OPPOSING A MINIMUM WAGE HIKE COULD COST THE GOP THE SENATE
OPPOSING A MINIMUM WAGE HIKE COULD COST THE GOP THE SENATE
Labor Day has started the sprint to the November election. And with more than 40 percent of U.S. workers struggling on...
Labor Day has started the sprint to the November election. And with more than 40 percent of U.S. workers struggling on less than $15 an hour, our economy’s tilt toward low-paying jobs has become a top economic issue this year.
Now, as GOP leaders fret that Donald Trump may drag down Republican incumbents, turning more U.S. Senate races into toss-ups, the Republican majority’s stonewalling of any action to raise the federal minimum wage could cost the party control of Congress.
New polling shows that close to 70 percent of voters in key swing states want an increase in the federal minimum wage—and that 60 percent or more support a $15 minimum wage in six of the seven states polled.
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Even more, the polling shows that candidates’ positions on raising pay could play a pivotal role in this year’s electoral battles for control of the U.S. Senate. The results show that the incumbent Republican U.S. senators locked in close races could lose critical support—and even their seats—over opposition to raising wages for working people.
In Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and New Hampshire, Democratic challengers Katie McGinty, Russ Feingold and Governor Maggie Hassan strengthened their leads over incumbent Republican Senators Pat Toomey, Ron Johnson and Kelly Ayotte when voters were made aware of the senators’ opposition to raising the minimum wage.
And in Arizona, Missouri and North Carolina, Democratic challengers Representative Ann Kirkpatrick, Jason Kander and Deborah Ross pulled ahead of Senators John McCain, Roy Blunt and Richard Burr, flipping those contests on their heads, when voters learned of the senators’ track records opposing raises.
For example, in Arizona—where John McCain has just emerged from his toughest re-election primary ever—a 43-43 tie turns into a 44-38 lead for Kirkpatrick once voters hear about McCain’s opposition to raising pay.
The polling comes as the National Employment Law Project Action Fund, the Center for Popular Democracy Action, the Working Families Organization and other grassroots groups in seven states begin to mobilize voters.
The coalition plans to engage in canvassing, hold candidate forums and wage debate protests, among other actions, to educate and energize voters around candidates’ positions on the raising the minimum wage.
While Donald Trump, who has been all over the map on the minimum wage, has announced he now supports an increase to $10, most Republicans in Congress remain opposed.
Leading Republican pollster Frank Luntz’s firm LuntzGlobal has warned minimum wage opponents, “If you’re fighting against the minimum wage increase, you’re fighting an uphill battle, because most Americans, even most Republicans, are OK with raising the minimum wage.”
Farm workers pick vegetables on a farm in Rancho Santa Fe, California, on August 31. Paul Sonn writes that Republican U.S. senators locked in close races could lose their seats over opposition to raising wages.
While Congress has refused to act, over the past three and a half years, more than 50 states, cities and counties, as well as individual companies, have stepped forward to approve minimum wage increases, delivering raises to 17 million workers.
And 10 million of those workers are in states or cities that have approved phased-in $15 minimum wages, raising pay for more than one in three workers in California and New York and beginning to reverse decades of growing pay inequality.
Historically, raising the minimum wage enjoyed the same bipartisan backing in Congress that it does with voters. But over the past 20 years, increasing polarization in Washington and the growing role of money in politics have led many Republicans to abandon their support.
As a result, the federal minimum wage today remains frozen at just $7.25 an hour. And taxpayers are being forced to pick up the tab, as low-wage workers in the seven states just polled must rely on $150 billion per year in public assistance to make up for their inadequate paychecks.
Candidates’ positions on the minimum wage have made a difference in close U.S. senate races before. Ten years ago, in Missouri and Montana, Democrats Claire McCaskill and Jon Tester successfully used their support for a higher minimum wage to highlight the difference between them and their opponents, Republican Senators Jim Talent and Conrad Burns, who both opposed raising the wage.
McCaskill and Tester rode the issue to an Election Day victory, helping to break a logjam in Congress and delivering the first federal minimum wage increase in 10 years in 2007.
With the public demanding action to boost pay, the Republican majority and individual candidates this fall face a clear choice: stop standing in the way of a long overdue federal minimum wage increase—or risk their political future.
By Paul K. Sonn
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The Fed, Full Employment, African-Americans, and an Event that Brings It All Together
Jared Bernstein Blog - March 3, 2015 - As a tireless (some would say tiresome) advocate for full employment and the...
Jared Bernstein Blog - March 3, 2015 - As a tireless (some would say tiresome) advocate for full employment and the benefits it yields for working people, you can imagine how I was thrown by this NYT headline over a piece by economics reporter Bin Appelbaum:
Black jobless rates remain high, but Fed can’t do much to help.
“Shots fired!” as the kids say.
I find this hard to believe in the following sense. Black unemployment has averaged almost twice that of overall unemployment since the monthly data begin in 1972 (avg: 1.9, with standard deviation of 0.15, so not a ton of variation around that mean). Crudely, that implies that if overall unemployment fell from 6% to 5%, the black rate might fall more in percentage point terms, from 12% to 10%.
Next, if the Fed can push down the overall unemployment rate, which is certainly within its purview and, at a time like this, its job description, then the headline seems off.
Now, there are important nuances in play here.
First, these relationships are not always so clean. Over the long, strong recovery of the 1990s, black unemployment fell 4.5 points compared to 2.1 points for whites (and 2.5 points overall). Over the 1980s recovery, black unemployment—which was about 20% at the end of the deep early 1980s recession—fell 8.5 points compared to 4.7 for whites.
Those comparatively big declines show the disproportionate benefits that blacks reap from lower unemployment and, conditional on the Fed’s ability to lower unemployment, they belie the NYT headline. I could make similar claims based on wages and incomes, but I’m bound by secrecy for now (more on that in a moment).
However, more recently, that relationship isn’t generating such impressive results. Over this recovery, black and white unemployment have declined by similar amounts (4.5 points for blacks; 3.8 for whites). And, as Appelbaum points out, real median wages have fallen twice as much for blacks as for whites.
But that’s kinda the point: until recently this has been a uniquely weak recovery, and as such, tells us little yet about the extent to which full employment will lift the relative economic fortunes of black workers.
If we get to and stay at full employment, I’m confident it will work as it has in the past, based both on the history briefly cited above and on some truly exciting results from a new paper we’ve commissioned for our full employment project on the benefits of full employment to black workers, written by the economist Valarie Wilson from the Economic Policy Institute.
Valerie will be highlighting the results at an event we’re holding in DC on March 30th so far be it from me to steal her thunder. But she’s got some panel data regressions (which provide lots more observations and variance than the simple time series comparisons noted above) showing the impact of lower unemployment on black compared to white median wages, and man…all’s I can say is I’m employing great restraint not to just print them right here and now!
Here’s another point worth considering. Various economists on team full employment have been trying to get the Fed to hold off on its interest rate liftoff, but Appelbaum writes: “It’s not obvious, however, that holding down borrowing costs for a little longer would be an effective way to address the underlying problem. Indeed, the problem is a good illustration of the limits of monetary policy.”
That may be true in the following sense: if the Fed raises rates a little bit in 2015q4 instead of 2015q3, I doubt it will matter that much to anyone in the real economy (though financial markets would make a huge deal out of it). Similarly, if they hold to a 5.4% full employment rate and a firm 2% inflation ceiling that mustn’t be breached, or if they shift from being data driven to shooting at the phantom menace of inflation that’s allegedly hiding out of sight from the data just around the corner—well then, yeah, they won’t much help those who depend on lasting full employment to catch a break.
He’s also got a point re underlying problems. Even full employment may not be enough to reach the millions of workers with criminal records who face uniquely high barriers to the job market. I’ve written about fair-hiring policies to reach these workers, and so has Appelbaum.
But check this out: I mentioned our March 30 event. Well, another speaker on the panel that morning will be the guy from whom I learned all I know about fair-hiring, Maurice Emsellem from the National Employment Law Project.
I know what you’re thinking: what about macro, what about Fed policy? How can you call yourself a full employment maven and leave that out? Did I forget to mention our keynote speaker? A fella named Bernanke…Ben Bernanke. Here’s the flyer. Be there and be square.
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Why Rising Police Budgets Aren’t Making Cities Safer
Why Rising Police Budgets Aren’t Making Cities Safer
Minneapolis, the city where Philando Castile was killed by a police officer while being profiled and stopped in his car...
Minneapolis, the city where Philando Castile was killed by a police officer while being profiled and stopped in his car for the 49th time, spends 36 percent of its general fund budget on policing.
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Video: Grandes bancos podrían beneficiarse con el muro de la frontera
Stable schedules for workers boost retail sales
Stable schedules for workers boost retail sales
Funding for the research came from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, the Robert...
Funding for the research came from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Institute of International Education in collaboration with the Ford Foundation, Center for Popular Democracy, the Suzanne M. Nora Johnson and David G. Johnson Foundation, and the Gap.
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Janet Yellen Meets With Community Leaders on Fed Policy, Jobs
The Wall Street Journal - November 14, 2014, by Pedro Nicolaci da Costa - Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen met...
The Wall Street Journal - November 14, 2014, by Pedro Nicolaci da Costa - Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen met Friday with a coalition of community activists who are urging the central bank to resist pressures to raise interest rates before the labor market has fully recovered and calling for greater public input into the selection of regional Fed bank presidents.
At a press briefing outside the Fed before the meeting, organized by the Center for Popular Democracy and featuring workers, community organizers and liberal economists, the activists said the idea that the economy was close to full recovery was belied by the joblessness and underemployment of millions of Americans.
“We’re here to launch a national campaign for a stronger economy and for a reformed Federal Reserve,” said Ady Barkan, staff attorney at the center, a left-leaning national nonprofit organization. “The economy is not working for the vast majority of people,” he said, citing high unemployment, inequality and large racial disparities.
The Fed declined to comment on the meeting or the activists’ recommendations.
The Fed last month ended its bond-buying program aimed at supporting economic growth, citing “substantial improvement” in the outlook for the labor market. Those present at the briefing said the experience of many communities across the country suggests otherwise.
One of their biggest complaints was the inability of workers to find full-time work, a problem that has worried Fed officials and suggests the job market is still some way from full health.
“My job used to be steady, something you could count on,” said Jean Andre, 48, of New York, who works on logistics in the film industry. “I’m one of the names at the end of the movies that nobody reads. But I’m underemployed, I just can’t get full-time work anymore, not like I used to before the crash.”
With the unemployment rate 5.8% in October, Fed officials are debating when to begin raising interest rates from near zero. Many investors expect the central bank to start raising its benchmark short-term rate sometime in the summer of 2015.
Josh Bivens, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington, noted that black unemployment is generally double the overall level. Black communities would be among those hit hardest by potentially premature Fed rate increases, he said.
The activist group also called for greater public input into the selection of the presidents of the Fed’s 12 regional banks. This comes ahead of the retirements next year of Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher and Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser. The two have been some of the most vocal opponents of aggressive Fed efforts to reduce unemployment—such as holding short-term rates near zero and buying bonds to lower long-term rates–arguing such policies risk fueling excessive inflation and asset bubbles while doing little good for the economy.
Fed presidents are selected by the boards of directors of the regional Feds, with the approval of the Washington-based Fed board of governors. The regional boards are composed of bankers, business executives and community representatives,
Kati Sipp, a director of the Pennsylvania Working Families Party who spoke at the briefing, said many of the regional bank board members designated as community representatives are not truly representative of the communities they are supposed to serve. “Right now in Philadelphia we have Comcast CMCSA +0.10% executives that are representing the public, and we think that it’s important for us that real people are also representing the public in Federal Reserve policy making.”
Michael Angelakis, vice chairman and CFO of Comcast Corp., is deputy director of the Philadelphia Fed’s Board.
“In Philadelphia we’ve had an 8% average unemployment rate for this year and it’s a 14.5% unemployment rate for the black community,” Ms. Sipp said. If Mr. Plosser believes the economy is back to full health, she said, then he hasn’t visited many of his own city’s troubled neighborhoods. “If he had, he would not believe that our economy has really recovered.”
Mr. Plosser has said he believes the job market is close to full employment and the economic recovery is genuine, if unremarkable.
The Philadelphia Fed announced Friday that Korn Ferry KFY -0.15%, the executive search firm hired to conduct the search for a new president, established an email address “to receive inquiries.” Asked if the move was in response to the protests, a spokesperson said it was “one part of our broad search process.”
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America’s biggest corporations are quietly boosting Trump’s hate agenda
America’s biggest corporations are quietly boosting Trump’s hate agenda
America’s biggest corporations are quietly boosting Trump’s hate agenda......
America’s biggest corporations are quietly boosting Trump’s hate agenda...
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Confronting white supremacy: Radicalized white men are on a reign of terror
Confronting white supremacy: Radicalized white men are on a reign of terror
Radicalized white men are on a reign of terror, and I’m not just talking about the tiki-torch terrorists in...
Radicalized white men are on a reign of terror, and I’m not just talking about the tiki-torch terrorists in Charlottesville. I’m talking about the white men who are threatening our health care, our schools, our communities, our institutions, and our families through their callous and self-serving policies. Hoods have been replaced by pinstripe suits.
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Nina Tassler & Denise DiNovi Launch Indie Studio PatMa Focused On Diverse Voices
Nina Tassler & Denise DiNovi Launch Indie Studio PatMa Focused On Diverse Voices
PatMa Prods. has forged strategic partnerships with several organizations with shared common values, including the...
PatMa Prods. has forged strategic partnerships with several organizations with shared common values, including the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, Center for Popular Democracy, and Planned Parenthood, among others.
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Meet the Ordinary People Who Are Mobilizing around Monetary Policy
The Washington Post - August 19, 2014, by Ylan Q. Mui - District resident Shemethia Butler never finished college or...
The Washington Post - August 19, 2014, by Ylan Q. Mui - District resident Shemethia Butler never finished college or studied finance. But she plans to fly to Wyoming this week for one of the most elite economic conferences in the world. Her goal: schooling the central bankers gathered among the Grand Tetons in Jackson Hole about the hard realities of her own kitchen-table economics.
There’s $899 in monthly rent for the two-bedroom apartment she shares with her 5-year-old daughter, $83 to $90 for electricity, $40 for her cell phone. Meanwhile, Butler brings in less than $700 a month from her part-time job at McDonald’s. She doesn’t need a spreadsheet to know that the numbers don’t add up.
“I’m going to Wyoming to let these bankers in Jackson Hole know that we are not in recovery,” said Butler, 34. “I need them to understand. I need them to see where I’m coming from.”
The three-day meeting in Jackson Hole, sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, includes a keynote by Fed Chair Janet Yellen. In the past, notable speakers have included Columbia University economist Michael Woodford and Bank of India Gov. Raghuram Rajan. The atmosphere is decidedly academic, with strict rules governing the presentation and debate of research papers that can run 50 pages or longer -- not the typical setting for a populist uprising.
This year the conference is focused on the health of labor markets, a key consideration for the Fed as it weighs when to end its unprecedented support for the American economy. And activist groups have become increasingly worried that workers themselves are not included in the discussion.
The Center for Popular Democracy is slated to release a letter Tuesday signed by more than 60 left-leaning organizations, ranging from community groups to bigger players such as the Economic Policy Institute, Public Citizen and Demos. They are calling on the Fed to keep its easy-money policies in place until wages start to rise and what has been an exceptionally uneven recovery begins to broaden out. Butler, along with several other workers and activists, intend to trek through the mountains to deliver that message in person before the conference begins Thursday.
“We are writing to remind you that the American economy is not working,” the letter reads. “We hope that in the coming months and years, the Federal Reserve’s leaders will make a more concerted effort to listen to our voices.”
The Fed is an unusual target for this type of grassroots campaign, more typical in protests against big companies such as Wal-Mart or around issues like voting rights. Monetary policy can be an abstract concept, rife with jargon and inscrutable acronyms. Criticism of the Fed has typically come from economists debating its mathematical models, politicians bristling over the independent central bank’s powers or frustrated investors attempting to divine its intentions.
“Most people don’t really understand much about what the Fed does and certainly not why it does what it does,” said Allan Meltzer, a professor at Carnegie-Mellon University and Fed historian. “It’s rather remote from most people’s current experience and interests. It’s very hard to summon public outrage, whether it’s deserved or not.”
The Fed’s charge is to keep prices stable and encourage maximum employment. It operates by setting the interest rate at which banks lend to each other overnight. That rate, in turn, influences the cost of borrowing throughout the economy. Lower rates help stimulate consumer and business spending -- and with any luck, create jobs -- while higher rates help quell an overexuberent economy and rising prices.
The Fed slashed its target for interest rates to zero in 2008 to combat the financial crisis and has kept it there ever since. It has pumped trillions of dollars into the economy for an additional boost. But now, the unemployment rate is falling faster than many at the Fed expected. Job growth is reaching into higher-wage industries after years of being concentrated in low-paying sectors. For the first time since the recession, the central bank is seriously debating if the economy is ready to stand on its own.
That is enough to worry activist groups -- particularly since hope of federal legislation on issues such as the minimum wage, extending unemployment benefits and paid leave stand little chance of passing in a polarized Congress. The Fed is one of the only games left in town.
“Monetary policy is central to our economy and our society, and the discourse around monetary policy needs to be democraticized,” said Ady Barkan, senior attorney for the Center for Popular Democracy. “We can’t leave the debate about Fed policies up to academics and elite bankers and corporate executives.”
The unusually contentious battle last year over who would lead the Fed also help stoke interest in the institution, he said. President Obama had initially planned to nominate former Treasury Secretary and close adviser Lawrence H. Summers for the post. But Democrats balked at Summers’ role in deregulating the financial industry during the Clinton administration and his disparaging comments about women made when he was president of Harvard University.
The pressure from liberal groups helped ensure that Summers could not secure the votes to win confirmation in the Senate. He eventually withdrew his name, and Obama instead nominated Yellen, who was the second-in-command at the Fed.
Yellen may be particularly sympathetic to the activists’ arguments, at least relative to previous Fed chairmen. In a speech Chicago in March, she invoked individual stories of struggling workers to illustrate the human toll of high unemployment -- an unorthodox move in an institution more famousfor obfuscation. The next month, she met with representatives from the AFL-CIO, which did not sign the joint letter, and has repeatedly cited the high number of involuntary part-time workers and those who have given up looking for a job as reasons to be patient in withdrawing the Fed’s support. Yellen is slated to speak about the labor markets Friday in Jackson Hole.
"These and other indications that significant slack remains in labor markets are corroborated by the continued slow pace of growth in most measures of hourly compensation," she said in congressional testimony last month.
It is unclear how much grassroots opposition may influence Fed thinking -- particularly since it occurs so rarely. Meltzer said he could not recall activists ever gathering at Jackson Hole. The last public campaign mobilized against the Fed was in the 1980s, when then-Chairman Paul Volcker was hiking interest rates to stem double-digit inflation. Though he successfully brought prices under control, the economy went into recession as a result. Farmers and construction workers were particularly hard hit by the rate hikes, and they mailed blocks of wood to the Fed in protest and blocked its entrances with tractors.
The measures did little to sway Volcker, according to Stephen Axilrod, who worked at the Fed for three decades and was among Volcker’s key aides. His course had been set.
“None of that, in my head, had much to do with anything,” Axilrod said.
But he and other Fed watchers acknowledge that the central bank is in a new era. Public confidence in government and financial institutions is shaky at best. The Fed has made a concerted effort to increase transparency and connect with Main Street. At the same time, lawmakers have launched several efforts to curtail the Fed’s powers -- or even get rid of it altogether. Though such proposals stand little chance of passing, they can shift public perception of the central bank.
“Part of it is part of a reputational issue,” said Sarah Binder, a professor at George Washington University and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “The Fed’s credibility depends on people believing that they’re going to do what they say they’re going to do.”
And right now, the Fed’s next step is not all that clear. Prominent economists outside of the institution -- and several top officials within it -- are arguing that the Fed has goosed the economy to its limit. Some worry it could be even laying the groundwork for the next bubble: The major U.S. stock indexes have roughly doubled in value since the depths of the recession. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has hit 15 record highs this year alone.
But Butler still has a long way to go to before rebuilding her life after losing her job at the Golden Corral due to budget cuts a few years ago. At McDonald’s, she makes $9.50 an hour, and she pulls in extra money by baby-sitting or doing her friends’ hair. It’s still not enough to make ends meet.
“Things may be fine on Wall Street, but they are not fine on my street,” Butler said. “And if [central bankers] lived on my street, they would definitely change their mind.”
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16 hours ago
16 hours ago