Here’s a sampling of links that EPI’s research team found insightful today:

• “A ‘fiscal cliff’ deal is near: Here are the details” (Wonkblog)
• “Conservatives complain Sandy bill includes millions in unrelated spending” (On The Money)
• “Assimilated by the Peterson Borg” (Paul Krugman)
• “Black jobless rate is twice that of whites” (Washington Post)
• “The Great Manufacturing Skill-Shift Labor Shortage: Hard to See” (Employment Policy Research Network)
• “A Giant Statistical Round-up of the Income Inequality Crisis in 16 Charts” (The Atlantic)

By now, it’s (finally) becoming well-recognized that the term “fiscal cliff” confuses more than it clarifies. The worst problem with it is that it presents the sharp fiscal contraction baked into current law for 2013 as a single monolith, when in fact it’s the result of a bunch of separable tax increases and spending cuts. Given that our previous effort at renaming the “cliff” clearly failed, I now officially nominate “à la carte austerity” as a new entry.

A second problem with the “cliff” metaphor is that it carries the strong implication that if this à la carte austerity is not solved by Jan. 1, then economic chaos will ensue. This is clearly wrong. If nothing is done to address the fiscal contraction throughout the entire first half of next year, then yes, the economy will re-enter recession. But we will not be slammed back into recession Jan. 2 if this isn’t solved by then. I should note one important caveat to this: fiscal austerity will be very “cliffy” indeed for about two million of the most vulnerable Americans, as extended unemployment benefits will see a hard cutoff by the end of December. So if policymakers are trying to manage this situation with maximum efficiency and compassion, it seems that extending the longer unemployment benefits is an obvious place to start, even if other elements of the à la carte austerity are not solved. Yes, I’m not holding my breath either. Read more

The American Immigration Council (AIC) has a new blog post that makes some troubling claims regarding certain aspects of the H-1B guest worker program. In her piece, “Lawsuit Uncovers USCIS’ Double Standards in H-1B Program,” AIC attorney Emily Creighton discusses what she believes to be the significance of a number of revealing internal documents AIC obtained from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and subsequent litigation. I admire and applaud the lawyers at the AIC’s Legal Action Center for their hard work to force the release of the documents, because the action has brought another element of much-needed transparency to the flawed and much-abused H-1B guest worker program for temporary foreign workers with at least a college degree. However, the conclusions Creighton draws regarding AIC’s new discoveries are off the mark.

Creighton describes the substance of her findings:

According to fraud referral sheets [obtained from USCIS], a fraud investigation may be triggered when a business asks for an H-1B employee if the business has a combination of the following characteristics: 1) a gross annual income of less than $10 million, 2) fewer than 25 employees, or 3) has been in business for fewer than 10 years.

In her opinion, this means Read more

After years of hearing the Chamber of Commerce and certain other business groups complain about the regulatory burden government imposes, far too many Americans (and politicians) are probably convinced that regulations are excessively burdensome to businesses. Not so, according to two important new pieces of information.

First, after examining 185 nations on 10 key factors, the World Bank’s latest “Ease of Doing Business” study ranks the U.S. No. 4 overall and No. 1 among the 25 largest economies. In the words of the World Bank, “A high ranking on the ease of doing business index means the regulatory environment is more conducive to the starting and operation of a local firm.” Unlike so many business trade associations and lobbyists, the World Bank recognizes that the regulatory environment includes many rules that enhance and protect business activity, and the U.S. ranks especially high in protecting investors, enforcing contracts, and getting credit.

A second fact that contradicts business complaints about burdensome regulations is that corporate profits, which were $1.75 trillion in the third quarter of 2012, are at an all-time high (higher as a percent of GDP than at any time in our history). That corporate America’s bottom line is doing extraordinarily well should, at a minimum, make one skeptical of the seemingly endless studies by business groups which somehow find that regulations are damaging them.

That leads to the central question: Given that the U.S. has one of the most welcoming regulatory environments in the world, why aren’t U.S. businesses creating more jobs instead of hoarding the historic profits they’ve accumulated? The answer, as most economists know, is slack demand. Without customers able and willing to spend, businesses won’t invest. The solution is the same as it was at the start of the recession: because financially squeezed consumers can’t spend and businesses won’t, it is the responsibility of the federal government to make large enough investments in infrastructure and human capital to lift the economy and protect our future prosperity.

The Wall Street Journal’s owner and editors hate unions, so it is no surprise that the newspaper published an editorial on Tuesday gloating over Michigan’s enactment of “right-to-work” legislation to ban contracts between labor unions and employers that require all employees covered by the contract to pay union dues or their equivalent. The editorial is so full of untruths, half-truths and right-wing extremist ideology that a full response would wear out both author and reader. But let’s take a brief look at how the 1 percent defends this ugly attack on employee rights and economic security.

The heart of the editorial is the contention that right-to-work-for-less laws are good for workers, families and state economies, which it supports with various pseudo-scientific studies, including one by the Taxpayers Protection Alliance that—ludicrously—claims the typical Michigan family of four would have had annual income $54,224 greater in 2008 if Michigan had enacted a right-to-work-for-less law in 1977. In 2008, median income for a family of four was about $78,000, so the Journal is proposing that it would have been roughly $132,000! Curiously, only four states had median household income over $100,000 in 2008, and not one was right-to-work-for-less. Read more

Here’s some reading material for you from items EPI’s research team skimmed through today:

• “State Trends in Premiums and Deductibles, 2003–2011: Eroding Protection and Rising Costs Underscore Need for Action” (Commonwealth Fund)
• “Dems hold the middle ground. GOP is on fringe.” (The Plum Line)
• “Right to Work” Isn’t a Civil Right. But Unionizing Should Be” (New Republic)
• “Former Bank of England Official Criticizes British Policies” (Economix)
• “Sheldon Adelson: ‘I’m Basically a Social Liberal‘” (Washington Wire)
• “AIG WRAP-UP: Treasury Sells Final Shares of AIG Common Stock, Positive Return on Overall $182 Billion AIG Commitment Is Now $22.7 Billion” (Treasury Department)

Here’s some thought-provoking content that EPI’s research team enjoyed reading today:

• “The Real Long-Term Budget Challenge” (Economix)
• “The Conventional Wisdom Re Growth is Unwise” (Jared Bernstein)
• “It’s Official: Austerity Economics Doesn’t Work” (New Yorker)
• “What Does the New Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) Paper Tell Us?” (Rortybomb)
• “A failure of leadership: Snyder’s about-face on right-to-work betrays voters” (Detroit Free Press)

This month, the National Council of La Raza’s (NCLR) Monthly Latino Unemployment Report focuses on the important issue of underemployment. “Underemployment,” as The State of Working America states, is “a more comprehensive measure of slack in the labor market than unemployment.”

The book goes on:

Underemployment includes workers who meet the official definition of unemployment as well as: 1) those who are working part time but want and are available to work full time (“involuntary” part timers), and 2) those who want and are available to work and have looked for work in the last year but have given up actively seeking work (“marginally attached” workers). While this is the most comprehensive measure of labor underutilization available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it does not include workers who are underemployed in a “skills or experience” sense (as in, say, a mechanical engineer working as a barista).

African Americans generally have the highest rates of underemployment among the major racial and ethnic groups. However, for much of 2009, Latinos had a slightly higher rate. This year, the Latino underemployment rate has averaged about 20 percent, while the black rate has averaged about 23 percent, and the white rate about 12 percent.

NCLR’s report also pulls apart the underemployment rate to examine the rate of involuntary part-time work. The share of workers who want full-time work but only have part-time work out of all workers is another important measure of hardship. Many of these individuals are struggling to make ends meet.

If one examines this involuntary-part-time rate from Nov. 2011 to Oct. 2012, Latinos have the highest rate. The share of Latino workers who only have part-time work but desire full-time work is 10.3 percent. For blacks, it is 7.7 percent, and for whites it is 5 percent. We need much stronger job creation to put these part-time workers in full-time jobs.

Here’s some of the interesting content that EPI’s research team browsed through today:

• “The Forgotten Millions” (Paul Krugman)
• “Bills Placing Limits on Unions Advance in Michigan Legislature” (New York Times)
• “Underemployment: The Real Jobs Crisis: Monthly Latino Employment Report” (National Council of La Raza)
• “Degree Inflation? Jobs That Newly Require B.A.’s” (Economix)
• “The Effects of Health Reform on Small Businesses and Their Workers” (Urban Institute)
• “Taxing Businesses Through the Individual Income Tax” (Congressional Budget Office)
• “The Gospel of Wealth Fails the Inequity Test in Primates” (Scientific American)

Among the U.S.-born, black women had the strongest birth-rate decline from 1990 to 2010, according to a recent report from Pew Social and Demographic Trends. The birth rate—the number of births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44—declined 29 percent for blacks, 25 percent for Asians, 21 percent for Hispanics, but only 5 percent for whites.

In 1990, the black birth rate was 26.1 points higher than the white rate. In 2010, it was only 4 points higher. If this trend continues, the black birth rate will soon equal the white rate.