Bye-bye employer health insurance
McKinsey is out with the results of a survey of 1,300 employers (How US health care reform will affect employee benefits), and the lead finding is a shocker: a third or more are likely to drop health insurance coverage for their workers as Obamacare takes effect. Clearly, not all bosses fully understand the economics of the new health insurance universe. Right now, 30% of respondents to McKinsey’s survey “will definitely or probably stop offering ESI in the years after 2014”—but 50% of those with “high awareness of reform” will do so. (The CBO has been assuming that just 7% of insured workers will be affected.) Almost all workers are likely to stay with their current employers even if they lose coverage—what else are they going to do, really?—though most expect “increased compensation” to offset their having to pay for insurance on their own (and how likely are they to get that?).
In the short term, this could provoke a real social emergency, as scores of millions are thrown onto the private individual insurance market and forced to pay $1,000 a month for crappy coverage. But this could vastly increase the constituency for a single-payer scheme, such as Medicare for All—assuming our rulers don’t destroy Medicare first.
What fiscal emergency?
I break into the big time! My antidote to deficit hysteria is up on CNN.com: What fiscal emergency?
Education policy in the USA
Golf, militarism, Jesus, and noblesse oblige. From Mike Allen’s Politico Playbook :
IF YOU’RE FREE AT LUNCH: Cornerstone Schools of Washington, an oasis of rigor and stability for 220 African-American pupils in inner-city D.C., is holding its annual benefit golf tournament in Alexandria. At an 11:30 a.m. reception before the golfers tee off, students will be on hand who would love to meet you. You don’t have to golf or give: The students would get a kick out of hearing about your exciting life. The executive director and principal is Clay Hanna, a young father of three and former Army captain who was awarded the Bronze Star during 600 combat patrols in Iraq. Event is at Belle Haven Country Club, south of Old Town in Fairfax County — 6023 Fort Hunt Road, Alexandria. Sponsorship info http://bit.ly/jUlvqg
Cornerstone is a Christian school whose mission mission is to provide “a Christ-centered, nurturing, and academically rigorous education to the children of Washington DC, equipping them with the knowledge, skills, and values necessary to become leaders who serve others in light of Christ and His Truth.”
They’re very upset that the Obama administration has blocked the U.S. of DC public money to fund a voucher scheme—created by a Republican Congress in 2004—that would allow kids to attend schools like this. Separation of church and state? No doubt an alien, treasonous idea. So get out those clubs and golf for Jesus and the U.S. Army! That stuff about turning the other cheek and loving they neighbor must be about some other Jesus.
Education: how the U.S. stacks up
I’ve just posted the latest in a series of pieces on education that I’ve been doing for LBO. This one is a review of how the U.S. stacks up internationally on spending, enrollment, attainment: “In and out of school.”
Capsule summary: we spend lots of money, but enrollment and attainment numbers are mediocre. It’s kind of like our health care system. We pay our teachers badly, don’t reward experience, and prefer spending money on things rather than people.
Earlier education pieces: “Charter to nowhere” and “Beastly numbers ”(how poverty explains test scores).
Reminder: this stuff doesn’t grow on trees, so if you like it and don’t yet subscribe, please do: LBO subscription info.
Learning nothing from crisis (cont.)
An update to Back to the status quo ante bustum: Aline van Duyn reports in the Financial Times that corporate America is once again borrowing money to buy up its stock to boost share prices.
The rise in buy-backs and deals marks a turning point in the credit cycle, as companies become more willing to invest their cash and borrow more money. Since the 2008 financial crisis, many companies have been hoarding cash and building up ever greater treasure chests and rainy-day funds.
No more of that prudent stuff. But hire, boost capital spending, or fund R&D? Heavens no! Much better to do M&A or buy your own stock. And if you don’t have enough money to fund those noble pursuits, well just borrow it. Senior management loves stock buybacks because they boost the value of their options packages. And if things go sour? Well Uncle Sam can always help out.
No protest songs!
Reading The Nation’s new list of protest songs, I’ve finally figured out what’s wrong with the whole genre: it assumes you’ll never be able to change anything. It’s like naming your magazine Dissent. You’ll always be on the sidelines, complaining.
An outlier on this second Nation list is “The Internationale,” which is about transformation, not whining. But they pick the Billy Bragg version, which drains the song of a lot of its militance in that folky way.
Bankers fly in private jets, regulators ride the bus
These guys are supposed to regulate Wall Street?
U.S. Regulators Face Budget Pinch as Mandates Widen: “On a recent trip to New York to tour a trading floor, a group of employees from the commodities watchdog [the Commodity Futures Trading Commission] rode Mega Bus both ways, arriving late to their meeting despite a 5:30 a.m. departure. The bus, which cost $30 a person round trip, saved the agency roughly $1,000 over Amtrak.”
Buy this book!
Excellent collection of interviews (not that I’m praising myself here). Perfect for teaching, or just reading. Order your copies here.
Sasha Lilley, Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult (PM Press, 2011)
The Left luminaries in Capital and Its Discontents look at potential avenues out of the mess—as well as wrong turns and needless detours—drawing lessons from the history of post-colonial states in the Global South, struggles against imperialism past and present, the eternal pendulum swing of radicalism, the corrosive legacy of postmodernism, and the potentialities of the radical tradition. At a moment when capitalism as a system is more reviled than ever, here is an indispensable toolbox of ideas for action by some of the most brilliant thinkers of our times.
Praise for Capital and Its Discontents:
“Few journalists can match Sasha Lilley’s knowledge of political economy, nor her keen instinct for the important questions. Read these interviews—with some of the left’s most clearheaded thinkers—for a far deeper understanding of contemporary capitalism and its problems, and, perhaps more surprisingly, a bracing and contagious optimism.”
—Liza Featherstone, author of Selling Women Short
“Enveloped by a crisis that seems to have no end, heirs to ideas that seem unable to carry us through the present—the combination is disorienting. For that, it is right to scour the intellectual malcontents to gain from their recovery of ideas from the past and their sense of how to understand the present. Ideas are the soul of social activism. Without them action dissipates into futility; the ideas help us focus our energy toward building the kind of alternative world that our hopes encourage. Sasha Lilley’s Capital and Its Discontents is a superb introduction to some of the best traditions, given to us through some of the sharpest thinkers of the Global North.”
—Vijay Prashad, author of The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World
“In this fine set of interviews, an A-list of radical thinkers demonstrate why their skills are indispensable to understanding today’s multiple economic and ecological crises.”
—Raj Patel, author of The Value of Nothing and Stuffed and Starved
“These conversations illuminate the current world situation in ways that are very useful for those hoping to orient themselves and find a way forward to effective individual and collective action. Highly recommended.”
—Kim Stanley Robinson, New York Times bestselling author of The Mars Trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt
“Capital and Its Discontents presents the thought of many of the most astute analysts of contemporary political, economic and cultural developments in accessible interview form. Sasha Lilley’s wide-ranging and probing questions prompt her interviewees to address the intersecting crises of our time and to outline frameworks for understanding and responding to them. This collection of interviews introduces the reader to much of the best thinking about social issues on the U.S. left today.”
—Barbara Epstein, History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz
“Reading this wonderful book feels like having a face-to-face discussion with each author. These brilliant radical thinkers from many parts of the world generously and lucidly share their knowledge and insights on capitalism, empire, and resistance.”
—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, historian and author of Red Dirt and Outlaw Woman
New radio product
Freshly posted to my radio archives:
April 23, 2011 James Galbraithon deficit hysteria • Matt Taibbi, author of this article (and this one too), on where all that Fed bailout money went, and how no one went to jail for the financial meltdown
Lots of new stuff on LBO website
Freshly posted to the LBO website, five articles from recent issues. If you’d been a subscriber, you’d have seen these already—and a lot more. But it’s never too late to sign up, if you haven’t already: LBO subscription info.
The articles:
Beastly numbers How do you explain educational outcomes? Poverty, mostly.
What a damn mess Just how bad does this economy suck? Real bad.
2009: income down, poverty up, more uninsured income & poverty in the U.S.
Charter to nowhere Do charter schools work, and if so, for whom?
Old world, new crisis The EU melodrama
LBO 132 out
Just emailed to electronic subscribers, and on press for print subscribers, LBO #132.
- bouncing around the income ladder: U.S. not so mobile
- education spending & enrollment: U.S. not so good
- MONEY The austerity drive intensifies
- MISCELLANY mythmaking about (un)employment
If you don’t subscribe, well, why not? Subscribe here. If you already subscribe, why not give a gift?
Non CREDO
If you’ve got an email account and have a rep as some kind of “progressive,” you’re probably bombarded with offers from CREDO Mobile, often via The Nation and Alternet. Their marketing hook is that the big guys, AT&T and Verizon, support the far right and CREDO is all crunchy and nice.
Except that the CREDO part isn’t really true. The company has no network of its own—it uses Sprint’s. And Sprint is aggressively nonunion, while AT&T is unionized. (No doubt AT&T would rather not be unionized, but it is.)
But that’s not all. Sprint gives plenty of money to Republican candidates. In the 2010 cycle (Sprint Nextel Contributions to Federal Candidates | OpenSecrets), it gave 46% of its contributions to Republicans, among them such progressive stalwarts as John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Dan Coats, David Vitter, Jim DeMint (one of the most right-wing members of the Senate), John Cornyn (who once excused the murder of judges as an understandable reaction to odious decisions, among them on abortion), Joe Lieberman, Joe Barton (who apologized to BP after the spill for the White House’s “shakedown” of the company, and who thinks global warming is a good thing). Sprint’s 45% isn’t much different from AT&T’s 55% or Verizon’s 50%.
CREDO claims that it doesn’t fund anti-environment politicians, or those who oppose a woman’s right to choose, or those who are pro-war. That may be true in a legalistic sense, but Sprint does. And if you’re using CREDO, you’re using Sprint.
You can’t shop your way to a better world. Or move your money, either.
Warning? What warning?
Remember that warning on U.S. Treasury debt from S&P early in the week? The markets don’t. From the Financial Times’ PM Markets summary:
Apple gives fresh boost to stock rally
Global stock markets are approaching the Easter holiday in fine fettle, with the wobble seen at the start of the week following S&P’s warning on US debt already a distant memory
New radio product
Freshly posted to my radio archives:
April 16, 2011 Joel Schalit, author of this piece, on Israeli identity and the problems with saying that the country may be turning “fascist” • Michael Heaney, co-author of this paper, on how Obama demobilized the antiwar movement • Roger Lowenstein, author of The End of Wall Street, on the financial crisis and its aftermath
LBO News from Doug Henwood 