Worþy Reads: 2021-09-17 Fr
An early look at my weekly read-around at Equitable Growth
From Equitable Growth:
1) The stakes involved in pushing the reconciliation bill to the goalposts are very large indeed:
Alix Gould-Werth & Sam Abbott: Congressional Investments in Social Infrastructure Would Support Immediate & Long-Term U.S. Economic Growth: ‘President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda…. The potential to reshape the U.S. economy…. Supporting workers and families with investments in care infrastructure, including a comprehensive paid family and medical leave program and increased investment in early care and education, as well as income supports, such as a permanent fully refundable Child Tax Credit and structural reforms to the Unemployment Insurance program. Common sense, as well as a robust body of research, suggests these investments would improve workers’ and families’ personal well-being, especially for families of color…. But policymakers should not lose sight of the economywide impact these investments will have as well…. The Washington Center for Equitable Growth has released four factsheets summarizing the research evidence that demonstrates the economic growth potential of key programs and areas considered in the Fiscal Year 2022 budget reconciliation process…
2) This will, I think, be our best policy conference yet—if only because America now has huge amounts of running room given the chaos caused by the plague and by the ongoing disruptions of American politics I believe its aftermath is likely to bring:
Maryam Janani-Flores, Kate Bahn, &Carmen Sanchez Cumming: Equitable Growth’s 2021 Policy Conference Features Key Speakers & Panelists Discussing Inclusive U.S. Economic Growth After The Coronavirus Recession: ‘The coronavirus pandemic… revealed underlying systemic fragility driven by longstanding economic inequalities and structural racism. More expansive, more transformative, and more equitable economic policies have helped power a far more rapid recovery, compared to the years following the Great Recession…. Economic policy challenges provide an opportunity for policymakers to rebuild a more resilient and inclusive U.S. economy and society. In a nutshell, this is what is on our agenda at our virtual policy conference, “Equitable Growth 2021: Evidence for a Stronger Economic Future,” on Monday and Tuesday, September 20–21…. Pathbreaking leadership and cutting-edge scholarship that recognizes how a stronger economic future is built on the linkages between racial justice, climate resilience, access to care and family economic security, financial stability, and rebalancing power, so that all can share in the gains of economic growth. Headlining the conference in a series of fireside chats and remarks are the new Equitable Growth President and CEO Michelle Holder, U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh, U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Michigan State University economist and Equitable Growth Steering Committee member Lisa Cook, University of California, San Diego assistant finance professor Carlos Fernando Avenancio-León, and Marketplace host and correspondent Kimberly Adams. Notable panelists are featured in our four panel sessions, taking place in two concurrent blocks on the second day of the conference, focused on the key economic questions…
3) Yes, global warming is going to have brutal effects across a wide range. Here is one slice:
Michael Garvey: Excessive Heat Harms U.S. Workers Unequally as the Safety Risks from Climate Change Soar: ‘Jisung Park… Nora Pankratz… and A. Patrick Behrer… the growing safety risks of excessive heat…. On days with highs of 90 degrees Fahrenheit, workplace injuries increase by 6 percent to 9 percent, compared to a day in the 50–60-degree F temperature range, while days of 100 F or higher increase injuries by 10 percent to 15 percent…. Hotter temperatures caused approximately 260,000 to 450,000 additional unreported heat related injuries in California over the period between 2001–2018, or roughly 15,000 to 25,000 per year. They estimate the socioeconomic costs of these injuries are on the order of $525 million to $875 million per year…. Human physical and cognitive performance to be highly sensitive to heat…. Hotter temperatures significantly increase injuries in predominantly outdoor industries, such as agriculture, utilities, and construction. But higher temperatures also increase injuries in some industries where work typically occurs indoors. In manufacturing, for instance, a day with highs above 95 degrees Fahrenheit increases injury risk by approximately 7 percent, relative to a day in the low–60s F. In wholesale, the effect is nearly 10 percent…. The effect of heat on injuries is significantly larger for men relative to women and for younger workers relative to older ones. Men appear to be at least three times more affected by heat-related workplace safety risks, compared to women, and workers in their 20s and 30s are approximately two times more affected than those in their 50s and 60s…
4) I have long thought that the social-policy literatures and the management literatures need to connect with each other, which they currently do not. And the figure of Peter F. Drucker would, I think, be a good place to begin:
Brad Delong: Peter F. Drucker: ‘The professional manager has not one job, but three…an entrepreneurial job, a job of moving resources from yesterday into tomorrow… of maximizing opportunity. Then there is a managerial or ‘administrative’ job of… human resources…making strengths productive and weaknesses irrelevant which is the purpose of organization…. Then there is a third function…. They are public. They are visible. They represent…. Managers have a public function… Royal Commissions… the local Boy Scout troop… within their own business by leadership and example. But they always do discharge it…. Managers are on the stage, with the spotlight on them…’
The young Peter F. Drucker was one of the more more interesting young moral philosophers in early 1900s Vienna all of whom brushed up against one another—alongside Karl & Michael Polanyi, their fascist cousin Odon Pol, Victor Adler, Josef Schumpeter, Karl Popper, Friedrich von Hayek, and many more. Drucker, however, then when came to the United States followed a very different trajectory. He became the U.S.’s BOSS management consultant and managerial theorist. But he remained someone who always hunted the same game as the Polanyis, von Hayek, Schumpeter and company. Pinned between Schumpeter, von Hayek, Karl Polanyi, and the shadow of Karl Marx, Peter F. Drucker sought his reconciliation of the antinomies of modern industrial society in the figure of the manager, whose social role was precisely to arrange things so that society could be an “association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development all”.
Drucker’s manager is the trustee of civilization, a member of a Michael Polanyian-type priestly profession in which one works not so much for one’s principals as for the smooth, efficient operation of the system as a whole in a way that makes sense to and reconciles the interests of all stakeholders: freedom and community, efficiency and equity, order and disruption are then reconciled through the judgments and values of this particular honorable professional caste of managers…
LINK: <https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1421190242195759105.html>
From Elsewhere:
1) This is a survey that I participated in. I find myself not far from the center of gravity. I think the Fed is likely to raise interest rates in the second half of next year, I think that is likely to be a mistake, and I think that Jay Powell will be nominated for a second term as Fed Chair.
FT-IGM Survey: Economists Predict Us Interest Rate Rise in 2022: ‘Economists predict US interest rate rise in 2022…. More than 80% of economists surveyed expect Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell to be renominated… Just over 70 per cent of respondents believe the Fed will raise rates by at least a quarter of a percentage point in 2022, with almost 20 per cent expecting the move to come in the first six months of the year…. To be in a position to raise rates in 2022, most of the 49 economists polled in the FT-IGM US Macroeconomists Survey expect the Fed to soon reveal its plans to begin reducing or “tapering” its programme of $120bn a month in bond purchases and complete the process by next year….
The survey results, collected between September 3 and September 8, match up closely with the views put forward by more “hawkish” members of the Fed’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, who worry about soaring consumer prices and contend that the US economy can withstand less support…. The economists, who cited further supply disruptions as a top hazard, raised their median year-end forecast for the Fed’s preferred inflation measurement — core personal consumption expenditures, or PCE — to 3.7 per cent, up from 3 per cent in June. Almost 70 per cent also said it was “somewhat” or “very” likely this gauge would still exceed 2 per cent on a year-over-year basis by the end of 2022…. The unemployment rate is expected to stay stubbornly high this year, with economists’ median estimate at 4.9 per cent for December. As of last month it hovered at 5.2 per cent….
“They will make a macro error [and] raise rates too soon,” said panellist Danny Blanchflower, an economist at Dartmouth University and a former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee…. Another risk, according to Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University, is a repeat of the destabilising 2013 “taper tantrum”…. Chair Jay Powell…. More than 80 per cent of the economists surveyed expect him to be renominated, while 18 per cent believe governor Lael Brainard will be appointed.
LINK: <https://www.ft.com/content/0a7a4edd-b656-4d6a-b608-454241d0288e>
2) Smart thoughts on a very bad development. I would like to blame ex-senators Baucus and Heitkamp, but they were not the deciders here:
Alan Cole: How a Key Biden Tax Idea Got Crushed: ‘The president was forced to retreat on the key issue of step-up basis… [His] plan is now in shambles after a public revolt and a decisive push from lobbyists like former senator Heidi Heitkamp…. The step-up fight is a big deal. It’s not just an isolated, one-off item on a checklist…. Step-up basis reform is critical for raising effective tax rates on the dynastic wealth of billionaires and their families….All in all, step-up reform is valuable to Democrats and the urgency from think tanks makes sense. Even centrist or right-of-center tax wonks are looking on at the failure to repeal step-up with a bit of pity for their left-of-center counterparts…. This lobbying blitz forced a total retreat.
The retreat seems hasty to me; a sufficiently moderate version of step-up repeal with a high exemption could probably evade most criticism. But a moderate provision might still have drawn ire without adding much revenue. “They were gonna get attacked no matter what they did, and the higher the exemption was, the less it was worth enduring those attacks,” Ritz tells me. “It’s a damn shame.”… In many polls, not to mention actual votes in Congress, estate taxes tend to fare poorly. Tax historians like Joe Thorndike and pro-estate tax academics like Michael Graetz have put a great deal of thought into why this is, and why Republican strategies have been so successful…. Members of the public are not always engaged or sophisticated in their tax policy views, but they can get surprisingly animated about particular issues of fairness, even as they ignore others…
LINK: <https://fullstackeconomics.com/how-a-key-biden-tax-idea/>
3) What happened in Wuhan in the fall of 2019 is frustratingly obscure. This is, I think, a useful and sober take on what we know and what we do not:
Natasha Loder: The November Story: ’China’s account of what happened in Wuhan is incomplete. So too are the accounts of foreign scientists and the American government…. Last month the Biden intelligence review into the origin of covid–19…. Four parts of the intelligence community (IC) and the National Intelligence Council assess with low confidence that initial infection was most likely by natural exposure to an infected animal infected with SARS-COV–2 itself—or a virus that was 99% similar. However one element of the IC dissents. It assesses with moderate confidence that the first human infection was the result of a laboratory-associated incident. This would be either experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)…. The IC in America comprises 18 organisations of varying sizes. The Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency are the most important. Reading this report, then, what we don’t know is how important this dissenting branch of the IC is. Is it a dinky, obscure bit of the IC, or is it a big powerful part? Without knowing this we can’t say if there is a standoff among equals or something else entirely.
It would be a mistake to assume the report said nothing. In fact, the IC agrees... 1: the virus was not developed as a biological weapon. 2: China’s officials did not have foreknowledge of the virus before the initial outbreak emerged (i.e. it was surprised). 3: that human infection probably started with an initial small-scale exposure. 4: this happened “no later than November” (my highlight). Personally, I think it is fair to assume that these points are relatively stable knowledge in a shifting sea of storylines about what happened in Wuhan prior to the official Chinese timeline.
The Chinese timeline begins, entirely implausibly, with a single case on December 8th. The phrase “no later than November” means the outbreak could have started far earlier. But either way, America is saying that covid–19 started earlier than the Chinese say it did…
LINK: <https://overmatter .substack.com/p/the-november-story>
4) That technological disruption affects workers already in declining industries but does not harm the prospects of future entrants may be a durable lesson from the past of technological disruption and change:
James Feigenbaum & Daniel P. Gross: Automation & the Future of Young Workers: Evidence from Telephone Operation in the Early 20th Century: ‘Telephone operation, one of the most common jobs for young American women in the early 1900s, provided hundreds of thousands of female workers a pathway into the labor force. Between 1920 and 1940, AT&T adopted mechanical switching technology in more than half of the U.S. telephone network, replacing manual operation. Although automation eliminated most of these jobs, it did not affect future cohorts’ overall employment: the decline in demand for operators was counteracted by growth in both middle-skill jobs like secretarial work and lower-wage service jobs, which absorbed future generations. Using a new genealogy-based census linking method, we show that incumbent telephone operators were most impacted by automation, and a decade later were more likely to be in lower-paying occupations or have left the labor force entirely…
5) At the edge of my wheelhouse, but I do note this:
Enabling current holders of bitcoin to unload their currently valuable positions at higher prices before the crash, and blocking regulators from limiting the ability of cryptocurrency grifters to create unstable “free banking” platforms like the wildcat banks of the 1830s—those have extremely little to do with the management of the public sphere of discourse and discussion in a democracy. BitCoin is one thing. The public sphere is quite anorther.
I do not think right wing literary intellectuals crossed with modern tech crossed with products whose principal aim is to separate customers from their money without providing them anything truly useful is a good thing. Shame on the New York Timeseditorial staff for publishing this, and for having nobody on the desk who understood enough about BitCoin to even notice that it is not a “fundamentally new and better way to generate, circulate, save, and exchange wealth”:
James Poulos: How Bitcoin Can Immunize America From Cancel Culture: ‘Through its recent legal threat against Coinbase’s new interest-bearing cryptocurrency account program, the Securities and Exchange Commission has created a stir…. Industry watchers now expect the Biden administration to go on regulatory offense against cryptocurrency. What is at stake is far more serious than the mainstreaming of cryptocurrency. Facilitated by technology, financial companies’ expansion into our private lives threatens to herd Americans into a de facto social credit system that punishes them for making choices—and even voicing opinions—that the people at the controls don’t like….
The elimination of a sitting president from social media, whatever its perceived merit or rationale, opened the door to a regime where those who can cancel and suspend accounts do so at whim and in unison…. A person who finds his financial and social media accounts closed after being identified as a subversive by the government will have no legal recourse…. The regime has deep knowledge of your activity online. Think, say and do what it wants, and you are allowed to function. Deviate, and you are shut down. This is the un-American logic of the social credit system being imposed on us. Without a fundamentally new and better way to generate, circulate, save and exchange wealth, Americans will be increasingly powerless to prevent their financial system from being used to transform their country into a technological cage.
LINK: <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/15/opinion/cryptocurrency-americans-free.html>
6) The point of Critical Race Theory: don’t make African-Americans poor and excluded from networks, keep them poor and excluded from networks, then discriminate against the poor and those excluded from networks, and claim that you are not then discriminating on the basis of race:
The Negro Subversive: Critical Race Theory: ‘There are today three things floating around under the name: “Critical Race Theory‘’: The first is the original intellectual framework out of legal academia; the second is educational theorists applying this intellectual framework to the study of education; the third and most recent is a buffoonish ploy by Republicans seeking to win back Congress…. Critical Race Theory’s founders sought to understand how a society that had officially disowned racism managed to continue being racist…. To understand how law impacts society, we must understand how law exists in society, which means applying insights from… the social sciences….
What all three social objects under the name “Critical Race Theory,” have in common is the idea of politicizing the allegedly apolitical…. The social sciences… rose in the midst of various national projects and served to justify them. Their (very incomplete) transition away from this heritage has traced an arc similar to their growth toward greater objectivity. The legacy of this transition continues, as the social sciences both reflect and condition how the public thinks about society. The fault lines of the critical race theory “debate,” reflect the fault lines early social science practitioners faced as they developed their disciplines out of “social philosophy,” into social science. Recognizing that these faults still condition our thinking about the social world is crucial to recognizing what’s at stake right now…
Du Bois worked amidst a nation that had lost its founding social institution, chattel slavery; to a civil war, and was now reforging its “bonds of affection,” over the battered bodies of a Black “nation within a nation.”… Weber did his work as Germany was willed into being out of a melange of German speaking states, forcing him to grapple with the basic “stuff,” of nationality. Durkheim was a French Jew whose French nationalism was challenged by an affair that brought ardent anti-semitism forth out of the center of French nationality…
LINK: <https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/guest-post-vic-bradley-on-critical>
7) Outside my wheelhouse, but essential:
Marc Elias: My Thoughts on Manchin’s Compromise Bill: ‘When it comes to voting rights, being asked to compromise is typically a warning sign. There is no middle ground between the arsonist and the firefighter…. Joe Manchin… Freedom to Vote Act… a surprisingly good voting rights bill. It reflects a sobriety and understanding of the challenges facing voters that is worthy of its lofty name. It is not just a reformulation of the prior For the People Act, but in many places, it is an improvement…. What makes this new bill exceptional, however, is its attention to several small, but important details… count provisional ballots cast by eligible voters in the wrong precinct but in the correct county… a 30-minute limit on wait times… polling locations on college campuses… prevents frivolous challenges to voter qualifications… increased protections for election workers… imposes new standards prohibiting partisan gerrymandering…. The crown jewels of the Freedom to Vote Act are contained in the judicial review provisions. The bill not only creates a specific “right to vote” in federal elections but guarantees it…. Senate Democrats, took a very big step …
LINK: <https://www.democracydocket.com/news/my-thoughts-on-manchins-compromise-bill/>
8) Also outside my wheelhouse, but as essential:
Jeet Heer: Coup and Countercoup: ‘Republicans prevented Congress from checking Trump, full stop…. As with any book written by Woodward, it’s best to exercise caution about taking at face value any things that are said by anonymous sources. These sources often offer memories to highlight their heroic role in making history, which Woodward—as a practitioner of access journalism—is all too willing to present uncritically….
Zeroing in on Trump and Milley misses the mark. The focus should be on the Republican Party and Congress. There are ample constitutional remedies for an unhinged and lawless president (impeachment and removal, the 25th amendment). These remedies are effectively moot if a political party with substantial seats in congress ties itself to a mad captain, as the GOP did under Trump. The real story here is the dereliction of duty by congress, powered by GOP partisanship. Unless those problems are tackled, the USA will be living on the edge of volcano. The likelihood of coups and countercoups will remain. As Milley himself worried, America in 2021 might be like Russia in 1905: a nation where a failed revolt prefigures a much larger social upheaval.
LINK: <https://jeetheer.substack.com/p/coup-and-countercoup>