Ted Rall's Bernie Bio Has Extra Relevance in the Wake of the Democrats' Presidential Defeat

[JHan]

15. You're proving my point in a way...

Dismissing a point as "right wing" shuts down debate. Let's engage with the point -

You immediately jumped to assume I was against the minimum wage. I favor an incremental increase pegged to inflation rather than a hike of $15 immediately. To implement an immediate hike will be disruptive - it will increase the cost of hiring workers, there will be a fall on effect on prices ,some businesses will just fire their staff and some will reduce the hours of their workers. Increasing the miniumn wage to 15 and assuming that will solve our wage stagnation woes is selling false hope-- I'm not a growth-addict but current growth levels don't cut it - that should be the priority.

"While regulatory capture is a real problem, the notion that regulations exist to protect entrenched players is the libertarian critique of government regulation. "

And there's merit to that argument. Unfortunately, there's a strong temptation to constantly frame regulatory excess in the context of wanting to hold large corporations to account, but that myopia blinds us to how excessive regulations harm small businesses in a variety of professions. Take hair braiding for example:

"For almost 20 years, Isis has fought Texas over her right to braid hair and to pass on her knowledge to others. Her struggle recently culminated in a major federal court decision earlier this month, which shined a spotlight on occupational licensing. Today, millions of Americans, like Isis, have to seek permission from the government—or fight back—before they can do their jobs.

Isis has been braiding since 1979 and has taught others in the art of natural hair care since 1984. Like many African braiders, Isis doesn’t use chemicals, dyes or coloring agents when she braids, twists or weaves hair. As she put it, her personal philosophy is “healing through hair.”

But in 1997, seven uniformed and undercover officers handcuffed Isis in front of her customers and dragged her out of her salon in Dallas. She had previously been found guilty and convicted for the surreal offense of braiding hair without a cosmetology license.


After a decade of fighting for reform, in 2007, Texas acquiesced and created a separate, 35-hour hair-braiding certificate. The state “grandfathered” Isis in, and honored her as the first natural-hair-care expert in the state. Finally, Isis could legally braid hair for a living."

All this is a reflection of an obsession with regulation throughout the federal government.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2015/01/29/hair-braiding-and-occupational-licensing/2/#116bd618837a

wanting regulatory reform doesn't mean I want massive deregulation - it also doesn't make me less of a liberal.

As for College:

First time I heard Bernie's plan I had a problem. This is my understanding of it - He made comparisons with Germany but Germany's set up is different. Germany applies stringent price controls - Sanders wants to beef up Federal Grants for undergraduates instead of imposing price controls. The problem with Grants is that it's no incentive for Universities to lower their costs. A study by the New York Federal Reserve found :

"When students fund their education through loans, changes in student borrowing and tuition are interlinked. Higher tuition costs raise loan demand, but loan supply also affects equilibrium tuition costs—for example, by relaxing students’ funding constraints. To resolve this simultaneity problem, we exploit detailed student-level financial data and changes in federal student aid programs to identify the impact of increased student loan funding on tuition. We find that institutions more exposed to changes in the subsidized federal loan program increased their tuition disproportionately around these policy changes, with a sizable pass-through effect on tuition of about 65 percent. We also find that Pell Grant aid and the unsubsidized federal loan program have pass-through effects on tuition, although these are economically and statistically not as strong. The subsidized loan effect on tuition is most pronounced for expensive, private institutions that are somewhat, but not among the most, selective."

So colleges that benefit most from federal aid programs slapped on a 65 cent increase, on the dollar, courtesy these Assistance Grants. This further has an effect on student debt ( it becomes a vicious cycle)

In Germany, the culture is also different. There are jobs you can get without a degree, that require a degree here - Sanders once correctly assessed that we treat College degrees like high school diplomas. So we need to focus more on creating alternative paths to prosperity which don't require a degree - the sort of apprenticeship programs both he and Hillary talked about.

This article is a good summary of the flaws in Bernie's Free College Plan.

http://www.thepeoplesview.net/main/2016/3/31/back-to-school-why-bernie-sanders-college-plan-fails-to-make-the-grade