DEMOS Report: A Higher Wage Is Possible

From www.demos.org

There is enormous public support for increasing the minimum wage in recognition of deep recessions and income equality. DEMOS' new report shares how it can be done:

November 19, 2013

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Catherine Ruetschlin,

Amy Traub

American workers are working harder for less, with productivity rising but living standards stagnant or declining.¹At the same time, stock market wealth and incomes for the highest-paid Americans have risen.² Against this backdrop, the pay practices of the nation’s largest private employer have come under increased scrutiny. Walmart, with 1.3 million U.S. employees and $17 billion in annual profits, sets standards for all other retailers and across the supply chain of one of the nation’s fastest growing industries.³ Walmart’s practices impact the public sector and taxpayers as well when employees earn too little to meet their needs and require public assistance.⁴ Finally, Walmart is a leader in promoting an employment model in which workers earn too little to generate the consumer demand that supports hiring and would lead to economic recovery. In the last year, Walmart employees themselves have been increasingly vocal in protesting their low pay. Since the last holiday season, Walmart employees in stores throughout the country have repeatedly spoken out in pursuit of a modest wage goal: the equivalent of $25,000 a year in wages for a full-time employee.
KEY POINTS

• Walmart workers and a growing number of community supporters are taking a stand this holiday season, calling for wage increases and sufficient hours on the job to earn the modest income of $25,000 a year. This brief explores one way to pay for raises.

• Walmart spent $7.6 billion last year to buy back shares of its own stock. The buybacks did nothing to boost Walmart’s productivity or bottom line. If these funds were redirected to Walmart’s low-wage workers, they would each see a raise of $5.83 an hour.

• Curtailing share buybacks would not damage the company’s competitiveness or raise prices for consumers.

• If Walmart redirected its current spending to invest in its workforce, the benefits would extend to all stake-holders in the company—customers, stockholders, taxpayers, employees and their families—and the economy as a whole.

LINK TO FULL STORY AND REPORT

A Higher Wage Is Possible

11-22-63

It's a week and a November 22nd when every Baby Boomer is going to tell you where they were and I am no exception.

At age 13, I was in Mrs Sonigan's 7th grade speech class when the class abruptly ended at Pickering Junior High near Wyoma Square in Lynn, Massachusetts. This was just one year removed from the Cuban Missile Crisis when, at age 12, I thought it was over for me and everyone else by way of nuclear annihilation.  But then Kennedy, not listening to General Curtis "Bombs Away" LeMay,  and Khrushchev, resisting his own hawks in the Kremlin,  cut the deal to allow me to get to junior high.

I don't know whether the news from Dallas came over the principal's office intercom or from Mrs Sonigan herself on that Friday. But school got out early for the weekend. There was a bus ride home full of nervous guessing by some classmates and then a long, sad three days of black and white television.

President and Mrs. Kennedy descend the stairs from Air Force One at Love Field in Dallas, TX, 22 November 1963.  

(Cecil Stoughton. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

The murder of the 46-year-old 35th President in Dealey Plaza profoundly changed the course of U.S. History in ways we'll never know.  Some historians and observers says Vietnam and much of the turbulence of the 1960s may have been averted had Kennedy lived. On the other hand, there is some doubt that Kennedy could have gotten all that was attained in the aftermath and mood created after his death. President Johnson's  legislative genius is greatly responsible for the civil rights acts and a War against Poverty (Head Start, Meals on Wheels) that came out of the Kennedy and Johnson years.

The war in Vietnam that haunted JFK's Defense Secretary Robert McNamara  and the subsequent murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy (on the night of my senior prom) killed the "high hopes" Kennedy brought.

Being Irish and Catholic and living in Massachusetts we took it  like a death in the family. In truth, however, the mourning  was ecumenical and universal.  "This is a sad day for all people," President Johnson drawled getting off the plane with Kennedy's body. Before 24/7 cable, McLuhan's electronic "global village" connected all in grief and shock to watch the events unfold on TV.

The other and more uplifting thing to remember about 11-22-63 is that a ton of people in local and national offices, including me, came into or got interested in politics and public service because of Kennedy's "Ask not" call to serve.

That is still the lasting part of JFK's 1,000 days in office -- days long ago but not forgotten this week.

Other Words: Food Stamp Cuts Will Stoke Hunger

A commentary from former Norwalk Mayor Bill Collins and Emily Schartz Greco on the GOP's move to feed the wealthy and starve the poor.....

Food Stamp Cuts Will Stoke Hunger

From www.otherwords.org

Food Stamp Cuts Will Stoke Hunger

Demand for SNAP benefits won't retreat until the economic recovery stops benefitting only the richest Americans

By Emily Schwartz Greco and William A. Collins

Would you believe that the nation’s cabinet has approved an executive order defining food as a legal right? No, not our nation.

India has taken this bold step. Malnourishment afflicts 42 percent of Indian children, and part of their government’s response to this entrenched problem is defining efforts to end hunger as more than a welfare challenge.

USDAgov/Flickr

Here in the United States, we’ve got a hunger problem too. Yes, it’s not on India’s scale, but nearly 50 million Americans — 16 percent of us — live in what experts call “food-insecure” households. The number of hungry Americans has held steady since 2008, when the Great Recession began.

UNICEF rates child welfare among 29 of the world’s richest countries.We’re in 26^th place — ahead of Romania, yet behind Greece, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

Clearly, we should do more to help the most vulnerable among us, right? Well, Congress doesn’t agree. So now the world’s largest economy will let more people go hungry while our lawmakers squabble over how deeply to cut food stamp spending.

Food stamp benefits for poor families have already taken a hit. Even though hunger never declined from its peak during our alleged economic recovery, a small benefit increase in the 2009 stimulus package expired on Halloween. The end of this $5 billion safety net extension will trim $36 per month for a family of four enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program food stamp program, known as SNAP .

The Republican argument for cutting food stamps is based on the program’s growth. The government spent around $80 billion on SNAP benefits in the past year, more than twice levels seen before the Great Recession. That increase followed the boost in the value of the food stamps people could qualify for and the expansion of the number of people poor enough to qualify.

Simply put, we’re spending more on food stamps because widespread economic problems increased the number of empty larders in America. It’s possible that higher benefits compelled more people to apply, but that’s beside the point.

Had the economic recovery been widespread, we might be spending less on SNAP. Instead, the richest 1 percent inhaled all economic growth and then some. In 2010 and 2011, the 1 percent snatched 121 percent of the recovery’s bounty. This mind-boggling statistic means that the bottom 99 percent experienced a net decline in income.

Demand for food stamps won’t retreat until the economic recovery reaches the rest of us. And food stamps are a powerful economic stimulus because every dollar in increased SNAP benefits generates about $1.70 in economic activity.

So what’s Congress going to do? Pare back benefits even more. The House has passed two different versions of a Farm Bill, the SNAP program’s legislative home. One left food stamps out altogether and the other slashed SNAP spending by $4 billion each year.

The Senate’s version would cut SNAP outlays by $400 million per year. Either of these reductions would come on top of the $5 billion decline in support for this meager lifeline that helps one in seven Americans with less than $1.50 for every meal.

Can the private sector do something? Well, sure.

Workers employed by many of our largest corporations, such as Walmart and McDonald’s, are compensated so badly that millions of them qualify for government anti-poverty programs. If they’d just pay a living wage, fewer Americans would turn to stamps, Medicaid, and other safety-net options.

If seeing your tax dollars subsidize giant corporations that refuse to pay their own workers enough to get food on the table strikes you as unfair, this business trend may cheer you up: Companies selling their wares to the poor are lowering their sales forecasts due to the SNAP cuts. Including Walmart.

Emily Schwartz Greco is the managing editor of OtherWords, a non-profit national editorial service run by the Institute for Policy Studies. OtherWords columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk, Connecticut. OtherWords.org

Republican Push Poll Called "Desperate" and "Misleading" By New Britain DTC

The Stewart for Mayor campaign, devoid of substantive ideas and relying on out of town interests such as Waterbury-based absentee landlord group, is headed for the gutter and negative campaigning, according the New Britain DTC as the campaign enters its final two weekends.

In this week's post at www.newbritaindemocrat.org reports are surfacing about push poll tactics on the part of the new Team Stewart:

Democratic Town Chairman John McNamara said today the Stewart for Mayor campaign has been conducting  an anonymous telephone poll to mislead voters and falsely link Democratic Mayor Tim O'Brien  to property tax hikes."Members of the Democratic Town Committee and other residents have informed our campaign that they were on the receiving end of a push poll conducted directly from Stewart for Mayor headquarters," said McNamara.  "Anonymous callers in the Stewart campaign are asking residents if they 'support Mayor O'Brien's tax increase' and who their preference is for mayor."
The DTC statement continued:
"The Republican push poll is another attempt by the Stewart campaign to distort the record on taxes and engage in negative campaigning as Election Day approaches. The Stewart campaign has been happy to peddle their water department lie and buddy up with outside corporate groups. Now they're disguising a call  as a supposedly unbiased survey. It  comes right out of the GOP's bag of dirty tricks to attack an opponent with misleading information.  It shows desperation and no respect for voters who deserve to know what campaign and political party is contacting them.
The Republican nominee and her cohorts keep complaining that everyone's taxes have gone up without providing any facts. Theirs is a campaign of innuendo and distortion because they have nothing to offer on issues that matter to voters.
It is a matter of record that 77% of single family homeowners are paying less in property taxes this year because of reassessments. The percentage exceeds 90" for two and three family residence. 

McNamara called on the Stewart campaign to cease the push poll and conduct their campaign activities with full disclosure. "Voters deserve better than to be on the receiving end of bogus political surveying by the Republican mayoral campaign."

The Big Lie On Taxes From Team Stewart and NB Republicans

Statements coming out of the mouths of Republicans in New Britain these days on property taxes are about as false and misleading as it gets. The phony refrains on taxes are a stretch even for the partisan sniping that is the New Britain Republican Party's stock in trade.

It's one thing to oppose first-term Mayor Tim O'Brien on fiscal priorities, but the GOP mayoral nominee and her cohorts are fabricating property tax increases where they do not exist.

"These tax hikes, spending hikes, and borrowing hikes will never end as long as this current mayor is in office," Erin Stewart told the New Britain Herald in a September 5th story not long after she supported spending hikes and borrowing hikes as a member of the Board of Education. Maybe she was for those new and much-needed school books before she was against them.

Republican Council candidate Carmelo Rodriguez, Jr., in the September 8th Herald, said Democrats on the Common Council "have lost credibility with the people because they say they did not raise taxes. But, the numbers reflect something different."

Mr. Rodriguez may begin to question his own credibility once he actually talks to most of his neighbors or bothers to look up the numbers that are a matter of public record.

Unfortunately, the new Team Stewart is sounding a lot like the old Team Stewart with a heavy dose of of tax-cut demagoguery and an aversion to the truth.

The campaign gambit is to falsely pin all the blame on O'Brien who took office in November 2011 facing structural deficits and an out of balance municipal budget.  It took O'Brien several months just to sort out a fiscal mess caused by his predecessor. 

Meanwhile, the new Team Stewart is laying 100 percent of the responsibility for  regressive, state-mandated auto taxes on the incumbent.  Funny how the state and not the local administration was blamed when a previous mayor named Tim occupied the corner office at City Hall.  And I thought elephants had good memories.

Current assessment data for New Britain documents just how false the Republican claims are on property taxes "going up"  in the aftermath of state-mandated revaluation.

The Assessor's Office and the revaluation firm retained by the city last year based assessments on the sales market values from October 2011 to October 2012 for the new values.  The burst of the housing bubble here and everywhere over the last five years can be seen in the numbers.

Across-the-board drops in assessments meant there was less value to tax and consequently tax bills decreased for every  property owner that declined in value by more than 17%.

Of more than 9,000 single-family homes in New Britain, there was an average decrease of $134; 6,972 homeowners (77%) are paying less on a mill rate of 44.12; 2,076 pay slightly more or about the same because their home values did not drop as much as others.

For two and three-family houses the property tax decreases are even more dramatic. Of 2,711 two-family residences 2,479 (91%) experienced lower tax bills; 232 did not. The average change is a decrease in taxes of $546.  Of  1,582 three-family dwellings 1,577 (99.6%) got lower tax bills and  15 paid more. On average three-family owners are paying $1,129 less.

The new property assessments confirm that  tax bills for single family, one-, two- and three-family residences decreased significantly.  Only the few properties with values decreasing less than 17 percent paid about the same or received small increases.

Politicians of all political stripes will face challenges in maintaining essential city services and being fiscally responsible over the next two years.  That's because the current property tax system as a means of paying for schools and city services is unsustainable.

Don't look for Team Stewart to acknowledge this reality. The intent is to dissemble and mislead on property taxes from now to November 5th.

SEE related February 6, 2013  post on Housing Bubble and Property Assessments

Remembering The March and Speech From the "Global Village"

The March for Jobs and Freedom culminating in the "Dream" speech that occurred 50 years ago today stirred the social consciences of many more than the 250,000 who were on the Washington mall that hot summer day in Washington, D.C.

All of us who are old enough have no business remembering where we were on that Wednesday afternoon so long ago.  But we do. "The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village," said a prophetic Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s at about the time there was a TV in virtually every living room

I was 13 about to enter 9th grade in Lynn, MA. The television was on in our Clarendon Avenue apartment and I knew the live network coverage in black and white was connecting  me to something big and historic.  Former President Bill Clinton, praising the marchers at todays' commemoration at the Lincoln Memorial, said he too joined the march through the medium as a 17 year old in Arkansas.

Said Clinton:

This march and that speech changed America. They opened minds, they melted hearts and they moved millions, including a 17-year-old boy watching alone in his home in Arkansas. (Applause.) It was an empowering moment, but also an empowered moment. As the great chronicler of those years, Taylor Branch, wrote: The movement here gained the force to open, quote, “the stubborn gates of freedom,” and out flowed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, immigration reform, Medicare, Medicaid, open housing.

King's speech and the march brought millions of people together in hope and possibility that August day.  And television elevated the event in the cause of social justice.

Less than three months after the March for Jobs and Freedom  I and many others would never forget where we were 50 years later.  We spent many more hours  in front of the  black and white TVs --- this time part of a global village connected in loss and sorrow over President Kennedy's  assassination.

Virtual Busway Tour Starting At New Britain Station

A special section in The Hartford Courant has an interactive tour of the the New Britain to Hartford rapid bus transit system a/k/a "CTfastrak"  as provided by the CT  Department of Transportation at its project website www.ctfastrak.com

The state Bond Commission this month allocated $500,000 for transit-oriented development in the downtown district. The busses of the long-awaited and much-debated busway are scheduled to start running in early 2015.