Last Call For The Vax Of Life, Con't

Team WIN THE MORNING can barely contain themselves over Democratic governors and senators starting to complain about President Biden's vaccine mandates.

 

Three months ago, as California Gov. GAVIN NEWSOM was turning around his fate in the state's recall election, many Democrats came to the conclusion that they'd struck political gold. Mandates to get the Covid-19 vaccine weren't just extremely valuable public health policy but they were electorally powerful too.

Now, moderate and frontline members of the party are singing a different tune.

In recent comments, several high-profile Democrats have stated their opposition to vaccine mandates, specifically applied to private businesses. The most recent Democratic lawmaker to voice her concern was Michigan Gov. GRETCHEN WHITMER. Once considered to be Biden’s vice president, Whitmer said she opposes mandates, citing the impact on the state’s workforce — as Michigan grapples with upticks in cases and residents are split on whether or not to get the vaccine.

"We’re an employer too, the state of Michigan is," Whitmer said on Monday, according to the Daily News in Greenville. "I know if that mandate happens, we’re going to lose state employees. That’s why I haven’t proposed a mandate at the state level. Some states have. We have not, we’re waiting to see what happens in court."

Whitmer isn’t the only Democrat now sounding these notes. Sen. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.) has said he does not support requiring businesses with over 100 employees to ensure that their workforces are vaccinated from Covid-19. Sen. JON TESTER (D-Mont.) has thrown a bit of shade on it too. Gov. PHIL MURPHY (D-.N.J.), shortly before an unexpectedly close re-election win, shied away from embracing a strict vaccine mandate for teachers and other public workers. Gov. KATHY HOCHUL (D-N.Y.), who is running for election after taking over for disgraced former Gov. ANDREW CUOMO (D-N.Y.), has stated her opposition to a “broad-based mandate for all private-sector workers in New York.”

The souring of some Democrats on the mandate comes as the courts strike legal blow after legal blow against a series of vaccine mandates President JOE BIDEN unveiled in September, and it’s prompting concerns in the party that they’re ending up with the worst of all worlds: a blunt policy that won’t go into effect but that will saddle them politically.

“On one hand, it’s just another thing added to the pile of shit that he’s already been dealing with,” a Democratic strategist told us. “On the other hand, it’s just one more front that he and his team are going to have to fight.”

The White House, so far at least, seems unbowed by it all. Aides are convinced that the mandates are necessary to finally tamp down the pandemic, which they believe is Biden’s political end-all, be-all. And they point to an uptick in vaccination rates after businesses and other institutions implemented their own mandates as evidence that they work.

“We know it works. That’s why the administration and the president will continue pressing forward,” White House press secretary JEN PSAKI said of vaccine mandates at today’s briefing.

Biden himself was initially skeptical of requirements that people be vaccinated against the coronavirus, out of a belief that most Americans would jump at the chance to get their shots if they were free and easily accessible. He wanted to steer clear of the politicization that has hampered much of the Covid-19 response, viewing mandates as a concept that could easily spark blowback.

“The concern all along was that mandates can be polarizing, that they have the potential to further entrench people in their resistance,” said CELINE GOUNDER, who advised the Biden transition on the Covid-19 response. “They really tried with incentives over the summer, hoping they didn’t have to go the route of mandates.”

The Delta variant’s emergence — combined with growing GOP opposition to the vaccination campaign — upended that calculation. Faced with a resurgence of cases, plateauing vaccination rate and few alternatives, administration officials by September concluded any political damage done by imposing mandates would be far outweighed by the price that Biden would pay if he failed to rein in the pandemic.

“It’s also important to keep in mind the importance this issue had on the presidential election. Swing voters in particular strongly disagreed with Donald Trump’s failure to act and ignorance towards the severity of the virus,” said ADRIENNE ELROD, a Democratic strategist and former Biden campaign aide. “Voters wanted leadership and a plan, and President Biden delivered.”

The thing is, COVID Omicron is now here as we plunge into another pandemic winter, and the urgency for vaccinations is higher than ever. Vaccination rates have plateaued in many red states, and in nearly 20 states, all of them Trump states, the fully vaccinated rate is still under 55% as of this week.

 

 

So yeah, vaccine mandates are going to be necessary. We're still nowhere near herd immunity and in 10 states, the unvaccinated still outnumber the vaccinated after months of being available.

But yeah, Dems are starting to waver on mandates now. Biden's unpopularity is starting to hurt them politically. Whitmer is facing a tough reelection campaign in 2022, and Kathy Hochul has a primary coming up in only a few months, but Manchin isn't helping and Phil Murphy just won last month.

This mixed messaging on mandates in deeply blue states like NY and NJ are going to hurt people, and it annoys the hell out of me.

Insurrection Investigation, Con't

Former VP Mike Pence's Chief of Staff, Marc Short, is cooperating with the January 6th Committee. Short's subpoena and cooperation represents a potentially serious problem for Trump, and it could signal that Pence himself maybe...and that's a huge, huge maybe...could be willing to at least not stop his team from giving evidence and testimony to the committee.

 

Marc Short, the former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, is cooperating with the January 6 committee, a significant development that will give investigators insight from one of the highest-ranking Trump officials, according to three sources with knowledge of the committee's activities. 

CNN is also reporting for the first time that the committee subpoenaed Short a few weeks ago. 

Short remains one of Pence's closest advisers and is a firsthand witness to many critical events the committee is examining, including what happened to Pence at the Capitol on January 6 and how former President Donald Trump pressured the former vice president not to certify the presidential election that day. 

Short's assistance signals a greater openness among Pence's inner circle. One source told CNN the committee is getting "significant cooperation with Team Pence," even if the committee has not openly discussed that. Another source told CNN that Short's help is an example of the "momentum" the investigation is enjoying behind the scenes. 

Last month, CNN reported that a number of figures close to Pence, including Short, may be willing, either voluntarily or under the guise of a "friendly subpoena," to cooperate with the committee. 

Reached by phone Monday and asked about his cooperation, Short told CNN "no comment." The select committee declined to comment when reached by CNN.

 

If Short is willing to cooperate against Trump, that could be the big break that the investigation needs to move ahead with conspiracy charges. Short would absolutely be aware of any memos and instructions given to Pence from Trump about the January 6th coup, because as Chief of Staff, it was literally his job to know it. 

The question is whether or not Pence is going to play ball here. Pence himself won't testify, his career would be over instantly, but he'll be under heavy pressure to disavow everything Short may have to say.

On the other hand, the pressure has already gotten to former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who is now not cooperating, the story coming hours after the Short news.

Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows will no longer be cooperating with a committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, despite previous efforts to work with them.

Meadows and his attorney George Terwilliger plan to officially notify the committee Tuesday morning, after the senior Trump administration official could not come to terms with lawmakers on an arrangement to work with them.

"We have made efforts over many weeks to reach an accommodation with the committee," Meadows's attorney George Terwilliger told Fox News.

Terwilliger said Meadows was looking to appear voluntarily before the committee and answer questions that Meadows believed were not protected by executive privilege.

Meadows is set to appear on Hannity Tuesday evening.

 

Seems things are going all over the place now. Short cooperating, Meadows not, and Jeffrey Clark facing contempt charges along with Steve Bannon.  Meadows will almost certainly face a criminal referral vote at this point, but as with the Bannon case, Merrick Garland will need time to put together a team to get this right.

 

Besides, the judge in Bannon's contempt trial has set a date...in July.  This is the expedited date.

We'll see who is right.

The Minster Of Trumpaganda

California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes says he will retire from the House at the end of the year to join Trump's social media company as his new propaganda master.

Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of California announced Monday he'll leave the House in the coming weeks to become CEO of the Trump Media & Technology Group. 

"I'm writing to let you know I've decided to pursue this opportunity, and therefore I will be leaving the House of Representatives at the end of 2021," Nunes said in a letter to his constituents. 

Moments after his statement, the Trump Media & Technology Group released its own saying Nunes would be its chief executive officer. 

Nunes, who faced the threat of a more-Democratic district through redistricting ahead of next year's midterms, is a close ally of former President Donald Trump. He previously served as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee when Republicans were in the majority, during which he led efforts among Trump's allies to discredit the FBI's Russia investigation and Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe.

 

I mean, I can't blame the guy. He's being redistricted out of the House along with several other Republicans in the state. But let's remember, Trump gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his loyalty, so of course he was going to work for the guy after his House career was all but eliminated.

This way he can simply create propaganda for Trump's 2024 run rather than having to deal with Congress and bypass the middleman.

Here's the real problem though, as Spencer Ackerman points out:

Nunes, who for more than half a decade has tremendous access to the most sensitive national security secrets, opting to become a formal Trump propagandist is going to be some serious shit.

— Spencer Ackerman (@attackerman) December 6, 2021

 

Trump couldn't have asked for a better in-house Minister of Propaganda for his 2024 run.  Of course, that Trump media enterprise Nunes is joining is already under federal investigation.

And let's remember that convicted Ukraine fixer Lev Parnas is ready to cooperate too...against Nunes.

Just saying.

Stay tuned.

StupidiNews!

• After a record-setting blizzard last week in Hawaii, the island of Maui could see record flooding with up to 25 inches of rain through Tuesday.
• St. Louis police say a seven-year-old brought a loaded gun to school to show off to classmates, nobody was hurt in the incident.
• President Joe Biden will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a virtual summit on Tuesday as military tensions along the Ukraine/Russia border continue to rise.
• France will take a number of measures to curb the spread of COVID Omicron, including closing nightclubs and bars for the next four weeks.
• New archaeological evidence places human relatives walking the earth some 3.6 million years ago, with two Australopithecus afarensis species footprints found in Tanzania.
  

Last Call For Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

Attorney General Merrick Garland is making good on his promise to defend voting rights on a second front in the Lone Star State by going after Texas's obviously racially-motivated Republican gerrymander, and I hope North Carolina is next on his list.

The Justice Department on Monday sued Texas for the second time in a month over new voting laws, this time alleging that Republican state lawmakers discriminated against Latinos and other minorities when they approved new congressional and state legislature districts that increased the power of White voters.

Attorney General Merrick Garland’s announcement marked the department’s first major legal action on redistricting at a time when Democrats have warned that GOP-controlled state legislatures are seeking to improperly redraw voting precincts to aid Republican candidates ahead of the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential election.

“This is not the first time Texas has acted to minimize the voting rights of its minority citizens. Decade after decade, Texas has enacted redistricting plans that violate the Voting Rights Act,” the Justice Department said in its lawsuit. “In enacting its 2021 Congressional and House plans, the State has again diluted the voting strength of minority Texans.”

Texas GOP leaders have said the congressional maps were approved by lawyers who determined the districts complied with voting rights laws.

But the maps have also drawn two legal challenges from advocacy groups, including one filed last month by a group affiliated with Eric H. Holder Jr., who led the Justice Department in the Obama administration.

Garland’s decision to pursue litigation comes just weeks after the Justice Department sued Texas over a separate law that federal officials would disenfranchise eligible voters, including older Americans and people with disabilities, by banning 24-hour and drive-through voting and giving partisan poll watchers more access.

Texas lawmakers approved the new congressional boundaries in October after a redistricting process led by Republicans, who control the state Senate and House.

 

As utterly dismantled as the Voting Rights Act is right now in the Roberts Court era, the one part of the legislation that remains is the "one person, one vote" standard...for now. We'll see how long that holds.

Myanmar, Military Coups, And Menace

Deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi is facing four years in prison on COVID-19 "violations" and incitement charges as UN Human Rights head Michelle Bachelet is blasting the trial and verdict conducted by the country's military junta.

U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet on Monday denounced a four-year jail term handed down to Myanmar's ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi after a "sham trial" and called for her immediate release.

The conviction of Suu Kyi "closes yet another door to political dialogue" in Myanmar, where the military took power on Feb. 1, and "will only deepen rejection of the coup", Bachelet said in a statement in Geneva.

A court jailed Suu Kyi for four years on Monday on charges of incitement and breaching coronavirus restrictions, said a source in a case that critics described as "farcical".

“The conviction of the State Counsellor following a sham trial in secretive proceedings before a military-controlled court is nothing but politically motivated,” Bachelet said.

“The military is attempting to instrumentalize the courts to remove all political opposition."

Ravina Shamdasani, a Bachelet spokesperson, told Reuters Television that the proceedings had failed to meet the country's domestic and international legal obligations for a fair trial.

Suu Kyi, 76, still faces charges of corruption and electoral fraud, Bachelet said.

She also said that the army, known as the Tatmadaw, had detained more than 10,000 opponents since the coup and that at least 175 people, including many members of Suu Kyi's National League of Democracy (NLD) party, were reported to have died in custody "most likely due to ill-treatment or torture".

She called for the immediate release of all those unlawfully detained.

 

At least five people have died so far in the junta's resulting crackdown on protests, and it's only going to get worse.

And, as I keep saying, "putting their political enemies in jail" is something I absolutely expect from the next inevitable GOP administration. Trust that the Republicans in Trump's orbit are paying attention.

The Winter Of Discontent

As the pandemic now heads into the winter months for the second year, with the COVID Omicron variant already on our shores, nobody should be surprised that it is the rural Trump counties, with the fewest resources and most disinformation, who are seeing skyrocketing per capita death rates.

Since May 2021, people living in counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump during the last presidential election have been nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19 as those who live in areas that went for now-President Biden. That's according to a new analysis by NPR that examines how political polarization and misinformation are driving a significant share of the deaths in the pandemic.

NPR looked at deaths per 100,000 people in roughly 3,000 counties across the U.S. from May 2021, the point at which vaccinations widely became available. People living in counties that went 60% or higher for Trump in November 2020 had 2.7 times the death rates of those that went for Biden. Counties with an even higher share of the vote for Trump saw higher COVID-19 mortality rates.

In October, the reddest tenth of the country saw death rates that were six times higher than the bluest tenth, according to Charles Gaba, an independent health care analyst who's been tracking partisanship trends during the pandemic and helped to review NPR's methodology. Those numbers have dropped slightly in recent weeks, Gaba says: "It's back down to around 5.5 times higher."

The trend was robust, even when controlling for age, which is the primary demographic risk of COVID-19 mortality. The data also reveal a major contributing factor to the death rate difference: The higher the vote share for Trump, the lower the vaccination rate.

The analysis only looked at the geographic location of COVID-19 deaths. The exact political views of each person taken by the disease remains unknowable. But the strength of the association, combined with polling information about vaccination, strongly suggests that Republicans are being disproportionately affected.

Recent polling data that show Republicans are now the largest group of unvaccinated individuals in the United States, more than any other single demographic group. Polling also shows that mistrust in official sources of information and exposure to misinformation, about both COVID-19 and the vaccines, run high among Republicans.

"An unvaccinated person is three times as likely to lean Republican as they are to lean Democrat," says Liz Hamel, vice president of public opinion and survey research at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health policy think tank that tracks attitudes toward vaccination. Political affiliation is now the strongest indicator of whether someone is vaccinated, she says: "If I wanted to guess if somebody was vaccinated or not and I could only know one thing about them, I would probably ask what their party affiliation is."

It was not always this way. Earlier in the pandemic, many different groups expressed hesitancy toward getting vaccinated. African Americans, younger Americans and rural Americans all had significant portions of their demographic that resisted vaccination. But over time, the vaccination rates in those demographics have risen, while the rate of Republican vaccination against COVID-19 has flatlined at just 59%, according to the latest numbers from Kaiser. By comparison, 91% of Democrats are vaccinated.

 

I said this months ago, that reaching the 40% of Republicans who refuse to get vaccinated is not something that will be allowed to happen while the disinformation merchants on the radios, TVs, and computers and mobile phones continue to convince a third of Americans that the vaccine is poison.

Death and tragedy only turn it around for those when it is far too late, and then even when the worst-case occurs, their family and friends refuse to get the vaccine.

Millions more are going to die in the months and years ahead until the disinformation networks are ripped out, and we know that disinformation is driving vaccine refusal.

Misinformation appears to be a major factor in the lagging vaccination rates. The Kaiser Family Foundation's polling shows Republicans are far more likely to believe false statements about COVID-19 and vaccines. A full 94% of Republicans think one or more false statements about COVID-19 and vaccines might be true, and 46% believe four or more statements might be true. By contrast, only 14% of Democrats believe four or more false statements about the disease.

Belief in multiple false statements highly correlates with vaccination status, Hamel says. "If you believe that the vaccines can damage your fertility, that they contain a microchip and that the government is inflating the number of COVID-19 deaths, you're going to think really differently about whether to get vaccinated."

Perhaps the most pernicious pieces of misinformation have to do with the perceived severity of COVID-19 itself. The most widely believed false statement was: "The government is exaggerating the number of COVID-19 deaths."

Hamel says that underestimating the severity of COVID-19 appears to be a major reason why Republicans in particular have fallen behind in vaccination: "We've seen lower levels of personal worry among Republicans who remain unvaccinated," she says. "That's a real contrast with what we saw in communities of color, where there was a high level of worry about getting sick." 

 

The two major lies spread about COVID were that one, the government was lying about the death toll, and two, that only "fat, lazy diabetic/sickle cell" Black folk were susceptible to actually dying from the disease. Those two lies all but guaranteed that rural America was going to tune out every message. Indeed, sites threw around words like "comorbidities" and "genetic mutations" to frighten and anger millions, taking full advantage of the dark history America has had with medicine and Black community, one that still exists to the present.

And now we have people literally willing to die rather than to admit they were conned.

A few months ago I would have said that there was nothing to be done, that you cannot reason with those who want to see you enslaved or exterminated, even at the cost of their own lives, to maintain the deadly, adamant grip of white supremacy, and that the goal was simply to survive the next several years.

I will tell you now that doing nothing but hiding and hating will never improve the situation.

StupidiNews!

• Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam says a deal with the city of Richmond to remove the granite pedestal that a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee sat upon, the pedestal will be removed this week.
• Former Georgia GOP Sen. David Perdue has announced that he will mount a primary challenge to Gov. Brian Kemp, with Kemp saying the race is Perdue's "bruised ego" over his 2020 loss.
• Police are questioning a man connected to the disappearance and subsequent manhunt for the parents of a 15-year-old charged in a Michigan school shooting last week.
• With the Biden administration's expected diplomatic boycott of the Olympics, China is blasting next week's planned US democracy summit, calling American democracy "a joke."
• 2021 Game Awards founder Geoff Keighley now says embattled game developer Activision Blizzard will not be a part of this year's show in light of ongoing sexual harassment lawsuits.
  

Last Call For In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions, Con't

Philly Inquirer columnist Will Bunch asks:

 

Deadly weapons like the machine gun brandished by Congressman Massie on his Christmas card or the 9mm Sig Sauer that Ethan Crumbley hid in his backpack aren’t some American cultural quirk but very much wrapped up in the post-1980, post-civil-rights zeitgeist of every man and woman for themselves — a holiday spirit not of sharing but of clinging to what’s mine with one finger already on the trigger. Is there a way out of this mess, short of a cataclysmic civil war?

 

 Short answer: History says "probably not."

Long answer: I don't honestly know for sure and anyone who does is lying, but what I am sure of is this: 

 

It will be the marginalized, Black folks, LGBTQ+ folk, non-Christians, brown folk, immigrants, and women, who will suffer the most in the years ahead, as it has been for 400 years here.

That's always, always been the case in America, if not its defining trait.

Bob Dole Dies At 98

Former Kansas Republican Senator and GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole has died at 98, maybe the last Republican who I didn't think was a complete garbage fire.

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, who will be remembered for the tenacity that defined his career and his work on behalf of fellow military veterans, died Sunday morning. He was 98.

"It is with heavy hearts we announce that Senator Robert Joseph Dole died early this morning in his sleep," the Elizabeth Dole Foundation said in a statement Sunday.

In his memoir, "One Soldier's Story," Dole wrote that his experiences in World War II defined his life.

"Adversity can be a harsh teacher," he wrote. "But its lessons often define our lives. As much as we may wish that we could go back and relive them, do things differently, make better, wiser decisions, we can't change history. War is like that. You can rewrite it, attempt to infuse it with your own personal opinions, twist or spin it to make it more palatable, but eventually the truth will come out."

As an Army officer in World War II, he was wounded and there were doubts he'd survive. His right arm was permanently disabled, but he adapted.

"If unable to reach voters with my right hand, I could always reach out with my left," he wrote in "The Doles: Unlimited Partners," a book he co-authored with his wife, Elizabeth, and Richard Norton Smith.

He went on to graduate from college, and, while still in law school, won a seat in the Kansas state legislature. He won a seat in Congress in 1960 and went on to serve in the House until he was elected to the Senate in 1968.

Dole ran three times for president. He lost in primaries in 1980 to Ronald Reagan and in 1988 to George H.W. Bush. He won the Republican party nomination in 1996, but lost the general election to Bill Clinton.

"Those pivotal moments remain indelibly impressed in your heart and mind," he wrote in "One Soldier's Story." "For me, the defining period in my life was not running for the highest office in the land. It started years earlier, in a foreign country, where hardly anyone knew my name."

 

Don't get me wrong, Dole was still a primary agent of the rise of the GOP we've been with all my life, but at least he killed some fascists and took crippling artillery injuries for America. He understood what America meant, and he understood the sacrifice, the pain, and the cost of that definition of our country, and more importantly who paid that cost.

But he was also one of the voices who remained largely silent and passive when the GOP fully metastasized into the party of Trump.

"Both sides use it," the former Senate majority leader noted of the parliamentary rule, then praised "the guy from West Virginia" who is defending it. That would be Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin. Dole decided on the spot that he'd like to meet Manchin – to invite him over for a chat, no big agenda, across party lines. Like the old days.

"I keep fairly busy," Dole said during a 45-minute interview in his apartment in the Watergate complex, and he has more things he wants to do. He hopes to regain enough strength to make "one more trip home," to Kansas, to visit the Veterans Affairs medical center in Topeka and meet with students at the University of Kansas' Dole Institute of Politics in Lawrence.

When he blows out the candles on his birthday cake – at a celebration hosted by his wife, former North Carolina senator Elizabeth Dole, and joined by a dozen or so friends – he'll make a wish for "pretty good health" for a while longer.

 

And he endorsed Trump, his final bad decision in a decades-long year career of them.

 

Dole is gone now, and so is the party he helped to create along with Reagan, Poppy Bush, and John McCain. The last of the Republicans, the party now replaced by open white supremacist fascist assholes.

The joke was is that they always were, just that Dole was smart enough to hide it.

[UPDATE] Joe Biden is a better man than I am, ordering flags at half-staff for Dole this week.

Sunday Long Read: The Great Resignation

This week's Sunday Long Read comes to us from the always prescient David Dayen, who covers the post-lockdown, post-Trump labor market where two out of five American workers are actively looking for new work, but what we're really looking for is a little dignity.

Things could accelerate from there. According to a July survey from the Society for Human Resource Management, 41 percent of U.S. workers are either actively searching for a new job, or planning to do so in the next few months. Two-thirds of those searching have considered a career change, rather than moving within their industry. Bankrate’s job seeker survey in August found even more turbulence; 55 percent of the workforce said they would likely look for a new job in the next year.

This trend has been characterized as the Great Resignation, and just about every economist and pundit has taken their crack at teasing out why it’s happening. Explanations have included health and safety fears, child care needs, a tight labor market, boosted savings from stimulus funds or reduced ability to spend money on bars and movies, enhanced unemployment benefits, increases in business formation, desire to work from home, early retirements, restrictions on immigration, demographic shrinking of the prime-age workforce, and my personal favorite, expectations of a labor shortage creating a labor shortage.

Some of these ideas have merit, though none can quite explain everything. In these moments, it’s best to actually ask the workers themselves. I did that, talking to dozens of people who have recently quit their job, or experts who closely track workers who have. And some patterns emerged.

The most vulnerable people in America have started the closest thing we’ve seen in a century to a general strike.

Work at the low end of the wage scale has become ghastly over the past several decades. With no meaningful improvements in federal labor policy since the 1930s, employers have accrued tremendous power. Workers were afraid to voice any disapproval, taking whatever scraps they could get. “The U.S. needs a reset, needs a big push, to get to a place where work is more secure and livable for a lot of the population,” said MIT economist David Autor, who has tracked the misery of American deindustrialization and the shock of China’s rise as a manufacturing powerhouse.

The pandemic functioned as that reset, creating a mental escape hatch from the immiseration and even danger of ordinary work. If you call someone an “essential worker” for long enough, they start to believe it. They start to wonder whether they deserve more, given their essential nature. Gaining courage from social media, the most vulnerable people in America have started the closest thing we’ve seen in a century to a general strike.

For now, it’s working to deliver higher wages and better conditions. But from my talks with workers, they’re really seeking something more ineffable than a couple more bucks an hour. Work is the largest time block of the day, in a moment where we’ve all learned how precious time can be. People simply want to spend that time getting the dignity and respect denied to them for so long.

WORKERS ARE QUITTING ACROSS the labor force; people I’ve talked to range from minimum-wage employees to senior executives. But quit rates and job-to-job transitions in the Great Resignation are mostly taking place among workers with less than a high school education, whose daily toil is typically spent in dead-end low-wage jobs, an engine for corporate profits that produces some of the grimmer existences in the industrialized world.

The particulars of low-wage work have been well documented for years: stagnant wages, short staffs, poor conditions, erratic schedules, no benefits, overbearing managers, and the constant fear of losing your job. The low-wage worker must fend off thieves who are writing their paychecks; a 2014 report from the Economic Policy Institute estimates that wage theft steals $50 billion from low-wage workers every year. The uniquely American innovation of constant worker surveillance, perfected by Amazon, now has workers’ every move tracked, every ounce of performance measured, every slip punished. All for 15 bucks an hour, if you’re lucky.

The point of this is to deliver lower prices and higher profits on the backs of labor exploitation. Low-wage employers rely on an endless reserve of desperate workers willing to break their backs for a pittance. Unsustainable wages are a problem for government benefit programs. High turnover is not a problem as long as there’s one more job application in the door.

As of 2020, nearly one-quarter of U.S. jobs were low-wage, the highest percentage in the developed world. “We think it has to be this way,” said Autor. “But look at peer countries, it doesn’t fit. All have rising educational attainment and drops in worker power. But many have higher wages and lower economic insecurity at the low end of the spectrum.”

 

The pandemic has made permanent the gradual changes in the workforce that we were slated to see this decade in just a year. We'll be dealing with these changes for a while to come.