A while back, NPR had a story about Stephen Hess’s book, The Professor And The President, which detailed how Daniel Patrick Moynihan became one of Richard M. Nixon’s most influential domestic policy advisers.
I’m thinking that it Moynihan’s heavy drinking might have had something to do with is.
If I found myself working as Nixon as a domestic policy adviser, I’d be polishing off a 5th of Bourbon a day.
I am paraphrasing the late Molly Ivins here, but the fact that the United States antediluvian approach to child care is driving women out of the workplace, and so making us less competitive than other members of the developed world, should be an subject of national shame:
Since Kerry Devine, 32, and her friends began having children, she has noticed a stark difference between her female friends in Auburn, Wash., where she lives, and those in England and Cyprus, where she grew up. In the United States, they almost all stopped working outside the home, at least until their children were in school. Yet, she says, she can’t think of a friend in Europe who left work after her children were born.
Ms. Devine quit her job after she had her first child, a girl, four years ago, because she thought 12 weeks of maternity leave was too short. “I just didn’t want to leave her in day care or pay for the expenses of it,” she said. When she gave birth to twin boys this year, a return to work — she had been a property manager for apartment buildings — looked even less plausible.Since Kerry Devine, 32, and her friends began having children, she has noticed a stark difference between her female friends in Auburn, Wash., where she lives, and those in England and Cyprus, where she grew up. In the United States, they almost all stopped working outside the home, at least until their children were in school. Yet, she says, she can’t think of a friend in Europe who left work after her children were born.
Ms. Devine quit her job after she had her first child, a girl, four years ago, because she thought 12 weeks of maternity leave was too short. “I just didn’t want to leave her in day care or pay for the expenses of it,” she said. When she gave birth to twin boys this year, a return to work — she had been a property manager for apartment buildings — looked even less plausible.
Her story would have played out differently, she said, if she had been living in her native England. Like many European countries, Britain offers a year of maternity leave, much of it paid, and protections for part-time workers, among other policies aimed at keeping women employed.
One would think that the supporting family values would actually involve supporting people who actually have a family, but the “family values” crowd seems to think that all they need to do is to tell women what to do with their ovaries, and hate te ghey, and it is Mission Accomplished.
F%$# that
Ian Welsh makes a number of cogent suggestions, including eliminating forfeiture laws, drug criminalization, RICO laws, etc., but there is one suggestion that stands out and shines like the sun:
If you really want to make the system work, make all private lawyers for criminal charges illegal, and use only public defenders, chosen by lot. I guarantee that the pay and competence of public defenders would soar and their case load would drop as soon as rich people realized that they could be the one being defended by an overworked and underpaid lawyer.
This is f%$#ing brilliant.
Read the rest.
After thinking about it, and analyzing my feelings on this matter, I support the secession referendum.
Basically, I think that the current political situation in the UK, where the Neoliberal consensus and the banksters in the City of London rule will continue to control the political discussion in England, and hence in the UK as a whole.
What this means is that, when in power, the Tories will continue to engage their efforts to do things like gradually privatize the social contract in Britain, and when the “new” (Blairite) Labour is will simply accept the new status quo, and so the policies will ratchet to a Dickensian society, particularly with the cross-party support of things like the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which largely makes privatization irreversible.
The path England has taken is pretty clearly toward continued deindustrialization and further finanacialization, at least until the Vampire Squid finishes sucking what remains out their society, and moves on.
The Tories are pushing inexorably in that direction, and Labor never moves the needle back, they just slow the deterioration for a few years.
In the process, it is clear that the National Health Service (NHS) will move to something very much like the American model for healthcare.
I would consider inflicting our system of healthcare on anyone else to be tantamount to a crime against humanity, and crimes against humanity are a justification for secession.
Make no mistake: this is why conservatives are so enamored of block grants. It’s not because they truly believe that states are better able to manage programs for the poor than the federal government. That’s frankly laughable. The reason they like block grants is because they know perfectly well that they’ll erode over time. That’s how you eventually drown the federal government in a bathtub.
He makes the observation that the TANF (what used to be called Welfare) block grants have had the effect of creating massive cuts in the program, and then (IMNSHO accurate) generalizes to block grants generally: Just level fund them, and the program shrinks to meaninglessness.
BTW, f%$# Bill Clinton for shredding the social safety net for unneeded political benefit. (He would have beaten Bob “Bob Dole” Dole in any case)
As opposed to buying into the Republican meme that has us throwing momma from the train, the distinguished gentleman from Ohio is suggesting that Democrats should be running on increases in the social safety net:
Word has it that Democrats are set to take a shellacking in the 2014 elections, in part because midterm electorates tend to be older and whiter. So what if Dems campaigned on expanding Social Security, rather than allowing themselves to get drawn into another debate over how much to cut the program?
There’s a hook for this looming: The coming battle over disability insurance, which is a part of Social Security.
Dem Senator Sherrod Brown, a member of the Finance Committee, tells me that GOP Senators have requested hearings into Social Security Disability Insurance this summer. Dems expect Republicans to attack the program as wasteful and fraudulent, in part because conservative media have already done so, and in part because at least one GOP proposal in recent days took aim at the program.
Brown says Dems should seize this occasion to get behind a proposal that would lift or change the payroll tax cap, meaning higher earners would pay more, while adopting a new measure for inflation that would increase benefits for all seniors. Instead of getting drawn into debates about “Chained CPI” and other entitlement cuts, Brown says, Dems should make the case that stagnating wages and declining pensions and savings demand an expansion of social insurance.
Good politics, and good politics.
Needless to say, the “Very Serious People,” in the Democratic Party will hate this idea, because, they are afraid that it might piss off the rich donors who pay their salaries.
It’s the Iron Law of Institutions, “The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself.” (Emphasis original)
The Maryland legislative session has ended and they passed bills hiking the minimum wate to $10.10 and decriminalizing marijuana:
By the time confetti fell in Annapolis on Monday night, state lawmakers had loosened marijuana laws, made Maryland the second state in the country to raise its minimum wage to $10.10 an hour and whittled their way through more than 2,600 bills considered during the 434th legislative session.
The two major votes on marijuana decriminalization and increasing the minimum wage closed out the annual 90-day frenzy of lawmaking. Measures to create stricter penalties for drivers who cause fatal accidents while texting and to revamp Maryland’s stalled medical marijuana program also received final passage.
Martin O’Malley will sign both bills into law, though he did issue a veto threat over a recreational marijuana legalization proposal.
As a Free Stater, I am happy.
In terms of both the Democratic 2016 primaries, and the Veepstakes to follow, the minimum wage bill is probably a bigger deal.
In the end, it does not matter.
Senator Mark Begich has decided to ignore the inside the beltway consensus, and campaign on expanding Social Security:
Senator Mark Begich of Alaska is embroiled in one of the toughest reelection fights in the country. His solution, in part: To campaign on a proposal that’s far outside the mainstream of what appears to constitute respectable Beltway discourse on entitlements.
That would be the idea of expanding Social Security benefits, rather than cutting them.
Senator Begich is one of a small but growing group of Democratic lawmakers who support the idea of lifting or changing the payroll tax cap, so higher earners pay more, while adopting a new measure for inflation that would increase benefits for all seniors. This is in contrast to the “Chained CPI” proposal that would use an index leading to a benefits cut, which Obama has championed. The idea behind expanding benefits is that large percentages of seniors’ income goes to costs that have risen faster than inflation, like medical care and housing.
Dems have been perhaps overly willing to get drawn on to GOP austerity turf by debating spending cuts. But Begich makes a startling suggestion: Talking about expanding Social Security benefits is good politics for Dems.
It’s also good policy.
Pete Peterson has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to sell the lie that real men cut grandma’s pension, and the bought and paid courtier class inside the Beltway function as his amplifier.
To quote Dwight David Eisenhower:
Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.
The mania in DC for cutting Social Security is just plain nuts, and the more Democrats who get that, the better.
The White House budget to be released early next month will propose $56 billion in new spending on domestic and defense priorities and drop a proposal that was included in last year’s budget as a way to attract Republican support — a plan that would have included less generous payouts of Social Security benefits.
The budget would aim to reduce the emphasis on austerity that has been the preoccupation of American politics for the past four years and also highlights top Democratic priorities in a year when Democrats hope to save their majority in the Senate.
A White House official said President Obama decided to release a budget that fully represents his “vision,” rather than to continue to pursue a fiscal agreement, because Republicans have refused to engage in good-faith negotiations over the nation’s top priorities. Obama is planning to pay for fresh spending by closing tax breaks that disproportionately benefit the wealthy.
Make no mistake though, Obama and His Evil Minions™ REALLY wanted to do this:
………One of the White House’s most poorly kept secrets is that many of Obama’s economic advisers support Chained CPI on the merits………
Because hurting the poors is a good thing, because ……… I can haz bipartisanship!
When the f%$# is the Democratic party going to nominate a Democrat for President?
Congressional Democrats are freaking out at Barack Obama’s repeated attempts to gut cut Social Security:
Democratic senators are pleading with President Obama to abandon his proposal to trim Social Security benefits before it becomes a liability for them in the midterm elections.
The president proposed a new formula for calculating benefits in his budget last year, in hopes that the olive branch to Republicans would persuade them to back tax increases in a broader fiscal deal.
But Democratic lawmakers say Obama should shelve the idea now that they are facing a difficult midterm election where they need to turn out the liberal base to preserve their Senate majority.
“I’m not sure why we should be making concessions when the Republicans show absolutely no willingness to do the same,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).
Democrats acknowledge it may be awkward for Obama to rescind his proposal, but say it would unwise of him to repeat the offer in the budget that is due out next month.
“I think it’s difficult for the president to pull it back after he already floated it but I would love to see it shelved until Republicans show they’re actually going to do something on their side of the ledger,” Murphy said.
Obama proposed nearly $1 trillion in spending cuts in his budget, including a switch to using the Chained Consumer Price Index (CPI), which liberal policy experts estimate could cost seniors thousands of dollars in benefits over their lifetimes.
Senator Bernie Sanders nails the consequences of such a policy in a nutshell:
“I certainly hope that the president has learned a lesson from this whole process,” Sanders said. “To be honest with you, I just can’t imagine what staff people gave him the disastrous advice to propose a chain CPI, which from both a public policy point of view and political point of view is totally absurd.”
First, it’s bad politics. Second, the “Chained” CPI does not accurately reflect the cost of living of Seniors, which is dominated by healthcare costs.
Senate Democrats should be more forceful about opposing this proposal, and if some of them were to say that they would support a filibuster of any such proposal, it would be a much needed warning to Obama.
Tom Tomorrow looks more prescient every year:
Today’s vote to allow debate to begin on continuing emergency unemployment compensation is not the same thing as either voting for the bill, nor is it a vote to shut off debate.
Instead, it is posturing by Republicans with a dash of blackmail down the road thrown in:
If you think Tuesday’s vote in the Senate to extend unemployment benefits means that Washington has finally come to its senses, think again. Although six Republican senators broke with their party and joined Democrats in supporting the notion of preserving benefits for about 1.3 million Americans who have been out of work for more than six months, this was just a procedural vote that paves the way for a full debate on the measure. And Republicans, in both the Senate and the House, have made clear that they won’t approve any actual legislation unless the White House agrees to cut spending in other areas, to cover the cost of the extension—about 6.4 billion dollars over ten years.
From a political perspective, it’s easy to see the appeal of this maneuver. Going into an election year, the last thing the Republicans want is to be depicted as heartless goons with no sympathy for the millions of Americans struggling to find work, the blameless victims of the Great Recession and its aftermath. (Of course, this is exactly how the Democrats would like to portray them.) At the same time, though, the average G.O.P. congressman or senator lives in mortal fear of upsetting right-wing groups, such as Heritage Action for America and the Club for Growth, which are leading the fight against extending jobless benefits. (On Monday, Heritage Action said it would include the Senate vote on its “legislative scorecard,” which ranks elected officials on their fealty to the conservative cause.)
Personally, I would call the Republican’s bluff, and cut things like abstinence only education and oil company subsidies, and maybe tax private jets, but I am not an elected official, nor do I work for one.
Thai vs. Australian per capita GDP
Government Debt
Social (health) spending
Look at the graphs on economic statistics for Thailand.
Why is anyone complaining about results like this?
Anti government forces Bangkok have vowed to rid Thailand of all vestiges of Thaksin — including Thaksinomics. So let’s pause to cast a medium-term eye over the country’s economic performance during the period (2001 to the present) that has been dominated by Thaksin-esque policies.
………
I’m sure there are plenty of other indicators and comparisons – good, not-so-good and bad – that could be used to plot Thailand’s economic performance since 2001 (comments on other indicators would be very welcome). But the overall point is that Thailand’s voters have some sound economic reasons to keep on electing Thaksin and his allies.
Strong economic growth, and increasing government spending on health, welfare and rural development, didn’t start with Thaksin, but he and his allies have been able to effectively place growing prosperity at the heart of their political success.
What the protesters are objecting to is not economic growth, but rather they are objecting to the fact that there are benefits accruing to the rural peasants.
So the hoi polloi are doing better.
There are new roads, new bridges, new rural clinics, and the position of the rural poor has improved.
It has improved a lot, and their lot relative to the urban elites has also improved.
So the protestors are upset that poor rural families are no longer forced to sell their daughters into prostitution in the big cities, and this is why they want to remove any vestige of Thaksin and Yingluck Shinawatra while insisting that there be no elections.
When I say that, “The Thai protesters are revolting,” I am using the last word as an adjective, not a verb.
It seems that Democrats are looking to stop running away from Obamacare, (a good idea, the Dems own it whether they like it or not) and instead want to push for a minimum wage increase as their signature issue for 2014:
Democratic Party leaders, bruised by months of attacks on the new health care program, have found an issue they believe can lift their fortunes both locally and nationally in 2014: an increase in the minimum wage.
The effort to take advantage of growing populism among voters in both parties is being coordinated by officials from the White House, labor unions and liberal advocacy groups.
In a series of strategy meetings and conference calls among them in recent weeks, they have focused on two levels: an effort to raise the federal minimum wage, which will be pushed by President Obama and congressional leaders, and a campaign to place state-level minimum wage proposals on the ballot in states with hotly contested congressional races.
With polls showing widespread support for an increase in the $7.25-per-hour federal minimum wage among both Republican and Democratic voters, top Democrats see not only a wedge issue that they hope will place Republican candidates in a difficult position, but also a tool with which to enlarge the electorate in a nonpresidential election, when turnout among minorities and youths typically drops off.
“It puts Republicans on the wrong side of an important value issue when it comes to fairness,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the president’s senior adviser. “You can make a very strong case that this will be a helpful issue for Democrats in 2014. But the goal here is to actually get it done. That’s why the president put it on the agenda.”
This is good politics, and good policy, though having your hired guns run to the press (I’m talking to you, Mr. Pfeiffer) crowing about how this is such good politics does not serve to reinforce their message.
The minimum wage fight is an opportunity to create a space for the discussion about political values on a terrain that favors Democrats, it’s not about allowing self important political consultants crow about their genius.
In this case, it is the heavily subsidized orthodox in Israel:
In mid-December, a report by the National Insurance Institute and the Central Bureau of Statistics reported that Israel’s poverty rate was shamefully high: 23.5 percent. It found that one-fifth of families — and one-fifth of retirees — in Israel are officially poor, as well as one-third of children.
Israel’s income gap is one of the highest in the world (following Chile, Mexico, Turkey and the United States). Israel, as O.E.C.D. reports have already indicated more than once, somehow manages to be a “start-up nation,” with high economic growth; yet, at the same time, it remains a backward nation with many extremely poor families.
The publication of the annual poverty report gave rise to two or three days of heated discussion. Aryeh Deri, the head of the Shas Party, called it a “poverty storm.” Shas relies on lower-income religious voters, and the report was an opportunity for a politician to demonstrate his outrage. Yet the storm quickly abated.
Israelis already know the numbers, and most have already formed opinions on this topic. Many middle-class Israelis are convinced that the poor themselves are at fault — and unless they do something about it, there’s not much that the state can do for them.
Two segments of Israel’s population stand out as the poorest of the poor: “ultra-Orthodox Jews” and “Muslim-Arabs.” Unemployment rates for ultra-Orthodox Jews (mostly ultra-Orthodox men) and Arabs (mostly Arab women) are very high. So are birth rates. The result: 59 percent of the ultra-Orthodox (also known as Haredim) are poor. Similarly, 58 percent of Arab Israelis are poor. Other groups with notably high rates of poverty are the elderly and new immigrants — but the numbers for these two groups are much lower, 23 percent and 17 percent, respectively.
Israel’s poverty doesn’t solely stem from the lack of full participation of these two groups in its economic life. But the high visibility among the poor Haredis and Arabs influences the never-ending public debate about how to put an end to poverty.
Kindling a sense of social solidarity among middle-class Israelis toward members of these groups is difficult for several reasons. First, the ultra-Orthodox and Arabs don’t mix much with most Jewish Israelis (both these groups refrain from military or other national service). Second, to be blunt, Israelis know that Haredis and Arabs are disproportionately represented in the underground economy (namely, by evading taxes). Finally, to a large extent they are poor because of choices they make — preferring their traditions over participating in the modern Israeli economy. Simply put: For Haredi Jewish men, the choice is generally to study the Torah and have many children (while the women have to provide for the families). For Muslim Arabs, it is to keep women at home and have many children (while the men go to work).
………
Only when unemployed Haredi men and Arab women go to work and black-market tax evaders are forced to pay taxes will the middle and upper classes be more open to thinking about a redistribution of wealth. Right now, the majority of Israelis have good reason — or good excuse — to object to any redistributive attempts to take from them and give to others.
I would argue that many of these problems are the issues of a segregated society.
The Heridim and Arabs live lives almost completely separate from mainstream society.
The Heridim have separate religious schools in which students are not provided with the tools to succeed in a mainstream society, and the Arabs are educated in “separate but equal” (they are not) schools in where teaching is in Arabic rather than Hebrew.
Furthermore, neither the Ultra-Orthodox nor the Arabs (the Druze excepted) do national (typically military) service, which serves as a touchstone for cultural cohesion.
Putting an end to both of these practices would go a long way toward fixing the problems with Israeli society.
An Ultra-Orthodox Knesset member is saying that Heridim will leave Israel if they become subject to universal conscription:
Haredi Member of Knesset Rabbi Yisrael Eichler was interviewed on Army Radio about the situation with the looming draft of haredim and the haredi community leadership’s decision to fight that draft with all its might and the government’s decision to force haredi schools to teach some secular core subjects, Yeshiva World reported.
Eichler – who is known for making outlandish statements that slander and smear political and religious opponents – told listeners that if need be, haredim will leave Israel en masse to avoid being drafted.
“The haredi community feels choked by the situation, to the point many are contemplating forfeiting their Israeli citizenship. If you want to rule over us then do so – but regarding education and culture, we must maintain our autonomy, as it has been for the last 3,000 years,” Eichler reportedly said.
(Emphasis miine)
First is the obvious question: Who will take them.
After all, many of them have been doing little but living off the dole while “studying” Jewish religious law.
They have no useful skills that any other country would desire.
Even if they can find a country to take them in, they have been living a lifestyle largely funded by the government subsidies paid them, and working for a living at a real job full time is a lot tougher than they think.
Of course, I’m not sure that they have much to worry about in the near term, because Netanyahu’s Likud is completely dependent on the Heredi parties, they have once again put off subjecting Yeshiva students to mandatory military service.
In Judaism, at least, if one is to assume a role of a religious scholar, one is more obligated to full one’s basic duties as a citizen, not less obligated.
They should not be allowed to shirk military service.
The US offers free “lifeline” cell phone service for the poor.
In Georgia, the powers that be decided to levy a fee on the free cell phones, because ……… They just want to hate on the poor, I guess.
A Federal Court just told them to go Cheney themselves:
A federal judge has blocked Georgia’s plan to charge low-income residents $5 per month for cell phone service that currently is provided free of charge.
The fee was set to take effect on Jan. 31 and would have made Georgia the only the U.S. state to charge for the federally subsidized phone service.
“The public interest tilts in favor of providing telephone services to low-income households that otherwise would be unable to afford mobile phones,” U.S. District Court Judge Richard Story wrote on Tuesday in a temporary injunction that stops the new fee while a court challenge is pending.
Nationally, about 14 million households participate in the Lifeline phone program, according to the Universal Service Administrative Co, the nonprofit organization that administers the program.
The level of hate and evil here is only exceeded by the pettiness shown.
Un-dirtyword believable.
Krugman’s latest OP/ED calls for raising the minimum wage.
It’s well thought out, but the limited space of the Times OP/ED page has him leaving out an important point to make, that a low minimum wage is actually a taxpayer funded subsidy for bad employers, because many of these employees qualify for food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, or the EITC.
Walmart and McDonalds actually have a policy to help their employees register for the public dole, because it is cheaper (for them) to dump it all off on the taxpayers.
Raising the minimum wage would tend to be stimulative, because poorer people spend a greater proportion of their income more quickly, and it would lower the deficit, by increasing tax revenues, and decreasing safety net programs.
Of course, the so-called “Deficit Hawks” don’t care, because they don’t really care about the deficit. They just want to punish the poors.
Ratf%$#s.
Following elections, because Angela Merkel’s traditional partner, the FDP was shut out of the Bundestag, she had to form a coalition government with her traditional opposition, the SDP.
As a part of the coalition agreement she has agreed to create a minimum wage of €8.50 and a partial lowering of the retiring age to 63:
It was a “Six-Eye Negotiation” – in German, an “Unter Sechs Augen Gespraech”. Three leaders, and so three pairs of eyes, sat down together in the small hours in a private room and haggled amongst themselves, eyeball to eyeball.
In the 185-page agreement which resulted, the Social Democrats (SPD) came away with a minimum wage of 8.50 euros (£7.10) an hour, uniformly applied across the country. The counter-argument had been that insisting on the minimum wage in the old East Germany would dent the region’s ability to attract work.
The SPD’s chief negotiator Sigmar Gabriel also got a lowering of the retirement age and some extra public spending. That may be welcomed by those outside Germany, who have argued that the country is “beggaring its neighbours” by not increasing German spending to match the country’s amazing excess of exports over imports.
The SPD also secured the introduction of a minimum percentage of women on German company boards.
For her part, Chancellor Merkel got an acceptance from the SPD that its election demand of higher taxes on the rich would not happen. She also emphasised that the new government would continue to balance its budgets – there will be no move away from the belief that spending is tied to revenue.
I think that there is a fair amount consequences, some intended, and some not, to this.
First, a minimum wage of €8.50 will raise the wages of 17% of the workforce, with much of the effect in the service industry.
When one considers the impact on wages of people whose wages are just above the new minimum wage (probably about €10.00) it means that something like ¼ of the workforce will see a raise from this, which, in the long run may have negative political consequences for Merkel’s CDU.
On the other side of the political consequences, the SDP’s capitulation on higher taxes of the wealthy may play to the advantage of the left wing Die Linke, which is really the standard bearer of the democratic Socialism now eschewed by the “3rd Way” movement of the SDP in recent years.
One of the artifacts of German taxation is that it is fairly regressive, and wages of the bottom 90% have decreased in recent years:
According to a DIW study published last year, wages fell in real terms for all but the top 10 percent of earners in Germany between 2005 and 2010. This had a particularly acute effect on those earning the least. “As a rule, the lowest earners spend the highest portion of their income,” study co-author Karl Brenke explains.
Low-wage workers also end up spending a much higher proportion of their income on mandatory health insurance, as any income above €46,000 in annual salary is not subject to premium payments. Thus, while a senior engineer earning €150,000 a year is only required to pay 6.6 percent of his total income in social security contributions, a laborer who makes only a tenth as much ends up paying 20.7 percent.Low-wage workers also end up spending a much higher proportion of their income on mandatory health insurance, as any income above €46,000 in annual salary is not subject to premium payments. Thus, while a senior engineer earning €150,000 a year is only required to pay 6.6 percent of his total income in social security contributions, a laborer who makes only a tenth as much ends up paying 20.7 percent.
The collapse of the FDP was in part a reaction to this reality, as it is the most Thatcherite of the major parties.
Note also that this coalition agreement is exactly the opposite of the normal prescription to debt crises in the Euro zone: reductions in spending, increases in retirement age, and reductions in the minimum wage.
The next country to receive a demand of austerity from IMF and the Euro zone troika will likely highlight the inherent hypocrisy of such a demand.
Walmart just held a food drive for its own employees:
The storage containers are attractively displayed at the Walmart on Atlantic Boulevard in Canton. The bins are lined up in alternating colors of purple and orange. Some sit on tables covered with golden yellow tablecloths. Others peer out from under the tables.
This isn’t a merchandise display. It’s a food drive – not for the community, but for needy workers.
“Please Donate Food Items Here, so Associates in Need Can Enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner,” read signs affixed to the tablecloths.
The food drive tables are tucked away in an employees-only area. They are another element in the backdrop of the public debate about salaries for cashiers, stock clerks and other low-wage positions at Walmart, as workers in Cincinnati and Dayton are scheduled to go on strike Monday.
Is the food drive proof the retailer pays so little that many employees can’t afford Thanksgiving dinner?
Norma Mills of Canton, who lives near the store, saw the photo circulating showing the food drive bins, and felt both “outrage” and “anger.”
“Then I went through the emotion of compassion for the employees, working for the largest food chain in America, making low wages, and who can’t afford to provide their families with a good Thanksgiving holiday,” said Mills, an organizer with Stand Up for Ohio, which is active in foreclosure issues in Canton. “That Walmart would have the audacity to ask low-wage workers to donate food to other low-wage workers — to me, it is a moral outrage.”
Gee, you think?
Don’t shop Walmart.
It turns out that upping the medicare eligibility age does not save a meaningful amount of money:
Raising the Medicare eligibility age to 67 saves far less than previously projected, a revelation that makes the policy far less attractive in upcoming deficit reduction negotiations in Congress.
The long-debated policy now cuts the deficit by just $19 billion over a decade, according to a report released Thursday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Last year, the same policy — of gradually lifting the eligibility age by two months every year until it reached 67 — was found by the CBO to save $113 billion over the same time period.
The idea has been floated since 2011, when President Barack Obama and Speaker John Boehner nearly agreed to a broad debt deal that adopted it. But while conservatives still support the policy, along with deeper long-term cuts to retirement benefit programs, the White House and top Democrats have since cooled to it.
“This would have been a tough sell when it raised $100 billion. It’s hard to imagine making such a drastic change now that we know it saves far less,” said a senior Senate Democratic aide, in response to the CBO report.
Of course, this is not really about is an attempt to incrementally destroy the program.
As the age goes up, the people get progressively sicker, and the per capita cost goes up, and the population served shrinks, and the program enters a political and fiscal death spiral.
This is the real goal of people who really want this.