Guest column: Conventional wisdom is just plain wrong on Social Security - by Terry Minow, Jon Ellingson, Elizabeth Marum, Barbara Archer, Bill Bronson

Found here. Our comments in bold.

How does one know when a Leftist is lying? When words are coming out of their word processors. There isn't a single accurate statement in this entire presentation. Yet these authors present these "facts" without explanation, documentation, or analysis. They are nothing more than a series of assertions.

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When "Socialism" destroyed our democracy... Faceborg meme

 Posted by a FB friend:

It seems to us that the vulgar summary dismissal contained in this meme is inappropriate, since it is certainly true that these programs are bankrupting us. 

First, let's define socialism. The classic definition of socialism is the state ownership of  the means of production. There is a three-faced rebuttal offered by the political Left

1. they will deny we have any aspect of socialism because of the classic definition - the government doesn't own the means of production. 
2. they will extoll the virtues of socialism by claiming that socialism is already at work, naming Social Security, the GI Bill, and fire and police departments as expressions of Socialism.
3. while asserting socialism is at work in society, they blame all the economic woes on capitalism. 

We would assert that aspects of socialism are indeed at work in our society, and are in fact the reason we have huge deficits and staggeringly huge economic wealth transfers that have solved nothing. 

Further, government no longer needs to own the means of production to push the socialistic agenda, for controlling the means of production is a defacto ownership. And, there are certain corporations who are happily doing the government's bidding: suppressing speech, censoring debate, and punishing those who don't hold to The Narrative. Thus, government doesn't need to own what it controls.

This goes well beyond the legislative control of the processes of factories and businesses, it includes taxing productivity. Not only does government lay claim to a percentage of a business's income, it does this with each worker as well. This carries an implicit assumption that government has a right to that money. So both a business and a worker's means of production is being taken from them, which as a matter of logic means their money does not belong to them. Therefore, if the result of someone's labor production does not belong to him, the government owns it and simply decides how much it wants to take.

Government has no money of its own, so it must engage in taxation to fund its operations. Those operations which allocate taxed money to beneficiaries (the poor, the retired, the sick) are redistributions, i.e. money taken from one person and given to another. And redistribution is at the heart of socialism.

Letter to the editor: Feds need to protect us from junk insurance plans Billy McWilliams

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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This fellow is the owner of a sex shop in Bozeman, Erotique, and former chair of the Gallatin County Democratic Party. And, he gave out free vibrators to persuade women to vote. 

This is the man who is going to lecture us on doing the right thing. Apparently he is so proud of his writing that he submitted his letter to the Billings Gazette and the Missoulian as well.

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Though our ongoing pandemic recovery is progressing with nearly 50% of Montanans fully vaccinated, the last 16 months have exposed gaps in our health care system. ("Our" recovery. "Our" health care system. Mr. McWilliams, a far left activist, chooses his words purposefully. "Our" is never "you and me," it is always government. 

As a collectivist, Mr. McWilliams can only think in terms of groups as opposed to individuals. This means that every problem is a group problem which requires "our" [government] action to solve. 

The reader will see how this plays out.)

At the forefront are issues in our ("Our.") 

health insurance industry, especially when it came to the expansion of short-term, limited-duration insurance plans (STLDIs), also known as “junk plans.” (Are STLDIs really at the "forefront?" It is certainly an issue being trumpeted by a few far-left websites and blogs. And Mr. McWilliams is clearly trying to make an issue of them, as we have just documented. But this problem is hardly at the forefront.

A STLDI is a temporary health insurance contract, designed to provide coverage for people who are in transition between health plans, or have lost their plan due to an employment change, or want to have coverage while waiting for the next ACA enrollment date.

Some people have been buying them because the duration of the insurance has been expanded to up to 364 days, plus the option to renew two times. Thus a person can buy a STLDI that will last for up to three years.

This was made possible by the elimination of the "shared responsibility payment" [the ACA penalty for not buying approved coverage] to zero. That means a person is no longer penalized by purchasing a plan that doesn't conform to the ACA coverage requirements, or by going uninsured.

This opened up alternative ways of obtaining coverage outside the grasp of regulators. The Left calls these "junk plans," not because they are worthless, but rather because they don't comply with ACA requirements. The authoritarian Left doesn't like it when they can't control peoples' choices or the contents of contracts like insurance plans.)

Before the pandemic, the Trump administration took action that allowed STDLI junk plans to proliferate. They (The Trump administration would be an "it," not a "they.")

not only expanded the time plans could be utilized, from less than a year to three years, but encouraged the public to adopt them as an “affordable” coverage option. During the pandemic, many that lost their employer-sponsored insurance turned to these barebones plans that don’t cover preexisting conditions, covered services under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or preventive services. (Ok, follow the logic. A "junk plan" doesn't cover pre-existing conditions, which means these plans are medically underwritten. Since it is unlikely a STDLI insurance company would issue a policy to a person with a serious medical condition, this means that if you qualify for a plan you don't have a pre-existing condition, or you have a condition that the STDLI insurance company would accept, or possibly exclude. So they will make you a conditional offer, excluding a particular condition. You then make your choice to buy the plan knowing this. 

This means the "problem" of not covering pre-existing conditions doesn't exist.

Further, the real problem Mr. McWilliams has is with peoples' choices. He doesn't like the fact that people are doing "unapproved" things. He doesn't think people should be able to buy the health insurance of their own choice.)

The affordability of these junk insurance plans on the front end is what makes them appealing for Americans across the country. (Of course. People will often make choices based on price vs. coverage. Mr. McWilliams want to take away this choice and force people to spend more money on coverage they don't want.)

But for the 150,000+ Montanans that suffer from a pre-existing condition, these plans can be of much lower quality than they appear and result in higher out-of-pocket costs. (Again, a person with a pre-existing condition likely would not be able to buy one of these plans. Plus we can be sure that 150,000+ Montanans are not in this position at all, where they are making this choice. Certainly no one is forcing them to buy a STDLI plan.)

Fortunately, the Biden administration has pushed for policies that help make coverage more affordable, including through the American Rescue Plan, (Interesting. After acknowledging that ACA insurance is too expensive, and decrying those who try to get around it, Mr. McWilliams finally admits that there is something else in the equation.)

which boosted subsidies for marketplace plans, lowered the cap on monthly payments, and expanded free and low-cost options to the uninsured. (So, if the ACA plans are now price-competitive with "junk" plans, where is the money coming from to make this so? What is funding the American Rescue Plan?)

I applaud Sen. Jon Tester for his role in opposing these plans, including through his co-sponsorship of the No Junk Plans Act, which would overturn the Trump-era rule. The federal government needs to work overtime to protect Montanans and Americans from these harmful plans. (Then what is the purpose of Mr. McWilliams' letter? The Democrats have majorities in both Houses plus they have the presidency. If the No Junk Plans Act is on the table, they just need to pass it. 

So, Mr. McWilliams presumes that people who buy these plans are stupid. Certainly they should not have this choice. They should be forced to buy coverage he approves of. 

He believes government should implement laws that prevent people from making unapproved decisions. He thinks there needs to be a law that forces people to buy what the government considers good insurance coverage.

And for some reason there are 150,000 Montanans who are going to buy a junk insurance plan, but actually they couldn't because they wouldn't qualify for it.)

How to fix Obamacare - The Economist

Found here. Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.
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It is very nearly astonishing that the Left-leaning Economist would even admit there is anything wrong with the ACA. Generally speaking, the Left has steadfastly refused to even consider that their heroic legislation had even the slightest flaw, preferring instead to vilify detractors as being in favor of sick people.

So let's see if the Economist is able to accurately represent both the law and its flaws.
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America’s health-care system remains dysfunctional, but it could be made better (The subtitle contains a subtle leftist meme, "America's health-care system," which suggests that it is an entity as opposed to an industry.)


It is now nearly a year since the roll-out of Obamacare. The launch was a shambles, and Obamacare is a totem for every American who hates big government. Republicans will deride it, yet again, in the mid-term elections. (The implication is that Republicans are out of bounds for being anti-ACA, and that they should shut up about it.)

Obamacare is indeed costly and overcomplicated. (And ineffective and ill-conceived and punitive and...) 

Yet it is not to blame for America’s health mess, (Let's see what the author says is to blame.)

and it could just contain the beginnings of a partial solution to it. But that will only happen if politicians treat health care like a patient: first, diagnose the disease, then examine whether Barack Obama’s treatment helped, and then ask what will make the patient better. (This is a job for politicians? Really? The same politicians who created the mess?)

A quick check-up

Begin with the disease. At the core of America’s problems with health care is a great delusion: it likes to think it has a vibrant private marketplace. (America thinks this? America is an entity with singular thoughts? In actual fact, very few, if any, think we have a "vibrant private marketplace." Almost everyone acknowledges that the healthcare system is broken. As we will see, the author likes to give unsupported assertions as if they were fact.) 

In fact the country has long had a subsidy-laden system that is the most expensive and complicated in the world, (This is what conservative have been complaining about for decades!) 

with much of the government cash going to the rich, (Unsupported assertion. Government healthcare cash went to the rich? What does this even mean?) 

millions of people left out and little individual responsibility. ( A free market, something we haven't had in decades, relies on individual responsibility. It is government intervention that has discouraged this and created our present problems. Healthcare has been heavily legislated and regulated, where government spent $.47 out of every healthcare dollar. Government forces insurance policy language and coverage, strictly limits choice, and dictates pricing and access. All of this is contrary to the free market.) 

America devotes 17% of GDP to health care, (Again note the implication that America is a singular entity, which "devotes" spending to this or that. The phrasing almost sounds like there's a deliberate allocation of America's collective money by some governing body.) 

compared with 9% in Britain, yet nearly 50m Americans were uninsured in 2012 and life expectancy is slightly below average for a rich country. And the taxpayer foots much of the bill: government health spending per head in 2012, before Obamacare’s main provisions took effect, was 50% higher than in Britain, which has a nationalised health system. Some spending, such as the huge Medicare programme for the elderly and Medicaid for the hard-up, is obvious. But much is opaque. (The author is swerving into the truth here. Much of the healthcare system operated totally outside the marketplace.)

Employer-sponsored coverage is tax exempt, costing the government at least $200 billion a year. (This is nonsense. Declining to tax something simply means those who were going to be taxed get to keep their money. This does not "cost" the government, as if government should tax something simply because it isn't. 

In addition, taxation does not happen in a vacuum. Taxes are an additional cost, which means money that could be spent elsewhere by those who actually possess it, gets turned over to the government instead. These economic effects filter all throughout the economy. And we know that taxation discourages the activity being taxed. That's the reason for tobacco taxes, isn't it? So if government taxed employer-provided health insurance benefits, fewer people would be insured, correct?)  

Co-op considers shelving products over birth-control coverage issue - By LAURA LUNDQUIST

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

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(It's truly odd how the Left picks and chooses its criteria for that which it supports or rejects. The very same reasons they do one thing do not apply to another if the other is something they despise. 

Example: The Left's defense of ACA is, it's "the law of the land." Roe V. Wade is the "law of the land." Gay marriage is "settled law." Yet the Bozeman Food Co-op is preparing to reject products that are made by companies who don't provide birth control to their employees, even though the matter is settled law. 

Apparently the Left is all-in on believing their own rhetoric. They actually think that a business that declines to pay for something for you is violating your rights, a patently nonsensical assertion that has the rest of us laughing at their absurdity. It is one of those strategies from their well-worn Playbook Of Slogans: Redefine, lather, then repeat. 

Here, the co-op wants to jump in on the culture wars, which has claimed many a participant. No business wins when they take sides and risk alienating 50% of their customer base. 

But the worst part is that it would never occur to the co-op to encourage their members to pay for those workers who lack contraceptive coverage themselves. No, it never works that way. The Left is perpetually interested in making sure other people pay their "fair share," but never include themselves. Other people must be forced to extend compassion, but they never get out their own checkbooks. They insist on choice, but deny it to those with whom they disagree.

On the other hand, the free market speaks. They are looking at a free market decision to end a voluntary, private, arrangement and direct their purchasing dollars elsewhere. I fully support this capitalistic activity. I shall also engage in similar free association and make sure my purchasing dollars never end up in their cash registers.

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The Bozeman Food Co-op is weighing a proposal to eliminate a line of food products because the manufacturer refused to provide its workers with birth-control coverage.

At a July Food Co-op board meeting, board members heard from several member-owners who questioned whether the Co-op should continue to stock products distributed by Eden Foods, a Michigan-based organic-food company.

Michael Potter, the sole owner of Eden Foods, is a devout Catholic who is opposed to providing his employees with health care insurance that covers birth control.

Some Food Co-op member-owners said Eden Foods was infringing on its employees’ human rights.

The Co-op defines its values as “self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity, and solidarity,” and some memberowners argued that supporting Eden Foods went against those values because it made the Co-op complicit in denying coverage for birth control to those who want it.

The Co-op board decided to put the issue out to its 15,000 member-owners for a two week comment period that ended Wednesday night.

Co-op spokeswoman Alison Grey Germain said she had yet to process the comments, but the issue had received a lot of feedback, both for and against.

“The Co-op does not have an opinion on this issue,” Grey Germain said. “In general, the Co-op always welcomes input from our member-owners on any issues or concerns they may have. The comment period is just that; a comment period.”

Grey Germain said it could take one to two months before the board considers any action.

At least one customer has jumped to the conclusion that the Coop’s consideration of the issue amounts to religious discrimination.

General manager Kelly Wiseman said the Bozeman Food Co-op was a cooperative, not a nonprofit organization, so it listens to its cooperative members.

“This kind of control over the product is 100 percent the decision of the members. This is one of the things that make a Co-op fun and interesting,” Wiseman said.

Valerie O’Connell, who said she represents the Glastonbury Landowners, which is aligned with the Church Universal Triumphant near Emigrant, said she’d encourage her group to boycott the Co-op if they eliminate Eden Foods. She said she had also contacted the Montana Family Foundation.

The Montana Family Foundation is a nonprofit religious organization that has lobbied against abortion and gay rights and for taxpayer funding of charter schools.

“We tolerate all religions. So for us to hear about this reverse discrimination after the Hobby Lobby decision, we’re just appalled,” O’Connell said. “They’re serving the public and they shouldn’t take sides. They’re taking a stance against religion.”

When the Affordable Health Care Act mandated coverage for birth control, Eden Foods joined about 70 other companies that insisted they should be able to opt out of contraceptive coverage for religious reasons. In March 2013, Eden Foods sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In October, an appeals court ruled that a corporation, unlike a person, could not exercise religion.

But in June, the Supreme Court — following the precedent set by the Citizens United ruling that corporations are people — ruled in a split decision that small companies could object to birth control on religious grounds.

The Supreme Court ordered lower courts to apply the ruling to previous cases, including that of Eden Foods.

The Supreme Court ruling was narrow, but in her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued that it opened the door for business owners with wideranging religious beliefs to deny employees coverage for almost anything on religious grounds.

The Full Employment Route to Poverty Reduction - by Dean Baker

This post originally appeared at TalkPoverty.org. Posted here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.
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Efforts to alleviate poverty are often seen as being separate from the debate on overall economic policy, with the former involving a distinct set of issues that only marginally overlap with the latter. This is unfortunate, since the health of the economy and specifically the level of unemployment, has an enormous impact on the prospects of the poor. In fact, there are few policies that are likely to have as much effect on improving the plight of the poor or near poor as a genuine commitment to full employment economic policies. (Commitment by whom? You will discover the governo-centric perspective is all that will be considered by the writer. Like most Leftists, the writer believes solutions to society's problems all come from government programs.)

There are three separate channels through which a reduction in the unemployment rate is likely to benefit low-income people. The first is simply by increasing their probability of finding jobs. Unemployment is not evenly distributed throughout the workforce; the less-educated and disadvantaged see the sharpest rises in unemployment when the economy goes into a downturn. (Because they are the least qualified and least productive. More highly trained and experienced workers, though they lose their jobs, are more likely to be able to find a replacement job, even at a lower wage, whereas the lowest skilled workers have nowhere to go.)

In the year prior to the beginning of the recession, the unemployment rate for workers without a high school degree averaged just over 7.0 percent. Its average for 2010 was 14.8 percent, an increase of 7.8 percentage points.

In the year prior to the beginning of the recession, the unemployment rate for workers without a high school degree averaged just over 7.0 percent. Its average for 2010 was 14.8 percent, an increase of 7.8 percentage points. For workers with high school degrees the unemployment rate went from 4.3 percent to 10.3 percent, a rise of 6.0 percentage points. By contrast, the unemployment rate for college grads rose by just 2.7 percentage points, from 2.0 percent to 4.7 percent. While everyone got hit by the downturn, clearly those with less education saw the greatest increase in their risk of being unemployed.

There is a similar story about race. The unemployment rate for whites rose from 4.1 percent in the years before the downturn to 8.7 percent in 2010, a rise of 4.6 percentage points. The unemployment rate for African-Americans rose from 8.2 percent to 16.0 percent in 2010, a rise of 7.8 percentage points. The unemployment rate for Hispanics went from 5.6 percent before the downturn to 12.5 percent, an increase of 6.9 percentage points. (I wonder if the writer is able to make the connection that President Obama has presided over this unfortunate situation?)

There are various explanations as to why less educated and African American and Hispanic workers see the sharpest rise in unemployment during downturns, but there is little debate about this outcome. Also, there is no evidence of any change in this pattern as the economy has recovered, despite the claims of some analysts.

For the first five months of 2014 the unemployment rate for workers without high school degrees averaged 9.5 percent, a drop of 5.3 percentage points from 2010 levels. The unemployment rate for college grads averaged 3.3 percent, a decline of 1.4 percentage points from recession peaks. This means the least educated workers have actually made more progress in getting back to pre-recession unemployment rates than the most educated workers. If the unemployment rate were to return to pre-recession levels for the population as a whole, it would almost certainly fall back to pre-recession levels for the less educated and minorities as well. (Here we have a conclusion based on the idea that there is a recovery, and that this recovery has manifested in returning to the former levels and kinds of employment. I suppose that because of the unabashed cheerleading in the media about the wonderful results of Obama's economic policies, the writer actually believes there is a recovery. However, the great majority of jobs added are service jobs, which means that low-skill workers aren't going to get those jobs. As stated above, higher skill workers who lost their jobs have taken them.)

In addition to the unemployment channel, workers at the bottom of the income ladder are also likely to benefit from low unemployment as a result of having the opportunity to work more hours. In my book with Jared Bernstein, Getting Back to Full Employment (free download available), we show that the late 1990s boom was associated with an increase of 17 percent in the total number of hours worked for households in the bottom fifth of the income distribution. By contrast, the increase in hours worked for households in the top two income quintiles was just 1.0 percent. There are many low-income people who would like to be able to put in more hours on the job. The low unemployment of the late 1990s, which bottomed out at 4.0 percent as a year-round average in 2000, provided this opportunity.

If full employment of the sort that we saw at the end of the 1990s could be sustained for a long period of time, it would almost certainly lead to a substantial reduction in poverty rates and a large improvement in living standards for low-income people. (Duh. So people being able to work lowers poverty? Who da thunk?)

Finally, low unemployment provides workers at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution with the bargaining power they need to get a share of the economy’s growth. Hourly wages have been largely stagnant for these workers for most of the last three decades. (All the way up through the upper middle class, in fact. The writer seems incurious why that might be.) However, in the years from 1996-2000, workers at the middle and bottom saw substantial wage gains. According to our analysis, a sustained 1.0 percentage point drop in the unemployment rate translates to a 9.8 percent increase in the wages of a worker at the 20th percentile of the wage distribution. It would lead to a wage gain for a worker in the middle of the wage distribution of 4.2 percent. It has little effect on the wages of workers at the top of the income distribution. (Does the writer have any idea why that period was good for employment?)

For these reasons, a full employment policy is an effective way to increase the opportunities and income of people at the bottom. If full employment of the sort that we saw at the end of the 1990s could be sustained for a long period of time, it would almost certainly lead to a substantial reduction in poverty rates and a large improvement in living standards for low-income people.

When the unemployment rate was falling to thirty-year lows in the late 1990s the press had accounts of suburban hotels and restaurants chartering busses to pick workers up in the inner cities and drive them to their jobs in the suburbs. There were stories of employers providing day care facilities and even making arrangements to accommodate elder care for workers caring for aging parents. Some firms actively sought out workers with disabilities. In a tight labor market, firms will make extraordinary efforts to recruit employees whom at other times they would likely not hire.

Full employment is also a desirable policy because it goes directly against the “makers versus takers” line that many conservatives push. (This passing remark, taking a shot at conservatives, constructs a straw man left dangling without context.) Full employment is about giving people at the bottom the opportunity to work. In this same context, not pursuing full employment is effectively a policy of not offering people an opportunity to work. (So far the buzz phrase "full employment" has been tossed about several times, but never has the writer broached the subject of how this functions in the economy. The next sentence, however, contains an astounding explanation of how this will happen.)

This is a crucial point. We can talk about a policy to promote full employment — by investing in infrastructure, spending on retrofitting buildings or solar paneling to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or subsidizing pre-K education; (Were you able to catch your breath after that? I'm still reeling a bit. Notice that everything in this list is make-work government programs and leftist cause de jours. Nothing here about businesses needing workers because demand has increased [a real indicator of economic recovery]. Nothing about there being a need to hire because businesses are expanding. No mention of legislative environment, tax policy, regulatory changes, or anything that might indicate the writer's understanding about why businesses hire. No, instead the writer wants government programs.) but accepting a higher level of unemployment is also a policy decision. We know that we can get more growth and lower rates of unemployment with more government spending. There is enough research on this topic that it should no longer be a debatable point. (No, we do NOT know this. This is total nonsense. Government money first belonged to the taxpayer. Government must take it from someone before it can spend it. This is simply a reallocation of existing money, where government spends it where it wants rather than the private person choosing his own spending habits. It is the profligate spending of government that has kept a damper on any sort of recovery. 

On the contrary, it is government spending that has kept a large number of people destitute and unemployed. We are entering our 6th year of anemic economic growth. Most downturns last 18-24 months, unless government steps in an meddles with its solutions. Then they last years.

Back in the late 90's government was starting to get its deficit spending under control. There was substantial welfare reform. As the writer noted above, unemployment was lower. There were no infrastructure initiatives or government make-work programs to speak of. The economy itself was responding to the very real idea that government was making an effort to get out of the way.
Business values stability, the ability to anticipate whether or not the legal, legislative, and economic policy environment is going to be the same tomorrow as it was yesterday. Business wants to be able to plan and make projections. It doesn't want to be surprised by obamacare-like programs that turn the economic world upside down. Nothing in the current environment inspires the confidence of business. Quite the contrary, business is very careful about risking anything. The situation, the "recovery," simply doesn't warrant taking the risk.)

We can also get lower rates of unemployment by reducing the size of the trade deficit. If we can increase our exports and replace imports with domestically produced goods and services, it will increase output and lead to more jobs. If we were to eliminate the trade deficit altogether and have balanced trade, it would create almost 6 million jobs. The trade deficit is also the result of policy decisions, most importantly ones pertaining to the value of the dollar. A dollar that costs less in foreign currencies makes our goods cheaper for the rest of the world to purchase, and makes imports more expensive. We could make deals with foreign countries to raise the value of their currency against the dollar as President Reagan did with the Plaza Accord in 1985, but our trade policy has taken a different direction. (Sigh. WHY is there a trade deficit? If it costs more to make a product domestically than to buy it from China, isn't in natural for purchasing to shift to China? If because of heavy regulation, complex and stifling taxation, and a whole assortment of other economic factors, businesses shift their purchasing to get the most bang for the buck, why would they make their products here?)

There may be reasons why people want smaller budget deficits, but pushing for deficit reduction in the current economic environment is ultimately a policy of denying people jobs. (No, no, no, no. First, as far as the Left is concerned, there is NEVER good time to reduce deficits. Second, reducing the deficit is not the same as lowering the national debt. Third, government doesn't create jobs. As we noted above, government money is sourced from the private sector. There is no net gain when government employs people. 

Fourth, what is the "current economic environment?" Is this a tacit admission that all is not as rosy as we thought? And why is the writer afraid of government getting its economic house in order? Will that be an admission that the economy does much better without the government coming in to "rescue" us?  In the same vein, supporting a high dollar, and therefore a large trade deficit, is also a policy of denying people jobs. And, since higher unemployment reduces the bargaining power of workers and leads to lower wages, a high unemployment policy is a policy that provides employers with low-cost labor, exacerbating economic inequality. (The writer doesn't seem to make the connection that if no one is buying, there is no need to make things, and no need to hire people. therefore, an unemployed worker has no bargaining power. If the labor pool is large for the number of potential jobs, the worker either chooses to work at the wage offered, or remains unemployed. The worker should have no power when the economy is faltering.)

In short, a full employment policy is a tremendously effective way to increase the income and opportunities available to the poor and near poor. But the high unemployment policy we currently have in place is one that redistributes income upward and denies people the jobs they need to escape poverty.


Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He previously worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor at Bucknell University. His blog, Beat the Press, features commentary on economic reporting. (Whew. Apparently this man is educated. Unfortunately, he seems more maleducated, or perhaps he is unable to separate his leftist politics from his economic understandings. In any event, it just goes to show you that a long list of credentials is no indicator of trustworthiness or competence.)