequent bailout of those whose behaviour caused it, made selling a deregulated free-market even harder. So, it became politically essential for libertarians to double down on those ancillary causes. Mr Trump was not the person they wanted: he was erratic and unprincipled, but he was the political entrepreneur best suited to winning the presidency. He has given them what they most wanted: tax cuts and deregulation. There are many arguments to be had over how corporations should change. But the biggest issue by far is how to create good rules of the game on competition, labour, the environment, taxation and so forth. Friedman assumed either that none of this mattered or that a working democracy would survive prolonged attack by people who thought as he did. Neither assumption proved correct. The challenge is to create good rules of the game, via politics. Today, we cannot.  

--
John Case
Harpers Ferry, WV
Enlighten Radio
Socialist Economics
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Choice in Health Care Plans and Medicare: It’s More Complicated [feedly]

Choice in Health Care Plans and Medicare: It's More Complicated
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/beat_the_press/~3/qk1wpxVpF6o/

Margot Sanger-Katz had a very good NYT piece on the difficulty of choosing among health insurance plans. The gist of the piece is that people have a very difficult time choosing among plans, and even well-educated people often make choices that are bad for them. (The highlight is that Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman could not sort through the plan options at his university job.)

After presenting evidence that most people make bad choices, and low-income people do worst, at the end of the piece she turns to Medicare and notes that over a third of the people receiving benefits choose a private Medicare Advantage plan rather than the tradition government plan. Sanger-Katz takes this to mean that people do value choice in health care plans.

However, it is inaccurate to present the issue here as the traditional Medicare plan being a vote for no-choice versus Medicare Advantage as a vote for choice. The traditional plan now involves three separate programs: Part A, Part B, and Part D. Part D is actually a set of private plans, offering prescription drug benefits, that people must choose between.

In addition, the vast majority of people in traditional Medicare (81 percent) also have a private supplemental plan. This is in large part because the traditional plan has not been modernized in many decades. It doesn't cover dental care, hearing aids, and many other health care services that would generally be regarded as essential. It also, unlike Medicare Advantage plans, has no out-of-pocket spending cap. These gaps have likely been by design to force people to either opt for Medicare Advantage or buy a private supplemental plan.

The key point for the choice issue is that even those opting for the traditional Medicare plan still have to deal with many choices in arranging their coverage. So it is wrong to present the selection of Medicare Advantage or traditional Medicare as a choice/no-choice scenario.

The post Choice in Health Care Plans and Medicare: It's More Complicatedappeared first on Center for Economic and Policy Research.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Reimagining Workplace Protections: A Policy Agenda to Meet Independent Contractors’ and Temporary Workers’ Needs [feedly]

Reimagining Workplace Protections: A Policy Agenda to Meet Independent Contractors' and Temporary Workers' Needs
https://www.urban.org/research/publication/reimagining-workplace-protections-policy-agenda-meet-independent-contractors-and-temporary-workers-needs

Millions of workers in nonstandard arrangements, including temporary, subcontracted, and on-call workers and independent contractors, lack access to essential workplace protections or, where protections do exist, to adequate enforcement mechanisms. Building an equitable economy requires addressing these shortcomings and reimagining our system of workplace protections. This report provides a policy framework for expanding essential protections to more workers, focusing on independent contractors' and temporary workers' needs.  

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Biz Insider: 'Unacceptable': Democrats reject new White House proposal that would slash weekly unemployment benefits in exchange for one-off $600 stimulus checks [feedly]

'Unacceptable': Democrats reject new White House proposal that would slash weekly unemployment benefits in exchange for one-off $600 stimulus checks
https://www.businessinsider.com/democrats-reject-white-house-proposal-containing-stimulus-checks-2020-12?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer conducting a news conference to discuss coronavirus-relief legislation on November 12.

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

• Democratic leaders are rejecting a new coronavirus relief package unveiled Tuesday by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
• The White House proposal calls for new $600 direct payments to Americans but would fund them by taking money from a proposed boost in unemployment benefits.
• "That is unacceptable," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Democrats are rejecting a White House proposal to fund new a new round of direct payments to Americans by slashing money for the unemployed.

On Tuesday evening, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin proposed a new $916 billion COVID-19 stimulus package that would offer relief funding to state and local governments in exchange for "robust liability protections" for businesses, protecting them from employee lawsuits over the spread of COVID-19 in the workplace.

Mnuchin's proposal, welcomed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, also includes money for a round of one-off $600 payments - the funds coming, in part, by slashing a proposed $300-a-week boost in unemployment benefits.

"That is unacceptable," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement.

The Democratic lawmakers noted that a bipartisan stimulus package called for providing $180 billion in new funding for unemployment insurance, a figure that would be slashed to $40 billion under the White House offer.

A $3 trillion spending package passed by House Democrats in May calls for $1,200 direct payments.

"While it is progress that Leader McConnell has signed off on a $916 billion offer that is based off of the bipartisan framework, the president's proposal must not be allowed to obstruct the bipartisan congressional talks that are underway," they said.

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