Dean Baker: Will Obama get to the core of the inequality problem?

[HomerRamone]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/dean-baker/53892/president-obamas-inequality-story

There are some items on President Obama's agenda that push in the wrong direction, most notably his plans for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)...The TPP is about imposing a regulatory structure that will give corporations more power over the political process. It will make effective health, safety, and environmental regulation more difficult. It may also shield the financial sector from efforts to rein in the sort of abuses that led to the financial crisis. And, it will make drugs more expensive. The TPP is about redistributing income upward; it has no place on a serious inequality agenda...

Getting back to full employment really should be at the center of any inequality agenda. Full employment matters not only for the unemployed workers who would get jobs and the underemployed workers who could work more hours, it also leads to tighter labor markets. As a result, workers at the middle and bottom of the pay ladder would be able share in the gains of economic growth as they did in the late 1990s boom.

Unfortunately, full employment does not seem to be on anyone's agenda right now. The budget cuts that slowed the economy and cost us millions of jobs over the last three years are now largely behind us, but no one seems prepared to push an investment agenda or the sort of trade policy that can bring us back to full employment any time soon.

That means we will see little real progress in addressing inequality based on President Obama's agenda. An increase in the minimum wage is an important goal with substantial benefits but it should not be confused with an inequality agenda.

[GeorgeGist]

1. The core is greed.

[ProSense]

2. Well,

The days are long over when minimum wage workers were high school kids from middle-class families picking up spending money working after school. The workers who will benefit from a minimum wage hike are overwhelmingly adults, many of whom are supporting children. The higher minimum wage will also put a substantial dent in the poverty numbers, reducing the share of the population in poverty by 1 to 2 percentage points, close to 5 million people.

...that's a significant stat.

The Tight Link Between the Minimum Wage and Wage Inequality
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024401656

[hfojvt]

3. I think Baker is missing something

After all, we had full employment for much of the late 1990s and inequality increased.