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**MAY 22, 2023**
Kuttner on TAP
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**** Our Glacially Improving Economic Prospects
Even if we can avert ill-advised budget concessions as part of a debt
ceiling deal, it will take more radical policies to improve the life
prospects of workaday Americans.
Last week, the usually perceptive Paul Krugman wrote a column titled
"Why Are Americans So Negative About the Economy?
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Krugman found this bewildering. After all, job creation is up, inflation
is heading down, and wages have just about kept pace with prices.
After cogitating a while, Krugman concluded that the explanation had to
be a combination of hyper-partisanship-Republicans would not credit
Biden with a good economy no matter what the numbers were-and the fact
that "media reports about the economy have had a strongly negative
bias." Krugman added, "And let's not let economists off the hook ...
many economists have been predicting recession month after month for the
past year."
Excuse me, but I think Krugman is looking in the wrong places. The
averages utterly miss the point. If you are young, or rural, or a
renter, or in the human service economy, or in debt to pay back college
loans, or in once-thriving but now-defunct manufacturing counties, your
economic life is going to hell, and often has been for decades.
More young people in their twenties than ever before have moved back in
with their parents, and not because they love the company of dear old
Mom and Dad. More and more young adults in their own apartments are
doubling up. Fewer can afford to become homeowners.
Payroll jobs with reliable career patterns have become more scarce,
while gig jobs are ubiquitous. Decent health insurance is tied to your
job; while we defend Obamacare, it isn't cheap. Most people, given the
choice, prefer employer-provided insurance when they can get it.
If you are a nurse, pre-K worker, public school teacher, or nurse aide
working in home care or in a long-term care facility, the pandemic has
made your working conditions notably worse. And the winding down of
COVID and the better economic averages cited by Krugman have done
nothing to make things better in the entire caring sector.
In short, the explanation, contrary to Krugman, isn't misperception.
It's reality, for tens of millions of Americans. And these are the
very Americans who tend to vote for Democrats when they believe that
Democrats can make things notably better.
This brings me to Biden and the debt ceiling charade. Biden has done
better as a progressive president than most of us expected in 2020. But
the patterns of grotesque inequality are so deeply entrenched that he
will need to be even more radical to make a notable difference in the
life prospects of working Americans.
Any cuts, even token ones, point us in the wrong direction both
politically and economically. They would muddy profound differences in
goals and values that need to be kept as vivid as possible.
If Americans don't feel great about the economy, they have good
reason. That should be hung around the necks of the Republicans and
their neoliberal Democrat and Third Way cousins who brought us this
economic mess.
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
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The Debt Ceiling Is Unconstitutional-but Not for the Reason You Think
<[link removed]>
Congress's power to make contracts does not come with the power to
renege on them. BY ANNA GELPERN, ADAM J. LEVITIN & STEPHEN LUBBEN
The President Is Already in Litigation Over the Debt Ceiling
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On today's X-Date: The White House and its allies are acting like they
must avoid a legal battle over the debt ceiling. Too late. BY DAVID
DAYEN
The New Minnesota Vikings
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Progressives in the North Star State have racked up a remarkable set of
victories. BY RYAN COOPER
Texas Republicans to Cities: Drop Dead.
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Particularly (but not only) in Texas, Republican state legislatures'
response to liberal cities is to strip them of all power. BY HAROLD
MEYERSON
Trans Rights in Finland
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Transphobes cite Finland as proof that trans activists have gone too
far. It isn't true. BY LUKE GOLDSTEIN
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