America Just Got Its First Glimpse At Hillarynomics — Here's What It Looks Like (Demo)

On January 16, 2015, Matthew Yglesias writes on VOX:

Hillary Clinton’s years-long 2016 presidential un-campaign has created a curious informational void. Over her several decades in the public eye, she’s become perhaps the most-covered figure in the political scene. But her lack of meaningful opposition for the 2016 Democratic nomination, combined with the general exhaustion of the party’s agenda in the waning days of the Obama administration, leaves us with little idea of how should we actually govern as president. Until now, that is.

A 160-page white paper from a think tank titled “Report of the Commission on Inclusive Prosperity” is not exactly designed to set the world ablaze. But the timing and circumstance of its authorship make it the best guide to what Hillarynomics is likely to look like.

In some ways, it defies stereotypes of the Clintons as standard-bearers for neoliberal centrism by endorsing fiscal stimulus and a strong pro-labor union agenda while downplaying the strong education-reform streak of the Obama administration. But it’s also notable for the Obama-era liberal ambitions it pushes aside. There’s no cap-and-trade or carbon tax in here, no public option for health care, and no effort to break up or shrink the largest banks. Nor is there an ambitious agenda to tackle poverty.

Instead, you get a multi-pronged push to boost middle-class incomes. After an extended period in which Democratic Party politics has been dominated by health care for the poor, environmental regulation, and internecine fights about Wall Street, Hillarynomics looks like back-to-basics middle-class populism. It should in many ways further infuriate Clinton’s left-wing intellectual critics — and then further infuriate them by turning out to be an agenda that makes the party’s voting base perfectly happy.

Why the Commission on Inclusive Prosperity matters

Ed Balls (WPA/Getty)

White papers are released in Washington all the time. But this one came out under the aegis of the Center for American Progress (where, full disclosure, I once worked), a think tank that has a unique relationship to Hillaryland. Its founder, John Podesta, has already been announced as the chair of her not-yet-extant campaign. Its president, Neera Tanden, was policy director of Clinton’s previous presidential campaign.

One of the co-chairs of the Commission is Lawrence Summers. Summers ran the Treasury Department at the end of the Clinton administration, and ran the National Economic Council at the beginning of the Obama administration; only liberal opposition stopped him from chairing the Federal Reserve. He is, in other words, Democrats’ go-to guy for economic policy. The other co-chair is even more telling — Ed Balls, the UK Labour Party’s Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. In other words, Labour is the opposition party now, but Balls is the guy who’ll be running UK economic policy if Labour wins the next election. The report offers separate sections for US and UK policy recommendations, but Balls’ involvement is a sure sign of how seriously the overall document is meant as a real policy blueprint.

The central challenge of Hillarynomics

(Center for American Progress)

The chart above exemplifies the report’s framing of the central economic challenge of the era. Across a variety of wealthy countries, incomes for the bottom 90 percent of the population have not kept up with productivity or per capita GDP growth. But there is also considerable variation. The experiences of Canada, Australia, and Sweden show that there is nothing inevitable about income stagnation.

The list of proposed solutions for the US is long, ranging from more infrastructure spending (with new measures to improve project management on federal infrastructure deals), more preschool, closing corporate tax and inheritance tax loopholes, curbing the deductibility of executive pay, a tax cut for middle class workers, more FHA subsidies for riskier loans, and a reiteration of the merits of comprehensive immigration reform.

But the report is especially striking for its endorsement of labor market regulations not normally associated with the Summers wing of Democratic thinking. As David Leonhardt put it, “one theme is that the countries where the middle class has fared better are countries where workers have more power.” The document endorses a variety of regulatory changes that would make union organizing easier, and calls for the creation of German-style works councilsoutside the context of traditional union organizing. It also endorses more favorable tax treatment for worker-owned firms, and proposing “estate tax relief” for corporate founders who convert their companies to worker-owned enterprises when they retire or die.

On the non-wage front, inclusive growth calls for paid (gender-neutral) parental leave, expanded Family and Medical Leave Act eligibility, and universal paid sick days and paid vacation days — all loosely under the banner of increasing women’s labor force participation. Clinton has, in the past, field-tested feminist frames as a means of selling big government.

Put it all together, and you see the sketch of a Clinton economic agenda. It has a lot to offer Americans who are employed and not impoverished, but nonetheless struggling with stagnant incomes and a sense of pervasive economic insecurity. Yet many thinkers on the left will find a great deal missing.

On the cutting board

Now much about crushing banks (Win McNamee/Getty)

What Hillarynomics does not include is anything like an Elizabeth Warren-style effort to dethrone giant banks from the commanding heights of the American economic system. The authors suggest that the practice of settling bank misconduct claims without an admission of guilt should be “severely curtailed,” and offers support for requiring banks to borrow less. But there’s no talk of breaking up or shrinking the biggest banks, and no support for the Financial Transaction Tax that House Democrats are lining up behind. Nor is there much of an anti-poverty agenda here — low-income Americans would be helped by some of these proposals, but they are very much not front and center.

Conversely, though the report speaks at length about the value of education, it does so primarily in the frame of liberal-friendly proposals for subsidizing preschool and college. The Obama administration’s focus on improving K-12 teacher quality, through moves that are often hostile to the interests of teachers’ unions, is nowhere to be found.

Two important leftover items from the Obama-era progressive agenda — charging fees for carbon dioxide emissions and adding a “public option” to the Affordable Care Act — are absent. One could simply plead political realism on these points. But there’s frankly no indication that Congress is poised to enact a paid parental leave bill, or a sweeping array of changes to the union organizing process, either. The practical realities of the modern Congress and the contemporary House map mean that almost anything liberals get done for the foreseeable future will have to come through executive action.

You can’t get there from here

Clinton is going to have major difficulty engaging her supporters on an emotional level over economic issues. This is in some respects an exciting plan, but lacks a realistic path for enacting it. So who is actually going to feel excited about it?

The Hillarynomics blueprint offers none of the Obama administration’s recent emphasis on creative uses of executive power. The text hews very much to a path of policy literalism, and offers no real political theory about how to achieve any of this. Some of that is a matter of focus, but some follows naturally from the heavy emphasis on labor market policy and the de-emphasis on financial and environmental regulation. The core of the agenda is a laser focus on middle-class income, a subject that simply doesn’t seem amenable to redress through executive unilateralism.

Figuring out how to craft an economic message that’s largely built out of politically unrealistic proposals is outside the scope of this commission’s work. But it’s a big, difficult question the Clinton camp is going to have to address. Clinton is already more accepted than loved by liberal activists, and there’s nothing in this economic plan to change this. So while a crowded Republican primary field gets ready to entertain America and deliver a winner who manages to find a way to stand out from the pack, Clinton is counting more on her iconic status than her agenda to power her forward.

http://www.vox.com/2015/1/16/7557803/inclusive-prosperity-hillarynomics

There are two planks in the Hillary Clinton platform that stand out and depart from the same old same old that is put forth by politicians.  Yes, sadly, there are a number of platform planks that would grow the power of government to coerce business corporations to raise wages as well as invest taxpayer extractions in infrastructure to create jobs, without the stipulation that the companies bidding for the government contracts are fully employee owned. And while Hillary Clinton has yet to address the issue of concentrated capital ownership and advocate universal individual ownership for EVERY citizen of wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets simultaneously with the growth of the economy, one of her platform planks “endorses more favorable tax treatment for worker-owned firms,” and proposes “‘estate tax relief’ for corporate founders who convert their companies to worker-owned enterprises when they retire or die.”

While the above addresses the concentrated capital ownership issue––the source of income and wealth inequality––Hillary Clinton only addresses aspects of this around the periphery and avoids the REAL issue. She, as with the majority of politicians seeking the presidency as well as in the Senate and Congress, are millionaires because they own capital assets, yet none EVER advocate to reform the system to empower EVERY citizen to acquire personal capital asset ownership on the basis that the earnings from the investments will pay off the initial insured, interest-free capital credit loans, which is the feasible and practical solution to broadening capital ownership.

While Hillary Clinton recognizes that “incomes for the bottom 90 percent of the population have not kept up with productivity or per capita GDP growth,” she fails to understand why and realize that tectonic shifts in the technologies of production are constantly eliminating the necessity for human labor and at the same time devaluing the worth of labor as “machines”––the product of technological invention and innovation––shift the relative productive input from human labor to non-human “labor,” which is presently narrowly OWNED by a politically powerful wealthy ownership class minority.

Hillary Clinton does endorse “closing corporate tax and inheritance tax loopholes,” but to what extent is not stated. Ideally, ALL such loopholes should be closed, as well as all subsidies should be eliminated.

As for “estate tax relief,” inheritance and gift taxes should be replaced with a transfer tax that would be imposed on the recipients whose holdings exceeded $1 million, thus encouraging the super-rich to spread out their monopoly-sized estates to all members of their family, friends, servants and workers who helped create their fortunes, teachers, health workers, police, other public servants, military veterans, artists, the poor and the disabled.

The Commission On Inclusive Prosperity’s report appears to focus on Americans who are already employed and not impoverished, but struggling with stagnant incomes and retirement insecurity, but largely ignores the necessity to empower EVERY citizen, regardless of economic circumstances, to acquire individual ownership of wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets on the basis that past savings are not required, nor reduction in wages or other incomes and benefits to qualify for insured, interest-free capital credit loans, repayable out of future dividend earning fully paid out from the investment in successful corporations are who are growing the economy.

The author of this article acknowledges that the report is ” in some respects an exciting plan, but lacks a realistic path for enacting it”––claiming that Hillary Clinton’s economic message is “largely built out of politically unrealistic proposals.”

Well, there is a politically realistic set of policy proposals that respects the private property principles our nation was founded on and takes no property from those who presently own property. The policies are embodied in the agenda of the Just Third Way and in the platform of the Unite America Party, which are open to ANY politician or political party to adopt. The central economic policies in this platform are contained in the proposed Capital Homestead Act.

While Hillary Clinton offers us hope that her eyes can be opened and that she would take up and lead the cause, if she did in fact endorse and advocate for the passage of the Capital Homestead Act, this would be a monumental political achievement and would put our nation on the path to inclusive prosperity, inclusive opportunity, and inclusive economic justice.

The end result is that citizens would become empowered as owners to meet their own consumption needs and government would become more dependent on economically independent citizens, thus reversing current global trends where all citizens will eventually become dependent for their economic well-being on our only legitimate social monopoly –– the State –– and whatever elite controls the coercive powers of government.

Support the Agenda of The Just Third Way Movement at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797, http://www.cesj.org/resources/articles-index/the-just-third-way-basic-principles-of-economic-and-social-justice-by-norman-g-kurland/, http://www.cesj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/jtw-graphicoverview-2013.pdf and http://www.cesj.org/resources/articles-index/the-just-third-way-a-new-vision-for-providing-hope-justice-and-economic-empowerment/.

Support Monetary Justice at http://capitalhomestead.org/page/monetary-justice.

Support the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-a-plan-for-getting-ownership-income-and-power-to-every-citizen/ and http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-summary/. See http://cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/ and http://cesj.org/…/uploads/Free/capitalhomesteading-s.pdf.

Support the Unite America Party Platform, published by The Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/platform-of-the-unite-ame_b_5474077.html as well as Nation Of Change at http://www.nationofchange.org/platform-unite-america-party-1402409962 and OpEd News at http://www.opednews.com/articles/Platform-of-the-Unite-Amer-by-Gary-Reber-Party-Leadership_Party-Platforms-DNC_Party-Platforms-GOP-RNC_Party-Politics-Democratic-140630-60.html.