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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months

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Antitrust is a labor issue

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me SATURDAY (Apr 27) in MARIN COUNTY, then Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

This is huge: yesterday, the FTC finalized a rule banning noncompete agreements for every American worker. That means that the person working the register at a Wendy's can switch to the fry-trap at McD's for an extra $0.25/hour, without their boss suing them:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/ftc-announces-rule-banning-noncompetes

The median worker laboring under a noncompete is a fast-food worker making close to minimum wage. You know who doesn't have to worry about noncompetes? High tech workers in Silicon Valley, because California already banned noncompetes, as did Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia and Washington.

The fact that the country's largest economies, encompassing the most "knowledge-intensive" industries, could operate without shitty bosses being able to shackle their best workers to their stupid workplaces for years after those workers told them to shove it shows you what a goddamned lie noncompetes are based on. The idea that companies can't raise capital or thrive if their know-how can walk out the door, secreted away in the skulls of their ungrateful workers, is bullshit:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its-the-economy-stupid/#neofeudal

Remember when OpenAI's board briefly fired founder Sam Altman and Microsoft offered to hire him and 700 of his techies? If "noncompetes block investments" was true, you'd think they'd have a hard time raising money, but no, they're still pulling in billions in investor capital (primarily from Microsoft itself!). This is likewise true of Anthropic, the company's major rival, which was founded by (wait for it), two former OpenAI employees.

Indeed, Silicon Valley couldn't have come into existence without California's ban on noncompetes – the first silicon company, Shockley Semiconductors, was founded by a malignant, delusional eugenicist who also couldn't manage a lemonade stand. His eight most senior employees (the "Traitorous Eight") quit his shitty company to found Fairchild Semiconductor, a rather successful chip shop – but not nearly so successful as the company that two of Fairchild's top employees founded after they quit: Intel:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/24/the-traitorous-eight-and-the-battle-of-germanium-valley/

Likewise a lie: the tale that noncompetes raise wages. This theory – beloved of people whose skulls are so filled with Efficient Market Hypothesis Brain-Worms that they've got worms dangling out of their nostrils and eye-sockets – holds that the right to sign a noncompete is an asset that workers can trade to their employers in exchange for better pay. This is absolutely true, provided you ignore reality.

Remember: the median noncompete-bound worker is a fast food employee making near minimum wage. The major application of noncompetes is preventing that worker from getting a raise from a rival fast-food franchisee. Those workers are losing wages due to noncompetes. Meanwhile, the highest paid workers in the country are all clustered in a a couple of cities in northern California, pulling down sky-high salaries in a state where noncompetes have been illegal since the gold rush.

If a capitalist wants to retain their workers, they can compete. Offer your workers get better treatment and better wages. That's how capitalism's alchemy is supposed to work: competition transmogrifies the base metal of a capitalist's greed into the noble gold of public benefit by making success contingent on offering better products to your customers than your rivals – and better jobs to your workers than those rivals are willing to pay. However, capitalists hate capitalism:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/18/in-extremis-veritas/#the-winnah

Capitalists hate capitalism so much that they're suing the FTC, in MAGA's beloved Fifth Circuit, before a Trump-appointed judge. The case was brought by Trump's financial advisors, Ryan LLC, who are using it to drum up business from corporations that hate Biden's new taxes on the wealthy and stepped up IRS enforcement on rich tax-cheats.

Will they win? It's hard to say. Despite what you may have heard, the case against the FTC order is very weak, as Matt Stoller explains here:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/ftc-enrages-corporate-america-by

The FTC's statutory authority to block noncompetes comes from Section 5 of the FTC Act, which bans "unfair methods of competition" (hard to imagine a less fair method than indenturing your workers). Section 6(g) of the Act lets the FTC make rules to enforce Section 5's ban on unfairness. Both are good law – 6(g) has been used many times (26 times in the five years from 1968-73 alone!).

The DC Circuit court upheld the FTC's right to "promulgate rules defining the meaning of the statutory standards of the illegality the Commission is empowered to prevent" in 1973, and in 1974, Congress changed the FTC Act, but left this rulemaking power intact.

The lawyer suing the FTC – Anton Scalia's larvum, a pismire named Eugene Scalia – has some wild theories as to why none of this matters. He says that because the law hasn't been enforced since the ancient days of the (checks notes) 1970s, it no longer applies. He says that the mountain of precedent supporting the FTC's authority "hasn't aged well." He says that other antitrust statutes don't work the same as the FTC Act. Finally, he says that this rule is a big economic move and that it should be up to Congress to make it.

Stoller makes short work of these arguments. The thing that tells you whether a law is good is its text and precedent, "not whether a lawyer thinks a precedent is old and bad." Likewise, the fact that other antitrust laws is irrelevant "because, well, they are other antitrust laws, not this antitrust law." And as to whether this is Congress's job because it's economically significant, "so what?" Congress gave the FTC this power.

Now, none of this matters if the Supreme Court strikes down the rule, and what's more, if they do, they might also neuter the FTC's rulemaking power in the bargain. But again: so what? How is it better for the FTC to do nothing, and preserve a power that it never uses, than it is for the Commission to free the 35-40 million American workers whose bosses get to use the US court system to force them to do a job they hate?

The FTC's rule doesn't just ban noncompetes – it also bans TRAPs ("training repayment agreement provisions"), which require employees to pay their bosses thousands of dollars if they quit, get laid off, or are fired:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose

The FTC's job is to protect Americans from businesses that cheat. This is them, doing their job. If the Supreme Court strikes this down, it further delegitimizes the court, and spells out exactly who the GOP works for.

This is part of the long history of antitrust and labor. From its earliest days, antitrust law was "aimed at dollars, not men" – in other words, antitrust law was always designed to smash corporate power in order to protect workers. But over and over again, the courts refused to believe that Congress truly wanted American workers to get legal protection from the wealthy predators who had fastened their mouth-parts on those workers' throats. So over and over – and over and over – Congress passed new antitrust laws that clarified the purpose of antitrust, using words so small that even federal judges could understand them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/14/aiming-at-dollars/#not-men

After decades of comatose inaction, Biden's FTC has restored its role as a protector of labor, explicitly tackling competition through a worker protection lens. This week, the Commission blocked the merger of Capri Holdings and Tapestry Inc, a pair of giant conglomerates that have, between them, bought up nearly every "affordable luxury" brand (Versace, Jimmy Choo, Michael Kors, Kate Spade, Coach, Stuart Weitzman, etc).

You may not care about "affordable luxury" handbags, but you should care about the basis on which the FTC blocked this merger. As David Dayen explains for The American Prospect: 33,000 workers employed by these two companies would lose the wage-competition that drives them to pay skilled sales-clerks more to cross the mall floor and switch stores:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-04-24-challenge-fashion-merger-new-antitrust-philosophy/

In other words, the FTC is blocking a $8.5b merger that would turn an oligopoly into a monopoly explicitly to protect workers from the power of bosses to suppress their wages. What's more, the vote was unanimous, include the Commission's freshly appointed (and frankly, pretty terrible) Republican commissioners:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/ftc-moves-block-tapestrys-acquisition-capri

A lot of people are (understandably) worried that if Biden doesn't survive the coming election that the raft of excellent rules enacted by his agencies will die along with his presidency. Here we have evidence that the Biden administration's anti-corporate agenda has become institutionalized, acquiring a bipartisan durability.

And while there hasn't been a lot of press about that anti-corporate agenda, it's pretty goddamned huge. Back in 2021, Tim Wu (then working in the White wrote an executive order on competition that identified 72 actions the agencies could take to blunt the power of corporations to harm everyday Americans:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

Biden's agency heads took that plan and ran with it, demonstrating the revolutionary power of technical administrative competence and proving that being good at your job is praxis:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

In just the past week, there's been a storm of astoundingly good new rules finalized by the agencies:

A minimum staffing ratio for nursing homes;

The founding of the American Climate Corps;

A guarantee of overtime benefits;

A ban on financial advisors cheating retirement savers;

Medical privacy rules that protect out-of-state abortions;

A ban on junk fees in mortgage servicing;

Conservation for 13m Arctic acres in Alaska;

Classifying "forever chemicals" as hazardous substances;

A requirement for federal agencies to buy sustainable products;

Closing the gun-show loophole.

That's just a partial list, and it's only Thursday.

Why the rush? As Gerard Edic writes for The American Prospect, finalizing these rules now protects them from the Congressional Review Act, a gimmick created by Newt Gingrich in 1996 that lets the next Senate wipe out administrative rules created in the months before a federal election:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-04-23-biden-administration-regulations-congressional-review-act/

In other words, this is more dazzling administrative competence from the technically brilliant agencies that have labored quietly and effectively since 2020. Even laggards like Pete Buttigieg have gotten in on the act, despite a very poor showing in the early years of the Biden administration:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/dinah-wont-you-blow/#ecp

Despite those unpromising beginnings, the DOT has gotten onboard the trains it regulates, and passed a great rule that forces airlines to refund your money if they charge you for services they don't deliver:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/04/24/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-rules-to-deliver-automatic-refunds-and-protect-consumers-from-surprise-junk-fees-in-air-travel/

The rule also bans junk fees and forces airlines to compensate you for late flights, finally giving American travelers the same rights their European cousins have enjoyed for two decades.

It's the latest in a string of muscular actions taken by the DOT, a period that coincides with the transfer of Jen Howard from her role as chief of staff to FTC chair Lina Khan to a new gig as the DOT's chief of competition enforcement:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-04-25-transportation-departments-new-path/

Under Howard's stewardship, the DOT blocked the merger of Spirit and Jetblue, and presided over the lowest flight cancellation rate in more than decade:

https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/2023-numbers-more-flights-fewer-cancellations-more-consumer-protections

All that, along with a suite of protections for fliers, mark a huge turning point in the US aviation industry's long and worsening abusive relationship with the American public. There's more in the offing, too including a ban on charging families extra for adjacent seats, rules to make flying with wheelchairs easier, and a ban on airlines selling passenger's private information to data brokers.

There's plenty going on in the world – and in the Biden administration – that you have every right to be furious and/or depressed about. But these expert agencies, staffed by experts, have brought on a tsunami of rules that will make every working American better off in a myriad of ways. Those material improvements in our lives will, in turn, free us up to fight the bigger, existential fights for a livable planet, free from genocide.

It may not be a good time to be alive, but it's a much better time than it was just last week.

And it's only Thursday.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/25/capri-v-tapestry/#aiming-at-dollars-not-men

#pluralistic #labor #antitrust #trustbusting #noncompetes #indenture #ftc #matt stoller #david dayen #tapestry #luxury fashion #capri

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azrielslostshadow · 10 months

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Modern!Azriel Headcanons

Modern! Azriel/ Navy Seal! Azriel x reader

Wordcount: 900ish

Warnings: annoying drill sergeant, couple curse words, not super gendered (like one mention of a dress)

A/N: az is a cutie in this one too :)))

Modern!Azriel who grew up in the same trashy neighborhood as you and cass and rhys.

Modern!Azriel who was determined to make it out despite what his shitty father and half-brothers had to say about it.

Modern!Azriel who was somehow top 10 in your graduating class despite missing like half of junior and senior year to work and help his mom pay the bills.

Modern!Azriel who got a 1500 on the SAT and a 96 on his ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) test.

Modern!Azriel who knew that his best chance out of the hood was the military (also probably not the best way to work out all his anger)

Modern!Azriel who convinces cass to join him and they both enlist in the battle buddy program together. (they both deploy together so they always have a homie to rely on)

Modern!Azriel who is a fucking 6’4” unit and is recruited by the navy bc he’s massive and a genius and secretly speaks like 5 languages (bc his mom is an immigrant and they’re like that)

the drill sergeant just about dropped and foamed at the mouth at the sight of azriel and cassian (drill sergeant goes on a tangent about finally getting some “real sailors” and the rest of the unit literally hates them bc yeah he’s right they don’t compare)

Modern!Azriel who (alongside cassian) gets asked to apply to seal school and they graduate with some of the highest BUD/S scores the navy has ever seen (his mom is super proud and makes him mole de pollo bc its his favorite and she loves her son and his friends)

Modern!Azriel who makes it to captain in six years instead of the average nine bc he’s just that good

Modern!Azriel who always remembered you as his kind coworker from his trashy minimum wage dishwashing job in high school and definitely not as his friend’s cute younger sister.

Modern!Azriel who remembers every time you brought him dinner and badly lied about how you hated to waste food and didn’t know what to do with the leftovers so he wouldn’t feel bad about eating it (bc times were tough in HS and he really wasn’t eating enough at all)

Modern!Azriel who just kind of slowly blinks at you when him and his unit walk into the museum that you’ve been working at.

Modern!Azriel whose chest tightens with something strange when your whole face lights up after recognizing him.

Modern!Azriel who has only had casual flings (mostly bc he was always away for work) but feels his heart drop to his feet when you press your lips to his left cheek and give his arms a little squeeze.

Modern!Azriel whose whole body relaxes when you pull him into a hug. who’s knees almost give out when you rub your manicured hands up and down his biceps and whisper about how you missed him–how you were worried about him.

his whole team will harass him later about his reaction and beg for the details behind your history because even though they’re navy seals they’re really just chismosas on the inside.

Modern!Azriel who is seriously so confused as to how you (someone who was so kind and loving) could be involved in counter-terrorism.

Modern!Azriel who is shocked when you explain to him that the art world is full of criminals and that terrorists especially love to use expensive art as methods of payment for whatever horrible acts they want to commit.

Modern!Azriel whose chest puffs with pride when he hears you tell your boss that you have full faith in his unit and their abilities bc “azriel isn’t the kind of man who lets people down”

Modern!Azriel who is supposed to be paying attention to the baroque painting on the wall but can’t take his eyes off of you in your beautiful, floor-length, velvet gown.

Modern!Azriel who takes out two things in one night: a secret terrorist cell and you to dinner.

Modern!Azriel who realizes he hasn’t been able to have a serious relationship bc he’s been in love with you this whole time (read: since he was literally 9 years old and you told him he had the prettiest eyes in the world)

Modern!Azriel who wears the matching bracelet you got him every single day. especially when he’s deployed bc a photo of you might actually be too dangerous for the field

Modern!Azriel who never tells you exactly what he does just that he’s the captain of a navy seal unit bc its classified, but you still worry (especially bc you’re a historian and can almost immediately tell where he’s been in the world based on the souvenirs he brings you)

Modern!Azriel who almost bursts into tears when you tell him you love him first bc he’d been struggling to get the words out for weeks

Modern!Azriel who gets to experience softness from someone other than his mother for the first time in his life

Modern!Azriel who is in a healthy, positive relationship with someone who loves all of him including his flaws.

Modern!Azriel whose partner teaching him about emotional maturity and communication and slowly walks with him down his healing journey

Modern!Azriel who is pathetically in love with his partner and can’t wait to start their life together.

#acotar #azriel #azriel fluff #azriel shadowsinger #azriel imagine #shadowsinger #cassian #nessian #rhysand #imagines #azrielslostshadow

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qqueenofhades · 1 year

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What is an R1 university? What does that mean?

Lol, well. This is going to be more Arcane Academic Detail than anyone needs to know, but an R1 university is the highest research classification that an American university can receive and generally means they're especially recognized for nation- and world-leading academics, programs, etc. In other words, it's a fairly rare and prestigious designation that a university is (generally justly) proud of receiving. The university at which I presently work is one such. We just got a celebratory email from the provost reminding us that it's the two-year anniversary of that designation, etc. As noted, they also want to get a billion dollars in fundraising for the next cycle. So the point is: this is a highly ranked private university with substantial ability and plans to attract major capital. Good, right?

Not really, because my gripe with it is that (possibly to nobody's surprise, but still) we are still being squeezed to death. My department has no money and can't get a new chair because they expect the new chair to do the same amount of work for literally 25% of the money paid to the last one. Not surprisingly, the faculty is up in arms about this and we already all have too much work because we are critically under-staffed (four professors currently, they won't approve a new tenure-track search while also cutting our budget in everything else), so nobody is in a hurry to take on even more responsibility for a giant pay cut. We are located in one of the top 10 most expensive metro areas in the country and despite being a program co-director with a PhD, I am paid barely more (literally, two dollars an hour more) than a graduate student assistant in the same department. As such, despite working full-time and managing one of the college's largest departments, I am in the "yeah here's my paypal if you feel like it, I would really appreciate it" stage of things. This is, to say the least, Incredibly Sucky, and it's not fair to anyone involved.

I am applying to a lot of new jobs, both inside and outside this university, but that is still as much as a crapshoot as it ever is. I am working on self-publishing my two existing original novels because I likewise need to make even a few more bucks to be able to consistently afford food. It's all very stupid and stressful, so. Yeah.

#silver-dream89 #ask #school stuff #personal #academia: not even once

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kdinjenzen · 2 years

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I've seen some intensely heated exchanges about whether legal (i.e. Crunchyroll) viewing of Vol 9 would still help the remains of CR00by, and one talking point involved creatives' contract renewals being dependent on that profit. Any truth to that argument?

This is all speculation on my end from my years of being an employee there and my college background in business finance, with that said, here's my thoughts:

I heavily doubt that a company that makes a statement pressuring everyone to "buy buy buy" after laying off so many people and cutting so many jobs has the money to continue making a show like RWBY the way it was for these past 10 years.

RWBY was, key word WAS, a unique experiment where for the duration of the show (until around V7-V8) almost everyone was a Full Time-Staff Position employee. Meaning health benefits, PTO, etc. And while it wasn't the highest paying job for anyone involved, the act of having an animation team all be Full Time-Staff Positions was something unusual.

Around the end of 2019, when so many people were laid off, RT Animation (meaning also RWBY) changed and forced almost all the staff to become "Contract" employees... without telling them before hand. And if they didn't like it? Too bad, they were let go/fired upon not agreeing to the new terms with no prior warning.

Those contracts can end at ANY TIME for ANY REASON that RT wants, period. With no ramifications toward the company at all.

Those contracts also meant that PTO didn't exist anymore, their health benefits were slashed in half or more, and their pay was lessened.

Again, since all that happened... RT Animation has lost almost all of it's staff. There's next to nobody there compared to the pre-2020 years. Which is why I asked "Who is CRWBY?" because if it means all the people who made the show possible then I'm sorry to say, most of them don't work there anymore.

To end this, I want to bring it back to what I said near the top of this message.

If they are pressuring the fans to "BUY BUY BUY" while constantly cutting jobs left and right, bleeding employees nearly every day, I really don't think that RT has the money to re-hire anyone to make RWBY like it was before and if they WERE able continue RWBY beyond V9 I really doubt that the animation would be done in-house, because it's likely WAY too expensive for them to do that anymore.

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coochiequeens · 2 years

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Ladies reblog with what you would do better than your male boss

There’s a major confidence gap between men and women in the workplace, though it might not be in the way you’d expect.

A majority, 64%, of women think they can do their manager’s job better than them, versus 47% of men who believe the same, according to a new Monster survey of 6,847 workers conducted in February.

That perspective doesn’t necessarily reflect that women feel proficient in their jobs, but rather they feel undervalued and overlooked for management roles, Monster career expert Vicki Salemi tells CNBC Make It.

“Women feel they can do their manager’s job,” she says, “but the frustration is: Why aren’t they given the opportunity to do it?”

Women are far less likely to say they feel they get the same quantity and quality of opportunities as men in the workplace: 66% of men believe everyone at work gets the same access to opportunities, versus just 23% of women, according to Monster.

The opportunities gap has a compounding effect among women at all levels in the workplace. Women say having a clear vision for the future of their career is a top priority for them, and a lack of potential advancement is the biggest red flag that would lead them to turn down a job offer.

And a severe promotions gap is driving women to quit in historic numbers. Women leaders are leaving their organizations at the highest rate ever, widening the quitting gap between women and men in senior roles, according to recent data from LeanIn.org and McKinsey & Company.

or every woman stepping into a director-level leadership role, two are choosing to leave, says Alexis Krivkovich, McKinsey senior partner and an author of the joint Lean In and McKinsey “Women in the Workplace” report.

Despite the bleak statistics, Salemi says there’s a lot companies can do to ensure women get equal opportunities to succeed in their careers for the long-term. They can provide women with clear paths to leadership through mentorship and sponsorship programs, stretch opportunities, and ensuring underrepresented leaders aren’t left to be the “only” ones in their positions.

“Regardless of the structure, have a clear vision so women can see the future of their careers for the next year, five years or 10 years” with the company, Salemi says.

Employers can further support women at work with adequate benefits for parents (that women are more likely to value, per Monster) such as paid family leave, child-care support and flexible schedules.

And they should ensure they’re paying everyone equitably, which is still a problem on the whole.

Some 77% of men believe everyone is paid the same, versus 24% of women — concerning given that women say fair and equal wages is the No. 1 most important benefit to them in the workplace.

The gender wage gap, which has persisted for decades, now sits at the average woman being paid 82 cents for every dollar paid to a man, according to Census Bureau estimates. The gap widens for many women of color.

#Women in the workplace #Wage gap #women in leadership roles #I would have made sure new staff knows the whole layout of the workplace not just their department

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brunchbitch · 1 year

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thought i would do an update since it's been a while!

9/27/23

things are going well with settling in to seattle! i'm doing lots of wedding stuff - got measured for my dress and had a makeup trial last week so it's starting to feel real! 10 months from today! next steps are sending out save the dates and deciding on catering, which will be fun bc we get to taste test everything.

a is doing well! he is taking a creative writing course that starts this week, and hockey starts this week as well. the seattle kraken have an adult league with over 100 teams (!!). he had tryouts (i almost wrote auditions lol) a couple weeks ago and got placed in the second highest division! i'm excited to go see some games, but the first one is tomorrow night at 10:45!!!! so if that's any indication of average game times, maybe i won't make it lol.

it has been raining every day for about five days now... it's reminding me of one of the hardest parts of living in seattle. i need to invest in a happy lamp and get some vitamin d.

as for the job front, i'm feeling frustrated and, before calling the DOH this morning, very confused about my path towards being a licensed independent clinical social worker (licsw). the requirements are pretty different in seattle. you start out getting licensed as a social worker associate advanced (lswaa), which basically means i have the necessary education but haven't gotten required post grad supervision to apply for the next level, which is a licensed advanced social worker (lasw). i'm required to obtain 3200 hours of supervised experience under an licsw which, full time, would be about a year and a half. then i apply to be an lasw, and once i'm approved i can take my sw generalist exam. THEN to become an licsw, i need 4000 additional supervised hours (~2 years full time). so 3.5 years working full time before i can get my licsw, and then have to take the clinical exam. in ma, it would've taken 2 years to get my licsw. i'm not sure why wa state requires so much more, but it explains why the pay ranges have been higher than what i expected.

i've been studying for the exam, bc that's what would be the next step in boston. so that was wasted time lol. hopefully some of it will stick in my brain so i'm not starting from square one when i start studying again in ~a year and a half. so now i really need to just focus on getting a job. i've had one interview and they never even got back to me. i probably would've turned down the job anyway (not exactly what i was looking for - a lot of independent time and not much of an ability to collaborate with other social workers, which i think is important being a new grad), but it still would've been nice to be offered the job lol. i've been getting so discouraged but trying to remind myself that something will work out eventually. even if i hate the job, i can stick it out until i get my supervised hours at least. and then i can look elsewhere.

i have a screening today for a job that is pretty close by my house. it's a primary care center that serves a lot of people who have high resource needs. i was hoping for a more acute setting (like inpatient hospital), but it does seem some of the patients would be pretty acute. so we'll see how the screening goes.

mental health is good - i've really appreciated being able to see L again. still smoking a shit ton, which concerns her, but trying to do better this week.

luna and lia are good - they've definitely adjusted. lia is sleeping on top of her cat tree right now hehe. unfortunately luna is getting a dental done at the vet right now and she had to have two tooth extractions :(. she's had several extractions before due to resorptive lesions, but the last few years her teeth have been good so i was hoping they wouldn't have to take any out. so she'll be on pain medication for a few days, but she's been through that before. i'm going to shower her with love when she gets home!

#update #personal #l #a #social work

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ukrfeminism · 1 year

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5 minute read

The number of graduates in full-time paid employment has reached a new high but female salaries have fallen behind their male counterparts, a survey has found.

There were over 60 per cent of graduates in paid employment from the academic year of 2020-21, a four percentage point increase from last year and the most since 2017. However, despite achieving the same level of qualifications, first-class female graduates had a median salary of £25,000, £2,000 lower compared with men.

The figures came from the annual Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) survey where graduates are asked about their employment status roughly 15 months after they have finished their university course. More than 355,000 graduates responded, marking a response rate of 43 per cent.

Kate Nightingale, the director of communications, campaigns and research at Young Women’s Trust, an organisation campaigning for equal pay, said that women were unfairly paid as soon as they entered employment. She said: “Pay inequality is there right from the start of working life and only grows over time. Women are putting in the effort to study but not getting the payoff at the end.”

She added: “Young women earn significantly less than young men — on average, around a fifth less per year despite tending to be more highly educated. There are a whole range of reasons for this, including young women going into lower paid jobs and sectors and not progressing as quickly. Discriminatory attitudes are still alive and well.”

The results showed that there was a higher proportion of men earning the top graduate salaries. About 10 per cent of male graduates had a salary of £51,000 or above, double compared with female graduates in full-time paid employment.

Alesha De-Freitas, the head of policy at the Fawcett Society, which pushes for women’s rights, says that employers must do a better job attracting female staff and warned of the economical impact of having a gender pay gap.

She said: “Employers must do more to ensure their hiring and pay policies do not disadvantage women and we urgently need to see more employers publishing action plans. We have a stubborn gender pay gap in the UK, which harms women and harms our economy.”

“It is particularly concerning that this data reveals men begin their careers earning more than women, even when having the same level of qualification.”

The HESA data also revealed that 10 per cent of graduates were either in further study or part-time employment, matching the figure in the previous survey.

Graduates who studied medicine and dentistry had the highest salary when they started full-time work. Of those who achieved a first, their median salary was £35,000, closely followed by veterinary science students at £32,000.

Former design, and creative and performing arts students entering full-time employment had a median salary of £22,500, the lowest among all subjects in the survey. Media, journalism and communications graduates earn just £500 more annually which was the second-lowest.

The Department for Education did not comment on the graduate pay gap but said that opportunities for women in the workplace have increased. A spokesman said: “Over the last decade the gender pay gap has fallen from 20 per cent to 15 per cent, with the percentage of women in employment rising from 67 per cent to 72 per cent. We strongly urge all organisations to take steps to address the gender imbalance in pay.

“To help close the gap even further, we have announced a childcare revolution with 30 hours free childcare for children over the age of nine months, and earlier this year we launched recruitment for our programme to get STEM returners back into the workplace.”

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nithrajobs · 2 years

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mariacallous · 1 year

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In a famous conversation, the author F. Scott Fitzgerald is credited with saying that “the rich are very different than you and me,” to which Ernest Hemingway replied “Yes, they have more money.”

Our work highlights another key difference: the most affluent Americans not only have more income; they receive it—and pay taxes on it—in vastly different ways than the rest of us.

For policy makers concerned about long-term fiscal shortfalls and high levels of economic inequality, our work reinforces the notion that raising the tax burden on the wealthy requires a special focus on how those households gain wealth and skirt taxes. We highlight four ways to effectively raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

How Americans make money

Most Americans receive almost all their income through wages and retirement income (pensions, 401(k)s, social security, and individual retirement accounts). The most recent available IRS data (2014) shows that wages and retirement income made up 94% of adjusted gross income (AGI) for households in the bottom 80% of the income distribution. Even for households in the 98th to 99th income percentile, wages and retirement income accounted for 71% of AGI.

At the very, very top, though, these sources are less important, accounting for just 15% and 7% of the income of the top 0.01% and the top 0.001% of households, respectively. These households receive most of their income from investments (interest, dividends, and especially realized capital gains) and businesses (including sole proprietorships, partnerships, and S corporations). These items constituted 82% of income for the top 0.01% and 88% for the top 0.001%, compared to just 7% for the bottom 80% of households.

These patterns are robust over time and data sources. And in practice, the tilt toward capital income at the top is even larger than these figures suggest because AGI does not include the massive unrealized capital gains and very sizable inheritances that accrue to many affluent households.

How that money gets taxed

Wages face heavier taxation than capital income, even though wages go mainly to low- and middle-income households and capital income goes mainly to high-income households. Most federal revenues are collected from wages. Payroll taxes account for 33% of federal revenues and are imposed solely on wages. Income taxes account for another 52% of federal revenues, and studies show that the share of income tax revenues that derive from capital income is quite small. These studies were performed before the enactment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which further diminished the taxation of capital via special deductions for business and cuts in the top income tax rate, the corporate tax rate, and the estate tax.

Moreover, the highest effective marginal income tax rates on wages exceed 40%, whereas much business income is taxed at a top rate below 30%, dividends and realized capital gains are taxed below 25%, and unrealized gains are not taxed until they are sold. As a result, the tax share of income paid by the very highest-income households is often lower than for middle-class households.

How to fix it

There are many ways to raise taxes on the wealthy without harming economic growth. Here we highlight four options.

Capital gains reform may be necessary if policymakers want to increase tax burdens on wealthy households. The simplest policy here would be the elimination of the step-up basis at death. Heirs would pay capital gains taxes on the taxable basis of the decedent who acquired the asset, instead of the basis of the asset at death. In 2020, the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) staff calculated that terminating step-up that year would raise $104.9 billion over the next 10 years. Alternatively, capital gains could be taxed at death, and treated as though the decedent had sold that asset. Batchelder and Kamin (2019) used 2016 JCT predictions to estimate that taxing accrued gains at death and raising the capital gains rate to 28% would raise $290 billion between 2021 and 2030.

Taxing intergenerational wealth transfers can make taxes more progressive and offset disparities in opportunity across income classes. Currently, less than 0.1% of all estates are subject to the estate tax, down from 7.65% in 1977. As baby boomers die, they are set to pass down $72.6 trillion in assets to heirs. Taxing these transfers more heavily would reduce inequality, increase opportunity, and raise revenues. The estate tax could be converted to an inheritance tax on recipients, with a reduced threshold of a million dollars for all gifts and inheritances (compared to the current threshold of almost $13 million) coupled with a tax rate that would equal the heir’s income tax rate plus some amount. This combined tax rate would integrate income and estate taxes. Since the heirs to wealthy estates are already usually in high tax brackets, the distributional impact would be similar to (though slightly less progressive than) the estate tax. This change has the political advantage of focusing on wealthy heirs, who were lucky enough to be the beneficiaries of wealthy relatives or friends, instead of targeting those who accumulated wealth.

Eliminating the Section 199A deduction for qualified business incomes would target another key component of income for the wealthy. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) reduced the top income tax rate from 39.6% to 37%, and the deduction brought the effective rate on qualified business income down to 29.6%. In 2020, the Tax Policy Center (TPC) estimated that the deduction would lower federal revenues by $417 billion over the following 10 years. The deduction is inequitable: the TPC estimated that 55% of the direct tax benefits in 2019 would go to families in the top 1% of the income distribution and 26% of the benefits would go to the top 0.1%. Although the deduction was intended to increase employment and investment, the incentives for both are actually quite low given the complicated structure and non-targeted nature of the deduction. Additionally, its complexity creates an opening for business owners to reduce their taxes by re-arranging and relabeling their investments and expenses, a practice which is further incentivized by the increased difference between the effective tax rates on wages and business income.

A final option would be to create a value added tax (VAT) coupled with a rebate or Universal Basic Income (UBI). This would leave the net tax burden smaller or unchanged for most households but would impose higher tax burdens on the wealthy. Currently, wealthy households can finance extravagant levels of consumption without even paying capital gains taxes on the accruing wealth by following a “buy, borrow, die” strategy, in which they finance current spending with loans and use their wealth as collateral. By avoiding realizing their capital gains, they can avoid taxes at the same time they enjoy a luxurious lifestyle. A VAT would tax consumption and hence would force the affluent to pay taxes on their lifestyle, even if they did not pay much in income tax. A VAT of 10%, combined with a UBI payment of the federal poverty line times the VAT rate times two, would raise about $2.9 trillion over 10 years. The Tax Policy Center estimates that this system would be extremely progressive: after-tax income for the lowest quintile would increase by 17%, the tax burden for middle-income people wouldn’t change, and incomes for the top 1% of households would be reduced by 5.5%. The VAT would also function as a 10% tax on existing wealth, since future consumption can only be financed with existing wealth or future wages.

Conclusion

Each of these proposals would undoubtedly face significant opposition from those who benefit from the challenge of taxing affluent households: the wealthy themselves. However, in order to face the dual concerns of ever-increasing national debt and rapidly growing inequality, it is a challenge that we must take on before it’s too late.

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