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Harold Meyerson: Republican Voters Approve Hiking Minimum Wage, Republican Legislators Reject Them31

By dianeravitch
December 26, 2018 //
7

Harold Meyerson of “The American Prospect” tells the story of Republican perfidy in overturning the will of the voters regarding minimum wage.

Republican voters approve minimum wage hikes; Republican legislators overturn them.

On Election Day earlier this month, Arkansas voters went to the polls and approved a ballot measure to raise the minimum wage. It wasn’t close: 68 percent of them voted Yes. Just to their north, in Missouri, voters also approved a minimum wage hike, with 62 percent of them voting Yes.

Though Arkansas and Missouri are among the reddest of states, these results shouldn’t surprise anyone. Every ballot measure to hike a state’s minimum wage over the past few decades has been approved. Indeed, the only group of Americans dead set against such raises appears to be Republican legislators.

On Wednesday, demonstrating just how removed those legislators are from the concerns of the American people, Republicans in the Michigan state senate voted to gut a minimum wage increase they had approved before the November elections—in a way that allowed them to rescind their approval once the elections had safely been dispensed with.

Earlier this year, progressive activists had gathered more than the required number of signatures to place a measure on November’s ballot that would have raised the state minimum wage to $12 by 2022, and the tipped worker minimum to $12 as well, but phasing it in more slowly. At that point, Republicans in the legislature intervened to enact a law identical to the ballot measure, but with the proviso that they could amend that law later this year. By so doing, they knocked the measure off the ballot. Had it remained on the ballot and been passed, as it surely would have been, it would have required the votes of three-quarters of the legislators to amend it. By passing it as a law, however, the Republicans ensured that it could be amended by a simple majority vote.

And on Wednesday, the simple, if devious, Republican majority in the state senate amended the law. In place of the stipulation that the minimum be raised to $12 by 2022, the Republicans pushed that back to 2030. The minimum for tipped workers was scaled back from $12 to $4, with that figure not to kick in until 2030 as well. The measure now goes to the House, where the Republican majority is expected to follow the Senate’s lead and send it to the desk of Republican Governor Rick Snyder, of Flint-deadly-water fame. The reason for this unseemly haste is that come the new year, a Democrat, Gretchen Whitmer, will succeed Snyder as governor, and she’s made clear there’s no way she’d sign such changes into law.

Michigan voters swept Democrats (all of them women) into every major statewide office in November’s voting; Republicans narrowly retained their state legislative majorities through the grace of gerrymandering. With Whitmer as governor, they won’t be able to carve such sweet-deal districts for themselves in the post-census redistricting, but for now, their gerrymandered moats and gerrymandered minds insulate them from the concerns and desires of their fellow Americans. ~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Categories Economy

Harold Meyerson: Corporate America’s Highest Priority: Rewarding the Rich

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2018 //
12

A reminder of why workers need unions. To reduce inequality. To give working people a voice. To establish a modicum of balance between haves and have-nots. To temper the greed of the wealthy.

From The American Prospect:

Meyerson on TAP

Corporate America’s Only Priority: Rewarding the Rich. The stock market may be tanking, but investors—make that, major investors—are doing great nonetheless.

How, you may ask, is this possible? It’s because corporations have showered them with heretofore unimaginable dividends and share buybacks.

According to a front-page story in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, “companies in the S&P 500 have spent nearly $421 billion on dividends through November,” which is more than they spent on dividends in all of 2017. And this doesn’t take into account the amount of money corporations are devoting to share buybacks, which is more than twice the amount they’ve shoveled into dividends this year. Indeed, both dividends and share buybacks have already broken their all-time yearly record—and the Journal predicts that next year’s levels will surpass this year’s, notwithstanding the downward direction of the market.

In recent months, both wages and domestic capital investment have inched up, but at nowhere near the level of the increase in the return to shareholders. As the terrific new study by Josh Bivens and Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute makes clear, the single most important factor in the past-four-decades’ diversion of business income from workers to shareholders and executives is the success of business’s assault on worker power, and the concomitant success of business’s insistence that government favor the rich over everyone else.

The last time I looked, the theory behind the government’s decision to tax capital gains at a lower rate than income from work was that investors bolstered the economy by investing. Now that corporation’s main mission is to reward investors at the expense of all other conceivable ways to spend its revenues, however, the capital gains tax has become purely a way to reward investors for extracting money from corporations, for siphoning funds from what otherwise might be productive enterprise.

Nice work if you can get it. ~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Categories Economy

Seth Sandronsky: How Corporate Tax Breaks Defund Public Schools

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2018 //
17

Today, as cities compete to lure multi-billion dollarcorporations woth tax breaks, its time to reflect on the true costs of these tax breaks and incentives.

Seth Sandronsky, a California-based investigative journalist, digs down and finds that public schools pay the bill.

“Public schools are losing. Private interests are winning. Here are the numbers. US public schools lost a total of $1.8 billion due to economic development tax incentives for corporations in 2017, according to a new report from Good Jobs First, a watchdog group in Washington, D.C. (goodjobsfirst.org/newmath).

“In this case, the term economic development conceals more than it reveals. At the end of the day, who wins and who loses when governments shift public tax dollars to corporate pockets comes into sharper focus with Good Jobs First unpacking the financial reports of 5,600 of America’s 13,500 independent public school districts across 28 states.

“Did somebody say the miracle of the marketplace? Well, government hands are all over this story, contrary to nonsense about the efficiency of market forces. The recent announcement of Amazon receiving billions of public tax dollars for its “HQ2” is a case in point.”

Categories Economy

Despite Full Employment and Big Corporate Tax Cut, Most Workers Got No Pay Raise

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2018 //
37

The rising tide was supposed to lift all boats. It didn’t.

Corporations and very rich individuals got a big tax break a year ago. The unemployment rate is very low.

But most workers did not get a raise.

In education, many teachers have not see a raise for years.

It seems that all the benefits of economic growth have gone to the wealthiest.

One reason: The decline of unions.

When corporations have a great year, unions fight for higher wages.

In the absence of unions, workers have no voice.

Categories Economy, Unions

“American Capitalism Isn’t Working”

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2018 //
80

David Leonhardt, columnist for the New York Times, explains his conviction that American capitalism isn’t working. It’s puzzling that someone who is so clear-sighted about the economy and the damage done by rapacious corporate greed is so bamboozled by charter school mythology.

He wrote:

The October 1944 edition of Fortune magazine carried an article by a corporate executive that makes for amazing reading today. It was written by William B. Benton — a co-founder of the Benton & Bowles ad agency — and an editor’s note explained that Benton was speaking not just for himself but on behalf of a major corporate lobbying group. The article then laid out a vision for American prosperity after World War II.

At the time, almost nobody took postwar prosperity for granted. The world had just endured 15 years of depression and war. Many Americans were worried that the end of wartime production, combined with the return of job-seeking soldiers, would plunge the economy into a new slump.

“Today victory is our purpose,” Benton wrote. “Tomorrow our goal will be jobs, peacetime production, high living standards and opportunity.” That goal, he wrote, depended on American businesses accepting “necessary and appropriate government regulation,” as well as labor unions. It depended on companies not earning their profits “at the expense of the welfare of the community.” It depended on rising wages.

These leftist-sounding ideas weren’t based on altruism. The Great Depression and the rise of European fascism had scared American executives. Many had come to believe that unrestrained capitalism was dangerous — to everyone. The headline on Benton’s article was, “The Economics of a Free Society.”

In the years that followed, corporate America largely followed this prescription. Not every executive did, of course, and management and labor still had bitter disputes. But most executives behaved as if they cared about their workers and communities. C.E.O.s accepted pay packages that today look like a pittance. Middle-class incomes rose faster in the 1950s and 1960s than incomes at the top. Imagine that: declining income inequality.

And the economy — and American business — boomed during this period, just as Benton and his fellow chieftains had predicted.

Things began to change in the 1970s. Facing more global competition and higher energy prices, and with Great Depression memories fading, executives became more aggressive. They decided that their sole mission was maximizing shareholder value. They fought for deregulation, reduced taxes, union-free workplaces, lower wages and much, much higher pay for themselves. They justified it all with promises of a wonderful new economic boom. That boom never arrived.

Even when economic growth has been decent, as it is now, most of the bounty has flowed to the top. Median weekly earnings have grown a miserly 0.1 percent a year since 1979. The typical American family today has a lower net worth than the typical family did 20 years ago. Life expectancy, shockingly, has fallen this decade.

The great stagnation of living standards is a defining problem of our time. Most families do not enjoy the “rapidly rising level of living” that Benton called for. Understandably, many Americans are anxious and angry.

The solution will need to involve a return to higher taxes on the rich. But it’s also worth thinking about pre-tax incomes — and specifically what goes on inside corporations. It’s worth asking the question that Benton asked: What kind of corporate America does the rest of America need?

Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator, is now rolling out a platform for her almost-certain presidential campaign, and it includes an answer to this question. It is a fascinating one, because it differs from the usual Democratic agenda of progressive taxes and bigger social programs (which Warren also supports). Her idea is the most intriguing policy idea to come out of the early 2020 campaign.

Warren wants an economy in which companies again invest in their workers and communities. Yet she doesn’t believe it can happen organically, as it did in the 1940s, because financial markets will punish well-meaning executives who stop trying to maximize short-term profits. “They can’t go back,” she told me recently. “You have to do it with a rule.”

She has proposed a bill in the Senate — and Ben Ray Luján, a top House Democrat, will soon offer it there — that would require corporate boards to take into account the interests of customers, employees and communities. To make sure that happens, 40 percent of a company’s board seats would be elected by employees. Germany uses a version of this “shared-governance” model, mostly successfully. Even in today’s hypercompetitive economy, German corporations earn nice profits with a philosophy that looks more like William Benton’s than Gordon Gekko’s.

Is Warren’s plan the best way to rein in corporate greed? I’m not yet sure. I want to see politicians and experts hash out her idea and others — much as they hashed out health care policy in the 2008 campaign.

But I do know this: American capitalism isn’t working right now. If Benton and his fellow postwar executives returned with the same ideas today, they would be branded as socialists. In truth, they were the capitalists who cared enough about the system to save it. The same goes for the new reformers.

Categories Accountability, Economy, Inequality

In Trump’s America, We Shoot Tear Gas at Mothers and Babies in Diapers

By dianeravitch
November 26, 2018 //
76

What is happening on the southern border is appalling. Trump has given the order to the Border Patrol to use lethal force, if necessary.

At this moment, the Border Patrol is using tear gas against families, and the news is full of photographs of mothers with their babies in diapers fleeing from the tear gas.

Welcome to Trump’s America!

FOX News calls this a “battle for the southern border.” Really? A battle between a bunch of bedraggled migrant families and our military? Oh, and FOX forgot to mention the federal report warning about a likely climate catastrophe in the not distant future. FOX was too obsessed with the “battle for the southern border” to give time to the climate change report from the Trump administration, which was strategically released on Friday at 2 pm in the midst of the Thanksgiving weekend in the hope that no one would notice it.

And another milestone in the era of MAGA: GM announced it is closing 5 of its American plants and laying off 10,000 workers. I wonder if they will get a Christmas bonus or even a card?

Categories Cruelty, Economy, Environment

Andrew Tobias: The More You Know

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2018 //
6

Andrew Tobias writes about personal finances and whatever else interests him. I subscribe to his blog. We disagree about Eva (he is mad about her, I am not), but not much else.

This is his latest post:

You don’t bring a bone saw to a fist fight. Our president is the only person in the world, other than some Saudis, who pretends to believe otherwise. It’s ludicrous.

And evil. Murder is proscribed in the Bible. Freedom of the press is enshrined in the Constitution. Murdering journalists — whom the founders saw as agents, not enemies, of the people — is a mortal sin that erodes democracy. Trump pals Putin and Duterte and Erdogan and Mohammed Bin Salman murder journalists.

Denying native Americans their right to vote is so Republican. As you’ve probably heard, Republicans have devised a way to block long-time voters from voting this time, by adding a new requirement: their ID must include a street address. But Indian reservations don’t have streets. Republicans couldn’t come up with a proposal for the “replace” part of repealing Obamacare, but boy can they make things happen when it comes to suppressing the vote. I mean, in fairness, what right do Native Americans have to vote? Why are they here, anyway? They don’t look like us. As the old saying goes, “go back to . . .” Oh, wait.

It’s the economy, stupid:
President Obama took the Bush Collapse and got the unemployment rate down by five percentage points — despite unprecedented obstruction from the Republican Congress — even as he got the National Debt back to shrinking relative to the economy as a whole (as Clinton had also done).

Trump has managed to keep the Obama Recovery going, trimming the unemployment rate by yet another percentage point — even as he has exploded the deficit, growing the National Debt faster than the economy ((as Bush and Reagan did).

See the difference?

You don’t think this is going to come back and bite us?

You don’t think the Republican tax cut for corporations and their wealthiest shareholders won’t cut into the programs so many normal Americans rely on?

Mitch McConnell says it out loud! Republicans are gunning for Social Security, Medicare and Obamacare!

Categories Accountability, Economy

Fortune: The Highest Paid CEO in the U.S.

By dianeravitch
October 13, 2018 //
6

Just thought you would want to know that the nation’s highest paid CEO made $103 million last year.

The U.S. Has a New Highest-Paid CEO and He Made $103 Million Last Year

Alan Murray

The Conference Board’s CEO pay study—the most comprehensive annual review of pay practices—comes out Thursday. Fortune‘s email newsletter CEO Daily got an exclusive early look.

Here are some takeaways:

—Median CEO compensation increased 9.9% in 2017.

—The biggest companies saw the smallest increases. CEOs at companies with revenues of $25 billion to $49.9 billion were down 7%; those at companies with $50 billion and more were up just 1.4%.

—The highest paid CEOs of the nearly 2,500 in the study were Hock Tan of Broadcom and Frank Bisignano of First Data, with total comp of $103 million and $102 million, respectively—almost all in stock awards (base salaries were $1.1 million and $1.3 million). Both are new to the Top 25 list.

—Other CEOs in the Top 5: Michael Rapino of Live Nation Entertainment at $70.6 million, Mario Gabelli of Gamco Investors at $69.4 million, and the now-departed Les Moonves of CBS at $69.3 million.

—The number of women on the Top 25 list dropped from 4 to 3, with Oracle’s Safra Catz ranking highest at No. 18 with $40.7 million.

—Full value stock awards—including restricted stock that vests over time—have almost entirely replaced stock options as a component of pay, and now account for almost half of compensation.

Options have fallen out of favor as being too subject to manipulation.

—For the first time this year, companies were required to report the ratio between CEO pay and median employee pay. For S&P 500 firms the median ratio was 158; for Russell 3000 firms it was 70. Mindy Grossman of Weight Watchers, whose total pay package was $33 million, had the highest reported ratio, at 5908.

Categories Economy

Global Groups Collaborate to Introduce Free Market Education Investments in Africa and Middle East

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2018 //
27

Education International, which represents teachers unions around the world, sent out notice of a disturbing new development. International groups have determined to introduce Marley forces and payment for test scores as their response to educational needs in Africa and the Middle East. The Business-School graduates discovered a “crisis” that has existed since time began: children in impoverished countries are not getting a decent education—or, in some cases, no education at all. Yes, it is outrageous. Why are these great minds not using their brainpower to promote economic development? Asia is booming. Why not transfer some lessons learned to reduce poverty and create good jobs, rather than bring in the hedge funds and social impact investors to monetize education?

Angelo Gavrielatos of Educational International writes:

A new financing facility, the Education Outcomes Fund (EOF) for Africa and the Middle East is in development – with plans to become operational in the coming year. The fund commercialises and commodifies education, using tax-payer aid budgets to support private actors and investors to profit from education provision. Similar funds are being developed targeting India and Latin America.

EI responds

EI has responded directly to the EOF and publicly.

Mobilisation of Member Organisations

Education International is mobilising our Member Organisations in potentially targeted countries, which include Burkina Faso, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Liberia, Morocco, Nigeria, Palestine, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, recommending that they take action to pressure their governments not to engage with the EOF.

What is the EOF and how does it work?

EOF is an initiative of the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity (the Education Commission) and the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment (GSG).

As a so-called innovation in education financing, the fund aims to raise $1 billion in development impact bonds (DIBs). DIBs work by employing investment capital to pay services, in this case education provision or education related services, offered by private actors in Africa and the Middle East. If ‘outcomes targets’ are met by the service providers, investors and providers receive a return, financed in part by bilateral donors through national aid budgets.

Putting private actors in the driving seat, disregarding democracy
EOF disregards democratic governance of education by choosing to directly fund private education providers rather than strengthening public systems through the elected national government. Giving investors control and influence over their investments is given precedent over governments’ sovereignty to define their own priorities.

What is more, as reporting systems for outcomes are geared to the needs of private funders, it becomes more difficult for educators, their unions and the broader community to hold their government to account to fulfil their obligation to provide quality education for all.

Funding outcomes narrows education
The EOF argues that its model’s strength lies in the fact that it will only pay for outcomes achieved. However, results-based financing actually negatively distorts quality teaching and learning processes by focusing on narrow outcomes rather than the development of the whole child.

With funding based on students’ test score outcomes, teachers are encouraged to teach to the test. Furthermore, results-based financing creates perverse incentives to invest in short-term gains rather than long term system strengthening. Outcomes in education are not immediate, but take time to manifest, such as its contribution to social, cultural, democratic and economic development.

Apart from the fact that the commodification of education by incentivising private providers and investors by profit-making is highly unethical and in disregard of the right to education, there is no substantial evidence of DIBs in the education sector.

Outcomes bonds leave the vulnerable behind
Importantly, a quest for outcomes and the involvement of profit-making organisations in the education sector leads to the further marginalisation of the most vulnerable groups in society. Evidence shows, when funding depends on test scores, private actors’ student selection processes can discriminate against less able students or alternatively encourage certain students not to participate in tests.

In clear contravention of the global commitment made through SDG4 to leave no-one behind, students from disadvantaged backgrounds, students from minority groups, refugees, students with disabilities or special needs and students living in remote areas lose out.

Proliferation of education privatisation and marketisation

To achieve SDG4, public systems must be strengthened and education must be universally embraced as a human right and a public good, not a market commodity.

Education financing must be sustainable and predictable, there are no shortcuts. It is only through well-funded public education that we will achieve quality education for all, not through attempting to establish new finance mechanisms that undermine the right to education.

Rather than strengthening public systems in regions where increased public financing for education is desperately needed, EOF will finance non-state actors, including for-profit companies and so-called ‘low-fee’ private schools that charge poor families for education of questionable quality.

‘Prime contractors’ will be commissioned by EOF to lead ‘whole-community based interventions’, suggesting that the fund will operate as a massive market creation scheme. Public-private partnerships will also be supported, with Partnership Schools for Liberia (PSL), Liberia’s disastrous experiment with outsourcing education to private providers, held up as a model.

Education is a public responsibility. The SDGs are about assuming those responsibilities. They are essential to the future and cannot be contracted out or sacrificed to the market. And, yes, they require political will to ensure a sufficient and sustainable source of public funding. We cannot rely on charity or the private sector.

If we believe that all children, regardless of their background or circumstances, regardless of the community, country or continent in which they live have a right to quality education, governments and the international community must invest in the expansion and strengthening of quality, free, universally accessible public education.
More information

Education Outcomes Fund (EOF) for Africa and the Middle East: Is it a Game Changer? by Keith M Lewin, Emeritus Professor of International Development and Education, University of Sussex, provides a detailed critique of the EOF.

Angelo Gavrielatos
Project Director – EI

Angelo Gavrielatos​
Project Director
Email: Angelo.Gavrielatos@ei-ie.org
Tel: +32 2 224 06 11
Fax: +32 2 224 06 06
5 bd du Roi Albert II | 1210 Brussels | BELGIUM
http://www.ei-ie.org

Categories Accountability, Economy, Education Reform, For-Profit, International

Lewis Hine, the Man Whose Photographs Ended Child Labor, and Reflections on Labor and Our Moment

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2018 //
34

Lewis Hine was the photographer whose work led to the passage of child labor laws.

Here are some of the photographs that touched the conscience of the nation and its leaders.

There was a time when our nation’s leaders had a conscience.

There was a time when Labor Day parades were a major event.

There was a time when labor unions provided a path to a secure, middle-class life for millions of people.

Now the parades have ended.

Now we have a new economic approach.

The rich get richer. Full employment. Stagnant wages.

The purpose of labor unions was to ensure that working people received a fair share for their contribution to their employer’s success.

Labor unions ensured that prosperity lifted up working people, not just shareholders, Wall Street speculators, and corporate owners.

We need them again. Working people need and deserve a collective voice. Now, more than ever it is time to spread the wealth, open new paths to the middle class, restore the dignity of work, and rebuild the hope for and the reality of a better life for all. To do that means to move away from the current emphasis on consumerism and libertarianism to a public philosophy that embraces the importance of the common good. That means a revival of the nearly forgotten concept of “We the People.” E pluribus unum. A shared destiny in which every life counts, in which we recognize our common humanity and our mutual obligations for one another, our brotherhood and sisterhood.

That won’t happen by wishing and hoping but by political action. It begins by voting out the agents of the current status quo. It must start now.

Categories Billionaires, Childhood, Economy, Inequity, Injustice
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