https://equitablegrowth.org/factsheet-what-does-the-research-say-about-care-infrastructure/

Factsheet: What does the research say about care infrastructure?

https://equitablegrowth.org/factsheet-what-does-the-research-say-about-care-infrastructure/

The United States is emerging from the greatest health, economic, and caregiving crises in a century. Many policymakers are looking for ways to jumpstart the economy and, recognizing the tie between infrastructure and economic growth, have turned their sights on investments in U.S. physical and care infrastructure.

What does the research say about care infrastructure?Download

In March 2021, President Joe Biden proposed the American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan, a multipart proposal that would boost federal spending on the nation's care and physical infrastructure. (See textbox for details.) Investments of this kind could help the U.S. economy recover from the coronavirus recession and lead toward sustainable, broad-based economic growth in the future.

Care infrastructure in the American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan

The American Jobs Plan includes significant investments in the nation's care infrastructure, including:

• $400 billion to expand home- and community-based services to help people who are elderly or have a physical or intellectual disability stay in their homes and avoid unnecessary institutionalization
• $25 billion to upgrade existing child care facilities and increase the supply of child care in communities with limited access

The American Families Plan has yet to be formally released, but President Biden supports the following care infrastructure investments:

• Twelve weeks of federally funded paid family and medical leave with an additional 7 days of paid sick leave
• Additional child care subsidies administered on a sliding scale, so that low- to middle-income families pay no more than 7 percent of their income on child care
• Expanded early care and education options, including universal pre-Kindergarten for all 3- to 4-year-olds and child care options for parents who work nontraditional hours

Care infrastructure includes the policies, resources, and services necessary to help U.S. families meet their caregiving needs. Specifically, care infrastructure describes high-quality, accessible, and affordable child care; paid family and medical leave; and home- and community-based services and support.

This factsheet presents some of the research and evidence on America's care infrastructure as it relates to families' caregiving needs, the care workforce, and U.S. economic growth.

The current state of U.S. care infrastructure

Caregiving is an important component of the economy. Research suggests that adequate care infrastructure can promote labor force participation, particularly among women; boost the human capital of care recipients; and support broad-based macroeconomic growth. Yet the evidence also suggests that U.S. care infrastructure is in need of greater investment, and current caregiving policies and resources may not be sufficient for the nation's caregiving needs. For example:

• Child care costs more than in-state public college in 30 states, and more than half of all families live in so-called child care deserts, where the supply of licensed child care slots is insufficient for the number of children in that area. Despite these high prices, child care providers run on razor-thin profit margins, making them particularly vulnerable to changes in macroeconomic trends. Meanwhile, the median wage for a child care worker is only $25,460 per year.1
• The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that today's seniors will incur an average of $137,800 in future long-term services and supports costs, half of which will be financed out of pocket—an unaffordable amount for many. And while COVID-19 outbreaks were particularly devastating to nursing home residents, waitlists for home- and community-based services through Medicaid waivers remain long. In 2018, more than 800,000 Americans were on such a waitlist—approximately 45 percent of the total population already receiving these services.2
• For workers living in the 44 states that do not currently have an active paid family and medical leave system, finding time to focus on caregiving can be a challenge. Only 20 percent of private-sector workers access paid family leave through their employers, and 44 percent of U.S. workers do not even qualify for unpaid leave through the Family and Medical Leave Act, or FMLA.3

The COVID-19 pandemic and recession exposed preexisting flaws in the nation's care infrastructure and further weakened an already-fragile system. Employment in the child care and home-health sectors remains depressed, suggesting the care economy could struggle to meet demand as the nation reopens, blunting the economic recovery. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1

Insufficient care infrastructure constrains the U.S. economy and worker well-being

• Paid caregivers earn less than workers in noncare jobs with comparable skills, employment characteristics, and demographics. Research demonstrates that professionals in the caregiving industry receive wages that are 20 percent lower than comparable professionals in other industries. Managers face a similar 14 percent penalty. These penalties translate to higher turnover, lower consumer spending, a smaller tax base, and reduced economic security than if care workers were valued the same as comparable noncare employees.4
• Turnover and disruptions in paid caregiving arrangements are burdensome for family caregivers. Recent research finds that the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted more than half of family caregiving arrangements. Family caregivers who face a caregiving disruption demonstrate increased anxiety and depression, and are 13.9 percentage points more likely to also experience permanent job separation or furloughs during the pandemic, compared with noncaregivers.5
• Informal caregiving may constrain the economy through lost productivity, wages, and benefits. In data collected by Gallup Inc., 24 percent of family caregivers report that caregiving keeps them from working more, and 30 percent report missing 6 or more days of work in the prior year due to caregiving duties. These productivity losses are estimated to cost the U.S. economy more than $25 billion per year. A 2011 study by the Metlife Mature Market Institute estimates that aggregate cost to the U.S. economy from lost wages, pensions, and Social Security benefits for these family caregivers is nearly $3 trillion.6
• Caregiving concerns may have driven millions of women out of the workforce in the COVID-19 pandemic. Research shows that caregiving concerns contributed to more than 2.3 million women exiting the labor force between February 2020 and February 2021. By March 2021, the labor force participation rate for women was 56.1 percent, the lowest rate since May 1988. The gap between men's and women's labor force participation widened in communities where school closures exacerbated caregiving needs. Time out of the workforce has long-term implications: Research shows that 13 percent of the gender pay gap can be ascribed to time spent outside of the labor force caring for others.7

Investments in care infrastructure boost economic growth, labor force participation, and worker well-being

• Investments in care infrastructure have the potential to create twice as many new jobs as investments in physical infrastructure alone. In the wake of the Great Recession a decade ago, researchers estimate that investment in early childhood development and home-based healthcare could have created 23.5 new jobs per $1 million spent, compared to 11.1 jobs from physical infrastructure investments. Approximately 85 percent of new jobs from both care and physical infrastructure investments would reach workers with lower levels of educational attainment.8 (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2

• Spending in the care economy would strengthen women's employment and reduce the gender employment gap. An analysis of care spending in seven OECD countries, including the United States, estimates that an investment in the care economy equal to 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product would raise the employment rate for U.S. women and men by 8.2 percentage points and 4 percentage points, respectively. This would reduce the gender employment divide by 4.2 percentage points.9
• Accessible and affordable child care can facilitate labor force participation and support economic growth. Research shows that parents' labor force participation increases when child care is more affordable and accessible. In one study, a 100-slot increase in the supply of child care in a community is estimated to raise women's labor force participation for the entire community by 0.3 percentage points. Conversely, every $100 increase in the price of child care is associated with a 3.7 percentage point decrease in that neighborhood's labor force participation rate among women.10
  • Meanwhile, high-quality early care and education can lead to long-term improvements in a child's human capital. Children in high-quality programs demonstrate better education, economic, health, and social outcomes and fewer negative outcomes—such as involvement in the criminal justice system. These high-quality programs can help pay for themselves, generating up to a 13 percent return on investment per-child, per-year.11
• Much of the research evidence shows paid leave has a range of positive outcomes for caregivers and care recipients. A growing body of research suggests that paid parental leave can improve a range of childhood outcomes, including infant mortality, low birth weight, preterm birth, breastfeeding rates, and pediatric head trauma, as well as later-in-life outcomes, including lower rates of attention deficit disorder and obesity. Additionally, evidence from California suggests paid caregiving leave can reduce nursing home occupancy among the elderly patients, likely due to enhanced access to family caregivers. And while research on paid medical leave is still comparatively scant, research on related programs indicates such leave can lead to positive health and economic outcomes, as employees have more time and resources to focus on their own well-being.12
  • Paid leave may also improve labor market outcomes for caregivers. The bulk of the research finds positive associations between paid leave and women's labor force participation, though the relationship remains nuanced. Evidence from California indicates that under the state's paid leave law, new mothers are 18 percentage points more likely to be working the year after the birth of their child, compared to mothers without paid leave access. Recent research corroborates these findings, indicating an approximately 20 percent increase in the probability of labor force participation during the year of a child's birth. This increase remains significant up to 5 years later.13
• Patients transitioning from institutions to lower-cost home- and community-based services experience better quality of life and fewer unmet needs. Research shows that patients who transition from institutional care to home-based care express greater life satisfaction (66 percent compared to 83 percent) and fewer unmet care needs (18.3 percent compared to 7.6 percent), compared to their time in institutions. In the same analysis, patients transitioning from nursing home facilities demonstrate 18 percent to 24 percent declines in healthcare spending in their first year in home- and community-based care.14
  • Home-based care may be particularly valuable for patients without access to family caregivers. Research demonstrates that higher levels of state home-health spending is associated with a significant reduction in the risk of nursing home admission among childless patients.15

Conclusion

Inefficiencies in the nation's current care infrastructure—paid family and medical leave, child care, and home-based services and supports—constrain economic growth, and leave families and businesses vulnerable to unexpected health and caregiving shocks. Caregiving work is undervalued, and many U.S. workers across the economy face a financial penalty for engaging in care work, which can lead to high turnover and caregiving instability. When care workers are not available or not affordable, family members take on new caregiving responsibilities, exacerbating work-life challenges. If family caregivers cannot resolve these challenges, then many are forced out of the workforce—costing the economy trillions of dollars in lost productivity and compensation.

Alternatively, research suggests that investments in care infrastructure could create significantly more new jobs than investments in physical infrastructure alone, boosting GDP growth and reducing the gender employment divide. Research on the individual components of the care economy likewise support further investment.

Accessible, affordable, and high-quality child care is associated with employment gains for parents in the short term and human capital improvements for children in the long term. Likewise, a preponderance of the evidence on paid leave indicates positive labor market outcomes for caregivers and health and well-being outcomes for care recipients. Finally, patients who transition out of institution-based long-term care report better quality of life, fewer unmet care needs, and lower healthcare costs.

Altogether, the bulk of the research and evidence suggests investments in care infrastructure are a promising tool to boost U.S. economic growth, productivity, and well-being. Policymakers looking to jumpstart the U.S. economic recovery from the coronavirus recession, ensure broad-based future economic growth, and provide much-needed support to U.S. workers and their families must prioritize investment in both physical and care infrastructure.

APRIL 15, 2021

AUTHORS:

Equitable Growth

TOPICS

CHILDCARE & EARLY EDUCATION

ECONOMIC WELLBEING

HEALTH

PAID LEAVE

PAY EQUITY

END NOTES

1. Child Care Aware of America, "The US and the High Price of Child Care" (2019); Rasheed Malik and others, "The Coronavirus Will Make Child Care Deserts Worse and Exacerbate Inequality" (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2020); Jessica H. Brown and Chris M. Herbst, "Child Care Over the Business Cycle," IZA Discussion Paper No. 14048 (IZA Institute of Labor Economics, 2021); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Child Care Works." In Occupational Outlook Handbook (Washington: Department of Labor, 2021).

2. Melissa Favreault and Judith Dey, "Long-Term Care Services and Supports For Older Americans: Risks and Financing, 2020" (Washington: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, 2021); Kaiser Family Foundation, "Waiting List Enrollment for Medicaid Section 1915(c) Home and Community-Based Services Waivers" (2018).

3. National Partnership for Women and Families, "State Paid Family and Medical Leave Insurance Laws: January 2021" (2021); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "National Compensation Survey, Employee Benefits in the United States, March 2020" (Washington: Department of Labor, 2020); Scott Brown and others, "Employee and Worksite Perspectives of the Family and Medical Leave Act: Results from the 2018 Surveys" (Washington: U.S. Department of Labor, 2020).

4. Nancy Folbre and Kristin Smith, "The wages of care: Bargaining power, earnings and inequality." Working Paper (Washington Center for Equitable Growth, 2017); Robert Holly, "Home Care Industry Turnover Reaches All-Time High of 82%," Home Health Care News, 2019.

5. Yulya Truskinovsky, Jessica Finlay, and Lindsay Kobayashi, "Caregiving in a Pandemic: COVID-19 and the Well-being of Family Caregivers 55+ in the U.S." Working Paper (Washington Center for Equitable Growth, 2021).

6. Dan Witters, "Caregiving Costs U.S. Economy $25.2 Billion in Lost Productivity" (Washington: Gallup Inc., 2011); Metlife Mature Market Institute, "The MetLife Study of Caregiving Costs to Working Caregivers" (New York:  Metlife Services and Solutions LLC, 2011).

7. Titan Alon and others, "From Mancession to Shecession: Women's Employment in Regular and Pandemic Recession." Working Paper 28632(National Bureau of Economic Research, 2021); The National Women's Law Center, "A Year of Strength & Loss: The Pandemic, The Economy, and The Value of Women's Work" (2021); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Labor Force Participation Rate – Women [LNS11300002]" (n.d.), retrieved from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; Caitlyn Collins and others, "The Gendered consequences of a Weak Infrastructure of Care: School Reopening Plans and Parents' Employment During the COVID-19 Pandemic," Gender and Society (2021);  Jérôme Adda, Christian Dustmann, and Katrien Stevens, "The Career Costs of Children," Journal of Political Economy 125(2) (2017): 293–337.

8. Rania Antonopoulos and others, "Investing in Care: A Strategy for Effective and Equitable Job Creation." Working Paper No. 60 (Levy Economic Institute of Bard College, 2011).

9. Jérôme De Henau and others, "Investing in the Care Economy: A gendered analysis of employment stimulus in seven OECD countries" (Brussels: International Trade Union Confederation, 2016).

10. Taryn W. Morrissey, "Child care and parent labor force participation: a review of the research literature," Review of Economics of Households 15 (2016): 1–24; Chris M. Herbst and Burt S. Burnow, "Close to Home: A Simultaneous Equations Model of the Relationship Between Child Care Accessibility and Female Labor Force Participation," Journal of Family and Economic Issues 29 (2008): 128–151.

11. James Heckman, "Invest in Early Childhood Development: Reduce Deficits, Strengthen the Economy" (The Heckman Equation,2013).

12. Elisabeth Jacobs, "Paid Family and Medical Leave in the United States: A Research Agenda" (Washington: Washington Center for Equitable Growth, 2018); Rui Huang and Muzhe Yang, "Paid maternity leave and breastfeeding practice before and after California's implementation of the nation's first paid family leave program," Economic & Human Biology 16 (2015): 45–59; Joanne Klevens and others, "Paid family leave's effect on hospital admissions for pediatric abusive head trauma" Injury Prevention 22(6) (2016): 442–445; Shirlee Lichtman-Sadot and Neryvia Pillay Bell, "Child Health in Elementary School Following California's Paid Family Leave Program," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 36 (4) (2017): 790–827; Kanika Arora and Douglas A. Wolf, "Does Paid Leave Reduce Nursing Home Use? The California Experience," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 37 (1) (2018): 38–62; Jack Smalligan and Chantel Boyens, "Paid Medical Leave Research" (Washington: Washington Center for Equitable Growth, 2020).

13. Alix Gould-Werth, "New paid leave research demonstrates challenge of balancing work and caregiving" (Washington: Washington Center for Equitable Growth, 2019); Charles L. Baum II and Christopher J. Ruhm, "The Effects of Paid Family Leave in California on Labor Market Outcomes," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 35 (2) (2016): 333–356; Kelly Jones and Britni Wilcher, "Reducing maternal labor market detachment: A role for paid family leave." Working Paper (Washington Center for Equitable Growth, 2020).

14. Carol V. Irvin and others, "Money Follows the Person 2015 Annual Evaluation Report" (Baltimore, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 2017).

15. Naoko Muramatsu and others, "Risk of Nursing Home Admission Among Older Americans: Does States' Spending on Home- and Community-Based Services Matter?" The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 62 (4) (2007): S169–S178.

Enlighten Radio:Talkin Socialism: The Forever Wars

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Fwd: [WEBINAR] Register now: Unequal power sabotages workers’ ability to protect themselves from injury, illness and death on the job.

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Date: Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 8:09 AM
Subject: [WEBINAR] Register now: Unequal power sabotages workers' ability to protect themselves from injury, illness and death on the job.
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Join EPI for a webinar that will delve into the overhaul needed to bolster OSHA and increase worker bargaining power.

View this email in your browser John, Workers at risk of coronavirus infection and harm in the workplace received neither adequate protection from their employers nor compensation for their added risks during the pandemic.  This can only be understood as a consequence of unequal workplace power. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the law that created it have also failed workers. Willful inaction in deference to employers and the weaknesses in the law have proven that these basic protections—as essential as they are—are inadequate for many of the hazards in workplaces of the 21st century. The pandemic laid bare two major worker-safety misconceptions that jeopardized workers' health and economic well-being, especially for low-income and Black and brown workers. We learned that: Businesses do not inevitably do the right thing to keep workers safe or compensate them for health risks. Current OSHA protections, actions, and tools were not adequate to protect workers. Unequal power in the workplace deprives workers of the ability to protect themselves from injury, illness, and death on the job. Similarly, lopsided employer power prevents most workers from obtaining adequate compensation for the inherent health risks they face at work. This webinar will delve into the overhaul needed to bolster OSHA and increase worker bargaining power, so workers across the country can obtain good health and safety on the job. Register for "Unequal power sabotages workers' ability to protect themselves from injury, illness and death on the job." For updates and to share this event on social media, use #OSHAUnequalPower. Tuesday, April 20 4 p.m.–5:30 p.m. ET / 1 p.m.–2:30 p.m. PT Economic Policy Institute Zoom   Featured speakers: Peter Dorman, Emeritus Professor of Political Economy, Evergreen State College. Leslie I. Boden, Professor of Environmental Health, Boston University Ann Rosenthal, former Associate Solicitor, Occupational Safety and Health Discussant: Randy Rabinowitz, Executive Director, OSH Law Project Moderator: Bernice Yeung, reporter, ProPublica   Please donate to EPI, so we can continue to host great events. Register Today Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

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Prince Philip & the communist ideal [feedly]

Prince Philip & the communist ideal
https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2021/04/prince-philip-the-communist-ideal.html

One unintended and unremarked effect of the eulogies to Prince Philip is that they have reminded us of Marx's vision of communism.

What I mean is that several of his admirers describe him as a "renaissance man" on account of his wide range of interests. 

This, however, is an example of a common error – of ascribing to agency what is in fact the result of economic forces.

Prince Philip could afford to pursue so many different passions because the day he married the Queen he was freed from what Marx called "the dull compulsion of economic relations." For most of the rest of us, however, this compulsion forces us to specialize, to develop just one skill to the detriment of other interests. Capitalism rests upon the division of labour. But as Adam Smith saw, this can destroy us:

The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging.

A man's mastery of one skill, said Smith is "acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues." And there's plenty of evidence for this. Think of William Shockley, Bobby Fischer, James Watson, Larry Summers, Morrissey, Richard Dawkins….

In fact, the early history of capitalism was marked by workers' fierce reluctance to devote long hours to doing just the one thing. Sidney Pollard (pdf) and E.P. Thompson (pdf) have documented how capitalists strove to instil an unnatural work discipline into their employees. As Pollard put it:

Men who were nonaccumulative, non-acquisitive, accustomed to work for subsistence, not for maximization of income, had to be made obedient to the cash stimulus, and obedient in such a way as to react precisely to the stimuli provided.

Of course, working conditions and hours have improved since Smith's day and many people have internalized the capitalist work ethic. But not all of us. Research by Alex Bryson and George MacKerron has found that even people in good jobs are more miserable whilst at work than they are in any other activity bar being ill in bed. Which is why thousands of those who can afford to do so opt out of the rat race to do what Prince Philip could do – pursue a variety of interests. One reason why I'm looking forward to retiring (next year, I hope) is that I want to spend more time reading, gardening, learning music and learning Italian.

Which is where Marx comes in. His vision of communism was one in which the division of labour no longer suppressed our development as Smith thought it did. (Marx, of course, had read Smith much better than have today's admirers of him):

As soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

You might object that Marx's vision was one of a society of (surprisingly bucolic) dilettantes. That misses the point – that in communist society you will be able to pursue just one activity if you want: you'll be free to choose.

Yes, free. Marx's main beef with capitalism was not so much that it was unfair but that it generated unfreedom by alienating us from our nature. As William Clare Roberts puts it, capital "bends labour power to an alien and unnatural end." Marx, says Clare Roberts, was a theorist of freedom.

Those of us who are rich enough can step away from the alienating and repressive division of labour by retiring early – although of course not without damage. But is what's possible for a privileged few possible for all?

Only in a sufficiently developed economy. Marx thought that a particular level of affluence was necessary for communism, and that whilst capitalism could provide the potential for this affluence, it would not fully realize that potential and that there would come a time when capitalism ceased to develop productive forces but instead held them back. It would, he thought, require communism to allow that potential to be realized for everybody. Aaron Bastani's "fully automated luxury communism" is in this tradition.

Whether this is feasible is of course another matter. The answer lies in the outcome of the race between technical change and diminishing returns and rising rents, and personally I think forecasting the former is a mug's game.

For my purposes, though, this isn't the point. I merely want to point to a nice irony – that Prince Philip's eulogists have, perhaps inadvertently, made the case for Marx's vision of communism.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Michael Hudson: America’s Neoliberal Financialization Policy vs. China’s Industrial Socialism [feedly]

Michael Hudson: America's Neoliberal Financialization Policy vs. China's Industrial Socialism
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/04/michael-hudson-americas-neoliberal-financialization-policy-vs-chinas-industrial-socialism.html

Michael Hudson: America's Neoliberal Financialization Policy vs. China's Industrial Socialism

Posted on April 15, 2021 by Yves Smith

Yves here. Michael Hudson said he both enjoyed and very much appreciated the robust discussion among members of the commentariat last weekend about what to call China's economic model. He's keen to continue the discussion. To advance that end, Michael has graciously given us a lecture being subtitled in Chinese for release in a few weeks. It summarizes a series of talks and will also be included in his my book to be published later this summer, "The Destiny of Civilization: Industrial Capitalism, Finance Capitalism or Socialism." As you can see, Michael focuses on finacialization as a central point of difference between the two systems.

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is "and forgive them their debts": Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year

Nearly half a millennium ago Niccolo Machiavelli's The Princedescribed three options for how a conquering power might treat states that it defeated in war but that "have been accustomed to live under their own laws and in freedom: … the first is to ruin them, the next is to reside there in person, the third is to permit them to live under their own laws, drawing a tribute, and establishing within it an oligarchy which will keep it friendly to you."[1]

Machiavelli preferred the first option, citing Rome's destruction of Carthage. That is what the United States did to Iraq and Libya after 2001. But in today's New Cold War the mode of destruction is largely economic, via trade and financial sanctions such as the United States has imposed on China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela and other designated adversaries. The idea is to deny them key inputs, above all in essential technology and information processing, raw materials, and access to bank and financial connections, such as U.S. threats to expel Russia from the SWIFT bank-clearing system.

The second option is to occupy rivals. This is done only partially by the troops in America's 800 military bases abroad. But the usual, more efficient occupation is by U.S. corporate takeovers of their basic infrastructure, owning their most lucrative assets and remitting their revenue back to the imperial core.

President Trump said that he wanted to seize Iraq's and Syria's oil as reparations for the cost of destroying their society. His successor, Joe Biden, sought in 2021 to appoint Hillary Clinton's loyalist Neera Tanden to head the government's Office of Management and Budget (OMB). She had urged that America should make Libya turn over its vast oil reserves as reparations for the cost of destroying its society. "We have a giant deficit. They have a lot of oil. Most Americans would choose not to engage in the world because of that deficit. If we want to continue to engage in the world, gestures like having oil rich countries partially pay us back doesn't seem crazy to me."[2]

U.S. strategists have preferred Machiavelli's third option: To leave the defeated adversary nominally independent but to rule via client oligarchies. President Jimmy Carter's national-security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski referred to them as "vassals," in the classical medieval meaning of demanding loyalty to their American patrons, with a common interest in seeing the subject economy privatized, financialized, taxed and passed on to the United States for its patronage and support, based on a mutuality of interest against local democratic assertion of nationalisticself-reliance and keeping the economic surplus at home to promote domestic prosperity instead of being sent abroad.

That policy of privatization by a client oligarchy with its own source of wealth based on the U.S. orbit is what American neoliberal diplomacy accomplished in the former Soviet economies after 1991 to secure its Cold War victory over Soviet Communism. The way in which client oligarchies were created was a grabitization that utterly disrupted the economic interconnections integrating the economies. "To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires," Brzezinski explained, "the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected and to keep the barbarians from coming together."[3]

After reducing Germany and Japan to vassalage after defeating them in World War II, U.S. diplomacy quickly reduced the Britain and its imperial sterling area to vassalage by 1946, followed in due course by the rest of Western Europe and its former colonies. The next step was to isolate Russia and China, while keeping "the barbarians from coming together." If they were to join up,warned Mr. Brzezinski, "the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America's status as a global power."[4]

By 2016, Brzezinski saw Pax Americana unravelling from its failure to achieve these aims. He acknowledged that the United States "is no longer the globally imperial power."[5]That is what has motivated its increasing antagonism toward China and Russia, along with Iran and Venezuela.

The problem was not Russia, whose Communist nomenklaturalet their country be ruled by a Western-oriented kleptocracy, but China. The U.S.-China confrontation is not simply a national rivalry, but a conflict of economic and social systems. The reason why today's world is being plunged into an economic and near-military Cold War 2.0 is to be found in the prospect of socialist control of what Western economies since classical antiquity have treated as privately owned rent-yielding assets: money and banking (along with the rules governing debt and foreclosure), land and natural resources, and infrastructure monopolies.

This contrast in whether money and credit, land and natural monopolies will be privatized and duly concentrated in the hands of a rentieroligarchy or used to promote general prosperity and growth has basically become one of finance capitalism and socialism. Yet in its broadest terms this conflict existed already 2500 years ago. in the contrast between Near Eastern kingship and the Greek and Roman oligarchies. These oligarchies, ostensibly democratic in superficial political form and sanctimonious ideology, fought against the concept of kingship. The source of that opposition was that royal power – or that of domestic "tyrants" – might sponsor what Greek and Roman democratic reformers were advocating: cancellation of debts to save populations from being reduced to debt bondage and dependency (and ultimately to serfdom), and redistribution of lands to prevent its ownership from becoming polarized and concentrated in the hands of creditors and-landlords.

From today's U.S. vantage point, that polarization is the basic dynamic of today's U.S.-sponsored neoliberalism. China and Russia are existential threats to the global expansion of financialized rentierwealth. Today's Cold War 2.0 aims to deter China and potentially other counties from socializing their financial systems, land and natural resources, and keeping infrastructure utilities public to prevent their being monopolized in private hands to siphon off economic rents at the expense of productive investment in economic growth.

The United States hoped that China might be as gullible as the Soviet Union and adopt neoliberal policy permitting its wealth to be privatized and turned into rent-extracting privileges, to be sold off to Americans. "What the free world expected when it welcomed China into the free trade body [the World Trade Organization] in 2001," explained Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr, trade advisor in the Reagan administration, was that, "from the time of Deng Xiaoping's adoption of some market methods in 1979 and especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992 … increased trade with and investment in China would inevitably lead to the marketization of its economy, the demise of its state-owned enterprises."[6]

But instead of adopting market-based neoliberalism, Mr. Prestowitz complained, China'sgovernment supported industrial investment and kept money and debt control in its own hands. This government control was "at odds with the liberal, rules-based global system" along the neoliberal lines that had been imposed on the former Soviet economies after 1991. "More fundamentally," Prestowitz summed up:

China's economy is incompatible with the main premises of the global economic system embodied today in the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and a long list of other free trade agreements. These pacts assume economies that are primarily market based with the role of the state circumscribed and micro-economic decisions largely left to private interests operating under a rule of law. This system never anticipated an economy like China's in which state-owned enterprises account for one-third of production; the fusion of the civilian economy with the strategic-military economy is a government necessity; five year economic plans guide investment to targeted sectors; an eternally dominant political party names the CEOs of a third or more of major corporations and has established party cells in every significant company; the value of the currency is managed, corporate and personal data are minutely collected by the government to be used for economic and political control; and international trade is subject to being weaponized at any moment for strategic ends.

This is jaw-dropping hypocrisy – as if the U.S. civilian economy is not fused with its own military-industrial complex, and does not manage its currency or weaponize its international trade as a means of achieving strategic ends. It is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, a fantasy depicting American industry as being independent of government. In fact, Prestowitz urged that "Biden should invoke the Defense Production Act to direct increased U.S.-based production of critical goods such as medicines, semiconductors, and solar panels."

While U.S. trade strategists juxtapose American "democracy" and the Free World to Chinese autocracy, the major conflict between the United States and China has been the role of government support for industry. American industry grew strong in the 19thcentury by government support, just as China is now providing. That was the doctrine of industrial capitalism, after all. But as the U.S. economy has become financialized, it has de-industrialized. China has shown itself to be aware of the risks in financialization, and has taken measures to attempt to contain it. That has helped it achieve what used to be the U.S. ideal of providing low-priced basic infrastructure services.

Here is the U.S. policy dilemma: Its government is supporting industrial rivalry with China, but also supports financialization and privatization of the domestic economy – the very policy that it has used to control "vassal" countries and extract their economic surplus by rent-seeking.

Why U.S. finance capitalism treats China's socialist economy as an existential treat

Financialized industrial capital wants a strong state to serve itself, but not to serve labor, consumers, the environment or long-term social progress at the cost of eroding profits and rents.

U.S. attempts to globalize this neoliberal policy are driving China to resist Western financialization. Its success provides other countries with an object lesson of why to avoid financialization and rent-seeking that adds to the economy's overhead and hence its cost of living and doing business.

China also is providing an object lesson in how to protect its economy and that of its allies from foreign sanctions and related destabilization. Its most basic response has been to prevent an independent domestic or foreign-backed oligarchy from emerging. That has been one first and foremost by maintaining government control of finance and credit, property and land tenure policy in government hands with a long-term plan in mind.

Looking back over the course of history, this retention is how Bronze Age Near Eastern rulers prevented an oligarchy from emerging to threaten Near Eastern palatial economies. It is a tradition that persisted down through Byzantine times, taxing large aggregations of wealth to prevent a rivalry with the palace and its protection of a broad prosperity and distribution of self-support land.

China also is protecting its economy from U.S.-backed trade and financial sanctions and economic disruption by aiming at self-sufficiency in essentials. That involves technological independence and ability to provide enough food and energy resources to support an economy that can function in isolation from the unipolar U.S. bloc. It also involves decoupling from the U.S. dollar and from banking systems linked to it, and hence from U.S. ability to impose financial sanctions.Associated with this aim is creation of a domestic computerized alternative to the SWIFT bank-clearing system.

The dollar still accounts for 80 percent of all global transactions, but less than half of today's Sino-Russian trade, and the proportion is declining, especially as Russian firms avoid dollarized payments or accounts from being seized by U.S. sanctions.

These protective moves limit the U.S. threat to Machiavelli's first option: destroy the world if it does not submit to U.S.-sponsored financialized rent extraction. But as Vladimir Putin has framed matters: "Who would want to live in a world without Russia?"

[1]Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince(1532), Chapter 5:"Concerning the way to govern cities or principalities which lived under their own laws before they were annexed."

[2]Neera Tanden, "Should Libya pay us back?" memo to Faiz Shakir, Peter Juul, Benjamin Armbruster and NSIP Core, October 21, 2011. Mr. Shakir, to his credit, wrote back: "If we think we can make money off an incursion, we'll do it? That's a serious policy/messaging/moral problem for our foreign policy I think." As president of the Center for American Progress, Tanden backed a 2010 proposal to cut Social Security benefits, reflecting the long-term Obama-Clinton objective of fiscal austerity at home as well as abroad.

[3]Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives(New York: 1997), p. 40. See the discussion by Pepe Escobar, "For Leviathan, It's So Cold in Alaska," Unz.com, March 18, 2021.

[4]Brzezinski, ibid., p. 55.

[5]Brzezinski, "Towards a Global Realignment," The American Interest(April 17, 2016) For a discussion see Mike Whitney, "The Broken Checkboard: Brzezinski Gives Up on Empire," Counterpunch, August 25, 2016.

[6]Clyde Prestowitz, "Blow Up the Global Trading System,Washington Monthly, March 24, 2021..

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Retail Workers Union loses in Amazon Bessemer vote count [feedly]

A solid report on Bessmer from Mark Gruenberg

Retail Workers Union loses in Amazon Bessemer vote count
https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/retail-workers-union-loses-in-amazon-bessemer-vote-count/

BESSEMER, Ala.—Amazon has beaten back a historic effort by workers to form a collective bargaining unit in a warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, with about two-thirds of ballots cast in the union election voting against joining the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, according to a tally by the National Labor Relations Board.

The final tally showed 1,798 votes against and 738 in favor, with about 55% of the 5,867 eligible workers casting a ballot. Another 76 ballots were voided and 505 were challenged. The challenged ballots were not counted or opened since they would not have changed the outcome. 

The RWDSU immediately vowed to challenge the results of the election, claiming that "Amazon illegally interfered in the union vote" by intimidating workers and coercing them to vote against the union.

There is no sign that labor and its allies are giving up. The union says it is challenging the rampant labor law breaking of the company and nationally the AFL-CIO is stepping up its campaign for major labor law reform embodied in the ProAct and has secured the backing of President Biden for that effort.

Alabama AFL-CIO President Bren Riley declared this morning that "this goes to show what happens when our woefully outdated labor laws allow corporations to get away with blatantly illegal union-busting activity, knowing the worst they'll receive is a slap on the wrist. Hell, for Jeff Bezos, a few thousand dollars charged by the National Labor Relations Board is what he makes in a matter of seconds.

"Our nation's labor movement is long overdue, Riley said, "for serious labor law reform. The Amazon union campaign deeply underscores the need to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, legislation currently awaiting a vote in the US Senate. If passed into law, it will be the largest law reform since the Great Depression."

The vote at Bessemer, just outside Birmingham, is important for the nation's unions but particularly important for workers of color. The Bessemer workers are 85% Black, and many, if not most, earn the federal minimum wage, $7.25 an hour, or slightly more.

If RWDSU won, it would have been a major breakthrough not only at anti-union Amazon but in notoriously now anti-union Alabama. The pro-union campaign became a civil rights cause, too, gaining support from, among others, actor Danny Glover and the Poor People's Campaign, and a strong endorsement video from Democratic President Joe Biden.

Wages were only one issue in RWDSU's organizing drive at Bessemer, which began when workers approached the union last year. Bezos's wealth and Amazon's huge profits, swollen by revenue from online shoppers during the coronavirus pandemic, was another.

Topping those factors were working conditions at the four-story plant, which is the size of several football fields end-to-end. One condition: Multiple elevators for goods but only one for people.

Amazon also docks workers—leading to suspensions or firings—for being too many minutes away from their posts, monitored by computers. That includes walking time to the few bathrooms to wash their hands to protect against the virus.

Workers also cannot sanitize and there's a lack of physical distancing. And Amazon had doled out "hazard pay" bonuses to workers during the first three months of the pandemic last year, then yanked them. There were also constant speed-up quotas.

All this prompted the organizing drive, which began with a group of workers contacting RWDSU, a sector of the United Food and Commercial Workers.

Amazon responded with an intense and, RWDSU President Stuart Applebaum said, often illegal, union-busting drive. Amazon featured anti-union harangues at captive audience meetings and even posted anti-union materials in the plant's bathrooms.

Amazon also got Bessemer officials to change traffic light sequences outside the plant's main gate, so pro-union workers would have less time to approach others in their cars.

"Our system is broken," Applebaum said. "Amazon took full advantage of that, and we will be calling on the Labor Board to hold Amazon accountable for its illegal and egregious behavior during the campaign. But make no mistake about it: This still represents an important moment for working people and their voices will be heard," he said.

A vote banner hangs on the side of the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer. | Jay Reeves/AP

They've certainly been heard by other Amazon workers around the nation, whom union leaders say have been paying close attention to the outcome in Bessemer.

Meanwhile, NLRB regional officials elsewhere ruled, in the days before the vote, that Amazon broke labor law by firing two workers who "engaged in protected concerted activity," to use the law's language, over lack of coronavirus protection and other issues.

Amazon workers on Chicago's South Side are also upset. Some 20-30 workers at its DIL3 warehouse in Gage Park became the latest group of the monster firm's employees forced to strike over working conditions, for a day on April 7. Many of the Amazon Gage Park workers are Spanish speakers.

More than a year ago, before the virus hit, Amazon settled a prior forced walkout in the Twin Cities over its refusal to allow Muslim workers time off for holy days.

At Gage Park, Amazon forces workers to toil on a "Megacycle" graveyard shift from 1:20 a.m. to 11:50 a.m. It's also imposing the Megacycle on workers and drivers in Florida, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and South Carolina, the Amazons United Chicagoland told The Intercept. They're also circulating an online petition demanding reasonable working hours.

"Stand with Chicagoland Amazon workers. Amazon workers here in Chicago and around the country are being moved to an inhumane 'Megacycle' (1 a.m.-12 p.m.) shift," the petition says. They demand accommodations for workers who cannot work at night, such as those with young children.

They also demand $2 per hour additional megacycle shift pay, free Lyft rides to and from work—CTA's buses don't run at 1 am in Gage Park, and commutes take hours—and respect for workers' 20-minute paid breaks.

"Amazon could make accommodations to peoples' schedules who need it. They just don't want to," Amazonians United organizer Christian Zamarrón told the news site.

This article was updated at 12:45 p.m. Central Time.

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