Tag Archives: jobs

A Union Strikes

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Buzzfeed News has been struck by the union that organized many of its workers.

“BuzzFeed won’t budge on critical issues like wages—all while preparing to go public and make executives even richer,” the union said… “There is no BuzzFeed News without us, and we’re walking out today to remind management of that fact,” the union said.

Another way of saying the same thing, without changing a minim of meaning is this:

“The union won’t budge on critical issues like wages—all while the company is preparing to go public and make the company and its employees even more prosperous. There is no BuzzFeed News without us, and we’re walking out today to remind management of that fact and to pay the vig. Be too bad if something was to happen to that nice company.”

Government Subsidies for Local Newspapers

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Dean Ridings, CEO of an organization self-absorbedly called America’s Newspapers, thinks it’s a terrific idea that the Federal government (presumably, government at any level) should…subsidize…local newspapers.

The Local Journalism Sustainability Act will provide the local news industry time to continue its transition to a more digital future and to work out a better arrangement, either through legislation or other means, to be paid when Google and Facebook use its content. It is not a permanent handout.

It is not a permanent handout. That’s just risible; Ridings knows better. It would be both a handout and permanent.

And this: time to work out a better arrangement, either through legislation….

Just what we need—a Government Press for the locals: Local Izvestia, Local Russia Today, Local China Daily, Local People’s Daily in the US. Even if the legislative aspect didn’t come to fruition, the strings will be attached to the subsidies from the start.

No.

If the locals want a local press, they’ll have one through a free market. No government funding—which is to say no taxpayers’ money from outside the community, from entirely different States, from clear across the nation—is necessary or even useful.

Build Back Better is Good

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Jason Furman, ex-Chairman of ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) White House Council of Economic Advisers and currently a Harvard Professor of something styled “Practice,” is all about the Biden-Harris reconciliation collection of policies known as Build Back Better.

He even wrote this in all seriousness in his piece in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal:

Build Back Better would have a minuscule impact on inflation over the medium and long term.

Even were that true, though, in the short term where most of us live, especially the lower middle class and poor among us who live especially short-term—paycheck to paycheck—we’re facing not just inflation, which is a rate, but actual steady-state higher prices; higher prices which will last into Furman’s medium and long terms, and beyond.

Meanwhile, wages won’t rise fast enough to reduce those higher prices to the status quo ante‘s buying power any time soon, leaving our lower middle class and poor worse off in Furman’s medium and longer term, and beyond.

That wage rise, further, will be held back by Biden-Harris’ and Progressive-Democrats’ penchant for regulation, which will hinder the rise in productivity that’s necessary to facilitate wages’ rise.

Furman knows this full well; he’s one of the Smart Ones of the Left.

We Need It

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One of the arguments Progressive-Democrats are using to rationalize their claimed need to pass their spendiferous reconciliation bill is one being advanced by Congresswoman Debbie Dingell (D, MI), this time via a Friday interview with Martha MacCallum on her The Story. Huge spending subsidies for child care is necessary because folks can’t otherwise afford it, so they can’t go back to work.

What Progressive-Democrats refuse to address, though—including Dingell (and MacCallum shied away from asking Dingell about it)—is that pre-pandemic, folks could afford child care, the unemployment rate was solidly below 4%, and the labor force participation rate was two per centage points higher than today.

What’s changed? I mean, besides lockdowns, which we now know was a mistake, yet Progressive-Democrats still demand them, and Progressive-Democrats having gained power and insist on throwing money at an economy that cannot absorb it without historically high inflation.

Government Press

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That’s another item buried in President Joe Biden’s (D) and his Progressive-Democratic Party syndicate’s reconciliation bill.

The Local Journalism Sustainability Act (LJSA), first introduced in July, would provide a local media advertising credit of up to $5,000 in the first year and up to $2,500 in the next four years, covering 80% of advertising costs in the first year and 50% in the following four years.
Other elements of the bill would provide a federal tax credit to local media outlets that hire local news reporters, covering half of compensation up to $50,000 in the first year, and 30% of compensation up to $50,000 in the following four years. To be eligible, reporters would need to meet a minimum of 100 hours of work per quarter.

Those 100 hours required to get a “reporter” subsidy (here in the form of tax credits) aren’t even for half-time work: they’re less than 20% of full time. Get a Government subsidy for “hiring” a dilettante or a hobbyist. Nice gig for the dilettante or hobbyist.

And what’s with the advertising subsidy (tax credit)? Advertisers pay the outlet for advertising time and space; outlets don’t pay the advertisers for gracing their pages.

Senator Maria Cantwell (D, WA), the item’s sponsor:

The tax incentives in this bill will help local newspapers and digital-only news journalists and broadcast newsrooms remain financially viable to retain and hire local base journalists to cover local news stories.

Naturally, the news outlets and associated unions, including National Public Radio, the AFL-CIO, NewsGuild-CWA, and the Writers Guild of America, East are enthusiastic about the free—an unearned—money.

It’s nonsense. If the local outlets are providing a product that’s useful to the local citizens, their readers, then the local market, those local citizens, will freely support that product with their time, eyeballs, and subscription/purchase money.

Government largesse is entirely unneeded, except as a tool for Government to use to…influence…what gets published, and just as importantly, what does not get published.

The subsidies, and their proclaimed need, are nonsense. But they’re part of what the Progressive-Democrats wish to use in their drive to expand government and government intrusiveness.