That’s the question millions are asking after reading Matthew Yglesias’ piece arguing that former Obama political adviser David Plouffe is cashing in the right way by working as a lobbyist for Uber. Matt argues that Plouffe is getting rich by openly arguing for a cause that he believes in. I’m not convinced.
First, Matt argues that if Plouffe thought the incumbent taxi industry was mostly right in its battles with Uber, then he could have gone to work lobbying for them. While this is true, my guess is that the incumbent cab industry would have a hard time coming up with the same sort of paycheck as Uber, a company with a $40 billion market capitalization. I doubt the industry collectively can come close to matching a $40 billion market capitalization. Furthermore, given the difficulties of coordination, it is extremely unlikely that their association would be able to toss around the same sort of cash for lobbyists as Uber even if the incumbents collectively had the same resources.
The other more important reason why I’m not convinced that Plouffe believes that he is on the side of the angels, is that the angels don’t have to cheat to make their case. Here I’m referring to the study that Alan Krueger, the former head of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, did on the pay of Uber drivers. Uber gave Kreuger data on drivers’ gross earnings per trip, as well as the number of trips they did per hour. This allowed Krueger to calculate that they grossed on average $6.00 an hour more than the net earnings of drivers for the incumbent cab industry.
What Krueger could not do was make a comparison of net earnings. While there is no way for Uber to know exactly how much it costs its drivers for each mile driven, we do have data on this issue. (The IRS puts the cost at 57 cents per mile.) This means that if we know the length of an average trip, then we could get a pretty good estimate of the net earnings of Uber drivers. (Actually, we would still need to factor in miles driven to and from pick-ups and dropoffs.)
Unfortunately, Krueger tells us that he didn’t have data on average miles per trip. Of course Uber would have very good data on miles per trip. If Kreuger didn’t have the data it’s because Uber chose not to give it to him. Presumably Uber opted not to share the data on miles per trip because it knew the data would make them look bad. Therefore, it opted to withhold these data from Kreuger so he could not do a full analysis.
Getting back to Plouffe’s motives, if he really believed in the virtues of Uber, then he should not have a problem with Uber giving all the data to Kreuger and letting him tell the whole story. The fact that Uber withheld the data indicates that Plouffe and the folks at Uber feel they have something to hide and therefore don’t entirely believe in the merits of their case. (I’m assuming that Plouffe was involved in arranging this study.)
So I’m afraid I can’t agree with Matt here. My guess is that Plouffe went with the highest bidder.
That’s the question millions are asking after reading Matthew Yglesias’ piece arguing that former Obama political adviser David Plouffe is cashing in the right way by working as a lobbyist for Uber. Matt argues that Plouffe is getting rich by openly arguing for a cause that he believes in. I’m not convinced.
First, Matt argues that if Plouffe thought the incumbent taxi industry was mostly right in its battles with Uber, then he could have gone to work lobbying for them. While this is true, my guess is that the incumbent cab industry would have a hard time coming up with the same sort of paycheck as Uber, a company with a $40 billion market capitalization. I doubt the industry collectively can come close to matching a $40 billion market capitalization. Furthermore, given the difficulties of coordination, it is extremely unlikely that their association would be able to toss around the same sort of cash for lobbyists as Uber even if the incumbents collectively had the same resources.
The other more important reason why I’m not convinced that Plouffe believes that he is on the side of the angels, is that the angels don’t have to cheat to make their case. Here I’m referring to the study that Alan Krueger, the former head of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, did on the pay of Uber drivers. Uber gave Kreuger data on drivers’ gross earnings per trip, as well as the number of trips they did per hour. This allowed Krueger to calculate that they grossed on average $6.00 an hour more than the net earnings of drivers for the incumbent cab industry.
What Krueger could not do was make a comparison of net earnings. While there is no way for Uber to know exactly how much it costs its drivers for each mile driven, we do have data on this issue. (The IRS puts the cost at 57 cents per mile.) This means that if we know the length of an average trip, then we could get a pretty good estimate of the net earnings of Uber drivers. (Actually, we would still need to factor in miles driven to and from pick-ups and dropoffs.)
Unfortunately, Krueger tells us that he didn’t have data on average miles per trip. Of course Uber would have very good data on miles per trip. If Kreuger didn’t have the data it’s because Uber chose not to give it to him. Presumably Uber opted not to share the data on miles per trip because it knew the data would make them look bad. Therefore, it opted to withhold these data from Kreuger so he could not do a full analysis.
Getting back to Plouffe’s motives, if he really believed in the virtues of Uber, then he should not have a problem with Uber giving all the data to Kreuger and letting him tell the whole story. The fact that Uber withheld the data indicates that Plouffe and the folks at Uber feel they have something to hide and therefore don’t entirely believe in the merits of their case. (I’m assuming that Plouffe was involved in arranging this study.)
So I’m afraid I can’t agree with Matt here. My guess is that Plouffe went with the highest bidder.
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It’s repeal the estate tax season, which means we are hearing all sorts of nonsense about how the tax forces people to sell their family farm or business. It should be self-evident that this is nonsense since no one owes a penny of tax on an estate worth less than $5.4 million. And, just to be clear, this is net of debt. If the “family farm” is worth $10 million, but comes with $5 million in debt, then the net worth is $5 million, meaning the kids get it after paying zero in tax.
But if you still think that families are losing their farms because of the tax, then it’s worth going back to an old NYT story by David Cay Johnston. Johnston called the American Farm Bureau, a major lobbyist against the tax, and asked to be put in contact with someone who had lost their farm due to the estate tax. The Farm Bureau could not produce a single family anywhere in the country who had lost their farm as a result of the tax.
In short, families do not lose farms or businesses due to the estate tax. They lose them because the next generation doesn’t feel like operating them. This is just one more story that politicians tell in order to justify reducing taxes on the very wealthy. The media should point this fact out.
It’s repeal the estate tax season, which means we are hearing all sorts of nonsense about how the tax forces people to sell their family farm or business. It should be self-evident that this is nonsense since no one owes a penny of tax on an estate worth less than $5.4 million. And, just to be clear, this is net of debt. If the “family farm” is worth $10 million, but comes with $5 million in debt, then the net worth is $5 million, meaning the kids get it after paying zero in tax.
But if you still think that families are losing their farms because of the tax, then it’s worth going back to an old NYT story by David Cay Johnston. Johnston called the American Farm Bureau, a major lobbyist against the tax, and asked to be put in contact with someone who had lost their farm due to the estate tax. The Farm Bureau could not produce a single family anywhere in the country who had lost their farm as a result of the tax.
In short, families do not lose farms or businesses due to the estate tax. They lose them because the next generation doesn’t feel like operating them. This is just one more story that politicians tell in order to justify reducing taxes on the very wealthy. The media should point this fact out.
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The NYT gave Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schauble, the opportunity to lay out his government’s position on austerity in a column today. I don’t have time to go through the piece in detail (there is not much new here), but I will make a couple of points.
First, Schauble touts the reform record of Spain and Ireland, Germany’s star pupils. It’s worth noting that, rather than being spendthrifts, both countries had budget surpluses before the crisis and had debt to GDP ratios well below Germany’s. Nonetheless they are still being forced to pay an enormous cost. The I.M.F. projects that both countries will first exceed their pre-crisis level of per capita income in 2018, that’s a performance considerably worse than the United States in the Great Depression. Even then, Spain is still projected to face an unemployment rate of 18.8 percent. Both countries have seen enormous cuts to public services and faced large tax increases. And, these are Schauble’s success stories.
The other point concerns the impact of structural problems on growth. In fact, many labor market protections have little or no impact on growth, but even where regulations lead to inefficiencies they do not necessary prevent an economy from having healthy growth. An obvious example is the health care system in the United States, where protections for doctors, drug companies, medical equipment suppliers and other providers may add as much as 8 percentage points of GDP to our health care costs (@$1.4 trillion a year). These distortions obviously slow growth, but they have not prevented the U.S. from having a relatively good economic performance over most of the last four decades.
The same is likely true of many of the distortions that have Schauble upset. Some of these may in fact slow growth in Greece, Spain. and other crisis countries. However, they would not prevent them from having functioning economies, if German did not insist on macroeconomic policies that strangled growth.
The NYT gave Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schauble, the opportunity to lay out his government’s position on austerity in a column today. I don’t have time to go through the piece in detail (there is not much new here), but I will make a couple of points.
First, Schauble touts the reform record of Spain and Ireland, Germany’s star pupils. It’s worth noting that, rather than being spendthrifts, both countries had budget surpluses before the crisis and had debt to GDP ratios well below Germany’s. Nonetheless they are still being forced to pay an enormous cost. The I.M.F. projects that both countries will first exceed their pre-crisis level of per capita income in 2018, that’s a performance considerably worse than the United States in the Great Depression. Even then, Spain is still projected to face an unemployment rate of 18.8 percent. Both countries have seen enormous cuts to public services and faced large tax increases. And, these are Schauble’s success stories.
The other point concerns the impact of structural problems on growth. In fact, many labor market protections have little or no impact on growth, but even where regulations lead to inefficiencies they do not necessary prevent an economy from having healthy growth. An obvious example is the health care system in the United States, where protections for doctors, drug companies, medical equipment suppliers and other providers may add as much as 8 percentage points of GDP to our health care costs (@$1.4 trillion a year). These distortions obviously slow growth, but they have not prevented the U.S. from having a relatively good economic performance over most of the last four decades.
The same is likely true of many of the distortions that have Schauble upset. Some of these may in fact slow growth in Greece, Spain. and other crisis countries. However, they would not prevent them from having functioning economies, if German did not insist on macroeconomic policies that strangled growth.
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That probably should have been the headline of a Politico article [sorry, behind paywall] on a letter signed by 13 former Democratic governors urging Congress to approve fast-track trade authority to facilitate the passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Pact (TTIP). The most newsworthy aspect of the letter is that the governors apparently do not understand the basic economics of trade.
In the letter the governors tell members of Congress:
“We’ve seen firsthand the benefits of trade to our communities. Increased exports have been a major component of economic development across all 50 states, adding $760 billion to our economy between 2009 and 2014 — one-third of our total growth. And this growth has supported 1.8 million new jobs and raised wages (up to 18 percent on average) for real people that we’ve met — the manufacturing worker in Kentucky, the computer technician in Massachusetts, the dairy farmer in Wisconsin — whose jobs are related to exports.”
This paragraph implies that the governors don’t realize that it is net exports, not exports, that add to growth and employment. To see this distinction, if the manufacturing worker in Kentucky they saw first hand, was producing a part for a car that used to be assembled in Ohio, but is now assembled in Mexico, she would have one of the jobs the governors are attributing to exports. Of course the assembly worker in Ohio has now lost her job, but apparently the Democratic governors don’t know about him. This lost job would be picked up if we looked at net exports, since we would subtract the full value of the car when it was imported back from Mexico.
If the governors had done their arithmetic right, instead of boasting about the $760 billion increase in exports, they would have been complaining about the $140 billion decline in net exports, since imports rose by $890 billion between 2009 and 2014. This means that trade was a drag on growth in the recovery, costing the country jobs and putting downward pressure on wages.
It is extraordinary when people who have held important public positions (one of the signers is former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius) show themselves to be completely ignorant on such a fundamental policy issue. Politico should have called its readers’ attention to these former governors misunderstanding of the way in which trade affects the economy, jobs, and wages.
That probably should have been the headline of a Politico article [sorry, behind paywall] on a letter signed by 13 former Democratic governors urging Congress to approve fast-track trade authority to facilitate the passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Pact (TTIP). The most newsworthy aspect of the letter is that the governors apparently do not understand the basic economics of trade.
In the letter the governors tell members of Congress:
“We’ve seen firsthand the benefits of trade to our communities. Increased exports have been a major component of economic development across all 50 states, adding $760 billion to our economy between 2009 and 2014 — one-third of our total growth. And this growth has supported 1.8 million new jobs and raised wages (up to 18 percent on average) for real people that we’ve met — the manufacturing worker in Kentucky, the computer technician in Massachusetts, the dairy farmer in Wisconsin — whose jobs are related to exports.”
This paragraph implies that the governors don’t realize that it is net exports, not exports, that add to growth and employment. To see this distinction, if the manufacturing worker in Kentucky they saw first hand, was producing a part for a car that used to be assembled in Ohio, but is now assembled in Mexico, she would have one of the jobs the governors are attributing to exports. Of course the assembly worker in Ohio has now lost her job, but apparently the Democratic governors don’t know about him. This lost job would be picked up if we looked at net exports, since we would subtract the full value of the car when it was imported back from Mexico.
If the governors had done their arithmetic right, instead of boasting about the $760 billion increase in exports, they would have been complaining about the $140 billion decline in net exports, since imports rose by $890 billion between 2009 and 2014. This means that trade was a drag on growth in the recovery, costing the country jobs and putting downward pressure on wages.
It is extraordinary when people who have held important public positions (one of the signers is former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius) show themselves to be completely ignorant on such a fundamental policy issue. Politico should have called its readers’ attention to these former governors misunderstanding of the way in which trade affects the economy, jobs, and wages.
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The Washington Post has long been completely gung ho for trade deals. Whether this stems from some sort of religious fervor or a desire to help wealthy friends and advertisers is not clear. What is clear is that the paper routinely departs from reality in pushing their trade agenda.
It did this most famously back in 2007 when a lead editorial proclaiming the virtues of NAFTA asserted that Mexico’s GDP had quadrupled in the prior 20 years. According to the I.M.F., Mexico’s growth was actually just 83 percent over this period.
In keeping with this pattern of cheerleading of trade deals, it ran an article on President Obama’s “evolution” on trade that treated his support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as an intellectual journey. It never once suggested that he might be supporting the deal out of a desire to appease powerful business interests. (The piece does note the political pressures to oppose the deal from unions and others who have been harmed by trade.)
Whatever President Obama’s personal views on trade, as everyone in Washington knows, presidents are constrained by political forces. (Why can’t we have a big stimulus that would restore full employment?) Politicians don’t get elected to the presidency or other offices based on their political philosophy; they get elected as a result of gaining the support of powerful interest groups.
There are many powerful business groups that have been directly involved in negotiated the TPP. They are writing rules protecting investment from regulations of different types, ensuring market access for our banks, telecommunications companies and other industries, and increasing the length and strength of patent and copyright protection. (The latter changes are forms of protectionism, which is why it is wrong for this article to describe the TPP as a “free trade” pact.)
It is incredibly irresponsible to not mention the pressure from these business groups to complete the TPP. This pressure will almost certainly have more impact on the Obama administration’s trade policy and the votes of Democrats in Congress than President Obama’s political philosophy.
The Washington Post has long been completely gung ho for trade deals. Whether this stems from some sort of religious fervor or a desire to help wealthy friends and advertisers is not clear. What is clear is that the paper routinely departs from reality in pushing their trade agenda.
It did this most famously back in 2007 when a lead editorial proclaiming the virtues of NAFTA asserted that Mexico’s GDP had quadrupled in the prior 20 years. According to the I.M.F., Mexico’s growth was actually just 83 percent over this period.
In keeping with this pattern of cheerleading of trade deals, it ran an article on President Obama’s “evolution” on trade that treated his support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as an intellectual journey. It never once suggested that he might be supporting the deal out of a desire to appease powerful business interests. (The piece does note the political pressures to oppose the deal from unions and others who have been harmed by trade.)
Whatever President Obama’s personal views on trade, as everyone in Washington knows, presidents are constrained by political forces. (Why can’t we have a big stimulus that would restore full employment?) Politicians don’t get elected to the presidency or other offices based on their political philosophy; they get elected as a result of gaining the support of powerful interest groups.
There are many powerful business groups that have been directly involved in negotiated the TPP. They are writing rules protecting investment from regulations of different types, ensuring market access for our banks, telecommunications companies and other industries, and increasing the length and strength of patent and copyright protection. (The latter changes are forms of protectionism, which is why it is wrong for this article to describe the TPP as a “free trade” pact.)
It is incredibly irresponsible to not mention the pressure from these business groups to complete the TPP. This pressure will almost certainly have more impact on the Obama administration’s trade policy and the votes of Democrats in Congress than President Obama’s political philosophy.
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Thomas Edsall presents some interesting polling results in his NYT column indicating less public support for government policies to redistribute income even as the distribution of income is becoming increasingly unequal. He argues that this presents a paradox for Democrats who are concerned about inequality.
Actually the situation is less paradoxical when we consider the possibility that government policies are largely responsible for growing inequality. This is most obvious is with the bailout of the financial industry in 2008. Without the help of the TARP and the Fed, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and most of the other Wall Street behemoths would be out of business. This would have drastically reduced the wealth and income of many of the richest people in the country.
The government has also redistributed income upward by supporting an over-valued dollar that has eliminated millions of manufacturing jobs and put downward pressure on the wages of non-college educated workers more generally. In addition, a Federal Reserve Board policy that raises interest rates to keep people from getting jobs any time the labor market gets tight enough to support wage growth has also had the effect of reducing the wages of most workers.
Also our trade policy of selective protectionism, which exposes manufacturing workers to competition with the lowest paid workers in the world, while largely protecting doctors, lawyers, and other highly paid professionals (who comprise much of the one percent), has the effect of redistributing income upward. Similarly, our policy of patent protection redistributes hundreds of billions of dollars a year from ordinary workers to drug companies and other beneficiaries of these government-granted monopolies.
In these areas and others the government has acted to redistribute income upward. A politician who wanted to reduce inequality could focus on having less government action in these areas. That would be consistent with the polls cited by Edsall indicating that the public wanted a smaller role for the government.
Thomas Edsall presents some interesting polling results in his NYT column indicating less public support for government policies to redistribute income even as the distribution of income is becoming increasingly unequal. He argues that this presents a paradox for Democrats who are concerned about inequality.
Actually the situation is less paradoxical when we consider the possibility that government policies are largely responsible for growing inequality. This is most obvious is with the bailout of the financial industry in 2008. Without the help of the TARP and the Fed, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and most of the other Wall Street behemoths would be out of business. This would have drastically reduced the wealth and income of many of the richest people in the country.
The government has also redistributed income upward by supporting an over-valued dollar that has eliminated millions of manufacturing jobs and put downward pressure on the wages of non-college educated workers more generally. In addition, a Federal Reserve Board policy that raises interest rates to keep people from getting jobs any time the labor market gets tight enough to support wage growth has also had the effect of reducing the wages of most workers.
Also our trade policy of selective protectionism, which exposes manufacturing workers to competition with the lowest paid workers in the world, while largely protecting doctors, lawyers, and other highly paid professionals (who comprise much of the one percent), has the effect of redistributing income upward. Similarly, our policy of patent protection redistributes hundreds of billions of dollars a year from ordinary workers to drug companies and other beneficiaries of these government-granted monopolies.
In these areas and others the government has acted to redistribute income upward. A politician who wanted to reduce inequality could focus on having less government action in these areas. That would be consistent with the polls cited by Edsall indicating that the public wanted a smaller role for the government.
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No, that actually is not what the column asked. The question was instead whether people on TANF or food stamps should be able to buy steak or spend their money in other ways that politicians consider lavish.
It seems that if we think the government has a right to dictate people’s spending habits based on giving them $1,600 a year in food stamps (the average benefit per recipient), there should also be a case for dictating their spending habits if we give them thousands of times as much in tax breaks, as would be the case with the fund managers’ tax break.
For those not familiar with it, the fund managers’ tax break (also known as the carried interest tax deduction) allows managers of hedge funds and private equity funds, as well as other types of investment funds, to pay the lower capital gains tax rate instead of the tax rate on ordinary income. In order to get this lower tax rate they have to be paid on a commission, like a car salesperson or a realtor. While other workers who get paid in part on commission still have to pay the same tax rate on their income, because of their enormous political power fund managers like Mitt Romney were able to get Congress to give them a special lower tax rate.
The gains to these fund managers can be enormous; it is not uncommon for successful managers like Romney to pocket $10 million a year. With a tax rate on normal income of 39.6 percent and a capital gains tax rate of 20 percent, this implies a government handout of $1,960,000 a year (@1230 years of food stamps). Some of the most successful fund managers pocket over $100 million a year, which implies a handout of more than $19,600,000 a year (@12,300 years of food stamps). If the government wants to tell people who get food stamps how they should spend their money, it certainly seems reasonable to tell people who can get thousands of times as much through tax breaks how they should spend their money.
For those who have trouble understanding that a tax break is the same as a welfare-type benefit, imagine that we lived in a condo and every unit was required to pay $500 a month to cover the cost of electricity, heating, maintenance, and other normal expenses. If the condo association decided that the people living in one unit did not have to pay their fees, that would be the same as handing them $500 a month, or at least it would be in the land where the laws of arithmetic apply. Of course we have a serious problem of climate change deniers in American political life, why shouldn’t we also have a problem of arithmetic deniers?
Note: typos and calculations corrected, thanks to Robert Salzberg. The calculations in this post ignore the 3.8 percent investor tax from the Affordable Care Act that would be imposed on most capital gains income, as well as the 0.9 percentage point tax that would be applied to most wage earnings of high income individuals. Together these taxes would lower the gap between the tax rate on ordinary income and capital gains income by 2.9 percentage points.
No, that actually is not what the column asked. The question was instead whether people on TANF or food stamps should be able to buy steak or spend their money in other ways that politicians consider lavish.
It seems that if we think the government has a right to dictate people’s spending habits based on giving them $1,600 a year in food stamps (the average benefit per recipient), there should also be a case for dictating their spending habits if we give them thousands of times as much in tax breaks, as would be the case with the fund managers’ tax break.
For those not familiar with it, the fund managers’ tax break (also known as the carried interest tax deduction) allows managers of hedge funds and private equity funds, as well as other types of investment funds, to pay the lower capital gains tax rate instead of the tax rate on ordinary income. In order to get this lower tax rate they have to be paid on a commission, like a car salesperson or a realtor. While other workers who get paid in part on commission still have to pay the same tax rate on their income, because of their enormous political power fund managers like Mitt Romney were able to get Congress to give them a special lower tax rate.
The gains to these fund managers can be enormous; it is not uncommon for successful managers like Romney to pocket $10 million a year. With a tax rate on normal income of 39.6 percent and a capital gains tax rate of 20 percent, this implies a government handout of $1,960,000 a year (@1230 years of food stamps). Some of the most successful fund managers pocket over $100 million a year, which implies a handout of more than $19,600,000 a year (@12,300 years of food stamps). If the government wants to tell people who get food stamps how they should spend their money, it certainly seems reasonable to tell people who can get thousands of times as much through tax breaks how they should spend their money.
For those who have trouble understanding that a tax break is the same as a welfare-type benefit, imagine that we lived in a condo and every unit was required to pay $500 a month to cover the cost of electricity, heating, maintenance, and other normal expenses. If the condo association decided that the people living in one unit did not have to pay their fees, that would be the same as handing them $500 a month, or at least it would be in the land where the laws of arithmetic apply. Of course we have a serious problem of climate change deniers in American political life, why shouldn’t we also have a problem of arithmetic deniers?
Note: typos and calculations corrected, thanks to Robert Salzberg. The calculations in this post ignore the 3.8 percent investor tax from the Affordable Care Act that would be imposed on most capital gains income, as well as the 0.9 percentage point tax that would be applied to most wage earnings of high income individuals. Together these taxes would lower the gap between the tax rate on ordinary income and capital gains income by 2.9 percentage points.
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