Roosevelt Reacts: How the State of the Union Could Be Even Stronger

Feb 13, 2013

President Obama laid out some strong progressive ideas, but there's lots more work to be done.

Richard Kirsch, Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow:

Two years ago, progressive groups came together to develop the Progressive Economic Narrative. And last night, at the very beginning of his State of the Union address, the president began with our story, ending with our central metaphor:

President Obama laid out some strong progressive ideas, but there's lots more work to be done.

Richard Kirsch, Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow:

Two years ago, progressive groups came together to develop the Progressive Economic Narrative. And last night, at the very beginning of his State of the Union address, the president began with our story, ending with our central metaphor:

Our economy is adding jobs, but too many people still can’t find full-time employment. Corporate profits have skyrocketed to all-time highs, but for more than a decade, wages and incomes have barely budged. It is our generation’s task, then, to reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth: a rising, thriving middle class.

Then he said the way we build that middle-class economic engine is by following the same path we laid out: government investment in research, infrastructure, energy and education. And he added at least some substance on good jobs, with his minimum wage proposal. This is a battle of ideas and policies we should welcome. 

Dante Barry, Chapter Services Coordinator & Summer Academy Fellowship Coordinator at the Campus Network:

Last night, the president announced a new Presidential Voting Commission, an ambiguous and amorphous idea to address the "voter experience" on Election Day, chaired by lawyers from the Obama and Romney campaigns. I am pleased that he decided to tackle this problem, yet I am also disheartened to see the efforts to take bold action on voting reform do not include a large amount of input from the communities represented, suppressed, and deterred. This commission should provide forward-thinking recommendations and take bold action to support our most sacred right for any American: one voice, one vote. We have a responsibility to provide access and opportunity for every American to vote in a way that reflects this country's progress and values with 21st century innovation and technology. 

Thomas Ferguson, Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow and Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts:

What you think of the president’s speech depends on what you think the real state of our union is. I think that we are five years into an economic crisis that is barely improving thanks to a huge deficiency in aggregate demand for goods and services. All over the globe, that crisis is toppling governments, fanning competitive depreciations, and, if you look closely, stimulating arms races, especially in Northeast Asia, where governments are pushing back more vigorously against the economic crisis than in our own country. Against this standard, the president’s proposals look pretty weak. Spending $50 or even $100 billion on infrastructure is a drop in the bucket. Raising the minimum wage is an excellent idea, but it won’t solve the aggregate demand problem. We’ll just have to see about climate change, but acknowledging the problem is just a first baby step. And the problem of medical costs is fundamentally a problem of monopolistic practices and limited information. If you don’t name that situation and deal with it, you have no real hope of delivering better care at lower cost. The president didn’t. To all of this, of course, there is a ready answer: If you don’t like these proposals, wait till you see those of the Republicans. And, this, alas, is equally true. Except when it comes to drones and killing Americans without due process.

Bryce Covert, Editor of Next New Deal:

Women were decisive in helping elect President Obama to a second term, and last night he began to start thanking them for their support. Perhaps the most important policy he proposed was his call for universal preschool, an enormous yet desperately needed program that would not only help children, but also help their working parents -- and let's be real, mothers still do the majority of work in caring for children -- go to their jobs knowing their children are taken care of. But he also put forward some other key policies that, if they were to be passed, would mean a lot to the country's women workers. He called for a raise in the minimum wage to $9 an hour and to have it indexed to inflation so that it doesn't continue to stagnate as it has for the past three years. Women absolutely need a raise in the minimum wage. They make up two-thirds of the workers who make such low pay. He unfortunately didn't call for a raise in the tipped minimum wage, which has been stuck at $2.13 for 20 years and would give a huge boost to the 64 percent of waiters who are women. But he did take aim at another problem affecting women's pay: salary secrecy. He called for the passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would build on the Lilly Ledbetter Act to get rid of the ban at half of all companies on discussing salary. Women first have to know what their coworkers are making before they can root out discrimination. All three of these policies would actually be huge steps forward in combatting the gender wage gap, as balancing children and work, making the minimum wage, and being forced into secrecy about paychecks are big factors.

Jordan Fraade, D.C. Pipeline member:

In terms of its delivery, the State of the Union felt like a victory lap: President Obama seems more confident and confrontational, a little bit feisty, and vindicated by the election. But despite this tone, the speech’s policy proposals seemed to focus on incremental change with a few major exceptions (universal Pre-K is a pretty big deal). The president kept coming back to the idea of making government “smarter,” not larger or smaller. His proposal for a “Fix-It-First” program for infrastructure is typical of this approach to policy, and in this case, it’s a good move. Putting people to work doing things like rebuilding deficient infrastructure and revitalizing abandoned urban neighborhoods is a far smarter way to plan for the future than building new highways to the suburbs and encouraging sprawl, which has been standard U.S. policy for over 60 years. However, along with his comments on mortgage relief and homeownership, I would have liked to see President Obama propose something to help renters as well, who are disproportionately urban, minority, and young and end up subsidizing homeowners through the tax code. Millennials, who graduated into a bad economy and a bottomed-out housing market, have largely had no choice but to pay the rent that’s asked of them, since tight credit and low salaries have made buying a home nearly impossible. The president, whose administration is filled with smart growth advocates, likely knows all of this already. His Millennial supporters would surely appreciate it if he acted on it during the next four years.

Mike Malloy, Campus Network member and student at Michigan State University:

In recent years, two Republican strategies to weaken the Democratic voting base have emerged at the state level: voter restriction and attacks on labor. Unfortunately—and unsurprisingly—President Obama neglected both in his speech last night. The president's eagerness to see bipartisan cooperation is commendable. But failing to expose partisan games undermines his bipartisan vision, enables the misleading of the public, and hurts targeted groups.

The president spoke about “improving the voting experience,” addressing logistical issues that caused long waits in November. Why not address attempts to supress voters by requiring special identification and limiting early voting, both intended to obstruct Democratic voters? The president could still champion convenient voting efforts and—in a perfect world—even call for both parties to end gerrymandering.

Likewise, despite emphasizing manufacturing and proposing a new minimum wage, the president did not mention organized labor, including the right-to-work laws and collective bargaining restrictions Republican state legislatures have passed to weaken unions' political influence. Acknowledging the problematic worker pension and benefit costs state and local governments face, President Obama might have called for a renegotiation of contracts while reaffirming the rights of workers, acknowledging the views of both parties. Instead, the president's silence continued a trend of staying quiet on labor issues. This likely stems from the unpopularity of unions, but it also reinforces that negative view.

The president's pursuit of bipartisanship cooperation is truly admirable. But in order to achieve it, he should call attention to egregious acts of partisan gamesmanship in addition to finding common goals.

Tim Price, Deputy Editor of Next New Deal

There were a lot of takeaways from last night's State of the Union, but the most striking to me is that after the last four years, President Obama still has the ability to surprise us. After what many viewed as an uncharacteristically progressive inauguration speech, there was potential for the president to retreat into his reflexively centrist comfort zone -- and there were hints of that, like his insistence that nothing he wants to do should add to the deficit, or the questionable decision to lead off the night by talking about entitlement reform. But for the most part, he exceeded expectations and behaved like post-2012 Obama, who seems much more comfortable pushing the boundaries of the debate now that he knows he won't be running for anything again. Who expected him to even mention the minimum wage or universal pre-K, let alone highlight them as major policy proposals, before the prepared text began to leak last night? We still have a long way to go before the solutions on the table measure up to the challenges we face, but at least we're having the conversation.

Where Obama defied expectations, Republicans met them, to their detriment and ours. Whether the topic was jobs, immigration, voting rights, or protecting women from violence, John Boehner kept his hands at his sides and grimaced as if he were sitting on a tack -- except that would at least have motivated him to stand up. In his response, Republican rising star Marco Rubio rehashed every tired anti-government argument you've heard a thousand times before and offered bold ideas like... tax cuts. It's obvious that they have nothing new to offer and are hoping mindless obstruction will be a winning strategy like it was in 2010. But that was a different time and a different economy, and the president's message to them last night was clear and forceful: we're all tired of your shtick. What else have you got?

Tarsi Dunlop,  D.C. Pipeline leader:

President Barack Obama highlighted the importance of investment last night: in America, in the middle class, and in future generations. He also talked about the return on investment, which is particularly pertinent when it comes to expanding access to early childhood education. Access to high-quality Pre-K education is one of the most effective ways to ensure that all children are prepared for academic success in K-12 and then ultimately for college and careers. If children are not reading at grade level by third grade, they are at a higher risk of falling behind and dropping out by the time they reach high school. Early childhood education offers early exposure to vocabulary, numbers, and helps children learn how to socialize with others. An additional benefit for families is that access to Pre-K education allows both parents to earn an income while offering children a safe and engaging learning environment. Outside high-quality daycare is expensive, and many parents don't have several hundred dollars a week to pay for it, something that the president noted last night. While expanding early childhood education is not cheap, there is a significant lifelong return on investment over the course of a lifetime, as the president pointed out: boosting graduation rates, reducing teen pregnancy and violent crime, increasing the likelihood of students holding a job, and having more stable families of their own. Ideally, as this proposal gains traction, the president’s definition of "working with states" should not involve competitive grant funding. This implementation method puts resource-strapped districts and states at a disadvantage in applying for funding and creates winners and losers. Best practices already exist for statewide programs, with effective public-private partnerships, that can and should be replicated. In the spirit of progressive values and ideals, dollars and investment should reflect an equal and fair commitment to each child, regardless of external circumstances. 

Michelle Tham, Campus Network member and student at American University:

Obama's speech mentioned the success in natural gas and how further investments must be funneled into the renewable energy sector. However, by not mentioning intellectual property rights, Obama misses the target of the conversation on renewable energy. Alternative energy resources is one topic that all countries are willing to share information on, except the United States. Foreign firms from Europe invest in China and India because their IPR (intellectual property rights) are less stringent, which allows the flow of information and design to flourish. China is the leading producer in solar panels because its designs are more affordable than American-based solar panels. Wind technology is China's third largest energy source domestically -- after coal and natural gas. Therefore, in order to increase innovative ideas, Obama needs more open trade policies with different countries and needs to encourage cooperation, not only in diplomatic relations, but in commercial relations as well. Technology transfers are occurring in commercial levels and the government's role is to facilitate such transaction. 

Naomi Ahsan,  D.C. Pipeline leader:

In his inaugural address, the president broke with the rhetoric of politics as usual to lay out his philosophy for good government in a very genuine manner. He used this new voice again in his State of the Union address and listed several legislative priorities within the overarching objectives of addressing poverty and gender justice. The first was raising the federal minimum wage. His description of how a family fully employed with honest work at the minimum wage can still be living in poverty captures the rationale for supporting welfare programs. The president also noted that persistent poverty has emerged as a geographically-defined phenomenon within the U.S. and called for direct community development efforts as well as making high-quality preschool available to every child. This would help break the cycle of poverty, particularly in distressed neighborhoods. Children from low-income families are already less likely to graduate high school and they start kindergarten demonstrably behind better-off peers on developmental milestones leading up to literacy. Making quality preschool universal would show that we have learned from seeing programs like Head Start and Jumpstart dramatically improve underprivileged children's educational prospects by providing extra support at the pre-kindergarten level. It is also important to recognize the connection between gender inequality and poverty: women account for about 62 percent of those earning the minimum wage and often are taking financial responsibility for leading families. Fair pay for these women workers contributes to the health and opportunity of children and families as a whole. I was impressed that the President was offering informed and thoughtful solutions for the growing issue of poverty, which has great potential for benefiting the economy and is deserving of the national attention that too often goes to deficit reduction.

Florence Otaigbe, Campus Network member and student at Michigan State University:

As a staunch supporter of President Barack Obama, my first reaction was that I couldn’t agree more with his introductory remarks on how America is now stronger than ever before. There is no disagreement when it comes to the matter of progress. The disagreement comes in trying to push progress further. During his address, the president laid out various proposals for his next term. Ranging from education to gun control, the president hit the nail on the head. Yet in spite of these great ideas, it’s up to Congress and the people for any change to occur. That’s where my reaction turns less optimistic. I truly believe that there is a great divide in Washington D.C. that is starting to reach the point of no return. Both sides are polarized like never before, and it’s really hard to reach a consensus on anything. I just don’t see how the country can advance when there is so much tension among the people who enable that advancement. There’s much more room for change in America, but most of that rests with most of our leaders in D.C. Without their cohesion, it’s likely that America will remain stagnant, and that is not what we want for our country.

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A Forecast for the 2013 State of the Union Speech

Feb 11, 2013Bo Cutter

This is not the moment to give the same economic speech, but to be bold and long-term.

This is not the moment to give the same economic speech, but to be bold and long-term.

Inaugural addresses are about poetry and vision; State of the Union speeches are about prose and governing. (I acknowledge the inaccurate theft from Governor Mario Cuomo.) But they can and should be about more than a simple listing of policy and budgetary goodies, which is more often what they have become, or the inevitable, and politically necessary, announcement that the state of the union is "good." President Obama should raise the level of the genre and his own game in Tuesday night's speech. Because second term presidencies are two real years rather than the constitutional four years, the president has a lot at stake in making this his best State of the Union.

The president's advisors have told the media that this speech will reflect a "pivot" back to the economy after the Inaugural Address's focus, largely, on inequality. That would be very welcome. But he still has a choice.

He can give the standard, dull, plain-vanilla generic presidential speech about the economy. This would have three major themes: (1) the economy is not in good enough shape, but it's getting better; (2) everything my administration has done to date is the reason why the economy is getting better; and (3) here is my list of actions we intend to take that will immediately make the economy even better. That last point invariably emphasizes job creation, immediate job creation, immediate American job creation, and immediate American good job creation. The generic speech always has a number of good things to say about infrastructure spending. This is all always said with the implicit assumption that the economy of tomorrow will be much the same as the economy of yesterday and today and that no one need worry too much about change. You have to remember that State of the Union speeches are drafted by political advisors and consultants who, across all political parties and all times, share two views about the American people: they go into catatonic states at the prospect of any change and their time horizon is at most a couple of weeks. This speech would disappear without a trace.

Or he could decide to give a far better economic speech. It would have the following themes:

First, a discussion of long-run economic growth, not the next six months - which matter, but not as much as the long term. 

Second, a focus on a particular kind of growth: long-term, equitable, and sustainable. I mention the "sustainable" point in particular because it is always part of any rhetorical flourish but mostly disregarded when the time comes to do anything. 

Third, a conversation about change. As is obvious to anyone, and as is detailed by the fascinating ebook by McAfee and Brynjolfsson, The Race Against the Machine, we are in the middle of a huge, long-term period of enormous dislocating technological change, and that's only one aspect of the change we are going to see. The American people need this president to tell them this and to say clearly this change will fundamentally alter many of the givens of jobs, work, companies, education, etc.

Fourth, an outline of a practical vision. The impending change is real, but so is America's immense capacity for innovation and reinvention. The president can show how down-to-earth, sensible policies will put the country on the right side of this change.

I haven't mentioned the omnipresent issues of budgets, deficits, and debt. These issues have to be resolved if we want to establish a strong basis for the economy of the future and if we want to make this economy safer. These issues should be put in this economic context. Resolving them will require movement from both Democrats and Republicans. There is no movement today. In this speech, President Obama should make a thoughtful and genuine proposal to break today's complete deadlock. 

The probability of this second speech being given is well below 10 percent. But the president would be better off if he gave it and if he established a different kind of context for that portion of his second term that really matters. This is a use-it-or lose it moment; this is what second terms are about.

Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Bo Cutter is formerly a managing partner of Warburg Pincus, a major global private equity firm. Recently, he served as the leader of President Obama’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) transition team. He has also served in senior roles in the White Houses of two Democratic Presidents.

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Signed, Sealed, Diminished: Postal Service Cuts Are Another Blow to the Public Good

Feb 11, 2013Tim Price

Policy choices drove the Postal Service into debt, but we can still choose to save it.

Policy choices drove the Postal Service into debt, but we can still choose to save it.

The news last week that the U.S. Postal Service plans to end Saturday delivery of regular mail provoked a wide range of reactions: anger from those who hope to prevent the cuts, praise from those who see it as a bold and necessary move, sadness from those mourning the end of an era, and denial from lawmakers who noted that it’s not entirely legal. Whatever their take, the fact that nearly everyone has an opinion on this policy shift shows how thoroughly the Postal Service has become woven into the fabric of American society. Many government agencies are facing cutbacks, but few have an influence as personal or as pervasive as the mailbox outside the front door. And when we check that mailbox by force of habit and remember why it’s empty, it may make us think twice about letting yet another pillar of public life in the U.S. be knocked down.

The blame for the Postal Service’s downward spiral is usually split between the Internet (you can’t include a funny video of a cat in a physical letter, so what good is it compared to e-mail?), private competition, and the most usual suspect of all, the United States Congress. The first two have some merit, but Congress, which has lately become the Kevin Bacon of looming disasters, never more than a few degrees removed from a crisis, is the biggest culprit here. In 2006, it imposed a wholly unique mandate that required the USPS to prefund health benefits for future retirees for 75 years, to the tune of about $5.5 billion a year. So far it’s placed $44 billion into that account while running losing about $30 billion. Now it’s planning service cuts that will save about $2 billion a year. You can work out the math on that one, even if our lawmakers can’t.

While contemplating the costs of the Postal Service, it’s also important to consider what we’re paying for. As of 2011, there were 35,119 postal facilities across the country processing 554 million pieces of mail every day. It may not be as polished as FedEx, but then again, FedEx couldn’t be as polished as FedEx without the help of the Postal Service, which delivers 30.4 percent of FedEx Ground shipments thanks to its presence in rural areas where private carriers fear to tread. To do all this, the Postal Service currently has 546,000 career employees, about 20 percent of whom are black. Further layoffs and service cuts will take a significant toll on communities that have already been disproportionately affected by the recession, from economically devastated towns that can’t sustain private carrier routes to minority groups suffering sky-high unemployment.

The USPS also has value beyond the daily churn of correspondence, commerce, and junk mail. Historian Gray Brechin notes that the New Deal’s public works projects included the construction of more than 1,100 post offices “designed…to elevate and inspire the public” and “distinguished by fine architecture, materials and detailing, as well as by a lavish programme of public art that, for the first time, reflected back to patrons and workers their regional identity.” FDR, himself an avid stamp collector, understood the value of public spaces and oversaw the construction of a vast network of facilities that would bind disparate communities together while serving as a vital supply line. It was also meant as a reminder of what Americans can achieve when united by common purpose. And now some people are ready to give up on it because the lines are too long.

In this light, attacks on the Postal Service look like another symptom of the general anti-government sentiment that has been undermining FDR’s legacy and the strength of our public institutions for decades. Like any service, public or private, the USPS should look to trim costs and adapt to customer demands if it can do so without compromising its quality of service or labor standards. But that’s a big “if,” and it’s hard to blame the agency for the fiscal hole it’s in when Congress has opted to micromanage it to death. Indeed, the prefunding mandate that’s driving the USPS into debt is a classic example of the conservative governing philosophy: come in, break stuff, then complain that it never worked in the first place. Some private firm must be able to do it better, even if it depends on publicly funded resources to get it done. And of course the object of their fixation would be postal workers’ future health benefits. As we’ve been taught from the endless attacks on Social Security and Medicare, the essence of greed in the modern workforce is the desire for a comfortable retirement.

We don’t have to let this narrative play out this way. With this and other public services on the chopping block, it’s time for Americans to have a serious debate about what we want from government and what it’s worth to us, in terms of both our budget and our national identity. Through its sheer omnipresence, the Postal Service and the cuts it’s facing may help Americans to grasp the full scope of what we stand to lose if we buy into the mantra that nothing that costs something is worth anything. It’s up to all of us to decide that the mail must go through.

Tim Price is Deputy Editor of Next New Deal. Follow him on Twitter @txprice.

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The Fiscal Cliff Deal: Useless Little Battles and a Worse Government

Feb 7, 2013Bo Cutter

The year ahead will be full of petty budget battles that solve nothing and distract from the real issues.

On the one hand, the last minute December 2012 fiscal cliff deal was in no respects a policy breakthrough, but on the other hand, it didn't solve any process issues either. There will be no grand resolution, which pleases the ideologues on both sides. God forbid that we come to any workable compromises. And there is no framework. So the 2013 stage is set for a series of useless little budget/deficit/debt wars.

The year ahead will be full of petty budget battles that solve nothing and distract from the real issues.

On the one hand, the last minute December 2012 fiscal cliff deal was in no respects a policy breakthrough, but on the other hand, it didn't solve any process issues either. There will be no grand resolution, which pleases the ideologues on both sides. God forbid that we come to any workable compromises. And there is no framework. So the 2013 stage is set for a series of useless little budget/deficit/debt wars.

We face, in turn, (1) the sequestration battles starting in March (over irresponsible cuts we agreed to 15 months ago as a way of avoiding doing anything then), (2) continuing resolution battles starting in April (a series of confrontations over spending this year because Congress couldn't pass spending bills), (3) 2014 budget battles starting in May (but then we haven't actually agreed on a budget for years), and (4) the return of the debt limit debacle sometime around August. (You thought this was over because Congress has declared that the debt limit has been suspended, but it's coming back.)

These little battles will not -- either singly or together -- lead to a resolution of the deficit/debt/budget debacle. No actual problems will be solved. Everything will be kicked down the proverbial road. My bet is that each of the impending possible battles will wind up the same. There will be high drama moving toward farce, forecasts of doom, tense last-minute negotiations in which various congressional and executive leaders will try to act as though something important is happening. Each time the Republican House will back down, because if your approval rating is lower than cockroaches, you have surprisingly little political leverage.

We are seeing this whole drama playing out now in the run up to the sequester. To remind everyone, these are cuts (roughly $85 billion in 2013 divided between domestic and defense programs) Congress and the president agreed to because they were thought to be so awful that the same two parties would agree to solving the whole budget problem to keep these cuts from happening. So now they are likely to happen and we've decided we hate them.

I hated them a year ago and said so at the time, but predicted that we would in the end make the domestic cuts and finesse the defense cuts. To be clear, I believe we must, over a 10 year period, slow down the growth of public debt, and this has to mean budget cuts. But these reductions will occur at the wrong time, they are done in the wrong way, they hit the wrong part of the budget, and they do nothing whatsoever to alter the 10 year picture of debt growth that impends. They are a wholly symbolic and harmful ritual dance.

We should not make these cuts now. We should, if necessary, make smaller cuts so Congress can say it got a "down payment." Then Congress and the president should agree there will be no debt ceiling fight this year and should publicly and together commit to a process that might work.

In my dreams.

We seem intent on having these useless little battles. They will not actually lead to disasters. On the other hand, they won't make anything better. But they will take up time, consume political capital, raise the level of distrust in government, maintain a high level of economic uncertainty, lower our economy's growth rate, and impede the administration's and the Congress's focus on the real issues of our future. Both parties will look worse after all of this.

Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Bo Cutter is formerly a managing partner of Warburg Pincus, a major global private equity firm. Recently, he served as the leader of President Obama’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) transition team. He has also served in senior roles in the White Houses of two Democratic Presidents.

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How Do the Long-Term Unemployed Compare to the Rest of the Labor Market?

Feb 7, 2013Mike Konczal

The situation for the long-term unemployed looked significantly better after last week's jobs report. The average duration of unemployment dropped from 38.1 to 35.3 weeks over that month, which included statistical rebalancing for the population. A year ago, 43 percent of the unemployed were out of a job for more than 27 weeks; now that number is down to 38 percent.

This is a good development, though it intensifies two of my larger worries about how people will view the economy. The first is that we'll think the economy is doing too well. If we think the economy is healthy, then the Federal Reserve and Congress will put the brakes on too fast, killing the possibility that full employment, the best social program we have, will really happen. There is already evidence of this happening. The sequestration, which will kill a million jobs, looks increasingly likely to happen, even though there is little long-run justification for premature austerity.

The other, oddly, is that we'll think the labor market is so weak that it can no longer be helped by emgerency stimulus. Neil Irwin wrote an overview, as a result of the Scarborough and Krugman back and forth, of what I'll call "pundit macroeconomics." It's a theory of why pundits care about cutting social insurance and deficits even though the economic logic is missing. The missing part of this argument is that many elites feel that while there are too many unemployed, they are uniquely unqualified for the jobs that are available.

Let's update one of my favorite graphs around, which shows how likely it is that the unemployed will find jobs by the duration of their unemployment. I just got new data from the BLS that gives us these numbers through October 2012. Is there a relatively healthy short-term labor market, with a collapsed long-term one? Let's compare 2007, 2011, and 2012:

As you can see, no matter how long you've been unemployed, the labor market in 2012 is weaker than it was in 2007. It was less likely that those unemployed for less than 5 weeks could find a job in 2012 than they could in 2007. The same goes for the long-term unemployed.

This pushes back against recent research by Rand Ghayad and William Dickens of the Boston Fed. They dissagregate the Beveridge Curve by duration, arguing that our problems are primarily concentrated among the long-term unemployed. However, they are likely just picking up on changes in the long-term distribution of the unemployed (which, as noted above, has been collapsing since June 2012, when their data ends), rather than strictly structural elements. Looking at the labor market through the graph above, we can see that it is generally weak, which is not just a function of the long-term unemployed.

Is duration falling because the unemployed are simply dropping out of the labor force? Here's the transition from unemployment to no longer in the labor force, or the liklihood of the unemployed simply dropping out, comparing the pre-crisis time period and today:

Compared to before the recession, the long-term unemployed are less likely to drop out of the labor force. People are still looking for jobs, though a little less in 2012 than in 2011. That said, there wasn't a large pickup in this rate in 2012, so it is unlikely to be the primary driver in the drop of unemployment duration.

Rob Valletta of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco just put out an economic letter on the long-term unemployed. He does the actual work of parsing out weekly transitions from the CPS data and finds this transition, the same dyanmic noted above.

If you break it down by month and look at it over a longer timeframe, it still has the same result. The labor market is depressed for everyone, not just a select group.

Notice the bump out at month 20 for the recovery period, where it actually goes above the expansionary period. Though it isn't clear what is driving this, it is likely both a function of an improving job market as well as people no longer qualifying for unemployment insurance. Unemployment insurance pulls in several directions then. It increases duration both through encouraging longer searches with better matches by providing liquidity. It provides stimulus to the economy, while also keeping people from leaving the labor force and giving up on their searches entirely.

Valletta also finds that "for most categories of workers, the share of long-term unemployment differs little from the share of short-term unemployment." There are some exceptions, notably younger workers. However, the long-term unemployed aren't a dumping ground for certain types of workers; it reflects a general malaise in the labor market.

This isn't to downplay the serious issues of long-term unemployment. The long-term unemployed do have a harder time finding jobs. But the best cure for this situation is to broadly boost the economy through fiscal and monetary stimulus while dealing with the housing market, rather than transitioning to either targeted job policy or deficit reduction.

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The situation for the long-term unemployed looked significantly better after last week's jobs report. The average duration of unemployment dropped from 38.1 to 35.3 weeks over that month, which included statistical rebalancing for the population. A year ago, 43 percent of the unemployed were out of a job for more than 27 weeks; now that number is down to 38 percent.

This is a good development, though it intensifies two of my larger worries about how people will view the economy. The first is that we'll think the economy is doing too well. If we think the economy is healthy, then the Federal Reserve and Congress will put the brakes on too fast, killing the possibility that full employment, the best social program we have, will really happen. There is already evidence of this happening. The sequestration, which will kill a million jobs, looks increasingly likely to happen, even though there is little long-run justification for premature austerity.

The other, oddly, is that we'll think the labor market is so weak that it can no longer be helped by emgerency stimulus. Neil Irwin wrote an overview, as a result of the Scarborough and Krugman back and forth, of what I'll call "pundit macroeconomics." It's a theory of why pundits care about cutting social insurance and deficits even though the economic logic is missing. The missing part of this argument is that many elites feel that while there are too many unemployed, they are uniquely unqualified for the jobs that are available.

Let's update one of my favorite graphs around, which shows how likely it is that the unemployed will find jobs by the duration of their unemployment. I just got new data from the BLS that gives us these numbers through October 2012. Is there a relatively healthy short-term labor market, with a collapsed long-term one? Let's compare 2007, 2011, and 2012:

As you can see, no matter how long you've been unemployed, the labor market in 2012 is weaker than it was in 2007. It was less likely that those unemployed for less than 5 weeks could find a job in 2012 than they could in 2007. The same goes for the long-term unemployed.

This pushes back against recent research by Rand Ghayad and William Dickens of the Boston Fed. They dissagregate the Beveridge Curve by duration, arguing that our problems are primarily concentrated among the long-term unemployed. However, they are likely just picking up on changes in the long-term distribution of the unemployed (which, as noted above, has been collapsing since June 2012, when their data ends), rather than strictly structural elements. Looking at the labor market through the graph above, we can see that it is generally weak, which is not just a function of the long-term unemployed.

Is duration falling because the unemployed are simply dropping out of the labor force? Here's the transition from unemployment to no longer in the labor force, or the liklihood of the unemployed simply dropping out, comparing the pre-crisis time period and today:

Compared to before the recession, the long-term unemployed are less likely to drop out of the labor force. People are still looking for jobs, though a little less in 2012 than in 2011. That said, there wasn't a large pickup in this rate in 2012, so it is unlikely to be the primary driver in the drop of unemployment duration.

Rob Valletta of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco just put out an economic letter on the long-term unemployed. He does the actual work of parsing out weekly transitions from the CPS data and finds this transition, the same dyanmic noted above.

If you break it down by month and look at it over a longer timeframe, it still has the same result. The labor market is depressed for everyone, not just a select group.

Notice the bump out at month 20 for the recovery period, where it actually goes above the expansionary period. Though it isn't clear what is driving this, it is likely both a function of an improving job market as well as people no longer qualifying for unemployment insurance. Unemployment insurance pulls in several directions then. It increases duration both through encouraging longer searches with better matches by providing liquidity. It provides stimulus to the economy, while also keeping people from leaving the labor force and giving up on their searches entirely.

Valletta also finds that "for most categories of workers, the share of long-term unemployment differs little from the share of short-term unemployment." There are some exceptions, notably younger workers. However, the long-term unemployed aren't a dumping ground for certain types of workers; it reflects a general malaise in the labor market.

This isn't to downplay the serious issues of long-term unemployment. The long-term unemployed do have a harder time finding jobs. But the best cure for this situation is to broadly boost the economy through fiscal and monetary stimulus while dealing with the housing market, rather than transitioning to either targeted job policy or deficit reduction.

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Christie and Cuomo's Minimum Wage Politics Highlight Different Economic Visions

Feb 5, 2013Richard Kirsch

Cuomo's minimum wage proposal is better for working families, but the debate needs to be broader.

Cuomo's minimum wage proposal is better for working families, but the debate needs to be broader.

Two potential candidates for president in 2016, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, have taken opposing positions on raising the minimum wage in their states. The debate between the two governors draws a sharp distinction between competing economic visions: trickle-down vs. middle-out economics. At the same time, it also shows how limited the current debate is when it comes to dealing with what’s needed to meet the needs of working families and, in doing so, change the direction of economic policy.

In late January, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie vetoed a small increase in the minimum wage, from the current federal minimum of $7.25 an hour to $8.50 an hour. Christie said that raising the minimum wage would “jeopardize New Jersey’s economic progress.” Christie based his opposition on concerns about small business, although two out of three low-wage workers are employed by corporations with over 100 employees.

Across the Hudson, New York Governor Cuomo argued just the opposite in his State of the State address. Cuomo made the economic case for how putting more money into people’s pockets by raising the minimum wage will move New York’s economy forward:

Increasing the minimum wage leads to greater economic growth. Low-income individuals spend a larger percentage of their income than higher-income earners and salary increases in low wage occupations lead to increased demand for goods and services. Empirical evidence suggests that an increase of $1 in the minimum wage generates approximately $3,000 in household spending per year. Increased household spending will increase demand for goods and help businesses grow, thereby creating more jobs for New Yorkers.

That’s a positive change from a year ago, when Cuomo raised the same concerns as Christie after New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver first put forth the minimum wage proposal. But by the end of the 2012 legislative session, Cuomo had warmed to the proposal, which in both states is supported by more than 80 percent of voters. This year, he has made it a top legislative objective, the first plank in what he calls a “progressive agenda.”

While Cuomo’s support is very welcome, the governor’s own words provide strong evidence that the small hike in the minimum wage he has proposed, to $8.75 an hour, will still far short of what a family needs for the basics in life. In his State of the State address, he explained:

The current minimum wage is unlivable. It's only $14,616. The annual cost of gasoline is $1,200. The annual cost of electricity is $1,300. The annual cost of auto insurance is $1,400. The annual cost of groceries is $6,500. The annual cost of childcare is $10,000. The annual cost of housing is $15,000 on a minimum wage of $14,000. My friends, it does not add up. Nineteen other states have raised the minimum wage; we propose raising the minimum wage to $8.75 an hour. It's the right thing to do. It's the fair thing to do. It is long overdue. We should have done it last year. Let's do it this year.

Despite his passionate plea, the governor’s facts underscore the distance between his proposal and what it would take for a family to meet its essential needs. That figure is available from Wider Opportunities for Women through their Basic Economic Security Table (BEST), which measures by state and county the income a working adult requires to meet his or her basic needs without public assistance.

The BEST number for New York, using the entirely unlikely assumption that a worker has health benefits on the job, is $19.89 for a single worker and about the same for a two-worker family with two children. A single working parent with two children would need to make $36.23 an hour to have a basic living standard. The importance of Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act coverage provisions, which will start in 2014, is underscored by how much higher the hourly wage would need to be in the much more likely scenario that low-wage workers have no health benefits at work. For example, without benefits, a single person would need to earn $25.63 to meet basic needs and a single parent with two children would need $50.72.

A minimum wage that comes close to meeting to a family’s basic needs is both a question of morality and of economic policy. The underlying moral value is that all work has dignity and a full-time worker should earn at least enough to provide basic supports for themselves and their family: housing, food, transportation, child care, health care, personal and household items, and a bit to pus aside for emergencies and retirement (5 percent in the BEST budget). I’d add that a basic budget should include enough to save for higher education and a simple vacation, but those aren’t in the basic BEST calculation.

The economic policy is founded on the premise that by putting money in the pockets of people to meet at least the basics, you make working families the engine of the economy. People who can educate their children, support and care for their families, and shop in their communities move the economy forward. Nick Hannauer and Eric Liu call this “middle-out” economics, the conditions that allow both middle-class consumers and the businesses that depend on them to thrive in a virtuous cycle of increasing prosperity for all. It is at the core of why Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz believes that decreasing inequality is the key to economic progress. Cuomo makes the same argument, along with a much more modest proposal, which Republicans in the State Senate are resisting.

But as long as we are stuck in the politics of the immediately possible, our economy will remain stuck in low gear. To jump-start this conversation, Hanauer and Liu are proposing a federal minimum wage of $15. As Liu told me, “At a time of record corporate profits and record low wages (as shares of GDP), if poor and lower middle-class people are paid more they can buy more, and when they buy more, businesses sell more and can hire more. It infuses demand into the economy in a way that will circulate many times over. The best case for a big increase in the minimum wage is that it's great for business and prosperity.”

Meanwhile, in the realm of the immediate politics, reformers in New Jersey are planning to put a minimum wage referendum on the ballot next fall, when Christie is running for reelection as governor. Cuomo has included his minimum wage hike proposal in the New York State budget, improving the chances that it will become law. Both governors like to be seen as gutsy populists. But only Cuomo is standing for an economics based on the little guy and gal. 

Richard Kirsch is a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, a Senior Adviser to USAction, and the author of Fighting for Our Health. He was National Campaign Manager of Health Care for America Now during the legislative battle to pass reform.

 

Chris Christie image via Shutterstock.com.

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Price Point

New Deal Numerology: A Great Migration

Jan 31, 2013Tim Price

This week's numbers: 11.1 million; 900,000; 0.6%; $1.5 trillion; $25 billion

11.1 million... is a ubiquitous number. That’s how many undocumented immigrants currently live in the U.S. Deporting them all is the closest the GOP has gotten to proposing a public jobs program.

This week's numbers: 11.1 million; 900,000; 0.6%; $1.5 trillion; $25 billion

11.1 million... is a ubiquitous number. That’s how many undocumented immigrants currently live in the U.S. Deporting them all is the closest the GOP has gotten to proposing a public jobs program.

900,000... is a working number. That’s how many new jobs could be created through comprehensive immigration reform, and unlike the deportation plan, the listings wouldn’t all say “ideal candidate is suspicious of others, owns a German Shepherd, probably wears aviators.”

0.6%... is a helpful number. That’s the average wage gain native workers could see from immigration reform, assuming we expand the definition of “native” to include everyone whose grandparents happened to win the race across the ocean.

$1.5 trillion... is a growing number. That’s how much immigration reform could add to GDP in the next decade. And given the latest GDP report, we can’t afford to sacrifice growth because we hate having to press 1 on bank menus.

$25 billion... is a contributing number. That’s how much net revenue the CBO projects the U.S. would gain by creating a path to citizenship, since immigrants will pay more in taxes than they receive in services. So that’s where all the makers have been hiding.

Tim Price is Deputy Editor of Next New Deal. Follow him on Twitter @txprice.

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The Bad GDP Report is a Warning Not to Create Another Roosevelt Recession

Jan 31, 2013David Woolner

President Obama should begin his second term much like the first and demand stimulus to bolster a sagging economy.

The only real capital of a nation is its natural resources and its human beings. So long as we take care of and make the most of both of them, we shall survive as a strong nation, a successful nation and a progressive nation—whether or not the bookkeepers say other kinds of budgets are from time to time out of balance.

President Obama should begin his second term much like the first and demand stimulus to bolster a sagging economy.

The only real capital of a nation is its natural resources and its human beings. So long as we take care of and make the most of both of them, we shall survive as a strong nation, a successful nation and a progressive nation—whether or not the bookkeepers say other kinds of budgets are from time to time out of balance.

This capital structure—natural resources and human beings—has to be maintained at all times. The plant has to be kept up and new capital put in year by year to meet increasing needs. If we skimp on that capital, if we exhaust our natural resources and weaken the capacity of our human beings, then we shall go the way of all weak nations. —Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1938

In a somewhat surprising announcement, the Commerce Department noted yesterday that the U.S. economy actually shrank in the fourth quarter of last year, contracting by 0.1 percent. This sharp decline from the 3.1 percent growth rate posted in the previous quarter has not as yet lead to widespread fears that the United States is about to enter another recession, but given that much of the cause of the decline can be attributed to cuts in government spending, some economists worry that this news is but a harbinger of things to come. We are, after all, facing another government-manufactured showdown on March 1, as well as a possible government shut down near the end of March when the stopgap measure financing the federal government expires. Then there is the expected fight over raising the federal debt ceiling, which could lead the U.S. to default on its debts.

Most economists agree that the uncertainty brought about by the dysfunctional nature of Washington is having a negative effect on the economy. But we hear little about the direct effects that cuts in government spending have had on job growth. How many Americans, for example, are aware that one of the primary drivers of our persistently high unemployment rate is the sharp decline in public sector employment—the massive layoffs of teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public sector employees over the past two years? We might also ask how many Americans recognize that one of the primary ways President Obama managed to stop the downward economic spiral at the start of his first term was through the funding of public sector jobs via the stimulus funds that were channeled to state and local governments. Indeed, it was the expiration of that federal support, and Congress’s refusal to support the president’s modest request for additional federal dollars to support state and local governments in his jobs bill, that initiated the recent public sector decline.

Now at the start of President Obama’s second term, with the U.S. economy still in a very fragile state, we are reminded once again of the direct link between government spending and jobs. For it was the deep cuts in federal defense spending that helped push the economy into negative territory in the past quarter.

One would assume, in the face of such economic realities, that Congress would support the type of modest spending proposals President Obama put forward in the American Jobs Act. But rather than provide funding for the employment of teachers, firefighters, police officers, and the like, rather than put hard-pressed Americans to work rebuilding our dismal infrastructure (now rated 23rd in the world), Congress would rather engage in another endless round of bickering about the perils of deficit spending. Once again heeding the siren song of the deficit hawks, those soothsayers of doom who insist that without an immediate and massive reduction in the level of federal spending we face an imminent economic collapse.

Interestingly, roughly three-quarters of a century ago President Roosevelt faced a similar argument at the start of his second term. Thanks to the stimulus spending of the New Deal, the U.S. economy had been growing at an average annual rate of over 11 percent. Fearing inflation, his more conservative economic advisors, like Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, urged the president to cut spending, balance the budget, and tighten the money supply. But the U.S. economy—which had seen the largest drop in the unemployment rate in history—was still fragile, and the results of the spending cuts were a disaster. Unemployment shot up, industrial production declined, and the country soon found itself in the midst of a recession.

Thankfully, FDR quickly reversed course, and his re-instigation of the essentially Keynesian economic policies (counter-cyclical deficit spending) he had been following since the start of his tenure as president soon turned the U.S. economy around. But the cost to the American people and to FDR’s political fortunes was high. Millions lost their jobs unnecessarily, and the president took a real beating in the 1938 midterm elections, rendering his social and economic reform agenda much more difficult to accomplish.

President Obama, who is fond of history, might do well to study what happened to FDR in 1937. At the very least he should not give up on his demand that Congress provide a modest level of support for further federal spending on behalf of state and local governments. He should also insist on further federal spending on infrastructure. As FDR once said, these measures do not represent wasteful spending; they represent an investment in the American people, an investment in what he liked to call “human capital.” Human capital whose health and well being was not only critical for the present but also for the future. Indeed, FDR insisted that:

Before we can think straight as a nation, we have to consider, in addition to the old kind, a new kind of government balance sheet—a long-range sheet which shows survival values for our population and for our democratic way of living, balanced against what we have paid for them. Judged by that test—history's test—I venture to say that the long-range budget of the present Administration of our government has been in the black and not in the red.

Let us hope that the president and Congress will take heed of this lesson. For, like FDR, they too will one day have to pass the test of history.

David Woolner is a Senior Fellow and Hyde Park Resident Historian for the Roosevelt Institute. He is currently writing a book entitled Cordell Hull, Anthony Eden and the Search for Anglo-American Cooperation, 1933-1938.

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Mike Konczal: How Would a Socialist Wall Street Work?

Jan 30, 2013

In the latest episode of the Roosevelt Institute's Bloggingheads series, Fireside Chats, Fellow Mike Konczal talks to Jacobin editor Seth Ackerman about Seth's recent article "

In the latest episode of the Roosevelt Institute's Bloggingheads series, Fireside Chats, Fellow Mike Konczal talks to Jacobin editor Seth Ackerman about Seth's recent article "The Red and the Black," which asks what kind of mechanisms would replace the pursuit of profit in a socialized economy. In the clip below, they discuss Seth's proposal for socializing the financial sector, transforming the heart of capitalism to give the public ownership over the means of production.

Mike summarizes the idea by noting that "if the government used eminent domain to purchase all the stocks" then "the public would run all the firms," allowing it to distribute the dividends of their success more equally throughout society. Critiquing the idea from a liberal perspective, Mike notes, "We don't tax wealth directly, but we tax the surplus that goes to corporations" and put it towards various public goods. If we want to create a more fair distribution of wealth, why not just do it through the tax code? Seth argues that this kind of "social democratic solution" attempts to mitigate the negative effects of capitalism but doesn't solve the underlying problems. 

For more, including how Seth's ideas apply to public education and what we can learn from past failures in both centrally planned and market economies, check out the full video below:

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Mike Konczal: How Would a Socialist Wall Street Work?

Jan 30, 2013

In the latest episode of the Roosevelt Institute's Bloggingheads series, Fireside Chats, Fellow Mike Konczal talks to Jacobin editor Seth Ackerman about Seth's recent article "The Red and the Black," which asks what kind of mechanisms would replace the pursuit of profit in a socialized economy.

In the latest episode of the Roosevelt Institute's Bloggingheads series, Fireside Chats, Fellow Mike Konczal talks to Jacobin editor Seth Ackerman about Seth's recent article "The Red and the Black," which asks what kind of mechanisms would replace the pursuit of profit in a socialized economy. In the clip below, they discuss Seth's proposal for socializing the financial sector, transforming the heart of capitalism to give the public ownership over the means of production.

Mike summarizes the idea by noting that "if the government used eminent domain to purchase all the stocks" then "the public would run all the firms," allowing it to distribute the dividends of their success more equally throughout society. Critiquing the idea from a liberal perspective, Mike notes, "We don't tax wealth directly, but we tax the surplus that goes to corporations" and put it towards various public goods. If we want to create a more fair distribution of wealth, why not just do it through the tax code? Seth argues that this kind of "social democratic solution" attempts to mitigate the negative effects of capitalism but doesn't solve the underlying problems. 

For more, including how Seth's ideas apply to public education and what we can learn from past failures in both centrally planned and market economies, check out the full video below:

 

Stock exchange image via Shutterstock.com.

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