First, here’s Hannah Katch and me over at WaPo, warning about the Trump admin’s attack on family planning/birth control/women’s rights, and the linkages between such rights and women’s economic mobility. Leaked docs suggest Trump wants to defund effective programs in this space and go back to “fertility awareness” (“having women track their ovulation to identify and practice abstinence on their most fertile days”). Trump argued that this apparently worked for Wilma Flintstone, so why not now? OK, I made that up, but you must admit it sounds plausible.
Next, there’s this tweet storm, featuring highlights from a new paper by economist Josh Bivens showing the many dimensions on which the corporate-tax-cut-will-give-wages-a-huge-boost argument fails. If you want a quick read backing up my claim in tweet #3 (“with footloose global capital, the costs/benefits of corp cut become theoretically uncertain”) see Martin Sullivan’s new, family-friendly discussion of corporate tax incidence.
From 1972 to 2006 I was in senior management and among those responsible for company wages and benefits. During this time, profits went up. Taxes went down. What we paid employees was always just enough to attract them to only the jobs we needed filled, and we offered raises just enough to retain them for a reasonable period. The bigger the company grew by acquisition, the less we had to pay, because workers had fewer alternatives in their field. In 2005 we were hiring many college grads at less than $8 an hour, since we had virtually eliminated our competition.
Expecting companies to trickle down profits willingly to workers is like an old fat guy believing that his trophy wife wants an open marriage to make him more happy. There is usually no happy ending in either case
This is great that economists are able to back up their arguments, but the Democrats will lose this fight because they are too stupid and their argument is just “we are against tax cuts.” There is an additional argument they have to make to support this which is “there is no waste in government spending” and since they have no alternative plan or agenda “you are fine the ways things are” which must be inferred absent a “we are too stupid figure out how to help you” cry for help.
Does anyone know what the Democratic agenda is? Something Chuck Schumer promoted as the Better Deal lacked the broad appeal and simplicity of tax cuts. Anyway, the way to fight tax cuts is by pounding into voters the deficit. The Democrats are scared that will just lead to program cuts. Of course they will whether the Democrats complain or not, but by staying silent, the Republicans pay a much smaller penalty.
At this rate it’s entirely possible they could still mess up next year’s midterms and ultimately their second shot at the Donald in 2020
What is this blogs stance, the big idea? But please, no to EITC and wage subsidies, corporate welfare which penalizes fair paying employers?
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/the-struggle-to-sell-a-better-deal/535410/