Tag Archives: economic

Trump’s Economic Plan: Light on Details, Heavy on Tax Breaks for the Rich

by JacintoWare2 Posted on August 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump tried to reset his campaign yet again with a Monday visit to Detroit and a promise of an economic agenda. His speech at the Detroit Economic Club was light on details and full of assurances that his campaign website would soon feature specifics on how he’d tackle the economy. But what details did exist undercut his pledge to make life better for low- and middle-income families, instead serving largely to keep more money in the pockets of the wealthy people in his own income bracket.

The centerpiece of Trump’s new plan is a retooled tax system. “Nothing would make our foreign adversaries happier than for our country to tax and regulate our companies and our jobs out of existence,” Trump said. He had already laid out a vision for rewriting the tax code during the Republican primary, one whose benefits tilted heavily toward a lower tax burden for people earning more than $1 million per year. His campaign website tried to erase his previous plan ahead of the Monday speech, though web archives still retain information on that initial proposal.

During the primary, Trump had proposed four tax brackets, with rates of 0, 10, 20, and 25 percent. While his new plan lacks details, on Monday he said he’d now seek to introduce only three brackets, taxed at 12, 25, and 33 percent. That represents a tax hike from his earlier proposal, but it’s still a major tax cut from current rates for the top income tax bracket, which is taxed at 39.6 percent.

Trump also said he’d like to wipe away the estate tax altogether, using the term “death tax” that’s popular among some conservatives. “American workers have paid taxes their whole lives, and they should not be taxed again at death—it’s just plain wrong,” Trump said. “We will repeal it.” But the inheritance tax, as currently constituted, touches only a small segment of the population. The federal government doesn’t take any taxes out of estates unless the inheritance exceeds $5.4 million for individuals or $10.9 million for couples. That leaves just the wealthiest 0.2 percent of families paying any estate taxes and makes its repeal less than a great boost to the working class.

Meanwhile, Trump’s speech included many subtle appeals to corporate interests. He promised to reduce the business tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent. Under a President Trump, there would be a complete moratorium on new federal regulations, a massive handout to the financial industry. “Next,” he added, “I will ask each and every federal agency to prepare a list of all of the regulations they impose on Americans which are not necessary, do not improve public safety, and which needlessly kill jobs. Those regulations will be eliminated.” Given his previous claims that he’d like to ditch the 2010 Dodd-Frank law intended to rein in Wall Street, it sounds likely that Trump would vastly lower the number of rules banks and financial institutions need to follow.

But Trump’s speech didn’t contain only the normal Republican calls to lower taxes and cut government oversight of business. He also called for an end to the carried-interest loophole, which allows hedge-funders and others to pay a much lower tax rate on earnings, marking a rare policy agreement with Hillary Clinton. And as Trump launched an usual attack against free trade policies, he cited the liberal Economic Policy Institute to explain potential harms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Trump also proposed a tax deduction for families to offset the cost of child care—but since that benefit is a deduction rather than a credit, its benefits would skew toward the upper middle class rather than working-class families.

Not unlike other Trump speeches, this one was unconstrained by facts. Trump accused Clinton of seeking to raise taxes on the middle class, based on a blatant misreading of a recent speech. (Clinton has in fact vowed to leave taxes untouched for all but the extremely wealthy.) The Republican nominee called the nation’s low unemployment rate a hoax, another claim that has landed him in trouble with fact-checkers in the past.

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Trump’s Economic Plan: Light on Details, Heavy on Tax Breaks for the Rich

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Wall Street Billionaires To Advise Trump On Populist Economics

by AdolfoLipinski Posted on August 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Excellent. Donald Trump has introduced his blue-chip economic advisory team:

The list includes strikingly few academic policy experts, usually the bread-and-butter of campaign policy teams. Instead, the advisory team of 13 men — and no women — consists largely of personal friends or longtime business associates of Trump. The median net worth of Trump’s official economic advisers appears to be at least several hundred million dollars.

That wealthy group includes Harold Hamm, a self-made oil billionaire…. Dan DiMicco, a former chief executive of steelmaker Nucor…. Steven Mnuchin…. chief executive of the hedge fund Dune Capital Management…. Steve Roth…. Vornado Realty Trust; hedge fund billionaire John Paulson…. The only academic economist on the team — the only one who has a doctorate in economics — is Peter Navarro of the University of California at Irvine, who focuses on trade with China.

….Trump’s outsider crew at times conflicts with his message of economic populism….His team is filled with hedge fund managers, bankers and real estate speculators.

A whole bunch of Wall Street billionaires plus Stephen Moore, an annual contender for stupidest man in the world. This fits Trump perfectly, especially since he’s not going to listen to any of them anyway. Why should he, after all? He knows more about how the economy works than any of them, believe me.

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Wall Street Billionaires To Advise Trump On Populist Economics

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People will pay for clean air, but only if they can afford it

by SergioBoard797 Posted on July 14, 2016

People wear protective masks near the Bund during a polluted day in Shanghai. Reuters/Aly Song

choked up

People will pay for clean air, but only if they can afford it

By on Jul 14, 2016Share

Just how much are people willing to pay for clean air?

By analyzing census data and purchases of air purifiers in 81 cities, researchers found an answer to that question in China, at least.

On average, Chinese households are willing to pay $5.46 to remove one microgram per cubic meter of pollution from their home. Findings are published in the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Results varied widely between the poor and rich on how much they were willing to pay to reduce pollution. People with high incomes were willing to pay as much s $15 per microgram.

“We found that average Chinese households substantially value clean air, but also that how much they value it depends greatly on how much money they earn,” said study author Koichiro Ito, of the University of Chicago. “Understanding these factors can help regulators decide which reforms and regulations would be most effective.”

Reforms are badly needed; air pollution causes about 6.5 million deaths per year, largely due to pollution from coal plants. And there are a lot of coal plants in China: A report released this week by Greenpeace found that China is adding an average of one new coal-fired plant a week. While air purifiers may help to some extent indoors, they are only accessible for those willing — and able — to pay.

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People will pay for clean air, but only if they can afford it

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Congress pledges billions to the world’s small farmers

by Shannon Walters Posted on July 7, 2016

Congress pledges billions to the world’s small farmers

By on Jul 7, 2016 4:23 pmShare

Everyone in my Twitter feed has been yelling about the GMO-labeling bill that passed the Senate on Wednesday, but few people noticed the much more important bill that passed almost simultaneously. That bill, the Global Food Security Act, provides more than $1 billion a year to support small farmers in developing countries. In a time when Democrats and Republicans seem to agree on nothing, the measure passed the Senate unanimously — and now needs President Obama’s signature to become law.

It’s surprising enough that members of Congress agreed to anything, and more surprising still that they agreed on something truly important. Some 70 percent of the people living in extreme poverty around the world are farmers. With simple tools and training, which this bill finances, those farmers can dramatically increase their harvests and their quality of life. They can send their children to school instead of the fields while growing more food on less land. In fact, helping small farmers is perhaps the most important way we can curb environmental damage.

At the G8 summit in 2009, Obama committed to fight poverty by helping farmers. He followed through later that year with his Feed the Future program, and it’s already delivering results. Susan Rice, the former U.N. ambassador and Obama’s National Security Advisor, highlighted some of them: The program has increased the incomes of small farmers by “more than $800 million” and helped feed 18 million children, according to her calculations.

Now, Congress has formalized that program into law and funded it through 2018. It’s heartening to see Congress pass this with overwhelming support from Democrats and Republicans. “The fact that the Senate passed the legislation without opposition and that the House legislation was cosponsored by nearly one in three members … shows that Congress understands the economic and national security importance of prioritizing global food security,” said Doug Bereuter, a former U.S. Representative at the Chicago Council, a nonpartisan think tank, in a statement.

It’s also heartening to see lawmakers pay attention to people in other countries and act so decisively to help them. Finally, it shows that it’s possible to take commitments made at gatherings of global leaders and turn them into binding laws. Keep your head up, Paris climate agreement!

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Congress pledges billions to the world’s small farmers

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Deadline Looming, Senate Rescues Puerto Rico From Default

by DesmondBosisto Posted on June 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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Two days before Puerto Rico was set to default on $2 billion in debt payments, the Senate staved off calamity by advancing a measure Wednesday that will allow the island to restructure its debts.

The Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, known as PROMESA, now heads to President Barack Obama for his signature. It will create an independent financial oversight board that will oversee the island’s budgets and allow the Puerto Rican government to restructure its nearly $70 billion in debts with 18 different creditors. A key provision would halt all pending litigation related to the debt—there are currently 14 different lawsuits—and allow for continued funding of essential public health and safety services for the island’s 3.5 million residents.

The measure was tacked on to a bill in the Senate that will reauthorize the National Sea Grant Program through fiscal year 2021.

“Obviously, the bill isn’t perfect,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said after its passage, according to the Washington Post. “But here’s why we should support it: It won’t cost taxpayers a dime; it prevents a bailout; and it offers Puerto Rico the best chance to return to financial stability and economic growth over the long term so we can help prevent another financial crisis like this in the future.”

On Monday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew sent a letter to McConnell arguing that failure to pass the bill by July 1 could lead to Puerto Rico defaulting on a $2 billion debt and interest payment and a possible court order forcing the island’s government to pay creditors before providing essential services for its people. The result could have been that Puerto Rico would have stopped paying police officers and firefighters, shut down public transit, and even closed medical facilities.

The next day, Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla wrote an op-ed for CNBC and argued that there was no choice but to pass this bill. He noted that the island’s government has already cut millions in spending, eliminated thousands of public jobs, raised taxes, and withheld tax returns, and is currently $2 billion behind in payments to suppliers (in addition to the $2 billion debt payment due July 1).

“The emergency measures we have taken are unsustainable, harm our economy, reduce revenues and diminish our capacity to repay our debts,” he wrote. “Puerto Rico cannot endure any more austerity.”

The governor’s op-ed echoed many Democrats, Puerto Ricans, and observers and said the independent financial review board—which has broad powers over the island’s budget decisions and is not accountable to any local elected leaders—”unnecessarily undercuts the democratic institution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.” Democracy Now’s Juan González noted Wednesday that a majority of Puerto Ricans oppose the bill and even the concept of an independent review board.

On Tuesday, as the Senate debated the bill, Democratic presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders railed against the bill, urging his colleagues not to support it, according to the Washington Post. Sanders has opposed the bill since it was proposed in the House.

“Is this legislation smacking of the worst form of colonialism, in the sense that it takes away all of the important democratic rights of the American citizens of Puerto Rico?” he asked Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who was speaking against the bill at the time. “That basically, four Republicans who likely believe in strong austerity programs will essentially be running that island for the indefinite future?”

Here’s how the financial review board works: The president will appoint the seven-member board by September 1, choosing the members from a list of names submitted by congressional leadership. â&#128;&#139;A nominee must have a background in finance, municipal bond markets, management, law, or government operations and cannot have a primary residence or business interest on the island. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) will nominate three members; McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and Obama will each nominate one. The governor of Puerto Rico, or his designee, will have a non-voting spot on the board.

The cash-strapped Puerto Rican government is responsible for coming up with the initial $2 million to establish the board—which will operate without any local oversight— and then will also be responsible figuring out its budget and permanently funding it to cover salaries for an executive director, other staff members, and overhead. The board will continue to be in charge of Puerto Rico’s financial existence until the island’s government has “adequate” access to short-term and long-term credit markets at reasonable interest rates and develops and maintains four consecutive years of on-target, board-determined budgets.

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Deadline Looming, Senate Rescues Puerto Rico From Default

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Britain Is a Total Mess Right Now

by WiltonMacKillop Posted on June 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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The day before the Brexit vote, Nick Clegg, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, wrote a piece titled “What you will wake up to if we vote to Leave…” It’s astonishingly prescient and worth a read. Apparently not very many people believed him, though.

But he was totally right, and no one knows what the hell is going on anymore. The process of leaving the EU officially starts when Britain invokes Article 50 of the EU charter, but oddly enough, no one seems to be especially eager to do that. David Cameron, the caretaker prime minister, has announced that he doesn’t plan to do this anytime soon, and Boris Johnson, the leader of the Brexit forces, seems to be OK with that:

Mr. Johnson offered no details about when or how Britain should invoke Article 50 — the formal process for leaving the European Union — nor did he lay out a plan for how Britain could maintain free trade with the European Union, the world’s largest common market, without accepting the bloc’s demand for the unrestricted movement of workers.

Meanwhile, the pound continues to fall and the financial community continues to panic. Tomorrow the Labor Party will hold a vote of confidence on its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, which he’s expected to lose by a landslide. Scotland is threatening to secede yet again. And the EU is saying that if Britain wants to retain access to the common market, then they have to accept free immigration too:

If it wants access to the bloc’s single market, post-Brexit Britain must accept EU freedom of movement rules and the supremacy of the European Court of Justice, EU diplomats have warned ahead of a vital summit. The idea that Britain could have access under a European Economic Area style deal and impose border controls was a non-starter, diplomats said.

Well, who knows? Maybe that’s just their opening negotiating position. But the Brexiteers are in for some serious trouble if it turns out that the price of access to the European market is the very thing that prompted their victory in the first place.

What a mess. And all for nothing.

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Britain Is a Total Mess Right Now

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Obama in Elkhart: "I Hope You Don’t Mind Me Being Blunt About This"

by JanetteReiter96 Posted on June 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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Dave Weigel says that conservatives weren’t impressed with President Obama’s speech yesterday:

I was actually sort of surprised by the lack of conservative reaction to Obama’s speech. I guess they must be keeping their outrage to themselves—which is a bit odd, since Obama’s speech was about the most partisan attack on Republicans I’ve ever heard him give outside a campaign. Here’s a taste:

I’m going to start with the story that…most Republican candidates up and down the ticket are telling….America’s working class, America’s middle class — families like yours — have been victimized by a big, bloated federal government run by a bunch of left-wing elitists like me. And the government is taking your hard-earned tax dollars and it’s giving them to freeloaders and welfare cheats. And we’re strangling business with endless regulations. And this federal government is letting immigrants and foreigners steal whatever jobs Obamacare hasn’t killed yet. (Laughter.)

….I haven’t turned on Fox News or listened to conservative talk radio yet today, but I’ve turned them on enough over these past seven and a half years to know I’m not exaggerating in terms of their story….But it’s not supported by the facts. But they say it anyway. Now, why is that? It’s because it has worked to get them votes, at least at the congressional level.

Because — and here, look, I’m just being blunt with you — by telling hardworking, middle-class families that the reason they’re getting squeezed is because of some moochers at the bottom of the income ladder, because of minorities, or because of immigrants, or because of public employees, or because of feminists — (laughter) — because of poor folks who aren’t willing to work, they’ve been able to promote policies that protect powerful special interests and those who are at the very top of the economic pyramid. That’s just the truth. (Applause.)

I hope you don’t mind me being blunt about this, but I’ve been listening to this stuff for a while now. (Laughter.) And I’m concerned when I watch the direction of our politics. I mean, we have been hearing this story for decades. Tales about welfare queens, talking about takers, talking about the “47 percent.” It’s the story that is broadcast every day on some cable news stations, on right-wing radio, it’s pumped into cars, and bars, and VFW halls all across America, and right here in Elkhart.

There’s more, and it’s mostly a sustained attack on conservative misinformation about the economy and Obama’s policies. It’s also a sustained attack on Donald Trump, even though Trump’s name is never mentioned. After seven years of holding his tongue, it’s pretty obvious that Obama is eager for the Democratic primary to finish up so he can get out on the campaign trail and tell us what he really thinks of the Republican Party these days.

And if you’re interested in policy, here’s what Obama had to offer:

Raise the minimum wage
Increase unionization
More early childhood education
Free community college
Build more infrastructure
Expand Social Security
Pass TPP
Strengthen Wall Street regulations

That all sounds very Hillary-esque, doesn’t it?

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Obama in Elkhart: "I Hope You Don’t Mind Me Being Blunt About This"

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Clinton Campaign Won’t Let Trump Distance Himself From Radical Tax Plan

by DoraColton Posted on May 9, 2016

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton’s campaign isn’t going to let Donald Trump quietly walk back the more extreme positions he took in order to secure the Republican nomination. On Monday, as Trump begins distancing himself from his earlier tax plan now that he’s the presumptive GOP nominee, the Clinton campaign organized a press call to rip the plan as a massive giveaway to the top 1 percent. “This is the most risky, reckless, and regressive tax proposal ever put forward by a major presidential candidate,” said Gene Sperling, the former director of the National Economic Council, speaking for the Clinton campaign.

Trump’s campaign hasn’t exactly been known for its depth of policy details. But one of the few comprehensive plans that Trump put forward was a scheme to cuts taxes drastically. Released last fall, Trump’s tax plan would slash rates across the board, but with most of the benefits accruing to the rich and uber-rich, as the top income tax rate would drop from 39.6 percent to 25 percent.

“We still think facts and numbers matter and should in this campaign,” Sperling said. He pointed to independent analyses of Trump’s plan showing that it would cost anywhere from $9 trillion to $12 trillion over the first decade. Most of the benefits of these tax cuts would go to the wealthy. According to the liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, $3.5 trillion, or 1.5 percent of gross domestic product, would go to people earning more than $1 million dollars per year. The Tax Policy Center found that 40 percent of the money in Trump’s tax cuts would go to the top 1 percent, with the bottom 60 percent of the country getting 16 percent of those tax cuts.

“To put it simply,” Clinton policy adviser Jake Sullivan said, “Donald Trump has put forward a tax plan that places him squarely on the side of the superwealthy and corporations at the expense of the middle class and working families.”

Over the weekend, Trump created some confusion about whether he actually stands by his tax plan. On NBC’s Meet the Press, Trump painted his proposal as just an opening bid that would inevitably change during negotiations with Congress, and he even seemed to suggest that he’d like to see taxes go up on the wealthy. “For the wealthy, I think, frankly, it’s going to go up,” he said. “And you know what, it really should go up.”

The Clinton campaign isn’t ready to let him to ditch his stances. “The only thing one can do is look at the black and white of his paper and not be fooled by his shifting comments,” Sperling said. The Clinton aides also suggested that Trump’s recent flirtations with refinancing the country’s debt posed a dire threat to the global financial system. “It’s somewhat shocking,” Sperling said, “that in a time when our country is celebrating the economic foresight of Alexander Hamilton that the presumptive candidate for president, Donald Trump, is openly advocating that the United States no longer honor 100 percent of its debt or protect our full faith and credit.”

“We frankly think that Mr. Trump’s economic plans have not received the scrutiny they’ve deserved,” Sullivan said, promising that the Clinton campaign plans to keep hammering the point home throughout the course of the race as a major area of difference between the candidates.

In the middle of the call, as luck would have it, Trump took to his favorite communication medium to stick by his tax plan:

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Clinton Campaign Won’t Let Trump Distance Himself From Radical Tax Plan

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Why China (really) is losing its appetite for coal

by JulissaU46 Posted on April 27, 2016

Why China (really) is losing its appetite for coal

By on Apr 27, 2016Share

China announced this week it intends to halt construction of about 200 new coal plants, the likes of which would have accounted for 105 gigawatts of generating capacity. Avoiding 200 new coal plants may not sound like a huge step for climate change at first, but it accounts for more electricity capacity than all of Britain and makes a dent in the staggering number of coal-fired plants the world has planned.

The pressures leading to this decision are just as important as the news itself. China’s hunger for coal has been shrinking rapidly and coal-fired plants have been operating at an average of around 50 percent capacity, hinting at the wild inefficiencies in the country’s energy infrastructure. But this isn’t only a story of ruthless economic pragmatism or China’s hankering for international political capital — it’s also one of citizen accountability.

“Chinese people are saying, ‘We demand cleaner air,’” said Melanie Hart, China policy director at the Center for American Progress. Hart detailed recent moves to install real-time air-monitoring technology across the country. By comparing real-time air quality to national standards, people now have a stark picture of a government failing to follow through on its environmental promises. The Chinese Communist Party “are now allowing the citizens to have an unprecedented role in holding local officials to account over air pollution,” she told Grist.

Citizen pressure could lead China to make even bigger changes down the road. But with a country as big as China, change takes time.

And there is, as always, some fine print: China’s new guidelines provide exemptions for coal projects linked to peoples’ livelihoods, a vague phrase that could perhaps apply to personal coal-fired heating in homes. The country as a whole is going to still be using a lot of coal, but the new guidelines still show Chinese officials are serious about restricting its growth.

“One thing to understand about China is that it’s really like a giant cruise ship,” Hart said. “When the economic command in Beijing starts to turn the wheel and change direction, it takes a while for the entire ship to swing around.”

Swinging the ship around will indeed be slow and arduous — and will include hardships for coal and steel workers in the transition toward a service-based economy. China can do a lot to ease that transition with retraining and reemployment programs. And over time, when that ship is pointing the right way, the world will be a lot better off for all the coal it avoided burning.

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San Francisco Just Did Something Really Cool for Working Parents

by JacobHaralson Posted on April 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, San Francisco became the first US city to require that all new parents—mothers, fathers, and same-sex partners—get fully paid parental leave for six weeks after giving birth or adopting a child. The new law follows the efforts by tech companies in the area, including Amazon, Apple, Google, and Twitter, to offer employees robust parental leave policies in an effort to increase work-life balance.

California is one of only five states that already offers some form of parental leave, but this new city-wide law is one of the most generous in the country. Workers in the Golden State now get six weeks off, but they receive just 55 percent of their pay. New Jersey and Rhode Island have similar laws, and Washington state recently passed a parental leave law that has not taken effect. In March, the New York legislature approved a parental leave policy that will cover 12 weeks of paid time off, though the law will go into effect in 2018 and will initially cover only 50 percent of average pay.

The United States, which guarantees up to 12 weeks of unpaid parental leave, is the only developed country that does not guarantee all new parents paid parental leave. Expectant mothers get 18 weeks of paid leave in Australia, 39 weeks in the UK, and 480 days in Sweden.

For workers in both California and New York, paid parental leave was one of two victories this week. Governors in both states also signed legislation Monday that will increase the minimum wage in each state to $15 an hour, to be phased in over about seven years. The higher wages, which are more than double the federal minimum wage, will affect roughly 60 million Americans. President Obama responded to the wage increases by asking Congress to follow suit.

“Since I first called on Congress to increase the federal minimum wage in 2013, 18 states and more than 40 cities and counties have acted on their own—thanks to the strong leadership of elected officials, businesses, and workers who organized and fought so hard for the economic security families deserve,” he said in a statement. “Now Congress needs to act to raise the federal minimum wage and expand access to paid leave for all Americans.”

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San Francisco Just Did Something Really Cool for Working Parents

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