{"id":29891,"date":"2017-08-13T16:52:14","date_gmt":"2017-08-13T23:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/franklycurious.com\/wp\/?p=29891"},"modified":"2017-08-13T16:52:14","modified_gmt":"2017-08-13T23:52:14","slug":"better-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/franklycurious.com\/wp\/2017\/08\/13\/better-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"<em>A Better Deal?!<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/franklycurious.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/ChuckSchumer.jpg\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" alt=\"Chuck Schumer - A Better Deal?\" title=\"Chuck Schumer - A Better Deal?\" class=\"left\" \/>The Democrats have released a program to make all our lives better called <a href=\"https:\/\/democrats.senate.gov\/abetterdeal\/\"><em>A Better Deal<\/em><\/a>. And there is much in it to like. But I think I can be forgiven for being a tad skeptical about it.<\/p>\n<p>As part of it&#8217;s release late last month, Chuck Schumer wrote an op-ed in <em>The New York Times<\/em>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/07\/24\/opinion\/chuck-schumer-employment-democrats.html?_r=0\"><em>A Better Deal<\/em> for American Workers<\/a>. At the beginning was some language that sounds, well, familiar, &#8220;There used to be a basic bargain in this country that if you worked hard and played by the rules, you could own a home, afford a car, put your kids through college and take a modest vacation every year while putting enough away for a comfortable retirement.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s taken right from Obama&#8217;s 2008 stump speech. And I just wonder: after 8 years of Obama supposedly trying to make that happen, the country choose as it&#8217;s president an incompetent bigot? Regardless, we sit here 9 years later still thinking back on that basic bargain. Now there&#8217;s a real question as to whether this bargain ever existed. It certainly didn&#8217;t for a huge percentage of the population. Just the same, I don&#8217;t think there is any reason that we couldn&#8217;t make it true today.<\/p>\n<h2>Mushy Thinking in <em>A Better Deal<\/em><\/h2>\n<p>Looking at <em>A Better Deal<\/em> itself shows that it is a mixed bag. For example, it doesn&#8217;t call for a $15 minimum wage. Instead, we get this, &#8220;As part of the Better Deal, many Democrats are calling to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour and have cosponsored the legislation to make that happen.&#8221; I don&#8217;t know what that means. It sounds a lot like: as part of Obamacare, many Democrats are calling for a public option. You all know what happened to the public option: it was killed by conservative Democrats &#8212; most of whom go voted out anyway.<\/p>\n<p>But what most upset me was the third part of <em>A Better Deal<\/em>, &#8220;Build an economy that gives working Americans the tools to succeed in the 21st Century.&#8221; The summary starts:<\/p>\n<div class=\"box\">Americans deserve the chance to get the skills, tools, and knowledge to find a good-paying job or to move up in their career to earn a better living. We will commit to <em>A Better Deal<\/em> that provides new tax incentives to employers that invest in workforce training and education and make sure the rules of the economy support companies that focus on long-term growth, rather than short-term profits.<\/div>\n<h3>Two Problems<\/h3>\n<p>Get that?! There are two major problems here. The first is that this is the same old stalling tactic that we&#8217;ve been fed for decades. The unstated assumption here is that companies are not hiring because workers don&#8217;t have the right skills. Now to start with, the <a href=\"https:\/\/data.bls.gov\/timeseries\/LNS14000000\">unemployment rate<\/a> is 4.3 percent right now. The truth is that there is no skills mismatch. American workers are qualified for the jobs that exist. Saying they need &#8220;skills&#8221; is just a way of doing nothing. And if wages are down, that isn&#8217;t because of a lack of skills. How about the Democratic Party standing up for unions?<\/p>\n<p>That all is bad enough. But the idea that workers lack skills and so we should give money to corporations is insulting. Do the Democrats want to see Trump have <em>two<\/em> terms as president? This is madness!<\/p>\n<p>So to summarize: the Democrats think that Americans need more job training (which they don&#8217;t) and they think corporations should be given the money to do this useless job training.<\/p>\n<h2>Better Than Nothing<\/h2>\n<p>The rest of the proposal looks okay, but it isn&#8217;t as clear as it could be. We Democrats seem to be incapable of that. And some things hearken back to Obama, like reducing the price of prescription medication. Yeah, that&#8217;s something we were talking about in 2008. It seems like we could have done something about that. It seems like we could have done something about the big drug company giveaway that is Medicare Part D.<\/p>\n<p>But I suppose we should give the Democrats <em>some<\/em> credit. They seem to be waking up to the need for a turn away from the road that led from Bill Clinton and NAFTA to Barack Obama and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.<\/p>\n<h2>Afterword<\/h2>\n<p>People bring up a lot of reasons why Hillary Clinton lost the last election. I wonder if having Obama running around pushing the TPP wasn&#8217;t also a drag on her campaign. It certainly reinforced the idea that Clinton was against the TPP now but that she would be for it once in office.<\/p>\n<div class=\"copyright\">Image of Chuck Schumer is in the public domain.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Democrats have released a program to make all our lives better called A Better Deal. And there is much in it to like. But I think I can be forgiven for being a tad skeptical about it. As part &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/franklycurious.com\/wp\/2017\/08\/13\/better-deal\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>A Better Deal? Democrats Release Mixed-Bag Plan to Improve Economy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Democrats have released a program to improve the nation for working people called A Better Deal. 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