“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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New York Times Editorial Board: Germany and the Minimum Wage
The federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is obviously too low. So is the Democrats’ proposed increase to $10.10 an hour by 2016. If the minimum wage had merely kept pace over time with inflation, average wages or productivity growth, it would be between $11 an hour and $18 an hour today.
It would also be higher if it kept pace with what other advanced economies are prepared to pay.
Last week, the lower house of Parliament in Germany voted to set a nationwide minimum wage of 8.50 euros an hour, about $11.60, effective in 2015. The upper house is expected to approve the measure this week. [..]
In a global economy that has long relied on low wages to lift profits, a relatively high minimum wage in Germany would also reflect a growing consensus there that a high-wage, high-productivity economy is, in fact, an advantage in stabilizing the nation economically and socially.
Malte Spitz: The NSA, the silent chancellor, and the double agent: how German ignorance left us vulnerable to the US spy game
To credibly demand change from the Americans, Merkel’s government must come clean about its own mass surveillance
The German-American relationship has long been like a bad, never-ending break-up. Germany, especially under the conservative leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel, saw the love of its life – intimate, trustworthy, for better or for worse, with no secrets but plenty of denial. The US was always a more sober and suspicious lover – in it for the affair, whenever it had the free time.
Now that a German intelligence official has been arrested under suspicion of passing secret information back to America – potentially concerning an NSA investigation, and reportedly under direction by the CIA – finally the Merkel government is admitting that the long honeymoon is over. Tap my cellphone, shame on you; fool me with a double agent, shame on an ignorant nation.
If a young employee of the German foreign intelligence agency (BND) was indeed passing secret information to the Americans for more than two years, that is certainly a direct attack to the heart of Merkel’s conservatives – no matter how low-level the employee, and especially if he was spying on the German Bundestag’s spying investigation. The security apparatus was always their domain, and an invasion of their system would be a blow to their fight for enhancing surveillance inside and outside of Germany
Who is the true patriot, Hillary Clinton or Edward Snowden? The question comes up because Clinton has gone all out in attacking Snowden as a means of burnishing her hawkish credentials, eliciting Glenn Greenwald’s comment that she is “like a neocon, practically.”
On Friday in England, Clinton boasted that two years ago she had favored a proposal by a top British General to train 100,000 “moderate” rebels to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria, but Obama had turned her down. The American Thatcher? In that same interview with the Guardian she also managed to get in yet another shot against Snowden for taking refuge in Russia “apparently under Putin’s protection,” unless, she taunted, “he wishes to return knowing he would be held accountable.”
Accountable for telling the truth that Clinton concealed during her tenure as secretary of state in the Obama administration? Did she approve of the systematic spying on the American people as well as of others around the world, including the leaders of Germany and Brazil, or did she first learn of all this from the Snowden revelations?
Dean Baker: The Good News About Obamacare in the June Jobs Report
Many people touted the 288,000 new jobs the Labor Department reported for June, along with the drop in the unemployment rate to 6.1 percent, as good news. And they were right. For now it appears the economy is creating jobs at a decent pace. We still have a long way to go to get back to full employment, but at least we are now finally moving forward at a faster pace.
However there is another important part of the jobs picture that was largely overlooked. There was a big jump in the number of people who report voluntarily working part-time. This figure is now 830,000 (4.4 percent) above its year ago level.
Before explaining the connection to the Obamacare, it is worth making an important distinction. Many people who work part-time jobs actually want full-time jobs. They take part-time work because this is all they can get. An increase in involuntary part-time work is evidence of weakness in the labor market and it means that many people will be having a very hard time making ends meet.
Richard Seymour: Ahmad Chalabi: the pariah who could become Iraq’s next prime minister
Even for the Bush administration, Chalabi was too untrustworthy. That the White House now needs him is a sign of its despair
If any confirmation were needed of the disintegration of Iraq and the failure of US policy, then surely it must be the second coming of Ahmad Chalabi. Once persona non grata in the US embassy in Iraq, he has been welcomed back into the fold, cited in the New York Times as a serious contender to replace Nouri al-Maliki, endorsed by Paul Wolfowitz, and talked up as a saviour by sections of the Iraqi government.
The US wants a replacement for Maliki, but why Chalabi, who has negligible grassroots support in Iraq? He is said to be able to unite the different factions, but has any figure done more to play off one against the other? The answer comes down to Chalabi’s considerable skill in elite manoeuvring. Never particularly interested in or adept at mass politics, he is exceptional at twisting arms and wooing behind the scenes.
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