Minimum wage
FILE PHOTO: People sing during a march marking the Carnation Revolution’s 42nd anniversary in Lisbon, Portugal April 25, 2016. REUTERS/Rafael Marchante/File Photo
April 25, 2019
LISBON (Reuters) – Thousands marched in Portugal on Thursday to celebrate the almost bloodless revolution 45 years ago that ended its four-decade-long dictatorship, while politicians said that economic and social developments had not matched its democratic advance.
Dictator Antonio Oliveira Salazar ruled Portugal from 1932 to 1968, though his regime only crumbled on April 25 1974, in the ‘Carnation’ revolution that led Portugal to democracy.
In Lisbon on Thursday, protesters young and old marched through the streets shouting “Fascism, never again!”. Demonstrators also took over the main streets of Portugal’s second-biggest city Porto, to hail the country’s liberation but also to demand more rights.
Portugal will hold a general election in October.
Holding a red carnation, the symbol of the revolution, Portugal’s president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa told a room in parliament packed with politicians and guests that more must be done to tackle the country’s most pressing challenges.
“We want more, much more from our social, political and economic democracy,” said Rebelo de Sousa. “Persisting inequalities continue to undermine cohesion between people, between groups and territories.”
Catarina Martins, leader of the Left Bloc, which backs Prime Minister Antonio Costa’s minority Socialist government, told public broadcaster RTP there are “many battles left to win to achieve equality”.
“We live in a country with such low wages and pensions,” she said. “People do not know if they can make it to the end of the month.” Portugal’s minimum wage is fixed at 600 euros a month, compared with 1,050 euros in Spain.
Opposition leader Rui Rio also argued the country is in need of reform, especially around its electoral, political and justice system. “After (this year’s election) political parties must consider a reform of the democratic regime in order for it to remain democratic,” he said.
Costa’s Socialists are expected to win October’s election, but may struggle to secure an outright majority.
(Reporting by Catarina Demony and Goncalo Almeida; Editing by Catherine Evans)
Source: OANN
Former Vice President Joe Biden, who is mulling a 2020 presidential candidacy, speaks at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers’ (IBEW) construction and maintenance conference in Washington, U.S., April 5, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
April 25, 2019
By Arlene Washington
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The largest Democratic field in the modern U.S. political era is competing for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination.
The diverse group of 20 vying to challenge President Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee, includes six U.S. senators. A record six women are running, as well as black, Hispanic and openly gay candidates who would make history if one of them becomes the party’s nominee.
Here are the Democrats who have launched campaigns, listed in order of their RealClearPolitics national polling average for those who register in opinion surveys.
JOE BIDEN
The leader in polls of Democratic presidential contenders, Biden waited until late April to enter the race – launching his bid by taking a direct swipe at Trump. Biden, who served eight years as vice president under President Barack Obama and 36 years in the U.S. Senate, enters in the middle of a Democratic debate over whether a liberal political newcomer or a centrist veteran is needed to win back the White House. At 76, he is the second oldest candidate in the nominating contest, after Senator Bernie Sanders. Liberal activists criticize his Senate record, including his authorship of the 1994 crime act that led to increased incarceration rates, and his ties to the financial industry, which is prominent in his home state of Delaware. Biden, who relishes his “Middle-Class Joe” nickname and touts his working-class roots, made unsuccessful bids for the nomination in 1988 and 2008. Biden, recently the subject of allegations of unwanted physical contact with women, in a video pledged to be “more mindful” of respecting “personal space,” an attempt to tamp down the controversy.
BERNIE SANDERS
The senator from Vermont lost the Democratic nomination in 2016 to Hillary Clinton but has jumped in for a second try. In the 2020 race, Sanders, 77, will have to fight to stand out in a packed field of progressives touting issues he brought into the Democratic Party mainstream four years ago. His proposals include free tuition at public colleges, a $15 minimum wage and universal healthcare. He benefits from strong name recognition and a robust network of small-dollar donors, helping him to raise $5.9 million during his first day in the contest. Sanders, whose father was a Jewish immigrant from Poland, has shown a more personal side in this campaign, highlighting his struggles while growing up in a working-class family. He also has tried to reach out to black and Hispanic leaders after having trouble winning over minority voters in 2016.
BETO O’ROURKE
The former three-term Texas congressman jumped into the race on March 14 – and has been jumping on to store countertops ever since to deliver his optimistic message to voters in early primary states. O’Rourke, 46, gained fame last year for his record fundraising and ability to draw crowds ahead of his unexpectedly narrow loss in the U.S. Senate race against Republican incumbent Ted Cruz. O’Rourke announced a $6.1 million fundraising haul for the first 24 hours of his campaign, besting his Democratic opponents. But with progressive policies and diversity at the forefront of the party’s nominating battle, O’Rourke will face a challenge as a wealthy white man who is more moderate on several key issues than many of his competitors.
KAMALA HARRIS
The first-term senator from California would make history as the first black woman to gain the nomination. Harris, 54, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, announced her candidacy on the holiday honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. She has made a quick impact in a Democratic race that will be heavily influenced by women and minority voters. She raised $1.5 million in the first 24 hours of her campaign and drew record ratings on a CNN televised town hall. She supports a middle-class tax credit, Medicare for All healthcare funding reform, the Green New Deal and the legalization of marijuana. Her track record as San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general has drawn scrutiny in a Democratic Party that has shifted in recent years on criminal justice issues.
PETE BUTTIGIEG
The 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is emerging from underdog status as he begins to build momentum with young voters. A Harvard University graduate and Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, he speaks seven languages and served in Afghanistan with the U.S. Navy Reserve. He touts himself as representing a new generation of leadership needed to combat Trump. Buttigieg would be the first openly gay presidential nominee of a major American political party.
ELIZABETH WARREN
The 69-year-old senator from Massachusetts is a leader of the party’s liberals and a fierce Wall Street critic who was instrumental in creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She has focused her presidential campaign on her populist economic message, promising to fight what she calls a rigged economic system that favors the wealthy. She also has proposed eliminating the Electoral College, vowed to break up Amazon, Google and Facebook if elected, and sworn off political fundraising events to collect cash for her bid. Warren apologized earlier this year to the Cherokee Nation for taking a DNA test to prove her claims to Native American ancestry, an assertion that has prompted Trump to mockingly refer to her as “Pocahontas.”
CORY BOOKER
Booker, 49, a senator from New Jersey and former mayor of Newark, gained national prominence in the fight over Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. Booker, who is black, has made U.S. race relations and racial disparities a focus of his campaign, noting the impact of discrimination on his family. He embraces progressive positions on Medicare coverage for every American, the Green New Deal and other key issues, and touts his style of positivity over attacks. Booker eats a vegan diet and recently confirmed rumors he is dating actress Rosario Dawson.
AMY KLOBUCHAR
The third-term senator from Minnesota was the first moderate in the Democratic field vying to challenge Trump. Klobuchar, 58, gained national attention in 2018 when she sparred with Brett Kavanaugh during Senate hearings for his Supreme Court nomination. On the campaign trail, the former prosecutor and corporate attorney supports an alternative to traditional Medicare healthcare funding and is taking a hard stance against rising prescription drug prices. Klobuchar’s campaign reported raising more than $1 million in its first 48 hours. Her campaign announcement came amid news reports that staff in her Senate office were asked to do menial tasks, making it difficult to hire high-level campaign strategists.
JULIAN CASTRO
The secretary of housing and urban development under President Barack Obama would be the first Hispanic to win a major U.S. party’s presidential nomination. Castro, 44, whose grandmother immigrated to Texas from Mexico, has used his family’s personal story to criticize Trump’s border policies. Castro advocates a universal pre-kindergarten program, supports Medicare for All and cites his experience to push for affordable housing. He announced his bid in his hometown of San Antonio, where he once served as mayor and a city councilman. His twin brother, Joaquin Castro, is a Democratic congressman from Texas.
ANDREW YANG
The entrepreneur and former tech executive is focusing his campaign on an ambitious universal income plan. Yang, 44, wants to guarantee all American citizens between the ages of 18 and 64 a $1,000 check every month. The son of immigrants from Taiwan, Yang also is pushing for Medicare for All and proposing a new form of capitalism that is “human-centered.” He lives in New York.
KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND
Gillibrand, known as a moderate when she served as a congresswoman from upstate New York, has refashioned herself into a staunch progressive, calling for strict gun laws and supporting the Green New Deal. The senator for New York, who is 52, has led efforts to address sexual assault in the military and on college campuses, and she pushed for Congress to improve its own handling of sexual misconduct allegations. On the campaign trail, she has made fiery denunciations of Trump. She released her tax returns for the years 2007 through 2018, offering the most comprehensive look to date at the finances of a 2020 White House candidate, and has called on her rivals to do the same.
JOHN HICKENLOOPER
The 67-year-old former Colorado governor has positioned himself as a centrist and an experienced officeholder with business experience. He is the only Democratic presidential candidate so far to oppose the Green New Deal plan to tackle climate change, saying it would give the government too much power in investment decisions. During his two terms in office, Colorado’s economy soared and the Western state expanded healthcare, passed a gun control law and legalized marijuana. The former geologist and brew pub owner is among the many candidates who have refused to take corporate money. He previously served as mayor of Denver.
JAY INSLEE
The Washington state governor has made fighting climate change the central issue of his campaign. As governor, Inslee, 68, has moved to put a moratorium on capital punishment and fully implement the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, and accompanying expansion of Medicaid health coverage for the poor. He has not settled on a position on Medicare for All but does support the Green New Deal backed by progressives. Inslee spent 15 years in Congress before being elected governor in 2012.
JOHN DELANEY
The former U.S. representative from Maryland became the first Democrat to enter the 2020 race, declaring his candidacy in July 2017. Delaney, 55, plans to focus on advancing only bipartisan bills during the first 100 days of his presidency if elected. He is also pushing for a universal healthcare system, raising the federal minimum wage and passing gun safety legislation.
TULSI GABBARD
The Samoan-American congresswoman from Hawaii and Iraq war veteran is the first Hindu to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. After working for her father’s anti-gay advocacy group and drafting relevant legislation, she was forced to apologize for her past views on same-sex marriage. Gabbard, 37, has been against U.S. intervention in Syria and slammed Trump for standing by Saudi Arabia after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. She endorsed Bernie Sanders during his 2016 presidential campaign.
ERIC SWALWELL
The third-term congressman from a California district south of San Francisco cited tackling student debt and gun violence among the reasons he jumped into the Democratic primary race. Swalwell, 38, is among the younger candidates vying for the 2020 Democratic nomination. He served on the House Intelligence Committee and founded the Future Forum, a group of more than 25 Democratic lawmakers that visits universities and community colleges to discuss issues important to millennial voters like student loan debt and climate change.
TIM RYAN
The moderate nine-term congressman from a working-class district in the battleground state of Ohio has touted his appeal to the blue-collar voters who fled to Trump in 2016. He says Trump has turned his back on those voters and failed to live up his promise to revitalize the manufacturing industry. Ryan, 45, pledges to create jobs in new technologies and to focus on public education and access to affordable healthcare. He first gained national attention when he unsuccessfully tried to unseat Nancy Pelosi as the House Democratic leader in 2016, arguing it was time for new leadership. A former college football player, he also has written books on meditation and healthy eating.
SETH MOULTON
An Iraq War veteran and member of Congress, Seth Moulton, 40, was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2014 when he defeated a fellow Democrat in the primary election. Moulton served in the Marines from 2001 to 2008. He became a vocal critic of the Iraq War in which he served, saying no more troops should be deployed to the country. He has advocated stricter gun laws, saying military-style weapons should not be owned by civilians. Moulton supports the legalization of marijuana and told Boston public radio station WGBH in 2016 that he had smoked pot while in college. After Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in 2018, Moulton helped organize opposition to Representative Nancy Pelosi’s bid to again become speaker.
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON
The 66-year-old New York Times best-selling author, motivational speaker and Texas native believes her spirituality-focused campaign can heal America. A 1992 interview on Oprah Winfrey’s show propelled Williamson to make a name for herself as a “spiritual guide” for Hollywood and a self-help expert. She is calling for $100 billion in reparations for slavery over 10 years, gun control, education reform and equal rights for lesbian and gay communities. In 2014, she made an unsuccessful bid for a House seat in California as an independent.
WAYNE MESSAM
Messam, 44, defeated a 16-year incumbent in 2015 to become the first black mayor of the Miami suburb of Miramar. He was re-elected in March. The son of Jamaican immigrants, he played on Florida State University’s 1993 national championship football team, and then started a construction business with his wife. He has pledged to focus on reducing gun violence, mitigating climate change and reducing student loan debt and the cost of healthcare.
(Reporting by Ginger Gibson; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
Source: OANN
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Six months before President Obama’s 2012 reelection, his campaign released an online slideshow. It was not an effort that helped him win.
Called “The Life of Julia,” it was an imaginary story complete with slick graphics and digestible talking points designed to illustrate “how President Obama’s policies help one woman over her lifetime — and how Mitt Romney would change her story.”
The timeline showed the mythical Julia growing up, graduating from college, building a business, giving birth, and eventually retiring. For every major milestone, a federally subsidized government program was there to help. Democrats saw Julia as illustrating the promise of a second Obama term under a caring and effective government. Republicans, on the other hand, gleefully discovered a ready-made, cradle-to-grave narrative about the dangers of Big Government.
Romney, the Republican nominee, dismissed the fictional fable as a “little cartoon,” while the editors of National Review called it “creepy,” and one conservative columnist summarized the mockery by asking, “Who the hell is ‘Julia,’ and why am I paying for her whole life?”
Nearly eight years later, not a single 2020 hopeful has waded into a similar digital space. None of the contenders has packaged a platform into easily consumable internet infographics. The sum of all their policies proposals, however, is even more expansive.
Under these plans, with the help of Uncle Sam, Julia could enroll her children in day care for free or at a subsidized rate. She could go to community college or a public four-year university without paying a penny. She could claim a federal tax credit to help with rent. She would enjoy a mandated $15 minimum wage at an entry-level position or compete for the millions of government-created jobs promised by the Green New Deal. And of course, she’d be automatically enrolled in Medicare. What follows is an examination of those promises, and others, along with the costs.
Universal Child Care
Child care is expensive, even more expensive than college tuition in some cases. Families in Massachusetts, the least affordable state for such care, according to one analysis, can expect to pay as much as $34,381 to enroll both an infant and toddler in day care.
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren plans on making it free for millions of people. The Massachusetts Democrat is the first 2020 contender to endorse universal child care. She envisions subsidized nurseries in every community, “a network of child care options that would be available to every family.”
It wouldn’t be a nanny state, per se. Warren calls for the government to partner with existing services provided by cities, schools, nonprofits, tribes, and faith-based groups. For families making less than 200% the federal poverty line, the care is free. For anyone making more, Warren would cap their costs at no more than 7% of family income.
“In the wealthiest country on the planet,” Warren wrote, “access to affordable and high-quality childcare and early education should be a right, not a privilege reserved for the rich.”
Who would pay for all this? According to the candidate, everyone whose net worth exceeds $50 million. How much would they be on the line for? According to independent analysis by the Moody’s Corp., $1.7 billion over 10 years.
Debt-Free College
The average college graduate who walks off stage with a diploma, once advertised as the ticket to the middle class, also leaves campus with student loans, now feared as long-term financial shackles. According to an analysis by industry expert Mark Kantrowitz, the average 2016 graduate owed a whopping $37,172. The Federal Reserve estimated a monthly payment of $393 to service that debt.
Now White House hopefuls promise the same college education without the crushing expense.
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Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed legislation to make community and four-year public colleges free for students from families earning less than $125,000 per year. Warren goes a step farther. She wouldn’t just make tuition free at those same universities, she would have the federal government forgive as much as $50,000 of loans for any graduate earning less than $100,000.
Sanders and Warren aren’t the only Democratic candidates being generous with other people’s money. Three other senators, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kamala Harris of California, and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York., have co-sponsored the Debt-Free College Act. Introduced last month, the legislation would create a one-to-one match of federal to state dollars to cover any costs above the “expected family contribution,” a measure of a family’s financial health as calculated by the Department of Education.
Not every candidate is sold on free college, including Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar. The mayor of South Bend, Ind., told students at Northeastern University earlier this month that making the federal government pay their tuition wasn’t feasible, a sentiment echoed by the Minnesota senator during a Monday night CNN townhall.
Momentum is moving toward debt emancipation, though, and the costs are significant. According to the Warren campaign, for instance, her plan would create a one-time cost of $640 billion, plus another $1.25 trillion over the next 10 years. Here, too, the wealthy are expected to cover the cost.
Guaranteed Income
The political promise of a good job has been eclipsed by the prospect of guaranteed minimum wages and, in some cases, guaranteed income regardless of work.
Sanders has made increasing the minimum wage one of his hallmarks. The self-described Democratic socialist rails against the current federal minimum of $7.25 as “a starvation wage” and authored legislation to more than double it to $15 an hour. When Sanders first introduced the bill in 2015, only five senators added their names as co-sponsors. That number jumped to 30 just four years later, and every Senate Democrat running for president now backs his initiative.
An increased minimum wage pales in comparison to the massive jobs program included in the Green New Deal. Introduced by Sanders acolyte Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it calls for an economic effort to combat climate change no less dramatic than the mobilization for the Second World War.
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Also a jobs program, an early GND blueprint released by Ocasio-Cortez’s office promised to put millions of Americans to work overhauling every existing building in the country, rebuilding the national power grid, and jump-starting the clean energy industry. The plan would blaze a path to the middle class for anyone able to follow. It also promised “economic security” for anyone “unable or unwilling to work.”
After the more controversial aspects of her proposal sparked an uproar, Ocasio-Cortez scrapped that blueprint in favor of a non-binding resolution that affirmed the overall spirit but not the specific policy proposals of the Green New Deal.
Aside from Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, the entire 2020 field has voiced support. Every Senate Democrat running for president endorsed the idea. The remaining mix of governors, mayors, and representatives voiced support for the spirit of the proposal if not the initial specifics.
Their hesitation comes from the cost, which the conservative American Action Forum pegged at $93 trillion. While some candidates shy away from specifics on environmental reform and subsequent economic redistribution, Andrew Yang is more than happy to discuss his plans to give away money. The Silicon Valley progressive wants the federal government to cut a $1,000 check each month to every citizen over 18.
Yang calls it a Freedom Dividend, his brand name for what economists describe as Universal Basic Income. On its face, the annual cost would be around $3 trillion, though Yang insists the spending would be offset by stimulated growth.
Reparations
More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, only former Rep. Beto O’Rourke has declined to join every major candidate in supporting the establishment of a commission to study possible government reparations to descendants of former slaves. Even Sanders, though initially hesitant to back payments, said that as president he would sign legislation that creates a commission.
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The discussion over reparations hinges on what the payments look like, as Harris explained last month in an interview with NPR. Reparations, the California Democrat noted, “mean different things to different people.” For Harris, reparations could mean investing in disadvantaged communities by funding mental health services. For Marianne Williamson, the self-help/spirituality guru, New York Times best-selling author and long shot presidential contender, reparations mean money.
Williamson told CNN in January that $100 billion should be paid in reparations over the next decade in the form of economic stimulus and infrastructure investments. She did not say where the money should come from.
Affordable Housing
Three presidential hopefuls want to help put a roof over a large portion of the population’s head. Warren introduced legislation last month to address what she describes as “an American housing crisis.” Co-sponsored by her Senate colleague and primary competitor Gillibrand, the Warren bill would spend $445 billion to do two major things.
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First, build as many as 3.2 million new housing units for lower-income and middle-class families. Second, provide mortgage assistance to help people who were hurt by the financial crisis more than a decade ago.
Warren touts an analysis by Moody’s that found the bill would be deficit neutral, a balance only achieved by increasing taxes and fees over the next decade.
Harris has her own housing bill but geared it toward those who rent their homes. According to the summary of the bill, which was introduced last year, the Harris plan would create a tax credit for anyone spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent. Depending on the individual’s income, the government would pick up between 25 and 100 percent of the excess amount spent on rent.
‘Medicare for All’
It was dismissed as a progressive pipe dream four years ago. So-called Medicare for all has since become all but official Democratic orthodoxy in this presidential primary. Eleven stalwarts demand some version of it. Five others — apostates in their own party — prefer more modest plans. Sanders is very much the OG of Medicare for all. His plan would offer the most generous benefits and, in theory, would eliminate private health insurance altogether.
“The current debate over Medicare for all really has nothing to do with health care,” he said at a recent news conference announcing the legislation. “It has everything to do with greed and profiteering. It is about whether we continue a dysfunctional system.”
Fixing that system would mean dropping the 8.8 percent uninsured rate to zero and lumping the 155 million Americans who are insured through employer plans with 20 million who have coverage through the individual market, 60 million current Medicare beneficiaries, and tens of millions now without insurance. But the costs, according to both liberal and conservative economists, are staggering.
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The libertarian Mercatus Center at George Mason University estimated last year that an earlier version of the plan would cost $32.6 trillion over 10 years. Gerald Friedman at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, put that number at $14 trillion.
Sanders argued that overall spending on health care in the U.S. would drop as a result of his plan even as overall government spending would spike.
How does Sanders plan on paying for it? According to a five-page memo released by the senator’s office, a grab bag of options including a 70% tax on those making above $10 million a year, fees on financial institutions, and a mandatory 4% income-based premium on employees plus a 7.5% income-based premium paid by employers.
In all, the Democrats’ “free stuff” menu is sure to tempt voters in the primaries that begin in nine months. Which of those offerings survive to be placed before the larger electorate in November 2020 is anyone’s guess, as is the ultimate choice voters will make. If a Democrat moves into the White House two months later, the work of fulfilling at least some of these campaign promises will begin. Closing the deal, especially if Republicans retain control of the Senate, is sure to be far tougher than selling it was to a receptive base.
Patrick McHugh lectures to an information technology class at the Milwaukee Area Technical College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., March 28, 2019. REUTERS/Howard Schneider
April 24, 2019
By Howard Schneider
MILWAUKEE, Wis. (Reuters) – As a record-breaking economic expansion nears the decade mark, people like Marty Groth may determine whether it is forced into a lower gear.
Not long ago, the 60-year-old Groth found himself out of a job and considered retiring on a pension built over a career of maintaining computer servers and printers.
Instead, he returned to school to update his computer skills and will soon join a Wisconsin labor force that is decidedly short of workers.
“I could retire now if I wanted,” Groth said. “But I am thinking, I like working.”
Over the last three years, around 3 million Americans over 55 joined or rejoined the workforce, federal data show. The addition of these older workers not only contributed to economic growth, experts say, but helped stop a national decline in the share of adults working or looking for work.
The trend may have run its course. After adding 5 million new and returning workers of all ages from 2016 to 2018, the U.S. labor force shrank during the first three months of this year. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2IpdXGq)
From healthcare to manufacturing, companies in places like Wisconsin are taking longer to hire as they struggle to find workers; some have delayed projects, others have become more willing to hire ex-convicts and less experienced workers bypassed when labor markets were looser, local officials say.
Blue-collar workers are putting in more hours, data show, while overall labor productivity is increasing. Nationally, wages are rising.
The upshot, according to policymakers, business executives and labor experts interviewed by Reuters, is that the labor market may be nearing its limits.
Over a long enough period, labor shortages can spark investment and raise productivity as companies retool. They can also improve opportunities for minorities with unemployment rates higher than those for whites.
But in the short run they pose a drag.
“Any employer, if they are willing to raise wages enough, at some point will get all the workers they need,” said Gad Levanon, chief economist at the Conference Board and author of a recent report on labor market constraints. “But it is coming at a higher cost… Projects that were profitable in a lower wage environment are not profitable anymore.”
DEALING WITH IT ‘DAY IN AND DAY OUT’
The corridor connecting Chicago to Milwaukee is a testament to the long-running economic expansion.
This is not the Wisconsin of pastures and dairy farms, but a landscape brimming with fulfillment centers and factories. A new interstate lane will allow autonomous trucks to deliver supplies for a high-tech plant being built by China’s Foxconn.
But the combination of low unemployment and an older population puts Wisconsin at the leading edge of where the country’s workforce as a whole is heading.
It is also a political battleground state, meaning the health of its economy will likely have consequences for the 2020 presidential election. Democrats will hold their convention in Milwaukee next summer.
Wages in Wisconsin rose 5 percent in 2018, compared to around 3 percent nationally, and the unemployment rate hit a record low 2.9 percent for several months in 2018 and again in February.
As chief economist at the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, Dennis Winters keeps close tabs on the state’s hiring. The labor shortage, he says, “is real, and people are trying to deal with it day in and day out.”
Sarah Condella, senior vice president for human resources at Exact Sciences Corp, is among them.
She joined the Madison-based company in 2012 when it employed 50 people and oversaw its growth to roughly 2,000 workers as doctors expanded use of its colorectal cancer test.
Along the way, Exact Sciences lifted starting pay to $15 an hour, roughly double the state’s minimum wage. It added perks like bus passes and flexible shifts and has plans for food service at its expanding campus.
Still, it has more than 400 vacancies, and the time to hire entry-level workers has grown from fewer than 30 days to around 45. Finding them requires radio ads, billboards and other tools not typical for a life sciences company.
It is a story repeated across Wisconsin.
Banking officials say deals are being delayed because supply chains are clogged and service companies booked, nipping the financial sector’s potential.
Half of respondents to a survey by the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce trade group cited labor shortage as the top issue facing companies and the state, ahead of healthcare and regulation. A majority said they planned to increase wages at least 3 percent as they add headcount this year.
Coupled with productivity, the number of people working is the core reason economies expand, and the expected slow growth of the labor force a main reason why Federal Reserve officials and others expect the U.S. economy will cool.
SEEKING: EX-CONVICTS, RECOVERING ADDICTS
Scott Jansen, chief operating officer of Employ Milwaukee, said his work is an exercise in finding anyone available.
A semi-trailer packed with advanced machine tools now tours state prisons so inmates can be released with an in-demand skill. In Milwaukee, his agency works through churches and community groups to contact the homeless, the less educated, immigrants and others who might be reluctant to appear at a government office.
It is a reversal from the years following the economic crisis, when employers had their pick of applicants, and workers often took jobs for which they were overqualified. Millions were simply sidelined. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2X9mu3q)
Today, Jansen said, employers are more willing to adapt job requirements to disabled workers, and more open to hiring those hardest hit during the financial crisis, like ex-convicts and those coping with addiction.
Throughout his 20s, Lee Baumann said he bounced between idleness and marginal jobs as he battled opioids. After training as a computer technician he was hired by Northwestern Mutual and is now a senior technical analyst.
“That life took me away. Three years of solid use,” Baumann said. A recent promotion raised his pay to $20 an hour, and he is saving to finish his associate degree.
Nationally, the labor force participation rate for prime-age workers like Baumann between the ages of 25 and 54 reversed a long decline around 2013. It is now near the peak hit in the 1990s.
It was largely people like Groth, the 60-year-old who is back in school, who padded the workforce. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that over-55 age group was the only one whose participation rate grew from 2006 to 2016.
A recent study by economist Jay Shambaugh and others for the Brookings Institution concluded the decision of so many older workers to remain in the workforce, or rejoin it, was the main reason the U.S. participation rate stabilized at around 63 percent.
But even that group cannot be relied upon: Some 226,000 over-55 workers left the labor market in March, the most in nearly three years.
Even if people like Groth are motivated to work a bit longer, they will eventually leave. Wisconsin will see that frontier first. The share of state population over 55 jumped from 26 percent to over 30 percent from 2010 to 2017; the share 65 and over, a traditional retirement plateau, jumped from 13.6 percent to 16.4 percent, according to census data.
“Adding more workers is a big part of getting GDP to grow,” Shambaugh said. With an aging population, choices by those like Groth are “a big part of your growth over the next decade.”
(Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Dan Burns and Paul Thomasch)
Source: OANN
Children walk along a breakwater at Coral beach in La Guaira near Caracas, Venezuela, March 23, 2019. “A person who has a minimum wage can’t come [to the beach]. The anguish that has all Venezuelans is food. First the flour and the rice.” said Carla Cordova. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado
April 23, 2019
By Shaylim Valderrama and Ivan Alvarado
CARACAS (Reuters) – A night at a bar is interrupted by a power outage, going to a baseball game is prohibitively expensive, and a trip to a nearby beach requires months of savings. But many Venezuelans have not given up on finding ways to smile.
Despite an economic crisis that has led to shortages of food and medicine and has prompted more than three million to emigrate, Venezuelans are seeking ways to have fun and spend time with family in the hope of easing their discomfort.
Still, the increased frequency of blackouts and a political showdown between the socialist government and the opposition has cast a cloud of uncertainty, leaving many Venezuelans bereft of simple pleasures.
Venezuela fell to the 108th place in the 2019 World Happiness Report prepared by the United Nations, down from 102nd place in 2018. In the Western hemisphere, only Haiti was below the oil-rich nation, ranking 147th out of 156 countries studied by the U.N.
The happiness report – which in its first edition in 2012 placed Venezuela in the 19th position – is based on indicators such as gross domestic product per capita, generosity, life expectancy, social freedom and absence of corruption.
Venezuela was plunged into darkness with two massive blackouts in March, generating water shortages and prompting the government to suspend work and school. Earlier this month, the government launched a power rationing plan, and electricity remains intermittent in many parts of the country.
In search of distraction, Venezuelans from the country’s capital of Caracas have long taken to the nearby seaside state of Vargas to spend weekends with family and friends on the shores of the Caribbean.
“You put your mind in another place,” said Leonel Martinez, a 26-year-old soldier while relaxing on the sand with his girlfriend while her nephews played nearby. “It’s a way to think about something besides what is happening in the country.”
But in a country where the monthly minimum wage amounts to just $6 per month, the $15-$20 a day trip to the beach can require months of savings and advance planning.
Martinez, who said he used to take the 40-kilometer (25 mile) trip to the beach frequently, said it was the first time he had gone in a year.
“It’s not something you can do every day, because of the situation in the country,” said Martinez.
‘IN THIS WORLD THERE IS NO CRISIS’
For Venezuelans, queuing for food is a daily ordeal. They also are used to trying multiple pharmacies and hospitals in search of the medicines they need, and more recently have grown accustomed to collecting water from streams.
But that has not stopped Joaquin Nino, a cash-strapped 35-year-old father of two, from taking his kids to an amusement park in southern Caracas.
“We have to work miracles just to have some fun,” Nino said.
At a parade in eastern Caracas celebrating Holy Week, revelers dressed in straw hats topped with flowers sang, banged drums and blew trumpets to tropical beats. With the sun beating down, one marcher who gave his name as Carlos remembers how in past years onlookers would douse those marching with water to cool them down.
“Now, because of the problems with the water, that probably will not happen,” he said.
In central Caracas, a group of men of all ages meet every Sunday to play softball while a handful of their relatives watch. The wire fence that once surrounded the field was long ago stolen. The lights, which once allowed the group to play at night, were also pilfered.
“I always come because my husband plays,” said Delia Jimenez, a 62-year-old industrial designer who jumps up from the stands whenever her husband comes up to bat. “We have fun and we shake off our stress.”
A few blocks away, groups of young people come together to break-dance, which they say is a way to disconnect. But some admitted that they had not been eating enough recently to be able to spend as much time dancing as they used to.
“When we’re out here dancing, we don’t think about the state of the country,” said Yeafersonth Manrique, a 24-year-old drenched in sweat after a long practice. “In this world there is no crisis.”
(See related photo essay here: https://reut.rs/2vcGsOS)
(Editing by Vivian Sequera, Pablo Garibian and Diane Craft)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO – Australian Labor Party opposition leader Bill Shorten laughs during remarks at his election night party in Melbourne, July 2, 2016 on Australia’s federal election day. REUTERS/Jason Reed
April 20, 2019
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Australian opposition leader Bill Shorten gave himself 100 days to make sure that low-paid workers get more money for working overtime if he wins next month’s election.
Labor party leader Shorten, a former union organizer, said on Saturday he would reverse the decision by a tribunal to cut overtime pay in several low-paying industries within 100 days of the May 18 poll.
“Do we really want to go down the American path of workplace relations where a worker … to make ends meet has to rely on tips and charity and the coins and dollar notes left on the table after the guest has gone?” Shorten told supporters in Melbourne.
“That is not the Australian way.”
In 2017, the Fair Work Commission ruled that reductions in the so-called penalty rates for weekends, public holidays and late night or morning shifts in retail, hospitality, fast-food and pharmacy would be phased in gradually by 2020.
The commission, an independent tribunal that sets the minimum wage, ruled that the cuts would vary, depending on the industry.
Opinion polls have had Shorten’s center-left Labor party well ahead for years and show that the coalition of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Liberals and the rural-focused National party is headed for a resounding defeat.
A recent poll showed that support for Australia’s once-influential far-right One Nation party plummeted after a series of scandals, paving way for Morrison and Shorten to intensify their fight for the right-wing voter.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A scrap dealer dismantles a winding machine at a weaving factory, that was shut a year ago, in Panipat in the northern state of Haryana, India, August 29, 2018. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
April 17, 2019
By Manoj Kumar
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – At least five million Indians lost their jobs between 2016 and 2018, and young urban men are being hit hardest, a Bengaluru-based private university said in a report on Tuesday.
The report by the Azim Premji University comes as Indians are voting in a staggered general election, which is due to end on May 19, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government keen to defend its economic record, including on jobs.
“In addition to rising open unemployment among the higher educated, the less educated (and likely informal) workers have also seen job losses and reduced work opportunities since 2016,” said Amit Basole, an economist and lead author of the report.
The report did not say how many jobs were created during the period.
Modi’s abrupt withdrawal of high value currency notes from circulation in November 2016, with the aim of curbing tax evasion and promoting digital transactions, disrupted small businesses and sparked layoffs.
The introduction of a national sales tax the following year compounded difficulties for some businesses.
The unemployed were mostly higher educated and young people, in the 20-24 age range, according to the study titled “State of Working India 2019”.
“Among urban men, for example, this age group accounts for 13.5 percent of the working age population but 60 percent of the unemployed,” it said.
Modi has faced criticism for not doing enough to create jobs for millions of unemployed young people despite official annual economic growth of about 7 percent for the past five years.
An official survey that the government withheld showed unemployment rose to its highest level in at least 45 years in 2017/18, the Business Standard newspaper reported in February.
The unemployment rate rose to 7.2 percent in February 2019, its highest since September 2016, and up from 5.9 percent in February 2018, according to data compiled by the private research house, Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).
The report suggested the next government should consider an urban employment guarantee scheme to create jobs, build infrastructure and provide services.
India has a rural jobs guarantee program, launched in 2006, which offers work to about 70 million rural people at the minimum wage for 100 days a year.
“India is at a crucial juncture in its economic development where timely public investment and public policy can reap huge rewards,” Basole said.
(Reporting by Manoj Kumar; Editing by Martin Howell)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador looks on during a meeting with industry bosses and members of his cabinet to discuss the new administration’s policy on the minimum wage at National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico December 17, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido/File Photo/File Photo
April 12, 2019
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – High-level talks between U.S. and Mexican officials in the eastern Mexican city of Merida on Friday will touch on the U.S.-Mexico border and improving the flow of traffic there, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said.
Lopez Obrador was speaking at his regular morning news conference prior to traveling to Merida, where officials are meeting over two days as part of a recurring cross-border forum of business leaders known as the U.S.-Mexico CEO Dialogue.
(Reporting by Dave Graham; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
Source: OANN
A worker walks next to halted machines at a cans’ factory during a power cut in Valencia, Venezuela, April 8, 2019. Picture taken April 8, 2019. REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino
April 12, 2019
By Corina Pons and Mayela Armas
VALENCIA, Venezuela (Reuters) – The latest power outage started another tough week for factory owner Antonello Lorusso in the city of Valencia, once Venezuela’s industrial powerhouse.
For the past month, unprecedented nationwide blackouts paralyzed the factory and the rest of the country, cutting off power, water and cell service to millions of Venezuelans.
Lorusso’s packaging plant, Distribuidora Marina, had already struggled through years of hyperinflation, vanishing client orders, and a flight of employees. Now the situation was worse.
For the whole month of March, Lorusso said, his company produced only its single daily capacity: 100 tonnes of packaged sugar and grains. When Reuters visited on April 8, he was using a generator to keep one of his dozen packaging machines working to fulfill the single order he had received. Power had been on for a few hours, but was too weak to run the machines.
“There is no information, we don’t know if the blackouts will continue or not,” said Lorusso, who has owned the factory for over 30 years. He said the plant had just a day’s worth of power over the previous week.
Power has been intermittent since early March, when the first major blackout plunged Venezuela into a week of darkness. Electricity experts and the opposition have called the government incompetent at maintaining the national grid. President Nicolas Maduro has accused the opposition and the U.S. government of sabotage.
Venezuela’s industry has collapsed during six years of recession that have halved the size of the economy. What is left is largely outside of the capital Caracas, the only big city that Maduro’s government has excluded from a power rationing plan intended to restrict the load on the system.
In Valencia, a few multinational companies like Nestle and Ford Motor Co cling on. But the number of companies based there has fallen to a tenth of the 5,000 there were two decades ago, when Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez became president, according to the regional business association.
“THE GAME IS OVER”
The government said on April 4 that the power rationing plan meant Valencia would spend at most 3 hours a day without electricity, but a dozen executives and workers there said outages were still lasting over 10 hours. Generators are costly and can only power a fraction of a business’s operations, they said. Many factories have shut down.
“The game is over. Companies are entering a state of despair due to their inviability,” said an executive of a food company with factories in Valencia, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Industrial companies this year are operating below 25 percent of capacity, according to industry group Conindustria. It estimated companies lost about $220 million during the days in March without power, and would lose $100 million more in April.
Nestle’s factory, which produces baby food, halted during the first blackout in early March and operations again froze two weeks later, with employees sent home until May, according to Rafael Garcia, a union leader at the plant. He blamed the most recent stoppage on very low sales of baby food which cost almost a dollar per package, or about what a person on minimum wage earns in a week.
“My greatest worry is the closure of the factory,” said Garcia, as he sat at a bus stop on Valencia’s Henry Ford avenue, in the city’s industrial outskirts where warehouses sit empty and streets are covered in weeds.
Nestle did not respond to emails seeking comment.
Ford’s plant along the avenue was working at a bare minimum for several months, union leaders said. In December, the carmaker began offering buyouts to staff after it received no orders for 2019, they said. Ford, in December, said it had “no plans to leave the country.”
The outages have idled more than just factories. In the countryside, lack of power has prevented farmers from pumping water to irrigate fields.
Since January, farmers have sown 17,500 hectares of crops, a third of the area seeded last year, and they fear losing the harvest due to the lack of water, according to agricultural associations. In the central state of Cojedes, several rice growers have already lost their crops, farmers said.
“In the rural areas, the blackouts last longer,” said Jose Luis Perez, spokesman for a rice producers federation.
Producers of cheese, beef, cured meats and lettuce told Reuters orders had dropped by half in March as buyers worried the food would perish once their freezers lost power in the next blackout.
Back in Valencia, Lorusso was preparing his factory for the new era of scarce power. He has converted one unused truck in his parking lot into a water tank. He plans to sell another to buy a second generator.
“We’ve spent years getting used to things. Then we were dealt this hard blow, and now we’re trying to find ways to cope,” he said.
(Writing by Angus Berwick; Editing by David Gregorio)
Source: OANN
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez never misses the opportunity to bash capitalism.
At the 2019 South by Southwest festival, the Congresswoman derided capitalism, describing it as “irredeemable.” She says that the U.S. is currently facing the consequences of “putting profits over everything else in our society.” Curiously, the freshmen congresswoman pivoted her rant towards a critique of the New Deal.
How could such a staunch leftist like Ocasio-Cortez — who fashioned her pet legislation as the “Green New Deal” — criticize its 20th-century predecessor? She was able to do so by turning this discussion into a matter of race.
In her view, Roosevelt’s New Deal cut African Americans a raw deal:
“The New Deal was an extremely economically racist policy that drew little red lines around black and brown communities and it invested in white America.”
Ocasio-Cortez continued expanding on the New Deal’s harmful effects: “It allowed white Americans access to home loans that black Americans didn’t have access to, giving them access to the greatest source of intergenerational wealth.”
Misinterpreting the New Deal’s Racist History
The congresswoman is correct about the New Deal’s racist policies, albeit from an observational standpoint. I wrote about this previously, detailing how the federal government promoted segregated housing during the New Deal at the African-American community’s expense.
However, Ocasio-Cortez’s talk about the New Deal flagrantly omits other government interventions that clearly affected racial minorities in a negative way. The Wagner Act of 1935 — which established labor-union monopolies — gave incumbent unions tremendous power to exclude low-wage workers. During this period, union heavyweights discriminated against black workers in order to keep wages artificially high for white workers.
Similarly, the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 allowed the executive branch to create industrial cartels to restrict output and enact minimum-wage policies. This resulted in approximately 500,000 blacks being pushed out of the labor market thanks to high, non-market wages.
Despite these overlooked aspects of the New Deal, Ocasio-Cortez continues to race hustle and thinks that more government intervention will somehow “correct” past injustices that the government itself created.
How Limited Government Made African Americans Prosperous
In contrast to the New Deal, markets have historically helped racial minorities. It was during the Gilded Age that the African-American community was able to first establish itself as an economic force. This was an era when there was no welfare state, no federal tax maze, nor an alphabet soup of bureaucracy to impede capital accumulation and business creation.
During this time, African American civil society was at its peak. David Beito’s From Mutual Aid to Welfare State was a seminal work in demonstrating how the African-American community thrived without any form of government assistance before the New Deal. Civic organizations like the Independent Order of Saint Luke and the United Order of True Reformers “specialized initially in sickness and burial insurance,” and became leading institutions in African-American civil society.
The Independent Order of Saint Luke stood out for its entrepreneurial endeavors and ended up establishing the Saint Luke Penny Savings Bank of Richmond, which had the honor of having Maggie L. Walker as the first, black female bank president in American history.
Additionally, prosperous enclaves such as “Black Wall Street ” in Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood District and Detroit’s Black Bottom neighborhood demonstrated the power of black capitalism. No central planning was needed to establish these business neighborhoods.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her intellectual cohorts make sure that this history falls down the memory hole. Bashing capitalism is simply too easy and anything that disrupts the narrative, must be cast aside.
Is Capitalism Truly Irredeemable?
So, is capitalism irredeemable and worthy of eternal scorn? Human Progress depicts what capitalism has been able to achieve, even with the fiscal and regulatory shackles imposed on it:
“….in 1820, 94 percent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty (less than $1.90 per day adjusted for purchasing power). In 1990 this figure was 34.8 percent, and in 2015, just 9.6 percent.”
Human Progress’s findings are in line with Mises’s view in Human Action that economies with nominal degrees of capitalism are still capable of delivering constant improvements in living standards: “The characteristic mark of economic history under capitalism is unceasing economic progress, a steady increase in the quantity of capital goods available, and a continuous trend toward an improvement in the general standard of living.”
Most importantly, capitalism has made us more humane in our treatment of domestic animals and has granted women and children unprecedented access to leisure activities and educational opportunities to improve economically. Sadly, select parts of the world — especially present-day Venezuela — have regressed into barbarism due to their political class’s complete rejection of capitalism and private property rights.
Indeed, Western mixed economies still have work to do, but the direction they must head towards is one of more liberalization, not government control.
The Invisible Iron Fist of Government Bureaucracy
Politicians like Ocasio-Cortez see poverty and working-class people struggling to make ends meet, but they don’t see the mountains of paperwork and regulations in the background that make the cost of living so high and make it difficult to run a small business. They also ignore the minimum wage laws that keep countless unskilled minority workers – their primary constituents – from entering the workforce and getting the experience they need to improve their lives.
Refuting the historical distortions and false narratives surrounding capitalism is incumbent upon on all free-marketers. George Orwell said it best, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
Politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez come and go, but their ideas have staying power. When these ideas are allowed to go unchallenged, they can transform into veritable nightmares in the political arena. The very least we could do is challenge these flawed ideas. If we fail to do so, we are only sowing the seeds for our inevitable defeat.
Attorney General William Barr is beginning to call out the Obama & Hillary camps for the crimes they committed during the 2016 presidential elections.
Source: InfoWars
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