The last couple of months have provided some data points that have raised hopes that the recovery is about to step into a higher gear.

Unemployment fell by 0.6 percent between December 2013 and June 2014, and essentially all of the decline was driven by actual job-growth rather than falling participation. Payroll job-growth for the second quarter of 2014 averaged 272,000, a rate that, if continued, would see us back to pre-Great Recession labor market health by early 2017. Not soon enough, but much better than the November 2018 recovery that would have happened had the pre-2014 pace of job-growth in the recovery persisted. And yesterday it was reported that gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of 4.0 percent in the second quarter.

How excited should we be by all of this?

Let’s take GDP first, since the story is pretty unambiguous: not very excited at all. Yesterday’s second quarter number was largely a pretty predictable bounceback from the disastrous first quarter numbers, which showed that the economy contracted at a 2.1 percent rate. Average these two quarters and you have the economy growing at less than a 1 percent rate for the first half of the year. This sad performance comes even as the fiscal drag from federal and state governments has relented a lot since 2013. It’s very hard to see us moving ahead of the same 2 percent growth in final demand that we have seen over the past three years.

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Last month’s jobs report was a strong one. We added 288,000 jobs, bringing the second-quarter average growth rate to 272,000 jobs per month. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate dropped for good reasons—because people found work, not because people stopped looking. Indeed, last month’s report made me unusually optimistic; at a growth rate of 272,000 jobs per month, we would get back to a healthy labor market in early 2017. That would still mean that the Great Recession, all told, will have caused roughly ten years of weakened labor market opportunities for American workers, but at least there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

So July’s jobs numbers, which will be released on Friday, will help answer the all-important question:  have we really kicked it into higher gear? A jobs number north of 270,000 would be a pretty clear sign that the answer is yes—but anything much less than that would push us back to “we have to wait and see” territory. Unfortunately, consensus forecasts are for job growth around 235,000—if true, that sets us back to growth rates that put health in the labor market more than three years away.

The big news in the Social Security and Medicare trustees reports released this afternoon is the improvement in Medicare’s finances due to slowing health cost inflation. As a result, the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund is projected to remain solvent until 2030, four years later than projected last year. The projected HI Trust Fund’s 75-year shortfall is 0.87 percent of taxable payroll, down from 1.11 percent of payroll last year.

On the other hand, the trustees also assume the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate formula will not take effect. Though Congress has overridden the legislated reduction in physician payment rates since 2003, it has also included provisions offsetting part or all of the cost to Medicare. Implicitly, the projections now assume the “doc fix” will no longer include such provisions, raising projected Medicare Part B costs by about 0.3 percentage points annually over the next 75 years.

The combined effect of these changes is a reduction in projected short- and medium-term costs and an increase in long-term costs. Last year, costs were projected to rise to 3.6, 5.8, and 6.5 percent of GDP in 2012, 2040 and 2087, respectively. This year, costs are projected to rise to 3.5, 5.6, and 6.9 percent of GDP in 2013, 2040 and 2088, respectively.

Social Security projections show little change from last year, with the combined old age and disability trust funds projected to remain solvent through 2033—the same as last year—and a modest increase in the long-term shortfall from 2.72 percent of taxable payroll last year to 2.88 percent of taxable payroll this year. The change in the valuation period—one fewer year of surplus and one more year of deficit—accounts for 0.6 percentage points of the decline. The rest is due to small changes in demographic and economic assumptions (such as a reduction in the inflation rate from 2.8 to 2.7 percent), methodological improvements, and the repeal of parts of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act.

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I read two pieces about the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) workforce this morning: an op-ed in USA Today and an editorial in the Washington Post. Both reference a recent Census Bureau study, which found that only a quarter of bachelor’s degree graduates in STEM fields end up working in those fields. But from there, the two pieces head in very different directions.

The Post says Census got the number of STEM jobs wrong, because, in fact, one out of every five jobs requires STEM skills, even if the students end up working outside their field. That’s stretching definitions, though the idea that many STEM grads can use what they learn outside their field of study is certainly true. But, amazingly, the Post also says the numbers don’t really matter: “Whatever the number generated, it should not be seen as determining the need for STEM education.” Whether one STEM worker in four finds a job in his field of study, or only one in ten, the education is so valuable we can’t have too many STEM majors, according to the Post editorial. Why, even farmers should have STEM degrees because, “many farmers rely on genetic modification of crops.” That’s just silly. Many truck drivers rely on civil engineering, but they don’t need engineering degrees any more than a farmer planting hybrid corn needs a math or genetics degree.

The Post’s editors believe there’s no such thing as an oversupply of STEM graduates, but their editorial doesn’t review the boom and bust history of STEM graduate oversupply, or even mention what effect oversupply might have on the earnings or aspirations of the students who have paid for and worked to complete STEM bachelor degrees. By contrast, the USA Today authors (some of whom have done research with EPI before), all of whom are academics with close ties to actual students, do care about what happens to STEM grads after they leave school and look for work. They are rightly concerned that the wages of IT personnel have been flat for 16 years, and they worry that overproducing STEM grads, coupled with industry’s immigration proposal to triple the number of IT guestworkers, will suppress wage growth and deny IT workers the middle class security most would like, let alone a fair share of the tech industry’s fabulous profits.

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Of all the thefts that happen in the United States, one type is greatly outpacing the rest. With billions of dollars stolen annually—greater than all burglaries, robberies, larcenies, and motor vehicle thefts combined—wage theft has become an epidemic. And wage theft’s victims tend to be those who can least afford it and who lack the power to stop it: low-wage and immigrant workers. When victims do speak out, they often face severe economic retribution, like cuts in their hours or the possibility of losing their job.

The federal government is not just failing to do enough to stop wage theft—it’s an active participant in it. Federally-contracted workers are victimized at an alarming rate. According to a Senate Heath, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee report, 35 of the Department of Labor’s 100 largest wage theft penalties from 2007-2012 (32 companies, with three repeat violations) were levied against federal contractors. In total, these firms had to repay employees $82.1 million in back wages, but only six faced civil penalties, which totaled just $640,385. Moreover, this did not prevent these firms from getting future government contracts—in FY 2012, these same 32 companies received a whopping $73.1 billion in federal contracts. If this doesn’t send a clear message to contractors, I’m not sure what does. Rip off your employees and you may get a slap on the wrist, but don’t worry, the contracts will keep coming.

In fact, the federal bidding process even provides a certain incentive for these illegal labor cost reductions. With contracts going to the lowest bidder, some firms try to shave costs in whatever ways possible, including illegally denying employees the wages they deserve.

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The release of the Social Security Trustees Report, just announced for July 28, usually prompts alarmist commentary on the burdens of supporting an aging population. A recent Congressional Budget Office report fanned the flames by identifying aging as the key driver of long-term growth in federal spending, accounting for 55 percent of the projected growth in federal spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as a share of GDP over the next quarter century. Aging eclipsed excess growth in health costs above general inflation (24 percent of the increase) and the expansion of federal health care programs under the Affordable Care Act (21 percent).

Aging appears to loom larger because health cost inflation slowed after ACA’s passage. Despite this positive development, CBO projects that by 2039 federal debt as a share of GDP will almost match the record set after World War II, even as federal revenues increase relative to the size of the economy. If aging is as inevitable as death and the Republican aversion to taxes, cuts to large social insurance programs benefiting seniors would seem to be the only way to prevent the federal debt from ballooning.

Not so fast. While CBO analysts should be given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to producing unbiased projections, how these projections are framed is not immune to politics. And while both the current and former CBO directors are known for their expertise in analyzing health costs, Peter Orszag, who stepped down as CBO director to become President Obama’s budget director, emphasized the need to rein in health costs through government action, whereas his successor, Douglas Elmendorf, has been more skeptical of government’s ability to do so, going so far as to dismiss ACA provisions designed to restrain health costs in CBO’s influential “alternative” projections.

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Yesterday, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) unveiled his long-awaited plan to fight poverty, called “Expanding Opportunity in America.” And while Ryan’s new proposals serve to distance his ideas from the more draconian aspects of his annual budget proposals, as well as 2012’s Romney-Ryan presidential campaign, this new plan serves as further evidence that Ryan fundamentally misunderstands the nature of poverty in the United States.

Drifting in Ryan’s ocean of misunderstanding is some flotsam of good policy ideas. Chief among them, Ryan does not advocate the shredding of the social safety net to further the goal of deficit reduction, as he did in his most recent budget proposal, which cut $3.3 trillion from low-income support programs over 10 years. Instead, in “Expanding Opportunity,” he emphatically states that his new treatise “is not a budget-cutting exercise.” Moreover, by calling for an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for childless workers, Ryan is moving away from prior rhetoric that belittled Americans with little or no federal income tax burden.

An expanded EITC isn’t Ryan’s only proposal that would help truly alleviate poverty—he also advocates prison sentencing reform and programs to try to reduce recidivism, helpful in the fight against poverty because the incarceration rate and long duration of sentences have led to prison becoming a “poverty trap,” especially for poor African-American men and their families.

As for the EITC, Ryan’s proposal is very similar to one backed by President Obama; Ryan would increase the maximum benefit to childless workers by just over $500, to $1,005, allow workers to receive the benefit until they hit an income of $18,070 (compared to the current cutoff of $14,790), and allow workers as young as 21 (as opposed to 25) receive the credit. Ryan would also aim to have the credit applied to paychecks monthly, rather than requiring completion of complicated forms during tax season, which can be magnets for shady tax preparation outfits.

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Corporate inversions are all the rage these days—over the past week and a half at least two large firms have announced plans to renounce their U.S. “citizenship.” Simply put, the U.S. corporate tax base is slowing leaking out of the U.S. to other countries. Most observers quite rightly blame our dysfunctional corporate income tax system for this problem, though there is no consensus on how to fix it—tax reform is unlikely in the near- or medium-term. As far as what to do about our eroding corporate tax base in the meantime, Democrats and Republicans are on completely different pages.

The main GOP position (and the position of others as well) was best summed up by John McKinnon and Kristina Peterson of the Wall Street Journal: “Many Republicans say inversions should be addressed as part of a broader overhaul of the tax code, noting that the U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world.” There are two major problems with this position, however.

First, tax reform is not going to happen any time soon, but the tax base is eroding now. The GOP apparently wants tax reform, but when a serious tax reform plan was proposed by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, the Speaker Boehner’s first comment was literally “Blah, blah, blah, blah.” This does not sound like a leader of a party that is serious about adopting tax reform anytime soon. Unless Congress passes a stopgap measure, it is likely a major proportion of the U.S. corporate tax base will have inverted before they can agree on a tax reform proposal.

Second, while the United States has one of the highest statutory corporate tax rates among developed countries, few firms actually pay that tax rate. Citizens for Tax Justice note that many large corporations, including GE, Verizon, and Boeing, have a negative tax rate. Additionally, it is noteworthy that two of the recent firms proposing to invert pay average tax rates of 22 percent (AbbVie) and 25 percent (Mylan), which are considerably below the 35 percent statutory corporate tax rate. The main point is the average corporate tax rate (what firms actually pay) is much lower than the statutory tax rate (what is written in the tax code) and not that much different from the average tax rate of many advanced economies.

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On May 22, 2014, the Office of Management and Budget solicited comments on a proposal for changes to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) that would take effect in a 2017 revision. The revision would reclassify factoryless goods producers (FGPs) such as Apple and Nike, most of which are now in wholesaling or management of companies, as manufacturers, and move trade by manufacturing service providers (MSPs), such as China’s Foxconn (which builds Apple products) into services. In What is manufacturing and where does it happen?, I show that this proposal would artificially inflate U.S. manufacturing production and employment and deflate U.S goods trade deficits with many countries. It would also irrevocably change U.S. balance of payments accounting. I recommend that OMB should withdraw its NAICS 2017 proposal regarding FGPs and MSPs, and remand the issue to the OMB committee that handles trade statistics policy for reconsideration.

NAICS is used by the myriad federal statistical agencies that collect, analyze, and publish economic data, including data on trade. The OMB proposal was developed to respond to the rapid growth of establishments that design products but outsource most or all of the production process.

The NAICS 2017 proposal—which is part of a broader, international, behind-the-scenes effort to redefine and recalculate U.S. and international trade accounts—would artificially inflate measures of U.S. manufacturing production and employment by arbitrarily moving wholesalers such as Apple and Nike into manufacturing, and changing substantial quantities of the goods we import into services. This would reduce our reported trade deficit in goods (on a balance of payments basis), with no change in our underlying balance of trade. And it would make it appear that U.S. manufacturing output has increased when, in fact, much of the actual manufacturing production has been offshored.

Suppressing measured trade deficits through statistical manipulation is no substitute for better trade and manufacturing policies. Congress should order a comprehensive review and evaluation of recent and planned changes to U.S. international trade and national accounting statistics, and of the international standards on which U.S. trade accounting systems are based.

Anyone who knows the shameful history of the U.S. response to Jewish refugees before World War II wants to avoid repeating it. As the Nazi genocide progressed, the United States turned its back on the Jews, infamously forcing the St. Louis, a ship with more than 900 German-Jewish refugee passengers, to sail back to Europe in June 1939 after it was refused entry to Cuba, rather than issuing visas to the refugees. President Franklin Roosevelt could have intervened through executive action, but chose not to in the face of the public’s anti-Semitism, worries about competition for scarce jobs, and isolationism. More than 250 of the St. Louis’s passengers eventually died in the Holocaust.

At the same time, Congress refused to take steps to save Jewish children who were fleeing Nazi violence and persecution. Bills introduced in the House and Senate to admit 20,000 German-Jewish children beyond the existing quotas were allowed to die in committee.

The United States had no role in the rise of the Nazis, but we are deeply involved in the political instability of Central America. We took sides in a civil war in El Salvador and supported a coup in Honduras. The United States bears a large part of the responsibility for the drug violence and armed conflict in Central America that are driving so many children from their home communities. We are the consumers of the drugs whose sale and transshipment enriches the drug gangs and fuels the drug wars. Without our insatiable consumption of illegal drugs, the drug violence would diminish. Moreover, as Jeff Faux has argued, without our militarization of the region and our billions of dollars of support for violent, right-wing governments and militias, large parts of the population would not live in terror. And finally, without our trade policies, which have disrupted the Central American economies and displaced tens of thousands of agricultural workers, there would be less of an economic incentive to immigrate to the United States.

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