Author: A.T.

Not everyplace is doing as well as Seattle — or is as expensive to live in — so an immediate jump all the way to $15 everywhere may not compute.  But consider:

Friends,

The unemployment rate in Seattle is at a near-record low of 2.9 percent. Weird, since we were told over and over again by corporate lobbyists and right-wing politicians that raising the minimum wage to $15 would lead to job losses across the board.

It’s almost as if trickle-downers have been lying to us.

Despite the repeated threats we’ve heard from minimum wage-law opponents, this great news for Seattle workers and our economy is hardly unprecedented. The National Employment Law Project analyzed 70 years of historical data and found no correlation between raised minimum wages and employment levels.¹ Economists know this, too. In 2014, more than 600 experts, including seven Nobel laureates, signed a letter stating that “the weight of evidence (is) now showing that increases in the minimum wage have had little or no negative effect on the employment of minimum-wage workers, even during times of weakness in the labor market.”²

Our state also raised the minimum wage recently (it went from $9.47 to $11 on Jan. 1, and will soon reach $13.50), and things are looking up. The recent jobs report from the Washington Employment Security Department showed that state unemployment is at a nine-year low.³

Still, don’t get your hopes up that anti-worker ideologues will change their tune. The wealthy and powerful desperately need the public to believe it’d be bad if the rest of us became more wealthy and powerful. The pervasive myth that paying workers a living wage will make jobs disappear has been a go-to right-wing argument since the first 25 cents/hour minimum wage was set in 1938.⁴

As @TBPInvictus wrote, “There is scant evidence to be had that Seattle’s higher minimum wage experiment has thus far been anything but a resounding success. Three years of arguing against it have proven futile although, sadly, the ideological naysayers are hard-wired to deny fact-based, data-driven evidence.”

Help pile more evidence in front of your trickle-downer friends and relatives by sharing my latest video update on Facebook.

In solidarity,

David Rolf
President, SEIU 775

1. “Raise wages, kill jobs? Seven decades of historical data find no correlation between minimum wage increases and employment levels,” National Employment Law Project, May 5, 2016
2. “Economist Statement on the Federal Minimum Wage,” Economic Policy Institute, Jan. 14, 2014
3. “Unemployment rate hits nine-year low in Washington,” Employment Security Department, March 22, 2017
4. “F.D.R. makes the case for the minimum wage,” New York Times, March 7, 2014

Watch and share David’s video if you have a chance.  Raising the minimum wage — apart from being the equitable and uplifting thing to do — would lower the cost to taxpayers of food stamps, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and health care assistance.

I got a Ferrari!

All electric.

Radio controlled.

Also: a golden unicorn (head only; not real gold), a gold pocket watch (real gold!); The New York Times Essential Guide to Grilling (and a certificate for a grill!); a 1000-piece New Yorker cartoon jigsaw puzzle (beautifully wrapped and perfect for regifting, it being the thought that counts); number 11-of-40 of a limited edition Asher Levine outfit (here’s an example of his remarkable work) — “beachwear” I could not have pulled off even at 25 but will enjoy trying on for my friends to laugh at; two orchids I am determined not to kill (did I ever tell you about the astonishing giant silk orchid I inherited? that I always admired on my mom’s windowsill — it never lost a leaf — so I put it in a windowless hallway and got lots of compliments — what a beautiful orchid! — and then it died!  It hadn’t been fake after all!  I still can’t believe it!); and a dry-ice packed dinner-for-two flown up from Joe’s Stone Crabs, complete with crabs, mallet, tiny-forks, bibs, cole slaw (Joe’s cole slaw will change your life), creamed spinach (so rich it could end your life), New England clam chowder, and a key lime pie (worth dying from the spinach for, because one slice of Joe’s key lime pie and you feel, at least, as though you’ve gone to heaven).

And I got a surprise party!

Not a surprise like my 30th, when I was genuinely surprised.

(It was at the apartment of the love of my life who had swapped me out for — well, I couldn’t blame him, but it was not my idea of fun to be feted at the home of my ex and my replacement.)

And not a surprise like my 40th, when I was totally mind-blowingly surprised — brilliantly thrown off the scent by a kind of lame “fake” surprise party on my actual birthday, so that when, a few days later, I got home from a diversionary trip to find the whole house decorated and filled with friends from all over, I was completely and entirely coulda-burst-into-tears-but-managed-not-to flabbergasted.

Nor a surprise like my 50th, to which Charles had sent out beautiful misspelled invitations (“SUPRISE!”), that I got wind of early on — though it was pretty great.

Nor a surprise like my 60th — the surprise there being that there wasn’t one.  Which made more sense.

Indeed, not a surprise at all, technically speaking, because various people over the previous weeks had told me how sorry they were that they wouldn’t be able to make it.  (“Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”)

But even though I knew to save the night, I had no idea what or where or who it would be — and when a car arrived, I got in, kind of assuming it would take me to Brooklyn.  Right?  Or New Jersey, maybe?  Instead, it stopped at a familiar address on 17th Street. No one was downstairs but the door was unlocked and I climbed the stairs preparing to act surprised . . . a lot of stairs for a 70-year-old, but I pretend to be younger . . . and was surprised!  There was the couple who’d sent the Stone Crabs up from Miami, and there were a couple who’d texted to say happy birthday “from London,” and there were . . . well, I don’t want to brag, but it was only the nicest crowd of people ever assembled.  With videos on a giant movie screen, a sushi bar, a guy with a microphone in his lapel seemingly oblivious to the party reading a book (was he the event manager? why was he reading a book in the middle of my party?) that turned out to be my book — you couldn’t hear it above the music (maybe at first, before it filled up?), but so diligent!  He just kept his head down, slogging through for three hours, past the part where I swung at a wild pitch on a three-two count at the top of the ninth (I’ve never been great under pressure) and past . . . well, who knows? no one could hear him, but it was a great touch. As were the stacks of toilet paper purchased in bulk, with $70 wrappers around each (if you don’t know whose face is on the $70 bill, now you do).  And margaritas!  And — this was hysterical — the same photographer the DNC uses at all its fundraisers, following me around the entire night.  (Hi, Beatrice!)  It was very democratic.

How did they even find so many of my friends to invite?  WikiLeaks?

There were no camels — one of my b-school pals imported camels and acrobats to his recent 70th — but do you know what?  I don’t think even camels could have made the party any better.  Though it would have been interesting watching them attempt to climb all those stairs.

So here’s the thing about turning 70.  It’s great.  If you’re fortunate enough to have your health — which along with friends and a decent internet connection are all that matter — it’s just the best, because it’s like the first day of school.  I am now officially the youngest old guy around.  The envy of 73-year-olds, 80-year-olds, 91-year-olds, 102-year-olds.

The Sixties were an amazing decade in which to reach adulthood; but one’s own sixties?

Speaking here only in terms of branding, there’s just no way to make an age starting with the word “sixty” sound young.  But seventy?  And with a party like that to kick it off?  And three-quarters of Joe’s key lime pie still in my freezer?  And readers like you?

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Well, ten very old words.  But some, like overmorrow, we should bring back.  And share with the blateroons apricating at the beach this summer.  Click here.  (Thanks, Glenn!)

You’ve probably already seen Jared Kushner’s take on Kim Jong-Un.  It’s pretty funny.  (Thanks, Andy Borowitz.)

A tech wizard I admire, Martine Rothblatt, tells me that Dr. Richard Feynman . . . a lecture of whose she once actually got to attend and whose autobiography you should read and who figured out why the Challenger exploded and showed Congress a glass of ice water and an o-ring . . . Martine tells me that this brilliant man predicted decades ago that if you could just get the atoms close enough (or something: what do I know?), battery capacity could increase 1,000-fold . . . and that we’re on the brink now of that happening.

“You’ll only have to recharge your cell phone once a year,” Martine told me.  And by the way?  She invented and piloted the first all-electric helicopter a few months ago — even with current battery technology.  (Here she is piloting it with a passenger.)

Needless to say, if batteries become 1,000 times more efficient, virtually everything will be powered by the sun, just as Thomas Edison imagined.  (“I would put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”)

Which means that . . . just as communication has become virtually free (185 years ago, information never traveled faster than 7mph; today you can make a video call [pause, please, to appreciate the marvel of it] to China [to China!] at no added cost to your Internet bill) . . . so energy is about to become virtually free.  Not entirely so, of course; a huge investment in infrastructure will be required to harness the power of the sun, just as a huge investment in infrastructure was required to make that next video call to Beijing free.  But the basic fuel?  Absolutely free for the taking.  And now (or soon), for use at night and on cloudy days, cheap for the storing.

Amazing.  After 10,000 human generations struggling and suffering and shivering and striving to get us to this point, it’s all coming together – either to a glorious and ultimately inter-planetary beginning, where those of us with exoskeletons will be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound (or short hedges, anyway) . . .

. . . or to a chaotic, ultimately horrific end.

More likely the latter.  But the former is sure worth fighting for.  And probably won’t be achieved by cutting taxes for the rich, boosting weaponry at the expense of soft power, and — hallelujah! — bringing back coal.

Have a great weekend.

My friend Brian woke at 4am Easter night (technically, Monday morning) remembering he’d not got the vacuum cleaner his bi-weekly housekeeper needed.

Before rolling over back to sleep, he reached for his phone, visited Amazon Prime Now (do they have it where you live?) and for . . . are . . . you . . . sitting  . . . down ? . . . nineteen dollars and ninety-six cents, got this one and — are you still sitting down? — it arrived at 7:49am.

No charge for delivery, just a tip.

(For delivery within an hour, there’s a charge.)

And this even before vacuum cleaners are flying through the air hooked to delivery drones that Hoover outside your window like hummingbirds, waiting to be unhooked before the next drone arrives with pizza.

And what about glasses?  They used to cost so much!

Warby Parker sends a case of five frames you’ve selected to try on for free before purchasing — if you like one — at a fraction of the cost.

Glasses USA — which has rimless options — let’s you try them on instantly, on your computer.  Just upload a photo of yourself, and — you’ll see.  It’s fun.

That’s the name of a show ending its limited engagement April 28, so I’m remiss only to be telling you about it now.  But on the off chance you’re in New York and can snag a couple of tickets to one of the final performances, grab them.  It’s just so good.  How far gay men have come since The Boys In The Band.

Of course, it probably helps to have lived through all this.  I’m guessing that most bright humans would find the play funny and powerful, whatever their age or gender identity.  But for someone about to get his first Social Security check?  (Not me, of course, but let’s just say someone who last week got a letter proving that computers are not yet capable of writing fully logical prose.*)  For someone like that, Daniel’s Husband really resonates.

*”Here is how we figured your regular monthly payment:  You are entitled to a monthly benefit of $3,255.90.  Less $428.60 premiums for medical insurance = $2,827.30.  Less .30 because we are required to round down to a whole dollar = $2,750.80.”

Makes sense to me!

Need an extension? Form 4868. But you still have to pay a good estimate of what you owe.

And don’t forget that — if you’ve had significant 2017 income on which taxes were not withheld — your first estimated quarterly tax is also due today.

I, of course, have not done either, and neither of us wants me to get in trouble, so today I’ll just offer some tax-related headlines the DNC press shop has pulled together on how Trump would revise the tax code.

They tell quite a story.

Sean Spicer on Monday: Trump’s Campaign Tax Plan Was Still “The Backbone” Of His Tax Reform Plan.

Time: “Trump’s Tax Plan Could Cost $12 Trillion—and Save Him Millions in Taxes Each Year”

Washington Post: “Analysis: By 2025, most of Donald Trump’s tax cuts would go to the wealthiest 1% of Americans”

Vox: “Study: Donald Trump would raise taxes on millions of middle-class families”

Politico: “Think tank finds Trump’s tax plan would increase deficit by $10 trillion”

It’s clear Trump’s proposed ‘tax reform’ is a giveaway to billionaires like Trump.

Fortune: “Donald Trump’s Tax Plan Is Really Good for Donald Trump”

Wall Street Journal: “The first big tax cut moving through Congress under President Donald Trump would likely benefit the president himself, potentially saving him millions of dollars in taxes on his rental income next year and even more money on other income if he wins a second term.”

Catherine Rampell in Washington Post: “The top 1 percent of taxpayers get the biggest cut in raw dollar terms, as a percentage of their incomes and as a percentage of total tax cuts. They’d receive nearly half the total tax cuts under Trump’s plan.”

Trump’s tax plan would hurt, not help, the many Americans who voted for Trump.

Washington Post: “A new poll suggests that ordinary Republican voters…might even object to current plans to reduce taxes on corporations and the wealthy.”

Washington Post: “Large groups of Republican voters say they were already upset by the fact that some corporations and rich households pay too little.”

Washington Post: “The plan would also reduce the rate on corporate income from 35 percent to 20 percent and reduce taxes on corporations by $891 billion in total over a decade. Yet even more Republicans worry that corporate taxes are already too low. In the poll, 44 percent of GOP respondents said corporations paying too little bothered them a lot.”

Trump plans to pay for tax breaks for the rich by repealing or changing the Affordable Care Act, putting quality healthcare out of reach for millions of Americans.

New York Times: “Wealthy Would Get Billions in Tax Cuts Under Obamacare Repeal Plan”

Well . . . five minutes . . . all about our cell phone addiction.

Fun.

Are you marching for science a week from Saturday?  Click here!  (“Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are now on pace to double this century, reaching the highest levels in 50 million years. Without further action, we’re headed to a point of no return for the planet.”)

But here for 11 minutes of good news:

If astronauts on a little spaceship to Mars can recycle the CO2 they exhale into food they consume — with the help of some microbes whose name I can’t pronounce — what if the soon-to-be 10 billion astronauts aboard our little spaceship Earth could do the same thing?  Taking carbon dioxide out of the air and turning it into food?

I was once on Bill O’Reilly’s Show. Another time, we sat next to each other at dinner (as fellow contributing editors of PARADE, the Sunday supplement).  He was perfectly cordial both times.  But he has a temper.  I’d not seen these 90 seconds before.  Charming.

As advertisers flee O’Reilly’s show, he retains at least one prominent endorser: the President.  Donald knows Bill well, he says, and doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong.  (Do it with a Tic Tac, and who really has grounds for complaint?)

But a presidential endorsement is not what it once was.

“Meet The Press” commissioned a survey to find out how people would feel about a product endorsed by President Trump.  As you may have seen Chuck Todd report yesterday morning, a full 18% said the endorsement would be effective: they’d be more likely to use the product knowing it had Trump’s seal of approval.  But 49% said his endorsement would make them less likely to use it, with more than half those going further: 29% of all respondents said they would actively boycott the product.

I’ll tell you whose endorsement would mean a lot to me: Fareed Zakaria’s.

For me, “must-see TV” includes Fareed Zakaria every Sunday morning on CNN.

And here’s a surprise.  He thinks Trump has for a long time, until very recently, been right about something really important.

As he began last Sunday’s show:

The recent Republican debacle on healthcare could prove to be an opportunity. You see, it’s highlighted yet again the complexity of America’s medical system, which continues to be by far the most expensive and inefficient in the advanced world.

But Donald Trump could actually use the legislative collapse to fix healthcare if he went back to basics and to his core convictions on the topic, which are surprisingly intelligent and consistent. Really!

There is an understandable impulse on the right to assume that healthcare would work more efficiently if it were a free market, or a freer market. It’s true for most goods and services. But in 1963, the economist Kenneth Arrow, who later won a Nobel Prize, offered a simple explanation as to why markets would not work well in this area.

He argued that there was a huge mismatch of power and information between the buyer and the seller. If a salesman tells you to buy a particular television, you can easily choose another or just walk away. If a doctor insists that you need a medicine or a procedure, you are far less likely to reject that advice.

Every advanced economy in the world has implicitly acknowledged this argument because they have all adopted some version of a state- directed system for healthcare. Consider the 16 countries that rank higher than the United States on the conservative Heritage Foundation’s index of economic freedom.

All have universal coverage and state-driven, guided or operated systems. Hong Kong, often considered the most unregulated free market in the world, has a British-style government-run system.

Switzerland, one of the most business-friendly countries, has a private insurance system just like the United States, but found that to make it work, it had to introduce a mandate like Obamacare.

I am particularly struck by the experience of Taiwan, which canvassed the world for the best ideas before creating its system. It chose Medicare for all, a single government payer with multiple private providers.

The results are astonishing. Taiwan has achieved some of the best outcomes in the world, while paying only seven percent of its GDP on healthcare compared to 18 percent in the US.

I asked William Hsiao, an economist who helped devise Taiwan’s model, what lessons they took from the United States.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM HSIAO, ECONOMIST: You can learn what not to do from the United States rather than learn what to do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Americans often assume that despite its costs, American healthcare provides better services than others. For example, we often hear about the waiting time for care in other countries, but according to the Commonwealth Fund, among industrialized countries, the US is in the middle of the pack for wait times behind even the United Kingdom.

Trump has now taken up the call to repeal Obamacare. But until recently, healthcare was actually one of the rare public policy issues on which Trump had spoken out consistently for 20 years. In his 2000 book, the America We Deserve, here is what he said:

“I’m a conservative on most issues, but a liberal on this one. We should not hear so many stories of families ruined by healthcare expenses. We must have universal healthcare. We need, as a nation, to re-examine the single-payer plan as many individual states are doing.”

[10:05:04] Trump was right on this issue for much of his life. He has recently caved to special interests and ideology, unmoored by facts. He should simply return to his convictions, reach out to the Democrats and he would help America solve its healthcare crisis.

Zakaria and Trump are both American born Muslims (except for Donald), both magnificently educated deep thinkers (except for Donald), both courtly and unfailingly gracious (except for Donald) — so, okay, sure: they could hardly be more different.  Could they?  Yet on health care, until Trump’s recent flip, they both quite sensibly come out the same place as the rest of the civilized world.

When Trump pulled out of the Transpacific Partnership (that would have lowered tariffs for American exports and — importantly — solidified our leadership in the Pacific region), he handed China a tremendous strategic gift.

That’s not what this Daily Beast article is about — All Mapped Out: How China’s Charting Its Course as a Superpower — but it’s useful context.

Did you know that to the Chinese, golf symbolizes corruption?  Take a read.