Minimum Wage a Winner Both Politically and Economically

President Obama's proposal to raise the minimum wage to $9.00 per hour puts the Republicans between a rock and a hard place politically. Paul Krugman echoes the point that a big majority of the population supports a minimum wage increase, including a majority of Republicans (his linking to the original poll source appears to have crashed that website, but I will update later). Yet the Republican leadership remains trapped because it opposes this increase as well as any alternative policy that might make the poor better off, such as increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit or endorsing a Guaranteed Minimum Income (points Matthew Yglesias makes in the link above). As further evidence, the minimum wage increase Proposition B in Missouri in 2006 passed 76-24, probably helping Senator Claire McCaskill to her first Senate victory with under 50% of the vote.

 Moreover, much recent research (via Think Progress) shows no "job killing" effects from raising the minimum wage. As originally shown by David Card and Alan Krueger, there was strong evidence of "publication bias" in the studies underlying the former economists' consensus that the minimum wage reduced jobs. That is, economics journals tended to prefer to publish studies with statistically significant results and not publish those showing no effect from the minimum wage. Researchers thus adjusted their statistical specifications until they achieved statistical significance, thereby generating a mass of studies that all barely reached statistical significance despite larger volumes of data which should have produced stronger results. As the Schmitt paper emphasizes, more recent studies of studies ("meta-analysis") continues to support the conclusion that the purported job killing effect was a mirage.

As I have pointed out before, cross-national comparisons of the minimum wage and unemployment rates also do not support the view that the minimum wage is the job killer Republicans claim it is. Indeed,  as in my September 2011 post, nine OECD countries have higher minimum wages rates than the U.S. does on a purchasing power parity basis that adjusts for the cost of living, yet only two have higher unemployment rates (France and Ireland), while the U.K.'s unemployment rate is the same. The table below illustrates this and underscores the point that the minimum wage is a winner for the middle class.

Solutions to the Middle Class Retirement Crisis

As I have noted in three recent posts, retirement security for those currently or recently in the middle class is no sure thing. 49% of the private work force has neither defined benefit (traditional pensions) or defined contribution (401(k)) retirement plans, while public sector pensions are coming under increasing attack. The United States has the highest elder poverty rate, 25% (measured as 50% of median income), of any industrialized nation bigger than Ireland. An estimated $6.6 trillion shortfall in retirement savings shows how the shift from traditional pensions to 401(k) plans has been totally inadequate to meet people's future needs.



Yet what passes for wisdom among the Very Serious People (VSP) is that we need to make a stealth cut to Social Security via a less generous inflation adjustment, while Republican plans for Medicare would shift an astounding $34 trillion in medical costs on to seniors whose income would be falling in real terms. This is a recipe for disaster.



So what do we really need to do now? Several different proposals are currently in the mix, all of which would address the income shortfall to varying degrees.



Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, released a report in July 2012, "The Retirement Crisis and a Plan to Solve It." It proposes a fairly small increase to Social Security benefits (about $60 monthly to the lowest earners) and replaces the current inflation factor (CPI-Urban wage earners) not with the chintzy "chained CPI" the VSP want, but with the more generous CPI-Elderly, which recognizes that seniors consume a larger share of rapidly rising cost products, most obviously health care. The other innovation in the Harkin plan is the introduction of "USA" (Universal, Secure, and Adaptable) retirement funds which would require both employer and employee contributions, with special tax credits for low-income workers. These funds would provide what might be called a "semi-defined benefit" that could be adjusted downward if there were a prolonged stock market slump, but otherwise would provide a predictable level of benefit to its recipients.



As pension expert Jane White contends, this proposal is vague when it is not simply inadequate. She argues for a plan like the Australian "Superannuation" plan, where employers are required to put in 9% of the worker's income. Her proposal for the U.S. would be a 9% contribution for large companies and 6% for small firms. It would be portable among companies, and employees would immediately own their employer's contribution (vesting), in contrast to the current situation where that can take years. She argues that the big problem with U.S. pensions isn't that not enough people have 401(k)'s (though with 49% of private workers not having one, I'm not sure I'm persuaded), but that the employer contribution is so small. By contrast, Harkin's USA plan does not specify a level of employer contributions, which is definitely a drawback when the savings shortfall is so severe.



Of course, White's proposal still subjects retirement funds to market risk that Social Security does not, and gives Wall Street a huge new pool of funds to play with. One logical alternative is simply a dramatic expansion of Social Security. Obviously, it is already portable between employers, and companies already have to deduct FICA and Medicare taxes, so there would be no difference administratively from what firms already do.



The funding would come from an end to the cap on earnings subject to the Social Security tax, currently $113,700 for 2013. A little-known fact is that while the payroll tax is regressive (flat to the cap, then 0), the payout structure counteracts this by reducing the share of earnings replaced in retirement the greater the person's income. As the Harkin report  explains:

The replacement factor for a person’s first $767 of Average Indexed Monthly Earnings (“AIME”) is 90%. The replacement factor drops to 32% for AIME between $767 and $4,624 and 15% for AIME between $4,624 and $8,532.

 The report goes on to propose a replacement factor of just 5% for income over the current cap. It further reports that Social Security only replaces an average of 40% of people's pre-retirement income, rather than the 65-85% that is widely recommended for retirees.



This suggests an obvious solution: increase the replacement factor substantially for middle-income people. While the numbers would need to be worked out precisely, middle class workers would be much more secure with, for example, 100% replacement of their first $2000 per month in income, 50% replacement of their next $2000 per month in income, 25% for the rest up to the current cap, and then Harkin's proposed 5% over the current cap.



When I say "obvious," that's not to say that it will be easy. Republicans still want to gut Social Security, even though it is supported by most Americans. But a deeper problem is that few people realize just how severe the retirement crisis will be, first for younger Baby Boomers, but much more so for their children and grandchildren. As a first step, you should follow White's suggestion to contact Harkin's committee asking for hearings on the coming crisis. The email is Retirement_Security@help.senate.gov



But we will need many more steps to ensure that the crisis is solved in our lifetimes.



Cross-posted at Angry Bear.

Billions for Job Piracy Despite State Budget Cuts

According to Center on Budget and Policy Priority data cited by Louise Story, in 2011 the states enacted $156 billion of austerity measures, between budget cuts and tax hikes. Despite their budgetary woes, however, this did not stop them from throwing billions of dollars a year into the worst kind of corporate subsidy, relocation incentives that move existing facilities from one state to another without creating any new jobs. A new report from Good Jobs First documents their widespread use, which is far more common than most people would imagine.



One great aspect of this report is that it goes beyond the two examples of interstate border wars we hear the most about, New York-New Jersey-Connecticut and Kansas-Missouri. We learn about Texas and Georgia vs. the world, North Carolina-South Carolina (especially in the Charlotte metro area), Tennessee-Mississippi (particularly with Memphis as target), and Rhode Island-Massachusetts. In addition, we learn more about the flip side of job piracy, retention subsidies, of which Sears' two in Illinois are the most egregious.



For example, Continental Tire moved its North American headquarters and 320 jobs from Charlotte to Lancaster County, South Carolina, in 2009. Georgia gave Ohio-based NCR Corp. (formerly National Cash Register) $109 million to relocate that same year. In 2010, Hamilton Beach received at least $2 million to move from Memphis to Olive Branch, Mississippi, while in 2009 McKesson received $4 million from Mississippi in addition to local incentives to move from Memphis to neighboring DeSoto County. Rhode Island, in a widely publicized move, gave Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling's video game company 38 Studios a $75 million loan to move from Massachusetts in 2009, only to see the  firm go bankrupt in 2012. There are many more examples in the report, but you get the idea.



The existence of relocation subsidies makes it possible for companies to demand incentives to stay in a particular state, i.e., retention subsidies. Two of the three largest ones went to Sears in Illinois, $168 million in 1989 and another $275 million in 2012 when the 1989 deal expired. The second largest was $250 million to Prudential Insurance from New Jersey in 2011. But many more states have had to shell out retention subsidies on a regular basis.



The report notes that at least 40 states know how to write no-raiding language into their subsidy programs, because they already have such language banning intra-state relocations from receiving subsidies under various programs. However, as far as I know, far fewer states prevent their cities from giving relocation subsidies to in-state firms, though the report shows that Maine's Employment Tax Increment Financing rules do provide that.



What is necessary, the report argues and I wholeheartedly agree, is that states need to tweak their program language to stop rewarding interstate job relocation as well. They need to stop efforts to directly poach existing firms, something Texas is heavily engaged in. The report says there is a "possible" federal role here, to withhold some Department of Commerce monies from states that engaged in job piracy. I, on the other hand, think that federal action is the only way it will happen. As I've written before, voluntary state efforts in the 1980s and 1990s to end job piracy have been utter failures, and the states clearly need an outside enforcement mechanism, which can only be provided by the federal government.



With such extensive documentation of how widespread relocation and retention subsidies are, hopefully more people can be mobilized to get the federal action we need.



Cross-posted at Angry Bear.

News of Note: Job Piracy, Tax Havens, Filibuster Reform

A lot has happened during my busy first week of classes, so I want to flag a couple of the most important pieces of news from the week.



1.  Good Jobs First has a blockbuster report on relocation subsidies. I will have a full post on this report as soon as I have time to digest it.



2. Tax Justice Network's January Taxcast is out, with reports on Dell in Spain, an EU threat to blacklist Switzerland, and a look at "Google Capitalism."



Hear it here.



3. Filibuster reform was less than hoped. Recall how overrepresented rural states are in the Senate in the first place. Here are Ezra Klein's pessimistic take and Chris Bower's somewhat more optimistic take on the changes.

$6.6 Trillion Retirement Savings Shortfall Shows 401(k)'s No Replacement for Pensions

Last week the Washington Post ran a story on the weaknesses of 401(k) retirement accounts, focusing on the the fact that 1/4 of Americans with 401(k)'s have used them to meet current income needs. Among people in their forties, the share rises to 1/3,  an astounding figure considering how close this group is to retirement. In the wake of the Great Recession and continuing job market problems, it is perhaps not surprising that 28% of 401(k) account holders presently have loans against their accounts.



As the Post delicately puts it,

Many employers have embraced 401(k) and other defined-contribution
accounts as a way of helping workers save for retirement while relieving
themselves of the financial risks that come with managing a traditional
pension plan. In theory, 401(k) accounts are better suited to an
economy in which workers are changing jobs more frequently than ever
because the accounts can be rolled over from previous employers.

A more accurate way of saying this would be that employers have embraced 401(k) plans because they are less expensive than providing pensions, thereby "cut(ting) overall employee compensation," and that 401(k) plans don't take into account the stagnation of real wages, points well made by commenter "Sean2020."



Moreover, as I reported before, 49% of private sector worker have neither a 401(k) or a defined benefit pension plan. Thus, they have no supplement to their eventual Social Security benefits unless they are able to save outside of a 401(k).



And they aren't saving. At least, they're aren't saving nearly enough to maintain their standard of living after retirement. As a report from the Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pension (HELP) committee states, there is a  $6.6 trillion gap (methodology here) between what people need to maintain their current standard of living and what they've actually saved for retirement. This is equal to the combined assets of defined benefit pensions and 401(k) type plans, more than total state/local/federal government retirement plans, and more than twice as much as the Social Security Trust Fund. There's a reason I've been using the word "crisis"!



Total Assets



Social Security Trust Fund      $2.7 trillion (12/31/2012)

Defined benefit pensions         $2.3 trillion (9/30/2012)

Defined contribution 401(k)    $4.3 trillion (9/30/2012)

State/local gov't employee      $3.1 trillion (9/30/2012)

Federal employee retirement  $1.5 trillion (9/30/2012)

IRA's                                    $4.9 trillion (6/30/2011)





Sources: Social Security Administration; Federal Reserve, tables L-116, L-117, and L-118 (financial assets only), for DB, DC, and government employee programs; Investment Company Institute for IRAs



This gigantic hole shows that the current model, based on 401(k)'s rather than true pensions, is not working. In a future post I will discuss ways to fix the crisis.

US already has high elder poverty rate; how can cutting Social Security even be on the table?

In the recent debate over the so-called "fiscal cliff," President Obama was reportedly at one point offering to raise the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67 and cut Social Security via "chained CPI.". However, in view of the coming retirement crisis due to the decline in defined benefit plans guaranteeing a specific retirement income, this is a terrible idea. Given that proposals to cut Social Security and Medicare will be repeatedly floated in the coming debt ceiling and related budget fights, we need to understand just how bad an idea this is.



First, let's look at what Social Security and Medicare have done to elderly poverty in the U.S. over time, using the standard poverty line as our measure. Daniel R. Meyer and Geoffrey L. Wallace of the University of Wisconsin have published data on official poverty rates for those over 65:



Official poverty rate for the elderly by year



1968          25.0%

1990          12.1%

2006            9.4%



1968, of course, is just three years after the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid. We can see that elder poverty was halved between 1968 and 1994, and dropped at a slower pace through 2006. In the bad old days, one in four of the elderly lived in poverty: why would we want to go back to that when we are a much richer society today than we were in 1968?



Moreover, before we pat ourselves on the back for how well we have done, we need to consider alternative measures of poverty and the experience of other industrialized democracies. As Arthur Delaney and Ryan Grim report, the Census Bureau has developed a "Supplemental Poverty Measure" (SPM) that includes items such as out-of-pocket medical expenses, which affect seniors more than those under 65. Thus, while the SPM was only slightly higher for all individuals in 2009 than the official poverty measure (15.7% vs. 14.5%), for seniors the increase was from 8.9% to 16.1%.



As Meyer and Wallace relate, when the poverty line was first defined in the United States in 1963, it was approximately equal to 50% of median household income. Today, according to Smeeding et al., it is approximately just 30% of median household income. Meanwhile, the European Union has gone in the opposite direction, defining poverty as 60% of median income. Researchers comparing poverty cross-nationally generally use a 50% of median income standard. How does the U.S. stack up?



Here are Smeeding et al.'s figures for poverty rates in 2000 for all over 65 (figures eyeballed from Figure 1; no table provided):



Country                        Poverty rate



United States                 25%

Australia                        23%

United Kingdom            18%

Italy                              14%

Germany                       10%

Sweden                          8%

Canada                          6%



I guess we can take solace in the fact that Ireland has a substantially (20 percentage points) higher elder poverty rate for households only comprised of the elderly, as Smeeding reports in a separate paper. Otherwise, the comparison is pretty grim.



Yet what do the Very Serious People, as Paul Krugman calls them, want? At the very least, they want to cut Social Security by changing how inflation is calculated, and they want to raise the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67. At some points, it appeared the President would go along.



This is lunacy. As David Rosnick and Dean Baker (via David Cay Johnston) show, cuts to Medicare, such as Paul Ryan's plan, shift far more costs to beneficiaries than what government saves through the cuts. In fact, while the Ryan cuts save the government $4.9 trillion over 75 years, the elderly will pick up $34 trillion in new costs. As Johnston puts it, for every dollar in saving for the government, there will be approximately $6 in net losses to the country as a whole.





Where are seniors supposed to find $34 trillion? Fewer and fewer people will have real pensions, 401(k) plans are vulnerable to market swings, and the Very Serious People want to cut Social Security. The simple answer is that seniors will be worse off than seniors today, yet 47% of the electorate voted for people who would have cut Medicare now.



It's time to take these cruel cuts off the table permanently. What we will need in the future is an augmentation of Social Security, not cuts. We've got to make sure politicians get this through their heads.



Cross-posted at Angry Bear.

Poll Results: 1 in 4 Never Expects to be Able to Afford to Retire

Thanks to everyone who answered the poll on when you have or expect to be able to retire. The biggest takeaway is that 1 in 4 never expect to be able to retire.



Full results:



Retire before 65: 20%

At 65: 20%

At 70: 20%

At 75: 4%

Over 75: 8%

Never: 25%



(Total does not equal 100 due to rounding.)



This underscores just how dire our retirement crisis will be. As I explained in my last post, the decline in defined benefit pensions from 38% of private sector workers in 1980 to 20% in 2008 means that Generation X will be particularly vulnerable to poverty in retirement, yet Republicans want to kill Social Security and Medicare. We see their efforts as well to eliminate defined benefit pensions for public sector workers.



Baby boomers, especially younger ones, will not be exempt from the crisis. But Generation X and beyond will be the hardest hit. More on the retirement crisis soon.

The "Fiscal Cliff" and the Coming Retirement Crisis of the Middle Class

On January 1, Congress approved a tax and spending bill to avert the so-called "fiscal cliff" combination of tax hikes and spending cuts that would have created deflationary pressure on the United States (though Yglesias questioned the conventional wisdom of whether it would necessarily cause a recession). Let's take a look at the deal in some detail, then proceed to the gruesome details of what will happen around the Ides of March.



From Think Progress, here are some of the more critical parts of the deal.



1) The Bush tax cuts expire on only about 0.7% of households, those earning more than $400,000 per year as an individual or $450,000 for a couple. This brings in $600 billion over 10 years. Since rich people don't spend as much of their income as the poor and middle class do, this is less deflationary than a tax increase on the middle class, as I discussed in November.



2) With the expiration of the temporary 2% payroll tax cut, 77% of households will see their taxes go up. Indeed, every single income group will, on average, see their taxes increase, as shown below (via Matt Yglesias):

Since this hits the middle class more directly, the deflationary consequences are larger than they would be for an increase in taxes on the rich. On the other hand, this strengthens the long-run funding of Social Security, an issue I will return to shortly.



3) Unemployment insurance is extended for two million workers. This will get spent and have a definitive stimulative effect on the economy.



However, the second shoe of the fiscal cliff, the automatic cutbacks known as the "sequester" was simply postponed for two months, which is the same time that the Treasury Department will run out of creative ways to keep the country from exceeding the debt ceiling, which it hit on December 31.



Combining these two negotiations, the debt ceiling and the sequester, will be an extremely high-stakes battle where the middle class has a lot to lose. The big problem here is that some Tea Party Republicans really do want to use the debt ceiling to take the economy hostage and force cutbacks in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Despite the fact that Republicans lost the Presidency as well as both Senate and House seats (with a majority of the votes cast for the House going to Democrats), they see their gerrymandered House majority as giving them license to wreak havoc.



The consensus among most commentators (Krugman, Klein, and Yglesias, for example) is that the fiscal cliff deal will work out okay as long as the President does not cave in to the Republicans' threats over the debt ceiling.  I agree as far as that goes. But, as Yglesias points out, there is nothing great about what Klein says is the most likely scenario, where the President gets $1 trillion in new tax revenue for $1 trillion in cuts over 10 years. That is still $2 trillion in austerity measures at a time when unemployment is barely below 8%!



The looming problem rarely mentioned, even in the context of the Republican campaign against Social Security, is that my children's generation (Generation X, if you will) faces a retirement crisis that many of my generation will avoid, based on the end of pension plans. According to one Social Security Administration report, the percentage of private-sector workers with a traditional defined-benefit pension plan fell from 38% in 1980 to 20% in 2008. Over the same period, private-sector workers who only received defined contribution plans rose from 8% to 31%. Note that this means that 49% of private-sector workers are not covered by any pension plan at all. Moreover, while governments have more commonly provided defined-benefit plans than private employers have, they are under attack in many states.



Let's do the math. With 49% of private workers having no pension, and another 31% having an on-average less generous defined contribution pension, how will seniors support themselves if Social Security is cut? Hint: It won't be pretty.



Get ready for a bumpy March.



Cross-posted at Angry Bear.

Surprise! Facebook Avoids its European Taxes

If you are as cynical as I am, I know you are not surprised that Facebook paid Irish taxes (via Tax Justice Network) of about $4.64 million on its entire non-US profits of $1.344 billion for 2011.* This 0.3% tax rate is a bit below the normal, already low, Irish corporate income tax of 12.5%.



As with Apple, Facebook funnels its foreign profits into its Irish subsidiary. As the Guardian article explains:

Facebook is structured so that companies buying advertisements on the
website in the UK, or anywhere outside of the US, have to pay Facebook
Ireland.

As a result, Facebook manages to slash its taxes in other countries, paying, for example,  $380,800 in British tax on estimated 2011 UK profits of $280 million, or a little over 0.1%. What is shocking is that Facebook paid so much Irish tax since it managed to convert its $1.3 billion gross profit into a net loss of $24 million.



As you've no doubt figured out, it's that "Double Irish" ploy again. Facebook operates a second subsidiary that is incorporated in Ireland but controlled in the Cayman Islands. This subsidiary owns Facebook Ireland, but the setup allows the two companies to be considered as one for U.S. tax purposes, but separate for Irish tax purposes. The Caymans-operated subsidiary owns the rights to use Facebook's intellectual property outside the U.S., for which Facebook Ireland pays hefty royalties to use. This lets Facebook Ireland transfer the profits from low-tax Ireland to no-tax Cayman Islands. For more on the arcane mechanics, see Joseph Darby's article "International Tax Planning," downloadable at Wikipedia.



This makes no sense of course, but is, in David Cay Johnston's inimitable phrase, Perfectly Legal. But it shouldn't be. And in the UK, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has announced 

a £154m [$246.4 million] blitz on tax avoidance and evasion, with HMRC [the British equivalent of the IRS] hiring an extra
2,500 tax inspectors to target high earners who aggressively exploit
loopholes to avoid or evade tax.

The U.S. should do the same.



* Dollar figures converted from pound sterling figures in the Guardian at an exchange rate of $1.60 per pound.

Student Loan Debt Is Ballooning - See This Chart

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/NA-BT838_Studen_G_20121127183304.jpg

Conservative ALEC Economic Policies Have No Benefit, Some Risks, for States

The economic policies proposed for states by the conservative American Legislative Council Exchange (ALEC) not only don't work, but carry risks for states' economies, according to new research by the Iowa Policy Project and Good Jobs First.



As we have seen most recently with Michigan's passage of anti-union so-called "right to work" legislation (which lets people free ride on union contracts and makes union organization and representation more difficult), the legislative agenda of ALEC proclaims that states should follow a low-tax, low-wage, non-union route to economic prosperity. Now, you or I might wonder how creating low-wage jobs is supposed to create prosperity, but luckily for us ALEC has ranked the states by how "competitive" their economic policies were beginning in 2007, giving us the chance to see how well their recommended policies have done.



ALEC's 15 recommended factors (p. 18) include taxes, debt service, public employees per 10,000 residents, "quality" of the legal system, "right to work," minimum wage, and workers' compensation costs. As pointed out by earlier commentaries, it says nothing about education or infrastructure, which have clear effects on a state's economy. The new report by economist Peter Fisher with Greg LeRoy and Phil Mattera undertakes a statistical analysis of these policies, using the ALEC ranking of all 50 states as of 2007 to see how well their economies have performed since then. Fisher et al. also highlight the shoddy statistical work by Arthur Laffer in creating the ALEC index and reporting results.



Whereas Laffer frequently makes his points simply by comparing the top vs. bottom 8-10 states, Fisher et al. start with a full comparison of all 50 states via a correlation analysis, then proceed to the necessary addition of holding other potential causes constant in what is know as multiple regression analysis. Beginning with the correlations, here is what the new report finds. Correlation runs from -1 (perfect negative relationship) to +1 (perfect positive relationship); the closer to +1 below, the better the ALEC competitiveness index predicted the following outcomes. All changes are from 2007 to 2011.



ALEC Competitiveness Index ranking correlated with--



State gross domestic product:  .02 (not statistically significant)

Percent change in nonfarm employment: -.09 (not statistically significant)

Percent change in per capita income: -.27 (statistically significant)

Percent change in state and local government revenue: -.16 (not statistically significant)

Percent change in median family income: -.30 (statistically significant)

Change in poverty rate: .21 ("statistically significant" at the .1 level*)



What this tells us is that the states which were following ALEC's preferred policies the most in 2007 saw worse performance in per capita income growth and median family income as well as a worse performance n poverty that we can almost be sure was not due to chance. The only thing ALEC's top states did see as predicted was an increase was in  population (Fisher et al. did not report the correlation coefficient, but their discussion makes it clear that it was statistically significant). However, population growth per se is not an economic outcome, as the report points out.



The concluding regression analysis weakens the case for negative consequences, but provides no support for positive effects of ALEC's state policies. Fisher et al. show that the most important determinants of 2007-11 GDP growth, employment growth, and per capita income growth are the components of a state's economy, with the strongest determinants being the presence of extractive industry (primarily due to the higher price of oil during this period) and a large health care industry. Once these are controlled for, none of the ALEC variables are statistically significant, though the closest is that the top personal income tax rate is associated with higher, not lower, per capita income growth.



If none of ALEC's policies work as advertised for job and income growth, what do they do? They are, in fact, a prescription for economic inequality. So-called "right to work" does not increase growth, but it reduces workers' bargaining power. Reducing taxes on the wealthy increases post-tax inequality. And so on, down the panoply of ALEC policies. Fisher et al. (p. 11) put it well:

The ALEC-Laffer strategies are exclusively those that would lower taxes on corporations and the wealthy, reduce public sector revenues (and hence public investments in education, health and infrastructure), and lower wages by eliminating minimum wages and weakening the bargaining power of workers. Yet the book claims that all of these measures would make states, and their populations, richer.

The report is Selling Snake Oil to the States, and that is precisely what ALEC's policies are.





* Technical note: I'm old school on when we should consider something probably not due to chance. For generations, the standard cutoff was that you have to be 95% certain a result was *not* due to chance to call it statistically significant. In economics, and now increasingly in political science, researchers have sometimes called a result statistically significant using a 90% cutoff instead. In my view, this shift has been due to what is called "publication bias": it is easier to get your study published in an academic journal if you have some statistically significant result. But this is a big problem in areas like minimum wage research, where not finding a statistically significant negative effect from increasing the minimum wage actually tells you a great deal. The key analysis of publication bias in minimum wage research can be found in David Card and Alan Krueger's book Myth and Measurement.



Cross-posted at Angry Bear.

Suppression of Congressional Research Service Report Reversed

Just as quietly as it happened, the Republican suppression of a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report showing the lack of relationship between top tax rates and economic growth has apparently been overcome. Jared Bernstein reports today that the report is back up. You can find it on the CRS website here.



What made this report so objectionable to Republicans was that it showed no relationship between the top tax rates and economic growth rates, and went beyond simple correlation analysis to more complex analysis that statistically controlled for other potential causes, known as regression.



Moreover, it performed the same series of analyses on the data for tax rates and inequality, showing that a low top tax rate contributes to economic inequality, again controlling for other potential causes.



It is good to see that the non-partisan CRS is still allowed to post the results of its own research. But it's bad that there could ever have been any question of it.

Appearing on National Progressive Talk Radio Tonight

Sorry for the short notice, but I will be on Lane Prophet's live call-in show on National Progressive Talk Radio at 9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific for one hour. I'll be talking about the so-called "fiscal cliff" and, probably subsidies as well. Here is the announcement from NPTR: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/national-progressive-talk-radio/2012/12/10/the-fiscal-cliff--kenneth-thomas--nptr-29



If you want to call in, the number is 347-326-9690.

NYT Series Illuminates -- And Confuses -- The State of the Subsidy Wars

Louise Story's series in the New York Times this week has created a substantial buzz about the issue of economic development subsidies.This is a welcome development, because it's an issue that doesn't get nearly enough attention in the highest profile media. Story has, in addition, appeared on shows such as MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and NPR's "Fresh Air," bringing subsidies to an even wider audience.



She crafted a number of stories that highlighted the big picture issues: imbalance in bargaining power between city governments and giant multinational corporations, the blatant conflicts of interest on display in Texas subsidy procurement, and a border war between Kansas and Missouri involving multimillion dollar incentives to move existing facilities across the state line, with no net benefit for the Kansas City metropolitan area, let alone for the U.S. as a whole.



The last few days have given me time to absorb the articles and the database Story created, as well as surveying the commentary on the web from well-known experts on subsidies. Several tentative conclusions seem in order.



First, as I pointed out in my last post, and backed up by Timothy Bartik's detailed analysis of Michigan, 5/8 of the national total is in the form of sales tax breaks, and probably the overwhelming majority of those sales tax reductions should not be considered subsidies. Here is what Bartik says about Michigan:

For example, in my own state of Michigan, the New York Times database
identifies $6.65 billion in annual state and local business incentives.
Of this total, $4.83 billion is in “sales tax refund, exemptions, or
other sales tax discounts”.  Of this $4.83 billion, almost all of these
refunds come from two provisions of Michigan tax law. First, Michigan
does not apply the sales tax to most services, including business
services, which saves businesses $3.88 billion annually. Second, for
manufacturing, Michigan does not apply the sales tax to goods used as
inputs to the manufacturing process, which saves manufacturers about
$0.92 billion in sales tax.

For those keeping score at home, that means that $4.80 billion of the $4.83 billion in sales tax breaks should not be considered subsidies, unless you consider manufacturing "specific" enough that this aid constitutes a subsidy, in which case only 80% of the sales tax breaks should be excluded from the subsidy tally.



Second, changes of this magnitude mean that the Times estimates are not sufficiently accurate to use in a statistical analysis, as Richard Florida attempts in The Atlantic Cities. Finding out if incentives affect outcomes like wages, employment, or poverty is precisely the type of analysis we would like to do, but the fragility of the data makes this premature. The good news is that since the data on these state programs are all in one place, it should be possible to get a better handle on state incentives by cutting out those programs which should not be considered subsidies. Different analysts will no doubt have different judgments about what should be counted as a subsidy, but since the database is so inclusive, it should be useful no matter what your definition of subsidy is.



Third, there are some smaller errors in the program database as well. The one I have identified so far is that it counts net operating loss (NOL) tax provisions as subsidies in Illinois and New Hampshire, but not in other states, even though all states with a corporate income tax will have an NOL provision. In any event, this should not be considered a subsidy at all, but a part of a state's basic macroeconomic framework. In addition, Timothy Bartik pointed out to me in correspondence that the program database does not include single sales factor apportionment (only counting what percentage of a multi-state firm's sales take place in a given state, rather than standard three-factor apportionment that uses percentages of payroll and property as well) as a subsidy, which it should.



Fourth, the program database does not distinguish between investment incentives (subsidies to affect the location of investment) and subsidies more generally, which may or may not require an investment to obtain them. This is an important distinction I have tried to make clear by providing separate estimates in Investment Incentives and the Global Competition for Capital: $46.8 billion in incentives, and $65 or $70 billion in subsidies, depending on whether or not you count non-specific accelerated depreciation as a subsidy.



Finally, as Phil Mattera at Good Jobs First points out, the deals database misses a number of large awards, leaving out Tennessee's $450 million (present value) subsidy to Volkswagen and an even bigger package for ThyssenKrupp in Alabama. It also underestimates other awards, including Apple in North Carolina and Boeing in South Carolina. I also found that it underestimated subsidies to Dell and Google in North Carolina by omitting the local subsidy portion of the awards, a problem Ms. Story is aware of, as I noted in my last post.



The Times series has been great for the spotlight it has put on state and local subsidies and the sometimes vulgar politics surrounding the process of awarding them, and for compiling a great database of programs all in one place. However, its interpretation of the sales tax breaks, which are 5/8 of the national total but largely not subsidies, confuses the issue of total impact on state and local budgets and makes statistical analysis premature. This will require some work to fix, but it appears like most of the raw material is there to do it.



Cross-posted at Angry Bear.

NYT: $80 Billion in State and Local Subsidies Annually (Updated)

In today's New York Times, Louise Story begins a series, "The United States of Subsidies," ten months in the making, with a story focusing on General Motors closures, the border war for investments between Kansas and Missouri in the Kansas City metropolitan area, and a new estimate of state and local incentives to business, $80 billion a year. Backing this up, and no doubt contributing to the long lead time, is a database of 150,000 state and local subsidy deals going back at least 20 years. Given its appearance in the country's newspaper of record, the series is sure to elevate the issue of state and local subsidies to a prominence it has never known before.



Since my 2011 estimate was $70 billion per year in total subsidies to business, and $46.8 billion in location incentives, the Times figure represents a substantial increase if accurate. Ever since David Cay Johnston reviewed my book when it first came out, he has argued that my $70 billion figure was probably an underestimate, and the new report would seem to back him up. Nevertheless, I will certainly be spending some time analyzing the database to see just what is in it. According to the story, $18 billion per year is accounted for by corporate income tax breaks, a whopping $52 billion by "sales tax relief," and the other $10 billion unspecified but most likely property tax breaks. I have some questions about these numbers, however.



First, it seems to me that property tax breaks likely exceed $10 billion a year. When California axed tax increment financing earlier this year, it was generating $8 billion in tax increment all by itself. Although California cities were by far the biggest user of TIF, municipalities in almost every other state still use it, as well as myriads of property tax abatements offered at the local level. Story is well aware of this. She writes:

The cost of the awards is certainly far higher. A full accounting, The
Times discovered, is not possible because the incentives are granted by
thousands of government agencies and officials, and many do not know the
value of all their awards.

Thousands of local governments give subsidies, and these are overwhelmingly related to property tax. In my most recent estimate, there were several states in Missouriwhich local subsidies exceeded state subsidies, including Missouri and Michigan, so my default  assumption was that they were equal if I did not have adequate information on local incentives, as is usually the case due to the huge number of governments involved.



On the other hand, there is some chance that the $52 billion in sales tax subsidies could be an overestimate; it all depends on what The Times includes in this category. My own thinking about sales tax has changed since I first created the subsidy estimates in my 2000 book, Competing for Capital. My estimate for Minnesota, for example, included many hundreds of millions per year in sales tax exemptions for business services. Now, I tend to think of these tax breaks as methods to avoid tax cascading (paying the sales tax on a good more than once, by taxing the full value of every intermediate good) and not a subsidy at all. They have been removed from my estimate of total subsidies in my more recent work, which did not prevent my estimate for 2005 (published in 2011) from being $20 billion higher than that for 1995 (published in 2000). I do still count some sales tax breaks as subsidies, particularly those on plant and equipment, which apply to the initial investment rather than ongoing operations.



While this may seem like a sterile academic argument, in fact it makes a big difference whether incentives are $50 billion a year or $80 billion a year, approximately 600,000 public sector jobs paying $50,000 annually. The larger the true figure, the more pressing is the case for subsidy reform. The inauguration of this new series of articles, plus the database, will help us put a better number on the value, a critical first step toward galvanizing public opinion to force politicians to rein in subsidies.



I will be commenting more on this series over the course of this week.



UPDATE: Text corrected to reflect that although I had specific data for local incentives in Michigan, the total of local incentives was somewhat lower than that of state incentives. In addition, it is clearly true that TIF in California exceeded state subsidies, so obviously so did the total of local subsidies. However, I did not know this at the time I made the estimate.



Cross-posted at Angry Bear.

Gigantic Journalistic Investigation Begins Ripping Mask off Bank Secrecy

While Mitt Romney may be fading from view in the wake of his defeat on November 6, the issue of tax havens is definitely not following suit.



Via the Tax Justice Network, I've just learned of a massive, multi-national joint investigation into secrecy jurisdictions by three very heavy hitters, the Guardian, BBC Panorama, and the U.S.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Though they are starting out with the United Kingdom and the seriously understudied situation in the British Virgin Islands, ICIJ has announced that this is just the start of a multi-year investigative project and that there are "many more countries to come in the next 12 months." Further, according to ICIJ, the investigation involves literally "dozens of jurisdictions and in collaboration with dozens of media partners and freelance journalists around the world" (emphasis in original).



As I write this, the first and second articles (Nov. 25 and 26) in the Guardian's series rank number two and number one in the "most viewed" articles in the last 24 hours. One of the most amazing articles discusses the use of "nominee" directors, people who pretend to be a company or foundation's directors in order to hide the true ownership from authorities. Incredibly, these nominee directors frequently do not know the companies they are supposedly responsible for; they just know that they are getting paid for the use of their names. Be sure to check out the BBC undercover film linked from this Guardian article.



The tremendous scope of the journalistic investigation begs the question: where is government on this? Part of the answer is that government is way behind the curve. In 1999, the British government claimed to have stamped out a nominee sham colorfully named the "Sark Lark," for the tiny Channel Island of Sark where the nominees lived. However, it turns out that the perpetrators of the Sark Lark have simply moved all over the world to continue their scam; the BBC caught up with one former Sark resident in Mauritius.



The other part of the answer is that much of these activities are, in the immortal title of David Cay Johnston's book, "perfectly legal." It appears that in many cases governments do not make the effort to sift the illegal from the legal activities.



But let's not forget: tax havens cost the middle class worldwide hundreds of billions of dollars in tax revenue that they have to make up. The evidence is mounting that they are a central piece of the world financial system. Fundamental reform is necessary and a massive journalistic effort like this one will help produce the outrage to make it possible. I'm looking forward to more fruits of this investigation.



Cross-posted at Angry Bear.

What the Fiscal Cliff Means for the Middle Class

Now that the election is over, it seems like all the politicians and pundits can talk about is the so-called "fiscal cliff." But the chatter around the fiscal cliff is deeply weird, so in this post I will explain what it is and what the issues involved mean for the middle class.



Just what is the fiscal cliff? It is the combination of spending cuts and tax increases set to take place on January 1 based on several different laws. Estimates of the consequences run as high as $800 billion next year, or 5.2% of the country's $15.29 trillion gross domestic product in 2011. Yes, that would mean a recession, with obvious consequences for the middle class. But this is only true if we did nothing after January 1, and that's not going to happen.



To put it another way, $800 billion is a 72.7% cut in the government's budget deficit for the just ended 2012 fiscal year. You would think this would make the people calling for an immediate cut in the deficit happy, but nooooo. Just the opposite, which is the weirdest aspect of the entire debate. I'll come back to that in a minute; first, let's look at the main components of the fiscal cliff.



The biggest chunk is $426 billion from the final expiration of the Bush tax cuts, according to a Bloomberg analysis in July. Of this, $358 billion is for the first $250,000 of all taxpayers' earnings, and the remaining $68 billion is for the tax cuts for income above $250,000 ($200,000 for a single person) that President Obama wants to get rid of. Both Republicans and Democrats want to retain the tax break for 98% of households, but Republicans will try to hold it hostage to the cuts for the other 2%. Since the Bush tax cuts expire if nothing gets done (because they were originally passed through the Senate's reconciliation procedure, which gave them a 10-year lifespan; then renewed for 2 years in 2010), on January 1 the Republicans will have no more leverage on this. Thus, I expect that the middle class tax cuts will be made permanent and, by early January at the latest, the $68 billion will be all that will have expired. Since the wealthy spend less of their income than do the middle class or poor, this tax increase will have little contractionary effect on the economy.



Another set of tax provision affecting couples with over $250,000 and individuals over $200,000 is contained in the Affordable Care Act. These folks will have to pay an extra 0.9% tax on earnings over the thresholds for Medicare, and an extra 3.8% on investment income, starting in 2013. According to an Associated Press estimate, this will raise $318 billion over 10 years, so we'll call it $30 billion for 2013. Since this is part of the funding for Obamacare, the President is highly unlikely to budge on this. Again, as a tax hike on the top 2%, it will have relatively little contractionary effect.



There are $110 billion in automatic spending cuts scheduled in 2013 due to the so-called "sequester." These were triggered last year when no deal was made on long-term deficit reduction. With unemployment still at 7.9%, government spending cuts are definitely harmful to the middle class. To the extent that the $55 billion cut from the defense budget comes from overseas spending, there will be little contractionary effect in this country. That is, if we closed a military base in Germany, it would have more of an effect there than here. In any event, since the United States spends 41% of the world's total military expenditure,* we could afford to redirect quite a bit of this $711 billion annual expenditure (China is a very distant second at $143 billion) to other uses. Nation building at home, as the saying goes.



The other $55 billion would come from domestic discretionary spending, so the middle class would bear the full brunt of this. Of course, neither party wants to see "their" favorite budget items cut, so there is a good chance that these spending cuts will be delayed, which would be a good thing, though not as good as shifting some military spending into the domestic budget.



There's more, of course, but the basic outline is clear: we are seeing a replay of last year's debt ceiling "deal," in which Republicans are trying to pass austerity measures the public does not support and did not vote for in the just concluded election. Indeed, a majority voted not just for a Democratic President and a Democratic Senate, but for a Democratic House of Representatives as well, with Republicans maintaining a majority only due to gerrymandering and compliant Republican courts. As Paul Krugman points out, the self-proclaimed "fiscal hawks" are tying themselves up in knots on why going over the cliff is bad when it achieves their goal of debt reduction. The answer, of course, is that they want to cut "low-priority spending," by which they mean programs benefiting the middle class. As Linda Beale argues, the right course for Democrats is to do nothing until January, when the Bush tax cuts will be gone and we can pass tax cuts more targeted to the middle class as well as redirecting spending from our bloated military to domestic programs.



* Source: SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) Military Expenditure Database 2011, http://milexdata.sipri.org



Cross-posted at Angry Bear.

Online International Political Economy Course

If you've enjoyed my posts, you may be interested in my courses, too. In spring 2013, I will be offering an online course at the advanced undergraduate level in my specialization, international political economy (Political Science 3830). This course will examine the main issues of the global economy, including trade, money, investment, and globalization, from a variety of theoretical perspectives and a special focus on who wins and who loses from different policies. I have taught this course for over 20 years and am now in the process of finalizing the online architecture.



This is a regular course at University of Missouri-St. Louis and you may be able to transfer it into your own degree program; needless to say, check with your adviser. To do this, you would enroll as a visiting student.



You can also enroll as a non-degree student if you are simply interested in the subject and are not taking it as part of a degree program.



This is a 3 credit-hour course. Tuition is $265.60 per credit hour for Missouri residents and residents of 22 counties in western and southern Illinois. Out-of-state tuition is $717.90 per hour. You will need to check what other fees may apply (there is a supplement for online courses; beyond that, I am uncertain).



If you are interested, you will need to apply as a visiting student or non-degree student. See here for more details on the admission process. Feel free to contact me at kpthomas55@hotmail.com if you would like more information.

Bain Capital Avoided $102 Million in Taxes Via Dutch Subsidiary UPDATED

A Dutch newspaper, de Volkskrant, reports today (translation here) that Bain Capital used a Dutch
subsidiary to avoid $102 million on its taxes. This has been picked up
by Taegan Goddard 
and the Atlantic Wire.
The Dutch author wrote a comment on Goddard’s site clarifying that Bain
(not Romney) saved $102 million. From his 2010 and 2011 tax returns,
Romney received $2.1 million in dividends and $5.5 million in capital
gains. Of course, who knows what he received in previous years, since
Romney hasn’t released more tax returns?



Since all the original analysis is in Dutch, which I can't speak, it's hard to say much further at this point, though Bain and the Romney campaign predictably refused to comment. However, the report does show the statement for Bain Capital Fund VIII for the first nine months of 2010 (part of the documents leaked to Gawker, I believe). One illuminating nugget on how private equity makes its money is that the fund reported $174,493,175 in income for the nine months, and a staggering management fee of $46,746,696! This makes it easy to see how private equity folks make so much money whether the underlying investment does well or not.



Of course, this is just one more piece of how the 1% hide their money from taxation. With Romney, it's gotten to the point where we are no longer surprised by this anymore.



Where is the mainstream media on this?



UPDATE: Here is a fuller translation from a Dutch speaker at Daily Kos.

What Senate Republicans Don't Want You to Find Out

There is a lot of buzz now about the fact, discovered over a month after it happened, that the Congressional Research Service (CRS) had withdrawn one of its research reports due to pressure from Republican Senators. Probably the most commonly used adjectives used to describe the CRS are "respected" and "non-partisan," so what is going on here? The simple answer is that the Republicans didn't like the study's conclusions and complained vociferously to CRS. Why did the CRS give in? No one knows yet, although the New York Times reported:

A person with knowledge of the deliberations, who requested anonymity,
said the Sept. 28 decision to withdraw the report was made against the
advice of the research service’s economics division, and that Mr.
Hungerford [the study's author] stood by its findings.

What was in the report that terrified Republican Senators so much? In fact, a lot more than reported in the media: "Tax Cuts for the Rich Do Not Spur Economic Growth," Talking Points Memo, September 17;  "Tax Cuts for the Rich Cause Income Inequality, Not Economic Growth," Think Progress, September 17; for example.



One major finding is contained in a plot of the top personal income tax rate and real economic growth rates for every year from 1945 to 2010. Contrary to conservative arguments, when the top tax rate was from 70-90+ percent, the country had growth rates averaging 4.2% in the 1950s, but only 1.7% in the 2000s, when the top rate was 35%. Overall, according to Figure 5 of the report, there appears to be no relationship at all between the top tax rate and growth.



It's important to remember, though, that a simple comparison of two variables tells us nothing by itself. It's only when we control for other potential causal factors that we can say whether a relationship does or does not exist between two variables like tax rates and growth. In the report's appendix, the author carries out such a regression analysis, as it's called, and still finds that there is no relationship between the top tax rate and real GDP growth rates.



Moreover, the study takes a look at the ways that lower tax rates are supposed to improve the economy, i.e., by increasing private savings, private investment, and labor productivity growth. In no case does the bivariate analysis (some of which shows higher taxes increasing private savings) or the regression analysis show either the top personal tax rate or the capital gains tax rate having an effect on these intervening drivers of economic growth. This completely undermines the economic arguments for tax cuts as the recipe for a better economy.



But wait, there's more! The diagram (scatterplot) showing the relationship between the top tax rate and the private savings rate shows that the highest private savings rates since 1945 were achieved when the top marginal rate was 70% (see top left of Figure 3), which comports well with recent calculations of the top optimal tax rate (70% or higher). In fact, when the top bracket was 90%, the rate of private savings as a percentage of potential GDP exceeded the rate when it was 40% or below in every year but one!



The other discomfiting finding for the Republican Senators is that lower top tax rates and lower capital gains tax rates increase income inequality. Not only is this obvious in the scatterplots for the top 0.1% and top 0.01%, it remains true in the regression analyses after controlling for other potential causes of the high income shares of the rich.



Tax cuts, then, don't increase economic growth (the ultimate zombie idea, as Paul Krugman says) but do worsen economic inequality. It may even be the case that high top marginal tax rates increase private savings, with the country's historical postwar maximum savings rates coming at a rate of 70%.



What the suppression of this study amounts to, then, is part of the present-day Republican Party's war on science, arithmetic, and knowledge in general. Unable to refute the findings of the CRS report, they demand its censorship instead. As Jared Bernstein says, this is simply scary: "this type of suppression is wholly inconsistent with democracy." That Congress' non-partisan research arm is going along with this makes it especially chilling.