Month: May 2016

‘Skills mismatch,’ huh?

~ susie

Job and Community Resource Fair

During the worst of the recession, employers demanded workers with multiple skill sets because they wanted to replace two workers with one. Now they’re bitching:

In a separate report, the National Federation of Independent Business said small businesses continued to report a shortage of qualified workers to fill job openings, with some saying they had either raised or planned to increase wages to attract and retain employees.

The share of small businesses reporting job openings they could not fill jumped in April, revisiting cycle highs. There was also an increase in the proportion of small business owners saying that the quality of labor was their biggest concern.

“With labor market slack diminishing, we expect to see a marked acceleration in wage growth soon,” said Steve Murphy, a U.S. economist at Capital Economics in Toronto.

In March, the number of unemployed job seekers per open job, a measure of labor market slack, was little changed at 1.38.

Professional and business services job openings increased 124,000 in March. There were also gains in transportation, warehousing and utilities, and nondurable goods manufacturing. Job openings decreased 80,000 in retail trade. There were declines in educational services and wholesale trade.

Hillary comes out for a limited public option

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Hillary thoughtful

Via the New York Times. Interesting:

“I’m also in favor of what’s called the public option, so that people can buy into Medicare at a certain age,” Mrs. Clinton said at a campaign event in Virginia on Monday.

Mr. Sanders calls his single-payer health care plan “Medicare for all.” What Mrs. Clinton proposed was a sort of Medicare for more.

The Medicare program currently covers Americans once they reach 65. Beneficiaries pay premiums to help cover the cost of their coverage, but the government foots the bulk of the bill. Mrs. Clinton’s suggestion was that perhaps younger Americans, “people 55 or 50 and up,” could voluntarily pay the full cost to join the program.

[…] Mrs. Clinton has been proposing a range of health policy overhauls to preserve and expand the Affordable Care Act. She has proposed expanding financial protections for people with high health care costs and expanding subsidies to help middle-income people buy their own insurance. She also has proposed a package of policies to lower the price of prescription drugs.

[…] Mrs. Clinton’s new Medicare plan, first reported by Bloomberg News, takes another step by proposing that Americans still in their prime working years be given the opportunity to obtain the exact same government insurance that is provided on a universal basis to their older peers.

[…] Moving more older adults into the Medicare program could have the effect of lowering insurance costs for younger people, as Mrs. Clinton suggested. But the exact dynamics would depend on the details of how the program was structured.

I wish I could say this was unbelieveable

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

The Old Gaol, Hexham, Northumberland

But a lot of the same people think the idea of everyone carrying guns is acceptable, too. Via Think Progress:

Colorado Springs will pay back destitute people it illegally jailed because they couldn’t pay court fines, the city announced Thursday.

The city will also discontinue its debtor’s prison policy, which violated both the U.S. Constitution and a 2014 state law in Colorado. The system usually targeted non-jailable offenses like jaywalking, violating park curfews, or drinking in public.

More than 60 victims of the city’s debtor’s prison policy are getting repaid with interest under the $103,000 settlement with the state’s American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) chapter. Under the city’s previous “pay or serve” sentencing policy, people who couldn’t afford fines for non-criminal violations like panhandling near highways were forced to spend one day behind bars for every $50 the court said they owed. The settlement sets compensation for 66 pay-or-serve victims at the rate of $125 per day they were jailed.

That translates to an $11,000 payout for Shawn Hardman, a homeless man who was imprisoned for more than 90 days at significant taxpayer expense under multiple pay-or-serve sentences for panhandling.

Colorado Springs had issued more than 800 separate “pay or serve” sentences in less than two years, the ACLU found. The group alerted the city of the figures and relevant legal arguments in October. Mayor John Suthers said Thursday he was “pleased to report that our Municipal Court, City attorneys and Councilmembers worked expeditiously to correct the situation upon learning of the non-compliance.”

Jon Stewart unleashes: ‘I would vote for Mr. T over Donald Trump’

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Jon Stewart // "You take a chance, and you can work to get away from your circumstance. And by working to get away from your circumstance you can make something better of yourself, but there’s no guarantee...But you know what? The joy of it is chasing tha

Jon Stewart, who only had two months to preside over the candidacy of Donald Trump before leaving “The Daily Show” in August, made up for lost time during the taping Monday of former Obama adviser David Axelrod’s podcast, calling Trump a thin-skinned and unrepentant narcissist, according to Politico. And that was just for starters. “I’m not… Continue reading “Jon Stewart unleashes: ‘I would vote for Mr. T over Donald Trump’” →