The Shrinking US Role in World Car Markets [feedly]

The Shrinking US Role in World Car Markets
https://conversableeconomist.wpcomstaging.com/2021/06/25/the-shrinking-us-role-in-world-car-markets/

Within the US, I often find a widespread sense that what happens in US (and perhaps also European) car markets will be the key factor in shaping world car markets. But that's highly unlikely to be true. The US accounted for 62% of all global car registrations in 1960. Even by 2000, the US included 22% of all global car registrations. But by 2018, the US share of global car registrations was 11% and still falling. The US and European car markets are essentially stagnant in terms of total quantity of cars, but rapid growth in cars is happening in the rest of the world, including in China.

The estimates of the US share of global car registration is from the latest version of the Transportation Energy Data Book, put together by Stacy C. Davis and Robert G. Boundy for Oak Ridge National Laboratory (vol. 39, updated April 2021). Here's some other data from that volume.

This table shows car production by country for 2000 and 2018. The US now runs a distant fourth, behind China, Japan, and and Germany, just ahead of India, Brazil, and Spain.

This figure shows total ownership of cars, comparing 1960, 2000, and 2018. Here, the US still runs second, behind China, but of course this is in part because of the much larger US population compared to most of the other countries listed here. It's also true that US cars are lasting much longer, so the gap between annual production and total ownership has risen. For example, in the US back in 1970, half the cars on the road were four years old or younger, and only 2.9% of cars on the road were 15 years old or more. In 2018, only about one-quarter of the cars on the road were four years old or less, and 19% of the cars on the road were 15 years old or more.

Of course, the fundamental driver of the rising share of global car production and usage outside the US is a result of faster-growing economies in those places. How much farther do other countries have to go before they begin to approach US levels of car ownership?

This figure helps put US car ownership in perspective with other countries. The dark line in the figure shows US vehicles per 1000 people over time from 1900 to the present. In the upper right, you can see how this measure flattens out for the US in recent decades. Then the car ownership of other nations per 1000 people is plotted on this same line. Thus, you can see that Canada in 2018, or western Europe in 2018, had about the same number of vehicles per 1000 population as the US had in the early 1970s. Further down the line, you can see that Mexico in 2018 had about the same number of vehicles per 1000 population as the US had in 1950.

What about China and India and others? To see where they are on this line, the second figure is a blow-up of the bottom left corner of the above figure. Here, the rise in US car consumption goes only from 1900 to 1930. You can see that Brazil's vehicle ownership in the 2018 was at about the same level (per 1000 population) as the United States in the late 1920s, while China's vehicle ownership in 2018 per 1,000 people was at about the US level of the early 1920s.

In short, the future of the global car industry in terms of sales and technology and how automotive technology affects the world's environment is going to be written largely outside US borders. A just-released study of demand for cars in China found an income elasticity of demand for cars in China of 2.5: that is, every 10% rise in incomes in China (roughly what has been happening every year or so) has been leading to a 25% rise in quantity of cars demanded.

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Make Child Tax Credit Improvements Permanent in Upcoming Recovery Legislation [feedly]

Make Child Tax Credit Improvements Permanent in Upcoming Recovery Legislation
https://www.cbpp.org/blog/make-child-tax-credit-improvements-permanent-in-upcoming-recovery-legislation

good  point. Family improvements may not be sustained if programs come and go before changes in quality of life take hold.

The American Rescue Plan Act, by making a significant set of changes to the Child Tax Credit, will cut the number of children in poverty by more than 40 percent, we estimate. Permanently enacting these historic provisions should be an urgent priority for policymakers in the upcoming recovery bill. We've excerpted below some recent CBPP analyses about the Child Tax Credit improvements: Congress Should Adopt American Families Plan's Permanent Expansions of Child Tax Credit and EITC, Make Additional Provisions Permanent Key tax credit provisions in President Biden's American Families Plan would ....

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[Charleston Gazette-Mail] Jim Probst: Moving on from coal without abandoning miners (Opinion)

https://www.wvgazettemail.com/opinion/op_ed_commentaries/jim-probst-moving-on-from-coal-without-abandoning-miners-opinion/article_2e78fbbf-41c0-5a05-ad02-245894ab858e.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=user-share

"Change is coming whether we seek it or not. Too many inside and outside the coalfields have looked the other way when it comes to recognizing and addressing specifically what that change must be, but we can look away no longer. We must act, while acting in a way that has real, positive impact on the people who are most affected by this change."

The above quote is from a document released in April by the United Mine Workers of America, titled "Preserving Coal Country." On June 16 there was a bill introduced in the U.S. Senate that addresses the changes occurring in coal country in a real, positive and substantial manner.

Introduced by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, the Save Our Futures Act proposes a comprehensive list of support for coal miners and coal-fired power plant workers affected by the transitions occurring in the ways that we produce energy.

For workers and their families, the bill includes:

n Five years of full wage replacement.

n Continuation of health care for five years based on previous employment.

n Continuation of pension contributions for five years also based on level from previous employer.

n Establishment of a G.I. Bill type program to provide educational benefits to affected workers and their children.

The bill also makes sure that the communities that have contributed so much are not left behind in this transition. Proposed support for communities would include:

n Replacement of lost tax revenue, for local governments, on a sliding scale, over a 10-year time period.

n Increased investment in abandoned mine reclamation, coal ash pond remediation and orphan oil well recovery.

n Increased investment in agencies important to community economic development such as the Appalachian Regional Commission.

n Investment of $30 million per year for 10 years in rural broadband development.

Quoting the President of the Utility Workers of America, who have endorsed this legislation, "The five years of full wage replacement, health insurance coverage, pension and educational benefits in this legislation together represent a baseline of support we must offer individuals and communities that have powered American innovation for generations."

All told, this legislation would offer approximately $120 billion over 10 years to fossil fuel workers and their communities as part of its Energy Veterans Package.

Of course, the driver of this need for action is our changing climate. The Save Our Futures Act will take a robust approach to addressing climate change by placing a substantial fee on greenhouse gas emissions and rebating 70% of the fees collected to low- and middle-income households on a semi-annual basis.

This approach will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 50% after 10 years and help to ensure that global temperature change is kept below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The reality is that we can no longer say that change is coming. Change to our climate is happening now as are the ways that we produce our energy. In the past 10 years employment in the U.S. coal industry has declined by over 50%.

To quote the UMWA, "The devastating impact on families and communities cannot be overstated. Divorce, drug addiction, imprisonment and suicide rates are all on the rise. Poverty levels are creeping back up in Northern and Central Appalachia, the heart of coal country. For every one direct coal job that has been lost, four other jobs have disappeared in these communities, meaning a quarter of a million jobs have already been lost."

The need for urgent action is now. Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., have both acknowledged the need to take steps to address climate change as well as the downturn our coal communities are dealing with. The problem is that their approaches to date just haven't risen to the level of urgency required.

We are in need of a bold, dynamic, far-reaching and comprehensive pathway to addressing what are certainly the most important issues of our time. The Save Our Futures Act provides that pathway and I strongly urge our two senators to support this legislation.

Disappointing Supreme Court decision makes it harder for farmworkers to unionize [feedly]

Disappointing Supreme Court decision makes it harder for farmworkers to unionize
https://www.epi.org/blog/disappointing-supreme-court-decision-makes-it-harder-for-farmworkers-to-unionize/

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court published its decision in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, a case involving an employer challenge to a California regulation that allows union representatives to visit the property of agricultural employers—in narrowly tailored and time-limited circumstances—to carry out efforts to organize the hundreds of thousands of California farmworkers who work in hazardous and low-paying jobs, and who suffer disproportionately high rates of wage and hour violations.

In a disappointing 6-3 decision, the Court's conservative justices ruled that the California regulation constitutes a per se physical taking of the employer's property, which in practical terms means union organizers will no longer have the right to access the farms where farmworkers are employed.

The vast majority of farmworkers across the country are not protected by the National Labor Relations Act—the federal law that enshrines the right of workers to join and form unions. In an attempt to fill that gap for farmworkers in California, over four decades ago the state's legislature passed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA), which established collective bargaining rights for farmworkers, and then-governor Jerry Brown signed it into law in 1975. The ALRA's access regulation enables organizers to visit the properties where farmworkers are employed, allowing the law to be implemented and have real meaning for workers.

Farmworkers are often difficult to reach because they work in remote locations and in many cases reside in housing that is owned and controlled by employers, so access to their workplaces is critical to organizing efforts. In addition, most farmworkers are immigrants, and a majority of them either lack an immigration status or have a precarious and temporary immigration status that their employers control, making it nearly impossible in practice for them to assert their workplace rights or to seek out unions and worker rights organizations.

The Supreme Court's decision means that the already difficult task of organizing farmworkers will be even harder now for unions, and there could be impacts far beyond labor organizing. For a more extensive EPI analysis of what was at stake in the Cedar Point case and the possible impact of the decision, click here. 

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The ‘reconciliation’ train is about to leave the station [feedly]

The 'reconciliation' train is about to leave the station
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/15/reconciliation-train-is-about-leave-station/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=wp_opinions

In a meeting with House Democrats on Tuesday morning, top White House adviser Steve Ricchetti appeared to put a hard deadline on the possibility of an infrastructure deal. According to Punchbowl News, Ricchetti said the White House is giving the bipartisan group of senators negotiating that deal another week to 10 days.

Indeed, it's obvious that, barring some surprisingly abrupt turnaround, Democrats are going to have to pass a big package by themselves, via the simple majority "reconciliation" process.

This train is going to leave the station by the end of the month. And that's good: If anything, it should have left some time ago. We can only hope the damage done by the wait doesn't end up being too serious.

This process is already being set in motion. According to a Senate Democratic aide, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) will convene a meeting with all the Democrats on the Budget Committee on Wednesday to start putting together the reconciliation vehicle for the infrastructure package.

Schumer will instruct those Democrats to craft a measure that includes requisite spending for policies that would "reduce carbon pollution at a scale commensurate with the climate crisis," the aide emails, adding that he will also say that the family-oriented components of Biden's package are "essential" and must be "robustly funded" in reconciliation.

The reason this is so critical is that many progressives have been loudly objecting that the endless quest for a deal with Republicans was putting all the progressive priorities in Biden's package at risk. This seems like an effort to reassure the progressives that they needn't worry.

As you'll recall, the idea all along has been that the groups of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate who are negotiating a bipartisan deal would try to reach one centered on bricks-and-mortar infrastructure, along the lines of what Republicans will accept. This plan would be paid for somehow or other without raising tax rates on corporations, which Republicans cannot accept under any circumstances.

If that deal comes together, then Democrats would load all the other priorities in Biden's package — the climate proposals, the supports for children and families, the investments in caregiving infrastructure, the corporate tax hikes to pay for it all — into a reconciliation bill and pass that later. If no bipartisan deal is reached, then Democrats would do the entire thing in one big reconciliation package.

As we all knew would happen, the bipartisan deal is failing to materialize. While it's still possible, skepticism is intensifying on both sides, with Republicans saying it's too liberal, and progressives saying too much is being traded away and it's time for Democrats to move forward alone.

But either way, what's remarkable is that the other half of the plan actually may be on track.

Schumer's assurances that the reconciliation package must include robust spending on both the climate and family-support sides of Biden's plan is designed to send liberals a clear signal. Whatever happens with Republicans, the reconciliation measure — whether it represents the second half of a two-part package, or the whole package all at once — will be ambitious and progressive.

Indeed, as I've reported, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who as chair of the Budget Committee is playing an influential role in the creation of that reconciliation package, is privately confident that this measure will be historic in ambition and scope, even if it doesn't give progressives everything they want. Schumer's latest directives perhaps validate that confidence.

We should not lose sight of why this has taken so long. It's because of two factors: the filibuster and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.). The filibuster is why all this effort has to be poured into creating a reconciliation package in the first place. And this has dragged on to this point because Manchin will not support a Democrats-only bill until all efforts to win GOP support have been exhausted.

Since it's apparently too much to hope that Manchin might see the insanity of this process and reconsider his support for the filibuster and his strange insistence that legislation cannot be inherently worth doing unless one or more Republicans supports it, we'll have to hope all this delay doesn't end up compromising the final product. But at least we're about to get real movement.

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What We Learned About Amazon's Warehouse Workers [feedly]

What We Learned About Amazon's Warehouse Workers
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/us/politics/amazon-warehouse-workers.html

Outsiders see a business success story for the ages. Many insiders see an employment system under strain.

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By Jodi Kantor, Karen Weise and Grace Ashford
June 15, 2021, 4:01 a.m. ET

An Amazon worker tries to return from a Covid-related leave and is mistakenly fired. A wife panics as disability benefits halt for her gravely ill husband. An employee is fired for having a single underproductive day.

An examination by The New York Times into how the pandemic unfolded inside Amazon's only fulfillment center in New York City, known as JFK8, found that the crisis exposed the power and peril of Amazon's employment system. The company famously obsessed with satisfying customers achieved record growth and spectacular profits, but its management of hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers was marked at times by critical mistakes, communication lapses and high turnover.

Here are the takeaways:

1. Amazon has been churning through employees.

Amazon conducted a hiring surge in 2020 that was unparalleled in American corporate history. In just three months, it signed up 350,000 workers — more than the population of St. Louis — offering a wage of at least $15 an hour and good benefits.

But even before the pandemic, previously unreported data shows, Amazon was losing about 3 percent of its hourly associates each week — meaning its turnover was roughly 150 percent a year. At that rate, Amazon had to replace the equivalent of its entire work force roughly every eight months.



Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokeswoman, responded to questions about the company's turnover by saying, "Attrition is only one data point, which when used alone lacks important context."

Inside Amazon's Seattle headquarters, the turnover has made some executives worry that the company may run out of workers. Paul Stroup, who until recently led human resources teams focused on understanding warehouse workers, felt disappointed that he "didn't hear long-term thinking" about the company's quick cycling through workers. He likened it to using fossil fuels despite climate change.

"We keep using them," he said, "even though we know we're slowly cooking ourselves."

2. Buggy and patchwork systems caused some workers to lose their benefits, and even their jobs, in error.

More than 25 current and former Amazon employees who worked on the disability and leave system bemoaned its inadequacy in interviews, calling it a source of frustration and panic. The problems escalated during the early months of the pandemic, when a new case management system designed to address the problems and provide flexibility was still buggy. Workers who had applied for leaves were penalized for missing work, triggering job-abandonment notices and then terminations.

"Please note the following," Dan Cavagnaro, a JFK8 worker, wrote in a final, unanswered email plea. "I WISH TO REMAIN EMPLOYED WITH AMAZON."

He was mistakenly fired anyway.

Dangelo Padilla, who worked as an Amazon case manager at a back office in Costa Rica, said he had witnessed numerous people being fired for no reason.



"I saw those situations every day," he said.

Ms. Nantel, the spokeswoman, said the company had quickly approved personal leaves during the pandemic, hiring 500 people to help process the increased volume, and worked hard to contact employees before they were fired to see if they wanted to keep their jobs.

3. Amazon's strict monitoring of workers has stoked a culture of fear.

Amazon tracks workers' every movement inside its warehouses. Employees who work too slowly, or are idle for too long, risk being fired.



Dayana Santos was a top performer when she had one bad day in 2019. Her bus was late, then her department was reassigned, causing her to scour the warehouse for a new workstation. That afternoon, she was stunned to find that she was being fired for having too much "time off task," or T.O.T.

Very few associates are fired for low productivity or time off task, but employees don't know that. The goal, JFK8's internal guidelines state, "is to create an environment not where we are writing everyone up, but that associates know that we are auditing for T.O.T."

The system was designed to identify impediments a worker may face, but some executives, including the early architect of Amazon's warehouse human relations, worry that the metrics now cast an outsize shadow on the work force, creating an anxious, negative environment.

After questions about Ms. Santos and T.O.T. from The Times, Amazon announced changes to its policy so that workers would never be fired for one bad day. Ms. Santos and all those like her are now eligible to be rehired. The company said it had been reconsidering the policy for months.

4. There is rising concern over racial inequity.

The retail giant is largely powered by employees of color. According to internal records from 2019, more than 60 percent of associates at JFK8 are Black or Latino.



And Black associates at the warehouse were almost 50 percent more likely to be fired — whether for productivity, misconduct or absenteeism — than their white peers, the records show. (Amazon said it could not confirm the data without knowing more specifics about its source.)

Derrick Palmer, a Black worker at JFK8, began at the company in 2015 as an enthusiast, and he was often a top producer.

But between the constant monitoring, the assumption that many workers are slackers and the lack of advancement opportunity, "a lot of minority workers just felt like we were being used," Mr. Palmer said. His comments echoed the sentiment of Black workers behind an unsuccessful unionization campaign at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama this year.

This spring, the company introduced a host of diversity plans, including a goal to "retain employees at statistically similar rates across all demographics" — an implicit admission that the numbers had been uneven across races. At JFK8, leaders are holding weekly "talent review" meetings to ensure that Black and Latino workers, among others, are advancing.

5. Many of Amazon's most contentious policies go back to Jeff Bezos' original vision.

Some of the practices that most frustrate employees — the short-term-employment model, with little opportunity for advancement, and the use of technology to hire, monitor and manage workers — come from Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder and chief executive.

He believed that an entrenched work force created a "march to mediocrity," said David Niekerk, a former long-serving vice president who built the company's original human resources operations in the warehouses.

Company data showed that most employees became less eager over time, he said, and Mr. Bezos believed that people were inherently lazy. "What he would say is that our nature as humans is to expend as little energy as possible to get what we want or need," Mr. Niekerk said. That conviction was embedded throughout the business, from the ease of instant ordering to the pervasive use of data to get the most out of employees.


Mr. Bezos recently made startling concessions about the system he invented. In a letter to shareholders, he said the union effort in Alabama had shown that "we need a better vision for how we create value for employees — a vision for their success" — and vowed to become "Earth's best employer."

What is not clear is how or whether he and his successors will reassess the systems that have propelled Amazon's dominance.

Mr. Cavagnaro, the worker Amazon inadvertently fired, asked: "Are they going to address the issue of an expendable work force? Are there going to be any changes?"

Jodi Kantor is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and best-selling author. She and Megan Twohey are the co-authors of "She Said", which recounts how the reporters broke the story of sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein, helping to ignite the #MeToo movement. @jodikantor • Facebook

Karen Weise is a technology correspondent based in Seattle, covering Amazon, Microsoft, and the region's tech scene. Before joining The Times in 2018, she worked for Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg News, as well as ProPublica. @kyweise

Grace Ashford is a researcher and reporter with the Investigations unit. Her recent work has focused on city housing policy and the crisis of affordability in New York. @gr_ashford
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