Roundup #1: Return to Blogging, Team Transitory Victory Lap, and Progressive Wins on Tax & Budget Policies
Also Ignore Polls of Biden Losing Young People, Airlines Cut Flight Cancellations, Failure to Override NY Vetoes, Higher Wages, Safer Streets, UFT Opposes Congestion Pricing, and Game Workers Unite
This Issue
Roundups and A Return to Blogging
This inaugurates what I hope will be weekly roundups of short pieces I’ve written, either as posts/threads on Twitter or what I plan to do as standalone pieces in the new “blog” section of my Substack. Some of you know I was an OG prolific blogger back in the early 2000s until work and family slowed that down. Social media posts became a small substitute, but I feel a desire to return to more short pieces to summarize the fractured writing of those posts.
So I will send out these weekly roundups and posts short pieces when moved to do so (although those won’t be mailed out except as part of these roundups). Let me know in comments if there is any change in format you think would improve things. And if you don’t want to get these roundups, remember you can unsubscribe from any section of the substack - and these roundups will be in the Blog section.
Victory Lap for Team Transitory
Via the constantly correct Claudia Sahm @Claudia_Sahm, I read this piece by Joseph Stiglitz, Time for a Victory Lap?, where he wrote
"Those who believed inflation would be transitory were proven right, and those who demanded the sacrifice of mass unemployment proven wrong."
On twitter I added my own comment:
“Sums it up. Those who wanted to fuck over people through mass unemployment should be banned from policy debates. Being inhumane is bad. Being inhumane and wrong should warrant political capital punishment.”
Back in 2022, I wrote a longer piece called Shirley Jackson's THE LOTTERY: Federal Reserve Edition where I highlighted comparisons of that story of ritual murder to the then-current mania to cure inflation for everyone else by destroying the lives of those made unemployed.
I noted that the elders in the story like Old Man Warner scoff at anyone who questions the need for the annual ritual killings:
And like Old Man Warner’s scorn at those questioning the Lottery, I wrote in 2022 that anyone asking whether hiking interest rates was the best approach to fighting inflation was scoffed at as economically unserious or ignored altogether in the media…
The thing is, just as people questioned Old Man Warner about the need for the Lottery and whether it even helps, there are serious doubts that raising interest rates is the solution, even aside from its clear human costs. [In] a time like now of obvious post-Covid supply chain problems and predatory corporate profiteering, focusing on wages and consumer spending driving the inflation problem is just plain bizarre.
Or maybe not so bizarre, since the companies benefitting from price hikes - and the raging profits they are feeding - have an interest in a Federal Reserve Lottery as a distraction from their own actions. Unstated in Shirley Jackson’s story is who set up the Lottery in those communities, but we can see the elite interests driving our current one at the Federal Reserve.
I’m hardly a major player in these particular economic debates, but I will take a small bow in confidently having been part of team transitory.
Progressives Have Been Winning the Fight on Taxes and Public Spending over the Last Half Century
Progressives can tend to focus on the bad news - and impending climate collapse and the thread of Trumpian fascism can do that - but in real ways, we have won critical battles on public spending. Back in the 1960s, average families paid more taxes than they received back in public benefits (largely due to massive defense spending).
Now, as Dylan Matthews highlighted in this chart from a recent academic paper, the bottom 50% of American receive far more in benefits than they pay in taxes now, highlighting that our tax and budget system has become far more redistributionist than it was during the era of the “War on Poverty”
Ignore Polls of Biden Losing Among Young People
Simon is making a core methodological point here: a poll showing some surprise result that "blacks believe this" or "young people say this" is based on subsamples with wildly large margins of error - far larger than the margin of error for the overall poll results.
Young people in particular are hard to poll and a tiny sample in a large poll is going to yield a bunch of outlier poll headlines. Polls with larger samples of young people show them standing firm with Democrats and Biden.
Airlines Cut Flight Cancellations: Regulatory Enforcement Works
The Department of Transportation reports that flight cancellations are at the lowest rate in nearly a decade:
The cancellation rate for the period from Dec. 17, 2023 through Jan. 1, 2024 was 0.8%, despite a record number of passengers, the department said. That was far below last holiday season's 8.2% cancellation rate, which included the Southwest Airlines meltdown that disrupted 2 million passengers and led to a record-setting $140 million civil penalty last month.
"We've been pushing the airlines hard," Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on CNBC Wednesday. "We've pressed them on realistic scheduling."
Make airlines pay for their own mess - and suddenly they start making less of a mess, all to the benefit of holiday and regular travelers. We take a lot of corporate misbehavior for granted, yet with tougher regulatory enforcement, much of it would disappear if the corporate fines were high enough.
Georgia Nuclear Reactor Comes Online, Continuing Industry’s Epic Run of Mismanagement
I’ve never been opposed to nuclear industry based on safety fears of meltdowns, but early on recognized the industry’s epic history of mismanagement and cost overruns dating back to the 1970s - and Georgia Power bringing the first new nuclear reactor online since 2006 has done nothing to break that pattern:
It will only cost $35 billion for just two nuclear power units after massive cost overruns and new rate increases on ratepayers. Why there is a faction of greens who still like nuclear is beyond me given this history of continual mismanagement & cost overruns.
Pathetic Failure of NY Legislative Leaders to Override Hochul Vetoes
A few years ago, New York progressives organized and created Democratic control of both the New York House and Senate - the first time they have controlled both chambers for any extended period of time SINCE THE 1930s. (not a typo).
They have passed a whole range of progressive reforms only to see them killed by vetos first by Andrew Cuomo and now Kathy Hochul. New York Focus summarized the 113+ laws that Hochul has vetoed this year:
This is bad but here is the pathetic part:
"Senate and Assembly have so far shown little enthusiasm for directly overriding vetoes, despite Dems holding supermajorities in both chambers."
Pete Sikora from New York Communities for Change excorciates Dem legislative leaders for failing to call legislators back into session to try to override any of these vetos. He sees it as a form of collusion with Hochul where Dem leaders get brownie points with activists for pretending to be progressive - but don’t have to take the heat from business interests by actually overriding Hochul’s vetos.
New York activists need to organize to elect new legislative leaders in both chambers willing to do their jobs and schedule override votes.
The sad thing is we see the same problem in California where Gavin Newsom, who plays a progressive on national television, vetoes large numbers of progressive measures but the California legislature doesn’t convene to try to override those vetoes. In fact, the California legislature hasn’t overridden a veto in 23 years.
Higher Wages, Safer Streets in NYC
New York City just implemented an $18/hr minimum wage for delivery workers - and has made NYC streets safer since workers don't have to ride dangerously to make enough deliveries to survive.
The UFT Craps on Teachers Who Use Public Transit in a Lawsuit to Delay Congestion Pricing
In 2019, New York passed a law to establish a tax on driving in congested downtown Manhattan that would fund improvements in mass transit throughout New York City. After years of delay and a federal environmental review, it is scheduled to finally be implemented in 2024, five years after passage.
And the f——— United Federation of Teachers decides to jump in with a new lawsuit demanding ANOTHER delay and another environmental review.
This is part of the general abuse that issues around 160,000 placards entitling city employees to free parking on the streets - often used in parks, bus lanes, and other places where it is illegal to park. As Streetsblog NYC has detailed, it is complete outrageous that public servants, including teachers and cops, routinely violate the law and hog public space in ways that delay buses, block bike lanes and make walking more dangerous. With almost zero penalties imposed by the City.
Is just enraging that UFT is choosing to represent the interests of teachers who drive at the expense of teachers - like my spouse - using public transit, who would lose out on funding for a better MTA if the union lawsuit succeeds.
Happy News: Board Game Cafe Workers Unionize
Board game cafe workers of the world unite! :)
Note that this NY Times story is also about a couple of men largely monopolizing this recreational space across NYC - a reflection of the ways in small and big ways workers face monopsonistic industries.
But given I have gone to these cafes regularly as part of my board game hobby, this gives me particular joy
Glad you are able to be here more frequently!