Subject: Re: Upshot: Dems May Know What Party They're In
From: "Molly Magarik" <[email-masked]>
To: "Joshua Alcorn" <[email-masked]>
Cc: "Alexander S. Mackler" <[email-masked]>, "Beau Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Ted Kaufman" <[email-masked]>, "Eric Schwerin" <[email-masked]>, "Acdonilon" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2015 13:18:22 -0400

Working, but Needing Public Assistance Anyway
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/13/business/economy/working-but-needing-public-assistance-anyway.html?via=newsletter&source=CSAMedition&_r=0>

By PATRICIA COHEN
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/patricia_cohen/index.html>
APRIL 12, 2015

A home health care worker in Durham, N.C.; a McDonald’s cashier in Chicago;
a bank teller in New York; an adjunct professor in Maywood, Ill. They are
all evidence of an improving economy, because they are working and not
among the steadily declining ranks of the unemployed.

Yet these same people also are on public assistance — relying on food
stamps, Medicaid
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/medicaid/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>
or other stretches of the safety net to help cover basic expenses when
their paychecks come up short.

And they are not alone. Nearly three-quarters of the people helped by
programs geared to the poor are members of a family headed by a worker,
according to a new study
<http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/the-high-public-cost-of-low-wages> by
the Berkeley
Center for Labor Research and Education <http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/>
at the University of California. As a result, taxpayers are providing not
only support to the poor but also, in effect, a huge subsidy for employers
of low-wage workers, from giants like McDonald’s and Walmart to mom-and-pop
businesses.

“This is a hidden cost of low-wage work,” said Ken Jacobs, chairman of the
Berkeley center and a co-author of the report, which is scheduled for
release on Monday.

Taxpayers pick up the difference, he said, between what employers pay and
what is required to cover what most Americans consider essential living
costs.

The report estimates that state and federal governments spend more than
$150 billion a year on four key antipoverty programs used by working
families: Medicaid
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/medicaid/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>,
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, food stamps and the earned-income
tax credit, which is specifically aimed at working families.

This disparity has helped propel the movement to raise the minimum wage and
prompted efforts in a handful of states to recover public funds from
employers of low-wage workers. In Connecticut, for example, a legislative
proposal calls for large employers to pay a fee to the state for each
worker who earns less than $15 an hour. In 2016, California will start
publishing the names of employers that have more than 100 employees
receiving Medicaid, and how much these companies cost the state in public
assistance.

“The low-wage business model practiced by many of the largest and most
profitable employers in the country not only leaves many working families
unable to afford the basics, but also imposes significant costs on the
public as a whole,” Sarah Leberstein, a senior staff lawyer with the
National Employment Law Project, testified recently before Connecticut
lawmakers <http://nelp.3cdn.net/1de121bda4a5a18e33_sdm6b0a81.pdf>.

Other states, as well as several cities, including Washington, D.C., have
moved to raise the minimum wage above $10, while local activists in fast
food, retailing, home care, airport services and other low-wage industries
have organized protests to demand $15 an hour. Organizers of the Fight for
15 movement are planning a nationwide wave
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/business/movement-to-increase-mcdonalds-minimum-wage-broadens-its-tactics.html?_r=0>
of protests and strikes for this Wednesday — April 15.

Adriana Alvarez, a cashier at a McDonald’s in Chicago, is among the people
pushing for higher wages. After five years with the fast-food giant, Ms.
Alvarez, 22, earns $10.50 an hour, well above the federal minimum wage of
$7.25. Still, she depends on food stamps, Medicaid and a child-care subsidy
to help get through the week.

“He eats a lot,” Ms. Alvarez said of her 3-year-old son, Manny, with a
laugh. He also drinks a lot of milk, she said — “a half-gallon every two
days” — and because he is lactose intolerant, he requires a more expensive
brand, using up most of her $80 allotment of food stamps.

Most everyone else she works with — including many 10-year-plus veterans of
the franchise — receives food stamps, said Ms. Alvarez, who started working
at McDonald’s full time when she was in high school.

She depends on Medicaid for her family’s health care, and receives a
subsidy for the day care center where she drops off Manny on her way to
work.

With the recovery now well into its sixth year, stagnant wages have
increasingly become the central economic issue and a political flash point.

A report issued last week
<https://www.clevelandfed.org/en/Newsroom%20and%20Events/Publications/Economic%20Trends/2015/Behind%20the%20Slow%20Pace%20of%20Wage%20Growth.aspx>
by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland said that labor’s share of overall
income had fallen to record lows in recent years while profits have soared.

A handful of powerhouse companies have cited a tightening labor market as
the reason behind recent wage increases, including McDonald’s, which
recently announced a $1 bump
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/02/business/mcdonalds-raising-pay-for-employees.html>
over the local legal minimum for its corporate employees. (The announcement
does not apply to the vast majority of McDonald’s employees, who work in
franchises.)

Several economists, including the Nobel Prize
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/nobel_prizes/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>
winner Joseph E. Stiglitz
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/joseph_e_stiglitz/index.html>,
who has written extensively on inequality, credited political rather than
competitive pressures for the decision by some larger fast-food and retail
employers to raise wages.

William E. Spriggs, chief economist at the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said the
McDonald’s announcement was “a response to worker campaigns to increase the
minimum wage and what is going on in legislatures on the state and local
levels.”

Denise Rush, a home health care worker in Durham, N.C., often works seven
days a week, returning home near midnight after her two teenagers have
already gone to bed. At $9.50 an hour, her biweekly paycheck totals just
over $700, or the cost of her monthly rent. There is little left for other
expenses.

“It’s a crazy dilemma,” she said. “Do I pay the whole bill or do I gas up
the car to go to work?”

Despite receiving coverage for her children’s health care from Medicaid as
well as about $300 a month in food stamps, Ms. Rush, 41, is still
struggling. “We’re talking about basic needs,” she said, including such
staples of modern life as a cellphone to keep in touch with work and her
children and a home Internet connection to allow her children to do their
homework.

Her paycheck also fails to pay for the uniforms and fees for the lacrosse,
basketball and soccer teams that Ms. Rush says she believes are essential
to keep her son and daughter occupied and out of trouble while she is
working. Fortunately, she said, the school has helped pick up that tab.

About 48 percent of home health care workers are on public assistance, the
Berkeley researchers found. So are 46 percent of child care workers and 52
percent of fast-food workers.

Even some of the nation’s best-educated workers have turned to taxpayers
for support; a quarter of the families of part-time college faculty members
are on public assistance, the Berkeley researchers found.

“I’m very proud of my doctorate, it was well-earned, but in terms of the
work force, it’s a penalty,” said Wanda Brewer, who lives in Maywood, a
Chicago suburb, and teaches at DeVry and Concordia colleges. She is paid
$2,700 for each 15-week course she teaches. She and her 4-year-old daughter
are both on Medicaid; they also receive $390 a month in food stamps and a
child care subsidy.

She has applied for other jobs at chains like Walmart, Home Depot and
Menard’s, but says she can’t even get a call back because such employers
consider her overqualified.

“When I apply for anything outside education, they laugh at me,” Ms. Brewer
said. “The term professor immediately commands respect. The assumption is
you’re making a fair wage, a living wage, but that is not necessarily so.”

On Mon, Apr 13, 2015 at 10:23 AM, Molly Magarik <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> This article is a little disingenuous, since the majority of the companies
> that incorporate here don't typically hire DE people beyond whatever legal
> assistance they need.
>
> One of the real perils for DE is in the last graph, how do we redesign our
> tax code in a way that's fair, promotes good jobs, and sustained economic
> growth, while slowing down the mass arrival of seniors from other states?
> As the article points out, this service intensive population is a force in
> driving job growth in areas that don't provide middle classes wages, i.e.
> retail, restaurants, and casinos.
>
> It's also contributing to provider shortages in the medical field in
> Sussex because upper middle class and wealthy retirees have helped drive
> increases in home prices, which shuts nurses, techs, and primary care docs
> out of the market. This is a huge reason the Wilmington VA is leading the
> nation in appointment wait times. The Georgetown clinic cannot keep enough
> primary care docs and/or nurse practitioners on staff to serve the needs of
> the vet population down there.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 13, 2015 at 9:48 AM, Joshua Alcorn <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>> Here’s a pessimistic article about our great state:
>> http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21647642-living-standards-drop-americas-business-capital-first-state-comes-last
>>
>> Delaware’s economyThe First State comes lastLiving standards drop in
>> America’s business capitalApr 4th 2015 | WILMINGTON | From the print
>> edition <http://www.economist.com/printedition/2015-04-04>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> WAGE growth in America has been measly for years, but since the recession
>> one state has fared particularly badly: Delaware, an east-coast tax haven.
>> From 2009 to 2014, it was the only state in which hourly and weekly
>> earnings dropped in cash terms (see chart).
>>
>> At first glance, this is puzzling. Unemployment in Delaware, at 4.8%, is
>> well below the national average; many would expect such a tight labour
>> market to result in rising wages. Moreover, the state is famously kind to
>> business. Thanks to benign company laws and low taxes, there are more
>> businesses registered in Delaware than there are people. More than 50% of
>> all publicly traded firms in America have chosen the state as their legal
>> home. Last year roughly 170,000 business entities formed there, a new
>> record. A quarter of Delawareans work in finance or business services, a
>> higher proportion than in any other state. Such vocations typically pay
>> well.
>> In this section
>>
>>    - The present past
>>    <http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21647625-150-years-after-end-civil-war-states-were-once-confederate-remain>
>>    - They wish they were in Dixie
>>    <http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21647629-why-americans-keep-heading-way-they-wish-they-were-dixie>
>>    - The First State comes last
>>    - Too many fish in the sea
>>    <http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21647649-dating-market-having-fewer-choices-can-be-more-efficient-too-many-fish-sea>
>>    - Religious freedom v gay rights
>>    <http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21647650-debate-which-both-sides-exaggerate-threats-they-face-religious-freedom-v-gay>
>>    - Unbroken Reid
>>    <http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21647643-one-bareknuckle-leader-may-be-replaced-another-unbroken-reid>
>>    - Why the gun lobby is winning
>>    <http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21647627-prevent-gun-deaths-politicians-offermore-guns-why-gun-lobby-winning>
>>
>> Reprints <http://www.economist.com/rights>
>> Related topics
>>
>>    - United States <http://www.economist.com/topics/united-states>
>>    - Delaware <http://www.economist.com/topics/delaware>
>>
>> But dig deeper, and problems appear. In recent years Delaware’s
>> business-services industry has not looked so hot. In company litigation,
>> its courts have lost out to rivals, particularly federal ones. Excessive
>> litigation encourages companies to move. And Wilmington, the largest city
>> in the state, is losing its appeal as a place to do business because of its
>> high crime rate. Downtown is eerily quiet, even on business days. At the
>> heavily policed railway station, a helpful video shows what to do if an
>> armed madman launches an attack.
>>
>> All this has taken a toll. The number of full-blown public and private
>> corporations registered in Delaware is 11% lower than it was in 2000. (The
>> number of smaller outfits has shot up, but these generate less juicy work.)
>> Small wonder, then, that over the same period employment in Delaware’s
>> professional and business-services sector has dropped by a tenth. Wages in
>> that industry have fallen for the past few years. They have also tumbled in
>> the financial sector, which has struggled recently with low profits.
>> Delaware’s moneymen are earning 25% less per hour than they did before the
>> financial crisis.
>>
>> Other parts of the economy are suffering, too. Delaware’s manufacturing
>> sector is one. Two car plants, which once employed 10,000 workers between
>> them, have gone: Chrysler’s in 2008 and General Motors’ in 2009. Since the
>> recession ended, manufacturing jobs (which typically pay well) have
>> continued to wither in the state, despite a nationwide recovery. Delaware’s
>> industrial electricity prices, which are 25% higher than the American
>> average, partly explain the lacklustre performance. John Stapleford of the
>> Caesar Rodney Institute, a libertarian think-tank near Wilmington, laments
>> the absence of a “right-to-work” law (which would prevent workers from
>> being forced to join a union as a condition of employment). Without one,
>> says Mr Stapleford, Delaware is an unattractive place to locate a factory:
>> manufacturing jobs go elsewhere.
>>
>> Delaware’s low-wage sectors, though, have bloomed. Since 2010 the state’s
>> casinos have been allowed to host “table games”, such as blackjack. That,
>> says George Sharpley of the Delaware Department of Labour, partly explains
>> why employment in the leisure and hospitality sector has since grown by 7%.
>>
>> Retirees are also playing a role, says Gus Faucher of PNC, a bank. Many
>> move to Delaware for its low taxes on retirement income. From 2010 to 2013
>> the share of the state’s population over 65 grew by 7%, well above the
>> American average, and Delaware is forecast to be one of the fastest-ageing
>> states in the next few decades. Working for gamblers and pensioners pays
>> poorly: hourly wages in leisure and hospitality are half the state average.
>> To paraphrase the state song, some wonder if the sun really is shining over
>> their beloved Delaware.
>> Joshua Alcorn
>> 302/295.8340 (office)
>> 302/598.1885 (cell)
>> [email-masked]
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Apr 11, 2015, at 10:56 AM, Alexander S. Mackler <[email-masked]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>  interesting numbers, and good news.
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/11/upshot/democrats-keep-lead-in-party-identification.html?ref=politics&_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1Political
>> Calculus Democrats Keep Lead in Party Identification
>>
>> APRIL 10, 2015
>>
>> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/nate_cohn/index.html>
>>
>>  Nate Cohn
>> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/nate_cohn/index.html>
>>
>> The party identification of American voters was one of the most hotly
>> debated topics among analysts before the 2012 presidential election. Many
>> Republicans thought there were roughly equal numbers of Democrats and
>> Republicans, and so doubted polls showing President Obama with the lead. In
>> the end, the polls were right. This week, a
>> <http://www.people-press.org/2015/04/07/a-deep-dive-into-party-affiliation/> Pew
>> Research report
>> <http://www.people-press.org/2015/04/07/a-deep-dive-into-party-affiliation/>
>> based on about 25,000 interviews in 2014 took a new measure of
>> partisanship. Here are the most interesting findings:
>>
>> Despite the president’s sagging approval ratings in 2014 and the strong
>> Republican performance in the midterm elections, the Democrats retain a
>> nine-point advantage among adult Americans who lean toward a party
>> identification, 48 percent to 39 percent.
>>
>> The tally is nearly unchanged from the 10-point Democratic advantage in
>> 2012, when President Obama won re-election.
>>
>> The stability of the Democratic advantage in party identification
>> suggests that disappointment with Mr. Obama’s performance hasn’t caused
>> traditionally Democratic voters to reassess their partisanship. That’s very
>> different from the reaction of Republicans in the middle part of the last
>> decade, when dissatisfaction with the Bush administration allowed Democrats
>> to build the wide advantage that persists today.
>>
>> Non-Hispanic whites lean Republican by a nine-point margin, one of the
>> party’s largest advantages among white voters over the last 20 years. But
>> the advantage is about the same as in 2004, when Republicans had an
>> eight-point advantage, and 2012, when it was a seven-point advantage.
>>
>> Notably, there isn’t much evidence of a trend against Democrats. Since
>> 2010, the Republican advantage has held between seven and 11 points.
>>
>> The Democrats have faced equal or larger deficits.
>>
>> Perhaps because of the growing Democratic affinity for liberal cultural
>> politics, Republicans have made steady gains among white evangelical and
>> Catholic voters over the last decade. Since 2004, the Republican advantage
>> among white evangelicals has grown by 12 points, from 34 to 46 points. Over
>> all, 68 percent of white evangelicals lean Republican, compared with just
>> 22 percent leaning Democratic.
>>
>> The traditional Democratic advantage among white Catholics — who were
>> equally likely to lean Republican or Democratic in 2004 — has turned into a
>> modest and persistent Republican advantage for five straight years,
>> including a nine-point edge in 2014.
>>
>> Political scientists delight in debating about the political leanings of
>> the young voters who reached voting age after Mr. Obama’s 2008 election.
>> One theory has held that younger millennials will be significantly more
>> Republican than older millennials, since their politics would be defined by
>> the Obama years, not by opposition to the Bush administration. Others have
>> argued that Democratic strength among younger voters is the result of
>> cultural and demographic changes, not the national political conditions of
>> the end of the last decade.
>>
>> The Pew data, which includes 2,693 voters who are 18 to 25, suggests that
>> the youngest millennials are about as Democratic as older millennials. The
>> youngest millennials lean Democratic by 15 points; older millennials lean
>> Democratic by 17 points. Fifty-one percent of the youngest millennials lean
>> Democratic, compared with 50 percent of older millennials.
>>
>> There is, however, one intriguing weak spot for Democrats among the
>> youngest millennials: minorities. While young whites are far more
>> Democratic than their elders, the youngest nonwhite adults tend to be
>> somewhat more Republican.
>>
>> According to the Pew data, 17 percent of 18- to 25-year-old black adults
>> lean Republican — far more than any other age group among blacks. The
>> sample is small — just 354 black adults between the ages of 18 and 25 were
>> queried — but it is not the only piece of evidence supporting this
>> possibility. In the 2012 exit polls, just 80 percent of black men 18 to 29
>> supported Mr. Obama, although the number of respondents was quite low.
>>
>> The Pew data isn’t enough to definitively state that Republicans fare
>> better among the youngest nonwhite voters, but it’s something to keep an
>> eye on.
>>
>> The Upshot <http://www.nytimes.com/upshot/> provides news, analysis and
>> graphics about politics, policy and everyday life. Follow us on Facebook
>> <https://www.facebook.com/upshot> and Twitter
>> <http://twitter.com/UpshotNYT>. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.
>> <http://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/upshot/>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Alexander Snyder Mackler
>> (302) 598-8678
>>
>>
>>