Media

Be careful what you wish for is good advice, and I'll be the first to admit that progressives may rue the day they celebrated historic changes to the Senate's filibuster rules.

Like when President Paul Ryan is packing the courts with pro-life judges in 2023. 

Modest Pension Benefits Play Little Role in Financial Crisis

DETROIT — In their push for bankruptcy, Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr and other public figures are incorrectly looking at Detroit’s long-term debt—figures generated using aggressive and in some cases inaccurate assumptions—to the detriment of solving the City’s immediate cash-flow crisis and its long-term structural challenges, according to a report released Wednesday by Demos.

Walmart can easily afford to raise pay for its low-wage workers by $5.83 an hour, to an average wage of $14.89, a new report from progressive think tank Demos concludes. All the retail giant has to do is stop its massive stock buybacks—which only serve to enrich a shrinking pool of shareholders, not to improve productivity—and put that money toward its workers.

Walmart spends $7.6 billion a year buying back shares of its own stock:

Wal-Mart could afford to hike every U.S. employee’s hourly wage to at least $14.89 an hour just by not repurchasing its own stock, according to a new report from the progressive think tank Demos.

Walmart, enmeshed in a debate over low wages highlighted by a food drive for employees at a Canton store, can significantly raise the salaries of sales clerks and other workers without having to find additional money for the pay hikes, says a research brief by a think tank.

In its house editorial yesterday, USA Today retold the now-accepted story of Detroit’s bankruptcy. Railing on “reckless public pensions,” the newspaper told its readers that the Motor City is “Exhibit A for municipal irresponsibility” because it allegedly “negotiated generous pensions” that were too lavish.

A New York-based think tank released a report today questioning Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr’s assertion that the city’s long-term debt is responsible for its fiscal problems, or that pension contributions are at major hurdle for the city’s finances.

Instead, the report by Wallace Turbeville, a senior fellow at Demos, a public policy organization, said Detroit’s decline into bankruptcy was caused by a steep decline in revenues partially due both to a shrinking tax base and deep cuts in state revenue sharing with the city.

Remember President Obama's big proposal to streamline how the federal government promotes business and trade? No, you probably don't. That's because the proposal disappeared without a trace last year after meeting resistance from various powers that be and getting forgotten by the very president who offered it. Welcome to the dispiriting world of government reform.