Public Sector

Saturday Reads Around The Internets - Public Unions & Homeless Beauty Queens

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Welcome to the weekly roundup of great articles, facts and figures. These are the weekly finds that made our eyes pop.

Miss Colorado is Homeless

A sign of the times, our beauty queen is homeless.

Just months after receiving her crown, Miss Colorado USA Blair Griffith lost her home.

The 23-year-old, who will compete in the Miss USA pageant in June, was evicted, along with her mother, from their home last November. They have been living with a family friend ever since. Griffith is also scheduled to lose her job at Saks Fifth Avenue when the branch she works at closes its doors for good next month.

Jobs Being Created are Low Pay Ones

The NELP ran some numbers and discovered the new jobs are low paying ones.

Lower-wage industries constituted 23 percent of job loss, but fully 49 percent of recent growth. Mid-wage industries constituted 36 percent of job loss, and 37 percent of recent growth. Higher-wage industries constituted 40 percent of job loss, but only 14 percent of recent growth.

We're hearing a lot of spin on tech jobs and innovation lately. Realize those jobs have shrunk by 4.4% over the last decade. In other words, the sector is not even employing the U.S. workers who need a job and have the skills.

Economic Nonsense Reported As Fact

Industrial Policy Can Work - Rethinking the Auto Bailout

Note: this is a cross-post from The Realignment Project. Follow us on Facebook!

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How NOT to Do It

 

Introduction:

When the first generation of historians begin their work on the Obama Administration, one of the more puzzling chapters will be the winter of 2010, when a major sea-change occurred in public policy that neither the administration nor the media were particularly eager to spend that much time trumpeting - namely, the revival of industrial policy after forty years or more beyond the pale of the Conventional Wisdom, as demonstrated by the success of the American automotive industry rescue.

While we wait for that generation of historians to get started being born, we can at least begin to learn some lessons about how and why the Big Three rescue worked when other industry bailouts have been such miserable failures.

A Defense of Public Sector Unionism - Part the Second

In part 1 of "In Defense of Public Sector Unions," I concentrated mostly on the ideological side of public sector unions - both why the existence of public sector unions is troubling to some progressives, and why ideologically progressives should support public sector unions. However, in the comments on the various sites where part 1 was cross-posted, one of the frequent themes of discussion was a request for some hard numbers to prove that public sector union workers aren't the goldbricking, featherbedding "thugs" they're made out to be.

So let's talk numbers.

A Defense of Public Sector Unionism - Part the First

Note: this is a cross-post from The Realignment Project.

 

Introduction:

There is something strange about the Democratic Party’s love of attacking parts of its own coalition. Every political party has divisions inside it, but disagreements between factions and interest groups are usually solved through negotiation, power-sharing, and the like. The Democratic Party is highly unusual in the level of existential opposition it’s willing to engage in – the infamous “Sister Soljah” moment, the bitterness of the Rainbow Coalition vs. New Democrat conflict that arguably lasted well into 2008, and so on.

However, there’s nothing quite as strange as the loathing of certain parts of the Democratic Party for the very existence of public sector unions.

Creating State Level Jobs Programs: A Jobs Insurance Supplement

Note: this is a cross-post from The Realignment Project.

Introduction:

Even under the relatively optimistic economic forecast included in the 2011 Federal Budget, unemployment will remain at the 9.8% rate through the end of this year, dropping to 8.9% in 2011 and 7.9% in 2012.  In other words, after four years since the first stimulus, unemployment will remain at recessionary levels. To be fair, the passage of a jobs bill – and the promised efforts to pass further stimulative elements (aid to states, highway money, public works, etc.) – lends some slight hope that this catastrophe might be averted.

However, as we’ve seen with the jobs bill, it’s incredibly hard and slow to get even the smallest elements of a jobs bill through Congress; this makes it highly unlikely that sufficient actions will be taken to bring down the unemployment. However, I do think that it is possible to push through more aggressive jobs measures at the state level in heavily Democratic states that aren’t hamstrung by the Senate’s rules and the Blue Dog Caucus. As I’ve discussed in my 50-State Keynesianism and Job Insurance series, I believe that it’s possible to reform state governments to be successful anti-recession institutions, complementing Congressional action.

Today, I’ll take California and New York as two heavily Democratic states that are also large enough to have a significant impact on the national economy.

Virtues of the Public - Part 4 (Power of the Purse)

Introduction:

For earlier parts in the series, see here and here.

In the history of public policy, like in other disciplines, sometimes the most fascinating topics are the most ordinary, the most overlooked. The things we don’t really notice can be the most powerful influences in our lives, because they can function unseen. And that brings us to the topic for today’s post.

We grumble about taxes, we handle money every day, but we don’t really think about what the power of the public purse means.

 

Job Insurance - The Public/Private Issue (Part 7 in a Series)

Introduction:

This is a cross-post from The Realignment Project.

For earlier parts in the series, see here.

One of the largest ideological barriers to establishing Job Insurance, just as was the case with Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, is that it would in a fundamental way reshape the composition and relations of the public and private sectors. This more than anything else is what terrifies Republicans (it’s the reason why the GOP has targeted the public option especially) because it undermines one of the most important justifications for anti-statist and pro-corporate ideology. If the public sector and the private sector are not diametric opposites – if in fact, the public can do things that the private can, instead of the private sector being the only repository of competence and efficiency (and thus, capable of replacing the public sector) – then there is no practical argument against government intervention in the economy, and increasingly fewer philosophical arguments against it.

And so the argument will be made that this is socialist, that it’s un-American. And none of that is true.