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**MARCH 22, 2024**
On the Prospect website
The Self-Funding 'Victim' of the Criminal Justice System
David Trone, founder of the Total Wine chain, is trying to draw a
contrast with his primary opponent, a former prosecutor, by saying
he's been caught up in the system. It was for business violations.
BY LUKE GOLDSTEIN
[link removed]
New Clean-Car Rule May Transform Unions in America
The Environmental Protection Agency rule makes it impossible for
Volkswagen to shut down its EV-producing plant in Tennessee, which is
being targeted by the UAW. BY DAVID DAYEN
[link removed]
The Center for a Responsible Federal Budget's Bad-Faith Criticism of
Biden's Budget Proposal
The organization that claims to champion deficit reduction actually
wants to cut your Social Security. BY DYLAN GYAUCH-LEWIS
Kuttner on TAP
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**** The Promise of Biden's Second Term
And the exemplary effects of his green jobs creation programs in his
first term
If you want to get a sense of what Biden might do in a second term,
especially if he brings with him a Democratic Congress, consider what he
has already done. Between November 2021 and August 2022, with the
slimmest of Democratic majorities in both houses, Biden signed into law
three landmark pieces of legislation-the bipartisan infrastructure
law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS Act.
Though Biden's jobs creation record in general is exemplary-15
million jobs created in slightly over three years, including 800,000
manufacturing jobs. And the jobs created specifically thanks to these
three laws were part of an industrial policy aimed at reviving U.S.
supply chains, modernizing and greening decaying infrastructure, and
adding new competence and domestic employment in semiconductors under
the CHIPS Act.
As our friends at UMass Amherst's Political Economy Research Institute
calculated in an authoritative report
by Robert Pollin and colleagues released last September, "Investments
supported by the BIL, IRA, and CHIPS programs would generate, in total,
an average of nearly 3 million jobs per year, as long as investment
levels associated with these programs are sustained at their anticipated
levels." They found that the expansion of job opportunities would be
unusually large in occupations that did not require a four-year college
degree.
Now PERI has just released a follow-up report
on the occupations with the largest increased demand for labor thanks to
these programs. The report also explores possible labor bottlenecks and
strategies for increasing labor supply. Jeannette Wicks-Lim and
co-author Pollin identify 21 occupations where demand has been increased
by Biden's three big programs, with relatively low entry-level
requirements and mainly on-the-job training. These include laborers,
pipelayers, and stock handlers.
[link removed]
But other occupations with increased demand do require significant
training, such as crane operators, carpenters, electricians, sheet metal
workers, wind turbine technicians-27 such occupations in all. In the
context of tight labor markets, expecially for skilled occupations in
short supply, whether all this great job creation proves inflationary
depends heavily on a rendezvous between big investment programs and
workforce development programs.
Here, too, Biden has made a good start. Whether the progress will
continue depends on whether he gets a second term. The PERI authors also
point out that women and people of color are grossly underrepresented in
the occupations that need more apprenticeship and other training
opportunites. They conclude: "The training, apprenticeship and
postsecondary education programs that are needed to expand the labor
supply in these ... occupations should be committed to recruiting and
retaining people from underrepresented groups."
It is grossly unfair that Biden has not gotten more popular credit for
his good deeds, which need to be intensified. The reason is that these
and other successes have not been transformative enough, yet, for a
majority of working people. That will take at least another term.
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter
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