Hands up

One argument often made in defense of slashing programs for low income and working people is that these discourage or "disincentivize" work. However, as Neil Irwin makes clear in this New York Times article, it's often the other way around.

According to Irwin, "Certain social welfare policies, according to an emerging body of research, may actually encourage more people to work and enable them to do so more productively."

For example the Earned Income Tax Credit, a refundable credit for workers with low and moderate (by WV standards), is a huge boon to millions of families. Studies suggest that the EITC encourages workforce participation by rewarding work. One study found that by 1999, 460,000 more women heads of household were working that would have been the case without the EITC.

(There's been an effort in WV for several years to create a state version, but that hasn't happened yet.)

Child care subsidies are another case in point. Costs for this can easily exceed college expenses. And they usually hit families at a time when their earnings haven't peaked. We've had several scrapes in West Virginia aimed at holding the line on these subsidies.

It only makes sense in a state with the lowest workforce participation rates to do what we can to make work affordable.

Research also supports the long term benefit of SNAP (formerly food stamps). A study of the early days of food stamps, a program that was rolled out at different times around. the country, found that those children who received this kind of nutritional support were more likely to be working decades later than those who didn't.

Specifically, a study titled "Long Run Impacts of Childhood Access to the Safety Net" by
Hilary W. Hoynes, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach  and Douglas Almond concluded that 

access to food stamps in utero and in early childhood leads to significant reductions in metabolic syndrome conditions (obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes) in adulthood and, for women, increases in economic self-sufficiency (increases in educational attainment, earnings, income, and decreases in welfare participation).

This is another reason why expanding access to free school breakfasts and lunches to everyone is so important. This is one area in which West Virginia is a national leader.

Another intervention that pays huge dividends is early childhood education. Nobel economics laureate James Heckman assets that "Evidence shows that supplementing the family environments of disadvantaged children with educational resources is an effective and cost-efficient way to provide equal opportunity, achievement, and economic success."

These kinds of investments offer more promise of promoting shared prosperity than the current slash and burn approach to federal and state budgets.

Three more for the road...from the road

I'm traveling tonight but found a few things worth a look. First, here's an interesting item by Charleston Gazette-Mail reporter and Coal Tattoo blogger Ken Ward on the Blankenship verdict.

The NY Times editorial on the subject is here. Here's the first paragraph:

It was the rarest of news in the coal mining hollows of Appalachia: A once powerful executive, Donald Blankenship, was sentenced Wednesday to a year in prison for conspiring to violate federal mine safety laws at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, where 29 workers died in an explosion six years ago. The very idea that a dominant baron of the industry called King Coal could be brought to justice and put behind bars shook the region, where miners have long complained that they face dangerous and illegal working conditions that routinely result in no punishment.

Kudos to federal judge Irene Berger, who had this to say to Blankenship:

 “You, Mr. Blankenship, created a culture of noncompliance at Upper Big Branch where your subordinates accepted and, in fact, encouraged unsafe working conditions in order to reach profitability and production targets.”

Finally, just for fun, here's a parody of a famous Robert Frost poem as Donald Trump might have written it.

In case you missed it...

...this rather lengthy NY Times article on former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship came out while I was traveling. I agree with Ken Ward at Coal Tattoo that it's a bit odd an article of that length didn't mention the role of federal prosecutor Booth Goodwin.

Speaking of coal, WV's ruling class is celebrating the Supreme Court ruling on the EPA. I'm not sure that this will be enough to bring back a booming economy in southern WV, however.

Classical ways of handling classes

Regular readers of this blog know that El Cabrero is a total Greco-Roman classics geek. Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Virgil, Plutarch, name it. Bring it.

When I first started reading about Greek  and Roman history, I was struck by how much of it was shaped by class conflict and how they found different ways of working it out, at least for a while. I remember thinking "wow, the history of all hitherto existing society REALLY is the history of class struggles, at least a good part of the time" to paraphrase a certain out of vogue political economist whose name escapes me at the moment.

Anyhow, from the NY Times, here's an interesting look at classical approaches to class conflicts by way of Athenian democracy, the Roman republic and the politics of Aristotle.

One thing has been clear to me for a long time: the doom of the Roman republic came when they lost the ability or will to work out class compromises. Good thing that would never happen here, huh?