socialist-economics

Monday, March 29, 2021

The Giant Ship Blocking the Suez Canal Is Finally Freed - Bloomberg

The Giant Ship Blocking the Suez Canal Is Finally Freed

by Jack Wittels and Ann Koh

The giant vessel that's blocked the Suez Canal for almost a week was pulled free from the bank, a major step toward getting ships moving again along one of the world's most important trade arteries.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-29/the-giant-ship-blocking-the-suez-canal-is-finally-freed?sref=woWS9Szx

Tugboats tow the Ever Given along the Suez Canal on March 29. Source: Suez Canal Authority

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The giant vessel that's blocked the Suez Canal for almost a week was pulled free from the bank, a major step toward getting ships moving again along one of the world's most important trade arteries.

The stoppage caused a tailback of hundreds of vessels, snarled supply chains already under pressure due to the coronavirus pandemic and provided a stark reminder of the fragility of the global trade infrastructure.

Horns sounded in celebration as the Ever Given -- a boat longer than the Eiffel Tower -- made her way up the canal after a frantic rescue operation involving teams of tugs and dredgers working day and night.

The container ship was moved from the canal wall around 3 p.m. Egypt time on Monday. It then traveled north from the narrow southern end of the canal, where it ran aground on Tuesday, toward the Great Bitter Lake.

The Suez Canal Authority said navigation would resume as normal, though it didn't specify when. There will be enough space for other ships to pass the Ever Given once it gets to the lake.

It could take around a week to clear the queue of ships waiting around the canal, according to the SCA.

Salvage teams had struggled to free the vessel, 400 meters long and carrying almost $1 billion of cargo. They tried to use high tides and a full moon to pull it from the sandy bank it smashed into during high winds, in an operation that also involved shoveling 30,000 cubic meters of sand and removing part of the canal wall.

Egyptian authorities were desperate to get traffic flowing again through the waterway that's a conduit for about 12% of world trade and about 1 million barrels of oil a day. This has been the canal's longest closure since it was shut for eight years following the 1967 Six Day War.

Firms including A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S and Hapag-Lloyd AG were forced to reroute their ships via the southern tip of Africa, which can add two weeks on to a journey between Europe and Asia.

Dominoes Have Toppled

The long-term impact of the canal's $10-billion-per-day closure will likely be small given that global merchandise trade amounts to $18 trillion a year. Yet so many ships being thrown off schedule will ensure cargo delays for weeks, if not months. The dozen or so container carriers that control most of the world's ocean freight are already charging record-high rates on some routes, and shortages of everything from chemicals and lumber to dockside labor already abound.

"The dominoes have been toppled," Lars Jensen, chief executive of SeaIntelligence Consulting in Copenhagen, wrote on social media over the weekend. "The delays and re-routing which have already happened will cause ripple effects" which will be felt for several months.

Companies from Ikea to Caterpillar Inc. have been affected and tens of thousands of live animals -- many of them sheep -- are stuck on ships in the area. Consumer goods, industrial inputs, and commodities from oil to coffee are caught up in the jam, with Asian exporters and European importers affected most directly.

The blockage held up about $400 million an hour, based on rough calculations from Lloyd's List that suggested westbound traffic to Europe is worth around $5.1 billion a day and eastbound traffic is approximately $4.5 billion.

— With assistance by Brendan Murray, Alex Longley, Abdel Latif Wahba, and Dan Murtaugh

Tugboats tow the Ever Given along the Suez Canal on March 29. Source: Suez Canal Authority

LISTEN TO ARTICLE

3:04

The giant vessel that's blocked the Suez Canal for almost a week was pulled free from the bank, a major step toward getting ships moving again along one of the world's most important trade arteries.

The Suez Canal Authority said navigation would resume as normal, though it didn't specify when. There will be enough space for other ships to pass the Ever Given once it gets to the lake.

It could take around a week to clear the queue of ships waiting around the canal, according to the SCA.

Firms including A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S and Hapag-Lloyd AG were forced to reroute their ships via the southern tip of Africa, which can add two weeks on to a journey between Europe and Asia.

Dominoes Have Toppled

— With assistance by Brendan Murray, Alex Longley, Abdel Latif Wahba, and Dan Murtaugh

Sunday, March 28, 2021

socialist-economics:Amazon worker resources Page.

The Red Caboose has sent you a link to a blog:

who wants to get involved???

Blog: socialist-economics
Post: Amazon worker resources Page.
Link: https://economics.enlightenradio.org/p/amazon-worker-resources-page.html

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Friday, March 26, 2021

One year later, unemployment insurance claims remain sky-high [feedly]

One year later, unemployment insurance claims remain sky-high
https://www.epi.org/blog/one-year-later-unemployment-insurance-claims-remain-sky-high/

One year ago this week, when the first sky-high unemployment insurance (UI) claims data of the pandemic were released, I said "I have been a labor economist for a very long time and have never seen anything like this." But in the weeks that followed, things got worse before they got better—and we are not out of the woods yet. Last week—the week ending March 20, 2021—another 926,000 people applied for UI. This included 684,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 242,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), the federal program for workers who are not eligible for regular unemployment insurance, like gig workers.

Last week was the 53rd straight week total initial claims were greater than the second-worst week of the Great Recession. (If that comparison is restricted to regular state claims—because we didn't have PUA in the Great Recession—initial claims are still greater than the 14th worst week of the Great Recession.)

Figure A shows continuing claims in all programs over time (the latest data for this are for March 6). Continuing claims are currently nearly 17 million above where they were a year ago, just before the virus hit.

Figure A

The good news in all of this is Congress's passage of the sweeping $1.9 trillion relief and recovery package. It is both providing crucial support to millions of working families and setting the stage for a robust recovery. One big concern, however, is that the bill's UI provisions are set to expire the first week in September, when, even in the best–case scenario, they will still be needed. By then, Congress needs to have put in place long-run UI reforms that include automatic triggers based on economic conditions.

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Thursday, March 25, 2021

New Yorker: The Amazon Union Drive and the Changing Politics of Labor

The Amazon Union Drive and the Changing Politics of Labor

https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-populism/the-amazon-union-drive-and-the-changing-politics-of-labor?utm_source=onsite-share&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker

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Most contemporary union drives are ultimately about the past—about the contrast that they draw between the more even prosperity of previous decades and the jarring inequalities of the present. But one that will culminate on Monday, the deadline for nearly six thousand employees of an Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama, to cast ballots on whether to affiliate with the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union, is the rare union campaign that is obviously about the future. In this case, hyperbole is possible. The Democratic congressman Andy Levin, of Michigan, a union stalwart, has described it as "the most important election for the working class in this country in the twenty-first century." On Monday, the Reverend Dr. William Barber, as prominent a figure as exists in the modern civil-rights movement, travelled to Alabama and said, "Bessemer is now our Selma."

That this election is about the future has something to do with the workers themselves, who embody the political transformation of the South to which progressives pin their dreams. According to union officials, a majority of the people employed at the facility, which is outside of Birmingham, are Black, and a majority are women. On the drive up to the facility, supporters of the R.W.D.S.U. planted a sign featuring the Democratic politician and voting-rights advocate Stacey Abrams striking a Rosie the Riveter pose. A high-ranking labor official in Washington pointed me to a detail from an interview, published in The American Prospect, with the campaign's on-the-ground leader, a thirty-three-year-old organizer named Josh Brewer. Brewer said that many of the workers who supported the union had been involved in demonstrations to bring down Confederate statues in Birmingham, and they often organized themselves.

But the significance of the drive has more to do with the company itself. Amazon is now among the largest private employers in the United States; its founder, Jeff Bezos, is arguably the wealthiest man in modern history. The company has paid every one of its workers fifteen dollars per hour since November, 2018, while also pioneering second-by-second monitoring of its employees. "This isn't just about wages," Stuart Appelbaum, the R.W.D.S.U.'s president, told me, on Monday. It is also about the strenuous pace of work, and the real-time surveillance methods that Amazon has used to monitor employees. Appelbaum said some of the workers that his union has represented have had employers that monitored their locations with G.P.S. chips in their delivery trucks, "but there's nothing like this, where you're expected to touch a package every eight seconds." It had been hard to organize within the Bessemer facility, he said, in part because many of the workers did not know one another. "It's hyper-Taylorism," Damon Silvers, the director of policy and the special counsel of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said. "Amazon has determined an optimal set of motions that they want their employees to do, and they have the ability to monitor the employee at all times and measure the difference between what the employee does and what they want them to do, and there is nowhere to hide." Appelbaum said, "People tell us they feel like robots who are being managed by robots."

The Amazon union drive has drawn a rare intensity out of the usual suspects. Abrams, Levin, and Bernie Sanders have announced their support for it, and so has President Joe Biden, who recorded a strong message encouraging the organizers and discouraging any effort to interfere with them. It has also drawn some unusual allies, above all the conservative Republican senator Marco Rubio, of Florida, who published an op-ed in USA Today declaring his support for the organizing workers and his opposition to Amazon's ways: "The days of conservatives being taken for granted by the business community are over."

Amazon's influence is so vast—touching on issues from wealth and income inequality to antitrust policy, the American relationship with China, the omnipotence of workplace surveillance, and the atomizing effect of big business, in its most concentrated and powerful form, on families and communities—that it can scramble ordinary politics. For a moment, at least, it can put Marco Rubio and Stacey Abrams on the same side. Most organizing campaigns have a symbolic quality, in which the employer and its workers stand for different models of economic organization. The fight in Bessemer is different because it is so direct. Amazon isn't a proxy for the future of the economy but its heart.

Ayear into a pandemic that has kept many Americans cooped up at home, ordering supplies and streaming their entertainment, seems an unpromising time to take on Amazon, which supplies many of those services. Amazon's revenue grew by nearly forty per cent in 2020, and its workforce grew by about fifty per cent; Jeff Bezos's wealth reportedly increased by nearly seventy billion dollars last year. The company has become so ubiquitous that even to inquire about it entangles you in its machinery: type "is Amazon popular?" into a search engine and you might find, as I did, that most of the top results are books about popularity which are sold on Amazon. You can find evidence that Amazon both is and isn't popular in survey data. In one poll, ninety-one per cent of respondents said that they had a favorable view of Amazon; in another, fifty-nine per cent thought the company was bad for small business. To count on broad opposition to Amazon right now is to assume such cognitive dissonance: that Americans may increasingly rely on Amazon and view it favorably while also believing that the company needs to change.

VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER

"That's Not Who We Are" Is the Wrong Reaction to the Attack on the Capitol

It is still rare to find Republicans who will cheer on the program of organized labor. But it has become easy to find prominent conservatives denouncing Amazon. Bezos's accelerating wealth and Amazon's profiteering have been targets of Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News since the middle of the Trump era; early this winter, Donald Trump, Jr., called Bezos "hypocritical" for celebrating Biden's win, in November, while trying to restrict balloting in the Alabama union election a few months later. Josh Hawley, the firebrand Missouri senator, will publish a book titled "The Tyranny of Big Tech" in May, and was praised this week by Donald Trump for his antagonism of Silicon Valley. Many of the anti-Amazon arguments that have surfaced on the right revolve around the company's interventions in politics, particularly its decisions to stop hosting Parler, the extremist social-media site, on Amazon Web Services and to exclude a conservative book critical of transgender identity from its bookstore. This, some conservatives say, is the "woke capital" problem.

Oren Cass, a former campaign staffer for Mitt Romney, told me that the "woke capital" criticism of Amazon enjoys "almost unanimous" support on the center-right. Cass, who runs a new think tank, American Compass—which is dedicated, in part, to challenging laissez-faire orthodoxy—thought that such support could be a seed for a broader conservative turn against free-market fundamentalism. "The behavior of firms like Amazon, as not only an economic but also a social and political force, is highlighting for conservatives that what's good for profits is not always good for America," he told me. There isn't any formal caucus of Republicans who share this perspective. (The Party right now is a chaotic tangle of rivalrous personalities that often defies ideology.) But the roster of elected officials who have appeared on American Compass's Zoom panels and published essays on its Web site is a start, even though these politicians have their own points of emphasis, and even though they have publicly denounced one another. Romney has emphasized a child tax credit and expanding government spending to support poor families; Tom Cotton, the senator from Arkansas, the ways in which Chinese manufacturing has warped markets; Hawley a war on Silicon Valley and a defense of traditional communities; Rubio the pressure that vast multinationals put on small businesses. My own observation is that there is a sharp generational break among conservative policy wonks and staffers: those under forty tend to be much more skeptical of free-market fundamentalism, just as the young policy talent on the left has broken with Obamaism to embrace the more skeptical, interventionist view of the free-market economy represented by Elizabeth Warren. There might be some opportunism in the Republicans who, after Trump, are experimenting with a working-class conservatism. But they also fit the generational pattern.

"Amazon is sui generis in a lot of ways," Cass said, "so, while there is a broader argument necessary about the relationship between labor and management and the power of workers in the labor market, from a political perspective it offers an especially compelling circumstance for supporting change." Cass recently collected, on a Twitter thread, a decade's worth of news reports on Amazon's labor practices. The stories recounted that Amazon had ambulances waiting outside of warehouses during summer heat waves, that employees were sometimes fired algorithmically, without input from a human superior (a charge that the company has denied), that it had hired Pinkerton detectives to gather intelligence on its warehouse workers. Cass pointed out that most of these stories included at least partial responses from Amazon. Still, he said, "the pattern here is pretty clear. And it points to the need for greater worker power." Most conservatives are still skeptical of labor unions. Rubio has spoken of the need for less "adversarial" relationships between management and labor. But Cass's Twitter thread also seems to suggest that Amazon had so perfected the model of an efficient corporation that to see the company clearly was to see that ideology in a full, cold light.

The labor leaders in Washington seemed to see Republican support as welcome but mostly ornamental—like if a distant relative had sent, for Christmas, a very large painting of a duck. They found the Democrats' reaction more significant. In Biden's message of support earlier this month, he warned employers not to interfere with union elections: "You should all remember that the National Labor Relations Act didn't just say that unions are allowed to exist. It said that we should encourage unions." Silvers, of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said he thought that Biden was speaking directly to the workers who were organizing. "The way he's talking is not unprecedented, but the precedents are in the Roosevelt Administration," he said. Appelbaum, of the R.W.D.S.U., said that there had been more talk about the importance of unions in the last Presidential campaign than he'd ever heard before. "We used to talk about how even those Democratic Presidents who we like would barely talk about unions. Biden is different."

What is rare about the Bessemer campaign is how neatly it encapsulates the modern economic system—it is, in many ways, a pinnacle of a pinnacle. Amazon represents an extreme expression of the twenty-first century's extreme inequality and concentration of wealth and economic power, which has already changed the Democratic Party and some elements of the G.O.P. The Bessemer facility represents Amazon's system fully realized, and so it carries one potential future for work. The union proposition is that, in Amazon, in Bezos, in Bessemer, after a year of the pandemic, the whole system can be seen clearly. Now the choice belongs to those six thousand workers. Appelbaum suspects that the early vote was unfavorable to the organizing effort, but that the late vote—once the union presented this vision—was more friendly, and that Monday's outcome will hinge on when the most votes were cast. "We're going up against the wealthiest human being since the beginning of time, and this incredibly powerful corporation," Appelbaum said. "And they still can be beat."

Benjamin Wallace-Wells began contributing to The New Yorker in 2006 and joined the magazine as a staff writer in 2015. He writes mainly about American politics and society.

Amazon Walks a Political Tightrope in Its Union Fight [feedly]

Amazon Walks a Political Tightrope in Its Union Fight
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/technology/amazon-union-politics.html

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WASHINGTON — Amazon is aligned with the Biden administration on several fronts.

It backs a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage. It has pledged to meet all the goals of the Paris climate agreement on reducing emissions. It has met with the administration to discuss how to help with the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines.

But a union drive at one of its warehouses in Alabama has the retailer doing a political balancing act: staying on the good side of Washington's Democratic leaders while squashing an organizing effort that President Biden has signaled his support for.

Amazon workers in Bessemer, Ala., have been voting for weeks on whether to form a union. The voting ends Monday. Approval would be a first for Amazon workers in the United States and could energize the labor movement across the country.

Labor organizers have tapped into dissatisfaction with working conditions in the warehouse, saying Amazon's pursuit of efficiency and profits makes the conditions harsh for workers. The company counters that its starting wage of $15 an hour exceeds what other employers in the area pay, and it has urged workers to vote against unionizing.

Labor leaders and liberal Democrats have seized on the union drive, saying it shows how Amazon is not as friendly to workers as the company says it is. Some of the company's critics are also using its resistance to the union push to argue that Amazon should not be trusted on other issues, like climate change and the federal minimum wage.

Refer someone to The Times.

They'll enjoy our special rate of $1 a week.

Amazon has always fought against unionizing by its workers. But the vote in Alabama comes at a perilous moment for the company. Lawmakers and regulators — not competitors — are some of its greatest threats, and it has spent significant time and money trying to keep the government away from its business.

Amazon's business practices are the subject of antitrust investigations at the Federal Trade Commission and in multiple state attorney general offices. Mr. Biden on Monday nominated Lina Khan, a legal scholar who came to prominence with her critique of the company, for a seat on the F.T.C.

"I think everyone is seeing through the P.R. at this point and focusing on both their economic and political power," Sarah Miller, a critic of Amazon, said about the company. Ms. Miller, who runs the American Economic Liberties Project, an antitrust think tank, added, "I think the narrative is cooked now on their status as a monopoly, their status as an abusive employer and their status as one of the biggest spenders on lobbying in Washington, D.C."

Drew Herdener, Amazon's vice president for worldwide communications, said in a statement that the company shared common ground with the Biden administration on climate change, immigration reform, the minimum wage and pandemic policy, and was "seeing really positive collaboration on those fronts" with the White House.

"As it relates to progressive Democrats in general, we've been surprised by some of the negative things we've seen certain members say in the press and on social media," he said. "If there's a progressive company in this country, it's Amazon. Find me another large company paying two times the minimum wage, providing great health benefits from Day 1, 95 percent education reimbursement, safe working environment, and so on. We really think we are an example of what a U.S. company should be doing for its employees."

Image
Lina Khan, a nominee for the Federal Trade Commission.Credit...Lexey Swall for The New York Times

Amazon spent $18.7 million on federal lobbying last year, compared with $2.1 million a decade ago, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Its lobbyists press their employer's case on a variety of issues, like how drones are regulated and the laws that govern pharmacies.

Consumers adore Amazon. In late 2019, a national survey by The Verge, a technology news site, found that 91 percent had a favorable view of the retail giant. When professors at Georgetown and New York Universities asked Americans in 2018 which institutions they had the most confidence in, only the military ranked higher than Amazon.

Still, when Jeff Bezos, the chief executive, testified before Congress last year, he faced accusations that the company squeezes the small businesses that use its online marketplace. A liberal philanthropic organization funded a network of activists to press Amazon on privacy, competition and labor issues. They have also attacked Mr. Bezos, the richest person in the world by some measures, for his personal wealth.

Amazon has made efforts to reach out to the new administration. Dave Clark, who runs the company's consumer business, sent a letter to the White House in January offering to help with the distribution of the coronavirus vaccine and met virtually with Jeff Zients, the White House's coronavirus coordinator, to discuss the vaccine rollout.

In December, the company also hired the lobbyist Jeff Ricchetti, whose brother, Steve Ricchetti, is a longtime aide to Mr. Biden and now a counselor to the president. In the final quarter of last year, Amazon paid Jeff Ricchetti $60,000, according to disclosure forms he filed with the government.

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An Amazon warehouse in Kent, Wash. According to a 2019 survey by The Verge, 91 percent of people in the United States had a favorable view of Amazon.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

The company's top lobbying and communications executive, Jay Carney, was a communications director for Mr. Biden during the Obama administration. President Barack Obama later named Mr. Carney the White House press secretary. He has deep relationships with Mr. Biden's inner circle, and has played in a garage band with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Under Mr. Carney's leadership, Amazon has taken steps to satisfy its liberal critics. In 2018, Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, attacked the company over its wages. Not long after that, the company announced that it would raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour and push federal policymakers to do the same.

"We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do and decided we want to lead," Mr. Bezos said in a statement at the time.

Amazon has promoted the $15-an-hour minimum in ads in publications frequently used to reach government officials, including Politico and The New York Times. Its lobbyists have pushed for a federal law raising the wage.

The union organizers in Bessemer have increasingly attracted support from the White House and top lawmakers in Congress. Labor leaders spent weeks pushing Mr. Biden's staff to have him weigh in on the election at the warehouse.

Their lobbying paid off: In February, Mr. Biden appeared in a video that didn't mention Amazon explicitly but was seen as a clear sign of support to the union. In the video, he said there "should be no intimidation, no coercion, no threats" from employers in coming union elections, including in Alabama.

"I didn't speak with the president directly, but my understanding was that the second this hit the president's briefing book, he was like, 'I'm in,'" said Sara Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants.

The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California both support the unionization effort, as do many other Democrats in Congress.

"We've got to protect every worker's right to form and join a union, and to bargain collectively for better pay, quality health care, a safer workplace and a secure retirement," said Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, where Amazon has its main headquarters. "That absolutely includes the Amazon workers in Alabama, just like workers in Washington State and across our country."

Amazon's opposition to the union drive could scuttle some of the good will it established among Democrats with its support for a higher federal minimum wage, some liberals said.

Image
Representative Andy Levin, left, a Michigan Democrat, visiting the Amazon warehouse in Alabama after meeting with workers and organizers involved in the unionization effort.Credit...Megan Varner/Getty Images

Mr. Sanders said he appreciated Amazon's help on the minimum wage. "On the other hand," he said, "to my mind, I find it hard to understand why Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon and the wealthiest guy in the world, worth about $182 billion, is spending millions of dollars fighting a union organizing effort in Alabama, where his workers are trying to organize for better wages and better working conditions."

But he said he would ultimately approach the company "issue by issue."

Mr. Sanders will appear at a union event in Alabama with the rapper Killer Mike on Friday. Mr. Clark, the Amazon executive, responded to the news with derision on Wednesday evening.

"I often say we are the Bernie Sanders of employers, but that's not quite right because we actually deliver a progressive workplace to our constituents," he said on Twitter.

It recalled the message Amazon had waiting for a delegation of progressive lawmakers who met with union representatives in Alabama this month.

At the warehouse, workers held up a large banner with text in bold letters: "CONGRESS: PLEASE MATCH AMAZON'S $15/HOUR MINIMUM WAGE!"

Karen Weise contributed reporting.

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Tuesday, March 9, 2021

Krugman: Will Stagnation Follow the Biden Boom? [feedly]

Will Stagnation Follow the Biden Boom?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/opinion/biden-economy-stagnation.html

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It's morning in America! People are getting vaccinated at the rate of two million a day and rising, suggesting that the pandemic may be largely behind us in a few months (unless premature reopening or variants mostly immune to the current vaccines set off another wave). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has already declared that vaccinated adults can safely mingle with one another, their children and their grandchildren.

On the economic front, the Senate has passed a relief bill that should help Americans get through the remaining difficult months, leaving them ready to work and spend again, and the bill will almost surely become law in a few days.

Economists have noticed the good news. Forecasters surveyed by Bloomberg predict 5.5 percent growth this year, the highest rate since the 1990s. I think they're being conservative; so does Goldman Sachs, which expects 7.7 percent growth, something we haven't seen since 1984.

But then what? I'm very optimistic about economic prospects for the next year or two. Beyond that, however, we're going to need another big policy initiative to keep the good times rolling.

President Biden's American Rescue Plan is what the name implies. It's a short-term relief measure meant to address an economic emergency. There are some elements Democrats hope will become permanent — child tax credits, enhanced subsidies for health insurance — but the great bulk of the spending will fade out within a year.

And once the big spending is behind us, we're all too likely to find ourselves back in a condition of "secular stagnation," an old concept recently revived by Larry Summers. I know it's an obscure piece of jargon. But what it means is a condition in which the economy has persistent trouble maintaining full employment, even with ultralow interest rates. An economy subject to secular stagnation will still have occasional good times, but policymakers will find it difficult to offset bad news, like the bursting of a financial bubble.

This is a bad place to be. There's a growing consensus among economists that the U.S. economy spent most of the decade after the 2008 financial crisis producing less and employing fewer people than it should have. We may — may — have finally gotten close to full employment on the eve of the pandemic, but even that isn't clear.

Exactly why we found ourselves in this condition is a subject of some debate, but a few factors are obvious. A drastic slowdown in growth of the working-age population reduced investment demand; so did an apparent slackening in the pace of technological progress. Whatever the reasons, the prepandemic economy spent most of its time underperforming relative to its potential.

And financial markets are signaling that they expect a return to underperformance once the Biden boom is behind us. These days interest rates are, in effect, a barometer of economic optimism — and these rates have in fact risen as the rescue plan has moved toward the finish line. But the rise has been modest, comparable to the "taper tantrum" of 2013 (don't ask) and minor compared with some interest rate surges of the 1990s.

What markets are telling us, in effect, is that after the boom they expect a return to stagnation — which would, again, be a bad place to be. How can we avoid it?

OPINION DEBATEWhat should the Biden administration prioritize?

ABDULLAH SHIHIPAR argues that the Department of Health and Human Services should declare racism a public health emergency "to bring desperately needed relief to the communities of color that have been ravaged by the pandemic."
KARA SWISHER writes that the Coronavirus vaccine rollout "has been shaken by far too much chaos," and in particular "chaos that is often related to glitchy tech" that could be improved.
RHEA BOYD, a pediatrician, writes that a focus on vaccine hesitancy "implicitly blames Black communities for their undervaccination" and obscures opportunities to fix the problem.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF, Opinion columnist, argues that while we need investments in bridges, highways and the electrical grid, "perhaps America's most disgraceful infrastructure failing is its lack of public toilets."

The answer is actually obvious: a large program of public investment, paid for largely with borrowing, although with a case for new taxes, too, if it's really big. Such a program would do double duty. Macroeconomics aside, we need to spend a lot to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, fight climate change, and more. And public investment can also be a major source of jobs and growth, helping to pull us out of the stagnation trap.

The good news is that the Biden administration's economists understand all of this perfectly well, and by all accounts they're already in the process of putting together a very ambitious infrastructure plan.

The bad news is that getting such a plan enacted will be very hard politically — probably even harder than getting to yes on short-term economic rescue.

In a well-functioning democracy, putting together a big public investment plan wouldn't be hard. "Every bit of polling evidence I have reviewed," wrote Gallup's Frank Newport, "shows that Americans are extremely supportive of new government infrastructure legislation." Remember, the Trump administration spent four years promising a plan any day now, although it never delivered.

But every bit of polling evidence I've reviewed also showed that Americans — including many Republicans — supported the American Rescue Plan. Yet not a single elected Republican voted for it.

Republicans will probably offer similar lock-step opposition to anything Democrats propose on infrastructure. In fact, the very popularity of infrastructure spending will stiffen their opposition, because what they want, above all, is to make the Biden administration a failure.

So the big question is whether Democrats can pull off another political miracle, and pass a second round of crucial economic legislation in the face of scorched-earth Republican opposition. The answer to that question will determine whether the Biden boom will endure.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

Paul Krugman has been an Opinion columnist since 2000 and is also a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade and economic geography. @PaulKrugman

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Monday, March 29, 2021

The Giant Ship Blocking the Suez Canal Is Finally Freed - Bloomberg

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Dominoes Have Toppled

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Dominoes Have Toppled

Sunday, March 28, 2021

socialist-economics:Amazon worker resources Page.

Friday, March 26, 2021

One year later, unemployment insurance claims remain sky-high [feedly]

Thursday, March 25, 2021

New Yorker: The Amazon Union Drive and the Changing Politics of Labor

Amazon Walks a Political Tightrope in Its Union Fight [feedly]

Tuesday, March 9, 2021

Krugman: Will Stagnation Follow the Biden Boom? [feedly]