Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
|
Last |
Change |
Percent |
|
|
S&P Futures |
1641.8 |
8.1 |
0.51% |
|
Eurostoxx Index |
2654.8 |
-11.8 |
-0.44% |
|
Oil (WTI) |
97.95 |
+0.2 |
+0.23% |
|
LIBOR |
0.273 |
0.000 |
0.00% |
|
US Dollar Index (DXY) |
80.92 |
-0.031 |
-0.04% |
|
10 Year Govt Bond Yield |
2.198% |
+0.02% |
|
|
Current Coupon Ginnie Mae TBA |
104.5 |
-0.3 |
|
|
Current Coupon Fannie Mae TBA |
103.1 |
-0.2 |
|
|
RPX Composite Real Estate Index |
203.4 |
0.5 |
|
|
BankRate 30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage |
3.98.05 |
Markets are generally higher as we begin the two day FOMC meeting. Bonds and MBS are down small.
Housing starts came in at 914k, lower than the 950k expectation. May starts were revised down to 856k. Multi-fam drove the decrease, and really accounts for the volatility of the index lately. SFR construction has been steadily growing from 520k to 620k over the past year. Wet weather in the Midwest may have dampened the number a bit. Building permits came in at 975k, as expected. Overall, it shows the housing market is continuing to recover, but we are still at very depressed levels. These sort of numbers are often seen at the absolute bottom of recessions. It may be too early to jump to conclusions, but perhaps the hike in interest rates over the past six weeks is starting to bite.
The housing starts number stands in contrast to the National Association of Homebuilders sentiment survey which jumped 8 points to a reading of 52, the first “net positive” number since 2006.
The consumer price index came in at +.1% on the headline number, and + .2% ex food and energy. This number is still too low to please the Fed as they would like to see annual inflation in the 2% to 2.5% range.
On Charlie Rose, Obama said that “Ben Bernake has stayed on as Federal Reserve Chairman longer than he wanted,” giving the clearest signal that the Bernank is going to leave when his term expires early next year. The two names mentioned have been ex Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Vice Chair Janet Yellen. Yellen is the overwhelming favorite, and she is a bigger dove than Bernake. Something to keep in mind when you start thinking about QE tapering. That said, the current voting members on the Fed are very dovish on balance. Oh, and one other thing – she doesn’t believe the Fed’s interest rate policy has a role in bubble prevention. She would rather rely on supervision and regulation as the main line of defense against bubbles. Of course, with the stock market bubble and the real estate bubble so fresh in our minds, she will likely preside over the bursting of the Treasury bond bubble.
Filed under: Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
I really liked the Jello Biafra quote of the day, but I took the liberty of changing it to a jnc one.
It sums things up beautifully, I think.
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In all, eleven GMU students signed the petition in about 45 minutes, according to Joseph.
If true, stunning.
– See more at: http://www.campusreform.org/blog/?ID=4796#sthash.QdTPMs8V.dpuf
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As this is making the rounds today, it’s worth debunking
“Florida’s Governor Signs Business-Backed Bill Banning Paid Sick Leave
By Bryce Covert on Jun 17, 2013 at 9:38 am”
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/06/17/2165671/rick-scott-paid-sick-leave/
The bill doesn’t ban paid sick leave. It locks in the status quo of leaving sick leave policy up to the individual businesses by preempting local ordinances that would mandate a fixed amount per year.
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So, your saying Think Progress is lying?!?!?!?
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Yep. About as much credibility as James Clapper.
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The Charlie Rose interview with President Obama illustrates attempts to have things both ways nicely:
He’s contradicting himself in the first two sentences. Either the tradeoffs are real or they aren’t. Either the choice is false or it isn’t.
Also he uses a different definition of “transparency” than the usual one:
The FISA court is anything but transparent.
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Everyone should know we don’t mandate sick leave, maternity leave or vacation. We’re special, lol. I tried to just post two of the images but couldn’t remember how to do it so posted the entire link. I’m sure I can figure it out but don’t have time right now.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/06/18/america-the-great-maybe-but-these-five-graphs-beg-to-differ-images/
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lms:
Everyone should know we don’t mandate sick leave, maternity leave or vacation.
And if “we” don’t mandate it, then obviously “we” don’t care about it. That, at least, is what the author of your link seems to believe anyway.
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Juicebox is having a sad because Jindal stopped criticizing R’s.
http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/18/bobby-jindal-is-the-republican-partys-problem/
And Juicebox junior is a racist,
@mattyglesias: Is Bobby Jindal’s reputation for intelligence anything other than ethnic stereotyping?
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Jindal’s rant was just amazing. An entire field of strawmen burnt to a crisp.
I guess if you can’t beat the stupid party, join it.
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Someone on the “left” has probably maintained one of those positions, with some glaring exceptions, so it is the kind of humorous exaggeration that makes a point, no?
As you might say “no true Scotsman…”, but, heck, I believe a few of those positions he criticizes. I mean, what’s wrong with porn for adults if male fetuses are masturbating, according to former ob/gyn Mike Burgess, R – TX?
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humorous exaggeration that makes a point
That type of schtick is practically trademarked by Sarah Palin. If that is the slice of the Republican demographic he is going after, more power to him. Speaking of Caribou Barbie, she had a great line the other day directed at Jeb Bush:
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YJ, about Palin. I remember how I thought she had been a breath of fresh air in AK politics from what I read about her in 2007-08. Dave! [remember Dave!?] and I argued about her in ’08 and I thought she was going places. She became a real disappointment to me.
But she is good at what she is doing in this video clip, YJ. It is funny.
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The Yglesias tweet made laugh. Does that make me racist too?
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yello:
Does that make me racist too?
Isn’t it you who thinks that everyone is a little bit racist?
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Yello, dunno, is racism funny?
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Scott
And if “we” don’t mandate it, then obviously “we” don’t care about it. That, at least, is what the author of your link seems to believe anyway.
I actually didn’t have time to read the piece, I was trying to put the two charts in comparing “us” (the United States) with other countries regarding maternity leave and vacation. As I said I couldn’t figure out how to put just the charts into the comment.
Update: I should know better than to try and participate when I’m busy…………it’s never worth it.
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I think it’s kinda dangerous touchy territory
Depends on what one thinks is dangerous, I guess. As touchy territory I’ve always thought it was kinda fun.
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Interesting, funny, and a connection I wouldn’t have made:
Chris Hayes on feminism and Fathers’ Day
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This assertion is debatable about the family where both spouses work:
“It’s an incredible transformation both for men and for their kids, a huge net benefit in human happiness.”
My own observation is that more often than not, both parents work full time and the kids are primarily raised in daycare.
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Day care, on average, is safer than home care. FWIW.
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Sometimes, jnc, you just have to go with it. http://tinyurl.com/NoCynicismJNC
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This time I read the article. Check out these two maps. The snark in me wants to say “maybe this is exactly the way they want it”, but I remember when our daughter spent the summer in Midland, TX working for an oil company and even some of the men there were beginning to realize that maybe abstinence only wasn’t working.
It might be a coincidence that the most conservative religious states have the most teenage pregnancies, but it might also be that both of these factors are related to some other factor. The researchers who studied this data suggest that it may be conservative religious views on birth control (and abortion?) that are causing this result. What can be said for sure is teenage sexual activity doesn’t appear to be less prevalent in more religiously conservative areas of the country.
Conclusion
With data aggregated at the state level, conservative religious beliefs strongly predict U.S. teen birth rates, in a relationship that does not appear to be the result of confounding by income or abortion rates. One possible explanation for this relationship is that teens in more religious communities may be less likely to use contraception.
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lms (from the link):
It might be a coincidence that the most conservative religious states have the most teenage pregnancies…
According to this site the state with the highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation is New Mexico. New Mexico has gone to the Democrat in 5 of the last 6 presidential elections, including twice to Obama. Not your stereotypical “conservative religious state”.
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lms:
I am trying to figure out what qualifies a state as being among the “most conservative religious states”. For example, Kansas seems an obvious choice, but its teen pregnancy rate is actually less than California, New York, and Illinois, three of the least conservative states in the nation. So too is Missouri’s, another seemingly obvious choice for being among the “most conservative religious states”. Texas probably qualifies, and is in the top 5, but then as previously noted, New Mexico tops them all and has traditionally been a blue state.
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Click to access FastFacts_TPChildbearing_Latinos.pdf
Only when Chicanas vote R will the actual numbers clearly favor the inference that more OOW teen pregnancies [and births] are a R problem.
It is also true that children, with or without fathers present, are generally celebrated in Chicano culture. This I take on balance to be a good thing, for the benefit of the child, even allowing for the potential hazard of no present daddy.
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Mark:
Only when Chicanas vote R will the actual numbers clearly favor the inference that more OOW teen pregnancies [and births] are a R problem.
I’m not sure even then it would favor that inference, given that the teen pregnancy rate for blacks, an obvious D constituency (and a larger demographic overall), is roughly the same as for Hispanics. Of course, the abortion rate for blacks is almost double what it is for Hispanics, resulting in a significantly lower birth rate, which is why, if we are going to start trying to lay blame for teen pregnancy on religious or political views, we should not be talking about birth rates.
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One possible explanation for this relationship is that teens in more religious communities may be less likely to use contraception.
Or abort the fetus?
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Duncan has 25 points at halftime. 50-44 Spurs. Hoping they can keep it up.
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Mark:
I’m actually splitting time between Spurs and the US soccer team vs Honduras, World Cup qualifier. US has had several excellent chances, but can’t put the ball in the back of the net. 0-0 with 20 mins left to play.
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US finally scores! 1-0 with 18 mins to go.
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Mark
That complicates things doesn’t it. Although they do say this;
The Latina teen pregnancy rate also varied widely by state.
In 2008, these rates ranged from a low of 26 per 1,000 in
Vermont to a high of 160 per 1,000 in Alabama.
Unlike the number of teen pregnancies, the rate standardizes for
differences in population size, and will not necessarily be
highest in states with large Latino populations.
I’m sure the high Latina numbers in both TX, NM, AZ and CA play a part of course. I just thought it was interesting to see the overlay of self-identified religious states and teen pregnancy. Whether or not it’s the deciding factor or merely an important one I don’t think is very clear.
I’ve personally always been fascinated by the religious objection to birth control, objection to abortion I understand. It just seems to me when you realistically face the options, easy and approved access to BC is obvious if you want to lower both the teen pregnancy rate and the abortion rate. That’s just me though. My husband says I’m too practical for my own good sometimes.
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easy and approved access to BC is obvious if you want to lower both the teen pregnancy rate and the abortion rate.
Agreed. And it seems like acute insight into the obvious, as well.
Not to mention reduced risk of STDs if condoms are the choice.
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LMS — I justed copied this off my parish website, FWIW,
“Catholics believe that the beautiful gift of sexuality is given by God to unite a husband and wife as a physical expression of their union of souls, as well as to cooperate with His plan of creation in the generation of children. Children are a great blessing and a gift to the couple and to the world. Since contraception is the deliberate exclusion of the possibility of generating new life, and thereby does not respect the nature of a married couple’s love as cooperating with God’s creative will, we believe that it is always immoral”
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Since contraception is the deliberate exclusion of the possibility of generating new life,
YES! They get it.
Oh. Wait. No. They don’t.
See also: Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life”
In Yorkshire, a Roman Catholic man (Palin) loses his employment. He goes home to his wife (Jones) and an impossible number of children, where he discusses the church’s opposition to the use of contraception, leading into the musical number “Every Sperm Is Sacred”. Watching this unfold, a Protestant man (Chapman) proudly lectures his wife (Idle) on their church’s tolerance towards contraception and having intercourse for fun, although his frustrated wife points out that they never do.
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Scott – While I agree with the general train of your thought it cannot be true that Blacks are a bigger number in America than Hispanics. Your two largest states, 1/5th of everybody, are half Hispanic. And CA and TX are not alone…
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lms:
I’m sure the high Latina numbers in both TX, NM, AZ and CA play a part of course. I just thought it was interesting to see the overlay of self-identified religious states and teen pregnancy.
I think it would be interesting to compare the teen pregnancy rates for liberal cities like LA, NYC, and DC to more rural areas in conservative places like Texas or Kansas. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any info.
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lms:
easy and approved access to BC is obvious if you want to lower both the teen pregnancy rate and the abortion rate.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there was actually a positive correlation between access to BC and abortion rates, ie easier availability of BC correlates to higher abortion rates. It would be interesting to find out, anyway.
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Nova, I understand that totally, I just think it’s the most unrealistic of views in the entire world. Pre-marital sex, extra-marital, teen sex, gay sex, unprotected sex and just plain fun sex have existed since time began (I think) so while it’s a beautiful sentiment, and I’ve been blessed with children myself and even felt the presence of a higher power in the process, I find it very unlikely that very many people actually aspire to that ideal.
I’d be much more concerned with other morality issues than this one…………..if I were a religious person, which I admit to only being on occasion. 😉
As I said though, I’m probably too practical for my own good sometimes.
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” unrealistic of views in the entire world”
you’re not suggesting the Catholic Church is out of touch?
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Nova
you’re not suggesting the Catholic Church is out of touch?
Uhhhhh…….nnnnnoooo, of course not. Not any more than Libertarians are anyway.
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http://www.salon.com/2013/06/19/nsa_spying_kills_my_faith_in_america/
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Scott, all interesting questions. I don’t understand your assertion that availability of BC possibly correlates to higher abortion rates. I would be very surprised if that were true. I think availability of abortion causes at least some women to use it as a form of BC though. Unfortunate, but probably true.
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lms:
I don’t understand your assertion that availability of BC possibly correlates to higher abortion rates.
Lots of reasons. An atmosphere in which birth control is readily and easily available to teens is most likely an atmosphere that does not stigmatize teen sex, which is going to result in a lot more encounters (as nova noted). Also, I assume there is probably a high correlation between availability of birth control and availability of (along with permissive attitude towards) abortion. And the availability of abortion, along with the absence of a stigma attached to it, will, I think, lead to less concern about utilizing BC even if it is readily available, and hence more abortions.
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jeebus, why do I, at 63, always end up talking about abortion and birth control? There’s something wrong with that……………….hahaha
Back to work.
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“I don’t understand your assertion that availability of BC possibly correlates to higher abortion rate”
increases the number of encounters that have the potential to result in pregnancy.
[edit — meaning obviously people are going to have sex. but does the availability of BC increase that number and or rate.]
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increases the number of encounters that have the potential to result in pregnancy.
The traditional moral concept is that
marriagemarital relations should only occur within marriage. This is treated with a wink and nod in most circumstances but strict Catholics and many conservative Protestant groups (e.g. Southern Baptists) see this as the only acceptable paradigm. In this mindset, teaching about contraception is akin to endorsing it.Some of the documented results of abstinence only education is that it does delay the age of first intercourse by a few months but the median is well within the teen years. Students of abstinence only education are also less likely to use contraception so one would think this would counter any benefit of there being less frequent intercourse among this group. Teenagers are an amazingly fecund group although I take most claims of ‘we only did it once and must have been very unlucky’ with an enormous pile of salt.
Secondly, there are cultural cues that perhaps most adults aren’t even aware of that encourage teenage girls to get pregnant. These could be the desire to start a family or get social services benefits or just plain peer pressure. In these cases education and access to contraception wouldn’t do any good since they aren’t necessarily avoiding a pregnancy.
Personally I think all women at the age of 14 should be given some sort of reliable long-term birth control just as a fall-back measure. In some respects this is somewhat done with all the kids who are on oral contraceptives for ‘acne-control’ or other flimsy rationalizations between them and their doctor. But culturally there is still a stigma that associates birth control with promiscuity.
In a recent Savage Love podcast, Dan Savage recommended women on birth control such as IUDs to use the white lie that they are not on BC to encourage consistent condom use by male partners until such time as the female partner feels comfortable enough to ‘fess up and let that standard relax.
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Let’s do the math:
Number of unprotected encounters x chance of pregnancy + number of protected encounters x (1 – birth control effectiveness) = pregnancy rate.
With most birth control methods being at least 90% effective, it doesn’t take a lot of unprotected incidents for the ‘good girls’ who slip up every now and then to have a higher pregnancy rate than the ‘sluts’ on birth control.
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yello:
The question before us was whether easy access to birth control would correlate to higher or lower rates of abortion. lms thinks it is obvious, but I am not so sure.
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The question before us was whether easy access to birth control would correlate to higher or lower rates of abortion rates.
I understand that. Expanding on my formula above:
Number of abortions = Pregnancy rate x likelihood of aborting pregnancy.
Using our extreme case of the church-going good girl whose quarterback boy friend talks her into going all the way on prom night, the abortion risk is zero. The other extreme is the town tramp using the local abortion clinic as her birth control method. I reality the female population runs the gamut within this range.
I would err on trying to lower the pregnancy rate all around rather than trying to get more wayward girls to the church-run crisis pregnancy center.
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I am not vouching for this, but Google linked to this CBS story: Free Birth Control Leads to way Fewer Abortions”
Free birth control led to dramatically lower rates of abortions and teen births, a large study concluded Thursday. The findings were eagerly anticipated and come as a bitterly contested Obama administration policy is poised to offer similar coverage.
The project tracked more than 9,000 women in St. Louis, many of them poor or uninsured. They were given their choice of a range of contraceptive methods at no cost — from birth control pills to goof-proof options like the IUD or a matchstick-sized implant.
When price wasn’t an issue, women flocked to the most effective contraceptives — the implanted options, which typically cost hundreds of dollars up-front to insert. These women experienced far fewer unintended pregnancies as a result, reported Dr. Jeffrey Peipert of Washington University in St. Louis in a study published Thursday.
The effect on teen pregnancy was striking: There were 6.3 births per 1,000 teenagers in the study. Compare that to a national rate of 34 births per 1,000 teens in 2010.
There also were substantially lower rates of abortion, when compared with women in the metro area and nationally: 4.4 to 7.5 abortions per 1,000 women in the study, compared with 13.4 to 17 abortions per 1,000 women overall in the St. Louis region, Peipert calculated. That’s lower than the national rate, too, which is almost 20 abortions per 1,000 women.
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This is only one study but it seems to have been done using the correct controls. Unfortunately I suppose, they offered the various methods for free and so there was much greater use of IUD’s and implants than normal because the cost of those methods is higher. Give every young woman who wants it an IUD………………good idea?
The women were counseled about the different methods, including their effectiveness, risks and benefits. The extremely low failure rate (less than 1 percent) of IUDs and implants over that of shorter-acting forms (8 percent to 10 percent) was emphasized. In all, about 75 percent of women in the study chose IUDs or implants.
From 2008 to 2010, annual abortion rates among study participants ranged from 4.4 to 7.5 per 1,000 women. This is a substantial drop (62 percent to 78 percent) over the national rate of 19.6 abortions per 1,000 women in 2008, the latest year for which figures are available.
The lower abortion rates among CHOICE participants also is considerably less than the rates in St. Louis city and county, which ranged from 13.4 to 17 per 1,000 women, for the same years.
Among girls ages 15-19 who had access to free birth control provided in the study, the annual birth rate was 6.3 per 1,000, far below the U.S. rate of 34.3 per 1,000 for girls the same age.
While birth control pills are the most commonly used contraceptive in the United Sates, their effectiveness hinges on women remembering to take a pill every day and having easy access to refills.
In contrast, IUDs and implants are inserted by health-care providers and are effective for 5 to 10 years and 3 years, respectively. Despite their superior effectiveness over short-term methods, only a small percentage of U.S. women using contraception choose these methods. Many can’t afford the cost of IUDs and implants, which can cost more than $800 and may not be covered by insurance.
“Unintended pregnancy remains a major health problem in the United States, with higher proportions among teenagers and women with less education and lower economic status,” Peipert says. “The results of this study demonstrate that we can reduce the rate of unintended pregnancy and this is key to reducing abortions in this country.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121004200908.htm
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Mark/lms:
Yes, I actually remember now when that study came out. I think the biggest problem with it is that the population was self-selected without a control group. Also, I would nitpick that there is a difference between access to BC and free BC. FWIW, here’s a critique of the study.
lms:
Give every young woman who wants it an IUD………………good idea?
If you want to finance it yourself, sure. I’ve got better things to do with my money, though. Although if the receipt of welfare payments was made contingent upon getting an IUD or an implant, then sure, I would be on board with providing those for “free”.
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Although if the receipt of welfare payments was made contingent upon getting an IUD or an implant, then sure, I would be on board with providing those for “free”.
I would be on board for that as well, but when it’s been suggested the howls have been deafening from all quarters.
My other frequent Modest Proposal (in addition to sticking all women with a Norplant at age 14) is that a third abortion is accompanied by a free but mandatory tubal ligation. That would essentially eliminate the ‘abortion as retroactive birth control’ moral hazard objection. Both of these ideas tend to put me on thin ice with feminists, among others.
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BTW…absolutely gigantic move in the Treasury market on the fed’s announcement and Bernanke’s press conference. B didn’t say anything too outrageously new, with everything as usual couched with “ifs” and “whens”, but market seems to think the end of perpetually low rates is nigh. 10 yr note is off 14 bps. Long bond up to 3.40 yield, highest in over a year.
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You corked me Mark…………dammit
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Sorry, I have to call out this typo as funny:
“yellojkt, on June 19, 2013 at 11:38 am said:
increases the number of encounters that have the potential to result in pregnancy.
The traditional moral concept is that marriage should only occur within marriage. ”
Nested marriage?
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“novahockey, on June 19, 2013 at 10:48 am said:
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/19/nsa_spying_kills_my_faith_in_america/”
He must have missed the drone strikes on American citizens.
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” there are cultural cues that perhaps most adults aren’t even aware of that encourage teenage girls to get pregnant.”
i recall reading somewhere (can’t recall or i’d link) that there’s % that’s more than insignificant of teen pregnancy isn’t unintended. top reason was “wanted someone to love them unconditionally”
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Nested marriage?
I had to read that twice to find where I had bungled the sentence proving that nobody (well, at least not me) should edit their own copy.
As a related issue, a judge in India has declared that any couple having sex is de facto married whether they’ve bothered to have a ceremony or not.
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” white lie that they are not on BC to encourage consistent condom use b”
switching gears a bit — but i think it is part of the reasoning behind the opposition to BC. it’s can’t be healthy to have a sexual relationship that’s based (perhaps in part) on a lie.
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“wanted someone to love them unconditionally”
These people should get a dog if they want unconditional love and the need to clean up poop on a regular basis.
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It’s David Sirota but still.
For a taste of what that kind of institutionalized corruption looks like, take a look at the amount of money Booz Allen Hamilton and its parent company, The Carlyle Group, spend on campaign contributions and lobbying. As you’ll see, from Barack Obama to John McCain, many of the politicians now publicly defending the surveillance state and slamming whistleblowers like Snowden have taken huge sums of money from these two firms. Same thing for the political parties themselves – they are bankrolled by these firms.
This is just an example from two companies among scores, but it exemplifies a larger dynamic. Simply put, there are huge corporate forces with a vested financial interest in making sure the debate over security is tilted toward the surveillance state and against critics of that surveillance state. In practice, that means when those corporations spend big money on campaign contributions, they aren’t just buying votes for specific private contracts. They are also implicitly pressuring politicians’ to rhetorically push the discourse in a pro-surveillance, anti-civil liberties direction – that is, in a direction that preserves the larger political assumptions on which the profits of the entire surveillance-industrial complex are based.
http://billmoyers.com/2013/06/19/how-cash-secretly-rules-surveillance-policy/
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As a related issue, a judge in India has declared that any couple having sex is de facto married whether they’ve bothered to have a ceremony or not.
That could be a real death knell for pre-marital sex.
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“Unconditional Love”………….hahaha, the kind of week I’ve had with adult children I’d settle for a pack of dogs. I’m ready for uncomplicated and unconditional.
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it’s can’t be healthy to have a sexual relationship that’s based (perhaps in part) on a lie.
Not to be too cynical but I don’t know of any relationships, particularly sexual ones, that aren’t based in part on a lie.
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“Both of these ideas tend to put me on thin ice”
be careful on that ice. i might mistake you for a granny.
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Scott
between access to BC and free BC
That’s why I mentioned it in my comment re the study.
And the other was just a joke. Although I do believe that Planned Parenthood is a fantastic idea and think the combination of public/private funding plus a sliding scale for costs to patients is well worth the public investment. Most of the problem with unintended pregnancies is with poor women and I think they have a greater chance to escape poverty without lots of babies.
I think my daughter would probably agree with you on the IUD for welfare plan. She was not impressed with the young girls (literally) with babies hanging off of them in her apartment complex in Midland. Our son probably would also. He drove an ambulance in San Bernardino while attending college and they used to call the day the welfare checks arrived, “Mother’s Day” and it was usually heavy on the drug overdose transports. There’s definitely an ugly side to welfare and unwanted babies.
Edit: I suppose in the case of this type of welfare recipient the babies are not unwanted.
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“market seems to think the end of perpetually low rates is nigh”
how nigh? i’ve been holding off on ordering an appraisal.
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nova:
how nigh? i’ve been holding off on ordering an appraisal.
Tough to tell this early whether this is a knee-jerk reaction or something that will be sustained, and the housing market is one of the “ifs” and “whens” that always couch fed talk. Brent will probably have a better idea than I, but I think the lows for mortgage rates have come and gone. It’s up from here.
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“There’s definitely an ugly side to welfare and unwanted babies.”
FWIW, i blame the safety net. (i know .. i know)
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I blame unintended consequences and ignorance. Sorry, I believe in a safety net and I won’t pretend otherwise. I wish we were all smart, beautiful, talented, motivated, perfectly healthy, etc. etc. but it’ll never happen and a safety net has a valid purpose and function. Most civilized countries seem to agree.
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” unintended consequences and ignorance”
agree with the ignorance part. but i think the consequences were foreseeable.
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nova:
but i think the consequences were foreseeable..
Totally agree.
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Certainly at least since the publication of the Moynihan Report.
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Well, if you guys are only referring to the war on poverty in relation to the destruction of the black nuclear family and what is the major cause of that, that’s a different discussion than a more generic discussion of the safety net, which includes things like Medicare, SS, medicaid, unemployment insurance,school lunches, etc. etc. I’m not nearly as cynical as you guys are in regards to the safety net and so-called intended consequences……………….I’m shocked you might believe that, whatever “that” actually is.
Much of the safety net was designed to solve problems not to create new ones intentionally. Whether they’re working or whether you think you should have to contribute financially to their success is a different discussion as well.
In other words I disagree.
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lms:
Much of the safety net was designed to solve problems not to create new ones intentionally.
I don’t think anyone is saying the problems were created intentionally. Just that they were entirely predictable for anyone who was interested in considering unintended consequences.
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Anyone interested in Michael Hastings last column?
“Everyone should just calm down,” Senator Harry Reid said yesterday, inhaling slowly.
That’s right: don’t panic.
The very topic of Democratic two-facedness on civil liberties is one of the most important issues that Greenwald has covered. Many of those Dems — including the sitting President Barack Obama, Senator Carl Levin, and Sec. State John Kerry — have now become the stewards and enhancers of programs that appear to dwarf any of the spying scandals that broke during the Bush years, the very same scandals they used as wedge issues to win elections in the Congressional elections 2006 and the presidential primary of 2007-2008.
Recall what Senator Levin told CNN in 2005, demanding to “urgently hold an inquiry” into what was supposedly President Bush’s domestic wiretap program.
Levin continued, at length: “It means that there’s some growing concern on Capitol Hill about a program which seems to be so totally unauthorized and unexplained…The president wraps himself in the law, saying that it is totally legal, but he doesn’t give what the legal basis is for this. He avoided using the law, which we provided to the president, where even when there is an emergency and there’s a need for urgent action can first tap the wire and then go to a court.”
There are two notable exception to this rule are Senator Ron Wyden, from Oregon, and Sen. Mark Udall from Colorado, who had seemed to be fighting a largely lonely, frustrating battle against Obama’s national security state.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mhastings/why-democrats-love-to-spy-on-americans
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yello:
Both of these ideas tend to put me on thin ice with feminists, among others.
Interesting that you have had that experience. I’m a pretty hardcore feminist and I’ve been advocating essentially the same thing for years. It gets me in trouble with my family (brother with five unplanned kids, his oldest with two, so far it seems that I’ve gotten through to the remaining four about the concept of Birth Control And Its Usefulness).
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James Gandolfini has died. That sucks.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/hbo-and-james-gandolfinis-managers-say-the-actor-famous-for-the-sopranos-has-died-in-italy/2013/06/19/60da0eb0-d93e-11e2-b418-9dfa095e125d_story.html?hpid=z1
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Scott, in that case I wish one of you would explain the predictable consequences of Social Security, Medicare or unemployment insurance, for instance, that I assume you believe should have warned us off. Most of us understand there is a trade off in policy but you guys seem to be implying that, and maybe I’m mistaken, knowing the trade off we destructively went ahead with the programs. I think you do that because you blame SS, Medicare, Medicaid etc. for what you perceive as the deficit problems and perhaps your personal tax obligation issues of today.
So there are two mistakes here I think, number one, they are not the destructive force you believe they are and number two, things like the astronomical rise in the cost of health care, particularly here in the United States, actually weren’t that predictable. And I think we could even ponder a number three, what kind of world would we be living in without the safety net that was created to solve problems like senior poverty for instance?
I though jnc went a little off the reservation referencing the Moynihan Report as though that has something to do with some of the most important safety net programs of the 20th Century. I didn’t see the relationship to what we were discussing related to foreseeable consequences because it narrowed the discussion too much. That’s all I was trying to point out.
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lms:
Scott, in that case I wish one of you would explain the predictable consequences of Social Security, Medicare or unemployment insurance, for instance, that I assume you believe should have warned us off.
Interestingly, today the WSJ has a review of a Niall Ferguson book which seems to touch on this topic. (I say “seems” because I have not read the book, only the review.)
The first thing I’d say that of all the things that might be categorized as a “safety net”, SS really doesn’t qualify. Safety nets exists to help support the few people who, through bad luck or unfortunate circumstances, can’t support themselves. SS by design supports virtually everyone. It is not a “safety net” program.
As for predictable consequences, the inherent problem with Ponzi schemes was well known before the 1930’s, so the fiscal problems that SS now presents ought not surprise anyone. They were and remain easily predictable. I’d also point out that everyone seems to recognize the moral hazard problem of the government bailing out banks, so I don’t know why the moral hazard of bailing out individuals ought to be an unexpected outcome.
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Here’s a good example regarding Medicare.
Numerous people predicted that Medicare would cost far more than it was estimated to when it passed and they have been proven prescient.
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“I though jnc went a little off the reservation referencing the Moynihan Report as though that has something to do with some of the most important safety net programs of the 20th Century. I didn’t see the relationship to what we were discussing related to foreseeable consequences because it narrowed the discussion too much. That’s all I was trying to point out”
The original welfare program was once considered to be an important part of the safety net, hence the push back from liberal groups when Clinton worked with the Republicans to change it.
Krugman now wants to go further:
He proposes expanding the “safety net” from helping people who were unable to help themselves, i.e. the old, sick, disabled into a system of just giving money to perfectly able people who aren’t working. It’s no longer about just being unable to work, now it encompasses unwilling to work.
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It’s no longer about just being unable to work, now it encompasses unwilling to work.
aka lazy moochers
Doesn’t that narrative just wear out after a while?
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yello:
Doesn’t that narrative just wear out after a while?
Are you suggesting that his characterization, ie that it encompasses not just those who are unable to work, but also those who are unwilling to, is not true?
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Okay then, if we’re going to get right into the nitty gritty of the safety net, Medicare isn’t considered part of the safety net either and neither is unemployment insurance.
Here’s a list of the safety net programs and their costs in billions in 2011/2012. I’d be curious to see what their projected costs are this year as some of these programs took a hit in the sequester.
I suppose the costs of these are pretty foreseeable but since they’re part of a “safety net” to help support the few people who, through bad luck or unfortunate circumstances, can’t support themselves we do it anyway and adjust the budget as we go based on need and budget circumstances and who’s in charge.
I did say in my original comment that there was an ugly side to welfare and even gave a couple of examples. I imagine it’s no surprise to anyone that there are people who will bilk the system and cheat or take the “easy” way out.
http://federalsafetynet.com/safety-net-programs.html
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lms:
neither is unemployment insurance.
I think temporary unemployment benefits can accurately be characterized as a “safety net” program.
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[puts on tinfoil tophat]
The entire point of great society was to drive a wedge between individuals and their community. we don’t want people turning to their families or churches or organizations we can’t control. we want them to turn to the government .. to rely on government for every aspect of their lives. that way, we turn citizens into serfs. and we, the political elite, resume our rightful place as lords. utterly dependent on us.
[takes off hat … slightly]
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have a safety net. but the reason behind it is not altruistic
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nova:
.The entire point of great society was to drive a wedge between individuals and their community. we don’t want people turning to their families or churches or organizations we can’t control. we want them to turn to the government .. to rely on government for every aspect of their lives. that way, we turn citizens into serfs. and we, the political elite, resume our rightful place as lords. utterly dependent on us.
I’m actually not so cynical as to think that this is what motivates most politicians, although I totally agree that this is the consequence. I suspect (I actually hope) that most politicians are motivated by a genuine desire to “do good”, but that they are driven more by their feelings than by reason, and the immediate feeling of “doing good” overwhelms the potential, oftentimes obvious, longer term negative consequences. The disintegration of true community spirit and familial obligations, and the effect that will have on society, is an abstraction that cannot compete emotionally with the charge of believing you are saving millions of people from immediate starvation.
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Nova, tinfoil looks good on you. My husband found several boxes in the mark down bin at the grocery store………….I’ll send you some.
Scott, UI is debatable I think as it is collected as a payroll tax paid by employers.
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lms:
Scott, UI is debatable I think as it is collected as a payroll tax paid by employers.
To me how it is financed is less relevant than who gets it. If it is designed to capture a relatively small demographic which happens to need some temporary assistance, it qualifies as a safety net. If it is designed to capture most of the population and is treated as a birthright, it is does not qualify.
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Is the problem that SS exists, or that it is a Ponzi scheme? I’d tend to argue that if it were managed as a traditional pension and responsibly managed so that it was fully funded, it would be a net positive. I may or may not find myself unemployed shortly, in which case I intend to collect my unemployment benefits, but I am not sure that they are a net positive culturally. Necessity is the mother of invention (and certainly motivation) . . . they are a safety net, I think, I’m just not sure if they are ultimately a net positive. Or that extending them indefinitely is a good response to hard economic times.
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Scott
I was just going by the list from the Feds re the safety net. You’re obviously free to include whatever you think.
I guess I’m wondering about things like safety net programs for people who actually do work. I don’t have time to look it up but I think I read that 40% of Walmart workers receive healthcare for their families through Medicaid and I think it was 10% of them are on food stamps. And that’s just Walmart. I was behind a couple with two small children at the grocery store the other day and he was cashing his Walmart paycheck and using WIC to purchase some of their groceries. That’s just sad IMO.
As wages go down, or remain stagnant, the safety net grows. Obviously the war on poverty hasn’t worked, but until wages rise or the cost of living goes down we’re stuck. A very large percentage of the population is really just barely getting by and most of them actually do work.
It’s convenient to blame the “do gooders” with good intentions for the mess but I believe the issue is much larger and is related to the causes of income inequality and the changes in the economy that are more related to trade, a global economy, loss of manufacturing, technical advances, decline of unions etc. etc. all of which have depressed wages. I’m not sure if those were either unforeseen or unintentional.
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lms;
I don’t have time to look it up but I think I read that 40% of Walmart workers receive healthcare for their families through Medicaid and I think it was 10% of them are on food stamps.
To be sure, when the government provides such benefits, it will have distorting effects on the labor and wage market. As an employer, why should I offer benefits to employees that they can get from the government at no cost to me (or them)?
Obviously the war on poverty hasn’t worked…
I suppose that depends on what “worked” means. If measured strictly by a standard of living, I imagine it has “worked” very well…poor people live much better today than they did in 1950. But there have definitely been societal costs and consequences which, if factored in, makes it appear to have worked less well.
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Hi Kevin, I hope you remain employed and if not, that you find something else very soon. Unemployment sucks but it’s better than nothing.
UI benefits weren’t extended indefinitely btw. The most was 99 weeks and those have mostly been rolled back now. It was only because of the recession that the typical 26 weeks were viewed as inadequate.
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@jnc4p: ” It’s no longer about just being unable to work, now it encompasses unwilling to work.”
There have always been those unwilling to work, they just weren’t subsidized by the government. Generally, they lived off family, spouses, children, parents or lovers. Or some combination.
Eligibility for enough benefits to subsist comfortably is not a minor achievement, and requires some effort. Trying collecting FEMA relief or qualifying for disability, to name two: mountains of paper work, and repeated delays and refusals that must be appealed. I think, perhaps, government entitlement programs may provide a disincentive to productive work, which may be the more destructive characteristic. Subsidizing those who would otherwise live off others might benefit the others they would otherwise attempt to live off of, to a net positive effect of allowing them to be productive and not spend their productive time dealing with mooches.
For others, it may distract them from doing productive work, with the idea that they can work the system, access free money, or simply that the effort involved in collecting entitlement money is the shortest route to guaranteed subsistence.
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I think, perhaps, government entitlement programs may provide a disincentive to productive work,
The answer is to incentivize work. The minimum wage is falling in real dollars well below what it was in the 50s and 60s. The maximum benefit for SS-DI is about 14k a year plus medical care (not an insubstantial cross-incentive if you are disabled and need medical care).
Most minimum and near-minimum wage jobs are in high-touch localized positions such as food service and construction. It’s very difficult to outsource these jobs so keeping wages low only makes that safety hammock look more attractive.
The offshoring and hollowing out of the American manufacturing base has been very lucrative for corporations but has decimated Rust Belt communities. There’s where you can look for consequences, unintended and otherwise.
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yello:
The offshoring and hollowing out of the American manufacturing base has been very lucrative for corporations but has decimated Rust Belt communities. There’s where you can look for consequences, unintended and otherwise.
To be sure, the globalization of the economy, and the resulting increase in the supply of low-skill workers, has had a negative impact on such workers in the US who once enjoyed higher demand for their labor than they do now. On the other hand, consumers have benefited enormously.
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@lmsinca: I thought some people collected up to 126 weeks of unemployment, in some cases . . . thus my “indefinite” comment. Yeah, I think Tennessee is back to 26 weeks. Which I will definitely start collecting, should I find myself unemployed. 😉
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Kevin, either way it wasn’t indefinite. They started rolling back based upon the unemployment rate in the state.
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Or they could pay their employees more and/or offer benefits like Costco does because it’s a good way to treat your employees.
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lms:
Or they could pay their employees more and/or offer benefits like Costco does because it’s a good way to treat your employees.
Costco has an entirely different business model. And of course the employees are certainly free to go get a job at Costco if they want to. But from an economic perspective, if the benefits that one can get from employment at Walmart plus government programs is equal to the benefits one can get from employment at Costco, then one should be indifferent to the two choices. (The convenience factor of getting all benefits at one place is, I suppose, worth something). This is exactly what I meant when I referred to the distorting effects of government programs on wage and labor markets.
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“The answer is to incentivize work.”
stop taxing labor 🙂
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On the other hand, consumers have benefited enormously.
Absolutely. And that is an argument WalMart has made in their defense when they are accused of destroying small town businesses and lowering the labor market. But an increased load on the social services network is a consequence. The net benefit/cost includes a lot of intangibles that might not necessarily be reflected in a purely economic analysis.
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yello:
But an increased load on the social services network is a consequence.
The load that is taken on by the social services network is determined politically, not by Walmart or any other business.
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Scott,
this
the distorting effects of government programs on wage and labor markets.
and this
To be sure, the globalization of the economy, and the resulting increase in the supply of low-skill workers, has had a negative impact on such workers in the US who once enjoyed higher demand for their labor than they do now.
as you said.
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lms:
this…and this…as you said.
I don’t understand your point.
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@yellojkt: “Absolutely. And that is an argument WalMart has made in their defense when they are accused of destroying small town businesses and lowering the labor market. ”
To some extent, I agree with WalMart’s argument. The problem is, when they move in to destroy the small businesses, they carry everything the small businesses do. Then they stop, as cost analysis indicates they’ll make more profit carrying more of what people buy more often and less of what they buy less often. And at first, they usually bring jobs to an area, often in excess of what is destroyed, but then start the bean counting and figure they can make more with less labor . . . whether it’s the free market or the social safety net, there seems to be a sweet spot that we, as human beings, always overshoot.
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Scott
Both of the things you said are true and in addition, I imagine there are other reasons why there are growing numbers of people stuck in poverty and both working and collecting benefits of some sort at the same time.
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lms:
Ah…got it.
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Scott
If I’m not arguing with you I guess it just doesn’t make any sense………….hahaha
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lms:
If I’m not arguing with you I guess it just doesn’t make any sense………….hahaha
Exactly! I was trying to place it into a context in which you were telling me I am wrong. Couldn’t figure it out.
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Somewhat related.
(Reuters) – Republican budget-cutters joined Democratic defenders of food stamps to defeat the $500 billion, five-year farm bill backed by GOP leaders on Thursday.
Agriculture Committee chairman Frank Lucas said there may not be a second chance to write a farm bill this year. Lucas’ bill called for the largest cuts in food stamps in a generation.
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Well, you were partially right for a change. Normally you’re all wrong.
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lms:
Normally you’re all wrong.
I try to be predictable.
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This was an interesting thread I thought. I’m going to try to put something up tomorrow but we’re still busy getting our big order out the door. The truck’s coming tomorrow to load up the pallets…………………so yay. The money hit our account today so yayer…………..haha
Anyway, I’m playing catch up on other work so may not get to a post but I will try.
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OT: Anyone else watching Boardwalk Empire? I just started going through them, in anticipation of cutting off HBO as a budgetary strategy (get my money’s worth) and have gotten addicted. Good stuff! But I don’t think I’d want to watch the show one episode a week . . . Also, anyone else watching season 4 of Arrested Development on Netflix?
OT, like I said.
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Kevin:
Also, anyone else watching season 4 of Arrested Development on Netflix?
I am. Not as funny as I hoped. I can’t put my finger on exactly why, but I think it has lost its edge.
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KW, I am not doing the first, but will probably do the second at some time. I also think the Netflix American version of “House of Cards” has been worth the effort.
I don’t have HBO.
And the Spurs lost.
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ScottC:
I enjoyed it, but, dang, you have to watch it one after the other to see jokes pay off, and to follow remotely what’s going on.
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Kevin:
Maybe that is my problem. I haven’t watched more than two at a time. Plus Portia DiRossi’s nose job is distracting me.
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NoVA, completely random question for you (or jnc, although I think he’s on vacation). How in the world did VA end up with that southern end of the Delmarva peninsula?
And is it just me, or does the MD state border look like the result of a drunken surveyor?
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does the MD state border look like the result of a drunken surveyor?
Um, that would be the famous Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon as in the Line named after them. And immortalized in the Thomas Pynchon novel and the Mark Knopfler song:
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Inspired by this thread I went and watched episodes 3 and 4 of the new Arrested Development. I particularly disliked the Portia De Rossi episode. Her character is the one on the show I like the least. Supposedly it picks up starting with Episode 5.
But I still have Elementary on DVR, The Wire on DVD and House of Cards on Netflix to watch. Plus there’s this show starring that fat guy who just died which I hear is pretty good.
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yello: uh, no. The Mason-Dixon line is at least straight. I mean the border that starts in the NW corner and does a drunken sailor’s walk over to the Chesapeake Bay.
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It’s mostly the Potomac River. Fun fact: Maryland owns the entire river. Virginia starts at the south bank.
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OK, now that makes sense. I’ll have to look at my maps more closely.
I can imagine that the western part of MD is very different than the B’more area.
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The way to make the government spend less money on poverty programs is to raise the minimum wage. It should be double or triple what it is now.
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YJ, I am really dubious. If we had a serious minwage covenant within NAFTA, or one within WT, or one with Europe, or one with all English speaking nations, I would feel more comfortable with it.
I think there is no harm raising the minwage to exactly what the prevailing entry wage is in every field. Over time, minwage lags. But raising it above prevailing entry wage would probably speed automation of that position, if it cannot be outsourced. In one sense that would be good. e.g., robot janitors would probably have to be overseen, maintained, rebooted. The overseers would be more highly paid than the minwage in any event.
American industrial production is still the highest in the world, YJ, but we do it with fewer humans who have higher skills. We actually have not slipped in industrial output in thirty years. It is just that the repetitive functions have been replaced by machines. And the remaining workers have both the machine’s skill and the ability to run and fix the machine.
This is also why the thirty per cent of 19 YOs without HS diplomas [every year since 1974, I think without exception] is the great waste of self in the individual sense and of human resources in the national sense. A higher level of literacy and numeracy at the low end, IMO, would have far better long term effects than raising the minwage above prevailing entry level [beats community college drum again].
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if it cannot be outsourced. In one sense that would be good. e.g., robot janitors would probably have to be overseen, maintained, rebooted. The overseers would be more highly paid than the minwage in any event.
Like in manufacturing, I would like to see fewer higher wage jobs. You see this effect already with self-check-out (which I abhor but grudgingly use) But most jobs which can be automated already have. Many minimum wage jobs are high-touch and localized and not easily outsourced. There is no machine which will clean a hotel room or mow a lawn. Yet.
A higher level of literacy and numeracy at the low end, IMO, would have far better long term effects than raising the minwage above prevailing entry level [beats community college drum again].
Yes. But that is a cultural thing. Also we have outsourced training as most places won’t hire people without certain certifications or skills. I work right next to a for-profit tech institute and the place is full of trainees in scrubs all the time. These programs are not cheap and the jobs they get afterwards are not necessarily highly remunerative. We need to flood the fields and raise the boats in the basin a little.
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yello:
The way to make the government spend less money on poverty programs is to raise the minimum wage
Which is just another way of saying “The way to make the government spend less money on poverty programs is to force someone else pay for them.”
It should be double or triple what it is now.
Why not increase it by a factor of 10 or 20 or 50? Hell, maybe we can get full employment if we raise it high enough. (snicker)
From the article:
In a capitalist system, rising inequality creates a death spiral of falling demand that ultimately takes everyone down.
That is simply not true as a matter of principle. Growth in the income of one person will increase inequality but does not reduce the demand of those whose income has not risen. The only time that rising income inequality would result in reduced demand would be if the inequality came from the result of falling income at the low end, not rising income at the high end.
No one earning the current minimum wage of about $15,000 per year can aspire to live decently, much less raise a family. As a result, almost all workers subsisting on those low earnings need panoply of taxpayer-supported benefits, including the earned income tax credit, food stamps, Medicaid or housing subsidies. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal government spent $316 billion on programs designed to help the poor in 2012.
The trouble is, this actually describes very few workers. Of the 73.9 million people who earn an hourly wage, 95% of them already earn more than the current minimum wage. Of the 3.9 million who earn the minimum wage or less, half of them are between the ages of 16 and 24 and most of these younger workers, 62%, are actually enrolled in school for most of the year. The average family income of min wage workers is $53,000, while the average family wage of this younger half (16-24) is over $65,000 a year.
In short, the minimum wage worker he is describing is not your typical minimum wage worker.
That means the current $7.25 minimum wage forces taxpayers to subsidize Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) and other large employers, effectively socializing their labor costs.
This is a rhetorical deception. (In other words, it is a lie.) The subsidy that taxpayers are forced to pay is the welfare payment the government gives to recipients. If what the author said was true, then every time an employer didn’t hire someone (much less pay them less than what the author wanted them to pay) who then ended up on welfare, that employer could be said to be “forcing” taxpayers to subsidize his business. Which is of course totally and utterly absurd.
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Which is just another way of saying “The way to make the government spend less money on poverty programs is to force someone else pay for them.”
The other person doesn’t have to pay for it. They could just refuse to hire a person. But if they do so it should be at level that does not inflict a externality on society.
The trouble is, this actually describes very few workers. Of the 73.9 million people who earn an hourly wage, 95% of them already earn more than the current minimum wage. Of the 3.9 million who earn the minimum wage or less, half of them are between the ages of 16 and 24 and most of these younger workers, 62%, are actually enrolled in school for most of the year.
These are great stats, but they mask a lot of economic reality. 16-24 covers a lot of territory. Plenty of 24 year olds (and more than a few 16 year olds) are already raising families. These are not all just high school kids working for gas money. It also means half of the minimum wage earners are older than this.
But by focusing on the very bottom of the tail, you neglect the huge number of people who are making hourly wages which are still near poverty level, i.e. the $8-$12 range which is the vast majority of food service, hospitality, and retail workers. Making $8 an hour instead of $7.25 is still not a path to the middle class.
Why not increase it by a factor of 10 or 20 or 50? Hell, maybe we can get full employment if we raise it high enough. (snicker)
I find this the most annoying knee-jerk rebuttal. Why not halve the minimum wage and get full employment that way? The current minimum wage is in a fairly inelastic part of the demand curve. Raising it is a fairly straight forward way of reducing societal inequality without unduly impacting the ability of the uber-rich to avoid tax increases.
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Raising it is a fairly straight forward way of reducing societal inequality
I think that’s the wrong goal. providing for the basics, I get. beyond that?
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yello:
But if they do so it should be at level that does not inflict a externality on society.
This is the rhetorical deception I was talking about. Paying someone less than some government determined amount does not “inflict” anything on society. The “externality” that is “inflicted” on society is the governmental decision to make welfare payments. Welfare payments are not a naturally occurring phenomenon that result inexorably from actions of employers. They are a choice made by government.
Imagine an unemployed person who is collecting from various government welfare programs. Then one day he gets hired by Walmart at the current minimum wage (or even below) which means he will collect something less from the government in benefits than he was getting before he was employed. In fact by paying this person any wage at all the employer is decreasing the burden that the government has itself chosen to take on. But in your bizarro world, this is characterized as “inflicting” an additional burden on government. Makes no sense to me at all.
Plenty of 24 year olds (and more than a few 16 year olds) are already raising families.
Well, according to Heritage, of all 16-24 year old min wage earners, 68% of them have a family income of greater than 150% of the poverty level. Only 22% of them have family incomes below the poverty level. This suggests to me that the vast majority are, as one would imagine, kids still living with their parents and working part-time or entry level jobs. In any event, the relatively small absolute numbers belie the notion these people represent the economic juggernaut your link claims.
But by focusing on the very bottom of the tail you neglect the huge number of people who are making hourly wages which are still near poverty level, i.e. the $8-$12 range which is the vast majority of food service, hospitality, and retail workers.
Feel free to introduce stats for this demographic, if you like.
Making $8 an hour instead of $7.25 is still not a path to the middle class.
I think that depends entirely on the circumstances of the person making the money. And, BTW, “middle class” is defined by the existence of a “lower class”. It is a simple fact of reality that, short of efforts to make everyone equally poor (which, God knows, has definitely been tried in several places), not everyone can be “middle class”.
Why not halve the minimum wage and get full employment that way?
I’m not sure it would spur full employment but it certainly would help.
Raising it is a fairly straight forward way of reducing societal inequality without unduly impacting the ability of the uber-rich to avoid tax increases.
As the demographics of those who earn min wage suggest, the min wage may not in fact be a very good measure of “societal inequality”. But I’d also say that if the point is to “reduce societal inequality”, then be upfront and just say so. Don’t hide behind a veil of “for the good of the economy and capitalism”, as your link did.
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But I’d also say that if the point is to “reduce societal inequality”, then be upfront and just say so. Don’t hide behind a veil of “for the good of the economy and capitalism”, as your link did.
They are congruent goals. Reduction of societal inequality is good for the economy. That was part of the point of the article.
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yello:
Reduction of societal inequality is good for the economy. That was part of the point of the article.
That was certainly the claim of the article, but it was hardly established and is questionable as a matter of principle. There is no reason to think that an increase in your income will decrease my consumption.
Having adult children living in their parents’ house because they can’t afford to move out is a bad indicator, not a good one.
You have introduced an assumption here, “because they can’t afford to move out”, that is not necessarily justified. And even in situations where it is justified, it is not necessarily a “bad indicator”. My daughter turned 18 a few weeks ago. She will work this summer for minimum wage. She is now an “adult child living at home”. She definitely cannot afford to move out. I will be paying for her to move out (to school) for the next 4 years. She may even work for minimum wage while at school. This is not a “bad indicator” implying that the world would be better off if she earned more than the minimum wage (although I most definitely would be better off).
The question, of course, is whether my daughter’s situation is more reflective of the average young adult minimum wage earner or whether the situation of the 19 year old supporting a wife and 2 kids while living in his parents basement is more reflective of the average minimum wage earner. The stats (62% if 16-24 year olds earning min wage are enrolled in school, only 5% are married) suggest the former, not the latter.
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I’d like to know where this figure came from.
The average family income of min wage workers is $53,000
A family of four with two adults working full time min wage jobs and two underage children would only be slightly over $30,000 in actual gross wages. The only way to get to $53,000 is to factor in benefits such as TANF, WIC, Section 8 housing and or EITC, or another source of income.
The piece that Scott quotes also states that people work part-time by choice which is definitely not true in many cases. In this economy with the cost of employer provided health care benefits, it’s much cheaper to hire three part time employees than two full time employees. Even better to farm out the work to independent contractors and make them responsible for their own payroll taxes such as SS and Medicare etc. You can even escape Unemployment and Worker’s Comp insurance by using temp agency workers.
Unfortunately raising the min. wage too much won’t help any of these situations.
I agree the minimum wage needs to go up but I do think there is a point where it will harm more people needing low level or entry level jobs than it will help. It’s an employer’s market right now and has been for quite awhile. As long as unemployment remains around 7% the workers are pretty much at a disadvantage.
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lms:
The only way to get to $53,000 is to factor in benefits such as TANF, WIC, Section 8 housing and or EITC, or another source of income.
The other sources of income being that of parents. The point is that a large portion of min wage earners are young people from middle class and upper class families still living at home. Min wage workers are not, by definition, necessarily poor.
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Which is just another way of saying “The way to make the government spend less money on poverty programs is to force someone else pay for them.”
Privatization–isn’t that what conservatives want in the first place?
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Growth in the income of one person will increase inequality but does not reduce the demand of those whose income has not risen. The only time that rising income inequality would result in reduced demand would be if the inequality came from the result of falling income at the low end, not rising income at the high end.
I don’t see how you can possibly make this claim.
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Scott, my point is that a family of four with two parents working minimum wage are making considerably less. I’d like to know if that median income of $53,000 includes their welfare benefits. That was my point.
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lms:
I’d like to know if that median income of $53,000 includes their welfare benefits.
I don’t know. It is footnoted as coming from this site, but I can’t figure out how to see whether it includes that or not.
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The point is that a large portion of min wage earners are young people from middle class and upper class families still living at home.
Having adult children living in their parents’ house because they can’t afford to move out is a bad indicator, not a good one.
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The point is that a large portion of min wage earners are young people from middle class and upper class families still living at home. Min wage workers are not, by definition, necessarily poor.
(1) I don’t think that’s true
(2) You’re missing the point repeatedly
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“median income of $53,000 includes their welfare benefits. That was my point.”
I don’t think benefits like at are included. but i’d have to double check
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Nova, I’m not saying it does, I’d like to know if it does. If we’re going to determine median income for a family of four when discussing the effects of a low minimum wage I’d like to know more. I didn’t think Scott’s link did that great of a job giving us the entire scope of how they arrived at those numbers.
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Look at table 1 in this link (Scott’s). It’s called demographic of minimum wage earners.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/02/who-earns-the-minimum-wage-suburban-teenagers-not-single-parents#_edn5
Median family income is stated as being a little over $53,000. For a family of four you’d either have to have someone in the family earning quite a bit more than min wage and maybe one or more full or part-time min wage workers to perhaps qualify for inclusion. Otherwise you’d need nearly four min wage full time workers to meet that $53,000 mark. I think it’s misleading in what it tells us unless they’re also including benefits of welfare in the mix.
Generally a family of four is understood as two adults and two dependents, so at least one of those two adults would need to be earning more than min wage and the 16-24 year old is still a dependent. What does it tell us really about poverty and the min wage then?
They’ve pulled from census data but I don’t have time to go through all of it to try to figure out what their exact parameters are. We all know how conclusions based on cherry picked statistics go.
Edit, I can’t figure it out either Scott.
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lms:
I think it’s misleading in what it tells us unless they’re also including benefits of welfare in the mix.
I actually think it is enlightening, not misleading. Again, use my daughter for an example. She is 18, living in my house, and earning minimum wage. She is not some poverty stricken young adult living in squalor because she can only earn minimum wage. The average household income figure will include my income, as it should. My daughter’s situation is most definitely not an argument for a higher minimum wage.
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right — i follow you. i’m not sure either
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Here are two sources on minimum wage and low-wage earners:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics focuses exclusively on minimum wage (and ironically lower) workers.
Fun excerpt:
The Economic and Policy Institute (an unabashedly pro-wage increase group) uses older numbers but includes near-minimum wage earners.According to them, many low-wage workers live in low-income households (which sounds like a tautology, Scott’s protests to the contrary).
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yello:
According to them, many low-wage workers live in low-income households (which sounds like a tautology, Scott’s protests to the contrary).
Well, “many” and “low-income” do not exactly provide clarity. But what you just quoted does say that most (ie more than two-thirds) of them live in households with income greater than $25k. Not quite the makings of your desired tautology.
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Scott, the link I read is a basically a refutation of the minimum wage and how it affects or doesn’t affect poverty. They’re including 16 year olds first of all, college students second of all and skewing the numbers to indicate that there just aren’t that many people supporting families on minimum wage jobs. That’s fine as far as it goes but these are not the people living in poverty.
And I was also wondering just for argument’s sake what income was included. That’s all. I’m not a proponent of tripling or even doubling the minimum wage so I’m not actually saying there’s no place for young people to work at that level while in school and living at home or away at school. I actually think there should be sort of a paid intern type wage for them that is separate from a minimum wage for adult able bodied workers……………….but that’s just me.
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In 2012, 6 percent of women paid hourly rates had wages at or below the prevailing federal minimum, compared with about 3 percent of men.
Some of those are probably wait people. They generally get about 1/2 minimum wage due to tipping.
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