Worþy Reads: For 2021-08-06 Fr
A preview of my weekly read-around for Equitable Growth:
Worthy Reads from Equitable Growth:
1) Coming on October 6 and 7. Register now. This has been among the very top events that I have seen. Highly recommended—and they have a very interesting virtual platform this year:
EconCon 2021: Building an Economy that Works for All of Us: ‘A virtual conference where you will hear from and connect with experts, organizers, and advocates shaping our economy. Now more than ever, we need once-in-a-generation policy changes and transformative investments in our communities. And they are possible if we can marshal the political will to enact needed policy change. Come connect, learn, and share what it will take for us to build an economy that works for all of us! EconCon is co-hosted by Center for American Progress, Center for Popular Democracy, Community Change, Dēmos, Economic Policy Institute, Economic Security Project, Groundwork Collaborative, Omidyar Network, Roosevelt Institute, and Washington Center for Equitable Growth.…
LINK: <https://econcon.com/>
2) Getting social insurance to people who need it during this plague has also entailed getting a lot of extra resources to people who really do not need it. Why? Precisely because our income support infrastructure is so weak. We could have done the income support job much more cheaply, and fairly. Not that I regret the effort. I do not regret it at all. But continuous improvement is the watchword. And there is a huge amount that we could have done beforehand, and that we could do now, to improve:
Liz Hipple & Alix Gould-Werth: Weak Income Support Infrastructure Harms U.S. Workers & Their Families & Constrains Economic Growth: ‘People in the United States access income support from a wide range of programs…. Many people who need this support are blocked from accessing it. During the COVID–19 crisis, the existing income support infrastructure has been wholly insufficient…. What is it, precisely, that stops people from accessing income supports?… Eligibility rules are too strict. Benefits are too hard to access even when people are eligible. Benefits amounts are too low…. These weaknesses in our nation’s income support system prevent the U.S. economy from reaching its full potential through lowered labor force participation, a weakened macroeconomy during economic recessions, and underinvestment in the human capital of the next generation of workers…
3) Looking forward to the arrival of the next Fearless Leader for Equitable Growth:
Michelle Holder: ’What’s wrong with this picture? NOTHING! Rakeen Mabud & I out having wine with me rocking my Groundwork tee shirt!…
LINK: <<https: //twitter.com/mlholder999/status/1423031642843750406>>
4) The critical path to dealing with a plague in a globalized era always was clear: Vaccine shots in the arms of everyone on the globe as fast as possible. With that, much becomes possible. Without that, little is possible. The Trump administration was totally clueless. And the Biden administration has not been nearly as clued in to this as I would've hoped. So this summer and fall are, once again, yes, a disaster:
J. Bradford DeLong: The Summer of Disaster: ‘The bottom line today is the same as it was a year ago, when stage-three trials first suggested that the mRNA vaccines against COVID–19 were a huge success. The obvious next step is to cut through the bureaucracy and open the money spigots to mobilize as many resources as are needed to get high-quality vaccines into every arm in the world as fast as possible. We can sort out the financing and regulatory approval issues later. It has been a full year since the biotech wizards gave us the tools that we need to beat the virus. Why are we still in the situation we are?…
Worthy Reads from Elsewhere:
1) at least Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson recognizes that his anti-mask grandstanding of the spring was criminal malfeasance on his part. The contrast with Florida governor DeSantis is clear:
Richard Fausset: As Virus Cases Spike in Arkansas, the Governor Backtracks on Masks: ‘Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed a law banning mask mandates. Now he wants to unravel it…. Hutchinson, a relatively moderate Republican, did not see much harm in it at the time. “Our cases were at a very low point,” he recalled in a news conference on Tuesday. However, he added, “In hindsight, I wish that it had not become law.”… Hutchinson has backtracked, and is now urging state legislators to undo part of the law so school districts may adopt mask mandates before students return to their classrooms en masse…
LINK: <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/us/covid-arkansas-mask-mandate.html?referringSource=articleShare>
2) The initial RCT results on the effectiveness and safety of the mRNA platform anti-plague vaccines were so totally, completely, ridiculously good. And these results have held up over the past nine months. Truly we had extraordinary luck, and skill, on our side here, in this narrow sector. Much kudos to the biowizards of BioNTech, Pfizer, and Moderna here:
Fernando P. Polack & al. for the C4591001 Clinical Trial Group: Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid–19 Vaccine: ’A total of 43,548 participants underwent randomization, of whom 43,448 received injections: 21,720 with BNT162b2 and 21,728 with placebo. There were 8 cases of Covid–19 with onset at least 7 days after the second dose among participants assigned to receive BNT162b2 and 162 cases [with onset at least 7 days after the second dose] among those assigned to placebo…
LINK: <https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2034577>
3) And the recovery is now firing on, if not all, at least half the cylinders. Now I have my fingers crossed that we can manage the Delta variant outbreak—which probably means: delay it as long as we can to give the vaccine-resistant a better chance when Delta knocks on their noses, as it will:
Joe Weisenthal: July Non-Farm Payrolls Liveblog: ‘Numbers at a Glance: July payrolls report shows a gain of 943,000 jobs versus an 870,000 median estimate in a Bloomberg survey. That also compares with a revised-upward June figure 938,000. Unemployment rate sank to 5.4% versus 5.7% projection. Year-over-year average hourly earnings growth advanced to 4.0%; estimate was 3.9%. Labor force participation rate met the projection of 61.7%…. Leisure and hospitality workers getting 6.6% annualized wage growth (on a 24-month basis)…. Yes, prices of many goods have risen faster than people have expected, or would hope. But on the other hand, we continue to see a rapid drop in the unemployment rate, and robust wage growth. This can go a long way in helping to ameliorate a higher cost of living. All this being said, there’s still a big hole to climb out of. As Nick Bunker at Indeed notes, we’re still down about 8 million jobs from where we should be…. S&P futures are up 0.13%, while the 10-year yield is rising to just under 1.27%. In addition to the solid numbers for July, revisions were also quite solid, with June’s payroll growth changed upward from 850K to 938K….. The spread of the delta variant has raised new concerns about the extent and pace of the recovery, particularly as it relates to “normalization” of consumption and work patterns. Meanwhile, the economy is still facing supply chain and inflationary stresses…
4) But do not overestimate how healthy the economy is. We are still down 8 million jobs:
Nick Bunker: ‘Lots to like, but let’s hope the Delta variant does disrupt this great progress we’re seeing…. Reminder: we’re seeing strong payroll gains, but we’re still down over 8 million jobs from where we would have been absent the pandemic…. The rise in employment came from both a rise in job finding and a decline in job losing. Really excited to see that pick up in job finding! And involuntary part-time work dropped as well!…. Another strong month of payroll gains for low average wage industries. But employment there still down 6.8%…
LINK: <https:// twitter.com/nick_bunker/status/1423625810162950144>
5) 60 years of Republican politicians thinking that they will use the base by pandering to them, and they still have not learned about the problem of the sorcerer’s apprentice:
David Frum: ’Republican anti-vaxxism offers a fascinating study of relationship between right-wing elites vs. rank-and-file. Elites first fomented anti-vax feeling for partisan purposes. They succeeded so well that they cannot/dare not now reverse. Elite leads; rank-and-file then constrain…
LINK: <https://twitter.com/AriPearlstein/status/1423622320766205955>
6) Very few people realize how profoundly il- and indeed anti-liberal John Stuart Mill could become when he shifted his gaze from the literate intellectual clerisy to the “lower orders“ of society:
John Stuart Mill: Dark Satanic Millian Liberalism: ‘Every one has a right to live…. The state… is bound… to provide that no person shall be born without its consent…. If the ordinary and spontaneous motives to self-restraint are removed, others must be substituted…. The guarantee of support could be freed from its injurious effects upon the minds and habits of the people, [only] if the relief, though ample in respect to necessaries, was accompanied with conditions which they disliked… some restraints on their freedom… privation of some indulgences… [their] condition… needs not be one of physical suffering, or the dread of it, but only of restricted indulgence, and enforced rigidity of discipline…
LINK: <https://www.bradford-delong.com/2018/05/dark-satanic-millian-liberalism-from-john-stuart-mill.html>
7) Does the Chinese Communist Party work for China’s bourgeoisie, or does China’s bourgeoisie work for the Chinese Communist Party? Under Xi Jinping the party has decided that it must take very strong steps to ensure the second. Stephen Roche thinks that the consequences for China’s economy will be devastating. I tend to agree. But I would make one more point, a point that I think is very important: the von Hayekian point that an authoritarian party that seeks to eliminate all alternative sources of societal power than itself turn first into a kleptocracy, and then into an ossified bureaucratic kleptocracy. Xi Jinping can attempt to inculcate ultimate egalitarian aspirations into the DNA of the party, but everything in history tells us that he will not succeed. Wealth flows to power and undermines egalitarian aspirations and servant leadership. Avoiding that requires the multiple sources of societal power to check one another that Leninist doctrine prohibits:
Stephen S. Roach: China’s Animal Spirits Deficit: ‘A longtime China optimist fears the recent tech crackdowns represent a tipping point: When it comes to the Chinese economy, I have been a congenital optimist for over 25 years. But now I have serious doubts. The Chinese government has taken dead aim at its dynamic technology sector, the engine of China’s New Economy. Its recent actions are symptomatic of a deeper problem: the state’s efforts to control the energy of animal spirits. The Chinese Dream, President Xi Jinping’s aspirational vision of a “great modern socialist country” by 2049, could now be at risk. At first, it seemed as if the authorities were concerned about a one-off personnel problem when they sent a stern message to the irreverent Jack Ma…
LINK: <https://www.thewirechina.com/2021/08/01/chinas-animal-spirits-deficit/>
8) In many ways, the right wing of today in America is making the same arguments that the right wing made 60 years ago: “Our formal system is colorblind, so what is the problem?” It is certainly the case that today the forms of discrimination on the basis of race that sail flying the false flag of formal color-blindness are much less vicious then the forms of 1960. In some other country this reduced viciousness might be a oretty big deal. But this is America. If we do not do much better, and still claim to be Americans, then we are liars:
Matthew Yglesias: Martin Luther King Called for Radical Redistribution of Material Resources: ‘Formal equality mostly characterized the United States before the civil rights revolution. The pre-Brown understanding was that separate accommodations were permissible as long as they were “separate but equal.”… That’s the context for King’s speech…. King isn’t… saying “equal access to all public accommodations, whether run by the government or private enterprise—what’s the big deal?” He… wants real access to the ballot, not just a requirement that voter suppression measures be facially race-neutral…. And he’s talking about generating meaningful economic opportunities. It’s called the March on Washington for Jobs and Justice…. King’s version of that dream was the endpoint of a program of massive material redistribution to build a radically more egalitarian society…
LINK: <https://www.slowboring.com/p/martin-luther-king-called-for-radical>
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_Why are we still in the situation we are?… _
To admit the supremacy of facts is to murder the grift.
The Biden administration exists to assert that the empire can work, if only it is competently administered. This is a false statement -- the Oil Empire absolutely cannot work in this century of angry weather, in the time of the death of ice -- and in its way and to its degree it is a grift of its own.
The fact-driven response -- that the absolute, utter, before all things else, goal is to minimise the overall global number of COVID-19 replication events to the smallest possible number before it finds worse and worser parts of its possibility space to occupy -- cannot be advanced. Once one fact becomes supreme, "what about this other fact over here?" becomes impossible to avoid. Then it becomes impossible to maintain the delicate pretence of American unity; it becomes impossible to pretend capitalism works. It becomes impossible to tolerate the anti-vax mask of dominionist evangelicals. The "feels before facts" Reaganite re-imagining of the United States comes apart. The vast, dreary jobs of created food security in our time has to happen; doing something about mammonism has to happen. To the extent that it's different, doing something about the dominionist evangelicals has to happen.
The democratic policy since Reagan has been to fight a rear guard action and pray for deliverance from the demographic shift. This is obvious; this is why ICE functions to perform ethnic cleansing and there are respectable republican voices calling for an end to all immigration. This is why the generational focus on removing democracy at the state level.
(this is why Joe can't shut down the kids-in-camps; ICE is a non-negotiable, touch-this-and-civil-war, component of the dominionist agenda.)
Some new policy needs to be attempted; the plague makes is really obvious, but it was true before.