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Why the Decline of Organized Labor Makes it Harder to Revive Growth

With unemployment above 9 percent, creating more jobs is an urgent priority for the United States. But it is difficult to have a sensible debate on how to spark job growth given the myths and misinformation that surround this issue. Specifically, many political leaders and analysts wrongly point to three culprits in explaining weak job growth: government regulations, the new healthcare law, and taxes. None of these explanations hold up under closer scrutiny.

Regulation Isn’t Stopping Job Growth

The biggest domestic policy failure has been the refusal of top officials in the White House and in Congress to recognize the severity of the employment crisis that has settled like a plague over American workers.

The New York Times ran a front page article this morning titled "As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge around Globe." Nicholas Kulish writes that across the globe, from Spain and Greece to Israel and India, political protests are being motivated not just by rising economic inequality but by a growing feelin

Last month, the White House introduced a program that would effectively overhaul the tax code and, as Robert Kuttner put it, "locked [Obama] in as a defender of social insurance and working Americans." The five-pronged tax plan would cut rates and inefficient and unfair tax breaks, increase investment and growth in the United States, reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over 10 years and -- most contentiously -- institute the "Buffett rule."

The citizens of Maine will be voting tomorrow whether to keep the same-day registration system that they’ve had for nearly four decades. Since 1973, Maine voters have been able to walk into a polling place or a municipal clerk’s office on Election Day and register to vote.

Do Republicans in Congress care about creating jobs -- which polls say is the number one issue for voters -- or about ideological purity? The ongoing debate on Capitol Hill over President Obama’s $447 billion jobs package offers a crystal clear answer to that question.

Blatant redistribution, the argument goes, may fly in Europe with its strong class identity, but is a non-starter here, where the value of individual self-reliance is dominant. Is this really true?

Wisconsin's restrictive voter ID law functions like a de facto poll tax for over 175,000 older Wisconsinites who lack a government-issued photo ID.

The new IRS report on the "tax gap" is a good news, bad news story -- although mostly bad news.

Same Day Registration increases voter participation and lets people fix registration problems at the polls on Election Day.

Wisconsin State Court Judge David Flanagan issued a temporary injunction on Tuesday that will prevent Wisconsin’s controversial Voter ID law from going into effect prior to the state’s April 3 presidential primary. After noting in the order that the Wisconsin State Constitution recognizes voting as a guaranteed right, Judge Flanagan called the bill “the single most restrictive voter eligibility law in the United States.” 

Fiscal hawks love to remind us that interest payments on the national debt will be a major driver of future U.S. budget deficits. Just last week, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) published a doom-and-gloom paper that noted that interest payments were the single fastest growing part of the U.S. budget and the most volatile area of future spending.

Progressives both in and outside New York City are super excited about Bill de Blasio running City Hall. President Obama summed up those feelings in his endorsement yesterday of de Blasio, saying that his ideas for universal pre-K and affordable housing could make him a "great mayor." 

The U.S. is one of just a handful of democracies that places the duty of registration on the individual. 

Philadelphia Council authorized a public vote on Bill 130532 last Thursday. The bill amends the city charter to provide better wage protections and benefits for subcontracted city workers. The referendum will appear on the Spring 2014 ballot. Council supported this item unanimously.

According to attorney Steve Masters of JustLaws,

Growth doesn't work. It doesn't deliver the claimed social and economic benefits. 

One of the most alarming aspects of a possible default is also one that gets the least attention: A default would raise the cost of federal borrowing, perhaps for years to come, and send the deficit soaring. 

If Treasury securities become, well, less secure, the United States will have to pay investors more to buy them. Hence higher interest rates on new debt that is issued.