Category Archives: economics

Local: Jobs and work support could curtail LA’s stubborn homeless crisis

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From today’s LA Times:

Providing jobs and other aid to Los Angeles County residents soon after they land in the streets could help prevent 2,600 to 5,200 people a year from falling into persistent homelessness, according to a new study from a liberal think tank.

The “Escape Routes” study from the nonprofit Economic Roundtable zeroes in on a key dilemma in Los Angeles’ homelessness crisis: Even as officials have moved 33,000 homeless people into permanent housing since 2013 and launched a $1.2-billion construction program, high rents, job loss and medical crises continue to push people out of their homes.

Without early intervention, thousands of these people will become mired in chronic homelessness, deepening the region’s stubborn problem, the study found.

“Housing alone is not enough to end homelessness. The steady flow of new people into chronic homelessness keeps moving the goalposts back,” Dan Flaming, president of Economic Roundtable, said in a statement.

The researchers combined 26 data sources — including county healthcare and social services records, the U.S. Census and homeless counts and demographic surveys — to sketch what experts called a novel portrait of people at risk of falling into chronic homelessness, as well as recommendations of how to help them.

For several years running, Los Angeles has topped the nation in chronically homeless people, with 16,576 in the 2017 count, the most recent available.

Dennis Culhane, a University of Pennsylvania professor and a leading researcher of homeless demographics, said one of the most important findings was that 150,000 people in L.A. County are homeless in a year, although many resolve their crises on their own.

Because more than three-quarters of L.A.’s homeless people live outdoors in camps or vehicles, the official homeless count — a three-day snapshot of people living in the streets and shelters — has always been suspect, Culhane said.

The study says the number of people languishing in homelessness can be reduced, but not without a big investment. Many homeless people are eager to work, particularly those with children, but they need childcare, transportation, temporary housing, training and in some cases government-funded jobs to bring them into the work force, study said.

Read the complete article here.

Public Servants Are Losing Their Foothold in the Middle Class

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From today’s New York Times:

The anxiety and seething anger that followed the disappearance of middle-income jobs in factory towns has helped reshape the American political map and topple longstanding policies on tariffs and immigration.

But globalization and automation aren’t the only forces responsible for the loss of those reliable paychecks. So is the steady erosion of the public sector.

For generations of Americans, working for a state or local government — as a teacher, firefighter, bus driver or nurse — provided a comfortable nook in the middle class. No less than automobile assembly lines and steel plants, the public sector ensured that even workers without a college education could afford a home, a minivan, movie nights and a family vacation.

In recent years, though, the ranks of state and local employees have languished even as the populations they serve have grown. They now account for the smallest share of the American civilian work force since 1967.

The 19.5 million workers who remain are finding themselves financially downgraded. Teachers who have been protesting low wages and sparse resources in Oklahoma, West Virginia and Kentucky — and those in Arizona who say they plan to walk out on Thursday — are just one thread in that larger skein.

The private sector has been more welcoming. During 97 consecutive months of job growth, it created 18.6 million positions, a 17 percent increase.

But that impressive streak comes with an asterisk. Many of the jobs created — most in service industries — lack stability and security. They pay little more than the minimum wage and lack predictable hours, insurance, sick days or parental leave.

The result is that the foundation of the middle class continues to be gnawed away even as help-wanted ads multiply.

Read the complete article here.

Better Your Chance For Equal Pay – What You Need To Know Now

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From today’s Forbes Magazine:

The gender pay gap is the most entrenched barrier to equality women face. It seems so simple: equal pay for equal work. But the formula is complicated in many companies because men outnumber women in C-suites, in leadership and management, in the most lucrative industries like banking, and in the higher-risk, higher-reward jobs – all of which skews the data and creates a rationale that is used to justify the pay gap.

The fact is, there is no valid reason for paying women less for equal performance, and doing so hamstrings the growth of our economy. A 2017 report by the Institute for Women’s Researchdemonstrates how equal pay for women could increase the U.S. economy by an incredible $512.6 billion.

Meanwhile, a confluence of factors continues to inhibit a woman’s ability to earn her worth, though many of them can be changes. Here are four things all women need to know to better their chances for equal pay:

1.Where you live and work dramatically impacts your potential for equal pay.

Smart Asset researched the pay gap in 507 metro areas around the country and found that nationally, women make an average 70% of what men do in the same jobs. However, there are 51 Metro areas where the gap closes to 80% or better. Cities like LA, Las Vegas, Flagstaff, Arizona; Jefferson City, Missouri; and Bangor, Maine all have narrower pay gaps than average. But the title goes to Rochester, Minnesota as the top place for working women for the second year in a row. Women in that metro earn the highest income in the nation, after deducting housing costs.

If you live in a state capitol, you have an even better chance of equal pay: nearly half of the top 12 metros were around capitals.

The women who live in Tallahassee, Florida’s state capital, will be relieved to know that they enjoy one of smallest pay gaps in the nation, with the average woman in the metro area earning roughly 94% of what the average man does. Florida, overall, had the most metros in the top 51, with 13 cities outperforming the national average. Gainesville, Tampa, Fort Meyers, and Miami all did better than 80%.

But there’s bad news for the women of Utah. Provo-Orem is the worst-performing metro area in the study. Smart Asset’s data shows that the average woman there earns about 42% of what the average man does.

Read the complete article here.

Tariffs bad news for American economy, including workers and consumers

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From today’s The Hill:

There’s never a good time for tariffs. American workers and consumers will pay dearly for the Trump administration’s short-sighted action to protect an industry that shows no signs of needing any protection—the market values of the five largest steel companies have more than doubled over the past five years. Yet with a major infrastructure spending bill set to come through Congress over the next year, Trump’s tariffs are bad policy with even worse timing.

While a small amount of people will benefit from the proposed tariffs, many more will be harmed. The American steel industry employs roughly 140,000 workers, but industries that rely on steel to create their products—the ones who will suffer directly under the tariffs—employ 6.5 million workers. A recent study by the Trade Partnership found that the direct cost of tariffs on employment would be 18 jobs lost for every one created. On net, 470,000 Americans could lose their jobs.

The Trade Partnership’s study fits with the lessons of recent history. In 2002, President Bush instituted protective tariffs on foreign steel imports. After just a year in which steel prices rose by up to 50 percent, steel production was insufficient to meet demand, 200,000 Americans lost their jobs, and the tariff was dropped. A mere fifteen years later, these lessons have already been forgotten.

Nor will other countries sit idly by as Trump restricts trade. Well over 10 million Americans’ jobs are supported by exports—jobs which would be at risk in the case of a trade war. Already, the European Union has prepared a ten-page hit list of potential targets of retaliatory tariffs should Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs go into effect.

American consumers will be harmed as well. A combination of new steel tariffs and lumber tariffs imposed last year mean that the cost of new homes is likely to continue rising—nearly half of steel imports go towards construction. Other American staples such as cars and canned beer are also set to see price spikes resulting directly from tariffs.

Read the complete article here.

Without no pay raise in years, Oklahoma Teachers Could Be the Next to Walk

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From today’s New York Times:

When she woke up one morning last week, Tiffany Bell, a teacher at Hamilton Elementary School here, had $35 in her bank account.

On take-home pay of $2,200 per month, she supports her husband, a veteran who went back to school, and their three children, all of whom qualify for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, a federal benefit for low-income families. The couple’s 4-year-old twins attend a Head Start preschool — another antipoverty program.

Money is so tight for Ms. Bell, 26, that she had to think twice before spending $15 on Oreos for a class project, in which her third graders removed differing amounts of icing to display the phases of the moon.

She knew it would be hard to support a family on a teacher’s salary. “But not this hard,” she said.

When West Virginia teachers mounted a statewide walkout last month, earning a modest raise, it seemed like an anomaly: a successful grass-roots labor uprising in a conservative state with weak public sector unions. But just a few weeks later, the West Virginia action looks like the potential beginning of a red-state rebellion.

In Arizona, teachers clad in red, the color of the teacher protest movement, have conducted a series of #RedforEd demonstrations demanding higher pay. In Kentucky, teachers have organized rallies to protest proposed cuts to their pensions.

And in Oklahoma, where teachers have not had a raise from the state in a decade, they have vowed to go on strike on April 2 if the Legislature does not act to increase pay and education budgets.

Read the complete article here.

56 years later, JFK’s call for a consumer bill of rights is forgotten under Trump

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From the Los Angeles Times:

On this day in 1962, President Kennedy laid out in a speech to Congress the framework for a consumer bill of rights and the crucial role the federal government must play in protecting those rights.

Kennedy’s call to arms is now marked every March 15 as World Consumer Rights Day, which seeks to advance “guidelines for consumer protection”backed by the United Nations.

Yet over half a century later, the current occupant of the Oval Office, President Trump, a wealthy businessman, is aggressively pursuing policies that undermine each of Kennedy’s declared rights.

So it’s worthwhile asking: Is it too late to change course? Have corporate interests prevailed?

Read the complete article here.

Some Dems ready to loosen tough bank regulations passed after financial crisis

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From today’s LA Times:

Before the 2008 financial crisis, BAC Community Bank in Stockton made about 100 mortgage loans a year. Now, after new regulations mandated in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the figure is down to about two dozen.

“We were never a big mortgage lender, but we did quite a bit more before Dodd-Frank,” said Bill Trezza, the bank’s chief executive. “It basically pushed us out of that to the point where we will do mortgages only for our customers if they request it.”

He and other small bankers hope that’s about to change. And a political shift is making that possible.

Nearly a decade after the financial crisis, some Democrats are ready to go along with a Republican push to significantly loosen the landmark law enacted to try to prevent the next one.

Senate legislation focused on easing new mortgage and other rules for small and mid-sized and regional banks has been co-sponsored by a dozen Democrats, several of them moderates up for re-election this year in states won by President Trump in the 2016 campaign.

The bipartisan support has the bill on track to be approved as soon as this week in what would be the first major overhaul of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

The House, which has approved more extensive financial deregulation, is likely to go along with the Senate’s more modest changes. Trump, who has called Dodd-Frank “a very negative force” in the economy and vowed during the campaign to dismantle it, would be expected to sign any bill that reduces its authority.

“The tone has shifted in D.C. from where regulation was necessary to protect the economy to the concern where regulation has gone too far and might be a drag on the economy,” said Ed Mills, a Washington policy analyst for financial services firm Raymond James. “Where that shift has occurred, it gave an opening to the smaller and medium-size banks to pursue these changes.”

But while there’s broad support for easing unintentional burdens in the law for small banks, many liberal Democrats are fighting the bill from Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho). They say it goes too far by also providing significant benefits for some larger financial institutions.

The legislation would exempt about 30 banks and other firms from the stricter oversight put in place by Dodd-Frank after the 2008 financial crisis. That 2010 law was an attempt to prevent a repeat of the bailouts and damage to the economy.

Read the complete article here.

When Wall Street Writes Its Own Rules, It’s An Age of Unprecedented Corruption

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From today’s New York Times:

On July 25, 2013, a high-ranking federal law enforcement officer took a public stand against malfeasance on Wall Street. Preet Bharara, then the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, held a news conference to announce one of the largest Wall Street criminal cases the American justice system had ever seen.

Mr. Bharara’s office had just indicted the multibillion-dollar hedge fund firm SAC Capital Advisors, charging it with wire fraud and insider trading. Standing before a row of television cameras, Mr. Bharara described the case in momentous terms, saying that it involved illegal trading that was “substantial, pervasive and on a scale without precedent in the history of hedge funds.” His legal action that day, he assured the public, would send a strong message to the financial industry that cheating was not acceptable and that prosecutors and regulators would take swift action when behavior crossed the line.

Steven A. Cohen, the founder of SAC and one of the world’s wealthiest men, was never criminally charged, but his company would end up paying $1.8 billion in civil and criminal fines, one of the largest settlements of its kind. He denied any culpability, but his reputation was still badly — some might argue irreparably — damaged. Eight of his former employees were charged by the government, and six pleaded guilty (a few later had their convictions or guilty pleas dismissed). Mr. Cohen was required to shut his fund down and was prohibited from managing outside investors’ money until 2018.

Now, with the prohibition having expired in December, Mr. Cohen has been raising money from investors and is set to start a new hedge fund. He’ll find himself in an environment very different from the one he last operated in. His resurrection arrives as Wall Street regulation is under assault and financiers are directing tax policy and other aspects of the economy — often to the benefit of their own industry. Mr. Cohen is a powerful symbol of Wall Street’s resurgence under President Trump.

As the stock market lurched through its stomach-turning swings over the past week, it was hard not to worry that Wall Street could once again torpedo an otherwise healthy economy and to think about how little Mr. Trump and his Congress have done to prepare for such a possibility. Stock market turbulence typically prompts calls for smart and stringent financial regulation, which is not part of the Trump agenda. One of Mr. Trump’s first acts as president was to fire Mr. Bharara, who made prosecuting Wall Street crime one of his priorities. Mr. Trump has also given many gifts to people like Mr. Cohen.

Read the complete article here.

Individual Mandate Now Gone, G.O.P. Targets the One for Employers

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From the New York Times:

Having wiped out the requirement for people to have health insurance, Republicans in Congress are taking aim at a new target: the mandate in the Affordable Care Act that employers offer coverage to employees.

And many employers are cheering the effort.

While large companies have long offered health benefits, many have chafed at the detailed requirements under the health law, including its reporting rules, which they see as onerous and expensive. Now that relief has been extended to individuals, some companies believe they should be next in line.

The individual mandate and the employer mandate are “inextricably entwined,” said James A. Klein, the president of the American Benefits Council, an influential lobby for large companies like Dow Chemical, Microsoft and BP, the oil and gas producer.

“It is inequitable to leave the employer mandate in place when its purpose — to support the individual mandate — no longer exists,” Mr. Klein said. “We are urging Congress to repeal the employer mandate.”

Opposition to the employer mandate could increase as more employers are fined for not offering coverage or for not meeting federal standards for adequate, affordable coverage. Since October, the Internal Revenue Service has notified thousands of businesses that they owe money because they failed to offer coverage in 2015, when the mandate took effect.

Representatives Devin Nunes of California and Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, both Republicans, recently introduced a bill, supported by party leaders, to suspend the mandate, canceling any penalties that would be imposed for any year from 2015 to 2018.

“The employer mandate is a job-killer, a wage-killer and a business-killer,” Mr. Kelly said.

But Tom Leibfried, a health care lobbyist at the A.F.L.-C.I.O., called the proposals to repeal or weaken the employer mandate “a very bad idea.”

“The Affordable Care Act was built on a framework of shared responsibility,” Mr. Leibfried said. “If you get rid of the employer mandate, you will see people lose coverage from their employers.”

Such a move could also increase costs for the federal government. Even though Congress has eliminated the penalties for people who go without insurance, millions of consumers are still eligible for financial aid in the form of tax credits to help them pay insurance premiums. These subsidies increase with the rapidly rising cost of insurance. If fewer people receive coverage from employers, more will qualify for subsidized coverage in the public marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act.

“The employer mandate holds down the cost of premium tax credits for the federal government,” said Catherine E. Livingston, a tax lawyer at the law firm Jones Day who was the health care counsel at the I.R.S. from 2010 to 2013. “Any employee who receives an offer of affordable coverage from an employer is not eligible for the tax credit. And the employer mandate provides a strong incentive for employers to offer affordable coverage.”

Read the complete article here.

MLK Day 2018, A Time to Reflect on Socio-Economic Injustice In All Forms

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In honor of MLK Day, we post a short educational video here with excerpts from Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Baldwin that draw the connection between racial injustice and economic inequality in the United States. Their insights are as true today as they were fifty years ago, showing just how far we’ve come and how far we have to go. If we want peace, we must work for justice in all its forms.