Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > New Yorker Magazine Shooting Blindly at Bernie Sanders
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New Yorker Magazine Shooting Blindly at Bernie Sanders
By Dean Baker [1] / FAIR [2]
February 4, 2016
It's clear that Bernie Sanders has gotten many mainstream types upset. After
all, he is raising issues about the distribution of wealth and income that
they would prefer be kept in academic settings, certainly not pushed front
and center in a presidential campaign.
In response, we are seeing endless shots at Sanders' plans for financial
reform, healthcare reform and expanding Social Security. Many of these
pieces raise perfectly reasonable questions, both about Sanders' goals and
his route for achieving them. But there are also many pieces that just shoot
blindly. It seems the view of many in the media is that Sanders is a fringe
candidate, so it's not necessary to treat his positions with the same
respect awarded the views of a Hillary Clinton or a Marco Rubio.
The New Yorker is clearly in this attack mode. It ran a piece [3] by
Alexandra Schwartz asking, "Should Millennials Get Over Bernie Sanders?" You
can guess the answer.
But the piece runs into serious problems getting there. It tells readers:
[Sanders'] obsession with the banks and the bailout is itself phrased in
weirdly retro terms, the stuff of an invitation to a 2008-election theme
party. As my colleague Ben Wallace-Wells points out [4], we voters under 30
have come of political age during the economic recovery under President
Obama. When I graduated from college, unemployment was close to 10 per cent;
it's now at 5. Sanders's attention to socioeconomic justice is stirring and
necessary, but when his campaign tweets [5] that it's "high time we stopped
bailing out Wall Street and started repairing Main Street," you have to
wonder why his youngest supporters, so attuned to staleness in all things
cultural, are letting him get away with political rhetoric that would have
seemed old even in 2012.
Those familiar with economic data know the labor market, which is the
economy for the vast majority of the public, is very far from recovering
from the recession. While the unemployment rate is reasonably low, this is
largely because millions of workers have dropped out of the workforce.
And, contrary to what is often asserted, these are not retiring baby boomers
or people without the skills needed in a modern economy. The employment rate
of prime-age workers (ages 25-54) is still down by 3.0 percentage points
from its prerecession level. Furthermore, this drop is for workers at all
levels [6] of educational attainment. Employment rates are even down for
workers with college and advanced degrees. Other measures of labor market
strength, like the percentage of people involuntarily working part-time, the
quit rate and the duration of unemployment spells, are all still at
recession levels.
Furthermore, the huge shift from wages to profits that we saw in the
downturn has not been reversed. As a result, wages are more than 6.0 percent
lower than they would be if the labor share had not changed.
Labor Share of Corporate Net Income.
Photo Credit:
Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis.
If this stuff is hard for New Yorker editor types to understand: If workers
lose 6.0 percent of their wages to profit, it has the same impact on their
living standards as if they faced a 6.0 percentage point increase in the
payroll tax. Would the New Yorker think that today's young people have
anything to complain about if they had seen an increase in the payroll tax
in 2009-10 of 6.0 percentage points, which still remains in place today?
If the answer to that one is "yes," then its editors should be able to
understand why millennials in 2016 are unhappy about the state of the
economy, and why they might find a figure like Senator Sanders attractive.
Dean Baker [7] is a macroeconomist and co-director of the Center for
Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He previously worked as a
senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor
at Bucknell University.
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Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [8]
[9]
________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/media/new-yorker-magazine-shooting-blindly-bernie-sa
nders
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/dean-baker
[2] http://www.fair.org
[3]
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/should-millennials-get-ove
r-bernie-sanders
[4]
http://www.newyorker.com/news/benjamin-wallace-wells/bernie-sanders-knows-wh
at-time-it-is
[5] https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/691988741179772928
[6]
http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/did-the-great-recession-lead-to-the-gre
at-vacation
[7] http://www.cepr.net/content/view/80/80/
[8] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on New Yorker Magazine
Shooting Blindly at Bernie Sanders
[9] http://www.alternet.org/
[10] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > New Yorker Magazine Shooting Blindly at Bernie Sanders
New Yorker Magazine Shooting Blindly at Bernie Sanders
By Dean Baker [1] / FAIR [2]
February 4, 2016
It's clear that Bernie Sanders has gotten many mainstream types upset. After
all, he is raising issues about the distribution of wealth and income that
they would prefer be kept in academic settings, certainly not pushed front
and center in a presidential campaign.
In response, we are seeing endless shots at Sanders' plans for financial
reform, healthcare reform and expanding Social Security. Many of these
pieces raise perfectly reasonable questions, both about Sanders' goals and
his route for achieving them. But there are also many pieces that just shoot
blindly. It seems the view of many in the media is that Sanders is a fringe
candidate, so it's not necessary to treat his positions with the same
respect awarded the views of a Hillary Clinton or a Marco Rubio.
The New Yorker is clearly in this attack mode. It ran a piece [3] by
Alexandra Schwartz asking, "Should Millennials Get Over Bernie Sanders?" You
can guess the answer.
But the piece runs into serious problems getting there. It tells readers:
[Sanders'] obsession with the banks and the bailout is itself phrased in
weirdly retro terms, the stuff of an invitation to a 2008-election theme
party. As my colleague Ben Wallace-Wells points out [4], we voters under 30
have come of political age during the economic recovery under President
Obama. When I graduated from college, unemployment was close to 10 per cent;
it's now at 5. Sanders's attention to socioeconomic justice is stirring and
necessary, but when his campaign tweets [5] that it's "high time we stopped
bailing out Wall Street and started repairing Main Street," you have to
wonder why his youngest supporters, so attuned to staleness in all things
cultural, are letting him get away with political rhetoric that would have
seemed old even in 2012.
Those familiar with economic data know the labor market, which is the
economy for the vast majority of the public, is very far from recovering
from the recession. While the unemployment rate is reasonably low, this is
largely because millions of workers have dropped out of the workforce.
And, contrary to what is often asserted, these are not retiring baby boomers
or people without the skills needed in a modern economy. The employment rate
of prime-age workers (ages 25-54) is still down by 3.0 percentage points
from its prerecession level. Furthermore, this drop is for workers at all
levels [6] of educational attainment. Employment rates are even down for
workers with college and advanced degrees. Other measures of labor market
strength, like the percentage of people involuntarily working part-time, the
quit rate and the duration of unemployment spells, are all still at
recession levels.
Furthermore, the huge shift from wages to profits that we saw in the
downturn has not been reversed. As a result, wages are more than 6.0 percent
lower than they would be if the labor share had not changed.
Labor Share of Corporate Net Income.
Photo Credit:
Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis.
If this stuff is hard for New Yorker editor types to understand: If workers
lose 6.0 percent of their wages to profit, it has the same impact on their
living standards as if they faced a 6.0 percentage point increase in the
payroll tax. Would the New Yorker think that today's young people have
anything to complain about if they had seen an increase in the payroll tax
in 2009-10 of 6.0 percentage points, which still remains in place today?
If the answer to that one is "yes," then its editors should be able to
understand why millennials in 2016 are unhappy about the state of the
economy, and why they might find a figure like Senator Sanders attractive.
Dean Baker [7] is a macroeconomist and co-director of the Center for
Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He previously worked as a
senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor
at Bucknell University.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [8]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[9]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/media/new-yorker-magazine-shooting-blindly-bernie-sa
nders
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/dean-baker
[2] http://www.fair.org
[3]
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/should-millennials-get-ove
r-bernie-sanders
[4]
http://www.newyorker.com/news/benjamin-wallace-wells/bernie-sanders-knows-wh
at-time-it-is
[5] https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/691988741179772928
[6]
http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/did-the-great-recession-lead-to-the-gre
at-vacation
[7] http://www.cepr.net/content/view/80/80/
[8] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on New Yorker Magazine
Shooting Blindly at Bernie Sanders
[9] http://www.alternet.org/
[10] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
