Over at PostEverything. She’s kept many of these cards close to her vest, so I don’t think this is the easiest question in the world.
Some early thoughts on Clintonomics, Hillary-style
Over at PostEverything. She’s kept many of these cards close to her vest, so I don’t think this is the easiest question in the world.
If she has “kept many of these cards close to her vest,” then she is an “ideas candidate.” She has two ideas:
“Hillary should be elected president.”
“Hillary should be re-elected president.”
After all, doesn’t she deserve it? Wasn’t she the valedictorian of Wellesley College?
Having read most of the Center for American Progress report, let me say this about that:
Great for the focus on women in the workplace. It’s a winning campaign strategy and very important for the future of American society, and wages. First, immigration is good, but if America relies on all of it’s population growth from immigration, that may be viewed as neither good nor bad, but definitely different. What can be said is Americans, women, and families deserve a choice. However, from a macro economic standpoint, the issue is crucial. No one seems to have done research how much the female male wage gap is accounted for by lack of childcare and need for time off, or flexible work schedules. No one seems to have done the research how much wage stagnation is due to this gap, partly hidden by DNWR (downwardly nominal wage rigidities). It would help the campaign for equality some one to do this job (I guess I should volunteer). Helps women and wages, and children in need of filling school gap (pre-school, after school, and summer when studies show children fall most behind).
Great for the focus on education, free college for all (you know, like Germany, and France (has nominal fee), but short of what England does (not free, but $9,000/yr cap even for Oxford).
Problems of Hillarynomics?
Education doesn’t cause wage gap, except that a better educated society might organize or demand a raise.
Immigration bill passed by Senate would hurt Americans by continuing denial of any labor rights to immigrants, replace work visas with green cards as former Congressman Morrison advocates, for Americans, the compromised bill is worse than no bill, and vastly expands worker visas, high and low skills, which is also why it doesn’t pass.
Taxes need to be much higher to prevent rising inequality and an American aristocracy. Hillary seems destined to pursue a rising tide lifts all boats win win message. Financial transaction tax and carried interest don’t seem to be in the cards. But what is needed is advocacy or Eisenhower rates, 80% on income above $1 million as advocated by Picketty, and higher corporate rates, and closing loopholes and no repatriation of foreign profits in exchange for tax breaks. I also wouldn’t hold my breath for restoring fresh start bankruptcy protection (ended with 2005 law) or restoring usury law (Supreme Court gutted in 1978).
From the linked article:
I’m beginning to think that a Ground Hog approach to the next election may be my best hope of retaining some modicum of relative sanity. And if the Ground Hog approach doesn’t work, I’ll mimic an ostrich.
Far be it from me to demean someone willing to put themselves in the public arena, but it looks like we have yet another campaign in which economic discussions are tightly constrained to tax policies, trade policies, family leave policies… heaven forbid that we try to think differently about what an economy ‘is’.
The horror!
An economy is not an ‘engine’. It does not need ‘tweaks’ and minor adjustments. Family leave policies, TPP, and more trade policies won’t fix the deeper, structural problems that we confront. Nor will continued catering to Wall Street.
An economy is a complex, adaptive system. In which case, we need a different conversation, and some more creative thinking, than it appears we’re likely to hear.
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have begun to engage in that conversation; Hillary Clinton, not so much.
Regrettably, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to bury my head in the sand…
Meh.
Free college education, free pre-k and expanded child care programs, parent friendly work rules are not tweaks and minor adjustments.
However, raising marginal rates, closing loopholes, curbing banking, hopefully Bernie Sanders will run on those issues and pull her and the country to the left.
Other labor issues are likely to be ignored.
The wild card is how the immigration issue plays out, for both sides, a double edged sword. Neither side wants to talk about giving immigrants labor rights and ending employer sponsorship as a requirement for entrance into the country. Also, neither side will expose the likely outcome of a huge increase in high skills labor immigration built into last bill. Because high skills* jobs (requiring at least bachelor’s degree) are projected to still be only 22% of the workforce in 2022, http://data.bls.gov/projections/occupationProj , equivalent numbers of new workers high vs. low, have 4 to 5 times the impact. When projections show only 450,000 high skills jobs/year, and you minimally nearly double the immigration from previous 150,000/year to upwards of 250,000/year, not even counting also the increase as the accelerated backlog clearing provisions are instituted, it boggles the mind. It wouldn’t be just tech workers affected (hint: it isn’t now either due to erstwhile tech workers creating surplus in other fields). There is a meaningless 8.5% unemployment rate trigger that would suspend increases (vs a rational cut) during the worst of another lost decade recession.
Also buried in the Center for American Progress report is a recommendation to increase estate taxes by discontinuing step-up basis of inherited assets, but unfortunately ignoring any need to restore estate tax rates on the really wealthy with assets over $10 million. Meanwhile the House is busy passing a bill to eliminate Federal estate taxes.
*asterisk is meant to clarify, I’m using the term “high skills” as conventionally used to designate jobs requiring a 4 year bachelors degree or higher. But there needs to be another term for such because I seriously doubt the skill level of many college graduates is beyond or even equal to skill levels displayed by often less well paying occupations that nonetheless lack formal requirements of spending often four years to pay someone to do work vs. getting paid to do work. I’ve had both types of jobs and sometimes the skills are different, sometimes not, but there is a ridiculous amount of elitism sometimes in denigrating work with labels, that don’t pay well due to factors that are surprisingly uncorrelated with skill. The same is true for supposed high skills. How much skill does it take for the banking industry to commit massive fraud and launch a worldwide recession?
Correction needed. If one takes into account retirements (and other causes for leaving the workforce), then aside from 450,000 new jobs, there are another 750,000 positions for a total of 1,200,000 positions to be filled. That’s also a different figure than the 1,700,000 openings because there are 500,000 people just switching occupations. In a further subtlety, that does not include people who switch jobs but stay in the same occupation (I don’t have figures for that or I’d give them, not sure if BLS makes them available). So lots of churn to keep HR departments busy.
The figure to pay attention to is the 1.2 million/year positions to be filled that require a 4 year degree or higher.
Two things to be aware of…
1) There are 1.8 million/year graduates with 4 year degrees plus a surprisingly high 800,000 masters degrees ( doctorates are 1777,500) vying for 1.2 million positions that require that level of education.
2) There are 3.5/year million new entrants into the work force, so the graduate levels make sense if you assume most of those with masters and doctorates are also already employed, probably as teaching assistants, plus many undergrads working their way through college (so to match reported 40% enrollment rate of 18 to 24 year olds)
3) Current high skill immigration levels are over 120,000/year, adding over 10% to the already obvious glut of overqualified graduates.
4) The proposed immigration bill that passed the Senate would more than double the number of high skills immigrants. The spillover will affect everyone as this additional 20% high skill workers causes similar level job seekers to displace lower skilled workers.
5) The qualitative difference of immigration portion of the high skills glut is that they lack labor rights, and are thus offered lower wages.
6) In the long run, immigration would not displace anyone, but that hasn’t been true under the current regime, and the lack of labor rights, let alone inability to start new businesses, one suspects is a major reason. No one who is dependent on employee sponsorship can start a business (legally that is).
This analysis is not to say the college numbers need in any match employment requirements. Everyone is entitled to an education and the value it provides whether they need the degree for a job or not.
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372
“During the 2014–15 school year, colleges and universities are expected to award 1.0 million associate’s degrees; 1.8 million bachelor’s degrees; 821,000 master’s degrees; and 177,500 doctor’s degrees. In 2011–12, postsecondary institutions awarded 1.0 million certificates below the associate’s degree level, 1.0 million associate’s degrees, 1.8 million bachelor’s degrees, 754,000 master’s degrees, and 170,100 doctor’s degrees.”
Table 5, Page 21
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/pdf/labor-force-projections-to-2022-the-labor-force-participation-rate-continues-to-fall.pdf
I’m a pretty active progressive in thought. Some people don’t think that thought and words are meaningful and they demand action in the form of protests, etc… That isn’t me. I’m about information.
It seems to me that Hillary is a great candidate. My greatest concern was that she might try to recreate a Bill campaign. I want Bill to stay out of this. Let Hillary be Hillary!
She’s better than Bill, I’m sure of that. Just let her be herself.
She’ll win. It will be a victory for the world.