Who Makes Policy Campaign 2016 Edition

Last week the U.S. Census Bureau released a report with results strongly indicating that the Job Market is well on its way to been recovered. This report showed that, the median household income increased from $53,718 to $56,516, a 5.2 percent increase between 2014 and 2015.

Interpretation of this report by the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers at the White House indicate that the increase in income was spread across the entire population, with the greatest gains noted for the poorest Americans. The chart below further explains this.

This is definitely a step in the right direction, and a good sign of recovery.

 

Last week I posted a blog, supported by an ABC new article, on the potential threat climate change presents to natural security…and look what we have here.  In his most recent presidential memorandum, (a more pleasant way of saying executive order) President Obama “directs 20 agencies from across the government to establish a dedicated working group to identify the U.S. national security priorities related to climate change. Second, it instructs these agencies to develop a Climate Change and National Security Action Plan outlining how they’ll develop and share information on these risks. Third, it directs each agency to develop strategies to address climate-related threats, from impacts on our economy to our food security to the flow of migrants and refugees.”

The policies of the memoranda will carry over into the next administration unless the next president explicitly cancels it.  In my opinion, A great move on Obama’s part since climate change has been pretty much forgotten and/or ignored on this campaign trail.

This is an interesting question and this article in the Washington Post starts to answer this.

Currently, there are multilateral economic sanctions against Russia from a great deal of the Western powers. The article claims:

“From Russia’s perspective, the revealed preferences of goosing the Ukrainian conflict just before the G-7 summit suggests that the geopolitical benefits of destabilizing Ukraine outweigh the economic costs of continued sanctions.”

But what of the US, again this piece give some interesting thoughts:

So it appears that both Russia and the United States have a vested interest in continued conflict. Russia wants to weaken Ukraine, not be seen as knuckling under to sanctions, and wait for fissures to appear in the Western alliance. But the United States sees the calculus of conflict a bit differently. U.S. officials think that continued conflict will help to perpetuate the sanctions and the number of dead Russian soldiers in Ukraine. This elevates geopolitical risk and makes it harder for Putin to suppress the domestic costs of his Ukraine adventure.

I still have to ask: to what end? I am not sure I really see the reason on Putin’s end or on Obama’s.

I wanted to point this out to everyone in case you did not catch this. Prop 61 is a CA ballot initiative that seeks to limit the cost of prescription drugs. I think it is worth following, especially if you are interested in healthcare. Some reading on it is bellow.

I am not sure how I feel about it. I think pharma companies are greedy and that there has to be a better way to make drugs available to people at a reasonable cost based on their economic means. I am not sure, however, that this is the way to do it. I see the pharmaceutical companies making California pay dearly in the form of access to drugs which will only serve a self-fulfilling policy for those who are against the bill who say that access to medication will be the economic cost of the price controls. Which leads me to ask is that even moral? But that’s a different blog post.

https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_61,_Drug_Price_Standards_(2016)

http://www.cacatholic.org/proposition-61-%E2%80%93-prescription-drug-pricing

http://www.noprop61.com/facts/impact-on-businesses

http://www.lao.ca.gov/BallotAnalysis/Proposition?number=61&year=2016

http://vetsforbernie.org/2016/09/phrma-ad-falsely-claims-ca-prop-61-increase-va-drug-prices/

 

As I’ve pointed out before, free trade (globalization) has become so toxic political topic that it is the one issue that both presidential candidates agree on. Several world renown economist and learning institutions have agreed that advancements in technology and manufacturing efficiency alone cannot explain the manufacturing job losses in the U.S. over the last 25 years. But it seems that the majority of opinions side with the argument that globalization is the cause of job losses in manufacturing. There are a few that make the case that the job losses were inevitable. That these manufacturing job losses would have happened regardless of free trade. However, a significant number of the prominent economist in the U.S and beyond disagree with this assessment. So if it’s not technology and it’s not entirely globalization in itself, then what is it?

 

There are some in academia that blame the shortsightedness of Wall Street and corporate boardrooms for their pursuit short-term stock price gains in exchange for long-term damage to the American workforce. They argue that it was the pursuit of share price gains that drove many to move manufacturing and some operations offshore. That in order to produce quick short-term improvements to their bottom line, they ignored or failed to asses the true cost of pursuing such goals.

“ ‘Many companies that off-shored manufacturing didn’t really do the math,’ says Harry Moser, an MIT-trained engineer and founder of the Reshoring Initiative. ‘A study the consulting company, Archstone, showed that 60% of offshoring decisions used only rudimentary cost calculations, maybe just price or labor costs rather than something holistic like total cost. Most of the true risks and cost of offshoring were hidden’.”

No one considered the destabilizing social consequences that such shortsighted decisions would have. That as a result of these moves, the American worker would eventually lose long and sustainable employment. Also, that many would be unable to provide for their families and build up pensions working in newly created low paying employment. They failed to predict that the new economic instability would end up evolving into nationalist movements that are both anti-business and anti-trade.

On September 20th President Barrack Obama addressed the full body of the United Nations for the last time as President of the United States. After a brief summary of worldwide progress in certain areas; he quickly moved into lengthy list of warnings. In a very analytical and professorial-like speech, he warned of all the challenges the world must meet in order to avoid further environmental and human cataclysmic events. He warned that unless people are able to overcome “tribalism”, the world would continue to see further conflict and mass migrations that threaten to further destabilize governments. He warned that “aggressive nationalism” and “crude populism” would further isolate nations and return us to a darker age; “…we, the nations of the world, cannot return to the old ways of conflict and coercion… A nation ringed by walls would only imprison itself”. He then went on to make his case for free trade.

After critiquing the isolationist mindset that longs to return to a better age he laid out the case for globalization and the TPP. He highlighted the necessity to interconnect the world’s economies in order to avoid conflict and improve the plight of the poor by saying that “the integration of our global economy has made life better for billions of our women and children…our international order has been so successful we take it as a given that great powers no longer fight wars.” And therein lies the crux of his case for the TPP and other similar trade agreements. He believes that the price of free trade is worth the resulting peace that can arise out such agreements. He went on to make two more points about free trade. The first acknowledged that too often the poor and working class were not sharing in the benefits of free trade. So he urged nations to put policies in place that would address income inequality or risk facing political instability and further growth in isolationist movements. However, in his second point, he also highlighted that free trade had the potential to improve workers rights and the environment. He went on to say that “together, we can eradicate extreme poverty and erase barriers to opportunity…We can promote growth through trade that meets a higher standard.  And that’s what we’re doing through the Trans-Pacific Partnership — a trade agreement that encompasses nearly 40 percent of the global economy; an agreement that will open markets, while protecting the rights of workers and protecting the environment that enables development to be sustained.”

This speech  seems to encompass his hope and support for free trade agreements. It also acknowledges the fact that he is aware of the consequences of free trade. It appears to me that his TPP problem is that he has not acknowledged the side effects of free trade with accompanying legislation that would help address income inequality and the manufacturing job losses that are sure to follow such an agreement.

In an continuing apparent bid to prove to the United States (and the world) that he does not care about anyone’s rights, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, stopping by an African-American church today, had this to say about crime and the tactics we should used to fight it:

“I would do stop-and-frisk. I think you have to…I see what’s going on here, I see what’s going on in Chicago, I think stop-and-frisk. In New York City it was so incredible, the way it worked.”

Yes, the Donald promises that, if elected, he will take a controversial, unconstitutional practice that has targeted minority communities nationwide.  He will have law enforcement stop and frisk everyone that they find “suspicious”.  Mind you, this reality TV star is stating his support of this policy in an African-American church of all places.

Given the combination of his statements over the past several days, in which he called for profiling and complained about the treatment of suspects in custody, along with his statements today, a clear picture is forming of the Donald.  An ugly picture of someone running for president, who obviously will not preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.

Yesterday, a letter to the public from 375 of the world’s top scientists was released urging people to understand the serious environmental dangers of Trump Presidency. The letter can be accessed here. I encourage you all the read it! The main argument of this brief letter is to fully acknowledge the reality of Global Warming, and undermine claims (such as Trump’s) that Climate Change is a hoax and not caused by humans. The letter states, “the basic science of how greenhouse gases trap heat is clear and has been for over a century,” which makes us wonder why Climate Change is still a debate – or who has a vested interest in making it still debatable? The letter is also an inspirational unity of the scientific community as evident from the amount and diversity of the signers.

Also, Stephen Hawking was one of the signers and who wouldn’t trust something Stephen Hawking stands by?

 

There are two main stories about how the U.S. job market is doing as highlighted by this article by Ben Casselman of FiveThirtyEight, titled “Trump and Clinton can both spin the Latest Job Report”

According to this article, on the one hand, the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton tells us, the job market is in great shape, citing the steady job growth, low unemployment rate, and rising wages as evidence, while the Republican candidate Donald J. Trump using this same evidence spews a negative rhetoric of slow recovery and claiming the numbers are manipulated.

As noted in my last blog post on the views of the economy, while an almost equal number of Americans 43% compared to 49% believe it is easy to find a job in their community, what is more important, I believe, is that a higher number of Americans, 53%, believe their family income is falling behind their cost of living.

There is cause to be hopeful with the latest report by the Census Bureau showing an increase in real median household income between 2014 and 2015, the first since 2007.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump touched on the capture of Ahmad Khan Rahami, the suspect allegedly behind the explosions in New York and New Jersey over the weekend, Monday evening at a rally in Florida.  He first thanked law enforcement for capturing the “evil thug”.  Then, he went on to make this troubling statement:

“The bad part: now we will give him amazing hospitalization, he will be taken care of by some of the best doctors in the world, he will be given a fully modern and updated hospital room, and he’ll probably even have room service, knowing the way our country is…And on top of all of that, he will be represented by an outstanding lawyer. His case will go through the various court systems for years, and in the end people will forget and his punishment will not be what it once would have been.”

Starting out with the obvious, Rahami is, at the end of the day, a suspect at this point, not having gone through trial and being found guilty of anything.  He has rights under our Constitution, such as to due process of law and access to an attorney.

This is not to mention that, as a modern nation, we do civilized things as provide medical care to those in custody, not let them fester in whatever ailments or injuries they may have.

The worst part of what the Donald, running to be our nation’s president, had said, comes at the end, complaining about how “his punishment will not be what it once would have been.”

So, what does this reality TV star think a more appropriate punishment should be?  Burning at the stake?  Beheading?  Hanging, drawing and Quartering?  Or perhaps tossing the condemned off of a roof, cliff, or some other tall structure?

We have a reality TV star running for the presidency.  A man with no basic understanding of a modern, civilized society, our Constitution, and the rule of law.