The impact of economic policy and structural change on gender employment inequality in Latin America, 

1990–2010

Elissa Braunstein and Stephanie Seguino

Keywords: Latin America; gender; labor markets; minimum wage; government spending

Published in print:Jul 2018

Category:Research Article

DOI:https://doi.org/10.4337/roke.2018.03.02

Pages:307–332

Download PDF (279.4 KB)

Latin America experienced a decline in household income inequality in the 2000s, in sharp contrast to growing inequality in other regions of the world. This has been attributed to macroeconomic policy, social spending, and increased returns to education. This paper explores this issue from a gender perspective by econometrically evaluating how changes in economic structure and policy have impacted gendered employment and unemployment rates, as well as gender inequality in these variables, using country-level panel data for a set of 18 Latin American countries between 1990 and 2010. Three variables stand out as having consistent gender-equalizing effects in the labor market: social spending, minimum wages, and public investment. Less important or consistent were the effects of external factors (such as terms of trade), economic structure, and GDP growth.



Full Text

1 INTRODUCTION

After about a decade of relatively strong economic growth, most Latin American economies are struggling to emerge from the global growth slowdown, evident since 2009, and the ripple effects of the end of the commodity price boom. From a human development perspective, this is a particularly troubling turn of economic fortunes because the boom of the early and mid 2000s, a real departure from the crises of the 1980s and the doldrums of the 1990s, was accompanied by significant declines in household income inequality across the region. This was especially noteworthy, occurring in a region that has historically been among the world's most unequal and at a time when inequality was widening globally. Though the growth slowdown in 2009 has not yet reversed the declining inequality trend of the 2000s, it may be too soon to tell if that declining trend is structural or cyclical. It is thus all the more important to understand its causes, and whether and how more challenging economic conditions may subvert the social and economic progress achieved over the last decade. 1 A number of scholars have taken up this question, focusing on both the political (the rise of left-of-center governments) and the economic (macroeconomic and social policies) as casual factors, and relying primarily on the net household Gini coefficient (post-tax and -transfer) to measure inequality (Cornia 2014; Lopez-Calva and Lustig 2010; Tsounta and Osueke 2014).

A related but as yet unevaluated question is whether gender inequality also declined in the 2000s and if so, whether the economic determinants are similar to those identified in the empirical literature on household inequality. Considering gender inequality separately from income inequality is important because income is not always equitably shared at the household level. Research on intrahousehold resource distribution identifies distinct gender differences in access to and control over resources, indicative of non-pooling of income. Gender equality is also an important development goal in itself, not least because of the association between a number of gender equality measures (for example, health, education, and employment) and higher rates of economic growth. Time series data on the gender distribution of income at the household level do not exist, so in this paper we focus on differences in economic opportunity as reflected in employment and unemployment rates. These measures of economic opportunity are important because earning an income through employment is a crucial vector for women's economic empowerment, one that has lagged behind the substantial achievements in gender equality in health and education throughout the region. Moreover, our focus on gender-specific labor market outcomes indicates whether and how changes in economic policy and structure affect more than household income, and whether these changes contribute to creating the conditions for sustainable and transformative improvements in well-being and gender equality. Taking as a guide the empirical literature exploring income inequality trends in Latin America, we econometrically evaluate how changes in economic policy and structure have impacted gendered employment and unemployment rates, using country-level panel data for a set of 18 Latin American countries between 1990 and 2010. 

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America’s chilling experiment in human sacrifice

May 26, 2020 By Lynn Parramore & Jeffrey L. Spear, Institute for New Economic Thinking
- Commentary


A chilling experiment is underway in America, with plenty of unwilling human guinea pigs.

Many parts of the country are reopening for business against the warnings of medical experts, flying in the face of grim predictions of sharply rising body counts. Two-thirds of Americans fear that the restart is happening too quickly, and the President himself acknowledges that by easing restrictions, “there’ll be more death.” Yet he presses on, even as his own White House suffers a viral outbreak.

News screens flash with tallies of death and tallies of wealth: New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo has declared that lives must be saved “whatever it costs,” insisting that for Americans the choice “between public health and the economy” is “no contest.” But he did not ask celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, who some weeks ago expressed his view that reopening schools could give the country its “mojo back,” and perhaps “only cost us 2-3% in terms of total mortality. (2% sounds conveniently small compared to its equivalent in human lives, 6,560,000. Oz later apologized after public outrage).

Meanwhile Dan Patrick, lieutenant governor of Texas, offered his own assessment of the trade-off between capitalism and the lives of America’s senior citizens, explaining, “there are more important things than living.”

Since the days of Adam Smith, free market capitalists have held that human beings are rational actors who pursue economic gain for self-interested motives. But here is Patrick, a free marketer if there ever was one, talking about a gift-sacrifice economy model in which people – some people, at least – lay down their lives to keep the economic engines revved.

Patrick’s words reveal an unspoken truth about capitalism. For the system to work smoothly, there have always been requirements of human sacrifice — a certain portion of the population was expected to act not as self-serving homo economicus, but self-sacrificing homo communis, focused upon what benefits the collective at their own expense. If these people can’t social distance at the workplace, they are expected to show up anyway. If there isn’t enough safety equipment, they are declared essential workers who must put their lives and that of their families at risk for the greater good.
But for whom and for what is this sacrifice intended? How much dying will be figured into state budgets and gross domestic product (GDP)? When ranked by GDP, the U.S. is the wealthiest economy in the world, but is a country’s wealth something totally separate from, or even contrary to, the health and life the majority of its citizens?


Wealth v. “illth”To help us navigate these questions, it is useful turn to someone who offered potent challenges to the economic calculus of his day: John Ruskin, the 19th-century art critic-turned-political economist. He was one of the most outspoken critics of capitalism and prevailing economic ideas of the Victorian era, and his work presciently points to shortcomings that have followed us into the present day.

Ruskin questions the premises on which free market capitalism is based, returning to first principles: what is wealth? What do we value? How should we understand the relationship between people, the economy, and the state?

In his view, economies are, above all, social systems whose true end is to benefit the people, and not, as the Texan politician would have it, the other way around. Anticipating the behavioral economics of our own day, Ruskin rejected the idea advocated by such economists as John Stuart Mill that there could be a deductive science of economics based on the assumption that the human being is “a covetous machine” that when applied to actual situations could take “the social affections,” the non-rational aspects of human behavior, into account. Ruskin recognized that such a system implicitly removed the marketplace from the constraints of religion and morality that are supposed to apply to all human behavior. He compared it to an assumption that humans are essentially a skeleton with flesh, blood and consciousness as add-ons founding “an ossifiant theory of progress on this negation of a soul.”

Ruskin defined wealth quite differently from many of his contemporaries, and ours. For him, wealth is anything that supports life and health, from the supplies in your storeroom to the song in your heart: “There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.” (Unto this Last).

By that definition, America is looking increasingly impoverished. And it is not a virus which is stealing our wealth away.

Playing on the root of the word “wealth” from the Old English word “weal,” signifying health, Ruskin proposed that while wealth was anything life-supporting that could be used and enjoyed, it had a dark counterpart that he called “illth” from the Old Norse word for bad – the things that make people ill, their lives stunted and despairing, their environment polluted. Wealth cannot be produced without illth, but great fortunes have been made by extracting the means of wealth without paying the cost of illth. To take a Ruskinian example, a factory that pollutes the water it uses, fouls the air and pays its workers below what a healthy life requires will be more profitable than a business that cleans up after itself and pays a living wage, but its illth becomes a form of national debt expressed in damage to the health of others and the environment. Think of something like a toxic Superfund site.

Economists have a term for Ruskin’s concept of illth, referring to it as “negative externalities,” even though they are not external to the capitalist economic system, but intrinsic to it. The most daunting problems of the current age, environmental disaster and inequality, are fueled by illth.

The Covid-19 crisis has merely amplified trends of rising illth, of despair, sickness, and alienation, which have been on the rise for decades as globalization, money-driven politics, decimated workers’ rights, and privatization have tipped the economic balance far in favor of the very few. If we are to judge a country’s health not by GDP, which rises in the face of a massive oil spill, but according to the criteria of the World Happiness Report (WHR), which measures things like social trust and faith in institutions, America is in bad shape when it comes to the ratio of wealth to illth. Scandinavian countries top the WHR, while the U.S. ranks a dismal 19th.

According to the Columbia University study of the 2020 WHR report, the key factors that account for the relative happiness of Scandinavian countries — what makes them wealthy in Ruskin’s terms — are precisely those that have been under pressure or cut back in the U.S. since the rise of neoliberalism: “emancipation from market dependency in terms of pensions, income maintenance for the ill or disabled, and unemployment benefits” together with labor market regulation such as a high minimum wage. Of course, no one likes to pay taxes, but Scandinavian “citizens’ satisfaction with public and common goods such as health care, education, and public transportation that progressive taxation helps to fund,” meets with approval at all income levels.

Pandemics are exacerbated by illth. We can see it in communities of color where the coronavirus strikes down those whose resources and access to health care have been limited by discriminatory policies and high contact employment. We can see it in factory farms where broken supply chains have caused farmers to euthanize livestock and plow under crops while people across the country go hungry. Airlines got immediate stimulus aid in the U.S., but there has been no subsidy for the restaurant supply chain that could be diverted for distribution by food banks and favorably located restaurants thus sustaining at least some of our much-vaunted small businesses. No one has to fly, but everyone must eat.

We sense illth accumulating in the comments of Las Vegas mayor Carolyn Goodman, who, in her eagerness to get the casinos back in business, told an astonished Anderson Cooper on CNN that she would offer up the city’s workers as a “control group” in a reopening experiment. If they weren’t able to social distance, Goodman was unconcerned: “In my opinion, you have to go ahead,” she said. “Every day you get up, it’s a gamble.”

Ruskin saw the capitalists of his day as gamblers heedless of the costs they foisted onto ordinary people: “But they neither know who keeps the bank of the gambling-house, nor what other games may be played with the same cards, nor what other losses and gains, far away among the dark streets, are essentially, though invisibly, dependent upon theirs in lighted rooms.” (Unto This Last).

In other words, not only do capitalists gamble with other peoples’ lives; they are oblivious to the fact that there are other ways to arrange society, to deal the cards differently, more fairly.

Witness the post-Covid reality imagined by Governor Cuomo. Instead of focusing on what changes could better support the health and lives of ordinary people, he has called in Google CEO Eric Schmidt to head a commission to reimagine New York state with more technology permanently inserted into every dimension of civic life. A better deal for Silicon Valley, to be sure. But what is in the cards for everyone else? When educational platforms and health protocols are mapped by gigantic and unaccountable corporations, who gets lost? Surely the answer is those who can least afford it.

President Trump says that it is time to move on from the coronavirus and get on with economy. Ruskin would have recognized the deity worshipped by country’s leader, which he called the “Goddess of getting on.” Only Ruskin recognized that she tended to favor “not of everybody’s getting on – but only of somebody’s getting on,” — what he called a “vital, or rather deathful, distinction.” For capitalists, getting on post-Covid means executives working remotely while the rank and file return to the factory floor without adequate face masks, and large corporations, not public input, determines the blueprints for our lives.

The issue of worker safety does matter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, but not because he fears that some will get sick or die, but for a potential “epidemic of litigation.” In the next pandemic relief legislation, McConnell is looking to solve the problem of worker safety by shielding corporations from lawsuits rather than supporting Centers for Disease Control (CDC) mandated regulations that would both promote safety and sort out what is and is not actionable.

The Visible Hand

Instead of Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand, Ruskin advocated a Visible Hand of reasoned management, a government which could allocate resources effectively and create stores of what citizens most needed in a crisis. In our day this need not be a literal storehouse but surge capacity. The Obama administration, for example, contracted with Halyard Health to design a machine that could turn out 1.5 million N95 masks per day. They were ready to build the machine in 2018 when the Trump administration cancelled the program.

In Ruskin’s view, the Visible Hand was the guardian of the lives of the citizens, especially the poor, whose health and lives were their essential property. Ruskin actually defined an economy as the wise management of labor, applying labor, carefully preserving what it produces, and wisely distributing those products. A country’s wealth is in the people’s strength and health, not their illness and death.

Ruskin’s concepts of wealth and illth help us understand the centrality of ethics and responsibility to economic activity, and how economies are not an assemblage of atomistic human units but whole systems of people interacting, where the activities of some impact the lives of all. His work indicates the need for a whole systems approach to a crisis in which what happens on the beaches of Georgia impacts a nursing home in North Carolina, and visitors to New York City or New Orleans can carry the infection home. The decisions of one business in a complex international supply chain can impact the fate of millions.

In unregulated capitalism, Ruskin sussed out what Sigmund Freud might have recognized as the death drive. Decisions about the economy, he held, must be informed by the essential biologic basis of life itself: “The real science of political economy, which has yet to be distinguished from the bastard science, as medicine from witchcraft, and astronomy from astrology, is that which teaches nations to desire and labour for the things that lead to life; and which teaches them to scorn and destroy the things that lead to destruction” (Unto This Last).

The Covid crisis has exposed contradictions in market and America First ideology. Without federal aid to state and local governments, essential personnel are being laid off even as we declare them heroes. Employer based insurance is failing, but few American politicians are willing to fully embrace single payer insurance. Meat plant workers are declared essential, but still subject to deportation, as if famed Revolutionary patriot Nathan Hale had said, “I only regret that you have but one life to give for my country.”

Ultimately, the most dangerous pestilence that threatens the country is not a packet of RNA called Covid-19 but an economic and political system that does not value true wealth, and promotes the life of the few while condemning the many to literal sickness unto death.

THE CANADIAN MILITARY IS OCCUPYING CONDEMNED NURSING HOMES 
IN ONTARIO AND QUEBEC THAT WERE ABANDONED WHEN THE COVID-19

PRIVATE NURSING HOMES & LONG TERM CARE FACILITIES
AUSTERITY CUTS TO BUDGETS, CONTRACTING OUT, ABUSE OF TEMPORARY FOREIGN WORKERS, PROFITEERING OF LACK OF PATIENT CARE

DOUG FORD PREMIER OF ONT IS OUTRAGED AFTER MILITARY REPORT DESCRIBES CONDITIONS IN NURSING HOMES IT IS OCCUPYING TO CLEAN, DISINFECT AND CARE FOR PATIENTS

NO COMMENT ON POSSIBLE CRIMINAL CHARGES

FORD BACK PEDALS ON FULL NATIONALIZATION OF NURSING HOMES SAYING NOT FAIR TO PAINT THEM ALL WITH THE SAME BRUSH, OH PULLLLLLEEEEAAASSSEEE
\

Trump Golfs While More Americans Die

While the U.S. pandemic death toll approaches 100,000, the president left the White House for one of his personal golf courses
By
PETER WADE



President Trump, who has faced mounting criticism for his administration’s mishandling of the coronavirus crisis and his lack of empathy throughout, decided to leave the White House on Saturday to play golf.

According to several reports, today’s trip to the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, is likely his first outing to one of his private golf courses since early March. However, during the two “working weekends” the president spent at Camp David in May, it is unknown whether or not he played golf.

Trump going golfing is consistent with his reopen theme that he’s been pushing of late, but it still shows a tone-deafness and a lack of empathy. The U.S. pandemic death toll is approaching 100,000, and on top of that it’s Memorial Day weekend, a solemn occasion meant for tributes to Americans lost at war.

Trump’s work ethic hypocrisy is also on display here. Months before he would announce his candidacy for president of the United States, Trump was in full birther mode as he made several rounds on various cable news programs and talk shows attempting to delegitimize America’s first black president, Barack Obama. But when he took a pause from his factless racist attacks, he’d instead take issue with Obama’s penchant for hitting the links.

And of course, this wouldn’t be a Trump controversy without the “there’s always a tweet” meme because astonishingly, there always is.

In October of 2014, Trump tweeted that Obama was being derelict in his duties as a sitting president because he was golfing, writing, “Can you believe that, with all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf. Worse than Carter.”


Can you believe that,with all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf.Worse than Carter
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 14, 2014

And then again that same month Trump bashed Obama. But this time it wasn’t only about the former president golfing but golfing during a health crisis. You can’t make this stuff up.

“President Obama has a major meeting on the NYC Ebola outbreak, with people flying in from all over the country, but decided to play golf!” Trump tweeted.


President Obama has a major meeting on the N.Y.C. Ebola outbreak, with people flying in from all over the country, but decided to play golf!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2014

Trump, as a phone-in guest on Fox News in 2014, spoke about Obama playing golf when, according to CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski, at the time there were two Ebola cases in the U.S.

“When you’re president, you sorta say, ‘I’m gonna give [golf] up for a couple of years and really focus on the job,’” Trump said. “It sends the wrong signal.”

Trump is golfing today.
In 2014 on Fox and Friends he criticized Obama for golfing when there were *two cases* of Ebola in the United States saying, "it sends the wrong signal" and he should have given up golf as president "to really focus on the job." https://t.co/br8jLwVLts pic.twitter.com/Jmh5CSt2mp
— andrew kaczynski🤔 (@KFILE) May 23, 2020


And in 2016, then-candidate Trump said, “I’m going to be working for you. I’m not going to have time to go play golf.”

Aerial photos capture extent of Michigan's disastrous dam failures

By Chaffin Mitchell, AccuWeather staff writer

& Mark Puleo, AccuWeather staff writer

Updated May. 22, 2020 10:48 AM


Severe flash flooding in Midland, Michigan, triggered a flood emergency declaration on May 20. Floodwaters invaded homes, farmland and many roads.

Residents in central Michigan on Thursday began returning to water-logged homes and assessing the scope of damage left by what Gov. Gretchen Whitmer described as a "500-year" flooding event. The disaster began unfolding on Tuesday after a long period of heavy rain caused rivers to swell beyond anything seen before, which resulted in two dams failing.

By Wednesday night, nearly 11,000 people in Midland had been evacuated in less than 12 hours, city officials pointed out. They also called attention to a remarkable outcome from the rapid evacuations: There were no major injuries or deaths reported during the disaster.

Whitmer visited the area on Wednesday to assess the damage left after the failures of the Edenville Dam and the Sanford Dam in Midland County


Damages are seen on one of two North M-30 bridges on Wednesday, May 20, 2020 in Edenville, Michigan. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

"I think, like everyone, it was hard to believe we're in the midst of a 100-year crisis, a global pandemic and we're also dealing with a flooding event that looks to be the worse in 500 years," Gov. Whitmer said.

Inspections to roadways and bridges also began on Thursday, with city officials urging residents to stay off parkways like the Currie Bridge until experts can examine its structural safety.

Even as floodwaters began to recede on Thursday, a flood warning was enacted for the day with water levels remaining far above the flood stage. The Tittabawassee River peaked at a record crest of 35.05 feet, recorded by the National Weather Service (NWS) at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday. The previous record of 33.9 feet stood since 1986.



Currie Bridge will need to be inspected and confirmed as structurally sound before reopened for use. Please DO NOT walk across it (barricades are still up for cars). https://t.co/o9RWE78gPG— City of Midland, MI (@CityofMidlandMI) May 21, 2020

As of Thursday night, the river was had dropped below 30 feet. In comparison, the flood stage is 24 feet and major flooding occurs when waters rise to 28 feet, according to the NWS.

Gov. Whitmer warned that the flooding could inundate parts of downtown Midland with as much as 9 feet of water. A flash flood emergency was in effect for areas downstream from the dams, including Midland City and Freeland Michigan. The flooding was so bad it was deemed 'catastrophic' by the NWS on Wednesday morning.



1/5


Aerial photos taken on May 21 capture the extensive damage in Midland, Michigan, left behind by the week's destructive flooding. (Satellite image ©2020 Maxar Technologies.)

AccuWeather National Reporter Blake Naftel was on the ground just south of Midland and described the situation as "rapidly-evolving" as the floodwaters continued rising on Wednesday. Aerial footage captured on Tuesday showed the raging waters completely overwhelming the Edenville Dam.

"Extremely dangerous flooding is ongoing along the Tittabawassee River in Midland County due to catastrophic failures at the Edenville and Sanford dams," the NWS wrote. "A Flood Warning is in effect, and anyone near the river should seek higher ground immediately, avoid driving into flood waters, and continue to heed evacuation orders given by local authorities. Life-threatening flooding continues today."


Waters overflow the Tittabawassee River, Wednesday, May 20, 2020, in Midland, Michigan. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

The Edenville Dam is located about 30 miles inland from the Saginaw Bay of Lake Huron. Over 80,000 people live in Midland County.

A leading expert who has been studying and inspecting dams and levees for more than 50 years, Tom Wolff, said it is not clear if the breach was due to overtopping, or a break just before overtopping after viewing the video showing the initial break.


The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) revoked the Edenville Dam’s license for power generation in 2018 after numerous violations and longstanding concerns that the dam could not withstand a significant flood. The commission notified the dam's previous owner as far back as 1999 that it needed to increase capacity the dam's spillways, according to Detroit News.

According to Wolff, there are thousands of old and or poorly maintained dams in the US.

"American Society of State Dam Safety Officials (ASDSO) estimates more than 2,170 at-risk dams in the high hazard category. High hazard refers to consequences that include potential loss of life. So there are similar situations all around the US, and it is just a matter of when and where there is a very rare, but very large storm event that leads to overtopping and destructive erosion, or other types of failure,” Wolff said.


Wolff stressed that the public needs to be aware of where such conditions exist, and importantly in the absence of repair, mapping of what areas would flood in the event of a breach.

Concerns among residents and environmentalists grew about the potential of widespread toxic contamination after floodwaters mixed with containment ponds at the vast Dow chemical plant.

According to the Midland County Roads Commission, every bridge crossing the Tittabawassee River is closed as of 10 a.m., local time, on Wednesday.

"Many roads are under water," the MCRC said on Twitter. "Please DO NOT attempt to use roadways that are under water."


Michigan State officers return as the Tittabawassee River overflows, Wednesday, May 20, 2020, in Midland, Michigan. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Midland County emergency management told people in Midland City, Michigan, who are located west of Eastman and south of US 10, to evacuate immediately on Tuesday afternoon, according to NBC25.

A slow-moving storm doused Michigan with heavy rains over the period of several days, triggering fear of imminent dam failure and flood warnings across the state.

At least two rivers in mid-Michigan, the Tittabawassee River in Midland and the Rifle River near Sterling, reached their major flood stage on Tuesday afternoon, sending dams past their limits.

The Tittabawassee Fire and Rescue rescued the driver of a pickup truck after the vehicle was swept away while trying to drive on a flooded roadway on Tuesday, according to WNEM.


Photos shared by the Michigan State Police depict the rush of floodwaters from the broken dam wreaking havoc. (Twitter/@MSPBayRegion)

“A very slowly moving storm system and cold front pushing through the Midwest has produced anywhere from 3 to 8 inches (100 to 200 mm) of rainfall in just the past week from the western Great Lakes through northern Indiana and into southern Missouri,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Jack Boston said.

Edenville Township residents along Sanford and Wixom lakes northwest of Midland were urged to evacuate their homes prior to the Edenville Dam burst. They were advised to make arrangements to stay elsewhere through Wednesday. Shelters have been set up at schools in the area.

Officials in Arenac County and Gladwin County, Michigan, also urged residents to evacuate ahead of the failure due to the possible dam breach from flash flooding along the Tittabawassee and Cedar rivers.


Edenville Dam at south end of Wixom Lake in Gladwin County, Michigan 7AM #miwx @LiveStormsMedia @Ginger_Zee @spann @CEaslickWNEM @C_Burkhart @NWSGaylord @NWSDetroit pic.twitter.com/oQKS5jvHr3— CJ Postal (@CJPostal) May 19, 2020

The Tittabawassee Township Department of Public Works asked Tittabawassee Township residents on Wednesday afternoon to reduce personal water usage and said water use may result in sewage backup to homes and businesses.

Naftel was in Midland on Wednesday morning, interviewing residents of the area and capturing the flooding devastation.

“I don’t even know what to think. It’s so crazy to see how much water is coming in, we were lucky to be on top of the crest of the hill so it's staying away from our home but we’ve got a fish or something trying to swim across,” one resident told Naftel.

Floodwaters have reached homes and covered streets in the areas, leaving some properties completely overtaken.


Footage captured by AccuWeather National Reporter Blake Naftel shows floodwaters completely covering properties, reaching houses and blanketing roads.

As floodwaters continued rising, threatening to cut off road access, emergency personnel warned citizens about the potential dangers of flooding and to find alternative routes if met with road closures.

Officials with Bay County Road Commission said the county is experiencing water over roads in some areas and water issues with draining. The commission is in the process of working on a map of roads closed and water over the road, according to the commission’s Facebook post.

“With all the rain we are getting, the river is rising and roads may be underwater. If you see water over the road, please do not attempt to drive thru it. Find an alternate route. Also, We are also aware there are water issues with draining. We just received a very large amount of rain and it has no where to go. Please be patient over the next couple days,” the post reads, MLive reports.


Dan Dionne looks over his former deck outside his home, Wednesday, May 20, 2020, in Edenville, Michigan. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Around 1 a.m. Tuesday, the Saginaw County Emergency Management Team reported that an Edenville Dam failure in Midland could impact residents along the Tittabawassee River in Tittabawassee and Saginaw townships.

Midland County Emergency Management stated that the Edenville and Sanford dams are “structurally sound but spilling floodwaters” as of around 3 a.m. Tuesday, according to MLive.

Later on Tuesday, Midland County Emergency Management said that the Edenville and Sanford dams "are structurally sound but can no longer control or contain the amount of water flowing through the spill gates." The county is working with the hydroelectric power plant Boyce Hydro to assess the dams.

"At this point, the water is still rising from all of the rainfall we received over the last couple of days and it will continue to do so throughout the day," the Midland County Central Dispatch Authority said Tuesday.

A flood warning remains in effect for the Tittabawassee, from Midland downstream to Saginaw, and the forecast does not show relief for Midland.

How one Swedish teenager armed with a homemade sign ignited a crusade and became the leader of a movement

ROLLING STONE MARCH 26, 2020

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/greta-thunberg-climate-crisis-cover-965949/

ONLY TWO COVID-19 MONTHS AGO, BUT IT FEELS LIKE A YEAR

Trump Economic Advisor Reduces Workers to ‘Human Capital Stock’

HASSETT REVEALS THE REAL SOURCE 

OF CAPITAL'S  WEALTH

“Our capital stock hasn’t been destroyed, our human capital stock is ready to get back to work,” Kevin Hassett said

WIPE THAT SMIRK OFF HIS FACE

CNN’s Dana Bash and Senior White House Economic Adviser Kevin Hassett.
CNN/Screencap

By  PETER WADE  MAY 25, 2020

While discussing whether the U.S. economy might recover this fall after the coronavirus downturn, a Trump economic advisor referred to the American worker as “human capital stock.”

Senior White House Economic Adviser Kevin Hassett made the wildly insensitive remark, first flagged by Aaron Rupar on Twitter, on Sunday after CNN’s Dana Bash asked whether unemployment numbers would remain in double digits come November.

“Our capital stock hasn’t been destroyed, our human capital stock is ready to get back to work, and so there are lots of reasons to believe that we can get going way faster than we have in previous crises,” Hassett said.
pic.twitter.com/TCPj4rbgHU
— PoliticsVideo23 (@politicsvideo23) May 25, 2020

Calling people “stock” is next level apathetic, and the way Hassett used the term so casually lines up with the lack of empathy shown to the victims of the coronavirus by Trump’s administration and Republicans since the crisis began months ago.

Trump has moved ahead with attempts to cut food stamps during the crisis while Republicans in Congress have balked at passing a second stimulus package and are looking to phase out coronavirus-related unemployment benefits.

Hassett was also asked about increasing funding for food stamps and said he hadn’t raised the topic with Trump, saying, “I have not discussed with the president.”

Hassert also called the requests for additional funding coming from states “absurd” and “radical.”

“There’s already a lot of money for state and local governments… I think that a lot of the requests for state and local bailouts that you’re seeing out there up on the Hill are, like, radically, radically more money than the expected shortfall for the year… And the requests are kind of absurd,” Hassert said.

A thoughtful and commonsense debate can be had about whether or not the funding requests from states are “absurd.” But calling human beings “stock” — especially as essential workers are putting their lives and bodies on the line right now — is undeniably absurd and heartless.

IN CAPITALISM THERE ARE TWO FORMS OF CAPITAL

FIXED; BUILDING, LAND, MACHINERY, RAW MATERIALS

VARIABLE: LABOUR

ONLY THROUGH LABOUR IS VALUE CREATED

THAT RED REVOLUTIONARY SCOTSMAN ADAM SMITH

What Happened to America’s Mayor?

Rudy Giuliani was once a national hero who refused to let Donald Trump buy him breakfast. 

How did he become who he is today?

WHERE'S RUDY?
WHO WANTS TO KNOW?!
HE DISAPPEARED RIGHT AROUND THE IMPEACHMENT

NOBODY I KNOW MENTIONED NO CEMENT SHOES

By SETH HETTENA

Spencer Heyfron/Redux

This story appears in the June 2020 print edition of Rolling Stone.

Not long ago, Rudy Giuliani was traveling in a car across New York City with Jon Sale, his longtime friend, when some construction workers saw the former mayor and approached the vehicle. Giuliani lowered the window. “One of them,” Sale recalls, “said, ‘Mr. Mayor, I would like to shake your hand and thank you for what you did for New York. I wish you were still mayor.’ ”

This happens a lot to Rudy Giuliani, and it reflects what he once represented to most Americans: a man whose steady response to the attacks of September 11th, 2001, transcended partisan politics and transformed him into a national hero. Christened “America’s Mayor,” Giuliani for years was an immensely popular figure who appeared destined for a lucrative, decorated career at the spires of American business and government.

Two decades later, Giuliani is in free fall. The past few years on the national stage have left his reputation in tatters, marked in history for his role in the Ukraine extortion scandal that got a president impeached. He has seemed, at times, unstable and incoherent, contradicting both himself and the president in wild appearances on cable news, while spinning a web of conspiracy theories with Joe Biden at the center.


Giuliani’s ever-dwindling circle of friends — “I got about five friends left,” he was overheard telling someone near a reporter for the New York Daily News in one of his frequent phone mishaps — maintains that Rudy is still Rudy. A bit older at 76 (as of May 28th), sure, but still the same brash maverick he always was, and anybody who says otherwise has an ax to grind.

But others, even those with a deep affinity for Rudy, have been stunned as a man they barely recognize pokes at his iPad in Fox News interviews or drools through a boozy lunch with a reporter. Raoul Felder, his divorce lawyer, tells Rolling Stone “the Rudy Giuliani that I knew was a very careful, brilliant lawyer. . . . It’s hard to comport what I see and the way he was.”

Rick Wilson, the GOP political consultant who credits Giuliani with making his career, says he will defend to his dying breath the Giuliani of 9/11, but he adds, “It’s a cliché that if you live long enough, you’ll see your heroes become villains.”

As Giuliani’s friends have slipped away over the years, some have been replaced by people who the Rudy of 35 years ago would have put in prison. Now, the U.S. attorney’s office he once ran is taking a hard look at his Ukraine activities, while many in the White House view Giuliani as toxic and blame him for the president’s impeachment.

FEATURE ARTICLE LONG READ

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/rudy-giuliani-new-york-trump-997712/

Pompeo is helping Trump destroy US credibility around the world — according to a former assistant secretary of state


May 25, 2020 By Alex Henderson, AlterNet



President Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear that he prefers loyalists in his administration. And Trump has no greater loyalist than Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose unquestioning devotion to the president is the focus of a scathing op-ed by Michael H. Fuchs (former deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs) for The Guardian.

“Donald Trump’s disdain for the people, country and values his office is supposed to represent is unmatched in recent memory,” Fuchs asserts. “And he has found in the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, a kindred spirit who has embraced his role as Trumpisms number one proselytizer to the world.”

Fuchs cites the recent firing of former State Department Inspector General Steve Linick as a glaring example of Pompeo’s adherence to Trumpism. Linick’s cardinal sin, in Pompeo’s mind, was that he was not a devoted Trump loyalist — and for that reason, he had to go.

“Pompeo doesn’t wield nearly as much power or have the jurisdiction to inflict damage on as wide a range of issues as the president,” Fuchs notes. “He’s not as crass or erratic as Trump, and his Twitter feed seems dedicated more to childish mockery than outright attacks. But when it comes to foreign policy, Pompeo’s penchant for undermining America’s credibility is top-notch.”

Pompeo, Fuchs explains, deeply resented the scrutiny he was getting from Linick.

“According to news reports,” Fuchs notes, “Pompeo was being investigated by the inspector general for bypassing Congress and possibly breaking the law in sending weapons to Saudi Arabia, even though his own department and the rest of the U.S. government advised against the decision. He was also supposedly organizing fancy dinners — paid for by taxpayers — with influential businesspeople and TV personalities that seemed geared more towards supporting Pompeo’s political career than advancing U.S. foreign policy goals. And he was reportedly being scrutinized for using department personnel to conduct personal business, such as getting dry cleaning and walking his dog.”

During the Ukraine scandal, Fuchs recalls, Pompeo “defended Trump while throwing under the bus career State Department officials, like the ousted U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Marie Yovanovitch, who spoke out.” Moreover, Fuchs adds, Pompeo “has regularly ignored Congress, withholding documents from lawmakers — including during the Ukraine impeachment investigation – and refusing to appear for testimony.”

Fuchs concludes his op-ed by stressing that when Trump damages the United States’ credibility in the world, he does so with Pompeo’s help.

“The fish, they say, rots from the head,” Fuchs asserts. “And Pompeo, like his boss, is actively undermining the values embodied by the state department, its professionals and the Americans they represent.”

Is planet Earth as a whole likely to be wage-led?

Arslan Razmi

Keywords: demand regime; income distribution; wage-led growth; neo-Kaleckian open-economy models

Published in print:Jul 2018

Category:Research Article

DOI:https://doi.org/10.4337/roke.2018.03.01

Pages:289–306

Download PDF (145.9 KB)

Open-economy considerations that create the possibility of ‘beggar-thy-neighbor’ effects offer one explanation for why the relationship between distribution, demand, and growth may be complicated in the short run. Several authors have argued recently, however, that even if demand and growth are profit-led in many individual countries, the global economy is likely to be wage-led since the planet as a whole runs balanced trade. This paper shows that this argument, while intuitively appealing, does not hold up to careful examination. Although the world economy as a whole is a closed system, it is not isomorphic to a closed economy, thanks to repercussion effects, relative price movements, and cross-country heterogeneity. Using asymmetries in consumption as a simple illustrative device I show that, in a two-country world, the effects of global redistribution depend on the nature of the constituent economies. This conclusion holds in spite of balanced trade at a planetary level, and regardless of whether one or both economies have excess capacity or whether zero-sum effects are present or not.