The Jobs Report is out for November and it is really good. Matt Yglesias provided a good overview of it, A Dominant Jobs Report. As he noted, the surface of the report is good news: 321,000 jobs added in November. “Dig a little bit deeper, though, and you see even more good news.” On the other hand, Dean Baker (Gloomy but correct!) would doubtless tell us that at this rate it would still take us years to reach full employment. Regardless, it is a good jobs report.

As a result, I’m worried. One of the best things in the jobs report is that we are finally seeing some wage growth: hourly wages went up by 9¢ this month. That’s great news all by itself. But the Federal Reserve is just itching to raise rates to head off inflation. You know: it is much better to kill an economic recovery than risk even the smallest amount of inflation that would hurt the rich rentiers. And the most liberal position on the Fed is that we should wait until wages start to rise before putting a great big drag on the economy.

Not surprisingly, I see it differently. I think that American workers have been suffering in a big way for the last six years. At the same time, the owners of capital have done extremely well. So the Federal Reserve should — For a change! — error on the side of the American worker. It should allow reasonable levels of actual inflation. I am so tired of the Fed constantly slamming the brakes on the economy before we see inflation. The justification for this is that inflation can quickly get out of control. But when have we seen this? It is ridiculous to suggest that if inflation went up to 3%, the Fed would be at a loss to do anything about it.

For the record, I think the Federal Reserve inflation target should surely be 3%. In fact, I’ve never heard a reasonable argument for why it shouldn’t be 4%. The truth is that over the last six years, the inflation rate has been below the ridiculously low target of 2% over 60% of the time. And the 2% inflation target is not based upon anything. It was just a number that Alan Greenspan made up. And his reason for doing so would not sit right with most economists. He claimed that the inflation measures overstated actual inflation so that 2% inflation actually represented zero inflation. Zero inflation is bad for workers and the economy; it is only good for the already rich.

This morning, Paul Krugman also argued for caution from the Fed. In fact, he gave what I think is infinitely reasonable advice, “So still: the Fed should wait until it sees the whites of inflation’s eyes — and by inflation I mean inflation clearly above 2 percent, and if I had my way higher than that.” But sadly, I don’t think any level of rational argument will matter. The clearest proof that our government is an oligarchy is found with the Federal Reserve. Not only does it give money away as long as the recipient is rich enough, it has never seen its purpose as being anything but helping the rich. The only good thing I can remember the Fed doing was under Greenspan where he allowed unemployment to get much lower than more establishment figures (like Janet Yellen) thought wise. And I don’t think he did that because he was concerned about the American worker.

Hopefully, the Federal Reserve will not act as stupidly and cruelly as is its tendency. But you can depend upon many people screaming about raising interest rates. One thing is pretty clear. The Fed has signaled that it will raise interests in mid-2015. The good jobs report today makes that much more likely.

Update (7 December 2014 10:06 am)

As expected, Dean Baker wrote, “To get back to the labor market of the late 1990s and 2000 we would need 3.5 years of November’s growth.”

It is extremely rare that technology saves us. An example of this was shown in a highly visible way this week. After the Michael Brown killer Darren Wilson was not indicted based to some extent on conflicting testimony, President Obama called for 50,000 body cameras to be worn by police throughout the country. That was Monday. And on Wednesday, the killer of Eric Garner went unindicted, despite video of the whole thing. Maybe next the president will call for brain implants that will record what police officers were thinking while they are strangling a man on the street or gunning down a 12-year-old in a park. But my guess is that grand juries would still find the officers innocent. After all, the police have such dangerous jobs. And what about black-on-black crime? And who are you to second-guess officers in the heat of the moment when they are staring into the barrel of a pellet gun or focusing on some untaxed cigarettes that may or may not exist?

As regular readers know, I don’t find these police apologia credible. The police really don’t have very dangerous jobs. I heard someone earlier this week say, “Police leave for work in the morning not knowing if they are coming back home that night.” That was said by a liberal! Yet that statement is meaningless in that it applies to literally every person who goes to work in the morning. And it is even more true of fishermen and cab drivers than it is of police officers.

The “What about black-on-black crime?” argument is just a dodge. How is killing Eric Garner over some potential illegal cigarette selling affected by black-on-black crime? What about all the blacks dying from Malaria in Africa? Should we just accept police violence and murder until we wipe out Malaria? The “What about black-on-black crime?” is at best a way to avoid discussing police abuse. At worst, it is a way of subtly placing the blame on blacks, “If those blacks weren’t so violent, the police wouldn’t be killing them all the time!”

The last claim is perhaps the most ridiculous. It is the one that police officers always mention in my experience. But the argument would never be applied to a run of the mill, non-police officer, murderer. No one suggests that we not second guess criminals. “Imagine you had been born into poverty and your father beat you every day and you ran away and lived on the streets from the age of 12 and so got into crime as your only occupational choice and ended up burglarizing a warehouse and were surprised by a police officer pointing a gun at you!” In that context, it would be very reasonable to shoot the officer, but no one has ever avoided prosecution with that argument. What people making such arguments are saying is that the police should never be held accountable.

In the case of Tamir Rice, the outcome will likely be different. I only say that because he was 12-years-old. Also, following the Brown and Garner cases, there will be real pressure on the District Attorney to get at least an indictment. I’d give a conviction for second-degree manslaughter a 50-50 chance. And I’m sure there won’t be an indictment of Officer Timothy Loehmann for murder. Even that would be asking for too much.

What we need to be aware of are two things. One is that we live in a racist society. The police are not any more racist than we are generally. The second thing to keep in mind is that we as a society have decided that the police are above the law. Unless they act in an egregious manner, they are generally clear. Having more video evidence won’t change that. For example, if there had been video of Michael Brown’s killing, I’m sure it would have shown that Brown was, in fact, stumbling and not charging Officer Wilson. But in court, Wilson still would have claimed that he thought Brown was charging — because I’m sure Wilson really did think that Brown was charging! He might have been indicted, but he certainly wouldn’t have been convicted.

Matthew Pratt Guterl wrote an excellent article today at New Republic, Police Cameras Won’t Cure Our National Disease. In it, he discussed various cases of police abusing their authority caught on camera:

I’m not sure what the solution is. Clearly we do not have to cure racism to make the situation substantially better. I think it would help for police to spend more time in the communities that they police. They should see their jobs as more interfacing with the community rather than “looking for crime.” They should stop thinking of the police force itself as a tribe. I’d love to see an end to the default carrying of guns and tasers. In other words, I’d like to see an entirely different approach to policing. But I’d be happy to just see a small amount of accountability. But I don’t expect to see even that.

Recent research published in Health Affairs shows that last year, healthcare spending grew at its lowest rate since the government has been measuring it. And it is expected to be the same for this year. What’s more, total healthcare spending as a fraction of the economy has remained flat since 2009. It’s really great news. So obviously, it is more important than ever that we destroy Obamacare. And now with help supposed liberals like Thomas Edsall and Charles Schumer, our long national nightmare of affordable healthcare may soon be over.

Of course, we really are going to have to depend upon the conservative ideologues on the Supreme Court and the most recent nutty case against Obamacare, King v Burwell. That’s the case where the plaintiffs are defending the right of people living in red states to not get help with their insurance. Those conservatives sure are charmers! But as history will show, there is no level to which conservatives can sink that will cause the people to turn against them. After all, didn’t the conservatives protect them from terrorist attacks. I mean other than that one time on 11 September 2001. Am I right?!

People like me had been hoping that when the Supreme Court eventually ignores the law and strikes down the exchange subsidies, that at least the more reasonable states could just set up simple exchanges — maybe just a simple website with a link to the federal exchange. Apparently, this is not going to fly. And silly me for thinking that it might! After all, this case isn’t about the law; this is just yet another opportunity for the conservatives on the court to gut a law they don’t like.

Let’s think about John Roberts in this case. Previously, Roberts found that Obamacare was a tax and thus upheld the law. He claimed that the government should be given wide latitude and that the courts should do everything they can to find in favor of laws. As Michael Hiltzik pointed out, if the court finds against Obamacare in this case, it will be going against “a 30-year-old precedent allowing federal agencies great leeway in implementing drafted statutory language.” So any credibility that Roberts maintains will be completely gone if he finds for the plaintiffs. But here’s the thing: I’m not sure he knows that. He may well be thinking that he can continue to chip away at the law and history will not judge him ill because he didn’t kill the law outright. If I were him, I’d be giving a lot of thought to Roger Taney.

As for the matter at hand, Nicholas Bagley, professor at the University of Michigan, explained the problem:

In addition to this, now there are no Obamacare funds to help states set up exchanges. And this is to mention nothing of the fact that in many states the lack of subsidies will be cheered as a great thing. And if we learned anything from the Sam Brownback re-election, it is that totally screwing over the people of your state will not hurt you politically.

So we better hope that John Roberts is smarter than he seems to be. Well, you had better hope that. I’ve given up hoping. John Roberts is an ideologically driven conservative Catholic. I know he isn’t smarter than he seems. I also know he’s a liar. (“Balls and strikes“!) And that he’s an evil man that doesn’t seem to have learned anything from all that supposed Jesus-loving.

Brad Plumer wrote a very interesting article over at Vox, Will Falling Oil Prices Kill the US Shale Boom? There has been a boom in shale oil because oil has been running at $100 per barrel. But now that it has dropped to $70 per barrel, at least some of it will stop being profitable. But there is huge disagreement about how much. For example, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that only 4% of the shale production will become unprofitable with oil less than $80 per barrel. But according to Bernstein Research, one-third of the production will be unprofitable.

I don’t find the specifics of this all that interesting. What is interesting, however, is that the profit margins are so slim for these hydrocarbon extractions. That means that if even a small fraction of the externalities associated with fossil fuels were included in the price, the industry would be dead. For decades we’ve been told that solar energy is just not competitive. In fact, conservatives have whined about every subsidy associated with solar. That is what is really behind the conservative obsession with Solyndra. If the government had lost a half billion on a loan to an oil company, there would have been no uproar. But it was a solar panel company, so of course it was a waste of money.

In 2011 and 2012, Congress tried to get rid of the $2.4 billion per year in tax subsidies that go to the big five oil companies. It was defeated, of course. Because somehow in the conservative brain, oil is “natural.” What’s it’s really all about is that big business is what conservatives in both parties care most about. Solar is not yet a behemoth. And so in a kind of twisted logic that only the power elite can understand, we must subsidize established industries. It angers the god of the free market to help out fledgling industries. But as I’ve already noted, the fledgling industries would probably be just fine if only the power elite didn’t stack the deck against them.

Low gas prices are a bad thing regardless. They may make shale unprofitable. And they may put an end to the Keystone XL Pipeline. But they will also allow the world to continue on its merry way pumping more and more carbon into the atmosphere. Because gas is not cheap. There are many hidden costs and many more not so hidden costs. And they are coming due. But the same people who tell us that our minor federal budget deficit is destroying our children’s future, are mostly silent about the unpaid cost of changes to the climate system.

I would think that the leaders of a country would be the ones who made the hard decisions. They would be the ones who explained that there was a steep long-term cost of cheep prices at the pump. But it is just the opposite. The people are surprisingly mature on this issue. Before Fox News started propagandizing the issue, global warming was widely accepted in this country, even when the evidence for it was far less clear than it is now. It’s our leaders who prefer pretty lies and piles of cash to the harsh reality. Fifty years ago, we should have been taxing oil extra for the environmental damage it was causing. But we didn’t. And even today, we are subsidizing it. And “wise” people claim that some day solar might be “competitive.” But the only reason it wasn’t long ago is because of the special privileges that we bestow on the oil industry.

Imagine that it is 1900 in San Francisco. The police are arresting a whole lot of Chinese people for opium possession. So some sociologists decide to look into whether the arrest of the Chinese is a form of racism. They come back with a study that concludes that these arrests are not because of racism. It is just that the Chinese are far more likely to use opium. And San Francisco has a law against opium — the first drug law in the nation. Does that mean that the these are not racist arrests? Of course not! The opium law itself was a racist law, enacted specifically to target the Chinese who were the most hated minority group at that time.

This is, tellingly, the reason for pretty much all drug laws. They are always about elevating “our drugs” and suppressing “their drugs.” So the opium laws were about getting the “chinks.” The cocaine laws were about getting the “coloreds.” And cannabis laws were about getting the “spicks.” In fact, the word “marijuana” was coined specifically to associate the drug with Mexicans. And this is why I don’t use the word unless I am quoting someone. People are often confused as to why tobacco and alcohol are legal when other, far less dangerous drugs, are not. But such thinking just means that they still accept the establishment paradigm that claims that drugs are made illegal because they are dangerous. A drug’s danger has absolutely nothing to do with its legal status.

On Monday, Ezra Klein wrote a great article that touches on this, How Racial Discrimination in Law Enforcement Actually Works. It counters the argument that law enforcement isn’t really racist. The argument goes more or less like this: when you control for social factors, the police don’t actually pull over African Americans more than whites. But when one of those controls is the age and condition of the car and African Americans generally have older and poorer cars, that is systemic racism — the study is “controlling” for what it is supposedly looking for. There are various others, some of which are so obvious — like neighborhood — that you have to wonder about the neutrality of the researchers.

Klein noted that all of these controls ultimately make the opposite case that conservatives claim. For example, when controlling for everything imaginable, African Americans are still twice as likely as whites to be arrested on a drug charge. So even when you control for the fact that the police target the African American community far more than the white community, there is still a major racial bias. But conservatives argue that since the controls make the racial aspect of the effect smaller, there is nothing to see. I guess they assume that there are just other controls that we haven’t found. Here’s an idea: control for skin color!

I’ve never thought that police officers were any more racist than the society in general. But given that the society itself is highly racist, the policing will be too. What’s troubling is that we don’t accept this fact. Instead, we run around trying to prove that we are a colorblind society. And that is exhibit number one in our racism problem. I have a very low opinion of Alcoholics Anonymous, but they are right about one thing: you can’t deal with a problem if you won’t admit it. And America will not admit its racism problem.

Update (3 December 2014 1:27 pm)

Wow! I just watched last night’s The Daily Show and Larry Wilmore made the same comparison about racism as an addiction and admitting a problem.