Evidently, sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander.
We’ve become accustomed to the breast-beating and recriminations that accompany decisions by American businesses to manufacture goods in other countries, or to move existing operations overseas. In the latter case, the loss of jobs is a genuine “hit” and efforts to retain them are understandable–although, as we’ve seen with Trump’s Carrier deal, often costly and counterproductive.
We almost never hear about the other side of the equation, however. Indiana, in particular, has benefited mightily from outsourcing decisions made by foreign companies. According to the Indiana Business Research Center at Indiana University, in 2015, Indiana had 152,700 workers employed by foreign-owned firms. (Think of the Honda plant in Greensburg, the Isuzu plant in Lafayette, etc.) Of the jobs created by foreign companies located in Indiana, 97,900 were manufacturing jobs that accounted for 3.1 percent of the state’s private employment.
Similarly, automation–not trade– accounts for most of the job losses in the United States. Trade actually creates jobs (although often the jobs created are different from those that are lost, and that does make for winners and losers). According to a January 2010 report from the Business Roundtable, at that time, 761,500 jobs in Indiana depended on trade.
In 2008, 20.5 percent of jobs in Indiana depended on trade, up from 10.0 percent in 1992. Indiana’s trade-related employment grew more than five times faster than total employment from 2004 to 2008.
This is not to minimize the issues raised by job losses; the impact on workers who find themselves unemployed–and often, due to age or lack of other marketable skills, unemployable–is very real. The impact on communities when a major employer closes or downsizes are equally real, and challenging. But addressing the consequences requires an accurate understanding of the causes.
To use a medical analogy, prescribing the proper remedy requires a correct diagnosis of the disease being treated.
The globalization of the economy has proceeded too far to be undone, even if we wanted to mount a retreat. History teaches us–or should teach us–that erecting trade barriers, punishing companies with tariffs on their foreign operations, and the other measures Trump has threatened–simply invite retaliation that hurts everyone.
It’s comforting to have a target for our economic frustrations, a “bumper sticker” solution to a problem. Unfortunately, modern life is more complicated than such “solutions” recognize. Automation has multiple virtues, but it does cause troubling job losses. There are good trade agreements and bad ones. Losing jobs as a result of American outsourcing is painful; gaining jobs as a result of Japanese or Canadian or British outsourcing is gratifying.
A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to speak to a “Women’s Rally for Change,” along with the Executive Director of Planned Parenthood and the Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor. The purpose was to discuss how to resist the coming assault on women and minorities, and to answer the increasingly common–and increasingly urgent– question: what can I do? What specific actions can I take?
The Rally was promoted only by Facebook posts; organizers hoped a hundred women might attend. We were stunned when five hundred women crammed into a space meant for far fewer, and another four hundred had to be turned away. (Future events, in larger venues, will be posted to a Facebook page established in the wake of the event: Women4ChangeIndiana.)
Several people who could not attend have asked me for copies of my remarks, so I’m posting them here. (Regular readers of this blog will find much of what follows repetitive….sorry about that!)
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We are facing divisions in this country unlike anything we’ve seen since the 60s, or maybe the Civil War. If America is to emerge reasonably intact, we need to look honestly at what just happened.
The ugly truth is that most of his voters saw Trump’s bigotry, misogyny and authoritarianism as features, not bugs. They didn’t overlook his appalling behaviors—those were what attracted them. They applauded his repeated attacks on “political correctness” and routinely told reporters that what they liked about him was that he “tells it like it is.”
The attitudes most predictive of support for Trump were racial resentment and misogyny—not economic distress.
Clinton won the popular vote, but because the Electoral College gives greater weight to votes from rural areas, she lost the Presidency. This is the 2d time in 16 years that the person who won the most votes was not elected.
The next few years are going to be very painful. Americans will lose many of the protections we have come to expect from the federal courts, probably for the foreseeable future. Economic policies will hurt the poor, especially women and children, and exacerbate divisions between the rich and the rest of us. A Trump Administration will abandon efforts to address climate change, and will roll back most of Obamacare. There will be no immigration reform, and God only knows what our foreign policy will look like. Worst of all, Trump’s normalization of bigotry will play out in a variety of ways, none good.
Sandy asked us to focus our comments on issues affecting women—but when you think about it, all of these issues will disproportionately affect women and children. And by far the worst for women is something we can’t reverse through legislation at some future time—a return to cultural attitudes that objectify and demean us.
So – what can we do, sitting here in overwhelmingly Red Indiana?
As individuals, beginning right now, we can support organizations that work to protect women’s rights, civil and reproductive liberties and public education, among others. A friend of mine and her husband, who stand to benefit from Trump’s proposed tax cuts, have decided to donate every dollar they save by reason of those cuts to organizations like Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. We might start a local “pledge my tax cut” campaign.
Perhaps the most important thing we can do is focus on local efforts to ameliorate the effects of likely federal actions. Most of the innovation and action on climate change, for example, is happening in cities, and it is much easier to influence local policy than state or national legislation. Those of us worried about the environment can make sure our cities are at the forefront of urban environmental efforts. There are other policy areas where—depending upon relevant state law—cities can mitigate the effects of federal action or inaction. Since the election, for example, several cities have decided to become Sanctuary cities, protecting undocumented people.
We can and must work to create inclusive and supportive local civic cultures that work against misogyny, bigotry and intolerance. We are already seeing a substantial increase in racist, homophobic, anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic incidents, and we need to create a civic environment that strongly discourages bigoted attitudes and behaviors. Cities have ready-made partners in those efforts, in arts organizations, civic and religious associations and the business community. I hereby volunteer to help mount a campaign focused on encouraging a welcoming, inclusive, respectful civic environment.
And if the new Administration really does establish a Muslim registry, we all need to register as Muslims.
In the longer term, we have to reform America’s election system. The first order of business is to get rid of the Electoral College, which favors rural voters over urban ones and generally distorts the democratic process. The person who gets the most votes should win the election. We should work with groups like the League of Women Voters to get Indiana to sign on to the National Popular Vote Project, to oppose gerrymandering and to make voting easier, not harder.
We also have to defend our public schools and improve civic education. “We the People” or a similar curriculum should be required for High School graduation. Trump made all kinds of promises that he could not constitutionally carry out. Perhaps recognizing that wouldn’t have mattered to the kind of people willing to vote for him—but it might have.
Sandy asked each of us to identify issues of particular significance to women that we might win at the Statehouse. Given the composition of our legislature, we face an uphill battle, but here are some suggestions:
Work with local business and civil rights groups to expand Indiana’s civil rights law to include LGBTQ Hoosiers.
Work with Planned Parenthood, the ACLU and other organizations to prevent passage of added restrictions on abortion that more conservative courts would uphold. We’re already seeing that effort in Indiana.
Work with advocates for public education to scale back Indiana’s voucher program, the largest in the country, that benefits parochial schools at the expense of public ones.
Require effective civic education for graduation from H.S.
If there has ever been a time to be an activist, this is it.
I understand a lot of the fixations of the far Right (although I disagree with virtually all of them). But I’m at a loss to understand their vendetta against Medicare, or their belief that access to healthcare should be considered a privilege, not a right.
If we take Paul Ryan and his ilk at their word, they evidently believe that market competition will bring healthcare costs down, and that guaranteeing access to healthcare promotes overuse (i.e. you’ll go to the doctor more frequently than you really need to). They believe these things–if they really do– despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
The great virtue of markets is that they enable voluntary exchanges; they provide an incentive to provide goods at a price buyers are willing to pay. The classic description of a market is “an exchange between a willing buyer and a willing seller, both of whom are in possession of all information relevant to the transaction.”
That is not a description of the “buyer” having a heart attack. Even in the absence of insurance requiring the use of specific providers, people do not–cannot–“shop” for medical care. We are generally not “willing” buyers, and as non-experts, we certainly do not have sufficient “information relevant to the transaction.”
You think it’s hard getting good insurance when you’re 30 or 50? Try getting good private insurance when you’re 70 or 80.
Providing health insurance coverage to seniors will unquestionably cost more if run through private insurance. No one who has looked at the comparative data on the cost efficiency of Medicare and private carriers can question this. There’s no money savings. Quite the opposite. The only difference is that seniors will pay vastly more out of pocket because the vouchers won’t come close to the costs of a policy. The upshot of the Ryan plan is significantly increasing the cost of what society pays for the medical care of seniors and then making seniors pay dramatically more out of pocket. All with none of the bedrock gaurantees Medicare provides.
There’s a reason administrative costs of Medicare–which doesn’t need to advertise, show a profit or cover outsized salaries to upper management– are dramatically lower than those of private insurance companies. As Marshall points out, the irony is that at the same time they are attacking Obamacare, Ryan and his cronies are proposing to replace Medicare with something that looks very much like Obamacare.
But building an exchange and subsidy adjunct for non-seniors onto an existing and fairly robust private health insurance system is one thing. Creating one from scratch for people who are all pretty much by definition bad risks is close to laughable. Laughable if you’re not bankrupted or dying because you couldn’t get care.
Remember the other things Medicare significantly guards against. If parents have insupportable medical bills or have no way to pay for care, they go to children. In the absence of any other options, that’s how it should be. But that money comes out of other things: buying homes, putting kids through college. The social insurance model of Medicare has positive effects well beyond direct beneficiaries.
Recent polls suggest that significant majorities of Americans don’t want to get rid of Obamacare, let alone Medicare. I still remember that senior at a Town Hall meeting carrying a sign that said “Keep Government’s Hands Off My Medicare.” He may not have recognized that Medicare is a government program, but he’ll certainly identify the perpetrators of attacks on it.
Fortunately, even in the Time of Trump, efforts to deprive millions of Americans of access to basic healthcare will not be a slam-dunk. As Marshall has also reported,
Many Republicans can see the political danger of touching Medicare. No one campaigned on this in 2016. Support for phasing out Medicare and replacing it with private insurance and vouchers is minimal outside libertarians and conservative ideologues. That’s why word play about ‘reform’ and averting ‘bankruptcy’ and ‘saving Medicare’ are the catch phrases. If anyone said, ‘We have an idea to have seniors get private insurance instead of Medicare and a check from the government to pay part of the cost’ they’d be laughed out of whatever room they were in. What’s most salient is that it is toxic within the coalition around which Donald Trump has at least temporarily remade the GOP.
In the real world, nothing about this Ryan/Trump effort makes sense. Practically, fiscally and politically, it would be a disaster. Given the characteristics of those who would be in need of coverage, it wouldn’t even benefit insurance companies or Big Pharma.
This is ideology-cum-religious fundamentalism: don’t confuse me with the facts.
The principle that government does not negotiate with terrorists is a longstanding American policy, endorsed (to date, at least) by foreign policy experts of both parties. The reasons are–or should be–obvious: when you reward an activity, you encourage it.
If kidnapping our diplomats or other citizens proves profitable, more kidnappings will occur.
Of course, if you are the spouse or loved one of the person being held hostage, you are likely to have a somewhat different perspective. Which brings me to the recent announcement–made with much fanfare–about Carrier Corporation’s decision to keep a thousand of its employees in Indiana, rather than moving their jobs to Mexico. Affected employees are undoubtedly (and understandably) euphoric.
Details thus far have been sketchy, but it appears that Indiana will provide financial “incentives” to keep the company here for the next few years. Since federal government contracts currently generate $6 billion dollars annually for Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies, it is likely that promises about that contracting relationship sweetened the deal.( A spokesperson for Trump hinted that the government might relax regulations United Technologies found “onerous.”)
As one economist tweeted, “Every savvy CEO will now threaten to ship jobs to Mexico, and demand a payment to stay. Great economic policy.”
Trump’s Carrier “accomplishment” is Exhibit A in what would likely be a long list of “teachable moments” if Trump were teachable. The lesson is: deals that make perfect sense in the private business sector can be invitations to disaster in the public sector.
I learned that lesson when I served as Indianapolis’ Corporation Counsel. Cities get sued with some regularity; a car goes in a ditch and the driver blames the design of the road; a building inspector tags a property and the owner disputes the violation; a homeowner objects to a sewer assessment, or a rezoning..the list is endless.
In the business world, it often makes fiscal sense to settle a suspicious “slip and fall” case, for example–especially when the amount at issue is much less than the cost of litigating the matter. If a City did that–if it “bought off” relatively small claims–it would be tantamount to hanging a sign out that said “Come sue us–we’re patsies.” Plaintiffs and their lawyers know that, unlike many private defendants, government entities have money; if all they had to do was file a lawsuit, if they didn’t have to risk going to trial, it would be open season.
So–unless the City was clearly in the wrong– we litigated them all, large or small.
Thanks to Americans’ ignorance of the significant differences between the public and private sectors, there’s a widespread and profoundly naive belief that anyone can “do” government, that public sector experience and/or specialized skills are unnecessary.
I wonder how many terrorists Trump and his cabinet of inexperienced newcomers will negotiate with–and what it will cost us taxpayers– before they figure it out…
Besides the U.S, the only other democracies that indirectly elect a leader who combines the roles of head of state and head of government (as the U.S. president does) are Botswana, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, South Africa and Suriname. (The Swiss collective presidency also is elected indirectly, by that country’s parliament.)
At this writing, Hillary Clinton looks likely to win the popular vote by over two million; Donald Trump won the electoral votes of the so-called “swing states” by the thinnest of margins– a collective hundred and seven thousand votes.
The dictionary definition of “democracy” is “rule by the majority.” Although it is certainly true that America’s system was not originally intended to operate by majority rule (it was instead conceived of as a representative democracy), and it (thankfully!) remains true that our Bill of Rights limits what government can do even with the support of popular majorities, we have changed our electoral system over the years, and we have done so in the name of increasing popular democracy.
In two of the last four national elections, the candidate clearly preferred by a majority of citizens has not become President.
We need to ask ourselves whether America truly wants to move in the direction of genuine democracy, or whether we want to continue a system that privileges the votes of more rural citizens over the votes of urban Americans– a system that decides who will win based not upon the larger number of votes cast, but upon where a candidate’s voters happen to live.
I fully expect that the elevation of a mentally unstable and monumentally unfit man to the Presidency of the most powerful nation on earth will usher in an era of chaos and social upheaval. I have no idea what will emerge in the aftermath–assuming that there is an aftermath, and that a thin-skinned and vengeful ignoramus in possession of the nuclear codes doesn’t destroy the planet.
If and when we do emerge, we need to decide whether we are committed to democratic decision-making or not. If we are, we have a lot of housekeeping to do.
