“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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David Cay Johntson: Flat wages show the US doesn’t have a labor market
Government action is required to correct imbalance in employer power
Another warning sign of our fragile economy popped up Friday in the latest quarterly employment-cost-index report, which measures the total cost of labor to employers. The index rose by one-fifth of 1 percent – the smallest increase since the data series was launched in 1982.
Without real growth in wages the economy cannot grow because the capacity of people to buy goods and services – what economists call aggregate demand – will remain flat.
This is a problem that we can fix, and there are three obvious ways to address it. But it requires the involvement of government, which makes the rules governing the market. If there is one thing that centuries of experience have taught, it is this: Whatever the rules, businesses adapt.
Dean Baker: Bernie Sanders, Open Borders and a Serious Route to Global Equality
Some progressives expressed dismay last week to discover that Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Senator and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, doesn’t favor a policy of open immigration. While such a policy would undoubtedly allow billions of people in the developing world to improve their lives, there are not many people in the United States who relish the idea of the country’s population tripling or quadrupling over the next three or four decades.
It is hard to justify people in the United States living so much better and longer lives than people in places like Bangladesh or Burundi, just like it’s hard to justify the children of the rich and privileged in the United States living so much better and longer lives than their poorer counterparts, but there is not a plausible story where this inequality will be addressed by mass immigration. There are however more serious ways to think about addressing global inequality.
What once looked like a foregone conclusion now appears stalled by major policy disagreements. What’s next?
Since the passage of fast-track authority, the biggest obstacle to more corporate-written international trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has not been unions or environmentalists or public health advocates. It’s been the calendar. And jostling by TPP member countries over domestic priorities may have just created such a calendar problem that we will not see a deal completed by the end of the Obama presidency.
Ministerial meetings in Maui last week were supposed to end in an agreement between the 12 nations negotiating TPP. But those talks broke up on Friday without a breakthrough. Officials played down the differences, claiming that anywhere from 90 to 98 percent of the details have been finalized. But the outstanding issues involve the basic building blocks of a trade agreement – specifically, what industries get tariff elimination and unfettered market access, and which remain protected. [..]
This is what happens when world leaders try to make deals they know their populations will detest. Apparently the last threads of democracy remaining are strong enough that, sooner or later, these same leaders must stand before their people and defend gutting regulations, selling out their sovereignty and benefiting multinational corporations instead of the public. It’s apparently hard to find a good time to do that.
Jeb Lund: The secret to gaffe-free Republican debates: limit their speaking time
How often in politics do your problems get to seem like virtues? After months of hang-wringing over whether the crowded Republican field would lead to debates as messy and unintelligible as a bachelor party at a chain restaurant, the party’s first crack at it turned out to be surprisingly polished. And while the New Hampshire “Voters First” forum’s structure was not identical to a debate, it showed that limited time and tight structure can, barring a Trump-sized implosion mid-stage, give every candidate a chance to look good. [..]
The rewards to this kind of structure are obvious: even if it’s hard to elaborate on your thoughts, it’s almost harder to make a fool of yourself. Candidates only need to memorize the maybe 20 paragraphs of policy planks they have on maybe 20 major issues (and they should have done that by now, just by virtue of repeating their stump speeches, which are often repurposed versions of their book chapters), then pivot back to them after any question touches on one of those topics.
Adam Lee: There’s a silver lining in the religious right’s onslaught of discrimination
The American religious right is more determined than ever to discriminate – and that may be a good thing. It means that the privileged can no longer overlook the impact of prejudice. They no longer have the luxury of overlooking it or dismissing it as something that’s none of their concern. [..]
It’s human nature to not care about injustices that don’t directly affect you. When it’s only same-sex couples, for example, who face rejection at the county clerk’s office, it’s easy for straight people to ignore their plight. When it’s only women who are denied access to standard and necessary reproductive healthcare, it’s easy for men to dismiss it as not their problem. But when members of the majority feel the sting of unfair deprivation for themselves, they’ll gain a more intimate perspective on how prejudice hurts – and, we can hope, they’ll be more willing to support democratic means to abolish it and to create a fairer society for everyone. Ideally, of course, people would be willing to do the right thing just from hearing about the mistreatment of others, even without experiencing it personally, but this comes in a close second.
Too often, religion is thought of as a purely benevolent and positive force, despite the role it has played in justifying harmful prejudice and the ongoing denial of equal rights. But these hardball massive-resistance tactics, this stubborn desire to enforce their will despite the collateral costs, brings people face to face with the anti-human side of religious morality in a way that’s a lot harder to overlook. Atheists have long made this criticism, but ironically, it’s the religious conservatives themselves who are lending it greater weight and force.
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