Medicare Advantage: Good? Or Bad? LC Sources
Medicare Advantage: Good? Or Bad? LC Sources
Tag: policy
No, California’s $20 Minimum Wage for Fast-Food Workers Did Not Create Jobs
“If minimum wage increases were a drug, governments would have to conduct trials and monitor adverse effects afterward. That’s what happened in Seattle when it raised the minimum wage in 2014. The city called for proposals to study the impact on actual workers earning below the minimum before the law. The Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington was the only volunteer. Its researchers found that the law didn’t cause an increase in layoffs among workers who had previously earned below minimum wage, but it did reduce their hours by an average of 7 percent. That was partly offset by a 3 percent increase in hourly pay for the hours they did work. On net, the law cost these workers an average of $888 per year.
That amount is significant in itself, but it’s important to consider that it accounts for only the short-term effects. As mentioned above, some layoffs and hour reductions will happen immediately, but others—such as more businesses closing and fewer opening, or automation and other changes reducing employment—can take years. Another point is that the workers who benefited from higher pay were the ones most likely to have risen out of the minimum wage ranks to the middle class even without a mandated increase, while the workers who lost much more than $888 per year are more likely to be the ones blocked forever from economic advancement. In fact, the paper found that the workers who benefitted net were the most experienced and highest paid among the group–earning more than the old minimum but less than the new–while the less-experienced workers earning the old minimum or close to it, lost considerably more than the average.
Seattle legislators must have been unhappy with those findings because they cut funding for the Evans School and reached out to the same group at U.C. Berkeley that did the California minimum wage study to do its own distorted analysis, which was rushed out a week before the Evans study was made public. Eventually, Seattle raised the minimum wage again.”
https://reason.com/video/2024/12/19/no-californias-20-minimum-wage-for-fast-food-workers-did-not-create-jobs/
Trump signs 4 new executive orders, transforming military
“The new orders prevent transgender people from openly serving in the military, greenlight the process of developing a missile defense shield to protect the U.S., and reinstate service members that voluntarily left or were forced out of the military over COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
Trump also penned an expected executive order that would “abolish” every diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) office within the DOD and Department of Homeland Security, the latter of which houses the U.S. Coast Guard.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-signs-4-executive-orders-125635519.html
What to know about the Laken Riley Act
“The new law will require the detention of undocumented immigrants accused of certain crimes such as theft. Federal immigration officials have warned it could impact 60,000 people.”
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“ICE warned Congress that the Laken Riley Act could require detention for 60,000 people, and that the agency would need billions of dollars and thousands more detention beds to comply with the law, Axios reported.”
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“The federal government has prioritized deporting immigrants with criminal records since the Obama administration”
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“Study after study has indicated that immigrants — those in the U.S. legally or undocumented — commit crimes at lower rates than U.S. citizens, Axios’ Russell Contreras reports.”
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/29/laken-riley-act-what-to-know-trump-immigration-law
The L.A. Fires Are a Natural Disaster, Not a Policy Disaster
“In some contexts, those policies do make the damage done by wildfires worse. They’ll certainly complicate Los Angeles’ recovery efforts.
But the connection between bad land use, insurance, and environmental regulations and the damage done by the current Los Angeles fires to people and property is more tenuous.
On closer inspection, this appears to be a severe natural disaster with natural causes. Bad public policy has played only a marginal role.”
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“there’s also only so much fuels reduction can do to reduce wildfire risk in the conditions that led to Los Angeles’ current fires: exceptionally strong seasonal Santa Ana winds that reached hurricane levels of intensity.
“If you have strong winds, embers fly away miles ahead of the fire,” says Carmignani. Clearing a few hundred yards here or there can provide firefighters with areas to operate. But it isn’t going to stop the fire from spreading to new areas when winds are that high.
If the four-lane Pacific Coast Highway wasn’t enough of a fire break to prevent beachside Malibu homes from burning down, one wonders what would be.”
https://reason.com/2025/01/14/the-l-a-fires-are-a-natural-disaster-not-a-policy-disaster/
Trump’s ‘External Revenue Service’ Is a Public Relations Effort. It Won’t Change How Tariffs Work.
“Any new tariffs imposed by the incoming Trump administration will function the same way as every other tariff: It will drain wealth from American consumers and businesses to enrich the U.S. Treasury. That’s what tax increases do, even when they are proposed by a Republican president and cheered by a crowd of Republican lawmakers, donors, and administration officials.
Indeed, study after study after study has found that the tariffs Trump levied during his first tenure were paid nearly entirely by American consumers and businesses.”
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“The big change Trump is proposing this time around is the creation of a new “External Revenue Service” that will collect tariff revenue. The exact contours of that new agency are still unclear, but it is probably best thought of as a public relations maneuver rather than a meaningful policy change. After all, there’s already a governmental entity that handles tariff collection—that’s the “customs” in U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Changing the name won’t change anything about the transactions that occur.”
https://reason.com/2025/01/20/trumps-external-revenue-service-is-a-public-relations-effort-it-wont-change-how-tariffs-work/
Trump Must Choose: Tariffs or Lower Prices
“Trump told reporters Monday night that he’s thinking of imposing tariffs of up to 25 percent on Mexican and Canadian goods. The Peterson Institute for International Economics recently published a study finding that such tariffs “would slow growth and accelerate inflation in all three countries.”
Though the details of Trump’s tariffs remain uncertain, he promised in his inauguration speech to establish an “External Revenue Service [ERS] to collect all tariffs, duties, and revenues,…massive amounts of money” from foreign sources. The Secretary of the Treasury was directed to establish the ERS on Monday night by the America First Trade Policy order. Howard Lutnick, Trump’s pick to run the Commerce Department, said that “the External Revenue Service will put up tariffs, or walls that protect you.” They will do just the opposite.
As Reason’s Eric Boehm explains, “The tariffs Trump levied during his first tenure were paid nearly entirely by American consumers and businesses.” Trump has to choose: Complement his deregulatory agenda with free trade policies that decrease the price of consumer goods, manufacturing, and production, or hinder them with protectionism that benefits select industries at the expense of the American people. Let’s hope the president chooses the former.”
https://reason.com/2025/01/21/trump-must-choose-tariffs-or-lower-prices/
Trump’s real inaugural address started when the teleprompter stopped
“When it comes to speeches, there are two Donald Trumps. The first is Teleprompter Trump, who reads a prepared speech and tends to be staid, sleepy, and insincere. The second is Rally Trump, who riffs in front of a cheering crowd and is wild, aggressive, and more true to the person that Trump really is.
We saw this duality on display immediately after Trump’s inauguration.
In his official inaugural address in the Capitol Rotunda, Teleprompter Trump delivered a largely unmemorable performance — a sleepy address that gave audiences little substance to remember it by. In an impromptu follow-up performance given to the overflow crowd in nearby Emancipation Hall, Rally Trump made an appearance — giving a rambling but undeniably more energetic monologue that Trump himself described as “a better speech than the one I made upstairs.”
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The Rally Trump speech really got going when Trump began talking about things he left out of the official inaugural address. He singles out prospective pardons for January 6, 2021, Capitol rioters as an important example, saying it’s “action not words that count — and you’re gonna see a lot of action on the J6 hostages.”
You can see how deeply Trump cares about transforming the official history of January 6. It’s not good enough that he is returning to office: He needs to rewrite what happened such that the people who rioted to try and steal the 2020 election for him are the victims — “hostages” — rather than criminals. It’s all in service of the grander goal of insisting that Trump cannot lose and never has, and using his new powers to try and force reality to match.
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In his first truly authentic speech after returning to office, where he felt unchained to discuss what he really cared about, he spent the bulk of the time obsessing over election results and January 6, endlessly litigating the past and (at times openly) stating his desire to seek recompense and revenge for the indignity of losing an election.
The Rally Trump speech was the truest reflection of the once-and-current president’s feelings and, I suspect, his governing priorities. And four years of a president who uses his power to punish political enemies and reward his lawbreaking friends does not augur well for American democracy.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/395776/trump-inaugural-speech-capitol-rotunda-transcript
6 things we learned from Day 1 about how Trump will govern
“Just over a week ago, soon-to-be-Vice President JD Vance opined that nonviolent trespassers prosecuted for entering the Capitol on January 6, 2021, should be pardoned — but that day’s violent rioters “obviously” should not be.
Trump had other ideas when he issued his sweeping clemency for those he called the “J6 hostages.” He did separate out 14 members of two far-right groups, the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who had been convicted of seditious conspiracy, commuting their sentences instead of giving full pardons. But “all other individuals convicted” of offenses related to the Capitol chaos that day received full unconditional pardons — including those who assaulted police officers, and including the Proud Boys’ leader, Enrique Tarrio.
Trump, it has always been clear, was “delighted” by the storming of the Capitol on January 6; he doesn’t care that his supporters assaulted police, terrorized members of Congress, and threatened to hang his own vice president. What mattered to him was that they were his supporters. So he handed them a get-out-of-jail-free card, even to those who violently tried to overthrow democracy.”
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Trump’s Day 1 executive orders were most numerous and detailed on the topic of immigration. The president revived previous hard-line administration policies, such as a refugee admissions freeze, deportation orders, and border wall construction. He also rolled back some Biden policies intended to let more migrants come in legally if they followed an orderly process, ending Biden’s “parole” program and shutting down an app created for migrants to schedule appointments to make asylum requests.
But on some fronts, Trump’s orders already went much further than he did in his first term and showed a newly emboldened willingness to defy legal caution. For instance:
He ordered that the US military would now be responsible for the “mission” of closing the border.
He used a public health emergency rationale to shut down the asylum system even though there’s no public health crisis at the moment.
He ordered that federal prosecutors recommend the death penalty for any unauthorized immigrant convicted of a capital crime.
He fired several top officials in the US immigration court system, including the system’s acting head.
And he declared that despite what the Constitution says, birthright citizenship would no longer apply to children born in the US to unauthorized immigrants or visa-holders (unless one parent was a US citizen or lawful permanent resident).”
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“Though Trump fired some federal employees Monday, the first day did not seem to bring a mass firing of federal bureaucrats, but the groundwork was laid for something like that to happen in the future.
First off, Trump restored what was previously known as his “Schedule F” executive order, issued in late 2020 shortly before he left office (it was never really implemented and Biden soon revoked it). The idea behind Schedule F — now rebranded as “Schedule Policy/Career” — is to reclassify various important civil servant jobs as exempt from civil service hiring rules and protections, making it easier for those workers to be fired.
Secondly, Trump took aim at part of the federal workforce known as the Senior Executive Service (SES). These are, basically, the top jobs at agencies in the civil service, which liaise with the political appointees to run things. Trump’s order demanded plans from his agencies for making SES more “accountable” (easier to fire). His order also said hiring for SES jobs would now be done by panels composed mostly of political appointees, rather than civil servants as is currently the case.
Third, the Office of Personnel Management issued a memo letting agencies hire unlimited “Schedule C” appointees — another class of political appointees that don’t go through the civil service hiring process. And fourth, another order instructed Trump appointees to come up with plans for reforming the civil service hiring process itself.
Altogether, this shows an intense focus from Trump’s people on wresting agency authority away from civil servants and toward greater numbers of political appointees — and though mass firings haven’t happened yet, it may be only a matter of time.”
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“A Trump order Monday made the unexpected announcement that, in fact, an existing part of the executive branch — the US Digital Service, set up during the Obama administration to modernize government IT — would become the US DOGE Service.
Now, this executive order laid out a surprisingly limited mission of “modernizing federal technology and software,” rather than DOGE’s previously announced remit of overhauling government spending, regulations, and personnel. Liberals on social media crowed at this apparent demotion for Musk.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Reports on Musk’s planning, and public statements from people in contact with his team, suggest they are planning to go very big indeed, in ways that haven’t yet been revealed. With a new report that Musk is likely to get a West Wing office, it’s hard to believe he’s scaled back his grand ambitions.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/395882/trump-day-one-agenda-executive-orders-takeaways
Why Wall Street found Trump’s first day reassuring
“On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to put a tariff of between 10 percent and 20 percent on all imports to the United States, along with a 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods and a 25 percent import surcharge on Canadian and Mexican wares — at least, until our neighbors choke off the flow of all migrants and drugs across America’s northern and southern borders.
This protectionist agenda is far more radical than anything Trump attempted during his first term. It threatens to hamper American tech companies by increasing the cost of semiconductors, depress stock valuations by reducing economic growth and fueling a global trade war, and disrupt the US auto industry, whose supply chains were built around the presumption of duty-free trade with Mexico.
Thus, American investors, executives, and entrepreneurs watched Trump’s first day in office with bated breath: Would his inaugural address and initial executive orders prioritize corporate America’s financial interest in relatively free global exchange — or his own ideological fixation on trade deficits?
Trump’s Day 1 actions did not fully clarify his priorities on this front. In his inaugural speech, the president reiterated his broad commitment to protectionism. Meanwhile, his administration prepared to launch federal investigations into America’s trade deficit in general, as well as the trade practices of China, Mexico, and Canada in particular.
Nevertheless, Trump did not actually establish any new tariffs on his first day in office, as his administration’s arch-protectionists had hoped that he would.
Investors interpreted Trump’s caution as a sign that he would be heeding his advisers’ push for a more limited and incremental tariff policy; stocks rose Monday while the US dollar fell (stiff tariffs would increase the value of America’s currency).
Wall Street’s relief may be premature. Trump appears as ideologically perturbed by America’s trade deficit as ever.”
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“Imposing even a 10 percent tariff on all imported goods would not only harm various business interests, but would also likely increase costs for consumers. Thus, such a duty would harm both Trump’s donors and voters.
If Trump’s first term is any guide, his universal tariff would not even redound to the benefit of American manufacturers, who would be vulnerable to higher costs and retaliatory tariffs from foreign nations. Generally speaking, presidents seek to avoid enacting policies that harm the bulk of their coalition, to the benefit of a narrow band of ideologues. And this is what implementing Trump’s grandest visions for trade policy would likely entail.
Second, the imposition of a universal tariff would roil stock markets. During Trump’s first term in office, he monitored the markets’ performance obsessively, tweeting about it incessantly and suggesting that stock values were a barometer of sound policy, warning in 2018, “If Democrats take over Congress, the stock market will plummet.”
Finally, Trump has recently shown some sensitivity to the interests of his newfound friends in tech, even when those interests conflict with the tenets of rightwing nationalism. Over the holidays, Elon Musk feuded with their co-partisans over the desirability of high-skill immigration and the H-1B visa, which help American tech companies to hire foreign talent. Trump ultimately expressed support for Musk’s position.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/395829/trump-tariffs-executive-orders-inauguration-stocks-trade-policy