Two week wrap

A few interesting news items this past two weeks:

• Became a dad - welcome BAF!
  
• Rep. Michele Bachmann continues to lie when it suits her, discussing swine flu or the budget reconciliation process  in Congress.
• Friedman thinks it's a decent compromise to out those who tortured but not push for prosecutions, but Krugman says it's nothing short of keeping our legal and moral standards to fully prosecute.
• Opponents to climate change legislation tend to think markets are best to solve everything, except carbon emissions (too costly!).  Gotta love the smell of cognitive dissonance in the morning.
• We may have moved beyond "she asked for it" in our perceptions of rape, but the U.S. shows poor attention to justice when it leaves "rape kits" untested for years.
• A nice chart on income concentration in the U.S. shows that we're (hopefully) coming off the peak of another Gilded Age (Roaring Twenties).  Both this period and the prior one were highlighted by spectacular financial speculation and shenanigans.
  

the GOP has a magic inequality spell that it chants while in office

Krugman has been examining the impact of party control of the executive (e.g. which party has the presidency) on economic inequality in the United States. He's skeptical that the executive could have so much to do with it, but the data are pretty robust: Republican presidents seem to have a magical inequality spell.

Democrats - a party of prosperity for everyone (data)

I'm lifting this chart straight from Paul Krugman's blog. Read his caveats. And marvel at this graphic:

Chart summary: Everyone is more prosperous (in terms of average annual income growth) under Democratic presidents. The rate of growth is also more equitable than under Republicans, who heavily skew income gains to the rich.

And that's why rich folks mostly vote for Republicans.

This isn't "performance pay"

One of my favorite features of Paul Krugman's blog is his willingness to look back. In this case, he examines the ridiculous pay packages of CEOs from the perspective of the early 1990s:

Jensen and Murphy, 1990:

On average, corporate America pays its most important leaders like bureaucrats. Is it any wonder then that so many CEOs act like bureaucrats?

So we stopped paying them like bureaucrats, and got this:

The Price of Any Departure Will Be at Least $159 Million
By ERIC DASH
Merrill Lynch’s directors may be weighing E. Stanley O’Neal’s future, but one thing is already guaranteed: a payday of at least $159 million if he steps down.

Rich folks are Republicans

Apparently there's been a misconception floating around about wealth and political party preference. Well, actually it's more like a bold-faced lie by many conservative commentators.

Paul Krugman has the data: rich folks vote Republican and poor folks vote Democratic. This income-related pattern has also become stronger in the past 40 years.

Unions: A look at the Employee Free Choice Act

With Democrats at the helm in Congress, labor is back on the table and legislation has been proposed to overhaul the way that unions get organized. The prime focus of the legislation is to simplify the ratification of a union by replacing the organizing drive and secret ballot with simple majority signup - 50% plus one employees approve and you are union. The legislation also asks for stiffer penalties for companies (read Wal-Mart) for interfering with union drives, a nice touch for the 31,000 people who were fired for participating in an organizing drive in 2005.

Some folks, such as Russell Roberts, downplay the importance of unions. He cites dropping unionization rates, few people being paid minimum wage, the ability of people to have employment empowerment by job switching, and the portion of GDP going to wages. Of course, he also thinks that cleaning people make $20/hour, which may be what he pays his Honduran help, but according to actual statistics is at least double the typical maid wage. He also dodges the fact that while wages are a growing part of GDP, the portion of income going to the middle class is shrinking. While Roberts' data is lacking, his conclusion is a nice tangent - let's fix public education!

Harley Shaiken wrote the pro-union column and his essay reflects it. He notes the large number of people fired for trying to unionize a workplace (30,000 a year), the failure of the Wagner Act to protect unions, as well as the slow increase of wages relative to productivity. His argument for eschewing the secret ballot part of the union drive is an interesting take - is a secret ballot meaningful in the coercive anti-union environment of most workplaces? Instead, he says that the simple signup will give union organizers a chance against the tactics of the modern corporation.

Read the 1-page bill summary (provided by the AFL-CIO).