TIME FOR A RAISE
A new study recently circulated on Bluesky
examined the impact of higher pay rates on the hiring process, and
discovered that — just as you might expect — when employers raise wages,
they fill open positions more quickly. Or, as the study specifically
found: raising pay by 4.3% reduces the time a job remains open by 27%.
It’s always helpful to have specific
numbers for stuff like this, and the researchers here did a service. But
this kind of study also raises the question of why it is that common sense assumptions which benefit workers apparently need to get tested and proven,
while assumptions that benefit the wealthy few so often get treated
like simple realities of the world. Why is it that we continue to live
in a world where the impact of the minimum wage is a topic worth
studying over and over and over again, while the impact of CEO pay is rarely even discussed?
Make it make sense.
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believe that insurance companies denying claims have a “great deal” or “moderate amount” of responsibility for the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. A similar number said excess health insurance company profits bear some responsibility. |
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are homeless in the USA, a record-high number which results from a record-fast increase
over the previous year. However, homelessness among veterans has
declined, due to a substantial federal investment in addressing that
particular aspect of our affordable housing crisis. |
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One of the fundamental ideas of neoliberal economics is that markets are almost always right. According to Economics 101,
when you aggregate millions of individual decisions to buy or sell
various assets, a particular kind of predictive genius emerges. This is
supposed to be a big part of what makes markets work, and why market
economies are just oh-so-wonderful for everyone.
It’s a tidy theory, but if this were all true, one place you’d definitely expect to see it proven is in how markets anticipate the future direction of US interest rates.
After all, this is one of the very biggest markets around, and one that
has massive impacts on the valuations of almost every other asset out
there. So it’s striking to see the chart below, which shows both the
changing levels of interest rates in recent years, and a series of whiskers that show how the markets anticipated future rates would turn out to be. What stands out here immediately is how wildly and consistently wrong the markets have been — at basically all points this century so far. It’s enough to make you wonder what else isn’t quite how they taught it in Econ 101.
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When the federal government issues fines for violations of securities law, the purpose is twofold. First, it’s supposed to provide restitution to anyone who lost money on account of the crime. Second, it’s supposed to penalize the lawbreaker
in order to deter future violations by them or anyone else. That’s a
big part of why hefty fines are often announced in major press releases:
so legal consequences are highlighted, and social norms are
strengthened.
But as Dave Michaels writes in the Wall Street Journal, $10 billion of these fines have gone uncollected for years
— so long, in fact, that the SEC is giving up on collecting them. In
one case, they've been seeking penalties from a particular financier for
31 years — since the beginning of the Clinton presidency! They even
charged him with additional violations just last year. But the
lawbreaker simply hasn’t responded. Instead, he turned the tax haven of
St Kitts into his own personal haven from American authorities. Not only
does the US Treasury take a financial hit as a result, but the entire
premise of SEC enforcement is undermined. Because if this guy can
brazenly get away with stuff like this, why should anyone else even pretend securities laws matter in the first place?
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www.civicaction.com e-mail of Tue Jan 14 2025
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