Showing posts with label unemployment insurance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unemployment insurance. Show all posts
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Mike Konczal — Did Ending Unemployment Insurance Extensions Really Create 1.8 Million Jobs?
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Tough sanctions: Obama Administration pays half of Ukraines gas bill due to Russia
Congress wasted no time in extending billions in low interest loans to Ukraine since the Russian annexation of Crimea. Of course no such help went to U.S. homeowners when they were getting foreclosed on left and right at the peak of the housing crisis (and it continues for many). Nor have the jobless or hungry kids gotten any sympathy as Congress recently cut unemployment insurance benefits and foods stamps.
Nothing for Americans, but our government is tripping over itself to help Ukrainians.
Now for the best part. You know how the Obama Administration has been talking tough with respect to economic sanctions on Russia? So we find out that the U.S. is paying half of Ukraine's gas bill that is in arrears to Russia.
Not only is this another slap in the face for Americans who have seen their own heating subsidies cut, but the U.S. is now subsidizing Russia by paying Ukraine's gas bills. That equates to profits to Russian gas companies. These are Obama's tough sanctions? What a joke. Does anybody in this Administration have a brain?
It's the Keystone Cops running the show.
Nothing for Americans, but our government is tripping over itself to help Ukrainians.
Now for the best part. You know how the Obama Administration has been talking tough with respect to economic sanctions on Russia? So we find out that the U.S. is paying half of Ukraine's gas bill that is in arrears to Russia.
Not only is this another slap in the face for Americans who have seen their own heating subsidies cut, but the U.S. is now subsidizing Russia by paying Ukraine's gas bills. That equates to profits to Russian gas companies. These are Obama's tough sanctions? What a joke. Does anybody in this Administration have a brain?
It's the Keystone Cops running the show.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Failure of US Long Range Strategic Planning, National Economic Security, Public Law
If we are living in the solution rather than the problem, then why not look at a National Referendum to force ethical planning and transparency into corporate and government planning documents.
Why not seek a referendum requiring all US organizations include a paragraph in their objectives, mission statements, and long range organizational plans that would address larger national failures that resulted in the sub-prime housing bubble, savings and loan crisis, 2008 financial crisis, Dot Com Crash, high unemployment, low taxes for high income earners, federal income tax rules that can't be understood by any one individual, court systems that are too expensive for common man on Main Street, and political and regulatory capture by those with the money to 'get in the game'.
Politics based on power is no longer acceptable. And business or multinational business based on money or power is no longer acceptable or sustainable. That means leaving money overseas off-shore till legislation is drafted for the US Congress - is no longer acceptable for those that pay payroll taxes automatically every payday. Balancing power between people, the government, and corporations is a much better policy.
The main advantage of a National scheme or referendum for government and organizational ethics clauses is to make up for failure of the US Constitution and Federal Legislation. We should adopt some national pride codified by public law that supports public discussion and transparency to keep our US Organizations on the right track. The theory being that if we think right, can point to common goals and national concerns, then we will act 'right'. We will address as a team or community the weakness in policy or actions. Employees will raise discussions on their own to bring their organization in line with ethical objectives. And it is very appropriate as ethics training for our young students and businessmen and businesswomen.
I believe there is value looking at a kind of "reorganization" of government based on transparency, ethics, and opportunity for everyone. I believe this kind of reorganization can be accomplished though goal setting and long range planning. Of course the idea is to position our nation for the future and correct the failures of the past.
First I wanted to point out some problems with Strategic Planning, organizational missions and objectives. Maybe we can agree that a strategic plan by Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brezinski for the world based on an ethnocentric perspective is flawed and likely unethical. Perhaps we can even agree that strategic planning is a corrupting influence on the world based on the killing of non-christians and suppression of foreign governments by our own governments.
I think a government or corporate executive can be easily understood as a human working on his mission to secure revenue, funding, profit, or value for his organization. Each of us may play roles during the work day as a corporate player, an ideologue, as a financial investor, as a person that provides service to his community, as a parent, as a friend, or as a moral citizen. Each human has many different motivations and interests.
So how do you fight the Long Range Strategic Plan for Goldman Sachs?
How do you stop a Long Range Strategic Plan by some faction of Big Businessmen, Big Multinationals, Big Petroleum Interests, World Bankers, or some evil doer? Well you don't. You regulate to discourage crime and fraud. But if you can create a national imperative or national initiative to include ethical rules in all Strategic Planning it may accomplish very much in my opinion.
In the Government they call this a "Reorganization". Clearly new rules of transparency (regulations) and new "Grand Goals", "National Goals", or "Sustainable Social Goals" would have to be adopted.
There is a precedence for this kind of legislation under public statutory law known as the social contract between a citizen and a state. The social contract defines the relationship between a state and an entity that owes allegiance to it according to wikipedia. Further, public law interacts with civil and human rights.
What is the weakness of my idea? Well there is no way to know what government is doing. No one wants people sticking their nose into their business even government business. We have a federal "Freedom of Information Act of 1966" that has helped US Transparency and various states have passed their own version. So there is a conflict of interest between the corporate or government employee/manager/executive and letting citizens know the details of business operations. The point is large organizations by their nature do not want their operations publicly known, will resist transparency, and citizens will face years of work to get the full picture of government activities in order to demand that remedies or reparations be made through public planning documents.
In summary this is my proposal:
1) Insert National rules for mission statements and objective statements
2) Insert National rules for ethical behavior in goal statements
3) Mandate that US Legal Organizations Strategic Planning clearly state and addresses the community, environmental, financial interests of the government in unemployment, job preservation, and social safety nets that may be affected by job losses created by mergers and leveraged take-overs by hostile or unfriendly firms that may saddle the organization with huge debt
4) Make all US Corporations, Fountadtions, governments, and legal organizations incorporate mission, objectives, and goals that are ethical and transparent to the public and employees.
5) US Strategic Planning as practiced in the US is focused as it is on it's own goals is acting like a maverick, acting like a loner, acting to the exclusion of national identity and responsibility. US Organizations ARE Acting like an off-shore privateer, a pirate, or a disinterested party.
6) There is nothing wrong with forcing corporations to serve the country if not the community by being transparent. I think we would expect the same of NGOs, Foundations, PACs, 501 (c)(4) organizations, 527 organizations (soft money), and any legal entity formed or incorporated in the USA. US Legal entities must be better citizens or state economy participants.
Links for discussion of weakness in current US Strategic Planning:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_range_planning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geopolitics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_analysis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_relations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_relations#Epistemology_and_IR_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_analysis#Bureaucratic_Politics_Model
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_analysis#Other_models
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy#Grand_Strategy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventionism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_mundialization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventionism#Unilateral_intervention
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_organization
Why not seek a referendum requiring all US organizations include a paragraph in their objectives, mission statements, and long range organizational plans that would address larger national failures that resulted in the sub-prime housing bubble, savings and loan crisis, 2008 financial crisis, Dot Com Crash, high unemployment, low taxes for high income earners, federal income tax rules that can't be understood by any one individual, court systems that are too expensive for common man on Main Street, and political and regulatory capture by those with the money to 'get in the game'.
Politics based on power is no longer acceptable. And business or multinational business based on money or power is no longer acceptable or sustainable. That means leaving money overseas off-shore till legislation is drafted for the US Congress - is no longer acceptable for those that pay payroll taxes automatically every payday. Balancing power between people, the government, and corporations is a much better policy.
The main advantage of a National scheme or referendum for government and organizational ethics clauses is to make up for failure of the US Constitution and Federal Legislation. We should adopt some national pride codified by public law that supports public discussion and transparency to keep our US Organizations on the right track. The theory being that if we think right, can point to common goals and national concerns, then we will act 'right'. We will address as a team or community the weakness in policy or actions. Employees will raise discussions on their own to bring their organization in line with ethical objectives. And it is very appropriate as ethics training for our young students and businessmen and businesswomen.
I believe there is value looking at a kind of "reorganization" of government based on transparency, ethics, and opportunity for everyone. I believe this kind of reorganization can be accomplished though goal setting and long range planning. Of course the idea is to position our nation for the future and correct the failures of the past.
First I wanted to point out some problems with Strategic Planning, organizational missions and objectives. Maybe we can agree that a strategic plan by Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brezinski for the world based on an ethnocentric perspective is flawed and likely unethical. Perhaps we can even agree that strategic planning is a corrupting influence on the world based on the killing of non-christians and suppression of foreign governments by our own governments.
I think a government or corporate executive can be easily understood as a human working on his mission to secure revenue, funding, profit, or value for his organization. Each of us may play roles during the work day as a corporate player, an ideologue, as a financial investor, as a person that provides service to his community, as a parent, as a friend, or as a moral citizen. Each human has many different motivations and interests.
So how do you fight the Long Range Strategic Plan for Goldman Sachs?
How do you stop a Long Range Strategic Plan by some faction of Big Businessmen, Big Multinationals, Big Petroleum Interests, World Bankers, or some evil doer? Well you don't. You regulate to discourage crime and fraud. But if you can create a national imperative or national initiative to include ethical rules in all Strategic Planning it may accomplish very much in my opinion.
In the Government they call this a "Reorganization". Clearly new rules of transparency (regulations) and new "Grand Goals", "National Goals", or "Sustainable Social Goals" would have to be adopted.
There is a precedence for this kind of legislation under public statutory law known as the social contract between a citizen and a state. The social contract defines the relationship between a state and an entity that owes allegiance to it according to wikipedia. Further, public law interacts with civil and human rights.
What is the weakness of my idea? Well there is no way to know what government is doing. No one wants people sticking their nose into their business even government business. We have a federal "Freedom of Information Act of 1966" that has helped US Transparency and various states have passed their own version. So there is a conflict of interest between the corporate or government employee/manager/executive and letting citizens know the details of business operations. The point is large organizations by their nature do not want their operations publicly known, will resist transparency, and citizens will face years of work to get the full picture of government activities in order to demand that remedies or reparations be made through public planning documents.
In summary this is my proposal:
1) Insert National rules for mission statements and objective statements
2) Insert National rules for ethical behavior in goal statements
3) Mandate that US Legal Organizations Strategic Planning clearly state and addresses the community, environmental, financial interests of the government in unemployment, job preservation, and social safety nets that may be affected by job losses created by mergers and leveraged take-overs by hostile or unfriendly firms that may saddle the organization with huge debt
4) Make all US Corporations, Fountadtions, governments, and legal organizations incorporate mission, objectives, and goals that are ethical and transparent to the public and employees.
5) US Strategic Planning as practiced in the US is focused as it is on it's own goals is acting like a maverick, acting like a loner, acting to the exclusion of national identity and responsibility. US Organizations ARE Acting like an off-shore privateer, a pirate, or a disinterested party.
6) There is nothing wrong with forcing corporations to serve the country if not the community by being transparent. I think we would expect the same of NGOs, Foundations, PACs, 501 (c)(4) organizations, 527 organizations (soft money), and any legal entity formed or incorporated in the USA. US Legal entities must be better citizens or state economy participants.
Links for discussion of weakness in current US Strategic Planning:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_range_planning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geopolitics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_analysis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_relations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_relations#Epistemology_and_IR_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_analysis#Bureaucratic_Politics_Model
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_analysis#Other_models
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy#Grand_Strategy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventionism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_mundialization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventionism#Unilateral_intervention
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_organization
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Why Not Use What We Already Have (instead of a JG?)
Read it at The Modern Monetary Theory Trader
I believe we have everything we already need to effectively make the JG superfluous.
Why Not Use What We Already Have (instead of a JG?)
(h/t Clonal Antibody in a comment at Trader's Crucible)
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Pavlina R. Tcherneva on MMT
Read it at New Economic Perspectives
This post is primarily addressed to the MMT community and whoever considers himself/herself a follower of Modern Monetary Theory. It deals with the question of what is in the purview of MMT.
What’s MMT About Anyway and is the Job Guarantee Crucial to the Project?
by Pavlina R. Tcherneva
Pavlina concludes, "And when we illuminate policy choices, we MMTers inevitably make a choice between one policy prescription over another."
I am not sure this is totally correct with the JG, which is part and parcel of MMT as a macro theory as I understand what the the developers (Moser, Wray, and Mitchell) have said. I would put it this way instead.
All policy options are optional politically, but economics may indicate the relative degree of optimality. It is always possible to choose a less optimal option for political reasons, but one should be clear that there is a tradeoff economically that bears an extra cost.
The JG is optional as a policy option, but then the one choosing it has departed from the MMT claim that full employment along with price stability is achievable through application of MMT. Without an alterative to the buffer stock of employed, one is choosing a buffer stock of unemployed and all the inefficiency, hence waste, that comes along. This should be clearly accepted unless the MMT claim that the JG along with the rest of MMT is capable of resulting in full employment with price stability can be disproved, or a substitute for the JG can be found.
Where MMT economists speak for themselves as citizens in policy choices is in how fiscal policy is to be applied. For example, some MMT economists, e.g, Warren Mosler, generally favor increasing the deficit by lowering taxes, whereas others, notably Bill Mitchell, favor increasing government expenditures. Those are policy choices generally independent of MMT as a macro theory specifying the size of the government balance needed relative to the non-government balance iaw the sectoral balance approach.
How functional finance is applied may be optional in many cases, since efficiency and effectives are not affected by the choice, so that no economic decision criteria are available. However, it an economic argument can be made the policy choice is not completely optional unless one is willing to settle for a less than optimal economic choice for political reasons.
I am not sure this is totally correct with the JG, which is part and parcel of MMT as a macro theory as I understand what the the developers (Moser, Wray, and Mitchell) have said. I would put it this way instead.
All policy options are optional politically, but economics may indicate the relative degree of optimality. It is always possible to choose a less optimal option for political reasons, but one should be clear that there is a tradeoff economically that bears an extra cost.
The JG is optional as a policy option, but then the one choosing it has departed from the MMT claim that full employment along with price stability is achievable through application of MMT. Without an alterative to the buffer stock of employed, one is choosing a buffer stock of unemployed and all the inefficiency, hence waste, that comes along. This should be clearly accepted unless the MMT claim that the JG along with the rest of MMT is capable of resulting in full employment with price stability can be disproved, or a substitute for the JG can be found.
Where MMT economists speak for themselves as citizens in policy choices is in how fiscal policy is to be applied. For example, some MMT economists, e.g, Warren Mosler, generally favor increasing the deficit by lowering taxes, whereas others, notably Bill Mitchell, favor increasing government expenditures. Those are policy choices generally independent of MMT as a macro theory specifying the size of the government balance needed relative to the non-government balance iaw the sectoral balance approach.
How functional finance is applied may be optional in many cases, since efficiency and effectives are not affected by the choice, so that no economic decision criteria are available. However, it an economic argument can be made the policy choice is not completely optional unless one is willing to settle for a less than optimal economic choice for political reasons.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Noah Smith — "I shall now debunk the "Great Vacation" in one sentence."
Chad Stone explains the "Great Vacation" hypothesis:
The “Great Vacation” narrative holds that unemployment insurance (UI) benefits...have dissuaded millions of unemployed workers from taking a job. If...jobless workers would get off their duff (or if we would give them a good swift kick there), unemployment would plummet.
Some "neoclassical" economists (e.g. Casey Mulligan) have adopted the "Great Vacation" as their favored explanation for the recession we are in. The story has also made its way into the political discourse, where it is now a regular Republican talking point.
I shall now debunk the "Great Vacation" in a single sentence:
If the labor demand curve slopes down, then a fall in labor supply should be accompanied by an increase in wages; since wages fell or stagnated in the Great Recession and have grown only slowly ever since, unemployment is not being caused by a decrease in labor supply.
OK, OK, I used a semicolon. Sue me.Read it at Noahpinion
I shall now debunk the "Great Vacation" in one sentence.
by Noah Smith
(h/t Mark Thoma)
(h/t Mark Thoma)
Neoliberals hoisted on their own models.
Friday, October 7, 2011
Major budget items seeing sharp decline in spending
Major spending items getting crushed and total year-over-year spending now negative. This means fiscal drag is rising. It got started back in May. Charts below.
Medicare and Social Security are increasing year-over-year, but not enough to offset all spending items that are falling. Witness total spending.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Treasury bond sales: Welfare for the rich!
It's been well discussed here as well as in many other MMT blogs on the web, that the government doesn't need to sell bonds. It spends simply by crediting bank accounts and the sale of bonds isn't necessary for the government to have the funds to pay for goods and services.
On the contrary, bond sales have historically functioned merely as a tool used to manipulate the level of reserves in the banking system in order to set interest rates. But now that the Fed pays interest on reserves, the sale of bonds is even more unecessary. So why do we keep on doing it? I have no idea.
Who buys bonds?
Mostly affluent people. I don't know too many poor people or even middle class people who are wondering what Treasury securities they are going to buy with their extra savings. Only rich people have that worry. Warren Buffet owns over $40 billion in Treasury securities by his own admission. So our government is basically paying interest to rich people like Warren Buffet for no reason at all. It's welfare for the rich and the numbers are huge. Take a look...
Here's what the government pays out in interest and what it pays out on some other, important spending items.
Fiscal Year-to-Date
Interest payments $194 bln
Education $206 bln
Unemployment Ins $106 bln
Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) $17bln
Food Stamps $4.6 bln
So the government spends 40 times more money paying interest to rich people than it does for food stamps.
It spends twice as much paying welfare to rich people as it does to help the unemployed.
It gives more than 10 times more to rich people than it does to needy families.
It gives about as much to rich people as it spends, in total, on education.
Pardon me, but these are disgraceful statistics. It's one thing to say that we need to spend a lot on national security, because without that, even food becomes moot. (You can't eat if you're blown up.)
However, to spend this kind of money subsidizing the rich when so many people--kids, families, etc--are going hungry or simply desiring an education or needing a helping hand during an economic depression, that is totally immoral, I'm sorry. Welcome to our government, our leadership and our economic reality.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)