A Mason-Dixon Line of Progress

[elleng]

'Inside the ancient town hall of Siena, Italy, the walls hold a series of magnificent 14th-century frescoes showing the effects of good government and bad. One side depicts a prosperous city-state, where justice and tolerance prevail in the Tuscan countryside. The other is ruled by a horned, fanged figure, the streets deserted and scary.

We saw our own version of this allegory with the two Americas this week — one going backward, the other stepping into tomorrow. We saw a retreat to bigotry in states dooming themselves to decline. And in other states, we saw a way for people to get around a do-nothing Congress controlled by Know-Nothing throwbacks.

First, the good. On Monday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed a bill that will eventually raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, lifting the earnings of 2.3 million New Yorkers, and he authorized one of the strongest paid parental leave laws in the nation. On the same day, Gov. Jerry Brown of California put his signature to a $15 minimum wage plan in the most populous state. Then San Francisco became the first place in the United States to require businesses to provide paid leave for new parents.

What had seemed impossible just a few years ago is now rolling through cities and states led by forward-looking politicians. Together, these changes amount to a “revolution in the workplace,” as one exultant activist put it. But let’s not get too excited: The United States remains the only developed country in the world that does not mandate paid parental leave.

Now, the bad. Following North Carolina’s lead, another state, Mississippi, passed a law allowing people and institutions to deny services to gay people. With this measure, Mississippi, already one of the poorest states in the nation, ensures that good job providers will stay away.

Indeed, PayPal dropped plans to bring 400 jobs to North Carolina after politicians gave people a green light to discriminate. And a host of corporate leaders signed a letter on Wednesday explaining why Mississippi and North Carolina would be shunned. “Such laws are bad for employees,” the representatives of companies ranging from Whole Foods to General Electric wrote, “and bad for business.”

Next door, in Alabama, the embattled Republican governor signed a bill earlier this year preventing cities from raising the minimum wage. This after Birmingham dared to dream of a day when its lowest-paid workers could make $10 an hour.

Nearly all the states with the highest percentage of minimum wage workers — full-time jobholders making $290 a week, before taxes — are in the South. . .

“The nation is alive from the bottom up,” Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California told my colleague Thomas Fuller. “For all the disproportionate focus on Washington, D.C., there’s a whole other America out there, and it should give pause to the pessimists.” Indeed, a new poll found that 44 percent of California residents approve the Legislature’s job performance — compared with a 14 percent approval rating for Congress.

Now, maybe paying the working poor a little more will be a job-killer, as Republicans assert. Maybe mandating parental leave will inhibit business start-ups. Sure. If you believe doing nothing, in the wake of 20 years of declining wages and a harder quality of life, is better than doing something, this is your home: the geography of despair.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/opinion/a-mason-dixon-line-of-progress.html?

[Baobab]

1. Its possible that a "standstill" clause in a 1990s trade agreement might block any subsequent change

seen to be a "non-conforming measure".

Would a wage increase be framed as a non conforming measure in an arbitral trade body? yes, it most certainly could, it has been twice now. As far as I know one case won, the other vanished into a non-public negotiation. nMost importantly, neither case lost.

So, yes, I am serious. The WTO might tell us we have to reverse something (like a minimum wage increase) to the level of regulation in 1998 or 1995. If we forced foreign firms (bidding on work here is one of the benefits of WTO membership) to pay US minimum wages.

I don't know which date would apply. See discussion here: http://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/20/a_plan_only_banksters_will_love - ( TiSA uses GATS's dates)

And we might have to do it. (For example, most of the good parts of the ACA clearly would not conform to WTO dogma and would be struck down if challenged, which could happen as soon as the floodgates open to health care insurance becoming international trade- then also single payer will forever become impossible, irreversibly. Instead we'll be presented with the globalization of care for the sick, shipping sick people overseas for care, or eliminating bariers to cross border trade in medical service providers. Thats definitely in the pipeline. instead of reforming the system, replace our hardworking doctors and nurses with foreign providers making a fraction as much. (Keeping the waste layer. Increasing profits.)

At the same time they could tell us to discipline any other domestic regulation which was successfully framed as a trade barrier. (Minimum wages could be framed as a trade barrier if they kept qualified foreign firms that paid less - that were successful low bidders, out.)

Its a whole new world ahead of us there.

And we're plunging into it COMPLETELY BLIND TO THE FACT THAT THESE DEALS ARE BEING MADE AND WILL EFFECT ALL OF US.

[elleng]

2. OY!

[Baobab]

3. words don't describe how screwed up the situation is.

For example..