BBB Bill Would've Allowed Millions Of Women To Work

While 6.4 million jobs were filled by workers in the last year, millions of other jobs remain unfilled. One reason is that millions of women remain out of the workforce because of issues like the lack of affordable child care. The Build Back Better Bill would have solved this problem, but too many senators refused to vote for it. They would rather complain that vote for solutions that would let women return to work.

Here is how the situation is described by Heather Long in The Washington Post:

If two years of pandemic life has taught us anything, it is that the United States urgently needs its own version of Japan’s “womenomics,” an effortto boost women in the workforce.

Omicron January has offered yet another reminder that parents, especially moms, are at a breaking point — over inadequate child care, intermittent schooling and the challenges of work, whether remote or in-person. It’s also been a warning about what happens when the U.S. economy doesn’t have enough workers: Growth slows as businesses are forced to cut hours or shut entirely. The 24-hour diner becomes the 16-hour place.

The irony of the moment is that at precisely the time when U.S. policymakers should think bigger about remaking the workplace to meet the needs of women, we are going in the wrong direction. The impending demise of Build Back Better threatens initiatives such as paid parental leave, more subsidies for child care and universal prekindergarten.

Addressing these long-standing problems is not just a matter of doing something nice for women, children and families — it’s good for the overall economy. There’s an immediate need to keep more women from quitting (or forgoing promotions) because they are burned out, but there’s also a longer-term imperative to make it easier for more women to be part of the paid workforce in the years to come.

With baby boomers retiring, the United States is likely to be short on workers for years. Immigration would help, but so would policies that specifically target enabling more women to work.

The United States used to be a global leader in advancing women in the workforce, but that’s not true anymore. In 1985, the United States was behind only Sweden in the share of women working. By 2019, the nation had fallen to 23rd, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Other nations have eclipsed the United States by following a formula: Offer flexibility, child care and paid parental leave.

In the short-term, parents need flexible scheduling from their employer to get through these covid-19 crunch periods. But to really change the game for women will require nationwide policies.

Japan launched womenomics in 2013 to try to increase the number of Japanese women in the formal workforce. It was far from perfect, but Japan’s female labor force participation rate soared above the United States and many European countries.

The core of womenomics was 14 weeks paid maternity leave, more government-subsidized child care, tax reforms to incentivize work and goals to prod employers to promote women to management ranks and to encourage men to take paternity leave.

For years there have been calls to do something similar in the United States, not to mention outrage that the United States is one of only seven countries in the world without any mandated paid maternity leave. McKinsey and S&P Global — hardly left-leaning institutions — have produced reports arguing that the key to boosting U.S. economic growth is to get more women into the paid workforce.

That urgency has only grown after the pandemic’s toll on the nation. Overall, the share of Americans working or looking for work is near the lowest levels since the 1970s. Put another way, there are 2.3 million fewer people working now than pre-pandemic, and more than half are women.

It’s a major red flag that day cares are at only 90 percent of normal staffing levels and schools are in dire need of bus drivers and substitute teachers, among other positions.

The Build Back Better package was supposed to go a long way toward addressing these problems.

“Probably the single biggest thing Build Back Better could do for the economy is boost women’s labor force participation,” said Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former adviser to the Japanese government.

But now it’s become “Build Back Smaller.” The measure has to be pared down significantly, if anything passes at all. There still seems to be momentum for universal pre-K, but other child-care efforts are in limbo and paid family leave looks likely to be cut.

“The reason this is not a top priority is this is invisible work that gets done by generation after generation of American women,” said Alicia Sasser Modestino, associate professor at Northeastern University who has done extensive research on the impact of the pandemic on women.

There are trade-offs to any policy decisions, but let’s be blunt: America is once again on the verge of leaving women behind. That’s going to hurt families and the entire economy for years to come.

Many Workers Are No Longer Willing To Take Lousy Jobs

Republicans would like you to believe that the current "labor shortage" is because workers would rather get an unemployment check. That's ridiculous! Workers would rather work than get a government check, because there is honor and respect in working for a living. But it makes no sense to work at a job that keeps you in poverty and doesn't pay your bills. Workers are no longer willing to go back to a lousy and low-wage job.

Here's how economist Paul Krugman puts it in The New York Times: 

The emergence of what look like labor shortages even though employment is still five million below its prepandemic level, and even further below its previous trend — remains somewhat mysterious.

Unlike the “skills gap” invoked to explain persistent unemployment after the 2008 crisis, this time labor shortages seem to be real. Workers are quitting at record rates, an indication that they feel confident about finding new jobs. Wages are growing at rates normally associated with the peak of a boom. So workers are clearly feeling empowered, even though many fewer Americans are employed than in the past. Why?

Earlier this year many people insisted that enhanced unemployment benefits were reducing the incentive to accept jobs. But those extra benefits were eliminated in many states as early as June, and nationally in early September; this cutoff doesn’t seem to have had any measurable effect on employment or labor force participation. . . .

A less upbeat story says that some employees are still afraid to go back to work, and/or that many can’t go back to work because their child care arrangements are still disrupted.

But there’s at least one more possibility (these things aren’t mutually exclusive): The experience of the pandemic may have led many workers to explore opportunities they wouldn’t have looked at previously.

I’d been thinking vaguely along these lines, but Arindrajit Dube, who has been one of my go-to labor economists throughout this pandemic, recently put it very clearly. As he says, there’s considerable evidence that “workers at low-wage jobs [have] historically underestimated how bad their jobs are.” When something — like, say, a deadly pandemic — forces them out of their rut, they realize what they’ve been putting up with. And because they can learn from the experience of other workers, there may be a “quits multiplier” in which the decision of some workers to quit ends up inducing other workers to follow suit.

I like this story, in part because it dovetails with one of the main discoveries of behavioral economics — namely, that people have a strong status quo bias. That is, they tend to keep doing what they were doing even when there might be much better alternatives. Famously, workers are far more likely to enroll in retirement planswhen they have to check a box to opt out than when they have to check a box to opt in. Checking that box costs nothing, yet many people will fail to take advantage of a good deal unless enrollment is automatic.

So I can easily believe that there were many workers who should have quit their lousy jobs in, say, 2019, but didn’t because they weren’t really considering the alternatives. And it’s at least possible that the disruptions of the pandemic led to a great rethink.

No Gas Shortage In Texas (Just An Abundance Of Dumb)

(This photo of a Texan filling trash cans with gas is from Facebook.)

A lot of people in the Lone Star State have decided to show their stupidity again, and in doing so have created minor problem with gas availability. They looked at Hurricane Harvey, and assumed their would be a gas shortage -- so they began to hoard the gas.

The truth is that there is no shortage. From WFAA-TV, here what Ryan Sitton of the Texas Railroad Commission (the agency that controls the oil and gas industry) had to say:

As gas prices spike across Texas and fuel runs short at some gas stations, officials say there's no shortage of fuel in the state because of Harvey.

Texas Railroad Commissioner Ryan Sitton said consumers are putting undue demand on fuel and that's making it difficult to resupply gas stations in a timely fashion. He called the problem simply one of demand and logistics. 

"There's plenty of gasoline," he said. "This will subside."

According to Sitton, the concerns started when refineries began shutting down along the Gulf Coast due to Hurricane Harvey. As news spread, so did concern over a potential shortage, leading to large rushes to stations. 

Sitton says he understands the worry as people drive up to gas stations and see high prices, long lines and red bags covering gas pumps.

But here's why this is happening, the commissioner says:

• Rumors spread of shortage, spurring rush to gas stations

• Gas stations see higher demand than usual

• Stations run out of gas at a high rate due to demand

• Station owners become concerned about supply, raise prices

• So many stations run out of gas it takes longer to resupply

"Remember the old stories of runs on the bank?" he said in a phone interview broadcast on WFAA's Facebook page. "If everyone goes to the bank at the same time and tries to get their money, then it causes a panic and the bank doesn't have enough cash in the drawer to give everyone their money ... The bank has your money, it's just not sitting at that one [branch]."

ust like the banks, Sitton said there's plenty of supply, but it will take longer to get that gasoline to the stations due to the high demand. 

This is what Sitton says about supply:

• The entire world uses 100 million of refined product daily

• The U.S. refines 18 million of those 100 million barrels

• Six million of that 18 million is refined in Texas

• About half of that six million is currently offline or at reduced capacity due to Harvey

"So, yes, that's a lot," Sitton said. "However, we have 230 million barrels of gasoline in storage in the United States right now. So if that three million barrels of refined capacity stayed offline for an entire month that would be 90 million barrels that wouldn't be produced. That would be less than half of what we have in inventory." 

And Sitton said that shouldn't even be a concern. 

"We don't expect these refineries to be down that long," he said. "We expect that there might be a couple that stay down that long, but some of them, like in Corpus Christi, are already working to go back online."

So what is the bottom line according to Sitton?

"Concerns and even panic over gasoline shortages are leading to a sense that there's a gasoline shortage," he said. "When in fact, there isn't one."

Why Does Water-Poor Texas Allow "Fracking" ?

There may be many states in this country that do not have to worry about water -- but Texas is not one of them. Many parts of the state are still in the throes of a severe drought, but that is not the main cause of Texas' water problems -- that has only added to those problems. Those water problems existed before the drought, and they will continue to exist after the drought has ended.

The sad fact is that Texas cannot sustain its current population with clean water far into the future -- and since Texas is one of the fastest growing states in the nation, population growth makes the problem worse each year. A conservative estimate says that by 2060 Texas will be short by 1.1 trillion gallons of water of what would be needed to sustain its population. A more realistic estimate is that Texas will be 2.7 trillion gallons short.

The legislature threw a few million dollars at the problem in the last legislative session, but no one thinks it was anywhere near enough to solve the growing water problems. Even the State Comptroller, Republican Susan Combs, admits we are not doing enough to solve the problem -- and she calls for more spending on all fronts -- conservation, desalinization, water projects, and the development of new technology to extract and clean more water.

To me, this brings up a question. With the water problems being faced by this state, why is it not doing more to protect the ground water we currently have? Specifically, why do we continue to allow the gas companies to engage in fracking (the pumping of water and poisonous chemicals into the ground to force hard-to-get natural gas to the surface)? While all tracking operations may not poison or pollute ground water reserves, we know for a fact that many tracking operations do damage ground water (sometimes polluting them so much that the water can produce a flame when lit with a match).

The gas companies have engaged in a huge campaign and lobbying effort to disguise what they are doing with their fracking operations -- getting laws passed to hide what chemicals are being used and denying that those chemicals can possibly get into the ground water. But common sense and past pollution due to fracking tells us otherwise. Why then is Texas, a state with widely recognized water shortage problems, continuing to allow the giant gas companies to engage in fracking -- putting our precious reserves of ground water in danger of pollution?

The question, of course, is a rhetorical one. Anyone with even a passing familiarization with Texas politics knows the answer. Texas government has long depended on money from gas and oil production, and too many Texas politicians, especially the Republicans (who control the state government), get huge campaign donations from the companies doing the fracking.

Those politicians know Texas has serious water problems, and they know that fracking endangers the ground water in Texas -- but they have made the greedy and stupid decision to support the giant corporations instead of protecting the ground water resources we currently have. They have put their own desire for campaign dollars over what is in the best interests of the citizens of Texas.

This will not change as long as the Republicans control the state government. They never met a corporation they wouldn't support -- even those who pollute the air, soil, and precious water of Texas. We need to fix this in November -- by voting the GOP out of power.

(NOTE - The image above was found at the website texasceomagazine.com.)

The Coming Food Crisis

(The picture above is from Quierosaber's Blog.)

I found the following article at the Zero Energy Construction blog. It concerns the coming food crises that will happen if we (and other countries) don't change many of our greed-based policies -- and change them fast. It was written by Lester R Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute. I am re-posting it here because I think it is something that everyone should read and think about. Here is what Mr. Brown has to say:


In the early spring of 2012, U.S. farmers were on their way to planting some 96 million acres in corn, the most in 75 years. A warm early spring got the crop off to a great start. Analysts were predicting the largest corn harvest on record.

The United States is the leading producer and exporter of corn, the world's feedgrain. At home, corn accounts for four-fifths of the U.S. grain harvest. Internationally, the U.S. corn crop exceeds China's rice and wheat harvests combined. Among the big three grains – corn, wheat, and rice – corn is now the leader, with production well above that of wheat and nearly double that of rice.

The corn plant is as sensitive as it is productive. Thirsty and fast-growing, it is vulnerable to both extreme heat and drought. At elevated temperatures, the corn plant, which is normally so productive, goes into thermal shock.

As spring turned into summer, the thermometer began to rise across the Corn Belt. In St. Louis, Missouri, in the southern Corn Belt, the temperature in late June and early July climbed to 100 degrees Fahrenheit or higher 10 days in a row. For the past several weeks, the Corn Belt has been blanketed with dehydrating heat.

Weekly drought maps published by the University of Nebraska show the drought-stricken area spreading across more and more of the country until, by mid-July, it engulfed virtually the entire Corn Belt. Soil moisture readings in the Corn Belt are now among the lowest ever recorded.

While temperature, rainfall, and drought serve as indirect indicators of crop growing conditions, each week the U.S. Department of Agriculture releases a report on the actual state of the corn crop. This year the early reports were promising. On May 21st, 77 percent of the U.S. corn crop was rated as good to excellent. The following week the share of the crop in this category dropped to 72 percent. Over the next eight weeks, it dropped to 26 percent, one of the lowest ratings on record. The other 74 percent is rated very poor to fair. And the crop is still deteriorating.

Over a span of weeks, we have seen how the more extreme weather events that come with climate change can affect food security. Since the beginning of June, corn prices have increased by nearly one half, reaching an all-time high on July 19th.

Although the world was hoping for a good U.S. harvest to replenish dangerously low grain stocks, this is no longer in the cards. World carryover stocks of grain will fall further at the end of this crop year, making the food situation even more precarious. Food prices, already elevated, will follow the price of corn upward, quite possibly to record highs.

Not only is the current food situation deteriorating, but so is the global food system itself. We saw early signs of the unraveling in 2008 following an abrupt doubling of world grain prices. As world food prices climbed, exporting countries began restricting grain exports to keep their domestic food prices down. In response, governments of importing countries panicked. Some of them turned to buying or leasing land in other countries on which to produce food for themselves.

Welcome to the new geopolitics of food scarcity. As food supplies tighten, we are moving into a new food era, one in which it is every country for itself.

The world is in serious trouble on the food front. But there is little evidence that political leaders have yet grasped the magnitude of what is happening. The progress in reducing hunger in recent decades has been reversed. Unless we move quickly to adopt new population, energy, and water policies, the goal of eradicating hunger will remain just that.

Time is running out. The world may be much closer to an unmanageable food shortage – replete with soaring food prices, spreading food unrest, and ultimately political instability– than most people realize.

Obama Acts To Stop Medicine Shortages

Those of you who are pretty healthy may not know this, but the United States has a growing problem of drug shortages. I'm not talking about shortages of illegal drugs (those are plentiful), but of legal prescription drugs prescribed for patients by their doctor. In 2010 there were 178 drug shortages reported to the Food & Drug Administration (FDA). Shortages of medicines in 2011 are on a pace to top that.

Naturally, as with most other serious problems in this country, Congress has refused to address the issue. Too many Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats are afraid that passing legislation to stop the shortages might in some way affect the profits of their rich buddies in the pharmaceutical industry -- and corporate profits take precedence over everything else, even the health of seriously ill American citizens.