Tag Archives: jobs

Open New York City for Operation

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Open New York City for Operation

The city currently is closed down by order of Da Mare Bill de Blasio (I know, different city. Same guy, though, functionally), and that’s causing a lot of damage, and not just economic.

More than 160 business leaders, including executives at Citigroup Inc, Mastercard Inc, and Nasdaq Inc, have signed a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio warning of New York City’s deteriorating condition in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and growing anxiety over public safety, cleanliness, and other quality-of-life issues.

De Blasio’s response? No. Gimme money first.

Let’s be clear: to restore city services and save jobs, we need long term borrowing and a federal stimulus—we need these leaders to join the fight to move the city forward[.]

Here’s a stimulus: open the city—withdraw the restrictions—and watch the sharp and prolonged economic growth provide a ton of stimulus.

And watch the malaise that being closed down and cooped up is causing the residents of the city fade as they’re able to go back to work, go back to shopping, go back to socializing. Able to go back to earning money for their bills—the lack of which is another source of serious angst—and spending some of it on entertainment, another angst reducer.

Equal Protection

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Recall that California, earlier this year, enacted a law requiring gig employers to reclassify those folks from contractors to formal employees—with all of the employee expenses that entails: half the payroll taxes due, retirement benefits, health benefits, paid time off, etc, etc, etc.

In response, a number of companies who’ve centered their business models on gig employees, have sued and have been fighting to force the law—AB-5—onto this fall’s ballot for the actual citizens to decide.

Related to the law and the hoo-raw surrounding it, are some additional consequences illustrated by this:

[M]agicians, freelance journalists, and interpreters have found themselves losing work: many small businesses say such measures would be too costly to implement, and have instead opted to cut back on their use of independent workers.

The Left doesn’t care, though, about this collateral damage [emphasis added]:

The ride-sharing and delivery companies’ legal and political push against AB-5 is “such a frustrating example of the way you can buy your way into a regulatory environment that suits you,” said Veena Dubal, a professor who studies employment law at University of California, Hastings, and has been a vocal critic of the companies. “They have been defying the order since Jan. 1. Meanwhile, a yoga studio doesn’t have that luxury.”

Sadly, this is a typical Leftist attitude. The well-off don’t deserve access to the means of legal defense or pushback because they’re well-off and others aren’t. The Left has not a syllable of a move to help those not-well-off gain the same access.

Dubal’s outcome would be one of no one having access. Which would cede everything to Government, where the Left thinks it all belongs, anyway.

Funding the Police

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Senator Josh Hawley (R, MO) wants to do that, so he’s introducing the David Dorn Back the Blue Act that would authorize DoJ to

raise the salaries of state and local police forces all across the country—except in cities that have chosen to defund law enforcement in the wake of nationwide protests and riots.

And

If the bill becomes law, police departments will have new federal funding at their disposal allowing them to increase the salaries of officers “up to 110 percent of the local median earnings, and would exclude cities that defund their police[.]”

Hawley is on the right track, but there needs to be an important adjustment to his bill. Rather than simply providing Federal funding to those cities, those funds should be matching funds, requiring the cities to put up their own salary-increasing funds before getting any Federal monies (I claim the matching ratio should require the receiving city to put up at least 50% of the increase). Otherwise, the city would simply shift the cost of the increase onto taxpayers from other States, taxpayers who have their own police departments to support.

Protection

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…and extortion. Leaders of many unions are threatening exactly that if they don’t their way.

Unions representing millions of workers, from teachers to truck drivers, pledged to ramp up protests in the leadup to the presidential election, with walkouts aimed at forcing local and federal lawmakers to pass police reform and address what they described as systemic racism.

Actually, it’s the union leaders:

…labor leaders from America’s biggest public and private sector unions said they would organize walkouts….

More the public sector than private sector unions: AFSCME, SEIU, and NEA.

And here’s the crux of it; “systemic racism,” “police reform,” these are just smoke screens:

…redistribute the stolen wealth of the billionaire class….

Pay the vig, suckas. Nice business, nice economy you got there….

Some Labor Day Questions

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First published in 2015, I’ve updated it for today.  In an ideal world, I’ll be able to update it again next year, with a yet more optimistic tone.

The Wall Street Journal asked some questions on Labor Day 2012, and supplied some answers.  Here are some of those questions and answers, which remain as valid this Labor Day.

  • Q: How are America’s workers doing? Not good. Over the past decade, over the ups and downs of the economy, taking inflation into account, the compensation of the typical worker — wages and benefits—basically haven’t risen at all. … The Labor Department recently said that 6.1 million workers in 2009-2011 have lost jobs that they’d had for at least three years. Of those, 45% hadn’t found work as of January 2012. … Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Friday that unemployment is still two percentage points higher than normal….
  • Q: Things ARE getting better, though. The US economy is creating jobs, right? Back in December 2007 when the recession began, there were about two jobless workers for every job opening.  When the economy touched bottom in mid-2009, there were more than six unemployed for every job.  At last count, the BLS says there were 3.4 jobless for every opening.
  • Q: How much of this elevated unemployment is because the unemployed just don’t have the skills that employers are looking for right now?  …the bulk of the evidence is a lot of the unemployment really is the old-fashioned kind: the kind that would go away if the economy was growing at a stronger pace. Mr. Bernanke said as much at the [2012] Jackson Hole conference….

In 2019, the jobs situation was drastically improved.  The overall unemployment rate was at an historic low, and there were more job openings than there were folks to fill them.  The black unemployment rate was at a record low.  The Hispanic unemployment rate was at a near record low.  The women unemployment rate was at a near record low.  Wages, both real and nominal, were growing.

I add a couple of questions for this year.

  • Q: What about the COVID-19 virus situation? It hit us hard last winter, when we knew nothing about it, and much of the data we did have had been falsified, with other, critical, data withheld from us by foreign entities for critical weeks. However, the initial spike has collapsed, and the latest, end-of-summer surge is waning. The fatality rate, given an infection, is a small fraction of 1% for most age groups and in the 3%-5% range for those in their 60s and older. Vaccines are on the horizon, and mitigating treatment techniques and drugs are in effect that greatly lessen the severity of most infections and shorten significantly hospital stays, and decrease drastically mortality rates for those hospitalized. It also turns out that children are the least harmed by this virus, neither likely to pass infections among each other nor to adults; schools can re-open for critically important face-to-face teaching and learning, and many of them are. Associated resurgences of infection are turning out to be minor.
  • Q: But what about the economy? This was a politically-forced, not an economically-induced, shutdown of our economy, and so it can be re-opened just as politically or by simple business decision to do so. And it is, in broad swaths of our economy. GDP is on a sharp rise, the unemployment rate is around 8.4%, which is well below the Panic of 2008 rate, and the current rate is falling. The employment participation rate is rising again. Businesses are reopening, furloughed employees are being recalled.

In sum, our exceptional American economy is coming back.

Happy Labor Day.