Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute is such a sensible economist that I could quote him every day. But it is exasperating in a way. He is known as a “liberal” economist. But there is nothing especially liberal about him. He is just what my father would call “common sense.” This is just part of the decay of political debate that has been going on my entire life. It is now the case that what used to be entirely conventional economic policy is now considered liberal or even “radical.” Just look at the situation in Greece. The new Greek government is making all kinds of sense, but it is the totally unreasonable German government that is considered respectable.

Yesterday, Mishel wrote, Even Better Than a Tax Cut. The “big news” is that both the Democratic and Republican parties are keen to attack income inequality with… tax cuts. Oh yeah, the woman working at Walmart for minimum wage for 29 hours per week (So they don’t have to provide any benefits!) already doesn’t pay any federal income taxes. So just how is it that reducing taxes is going to help her? Are we going to see a reduction in the payroll tax? What would it be replaced with? And increase on the cap? Don’t count on it.

The main aspect of this is just that there is no way that we are going to get tax cuts that don’t disproportionately help the rich. Why do I say that? Because tax cuts are always proposed as being focused on the middle and lower classes, and they always end up enriching the rich. But Mishel is correct that the Democratic plans — “expanded child care credits or a secondary earner tax break” — could at least help in the short term — if they got enacted as proposed (and they wouldn’t). But tax breaks just aren’t going to change the basic situation. As Mishel noted, “What has hurt workers’ paychecks is not what the government takes out, but what their employers no longer put in — a dynamic that tax cuts cannot eliminate.”

Of course, the Republican plans are a total joke:

Mishel’s main point is not to knock the tax cut proposals. The truth is that they are laughable and why anyone takes them seriously at this point amazes me. Mishel’s main point is to discuss policies that actually would decrease income inequality. And the list ought to sound pretty familiar to people who read this blog:

• The Federal Reserve needs to liberalize itself and stop holding back the economy with its excessive focus on inflation.
• Don’t do any more job killing, rent enhancing trade deals like the TPP and TTIP.
• Raise the minimum wage so that it is equal to half the average American wage ($12.50 by 2020).
• Raise the amount a worker can make and still qualify for over-time pay.
• Protect and expand worker’s rights: including the right to unionize, which has been decimated.
• Enhance laws against businesses that steal from their employees.

That’s a funny list. There isn’t a single item there that wouldn’t get a super-majority if we polled the American people. But precisely because these are measures that would decrease income inequality, the power elite are against them. And as a result, no one will talk about this stuff in the 2016 general election. Instead, we will get “Tax cuts!” And “Reduced regulations!” And “Education!” None of it will help to fix the problem, but it’s something for politicians to talk about while income inequality grows.

Mishel ends with one the clearest descriptions of the problems we face:

But that’s not what the power elite want us to talk about. So instead, we will get these pretend solutions that are meant to do nothing other than stall while nothing is done.

I haven’t been exactly circumspect in my criticisms of Charles Krauthammer. But I’ve always given the man his due — or what I thought was his due. I thought he was at least fairly intelligent. But he isn’t. He’s an idiot. But before I discuss that, I want to talk about his well documented hypocrisy. A bit over a year ago, I wrote, A Tale of Two Krauthammers. It was about the filibuster. In 2005, when the Republicans controlled the Senate, Krauthammer wrote, Nuclear? No, Restoration. The Democrats were supposedly so out of control on the filibuster that “going nuclear” was just restoring normalcy in the Senate. The Republicans were right to go nuclear!

Even at the time, his argument was ridiculous. Check out my article, Republicans Caused All Filibuster Abuse. It shows quite clearly that it has always been the Republicans who pushed the use of the filibuster to higher levels. Whatever that level was, the Democrats stuck with it when they were in the minority. So Kruathammer’s anger in 2005 was just the usual complaint from Republicans that when they are in power, they don’t get everything they want. Later, I discussed the issue of the changing situation in, Filibuster Hypocrisy Is One Sided. As I noted, one could reasonably be for filibuster reform in 2013 and have been against it in 2005. But there is no way it works the other way around. If the filibuster needed to be destroyed in 2005, then it needed to be even more so 2013.

Of course Krauthammer didn’t agree. In 2013, I explained:

Well, Krauthammer was back last week with another gem, Time for the GOP to Go Nuclear. He provided his reasons. He claimed, “I’ve been radicalized. By Harry Reid and Barack Obama.” But how can that be? He was similarly “radicalized” in 2005 when Reid had just taken control of the Senate Democrats and Obama had just made it into the Senate. No, I think we all know the truth: Charles Krauthammer is against the filibuster when the Republicans are in the majority and for it when they are in the minority. There is nothing more to his arguments. He’s a pathetic hack who can’t even be bothered to look back on what he’s written before.

His stated reason for thinking that the filibuster must be killed is so that the Senate will get a chance to vote to defund the immigration services of the Department of Homeland Security. As it is, it is looking like the Republican controlled Congress will manage to just shut down the the whole department. And get ready for a great big conservative Krauthammer whine, “Republicans, not the filibustering Democrats, will be blamed for shutting down DHS and jeopardizing the nation’s safety at a time of heightened international terrorism.”

There is something else that the Congressional Republicans could do: they could just pass a clean funding bill and not hold national security hostage to their their little slap fight with the president. But that’s Krauthammer’s argument. The Republicans should get rid of the filibuster altogether for just this one fight because it will make the Republicans look bad for one news cycle.

But that just makes Krauthammer (as usual) pathetic. What makes this so stupid is that he’s wrong that if the Republican Senate got to vote on the bill and it got vetoed by the president that the American people would blame Obama and not the Republicans. The American people are not fair. If they were, the Republican Party would have long ago became a group with power only in Alabama, Mississippi, and parts of Louisiana. So Krauthammer ought to be damned glad that the American people unfair, because it usually works to the Republicans’ advantage. But when it comes to government shutdowns, the American people do know which party it is that wants to shut down the government. So they are going to blame the Republicans regardless.

If Krauthammer were a liberal, he might be a middle manager at a small corporation. It is only because he’s a conservative that he has any audience. The man is a total joke — a party hack who never has anything interesting to say. About the only thing he’s good for is laughing at — which does provide me with content for a couple of articles per year. But if you ever wonder what Krauthammer thinks about the filibuster, just look and see who which party controls the Senate. You don’t have to read any of his pathetic apologias.

Afterword

For the record, I’m still for getting rid of the filibuster. I just don’t see the point of it. If the parties had the level of control they had in the 1960s, it might be fine. But it is long past its due date. Regardless, it is undemocratic, just like the Senate. I’d like to get rid of both

As you may have heard last week, Walmart announced that they will raise the wages of over a half million of their lowest paid employees. In April, the minimum starting pay will go up to $9 per hour and then it will go up to $10 per hour next year. This is good news for those employees, of course. And it is good news for the economy. But it doesn’t say much of anything about the company itself.

I’m not one of those people who thinks that Walmart is a uniquely evil company. But it is an excellent exemplar of the evil company. Walmart, and the many companies like it, should be illegal in a modern capitalism. According to an article in Forbes last year, Walmart Workers Cost Taxpayers $6.2 Billion in Public Assistance. That’s roughly 40% of the profit that Walmart makes each year. This is an argument that I’ve been making for years: this is not welfare for the poor; this is welfare for the rich. Food stamps, Medicaid, and SCHIP are programs that give money (indirectly) to the poor, but the real beneficiaries are people like the Waltons who get to pay their employees less than a living wage.

Of course, it isn’t like the government doesn’t know it is giving billions of dollars to Walmart every year. The government loves giving money to the rich while it holds its nose as though it were doing some great good deed to the undeserving poor. At the same time, ever since 1947 and the Taft–Hartley Act, the government has done everything it can to destroy unions so that workers had no power to get a slice of economic growth. And as Think Progress reported a few years back, Walmart Allows Its Workers to Unionize in Other Countries, Just Not in the United States. That isn’t because Walmart especially hates American workers. It’s because the American government especially hates American workers. But I digress.

Michael Hiltzik put the whole thing into context, Walmart’s Raise Underscores the Poor Condition of Most Low-Wage Workers. Much of the reason for these raises is simply that states have been raising their minimum wages, “That’s an improvement. But the average nationwide minimum will barely keep pace with statutory minimum wages now or going into effect in January in nine states and the District of Columbia…”

Here’s a little factoid that will make your head explode. Since 2008, Walmart has opened hundreds of new stores. Yet they have decreased their workforce by 120,000 people. This reminds me very much of Edward Baptist’s recent book, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. Just as industrialists made better equipment to increase productivity, the slave economy increased productivity via the whip. But as Hiltzik noted, there are limits to this approach to increasing profits, “In 2013 the grimy condition of [Walmart’s] stores, their unstocked shelves, and the lengthening of their checkout lines reached a crisis, and customers started to flee.”

There is no doubt that part of why Walmart is doing this is just to improve its public relations. The fact that so many of its workers depend upon public programs to make ends meet is well known — even blown out of proportion in many cases. And since just short of half of all American workers are seeing their minimum wages increased, Walmart certainly must have thought that they might as well make themselves look good instead of just like another company grumbling as the the minimum wage went up. (In Walmart’s defense, it has generally been supportive of minimum wage increases — for its own greedy reasons.)

But there are two things to take away from this. First: what Walmart is doing is pretty much the minimum that they could get away with. Second: Walmart wouldn’t have done anything at all if it weren’t for voters and organizers all over the United States who got the minimum wage increased. I continue to hear low (but not minimum) wage workers grouse about fast food workers’ demonstrations for raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour. This is about solidarity folks! Most of the evil work of the power elite is done for it by the oppressed workers. Non-unionized workers complain about unionized workers. Slightly above minimum wage workers feel they will get screwed if the minimum wage is lifted to their wage level. Unions are good for all workers — regardless of whether you are in a union. A higher minimum wage is good for all workers — regardless of whether you make the minimum wage. Don’t be fooled into doing the dirty work of Walmart and the rest of the power elite.

Charlie Pierce wrote an excellent article on Friday, Drums Along The Potomac: How This Country Never Learns Anything. In it, he reminded me that, “Rudy Giuliani is only the most garish member of the rising chorus.” His claim that Obama doesn’t love America was about the fact that Obama isn’t standing up and shouting about a clash of civilizations. I was reminded of it recently in a conversation with my father. He’s very frustrated about the Islamic State. How can we allow these barbarians to do “this.” What “this” means is the very public executions — most especially the burning alive of Muath al-Kasasbeh.

But it’s curious, because “those people” who we are supposed to have a class of civilization include Muath al-Kasasbeh. And as I’ve noted before, a big war with the Islamic State is not going to do much to help the people who we are supposed to be helping. And ultimately, what is it that the Islamic State is doing? Their biggest crimes are against the people who are living under them. But we in the west could hardly care less about them. It is the totally unjust and horrific snuff videos that the Islamic State puts out that has everyone in a tizzy.

The purpose of these very public horrific acts is to get us to act like teenage boys right before the big game. It’s all testosterone and no rationality. Is bombing more Islamic State targets going to make the public executions stop? Is a ground invasion? Is more pointed rhetoric about Islamic extremism? What is it that the conservatives want us to do that will actually make the situation better? The answer, of course, is nothing. The conservatives and — let’s face it — most of the liberals just want us to do something. It is the American way: it is better to do something useless or counterproductive than it is to do nothing.

But this one really isn’t that hard. How is it that the Islamic State has managed to take control of so much territory in Iraq? Well, to be honest, the Islamic State doesn’t control that much territory, and the territory they control isn’t all that great. But they have substantial control and the reason that they have it is that we decided to destabilize an imperfect but stable situation in Iraq twelve years ago. We got rid of the largely neutered Saddam Hussein and put in charge a Shiite government that has treated the Sunni population really badly. So what’s the plan this time? How are we going to screw up Iraq this time?

Right now, Libya is a mess because again, we thought it would be a good idea to go in and get rid of a despot. Yeah, I don’t like despots. I don’t like the Islamic State. I really don’t like these public executions. And I’m not against doing something. But the same people who felt we just had to “do something” in Iraq at the end of 2002 are the people who are telling us we must “do something” today. And my question is, “To what end?” We aren’t going to roll into Iraq, defeat the Islamic State and then everything will be fine.

As it is, our greatest potential ally in the region is Iran. But we can hardly even talk to Iran because of the Iranian Revolution — Which we were ultimately culpable for! — which happened almost forty years ago. This is the state of our foreign policy — the state of our intellectual maturity. People like Rudy Giuliani and John McCain don’t want to solve a problem; they want to have that great feeling when you let loose on someone who really deserves it. But most people know that while telling the boss to shove it might be very satisfying for a minute or two, it is a really bad idea.

So what good would be done by any of these conservatives ideas? I haven’t heard anything that makes me think that they would not lead to yet another crisis that would have the same group calling yet again for us to, “Do something!”