"The Rich Thrive and Everyone Else Struggles"

"The labor share is a symptom of worker anxiety, of course, not the cause. But as a symptom it speaks volumes. It reflects growing wealth inequality, a tax system that comes down hard on wages but gives capital earnings a pass, an explosive growth in corporate profits and a shift of employment from large-scale manufacturing to gig-provided services."

At the Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik writes that "labor's share of the economy is at a record low."

Make Public Colleges Public Again

"Higher education is a massively complicated and convoluted public policy challenge. Unfortunately, Biden's debt cancellation intervention will probably make these issues even more polarized politically than they were before. But one thing we know for certain—the current costs of college are crazy and student debt is an unjust and ineffective way of dealing with it. It doesn't serve America's interests to treat post-secondary education as an unaffordable luxury item for select people rather than as a public good."

John Halpin at The Liberal Patriot calls for "training and college for all who want it and are willing to put in the work at a higher level beyond high school.

And Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times counters claims that debt forgivness is inflationary and reminds readers that "the federal tax rate of the richest 10% of American households fell from 32.6% of pre-tax income in 1950 to 27.5% in 2018. The rate of the bottom 90% rose from 22.1% to 29%, and of the bottom 20% from 16.3% to 24.6%."

"This Is an Old Idea for Limiting the Reach of Government Programs"

"Means-tested programs tend to be politically vulnerable and carelessly crafted, chiefly because they're targeted at the most politically powerless segments of society. Wilbur Cohen, who participated in the birth of Social Security in 1935 and helped create Medicare and Medicaid as a government aide in the 1960s, always maintained that 'programs for the poor are poor programs.'"

Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times writes that Democrats should favor social insurance over social assistance.

"They Just Don't Have It"

"'The effects of unconditional cash transfers' included 'a significant increase in … quality of life benefits,' Ioana Marinescu of the University of Chicago noted in a recent report. Those included improvements in 'mental and physical health, education outcomes, parenting [and] reduced criminal activity.' Studies found either no impact or a slight decrease in labor participation, but some of that may have been due to recipients leaving workplace jobs to care for family members, including children, at home.

"Those results show that 'poor people and the middle class know best how to spend their money,' says Foster."

Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times looks at the discussion over universal basic income.

"A Boon to the Rich"

"The Legislative Analyst's Office report does support Ben Franklin's adage in an important way. Proposition 13 didn't necessarily relieve Californians of paying for the services they demand from local government; but it did produce a change in who pays the price. In many respects, the burden has been shifted down the income scale, so that poorer taxpayers are shouldering more of these costs."

Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times discusses a new study of Proposition 13.

"The Richest Large Country in the World Is Beggaring Its Own Future by Decades of Systematic Underinvestment"

"Kleinbard likens inequality apologists to courtiers telling their rich patrons what they want to hear. His years of serving affluent clients in private practice taught him that they genuinely believe they deserve their wealth.
"'They thought that money was naturally attracted to them because of their special qualities,' he told me. 'They would take better care of it and nurture it, and you would no more turn a baby out on a snowy slope than you would let these poor dollars into the hands of the unwashed masses.'"


In the Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik talks with Edward D. Kleinbard about Kleinbard's new book, We Are Better Than This: How Government Should Spend Our Money.

"Because Some People Are Greedy"

"The tobacco industry was a pioneer at this. Its goal was to erode public acceptance of the scientifically proven links between smoking and disease: In the words of an internal 1969 memo legal opponents extracted from Brown & Williamson's files, 'Doubt is our product.' Big Tobacco's method should not be to debunk the evidence, the memo's author wrote, but to establish a 'controversy.'
"When this sort of manipulation of information is done for profit, or to confound the development of beneficial public policy, it becomes a threat to health and to democratic society. Big Tobacco's program has been carefully studied by the sugar industry, which has become a major target of public health advocates.
"It's also echoed by vaccination opponents, who continue to use a single dishonest and thoroughly discredited British paper to sow doubts about the safety of childhood immunizations, and by climate change deniers.
"And all those fabricated Obamacare horror stories wholesaled by Republican and conservative opponents of the Affordable Care Act and their aiders and abetters in the right-wing press? Their purpose is to sow doubt about the entire project of healthcare reform; if the aim were to identify specific shortcomings of the act, they'd have to accompany every story with a proposal about how to fix it."


Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times explores "agnotology, a neologism signifying the study of the cultural production of ignorance."