Defending the Full-Employment Economy, Netanyahu Bows to Biden Pressure and Ongoing Media Failures (Roundup #2)
Also doctors unionizing, tide turning against NIMBYism and other quick hits
In this Roundup
Defending the Full-Employment Economy
The most serious divide among progressive economic writers right now is between those who are defending the economic results of the CARES Act and Biden’s American Rescue Plan (plus the rest of his agenda) and those who argue it’s a failure.
Aside from the strategic problem that piling onto Biden could well feed Trump’s election, the attacks mostly miss the real economic gains we are seeing, especially as inflation recedes toward the target 2% rate. Claudia Sahm and Arin Dube have been two of the economists relentlessly documenting the gains for working families in the current economy, particularly low-wage workers- and both have expressed frustration with liberal colleagues on this.
I will write a deeper dive on all this soon, but this chart is particularly striking in highlighting that workers now have the best combination of low unemployment with the highest inflation-adjusted wages of any modern President in history.
The deeper problem with left-liberal folks not defending the Biden economy is that there is a systematic rightwing argument that we spent too much on Covid relief - and that the result is a bad economy with high inflation. If some liberal/left pundits dogpile on the current recovery, they just feed the conservative push to NEVER do anything like pandemic UI or the expanded child credit ever again for fear of inflation.
It is an economic miracle that we went through a horrific mass death Covid event that shut down much of the economy- and yet we are back at full employment and just arguing the details of who is and is not having real wage gains. US growth has been higher than Europe and inflation far LOWER, so by any comparative measure, US policy is outperforming any alternative policies - as opposed to fantasy policies that pretend Covid shortages & corporate profiteering didn't exist.
Having the highest wages in US history with one of the lowest unemployment rates should be a cause for mass celebration - and organizing to defend this achievement. Of course, we should demand more, particularly with the extreme-wealthy siphoning off such a disproportionate share of the gains in this economy. But you can promote the success of the Biden recovery plan - notably enacted with no GOP support - while also arguing for the next steps in building a fairer economy for the future.
Also worth putting the relative success of Democratic policy in the context of the complete collapse of the left across much of Europe. This poll shows the Social Democrats, ex-CP Left, and Greens in Germany are barely getting a third of the vote COMBINED, raising the specter of neofascists entering national government for the first time.
With neofascists taking power in multiple countries, including Italy, and with a rightwing coalition including the far-right parties possibly winning a majority in upcoming European elections, defending the success of a Keynesian center-left policy in the United States is all the more urgent.
Netanyahu Bows to Biden Pressure over Gaza
Last week I made the case that Biden was systematically pressuring the Israelis to foreswear ethnic cleansing and to commit to leaving Gaza when the current conflict ends.
Dousing rhetoric by some in his Cabinet, Netanhayu in this linked video accepts key demands by the Biden administration: "I want to make a few points absolutely clear: Israel has no intention of permanently occupying Gaza or displacing its civilian population.”
No doubt global pressure is also playing a role but it’s important to see these shifts in official policy.
Media Failure, Example #100
We have example after example the media’s failure to inform the public on basic facts, with public perception being at odds with reality on so many issues.
Recently, the Blueprint 2024 project did polling on what energy policy people want - but also what they believe has happened under Biden.
The answer was that 71% of voters believed oil and gas drilling had either stayed the same or decreased under Biden. Only 29% gave the correct answer that oil and gas drilling has hit record levels under Biden, pumping more barrels of crude oil than Saudi Arabia at this point and more than under Trump.
I obviously wish oil drilling had decreased under Biden, but what’s shocking is the way the media will just quote Trump in a speech saying, “On Day 1 of our new administration, we will end Biden’s nation-wrecking war on American energy,” without actually balancing with the reality. So readers absorb the falsehood as the truth.
This is similar to the insanity that even as Orwellian censorship sweeps through Florida public schools, including (no kidding) banning Webster’s Dictionary, on orders of state govt - the NY Times is fixated on internal fights at a private institution like Harvard? Just a broken media space.
Doctors Forming Unions - The College Educated are Increasingly the New Proletariat
Doctors are high-paid but increasingly wage workers like everyone else - and starting to unionize to protect against corporate abuses, as this PBS story documents:
A few years ago I wrote about how the increasing support for Democrats from by college-educated voters was not a shift away from working-class politics - but a shift of college graduates being turned into proletarians.
What is striking is that the majority of doctors are now employees, not owning their own practices, and this coincides with shift of doctors supporting Democrats. As I wrote back then, this is paralleled in other areas of new union militancy where professionals are now just employees.
Even doctors are increasingly just employees of medical services chains. 2018 was the first year more doctors were employees than in the management of their own firms and this is just accelerating with 70% of physicians under age 40 now being employees. In sync with this change, doctors have moved from being a heavily Republican-donating group to increasingly supporting Democrats, with employment status being a key variable in studies documenting this shift in political loyalties.
That same corporate consolidation has driven increased union militancy in the news media, in sports, and in Hollywood- as even some of the highest paid employees in creative fields find their politics directed into more anti-corporate directions.
Tide Turning Against NIMBYs on Housing Policy
New report out from Pew States shows that Minneapolis eliminating many zoning restrictions has led to faster growth in new housing units, far lower rent increases, and a decline in homelessness in the city even as it has increased statewide.
Need a lot more public funding as well but the evidence is clear- NIMBYs help drive the housing crisis.
Other Quick Hits
United Autoworkers announces 30% of workers at Alabama Mercedes plant have signed union cards - and union rolls out an official plan for ramping up pressure plant by plant.
NY AG Tish James highlights fraud by health insurance networks who claim to provide mental health care - while having no providers who will accept clients. Tish James released this report and hopefully will followup lawsuits against this fraud.
Trump calls for “mass deportation” of Americans. It’s unclear if he'll stop at the children of undocumented immigrants - or maybe he won't if MAGA cheers loud enough.