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Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
, 3 tweets, 1 min read Read on Twitter
Four measures of real wages since 1964:

Blue = average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers (AHAPNW), CPI-adjusted

Red = AHAPNW, PCE-adjusted

Green = average hourly compensation, CPI-adjusted

Purple = average hourly compensation, PCE-adjusted
Now here's the same four measures since 2000.

The gap between wages and total compensation hasn't risen much recently. But PCE and CPI inflation measures are still diverging.
To me, the most important lesson of these graphs is that replacing employer-based health insurance with government (or government-paid) health insurance would open up lots of space for cash wages to go up.
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Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
This Jill Lepore article about nationalism is just so damn good.

foreignaffairs.com/articles/unite…
"The origin of the language we speak carries us to India; our religion is from Palestine; of the hymns sung in our churches, some were first heard in Italy, some in the deserts of Arabia, some on the banks of the Euphrates; our arts come from Greece; our jurisprudence from Rome."
"Every human being drawing vital breath upon this soil...he may be of Caucasian, Jewish, Indian, or Ethiopian race...but before the Constitution of Massachusetts all these distinctions disappear. He is a MAN, the equal of all his fellow-men."

- Charles Sumner
Read 10 tweets
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Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
The real problem with the GND (which my alternative plan tries to address) isn't that you shouldn't marry economic and environmental policy.

It's that if you end up deeply hurting your economy with BAD economic policy, it's going to end up hurting the climate too.
Imagine if China et al. saw us try a big bold plan to decarbonize our economy that ended up falling apart and sending us into an economic tailspin. It wouldn't have to be "Venezuela" bad, just somewhat bad.

That would warn China away from decarbonizing, don't you think?
It's fine to package economic policies with environmental policies. Just make them GOOD ones! Make sure they're things that make the economy more fair and equal while also not substantially reducing the nation's wealth!
Read 10 tweets
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Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
OK, it's here! My sketch of an Alternative Green New Deal!!

Call it AGND.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
My Alternative Green New Deal has two main goals:

1. Actually doing the most we can to save the world from climate change

2. Increasing economic justice and equality in a way that definitely won't collapse our economy
First, climate change.

Reducing U.S. emissions is important, but if the rest of the world doesn't follow suit, we are BARBECUED. No two ways about it.

Therefore my AGND adds a lot of provisions for helping the rest of the world decarbonize.
Read 15 tweets

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Oren Cass
@oren_cass
1/ My op-ed @WashingtonPost today tackles a question I hear often: Why do we have to worry about the American worker, with unemployment below 4%? I think it's a serious mistake to confuse a cyclical boom with a long-term secular trend. Let me explain. washingtonpost.com/opinions/ameri…
2/ All the good economic data is indeed good, and worth celebrating. But we've been here before and we'll be here again. One could have asked the same question in 2007, or in 2000, but as we know now the labor market's underlying fundamentals were on a downward trajectory.
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@WhiteHouse @realDonaldTrump Wages aren’t growing when adjusted for inflation, new data finds - According to the Labor Department, median weekly earnings fell 0.6% in inflation-adjusted dollars in the second quarter, compared to the same time period of 2017. on.mktw.net/2uHDaTn
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Melissa Boteach
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🛎RED ALERT🛎Trump just unilaterally expanded his powers to attack immigrants & working families w/new #publiccharge rule

This is Trump at his worst:
❌ Rigging system for the rich
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What is public charge? For a summary, read this thread: ), but basically, it's an arcane policy from 1892 (originally designed to keep out Irish Catholics), Today, the rule excludes immigrants likely to rely on govt for subsistence. 2/
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ลาอิ อยากนอนเฉยๆ ทุกวัน
@Rain30twit
พี่เยี่ยจะถือถุงช้อปปิ้งให้แฟนนนนน
#หวังcเยี่ย

“เอาตัวนี้ด้วยค่ะ แล้วก็คิดเงินเลยนะคะ”
พนักงานสาวยิ้มร่าแล้วรับเสื้อตัวที่3 มา เมื่อรวมกับของที่ลูกค้าสาวท่านนี้เลือกก็มีทั้งเสื้อ กางเกง และเสื้อโค้ท รวมเกือบสิบตัวแล้ว

“เสี่ยวหวัง...”
“ไม่เป็นไร เดี๋ยวฉันจ่ายเอง”
“ไม่ใช่เรื่องนั้น” เยี่ยซิวยิ้มแหยๆ แน่ละว่าเขาไม่อาจทำเท่บอกว่าจะจ่ายเงินเองได้ ก็แอดมินกะดึกกระเป๋ากลวงอย่างเขา ขืนมาเข้าร้านหรูแบบนี้ ทำงานอีกสิบชาติก็ใช้คืนไม่หมดหรอก แต่ประเด็นที่เขาต้องการจะบอกก็คือ...
“หรือว่าเหนื่อยแล้ว? งั้นจบร้านนี้ก็กลับกัน”
ขณะที่เยี่ยซิวกำลังจะอธิบาย พนักงานสาวก็นำบัตรเครดิต สลิปและถุงใส่ชุดที่หวังเจี๋ยซีเลือกไว้ทั้งหมดมาให้ หลังจากสาวสวยเซ็นชื่อตัวเองก็รับถุงมาไว้ในมือ

“กลับกันเถอะ แบ่งถุงในมือมาสิ เดี๋ยวฉันช่วยถือ”
Read 19 tweets
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Sherrod Brown
@SenSherrodBrown
Just last week, a Federal Reserve official said, “There are definitely downside risks, but the strength of the economy is really pretty important at the moment. The fundamentals for the U.S. economy are very strong.”
If you just look at Wall Street, it certainly looks strong – that’s what happens after $1.5 trillion dollars in tax cuts for corporations and wealthy Americans are funneled into stock buybacks and dividends, juicing stock prices.
Meanwhile, the tax bill’s impact beyond Wall Street – on workers who haven’t seen a real raise in years, on young Americans drowning in student loan debt, on families trying to buy their first home – is an open question at best.
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