DOWNLOADS: (65)

PLAYS: (179)

Embed

After only four members of Congress even bothered to show up for a hearing this week on what should be the most important issue of our time -- getting Americans back to work -- MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry let them know what she thought about it on this Saturday's show.

If only Congress considered unemployment as urgent as flight delays:

Dear Members of the Joint Economic Committee:

It’s me, Melissa. Mind if I call ya J.E.C.?

I get it. A legislator’s work is never done. Days filled with dozens of hearings, back and forth to the Capitol for debates and votes, the obligatory press conferences. You can’t be everywhere at once. Inevitably some balls are going to get dropped. You’ve gotta prioritize, right?

After all, immigration reform is imminent, there’s a terrorist attack to be responded to–and can’t forget those flight delays!

Yes, you are there when it matters. Which can only leave me with one conclusion when I look at this photo, and see testimony about how to get the long term unemployed back to work, given before a room of empty chairs.

To you, this crisis confronting our country simply doesn’t matter. And make no mistake this is a crisis–not just for those who’ve fallen into chronic joblessness, but also for the U.S. economy. It’s what the National Employment Law Project has called “the real cliff that threatens our economy.”

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (194)

PLAYS: (1531)

Embed

From this Wednesday's The Young Turks: On US income inequality: ‘We are redistributing income in this country — up’ :

Cenk and investigative journalist David Cay Johnston dig into ongoing income inequality struggles in the United States. Between 1966 and 2011, the richest 1 percent of Americans saw their average income increase by more than $18 million. Meanwhile the bottom 90 percent have only seen average incomes increase by $59. Cenk asks, “Are we being robbed blind?” Johnston says, “Oh, unbelievably. This is not because American workers have suddenly gotten lazy. It’s because government policies have changed, and what they’re doing is the exact opposite of the myth we’re being sold.”

From this Monday's Democracy Now, economist Richard Wolff is asked about Bill O'Reilly's remarks last week where he told his audience on Fox that Cyprus and other European countries are facing economic hardships because they’re so-called "nanny states." Wolff responded with a lesson in economics 101 for Bill-O:

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Wolff, before we end, I want to turn back to the crisis in Cyprus and relate it to what’s happening here. Bill O’Reilly of Fox News warned his audience last week that Cyprus and other European countries are facing economic hardships because they’re so-called "nanny states."

BILL O’REILLY: Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, now Cyprus, all broke. And other European nations are close. Why? Because they’re nanny states, and there are not enough workers to support all the entitlements these progressive paradises are handing out.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Bill O’Reilly of Fox News. Richard?

RICHARD WOLFF: You know, he gets away with saying things which no undergraduate in the United States with a responsible economic professor could ever get away with. If you want to refer to things as nanny states, then the place you go in Europe is not the southern tier—Portugal, Spain and Italy; the place you go are Germany and Scandinavia, because they provide more social services to their people than anybody else. And guess what: Not only are they not in trouble economically, they are the winners of the current situation. The unemployment rate in Germany is now below 5 percent. Ours is pushing between 7 and 8 percent. So, please, get your facts right, Mr. O’Reilly.

The nanny state, you call it, the program of countries like Germany and Scandinavia, who tax their people heavily, by all means, but who provide them with social services that would be the envy of the United States—a national health program that takes care of you, whether you’re employed or not, and gives you proper healthcare. In France, for example, the law says when you go to work, you get five weeks’ paid vacation. That’s not an option; that’s the law. You get support when you’re a new parent for your child care and so forth. They provide services. And they are successful in Germany and Scandinavia, much more than we are in the United States and much more than those countries in the south.

So they’re not broken, the south, because they’re nanny states, since the nanny states, par excellence, are doing better than everyone. The actual truth of Mr. O’Reilly is the opposite of what he says. The more you do nanny state, the better off you are during a crisis and to minimize the cost of the crisis. That’s what the European economic situation actually teaches. He’s just making it up as he goes along to conform to an ideological position that is harder and harder for folks like him to sustain, so he has to reach further and further into fantasy.

h/t Raw Story

DOWNLOADS: (139)

PLAYS: (442)

Embed

The Krugman-bashing on Morning Joe continued unabated Wednesday, following Joe Scarborough and Paul Krugman's debate the other night on Charlie Rose's show. It seems the right has been looking for countries to prop up to prove that their calls for more austerity measures in the United States are not going to harm the economy and they've found at least one in the tiny Baltic nation of Estonia.

Scarborough started things off in the clip above by writing off our current economic circumstances as just another "period of deleveraging" where the United States needs to get its fiscal house in order with absolutely no reference to the fact that we should not be taking a series of booms and busts as the norm, or the part that deregulation and the dismantling all of the protections that were put in place following the Great Depression to attempt to prevent these types of cycles from happening again have played.

After Scarborough pointed out the fact that Americans and particularly young people are not longer racking up debt, but are also not spending and pumping money into the economy, his guest and CNBC regular Miles Nadal then moved onto the Krugman bashing:

NADAL: So when you say, are you positive on the economy, I'm positive in a cautious kind of way, but as Joe articulated on The Charlie Rose Show, which I thought was really a terrific debate, there are things on the horizon that are very scary. And I thought Paul Krugman's perspective was kind of, a little frightening in the sense that he didn't see any possibility of any Black Swan on anything that's happening and if you talk to any informed business person, that's not possible that you could completely eliminate the probability that nothing, including this multi-trillion dollar deficit would have no impact.

And as we articulated in the green room, nobody could run a company or a home the way the government is running things.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (289)

PLAYS: (2393)

Embed

Nobel prize winning economist and columnist Paul Krugman sat down the MSNBC's Ed Schultz this Friday evening to discuss the recent madness we've been watching with this budget sequestration, which President Obama signed into law this Friday evening. Once again we find Krugman being one of the few voices of reason who is allowed some air time on our corporate media, discussing the fact that this deficit fetishism we're seeing from our politicians is exactly the wrong conversation we should be having right now.

What we should be talking about first and foremost is getting Americans back to work. It was also good to hear some push back against the constant chatter we're hearing from the Villagers in the media who are continually pushing for Chained CPI, and pretending as though cutting Social Security benefits in exchange for "tax reform" -- a.k.a. lowering taxes on rich people and corporations -- is something anyone should think is acceptable, or "balanced" or that would do a thing to help lower the deficit. It would have been nice to hear either of them say out loud that Social Security does not add to the deficit during this interview, but it was only implied and not clarified for the audience.

Here's more on Krugman's conversation with Schultz via Raw Story: Paul Krugman: Sequester ‘was designed to be stupid’:

“This was designed to be stupid,” Krugman said. “The whole point was, this was supposed to be a doomsday device that would force the [Democratic and Republican] parties to reach an agreement. Of course, they didn’t, and here it goes.”

While the effect of the spending cuts would take time to manifest, Krugman told Schultz, they would definitely be felt by late 2013.

“This is exactly what the doctor did not order,” he said.

While the spending cuts were conceived as a fix for the federal deficit, Krugman said, this was not the time to implement that kind of measure. Instead, he said, the government should be taking advantage of low interest rates and a high number of unemployed construction workers to invest in infrastructure and education.

“What kind of spending would it take to keep us on the track that we’re on right now?” Schultz asked, noting a continued pattern of private sector job growth despite Republican resistance to a new jobs bill since the stimulus package of 2009.

“If we would just stop cutting, the growth would probably keep going,” Krugman answered. “If spending had grown as fast in this recovery as it has in past recoveries, we’d be spending something like $200 billion a year — state, local and federal — more, maybe $300 billion a year more. Maybe $300 billion a year more. We’d have about a million and a half more public sector workers than we do right now, because we’ve been laying them off at [an] unprecedented pace. So, I think $300 billion a year of additional spending would be appropriate and would mean, if we did it, that we would be pretty close to full employment at this point.”

Greg Sargent made the same point in his column this week as well: The Morning Plum: Happy Sequester Day! We’re still stuck in the wrong conversation.:

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (181)

PLAYS: (1342)

Embed

If anyone needs a break from the typical fare we're treated to on the bobblehead shows on Sundays, check out some of Chris Hayes' show from this Saturday. It's rare that this kind of in depth and comprehensive discussion happens, even rarer where the discussion is so good, it's worth highlighting multiple segments. But that's exactly the case with this discussion of President Obama's proposal to raise the minimum wage made during his state of the union address, that is already being clouded by the fog of talking points in DC:

Then we’ll dive deep on the president’s proposal to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 $9 an hour, and to index the minimum wage according to inflation, so that it keeps pace with the cost of living. Republicans and business groups have lined up in opposition to a minimum wage increase, and in doing so, they’ve repeated a talking point that has been common in Washington for decades: that an increase in the minimum wage would lead to reductions in employment. As it turns out, there’s a growing body of empirical evidence that indicates that minimum wage increases, within a certain range, have no negative impact on employment, and may actually boost worker productivity and consumer demand, providing a much-needed stimulus to the economy.

For the most part, Hayes' guests were outstanding and really informative to listen to, with the exception of the Hispanic Leadership Network's Jennifer Sevilla Korn. She may be the kinder, gentler face of the Republican Party with toned down rhetoric with respect to the immigration issue, but on Hayes' show, she was nothing but a right wing talking points regurgitation machine with little to no facts to back up her assertions.

If you listen to her carefully during her time on the show, she was challenged by Hayes quite a few times to give specifics for her claims about minimum wage supposedly causing businesses not to hire or that it might cause inflation. How often does that happen? And just like a typical conservative, she never answers him. The same can't be said for the others on the panel who were more than willing to talk about specifics and shoot holes straight through her talking points.

In the segment above, Lew Prince, owner of Vintage Vinyl, Inc. a small business in St. Louis, Missouri, talked about his invitation to come to the White House with a number of other small business owners and they were asked by President Obama "What can I do for you?" Prince recounted that the first thing they all said in unison was to raise the minimum wage to $10 per hour, because "putting three hundred bucks a month in the hands of the customers is the best economic stimulus the country can have and that money tends to get spent in the businesses more than any other."

Unlike Korn, Prince's point is backed up by research.

A 2011 study by the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank finds that minimum wage increases raise incomes and increase consumer spending, especially triggering car purchases. The authors examine 23 years of household spending data and find that for every dollar increase for a minimum wage worker results in $2,800 in new consumer spending by his or her household over the following year.

A 2009 study by the Economic Policy Institute estimates that Obama’s campaign pledge to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2011 would inject $60 billion in additional spending into the economy.

The National Employment Law Project's Tsedeye Gebreselassie followed up by discussing the fact that 74 percent of the public supports raising the minimum wage. Unlike the conservatives speaking out against it, they understand that that one cannot live on the current wage and that the minimum wage has not kept pace with inflation. They know the opposition is with the lawmakers supporting the top wage earners only.

Korn cites some unspecified economist-- who of course isn't a partisan--telling her that raising minimum wage is going to cause inflation. While that might be true if it is raised too high or if the economy was in a period of stagflation, that's not the political environment we have now and Prince countered her argument quite nicely.

PRINCE: You won't get a business owner that says that and I'll tell you what, the portion of wages, that is in my cost, is actually relatively small and even in the manufacturing and a whole lot of areas. It is relatively small. My overhead is complicated and large, and the minimum wage and the wage, is actually a small part of it. And prices in America, this is, you know, the great secret – prices in America are not set by the cost of making something or doing something. Prices are set by what market research tells most companies you are willing to pay. You know, the reason a beer is ten bucks at Yankee stadium isn't because...

HAYES: Of course not.

PRINCE: … you can get it there to the bar across the street where it is two bucks.

In the next segment the panel discussed the two different arguments we're seeing from Republicans on why they're against raising the minimum wage. One being the that it will cause a negative effect on employment and the other being that it will cause price spikes that the system cannot absorb.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (108)

PLAYS: (386)

Embed

As Think Progress noted, Republicans immediately shot down President Obama's proposal to increase the minimum wage to $9 per hour during his State of the Union address, claiming that it would harm job growth and make it harder for small businesses to hire. None of that is true of course, but that's not going to stop them from looking out for campaign donors like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Restaurant Association -- both of whom are against the proposal. Guess they want to keep that cheap labor coming!

Wingnut Rep. Marsha Blackburn however, had a different take on why it's acceptable to pay Americans starvation wages, and accidentally shot a big hole in her own talking point. Don't expect her to retract what she said if she's asked about it:

OOPS: GOP Rep. Inadvertently Makes The Case For Nearly Doubling The Minimum Wage:

Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R) chose a different reason to oppose the proposal today. A stronger minimum wage, Blackburn said, would negatively affect the ability of young workers to enter the workforce as teenagers, and would prevent them from learning responsibility like she did when she was a teenage retail employee making a seemingly-measly $2.15 an hour in Mississippi:

BLACKBURN: What we’re hearing from moms and from school teachers is that there needs to be a lower entry level, so that you can get 16-, 17-, 18-year-olds into the process. Chuck, I remember my first job, when I was working in a retail store, down there, growing up in Laurel, Mississippi. I was making like $2.15 an hour. And I was taught how to responsibly handle those customer interactions. And I appreciated that opportunity.

Making $2.15 an hour certainly lower than today’s minimum wage, which federal law mandates must be at least $7.25 an hour. But what Blackburn didn’t realize is that she accidentally undermined her own argument, since the value of the dollar has changed immensely since her teenage years. Blackburn was born in 1952, so she likely took that retail job at some point between 1968 and 1970. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator, the $2.15 an hour Blackburn made then is worth somewhere between $12.72 and $14.18 an hour in today’s dollars, depending on which year she started.

DOWNLOADS: (88)

PLAYS: (291)

Embed

Ed Schultz spoke to journalist David Cay Johnston this Friday about what America needs to do to keep adding more jobs to our economy, the importance of continuing the extended unemployment benefits, and the Republicans' refusal to help the problem by passing President Obama's jobs bill.

As Johnston noted, Republicans love to complain about "uncertainty" creating problems with the economy, but par for the course, they're generally the ones causing it.

SCHULTZ: We told you at the top of the show, Republicans are dragging their feet to get a tax cut deal with the American people. Those Republican delays are putting our economic recovery, I think, in some serious neighborhood, dangerous, very dangerous.

But the good news is though, the latest employment numbers came out this morning. The economy added 146,000 jobs in the month of November. The unemployment rate hit a four-year low. It inched down to 7.7 percent.

Here's the bad news. America lost another 7000 manufacturing jobs last month. Overall the job numbers are better than analysts predicted, but republicans refuse to compromise on policies which will bring back even more jobs next year. They are risking our nation's economic recovery. Here's how Speaker John Boehner's explanation today.

BOEHNER: The risk the President wants us to take, increasing tax rates, will hit the many small businesses that produce 60 to 70 percent of the the new jobs in our country. That's the whole issue here.

SCHULTZ: Once again, it's all theory from Boehner. No guarantee on that. But Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi says the problem goes beyond the fiscal cliff debate.

PELOSI: Our economy is moving forward, but it could be growing at a faster rate if the Republican leadership had taken up and passed some of President Obama’s job initiatives including the American Jobs Act and had passed the middle income tax cut.

SCHULTZ: So, let's cut to the chase. One of those Congressional members is lying. Either the Republicans are right on cutting taxes on small businesses will add jobs or the President's stimulus policies are fueling the economic recovery in this country.

Joining me tonight to sort out the facts, David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author of "The Fine Print." Let's start with the job growth. Unemployment hit rock bottom near the beginning of the -- under the Bush administration. You can see this right here. This is of course the changing of the color here when President Obama took over in January of '09. Who is responsible for this turn around?

JOHNSTON: Oh, absolutely the President and it would be a better turn around if the Republicans had allowed a bigger stimulus. We would have many, many more jobs if we had had a bigger stimulus.

SCHULTZ: You would make the case we didn't spend enough on the economy?

JOHNSTON: Not only did we not spend enough, but we wasted 40 percent of it on tax cuts for small business, which is inherently savings and not stimulus. It was a real policy mistake.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (283)

PLAYS: (2769)

Embed

It seems Paul Krugman is about as tired as I am of these talking heads and politicians who seem to be obsessed with inflicting pain on the working class. Republicans aren't going to be happy until they undo every New Deal program, destroy our social safety nets and destroy what's left of the dwindling middle class in America.

The PBS Newshour had Paul Krugman on this Tuesday evening to counter some of Erskine Bowles deficit fetishism from the previous night and all I can say is I hope the Democrats are listening to him. We don't have a deficit crisis. We've got a jobs crisis and what Republicans are proposing will just make that worse: Paul Krugman: Hasty Fiscal Fix to the Deficit Would Cause 'Austerity Bomb':

GWEN IFILL: Erskine Bowles may be one of the people you have written about in the past who you called deficit scolds who were touting a phantom menace known as the fiscal cliff.

PAUL KRUGMAN,PrincetonUniversity: Yes.

GWEN IFILL: Am I right about that?

PAUL KRUGMAN: Fiscal cliff is not a phantom menace. The deficit right now is, the notion that something terrible will happen if we don't deal with the deficit right away.

The fiscal cliff is a very different story. That's about reducing the deficit too fast.

GWEN IFILL: In fact, you call it an austerity bomb. Describe that, what you mean by that.

PAUL KRUGMAN: Yes.

Well, what's happening is that we are scheduled, unless something is done, basically to do to ourselves gratuitously what has been happening to some of the European economies.

We're going to have substantial spending cuts, substantial tax increases at a time when the economy is still very weak. And, of course, that's a recipe for sliding back into recession.

So, we set ourselves up with the land mine in the road in front of our economy, which is not based on anything real. It's just based on our political mess.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (249)

PLAYS: (3302)

Embed

From this Friday's Andrea Mitchell Reports, apparently Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a member of the House Budget Committee, doesn't understand what the debt ceiling is or how it works. Andrea Mitchell explains that to him when he complains that President Obama somehow wants an "unlimited credit card" for the spending he and his cohorts already voted for.

CHAFFETZ: The President said he was going to help curb back the debt and tackle this deficit. Instead the President has the gall to actually go out and suggest that we should get rid of the debt ceiling votes and take away Congress' ability to help put a lid on that. Essentially he wants a limitless credit card. [...]

MITCHELL: Let's talk about the debt ceiling for a second, because the debt ceiling is not more money. It's raising the level to accommodate what Congress has already appropriated. So it's not an unlimited credit card, and most serious economists think that it is an unnecessary act. Why not review the bidding on just how that debt ceiling should be used? Because it's used as a shotgun to the head of either party, either president.

CHAFFETZ: Look, there's got to be some limit to the debt we're putting forward in this country and I believe that we should have that discussion. In the past,it's driven the debate and the discussion about our out of control debt.

Amazing how that concern for the deficit they've got now wasn't "driving the debate" when they were passing the Bush tax cuts, voting for a couple of wars they didn't want to pay for, or a prescription drug plan what wasn't paid for. Deficits didn't matter back then. They only matter when they want to use them as an excuse to destroy our social safety nets.

h/t Dave