Labor Market Policy – Tackling the Pyramid

Introduction:

It’s somewhat out of vogue to talk about the quality of jobs and the shape of the labor market at a time when unemployment is so high and the obvious issue is the number of jobs being created. This wasn’t the case prior to the recession, although rather specious reasons were given to justify the rapidly increasing inequality of wages as the outcome of superior education or productivity. What can’t be denied is that even before the recession, we were sliding into a highly unequal labor market in which many low-paid, insecure workers (50% of American workers made less than $26,000 or 230% of poverty in 2010) serve a small number of ever-richer elites.

This trend has only continued since the recession, and it’s a problem that has to be solved if we are to either fully recover or protect ourselves from the next recession.

“Green” as Aesthetic, Ethic, or a Program

Introduction:

The internal tension within politics is the fact that politics is carried out in a language of ideological values, and values don’t really lend themselves to empirical analysis, while policy is carried out largely in a language of social science which must be. Difficulty and deception comes where the two languages either overlap or fail to find common ground. Hence the bizarre situation in which values of “fairness” and “progressiveness” were used to both attack and defend the same policies in the U.K.

However, there’s no reason why we can’t interrogate our values as closely we do our policies – to prevent values labels from turning into veils used to mislead and obfuscate. This is especially true for the label “green” where “green”-ness is used as a signifier of goodness and a way to shut down consideration of other values.

A Wagner Act for Public Sector Unions

Introduction:

The sad reality of the recent spate of right-to-work laws, collective bargaining bans, anti-picketing laws, and other state level anti-union legislation is that, despite our victories in Ohio and the recalls in Wisconsin, the labor movement will never begin to make progress as long as we are fighting a piecemeal defense of an industry (the public sector) that is only 37% organized and reliant on state politics for its very existence.

In short, what we need is a Wagner Act for the public sector.

Psychology of Public Policy – IHSS as a Model for a New Welfare State

Introduction:

(For previous parts in this series, see here)

One tricky dilemma that progressives have had to face about the welfare state has been the contradiction between our desire to provide universal protection against the great social ills (poverty, disease, lack of education, poor housing, and unemployment), which tends to be broadly supported by society, and society’s resistance to violations of the social norm of reciprocity. The easiest attack on welfare has always been to assert that other people are getting something for nothing and thus divide society between the payer and payee.

While progressives ran headlong into the brick wall of social resistance in the welfare politics of the 1970s, it’s not foreordained that all forms of social welfare have to meet the same fate. It is possible to be both right and smart – and learn to tack into the wind of public opinion.

Looking at the IHSS model gives us one possible solution for how to do just that.

In Honor of the Workers of Wisconsin: Classic TRP – In Defense of Public Sector Unionism III

Introduction:

The last installment in The Realignment Program’s re-posting of its series on public employee unions is here, and we turn from defending the idea of public employee unions to thinking towards a more expansive, hopeful vision of how progressives can promote public sector unionism.

In Honor of the Workers of Wisconsin: Classic TRP – In Defense of Public Sector Unionism II

Introduction:

Continuing our re-posting of The Realignment Project’s series on public sector unions, here’s part 2, in which we learn that that public sector workers are not overpaid, but that private sector workers are underpaid.

High-Speed Rail in an Age of Ideology

Introduction:

To many, the decisions of the recently-elected governors of New Jersey (to reject Federal money for a second New Jersey-New York rail tunnel), Wisconsin, and Ohio (pulling the plug on Federally-financed high-speed rail project) seem illogical. High-speed rail projects spur growth, create jobs and tax revenue, they’re environmentally sustainable, and the state doesn’t even have to pay (mostly)! So why kill them?

The truth is that we shouldn’t be surprised by these decisions – or treat them as irrational. We are living in an age of ideology, and high-speed rail is no less ideological than any other public policy. They’re still wrong to kill the projects, but on ideological grounds.

Rebuilding The Public University: The U.C – What/Who’s It For?

Introduction:

With the U.C Regents’ recent 8% fee hike (on top of the 32% hike from the previous  year) and the more symbolic acceptance that the University of California is not a tuition-free school, we mark a turning point in the history of the once (and future?) greatest public university in the world. U.C Berkeley now joins the “50k club” once occupied solely by private universities.

This is as good a time as any to ask – where is the U.C going? Why is it going in the direction it is? And is there an alternative?

Because there may not be another time to ask.

A New Deal for California – What Now? (Finance and Green Economy)

Introduction:

With the belated victory of Kamala Harris as Attorney General, the full results of the 2010 election are in for California. There many things that progressives can be proud of – a sweep of statewide offices, picking up another Assembly seat, defeating prop 23 and passing prop 25. On the other hand, there are also some major disappointments – the defeat of prop 19 (marijuana legalization), the defeat of prop 21 (a VLF to fund the state parks), the defeat of prop 24 (rolling back corporate tax breaks), and the passage of prop 26 (2/3rds requirement for fees). Prop 26 especially complicates what this victory means for California.

Indeed, our situation is a lot like the national picture after the 2008 elections – we have an executive who straddles the line between the left and right wings of the Democratic Party, a big legislative majority, but not the ability to break the fiscal deadlock and really be able to govern our state.

So where do we go from here?

F*ck the Laffer Curve – Individual Vs. Social Consumption

Introduction:

The power of ideas to define the range of the possible and the acceptable can be seen in the fact that, despite nearly four years of budget austerity at the state level, California appears to be trying once again to cut itself out of a recession, or the fact that despite a stimulus that has appreciably worked, an incredibly modest proposal for public works and tax cuts is unlikely to pass Congress.

Among other things, this should point to the legacy of nigh-on forty years of anti-government rhetoric at the highest level of government. One angle into seeing the effects of this legacy is to look at the way that taxes are publicly discussed as either a net loss to the taxpayer (or outright theft by movement conservatives), and the government itself as a kind of black hole into which taxes disappear. The progressive alternative to this rhetoric that has yet to be comprehensively advocated for on the national stage is to emphasize that taxes pay for things, and that they are ultimately a question of individual versus social consumption.