The McConnell-Trump Economy in Kentucky

Yeah, it's an isolated anecdote, although it explains and confirms a lot of things we've been seeing over the past year, so anyway:

I was in Kroger this morning, in a white, well-off section of Louisville, where I noticed that there were no baggers.

The poor cashiers were struggling to handle long lines of shoppers, backed up because the cashiers had to do the bagging, too.  And because on the busiest grocery shopping day of the week, there were only four checkout lines open.

Recently this Kroger had closed four checkout lines and replaced them with self-checkout, thus eliminating at least four cashier jobs, not including the departed baggers.  There was no waiting at the self-checkout, because everybody hates them.

And even though everyone in line whom I could see and hear was being patient and polite, the stress on the cashiers was evident.

Just as I reached the cashier, an elderly woman in her 70s, her phone buzzed.  She said, apologetically, "may I beg your indulgence?  I have to take this call. My mother just fell and broke her arm."

I'm a liberal Democrat, not a child-caging repug, so of course I said "please, go ahead."  It was the hospital, just texting to let her know her 94-year-old mother had broken her shoulder plus her arm in three places and they were prepping her for surgery.

She kept working.  And she kept thanking me.  And I kept reassuring her that we must support everyone caring for elderly or disabled loved ones.

What the FUCK kind of economy requires a woman in her 70s, with a 94-year-old mother undergoing emergency surgery, to KEEP WORKING instead of going to the hospital to be with her mother.

The kind of economy Mitch McConnell and the Pumpkin Traitor are working to create: Lords and Serfs.

Also, fuck Kroger for trying to force us all into self checkout by eliminating jobs. 

College As Social Insurance

Because it is a social good, and because forcing young people into crippling debt to obtain it is about as economically self-destructive as it gets.

I am much more enthusiastic about this than Erik Loomis, though I appreciate his point about funding.

I have a rather strong objection to the term “pay it forward” that is based entirely upon Kevin Spacey sabotaging his own career by starring in New Agey vehicle after New Agey vehicle in the early to mid 2000s, including one by the name above. However, I have to use the term because of this Oregon bill offering an alternative way of funding higher education:

The Pay It Forward solution offers students access to higher education without debt. Students at public universities and community colleges would pay no tuition up-front. In exchange, they would agree to pay a small percentage of their income (1.5% for community college, or 3% for a 4 year school) for 20 years to “pay forward” the cost of instruction for the next generation of students.

Pay It Forward is a social insurance program, not a loan. Students would have no debt, no interest, and their percentage would never change. Instead, graduates would pay their contribution as a payroll deduction, similarly to how we pay Social Security taxes. This means that their contribution would be a dependable, affordable expense. For example, a recent grad making $30,000 a year would pay $900 a year. Later on, when they make $60,000 a year, they would pay $1,800 per year.

Over time, the Pay It Forward plan will create a stable funding stream for Oregon public higher education. As more students graduate and pay in, the fund will grow, allowing more students to participate. Start-up funding will be needed until the first few generations of students graduate and get into jobs where they can pay it forward. This could come from private grants, or public money. One option would be to start with a pilot program at a specific institution, and expand to others as the program grows.

So I’m more than a little skeptical of bills that don’t actually have funding. But given the collapse of the 20th century structures created to ensure a chance at social mobility, it’s good that people are being creative. I’m really not sure what to think about this and I’m curious about the mechanisms for people to buy in. I’m also curious to see if top earnings don’t get capped so that those who become rich will not have to pay 3% for 20 years. In any case, this is at least worth a discussion here.

We can start with those of us who got our degrees before 1985 admitting that our de minimus tuition at public universities was a massive public subsidy unavailable for the past 20 years, and that we graduated into an economy that still offered good jobs at good pay with good benefits on which we could support ourselves - something else not available since the '80s.

Who Doesn't Want Prosperity For All?

Everybody who doesn't sign on to Rep. Keith Ellison's Inclusive Prosperity Act.

Down with Tyranny:

Instead of waiting for Obama and Boehner to cobble together some "Grand Bargain" on November 7, Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Keith Ellison decided to give them a headstart with some commonsense legislation that just about everyone in the country-- other than hedge-fund managers and Rush Limbaugh-- would probably embrace. This week Ellison introduced H.R. 6411, the Inclusive Prosperity Act, "to impose a tax on certain trading transactions to strengthen our financial security, expand opportunity, and stop shrinking the middle class." So far there are 8 co-sponsors, John Conyers (D-MI), Bob Filner (D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Jim McGovern (D-MA), Pete Stark (D-CA), Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) and Jim McDermott (D-WA), all House Members who put the interests of working families above the interests of the corporate campaign donors who make the wheels in DC-- both sides of the aisle-- go round and round.

Ellison, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, points out that the bill, if passed without tampering by lobbyists, will "raise billions to invest in our economy by taxing highly speculative financial transactions." It would tax the sale of stocks, bonds and derivatives sold by Wall Street firms. The tax imposed will be 0.5 percent on stocks, 0.1 percent on bonds, and 0.005 percent on derivatives or other investments.

He explained that “the American public provided hundreds of billions to bailout Wall Street during the global fiscal crisis yet bore the brunt of the crisis with lost jobs and reduced household wealth. This is a phenomenally wealthy nation, yet our tax and regulatory system allowed the financial titans to amass great riches while impoverishing the systems that enable inclusive prosperity. A financial transaction tax protects our financial markets from speculation and provides the revenue needed to invest in the education, health and communities of the American people.”

The small tax is meant to discourage unsafe speculation and gambling-- rather than real investing-- by Wall Street firms. It would make high frequency trading less profitable, which could reduce the excess speculation on commodities like food and gasoline that has caused their prices to escalate, sometimes irrationally-- and much to the disadvantage of consumers. Almost 30 nations have some form of a financial transaction tax and the U.S. had a similar tax from 1914 until 1966. The UK has had a tax on stock trades for decades-- the same rate proposed in HR 6411-- and their volume of trading has grown robustly. Supporters of a form of financial transactions tax include business leaders such as Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Dallas Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban, and Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO Warren Buffet.

There is no need for any budget cuts at all - not in defense, not in social programs, not even in subsidies to Big Ag and Big Oil, and sure as hell not in Social Security and Medicare. All the money we need is sitting in the offshore accounts of the parasitic rich, who have been stealing it from the rest of us for thirty years.

It's our money. They stole it. Let's go get it back. 

Why For the U.S., Failure IS an Option

Short answer: Because our political and economic institutions are moving rapidly toward exactly the kind of plutocratic control that causes nations to fail.

Long answer: All 463 pages of Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson's brilliant, fascinating and terrifying Why Nations Fail.

It's not geography. It's not natural resources. It's not technology. It's not education. It's not race, religion, climate, modernity or even democracy.

It's inclusion versus extraction.

Acemoglu and Robinson methodically demonstrate that dating back to the earliest pre-Roman societies, in every part of the world, one factor separates nations that succeed from nations that fail.

Nations with political and economic institutions that include all citizens succeed. Nations with political and economic institutions that extract power and money from the majority to benefit a minority fail.

And while both kinds of nations - extractive and inclusive - tend to perpetuate their existing institutions, it is possible for a nation to change its fate.

A nation may rise from extractive institutions to inclusive institutions and thus from repeated failure to success, as Brazil did over 30 years starting in the 1970s thanks to Lula's Workers Party, and the American South did starting in the 1950s thanks to the Civil Rights Movement.

A nation may also fall from success to failure by allowing extractive institutions to overcome long-standing inclusive ones. Japan and Germany did so in the 1930s, nearly destroying the world as a consequence.

Although the authors never say so explicitly, the current economic crisis in the United States contains all the conditions necessary for an extractive takeover, particularly the concentration of both wealth and political power in the hands of a tiny elite, and the simultaneous withdrawal of both from the majority.

I have grossly oversimplified the argument in Why Nations Fail, which is the least of many reasons you should read it yourself.

But it is no coincidence that voter suppression is shrinking the franchise and budget cuts are shredding the social contract at the same time that the obscenely rich have an enormous share of the national wealth that they use to buy elections.

The success of the Plutocracy means not just a lords-and-serfs economy in which the vast majority of citizens suffer poverty and oppression.

The success of the Plutocracy means that the United States itself ... fails.  

Union Plan for Destroying the Nation Exposed!

Saving Social Security. Supporting working families. Reducing income inequality. Securing contraceptive availability. Cleaning up political campaigns. All of it right there on their website.

They are just shameless.

Kenneth Quinnell at Crooks and Liars:

In addition to their endorsement of Barack Obama's re-election campaign, the AFL-CIO at its recent convention outlined an ambitious platform of solutions to the problems that are undermining the country, the economy and the political system. The issues they tackle go beyond just worker's rights and represent one of the more aggressive political statements from labor unions in recent years. They issued a series of statements announcing their positions, including Citizens United:

The AFL-CIO supports the overturning of the Citizens United decision and calls for immediate action to end the dominance of our political system by corporations and the 1%. The AFL-CIO has long advocated for measures to bring about greater fairness, openness and participation in elections—reforms that enfranchise voters and ensure that wealth does not wield disproportionate influence. We support public financing of campaigns, limitations on individual contributions to candidates and parties and public disclosure of political expenditures. We also support measures to enable citizens to vote more easily, and we oppose voter identification and similar measures that are aimed at seizing partisan advantage through disenfranchisement. And, we oppose misleadingly labeled “paycheck protection” measures that would exacerbate inequality by hampering union political activity while leaving corporate and rich individuals’ political spending unimpeded.

The Citizens United ruling has opened the floodgates to massive spending by corporations and even more so by wealthy donors. They are pouring money into our electoral system and threaten to drown out the voices of hard-working Americans. Common-sense restrictions on their spending are needed, along with robust disclosure of their contributions and expenditures—including their contributions to organizations engaged in electoral activity.

The AFL-CIO also supports reforms aimed at restoring business corporations to their proper role as commercial institutions and limiting their influence in the political sphere. Business corporations are not people—they are manmade creatures of law that exist to generate economic activity and create jobs and income in communities. The notion that they should enjoy the same rights and protections as natural persons is absurd and it is destructive to our democracy. At the same time, for more than a century, corporations have enjoyed certain constitutional protections, such as due process protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, which are consistent with basic American values. We support reforms, including changes to our tax laws and corporate laws, that address corporate dominance of our political system and that restore corporations to their proper role in our democracy.

Congress should pass and the Supreme Court should uphold the necessary reforms to protect our democracy from the power of money. As long as Citizens United remains the law of the land, constitutional change may be the only option. Amending the U.S. Constitution should be a rare act, done with the greatest of care. To earn our support, any such amendment must be carefully and narrowly crafted to protect our democracy from the economic power of the 1%, while at the same time protecting the public’s right to organize politically through democratic organizations and movements.

On Social Security:

If America were to craft a solution to the retirement crisis, it would have the same components as Social Security—shared responsibility, pooled resources, portability and security, for example. But instead of increasing Social Security benefits to meet the real needs of real working families, foes of Social Security are attempting to cut it and "have spent enormous amounts of money spreading misinformation about the program."

SNIP

It's good to see the AFL-CIO coming out with strong statements about their values and the action we should take moving forward. Unions are the backbone of the American left and when they are strong, we are all strong.

There's much more. Read the whole thing.

Core Democratic Values

Sixty-seven years is too long to wait for these.

Ken in NY at Down with Tyranny:

WHAT DO I MEAN BY "CORE DEMOCRATIC VALUES"?

I would encourage you to take a list at the 1944 State of the Union address of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which Howie, again from China, appended to my post yesterday on the Congressional Progressive Caucus's summer 2011 12-city Speakout for Good Jobs Now "listening tour," which kicks off Saturday in Minneapolis. In that speech, you'll recall, the president enunciated some points that are part of "a second Bill of Rights," economic rights, which he insisted had already "become accepted as self-evident. I know this post is running long, but I think it's important to look again at the rights he insisted were included:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

"All of these rights," the president continued, "spell security."

And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

Americas own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for all our citizens.

For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.


Can you imagine how the Republican scum in Congress would react if a president dared to give such a State of the Union speech today? More important, can you imagine how most of the Democrats in Congress would react?

Howie refers a lot in his DWT posts to the betrayal by today's Democrats of "core Democratic values," and I suspect some readers sometimes wonder what values he's talking about, or whether they're really "core" values. Well, here they are.

On that day in January 1944, with World War II still raging, and with a whole reelection battle still to be waged (successfully, of course), I don't know whether President Roosevelt knew how close he was to the end -- just 15 months, almost to the day. But on that day he left a powerful testament. It's a shame so few Democrats choose to accept, let alone honor, that legacy.

Watch that section of FDR's speech here.

The Standard to Meet

I'd say this list is the absolute bare minimum that any politician seeking democratic votes should swear he will strive to achieve.

gordonskene at Crooks and Liars has the video of FDR's State of the Union address in January 1944.

This address has also been known as FDR's "Second Bill Of Rights Speech", since he outlines the aims of the Roosevelt administration for a post-war era.

President Roosevelt: "As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men are not free men." People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being."

In these particular times, it's good to remember as our basic needs haven't changed.

Print out this list. Every time you meet an elected official, ask her what she is doing to make these basic security rights a reality.