Things to Read at Lunchtime on Thursday, January 30, 2014

January 30, 2014

Must-Reads:

  1. Jonathan Cohn: Obamacare Death Spiral Not Happening: “In the world of Obamacare hate, the law’s failure is imminent and inevitable… an insurance ‘death spiral’…. Could Obamacare enrollment really go so awry? Sure. But some news from Wednesday is one more sign that such a crisis is unlikely…. Wellpoint… officials announced that enrollment in their health plans was meeting expectations… 400,000 new customers already and expected to have close to a million by… the final day of March…. If the pattern holds, Wellpoint won’t be taking the kinds of losses that force higher prices next year.”

  2. Simon Wren-Lewis: Understanding ever-increasing executive pay: “Why did executive pay start taking off in the 1980s?… Tax rates on top incomes were… substantially reduced… the CEO has a much greater incentive to put lots of effort into the bargaining process with the company… microeconomic evidence that CEO pay for firm’s performance that is outside the CEO’s control (i.e. that is industry wide, and so does not reflect personal performance) is more important when tax rates are low…. There is a nice parallel between the compensation bargaining model and the union bargaining model popular outside the US in the 1970s/80s, which made many economists somewhat antagonistic to growing union power…”

  3. Igor Volsky: 6 Ways Extreme Income Inequality Is Making Your Life Worse: “1979-2007… top 1 percent… families experienced a 278 percent increase… families in the middle 60 percent saw an increase of less than 40 percent…. 1. Income inequality forces Americans into debt…. 2. Income inequality makes America sick…. 3. Income inequality makes America less safe…. 4. Income inequality makes America less democratic…. 5. Income inequality undermines the American dream…. 6. Income inequality is undermining long-term economic growth…”

  4. Mark Thoma: Sharing the Gains from Economic Growth: “Reducing inequality a major part of his State of the Union Address…. But to avoid being accused of waging class warfare, he will talk about creating ‘ladders of opportunity’ instead of focusing directly on the inequality problem. This shift in emphasis is a mistake…. Opportunity is unequal, and creating ‘ladders of opportunity’ should be part of any attempt to address the inequality problem. But… the distribution mechanism is broken, the gains from economic growth have not been widely shared… focus solely on opportunity does nothing to solve the problem of income being misdirected to the upper end of the income distribution.”

Should-Reads:

  1. Jared Bernstein: Inequality and Accountability: “A primary concern is that… inequality of income and especially wealth begins to block opportunities for those on the wrong side of the divide. On what to do about it, I’m with Krugman re jobs and full employment. But Mark Schmitt makes a strong case for the targeting the outsized political influence of concentrated wealth. And it’s not like you have to choose one…. There’s another important part of this inequality debate… accountability…. When policy makers are thinking about the policy set implied by the inequality debate, I’d strongly add accountability–and thus, government oversight–to the list.  I don’t think we can count on corporate boards to do it for us…”

  2. Robert Reich: Robert Reich (Why There’s No Outcry): “Middle incomes are sinking, the ranks of the poor are swelling, almost all the economic gains are going to the top, and big money is corrupting our democracy. So why isn’t there more of a ruckus?…. First, the working class is paralyzed with fear it will lose the jobs and wages it already has…. No one has any job security. The last thing they want to do is make a fuss and risk losing the little they have. Besides, their major means of organizing and protecting themselves–labor unions–have been decimated…. Second, students don’t dare rock the boat…. But today’s students don’t want to make a ruckus…. The job market for new graduates remains lousy. Which is why record numbers are still living at home…. Third and finally, the American public has become so cynical about government that many no longer think reform is possible…. It’s hard to get people worked up to change society or even to change a few laws when they don’t believe government can possibly work.”

  3. Rick Perlstein: Thinking Like a Conservative (Part Five): Epistemology and Empathy: “Have you ever noticed how conservatives who say the most controversial things imaginable think no one actually disagrees with them? They will admit… people might claim to disagree. But they will explain… that those who do so are lying, or nuts, or utter… out of a totalitarian will to power, or are poor benighted folks cowed or confused by those aforementioned totalitarians…. A genuine right-winger will be so lacking in intellectual imagination—in cognitive empathy—that imagining how anyone could sincerely reason differently from them is virtually impossible.”

Dean Baker: “It is difficult to see how anyone can get be too concerned about the projected path of Social Security spending. It went from 4.1 percent of GDP in 2000 to 5.1 percent in 2013. It is expected to rise by another 1.1 percentage point of GDP over the next twenty years. It’s not clear why anyone would view this as a major problem” | Martin Wolf: The challenges of a post-crisis world | Robert Greenstein: Commentary: Nutrition Title of Farm Bill Agreement Drops Draconian Cuts and Represents Reasonable Compromise | Dean Baker: Fraternity Type Reporting on Budget and Food Stamp Cuts at the WaPo by Ed O’Keefe | John Cassidy: Ten Ways to Get Serious About Rising Inequality | David Dayen: The Post Office Should Become a Bank | Patrick Thibodeaux: What STEM shortage? Electrical engineering lost 35,000 jobs last year |

Should Be Aware of:

  1. Josh Brown: Timing your blog post to have maximum punch: “If you are a financial adviser with a blog and social-media presence, you are not forced at gunpoint to have an opinion on every issue…. When something notable happens, you’re going to want to demonstrate to your readers that you’re at least aware of it…. But a lot of people will be doing that at the same time…. The question then becomes, ‘How do I stand out?’ TRY TO BE LAST. Barring the superhuman ability to always be first with news or to be the most knowledgeable about every development, I’ve learned over the years to try to be last, hitting topics with such force that no one else will bother to opine in your wake. To literally crush a subject and put it to bed once and for all, now that’s a worthwhile endeavor.”

  2. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee: The Second Machine Age @ Commonwealth Club: “Welcome to the modern age, where computers diagnose diseases, drive cars and write clean prose. Advances like these have created unprecedented economic bounty. Meanwhile, median income has stagnated and unemployment has risen. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee reveal the technological forces behind this economic sea change…. As business researchers at MIT they predict that the path to prosperity lies in businesses and individuals using ingenuity to race with machines.”

  3. Marc Ambinder: Two attacks on Hillary Clinton that won’t work: “In the past 48 hours, two potential Republican rivals of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton found themselves with the chance to take a shot at the presumed Democratic front-runner in 2016. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) brought up President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky…. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called on Hillary Clinton to be candid about her mismanagement of the deadly violence in Benghazi, Libya. Both attacks have superficial plausibility. But if they’re the best that Republicans have, then Clinton is an even stronger presidential candidate than she appears to be.”

  4. Alyssa Rosenberg: At The Grammys, Beyoncé And Jay-Z Made The Case For Marriage That Conservatives Can’t: “The New York Times’ Ross Douthat wrote a column in which he suggested concessions both liberals and conservatives ought to make if we’re to get together on the joint project of making marriage more appetizing and acceptable…. [He asks] liberals… ‘to acknowledge the ways in which liberalism itself has undercut the two-parent family–through the liberal-dominated culture industry’s permissive, reductive attitudes toward sex, and through the 1970s-era revolution in divorce and abortion law…. Liberals tend to feign agnosticism about pop culture’s impact on morals”…. The only evidence Douthat cites for these claims are a RAND paper and Jonathan Chait’s piece for New York magazine about the liberalization of pop culture, neither of which particularly bolster his case…. But I really would have liked to see Douthat engage with a significant contradiction in his argument about culture and sexual morality: sure, American popular culture involves a lot of depiction of sex out of wedlock. But it also remains deeply invested in the idea that marriage is a desirable end goal…. The 40-Year-Old Virgin…. Baby Mama (2008), The Switch (2010), The Back-Up Plan (also 2010)…. Friends With Kids (2011)…. Barney Stinson… is tying the knot on How I Met Your Mother. Happy marriages abound on television… Modern Family… Trophy Wife… Raising Hope…. And in my favorite recent example, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter and Jay-Z got on the Grammy stage last night and did what conservatives have been dying for someone to do for ages: they made marriage look fun, and sexy, and a source of mutual professional fulfillment…. ‘Drunk In Love’ is raunchy, fun and even silly…. It’s a song about flirting, about going out and partying, about having fantastic, adventuresome, totally enthralling sex–with your spouse. That’s a far, far better argument for marriage than the pseudo-scientific case for holding onto your oxytocin by not having sex before you say your vows on the grounds that such conservation efforts will make your first time better…. And that’s what makes Jay-Z’s appearance on stage with Beyoncé at the Grammys so lovely. Mrs. Knowles-Carter doesn’t need her husband with her to dominate a performance space. But she chose their duet. And what we got was a performance that’s explicitly about what a good time they’re having together….

    “This may not be the vision of marriage conservatives intended to try to promote. And it’s absolutely a more aspirational, exciting good than the idea that marriage will discipline wayward men or provide support for women who can’t manage economically on their own. But if conservatives want to sell Americans on marriage, maybe they have to talk more about the bliss half of wedded bliss…. And maybe the entertainment industry that Douthat’s singled out as the enemy of marriage has something to add…”

And:

Richard Grossman: Interview | Ogged: “Give her this, Amy Chua knows how to make a buck. ‘The Triple Package’ reminds me of Niall Ferguson’s ‘Six Killer Apps’. We can probably blame TED talks for this, somehow. Anyway, if you want to read a marginally coherent op-ed preying on the economic insecurity of life in these United States, boy, have I got a link for you” | “the President will announce that he will use his executive authority to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 for those working on new federal contracts for services” | Phil Swagel: Challenges for the Yellen Fed | Nate Silver: FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Status Update: Building FiveThirtyEight | Andrew Harless (2010): Employment, Interest, and Money: Do Umbrellas Cause Rain? | Jérémie Cohen-Setton: More inequality, same mobility

January 30, 2014

Connect with us!

Explore the Equitable Growth network of experts around the country and get answers to today's most pressing questions!

Get in Touch