“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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Paul Krugman: Liberals and Wages
Hillary Clinton gave her first big economic speech on Monday, and progressives were by and large gratified. For Mrs. Clinton’s core message was that the federal government can and should use its influence to push for higher wages.
Conservatives, however – at least those who could stop chanting “Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!” long enough to pay attention – seemed bemused. They believe that Ronald Reagan proved that government is the problem, not the solution. So wasn’t Mrs. Clinton just reviving defunct “paleoliberalism”? And don’t we know that government intervention in markets produces terrible side effects?
No, she wasn’t, and no, we don’t. In fact, Mrs. Clinton’s speech reflected major changes, deeply grounded in evidence, in our understanding of what determines wages. And a key implication of that new understanding is that public policy can do a lot to help workers without bringing down the wrath of the invisible hand.
David Cay Johnston: The economic upshot of the Iran deal
War is bad for business. Avoiding it will be a boon for the US, Europe and the Middle East
For all the hot air in Washington this week from Republicans denouncing the historic deal the United States and five world powers reached with Iran, keep in mind that gasoline may soon fall back to $2 a gallon.
That is just one of many economic benefits to America, Europe and the Middle East we can anticipate because the smart use of economic sanctions and diplomacy produced a peaceful solution to the confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program. Since 2006 the U.N. has granted authority to its members to thwart Tehran’s development of nuclear bombs and the missiles to deliver them.
Throughout we have had political donors such as American casino mogul and pro-Israel hawk Sheldon Adelson, foreign leaders such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a host of Republicans on Capitol Hill openly state or suggest that the best way to deal with Tehran was war.
Despite Syriza’s surrender, the new bailout agreement makes Grexit more likely in the future
The battle over the future of Europe – currently centered in Greece – is far from over. But this week, it entered a new phase. [..]
Some economists have correctly noted that a default and devaluation that involves creating a new currency presents additional challenges, as compared with Argentina’s abandonment of the peso/dollar peg. But that doesn’t change the basic story. A developed economy does not transform itself overnight into a failed state simply because it leaves a currency union. We can look at the worst financial crises over the past 25 years, and none of them resulted in the kind of economic damage that Greece has already suffered.
Meanwhile, despite the unconditional surrender of the Syriza government and the parliament’s approval of the hated austerity measures that the European authorities demanded, the ECB did not increase its Emergency Liquidity Assistance to Greek banks so that they could open. The banks stayed closed, and the ECB to this day appears to be in no hurry to let up on the accelerated economic damage that it has been deliberately inflicting on the Greek economy over the past few weeks.v
Jessica Valenti: Ellen Pao isn’t harassed because she’s female. It’s because she’s a feminist
You’d be hard-pressed to find a female boss in Silicon Valley who hasn’t faced some sort of harassment, but it’s difficult to imagine that anyone has gotten more hate than former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao. From racist “Chairman Pao” memes to hate mail and death threats, Pao has been on the receiving end of some of the worst the internet has to offer. Indeed, in her resignation note on the site, Pao wrote that some of what she’s seen on Reddit “made me doubt humanity,” and she urged users to “remember the human,” noting, “I have a family, and I have feelings.”
It’s clear, though, that what made Pao a target wasn’t solely her gender; She wasn’t just being attacked for being female, but for being a feminist. As Kaliya Young, founder of She’s Geeky, told the Guardian recently, “Ellen was at the center of a high-profile sexual discrimination suit versus a major VC firm and she was put in charge of the teenage boy section of the internet. What did you expect was going to happen? It was inevitable that they would turn on her.”
William C. Anderson: Big business built the prison state. Why should we trust them to tear it down?
This week President Obama launched a major push to fix the country’s criminal justice system and end mass incarceration. The reform talk is coming from both sides of the aisle and unlikely partnerships are being forged between big business interests like the Koch brothers and vocal liberals. But big business is tied to the carceral state, so how can they be part of the solution to end it?
Van Jones, the liberal political commentator, and a Koch representative named Mark Holden recently appeared on Democracy Now where they harmoniously backed Obama’s reform plans. Holden stated that “Charles Koch and David Koch are classical liberals who believe in expansive individual liberties in the Bill of Rights and limited government.” [..]
This language reinforces the idea that the prison system in the United States is a business. The Koch Brothers have been connected to the conservative, corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC, for some time.
Nathan Newman: Uber: When Big Data Threatens Local Democracy
Big data is threatening to crush local democracy across the country–and if it succeeds, it may distort local transit and infrastructure development for decades to come.
As Uber has sought to dominate the local taxi industry from Delhi to New York City, the company has deployed its multi-billion dollar venture capital war chest to fight politicians across the country and world, often ignoring local laws as it introduced its app and drivers into the heavily regulated taxi industry. In New York City, a bill has been introduced to limit the growth of the company locally while the City Council studies the implications for the local taxi industry.
Yesterday, Uber added an attack ad against the City’s mayor Bill De Blasio on the front page of its hailing app, melding its attempt to control local taxi service with seeking control of local politics. In doing so, it highlights the danger of letting multi-billion dollar global corporations control any part of local transit or other infrastructure, since it gives them a stake in distorting local politics as well.
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