Krugman: Happy New Year?

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Happy New Year?

There’s an alarming amount of optimism out there about US economic prospects for 2014. Let me make the situation even more alarming by saying that I basically share that optimism.

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The point, in any case, is that the head-banging is about to stop — not in the sense that we’ll reverse our move in the wrong direction, but that we won’t keep on moving in that direction. Here’s Goldman Sachs’s estimate of “fiscal drag” from federal policies (no link):

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None of this vindicates the multiple years of sluggish recovery that should have been vigorous. And let’s be clear: this kind of forecast is much less secure than, say, my predictions that inflation and interest would stay low in a liquidity trap, which were grounded in model fundamentals.

Still, the new year starts with some good omens. Oh, and politics: between the non-disaster of Obamacare (which is producing epic levels of denial) and the prospect of a decent rate of economic growth, the midterm elections may not go the way many on the right currently expect.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/04/happy-new-year/

Peter Dreier

The 25 Best Progressive Victories of 2013

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3. Minimum Wage Momentum: In recent years, Americans have shown increasing support for boosting the minimum wage and for the idea that people who work full-time should not earn poverty-level wages. A poll conducted in July by Hart Research Associates, showed that 80 percent of Americans back hiking the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour and adjusting it for the cost of living in future years. Not surprisingly, 92 percent of Democrats voice support for this proposal, but so do 80 percent of independents, 62 percent of Republicans, 75 percent of Southern whites and 79 percent of people with incomes over $100,000. (A November poll by CBS News found similarly widespread support for raising the federal minimum wage). The burgeoning protest movement among low-wage workers triggered increasing media coverage, including brilliant put-downs on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report of the conservative arguments against the minimum wage. All this has translated into changes in public policy. Even as New Jersey voters were giving conservative Republican Gov. Chris Christie a second term with 60 percent of the vote, they also approved, by the same margin, a constitutional amendment to raise the state's minimum wage by a dollar to $8.25 an hour. The new law includes an automatic cost-of-living increase each year. California Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation raising the state's minimum wage from $8 to $10 an hour -- a bill he had vetoed a year earlier. In November, voters in the Seattle suburb of Sea-tac embraced the Good Jobs Initiative' to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour for workers at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and at airport-related businesses, including hotels, car-rental agencies and parking lots. The new law, sponsored by labor unions and other progressives, applies to more than 6,300 workers. (On the day after Christmas, ruling on a suit filed by Alaska Airlines and the Washington Restaurant Association, a King County judge barred its enforcement at the airport -- which is located in the city of Sea-tac but is owned and operated by a separate government agency -- but let it stand for the 1,600 workers employed at nearby hotels and parking lots). Seattle's new Mayor Ed Murray supported the Sea-tac initiative and raised the possibility of doing the same thing in Washington's largest city. In New York City, one of De Blasio's key policy planks was enacting a living wage of $11.75 per hour for workers employed by companies that get tax breaks and other subsidies from the city. Activists in Idaho, South Dakota and Alaska are gathering signatures to put minimum wage hikes on the ballot in 2014. Their counterparts in Maryland, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Hawaii are pushing state legislators to raise the minimum wages in their states, too. The momentum at the local and state levels is likely to put pressure on Congress to raise the federal minimum wage. In his State of the Union address last January, he proposed raising the minimum wage from the current $7.25 to $9 an hour. A week after the November elections, Obama announced that he supports hiking it to $10.10 an hour, based on a bill sponsored by Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Cong. George Miller (D-CA). In August, Demos published a report, Underwriting Bad Jobs, that revealed that the federal government -- through contracting out and privatization -- is the largest employer of low wage, dead-end jobs. The think tank and its organizing allies urged Obama to issue a Presidential Executive Order raising the minimum wage for workers on all federal contracts.

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20. Domestic Workers Win: Until 2013, domestic workers were excluded from protections such as a guaranteed minimum wage, paid breaks, and overtime pay. In September, the Obama administration announced new rules extending the Fair Labor Standards Act to include the 800,000 to 2 million home health workers -- who help seniors and others with self-care tasks like taking medications, bathing, and shopping -- under the federal government's wage and hour protections. A week later, California governor Jerry Brown signed the Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights, allowing the full spectrum of domestic workers -- including live-in nannies and housekeepers -- to benefit from the same gains as the home health workers. The California victory follows previous victories in New York and Hawaii. Campaigns are now underway in Massachusetts and Illinois. For the first time ever, these employees will be guaranteed the federal minimum wage and will earn overtime pay. These victories have implications for a much larger portion of the workforce, including independent contractors, nontraditional employees, and those on temporary assignments. Much of the credit for these historic wins is due to the tenacious organizing of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, led by the dynamic young organizer Ai-Jen Poo.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/the-25-best-progressive-v_b_4526842.html

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1. Kick! n/t

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4. What does any of that have to do with the OP?

Welcome to DU.

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6. The OP has nothing to do with the media.

Nothing.

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8. Yup, and

"At least I kicked the thread."

...you did it four times. Every post counts.

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10. Five

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024280148#post6
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024280148#post7

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12. Six times, and

"Is there a problem with what I'm doing or saying?"

...if it has nothing to do with the OP, what you're doing is called hijacking a thread.

You're new here so you probably don't know that.

Maybe you could start a thread and expand on your topic, which you seem passionate about.

Oh, and no need to apologize again.

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14. Damn,

I didn't get to say "bye."