Strong capital requirements help protect taxpayers and prevent financial crises. As the savings and loan industry bailout of 1989 and the 2008 financial crisis underscore, when banks take on too much risk with too little capital, workers, small businesses, and American taxpayers pay the price.
PPI believes strong, tangible capital requirements for depository institutions are key to ensuring a well-functioning banking system. Given the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank last spring, we applaud federal regulators for undertaking a review of what changes are needed to prevent similar outcomes in the future.
With regard to the proposed rule to increase capital standards on large banks by as much as 20%, we find ourselves in agreement with Senator Mark Warner of Virginia. As the Senator stated earlier this fall, we must “make sure that when we think about the safety and soundness of the system, we think about the interaction between interest rate rise, capital standards, and other factors.”
Or in other words, given the many economic challenges facing the nation today — a 22-year high federal funds rate, an inflation rate that has dropped significantly but remains higher than the Fed’s target, weakening loan demand, and ongoing political dysfunction — regulators must be careful that the impact of any changes in capital requirements not inadvertently hurt middle-and working-class families and small businesses.
Balancing the safety and soundness of the financial system has always been a difficult tightrope to walk. But that is the job of banking regulators. Regulators may be correct that higher capital standards may be needed, but the evidence must be clear, rational, and thorough.
Washington, D.C. — With the recent surge of new COVID-19 variants, the question of whether to receive a COVID-19 booster has become front of mind for many Americans. The development, manufacturing, and administration of COVID-19 vaccines to the great majority of the adult United States population has been an impressive scientific and policy achievement.
Today, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) released a new report “Quantifying the Economic and Health Benefits from Rapid-Development COVID-19 Vaccines and Boosters” by Michael Mandel, Ph.D., Chief Economist at the Progressive Policy Institute, Robert Popovian, Pharm D., M.S. Senior Health Policy Fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, and Wayne Winegarden, Ph.D., Director at the Center for Medical Economics and Innovation Pacific Research Institute.
Using conservative assumptions, the report finds that the COVID-19 vaccines saved 2.9 million lives, avoided 12.5 million hospitalizations, and saved $500 billion in hospitalization costs. This is in comparison to the counterfactual of no successful vaccine, relying instead on the development of natural immunity through infection.
Looking forward, the report uses the same framework to examine the decision to receive a new COVID-19 booster each year, which boosts protection against severe outcomes. The analysis assumes that existing protection against severe outcomes decays as new variants arise and that the benefits of the booster depend on the nature and speed of changes in the virus.
The report provides illustrative calculations of the benefits from annual COVID-19 boosters at different ages. One such illustrative calculation shows that the expected 5-year economic losses to an individual choosing not to receive boosters rises from $654 at age 30 to more than $65,000 at age 75.
“The data shows that COVID-19 vaccines have provided enormous health and economic benefits to the United States, saving millions of lives and hospitalizations, as well as $500 billion in hospital costs,” saidDr. Michael Mandel. “This comprehensive report also analyzes the individual consequences of deciding whether or not to receive a COVID-19 booster and finds that there is a great economic benefit to getting COVID boosters.”
“Immunization continues to be the most cost-effective and clinically safe way of gaining immunity against viral pathogens of COVID-19. While the data demonstrates that both prior infection and vaccination provide similar protection against future COVID-19 infections, there are typically more health and economic consequences from obtaining protection through prior infection compared to vaccination,” said Dr. Robert Popovian.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Find an expert at PPI and follow us on Twitter.
This paper assesses the health and economic benefits of the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines. Using a simple framework of stylized facts, we find that the COVID-19 vaccines saved 2.9 million lives, avoided 12.5 million hospitalizations, and saved $500 billion in hospitalization costs. Importantly, these are conservative estimates, based on the assumption that successfully surviving COVID-19 infection offers protection against future severe outcomes similar to vaccination.
Using the same framework, we examine the consequences to individuals of choosing to receive or not receive new COVID-19 boosters, given the continued evolution of the virus. An illustrative calculation shows that the expected 5-year economic losses to an individual from choosing not to receive boosters rises from $654 at age 30 to more than $65,000 at age 75.
INTRODUCTION
From the moment COVID-19 was first identified, researchers were projecting the potential economic and human cost of an unchecked major pandemic and the corresponding economic and human benefits of an effective COVID-19 vaccine. Some of these projections were exceedingly influential in guiding private and public responses to the pandemic.
The development, testing, manufacturing, and administration of COVID-19 vaccines to almost 80% of the population over the age of 12 in the United States (fully vaccinated) has been a tremendous scientific and policy achievement. Globally, about 67% of the world population was fully vaccinated as of March 2023.
Unfortunately, hopes that a sufficiently vaccinated population could mostly avoid initial infections have turned out to be excessively optimistic. As of November 2022, 77.5% of the population was estimated to have been infected by COVID-19 at least once. In the 16- to 49- year-old age group, the percentage infected is closer to 85%.
In particular, the Omicron variant turned out to be extremely contagious in the U.S. and globally. As of April 2022, 60 to 80% of the European population was estimated to have been infected with COVID-19. More recent estimates are even higher. According to one model, an estimated 95% of the European population has been infected at least once as of December 2022. In Japan, the cumulative infection rate, measured by antibody tests, rose sharply from 28.6% in November 2022 to 42.3% in February 2023. In Japan, an estimated 80% of the population has been infected at least once. In Korea, the cumulative infection rate was 83%. Even the draconian measures applied by the Chinese government were unable to contain the wave of infections.
A related observation is that neither infection nor vaccination with the current generation of vaccines appears to offer long-lasting immunity against reinfections. Past a certain point, the spread of the virus through the population could not have been prevented by a more aggressive vaccination program or other policy interventions.
However, the exceedingly good news is that vaccination appears to provide durable protection against severe outcomes such as invasive ventilation and death. Obviously, that might change as new variants arise, but for now, that’s what current evidence shows.
Notably, prior infection also appears to provide durable protection against severe outcomes, even for those people who have not been vaccinated. This is no longer a “novel” pathogen attacking unprepared immune systems. Once again, this could change for a sufficiently different variant.
So now we can get a clearer picture of the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination. Vaccination provided a much lower risk path for achieving protection against severe outcomes. Without vaccines, many more people would have died or have been hospitalized.
This paper has both a backward-looking component and a forward-looking component. Based on the evidence, the backward-looking component constructs a set of stylized facts that allow us to understand the economic and health benefits of a rapid-development COVID-19 vaccine compared to reasonable counterfactuals (including no vaccine and more rapid roll-out of the vaccine at the beginning of 2021). These estimates include the mortality and hospitalization outcomes of the “worst case” counterfactual of no successful vaccine, along with the associated health-related costs.
FACT: The price of a 40-inch TV set has fallen by 99% in 25 years.
THE NUMBERS: Price of a 40-inch flat-screen TV –
2023
$150 – $300 (Best Buy and Amazon range)
2005
$4,000 (Sony)
1997
$22,900 (Fujitsu’s first 40″ plasma TV)
WHAT THEY MEAN:
The election year 2024 opens with many questions, but one is basic: Can a person, who has attempted to overthrow a settled election and has called for “termination” of unspecified parts of the Constitution, in good faith take an oath to “faithfully execute the office of President of the United States” and “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution”?
Policy choices fall pretty far beneath this. (If they’re wrong, they can always be changed.) But they aren’t irrelevant and are sometimes connected to this large constitutional matter. Here, for example, is the former U.S. Trade Representative Amb. Robert Lighthizer, defending Trump campaign proposals for a 10% worldwide tariff and a sharp break in economic relations with China to a team of New York Times political writers by making a more general plea:
“If all you chase is efficiency — if you think the person is better off on the unemployment line with a third 40-inch television* than he is working with only two — then you’re not going to agree … There’s a group of people who think that consumption is the end. And my view is that production is the end, and safe and happy communities are the end. You should be willing to pay a price for that.”
The apparent idea is that if everyone’s cost of living rises and families buy fewer things, the country as a whole will be better off because it will make more things and unemployment will decline. More simply, if Americans are to be “rich” and secure, living standards must fall.
The flaw here is pretty obvious — if people are less affluent they will buy fewer things, and production of things will not rise but drop. Two illustrative examples of how this works, and then a thought on how this might relate to the really basic question:
1. TVs, Efficiency, Productivity, & Innovation: People buy TV sets, and by extension lots of things, on the basis of quality and price. An “efficient” firm will reduce costs through productivity, develop new products through innovation, and offer high-quality sets at low prices. Back in the 1970s, for example, Sony’s 19-inch color Trinitron introduced flatter screens with better visual resolution, and the company’s efficiency and productivity allowed it to sell them at the same prices its competitors charged for blurrier and heavier consoles. Late-1970s anti-dumping suits and import quotas didn’t change these facts. A generation later in 1997, a 10% tariff on Fujitsu’s inaugural $22,900 40-inch plasma might have been daunting even for the few hedge-funders and studio execs interested in showing one off, but wouldn’t have affected production much. Since then, efficiency has cut the cost of a 40-inch TV by 99% to a current range of $150-$300,* making today’s much better versions easily available to Amb. L’s supposedly spendthrift waitresses and bus drivers. The same tariff today would set them back about $20 (or $60 if they wanted to buy three). Over the entire TV-making and -selling world, this would likely put some retail clerks out of their jobs, but likewise wouldn’t affect production.
2. Metals, Tariff Payments, and Production: In the event of a 10% tariff, someone will pay and it’s pretty clear who it will be. The aluminum and steel tariffs the Trump administration imposed in March of 2018 (10% and 25% respectively, with some exclusions) offer a modest case study of the economy-wide effects of higher input prices and consequently reduced efficiency. The U.S. International Trade Commission’s March 2023 report summarizes their effects five years on:
“U.S. importers bore nearly the full cost of these tariffs. The USITC estimated that prices [of the metals] increased by about 1 percent for each 1 percent increase in tariffs. … U.S. production of steel was $1.3 billion higher due to Section 232 tariffs. U.S. production of aluminum was $0.9 billion higher in 2021 due to Section 232 tariffs. U.S. production in downstream industries [Editors note: the ITC’s major examples are machinery manufacturing, auto parts, hand tools, and cutlery] was $3.5 billion less in 2021 due to Section 232 tariffs.”
So the ITC’s finding is (a) a $2.2 billion increase in output of the metals (about 5%), compared to the model’s guess at an economy continuing on the same course without tariffs, (b) a somewhat larger decline of $3.5 billion in the machinery, auto parts, and tool-making industries using metals to make their products, and therefore (c) an overall slightly smaller manufacturing sector, though one in which the modestly diminished machinery- and parts-makers buy somewhat more metal from local mills.
In fairness, the administration’s stated reason for imposing the tariffs five years ago was not a hope for “generally higher manufacturing output.” Rather it was an argument that metals production is important enough to national security to sacrifice the interest of machinery and auto parts makers, plus a hope that tariffs would mean a large increase in metal output and mill capacity utilization. More on this in a few weeks (and a few stats below), but the many metal-tariff experiments over the last half-century suggest some skepticism about the latter point.
3. And the Constitutional issues: Apart from the economics, how exactly would this happen? Constitutionally, only Congress has the right to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.” Asked by the Times’ political team about how a President could create an entirely new tariff system by himself, the Ambassador cites some existing trade laws that might enable a President to declare a “national emergency” and impose it by decree. Which, sounding pretty consistent with the “termination” of parts of the document, makes these policy issues look quite relevant to the year’s really basic question.
* $200 is about 0.2% of America’s $74,850 median household income. Not an extravagance at all, and even three would be manageable for a lower-middle-income household.
FURTHER READING
From the National Archives, the official Constitution transcript (see Article I, Section 8, #1 for “Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises”).
… and ex-USTR Lighthizer in the New York Times (subs. req.) on a second Trump program, national wealth through forgoing new TV sets, etc.
Metals:
The U.S. International Trade Commission models the effects of steel and aluminum tariffs five years later.
Or, from a different source — The U.S. Geological Survey’s record of steel use, trade, and production by year reports actual use and output rather than trying to model a non-tariff economy. Their 2022 summary reports 82 million tons of “raw steel production,” 8 million tons exported, 30 million tons imported, and 96 million tons “consumed” throughout the economy. By comparison, the 2017 report has 81.6 million tons produced, 9.5 million tons exported, 34.6 million imported, and 102 million tons used throughout the U.S. economy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics likewise reports employment essentially unchanged, at 83,000 in late 2017 and 82,600 at the end of 2022.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers remembers Fujitsu’s first flat-screen TV.
And from the Washington Post archives (also subs. req.), a report on a 1977 TV “price war,” featuring Japanese innovation, import competition, and U.S. trade law.
ABOUT ED
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
Managing money around the holidays can be tough for low-income families even in the best of times. The pressure to be generous with family and friends can often lead to overspending and a hangover of debt when the new year rolls around. But the challenge has become particularly acute for many after a prolonged period in which rising prices often outstripped modest wage gains. One relatively easy solution is to improve “financial capability” — an individual’s understanding of how to distribute their incomes, manage their debts, balance their cashflow, and protect themselves against financial uncertainties.
A 2021 study from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) found that an individual making between $25,000 and $50,000 was 15 points more likely to have emergency savings capable of covering three months of expenses if they scored above average on an assessment of financial literacy (another term for financial capability). Individuals in this income range demonstrating high financial literacy were also 10 points more likely to spend less than they earn, putting them on par with people who made more than $100,000 and demonstrated below-average financial literacy. These findings suggest good financial education can give many lower-income families the same financial security high-income households enjoy.
Unfortunately, those households under the most financial pressure are often the least equipped to manage it. The FINRA study found individuals with incomes over $50,000 were more than twice as likely to demonstrate high financial literacy as those without. Improving financial capability may not be a panacea for families in the depths of poverty, for whom there is no substitute for additional resources, but it would clearly make a meaningful difference for many low- and middle-income families.
2023 has been a particularly good year for American high-speed rail. In Florida, Brightline expanded its fast train (top speed 125 mph) from Miami to Orlando with plans to break ground on an extension to Tampa. The company’s project (186 mph) to connect Las Vegas with the exurbs of Los Angeles both acquired the necessary environmental approvals and received $3 billion (about $9 per person in the US) from the federal government. The Biden Administration awarded $3 billion of the $10 billion needed to help California finish its new 171-mile central valley corridor (220 mph) between Merced and Bakersfield (220 mph). Finally, Amtrak’s new, lighter, and faster Acela train sets (160 mph) may finally hit the rails in 2024, which along with some important upgrades, will cut the journey between New York and Washington by two-and-a-half hours from about three.
But, while some believe the dream of U.S. high-speed rail is finally within reach, the reality is America is still worlds from boasting a high-speed rail network like those found in Asia and Europe. The reason is simple—cost.
U.S. rail projects are more expensive and take longer to finish than anywhere else in the world. Domestic rail/transit projects cost 50 percent more (on a per mile basis) than those in Europe and Canada. U.S. projects also take more time. According to one study, European tunnels can be completed 18 months faster than anything similar in the U.S. That extra time is costly, as companies must pay salaries and benefits during the long wait.
In eight months, Chicago will host the 2024 Democratic National Convention, where delegates will nominate for re-election the most union-friendly U.S. president in recent memory. President Biden’s support for union workers is laudable when applied to the private sector where profits and the bottom line are the raison d’etre. Collective bargaining agreements ensure employers don’t mistreat workers in their quest for cash.
The picture changes, however, when public sector unions are taken into account. Public organizations — schools, police departments, post offices, and so on — exist to serve taxpayers and their families, not to build investors’ wealth. That mission doesn’t always neatly dovetail with unions’ eternal goal of increasing membership, and subsequently, the union dues that flow into their coffers.
When it comes to public sector unions, none are as powerful as the two national teachers unions and their local affiliates. Just four public unions together spent almost $709 million on politics in the 2021–2022 election cycle. One was the National Education Association (NEA); another was the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Combined, the NEA and the AFT spend more money for the sake of political power in Illinois than any other state.
A just-released study just released by the Commonwealth Foundation found that public sector unions spent almost $30 million in Illinois’ 2021–2022 election cycle. Larger and more populous California trailed Illinois in second place; no other state even comes close.
For the Progressive Policy Institute, 2023 was a year of dramatically expanded reach. We added to our team of highly talented policy analysts and innovators. We enlarged our global footprint, visiting no less than 21 countries. And we expanded our political outreach and ideas for modernizing progressive parties at home and abroad.
PPI launched three major new projects in 2023:
The New Ukraine Project is directed on the ground from Kyiv by Tamar Jacoby, a former New York Times editorial writer. Jacoby has produced a prolific series of deeply researched reports and vivid dispatches on why Ukraine fights, the staggering losses inflicted by Putin’s war machine, and the country’s internal battles to overcome the Soviet legacy of corruption. She has engaged in Brussels with officials overseeing Ukraine’s crucial accession to the European Union. Jacoby and PPI recently teamed up with the Hudson Institute to rally bipartisan support for U.S. aid to Ukraine’s fight for freedom and independence.
The Project on Center-Left Renewal is headed by Claire Ainsley, formerly a top policy advisor to British Labour Party leader Keir Starmer. In April, Ainsley led a PPI delegation to Australia to glean useful lessons from the electoral and governing successes of that country’s Labor party. The project teamed up with Progressive Britain for a London conference in May featuring Starmer and other key Labour leaders. Ainsley and PPI also were highly visible at Labour’s Liverpool conference in October, releasing a polling and strategy document, Roadmap to Hope, on how Labour could begin to win back working-class voters who defected to the Conservatives in the 2019 election.
A new project on competition policy will be helmed by Diana Moss, a prominent economist who came to PPI after a long stint as president of the American Antitrust Institute. Looking beyond the ideological “techlash” fad, Moss has launched a systematic inquiry into economic concentration and monopoly across the U.S. economy. She has commented on the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Justice draft merger guidelines, and generated incisive analyses of the proposed JetBlue-Spirit merger airline, competition in pharmaceutical markets and the Ticketmaster monopoly.
In addition to these new projects, PPI expanded its work around creating robust alternatives to college for young Americans looking to acquire on-the-job training and skills; protecting the digital innovation ecosystem to ensure that the United States stays in the front in the race to develop frontier technologies; developing a fiscally responsible plan for public investment and closing America’s yawning revenue gap; promoting trade policies that eliminate the Trump tariffs, open markets to our exporters and resume U.S. economic leadership; advocating for a pragmatic clean energy transition that can win majority support; preventing a catastrophic decline in health care coverage; and combatting exclusionary zoning to bring down housing costs.
Finally, expansion was also the key theme of PPI’s core political work. Throughout 2023, we pointed out that the Democratic coalition is actually shrinking rather than expanding. The party is hemorrhaging working-class Hispanic and Black voters as well as losing even more ground with their white counterparts. That is largely the result of the dominant role college-educated white progressives play in dictating the party’s economic policy and its leftist stance on cultural issues.
To help Democrats understand what working-class voters actually want from their leaders, PPI commissioned a major survey, Winning Back Working America. Heading into the 2024 presidential elections, Democrats need to do a better job of listening to these voters and including them in a broader party coalition that spans America’s “diploma divide.”
Thank you to all our friends who supported PPI throughout 2023. Your support has helped generate pragmatic, commonsense solutions to America’s biggest challenges. As we gear up for a critical year for the Democratic Party — and the country — in 2024, your support could not be more important. If you’re interested in continuing to contribute to PPI’s mission, please donate or visit our website.
From our PPI family to yours, we wish you and your loved ones a joyous holiday season!
FACT: Pirate attacks are at their lowest in 30 years.
THE NUMBERS: Annual pirate attacks on shipping* –
2023
120?
2023
115
2013
264
2012
439
2000
471
* Totals from International Maritime Bureau
WHAT THEY MEAN:
How many ships are on the water? UNCTAD’s Review of Maritime Transport 2023 counts precisely 105,395 large cargo ships, defined as vessels of 100 deadweight tons or more. Other less exact sources find the world’s navies operating about 10,000 boats; wealthy individuals and tourists sailing around in about 10,800 cruise ships and pleasure yachts; and (per the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization) about 45,000 large factory-style fishing ships. So, altogether about 170,000 large ships.
And how often do pirates attack these ships? Since 1992, the International Maritime Bureau, a consortium based in Kuala Lumpur, has been answering this question with quarterly reports based on notifications by shipowners. In 2022 IMB found 115 attacks, ranging from unarmed burglaries of ships in berth to gunpoint hijacks of ships on the high seas. This year they report 99 attacks from January through October 2023, which is about the same as the 97 attacks reported from Jan.-Oct. 2021, and a bit more than the 90 in Jan.-Oct. 2022. So pirate attacks have been pretty stable over the last three years at about two each week. Some more context on this:
Piracy attack rates have fallen sharply: From 2000 to 2014, IMB was reporting between 300 and 500 pirate attacks per year. The 115 attacks in 2022 were the lowest in its records, down nearly 75% from the 439 reported in 2012. The largest reason for this drop is the near-elimination of attacks off the Horn of Africa, after the suppression of Somalia’s industrial-scale pirate fleet by an international naval consortium, Combined Task Force 151, between 2012 and 2015. Attacks in Southeast Asia and West Africa, always more opportunistic and smaller scale than the Somali pirate industry, have also declined.
High-seas piracy accounts for about 40% of all pirate attacks: Somalia’s pirate industry involved large-scale organized attacks on high-seas shipping passing through the Bab-el-Mandeb strait (separating Yemen and Somalia) and the Gulf of Aden, aiming to take control of the targeted vessels, sell their cargoes, and hold their crews for ransom. This involved operations far offshore, in which pirate gangs used converted fishery vessels to carry fleets of speedboats for attacks on ships using automatic weapons. The typical current attack is much less ambitious, usually involving an opportunistic effort by a small group, often with knives rather than guns, to rob a ship at anchor or sailing close to shore. IMB’s count through October included 51 attacks on ships either anchored offshore or berthed at a dock, and 37 en route. Thirty of these 37 high-seas attacks took place in the Singapore Strait, and three involved actual hijackings – up from one hijacking each in 2021 and 2022m but still far below the 49 hijackings of 2012. A sample report from IMB two weeks ago describes a standard 2023 attack:
22.11.2023: 2135 UTC: Posn: 01:43.20N – 101:26.72E, Dumai Anchorage, Indonesia.
Four robbers armed with knives boarded an anchored tanker. They threatened and took hostage the duty AB while the OS managed to escape and inform the Duty Officer. Alarm raised and crew mustered. Seeing the crew alertness, the perpetrators escaped empty handed.
Pirate attacks are now most common in maritime Southeast Asia: Thirty-three of IMB’s 99 reported pirate attacks took place in the Singapore Strait, a 65-mile stretch of water which (per the Lowy Institute) handles about 1,000 ship transits daily. Maritime Southeast Asia generally is the site of nearly half — 51 of 115 — of this year’s attacks. (And Singapore-based RECAAP has a higher tally, of 98 attacks in Southeast Asia through the end of November.) Elsewhere, IMB reports 23 pirate attacks off Africa, 16 off South America, and none in the Mediterranean or North Atlantic.
Cargo ships are most frequently attacked: Most pirate attacks, by IMB’s count, target large ships carrying cargo, presumably as they are lightly defended — a very large container ship carrying 8,000 or more boxes may have only 20 crew members — and carry potentially valuable goods. The 99 attacks so far this year included 37 on tankers, 40 on bulk carriers, 14 on container ships, and 8 on all other kinds of shipping. IMB has no record of an attack over the last five years on a large fishing boat, a cruise ship or yachts, or a naval vessel.
Special note: PPI’s Trade and Global Markets staff will be on vacation next week, and the Trade Fact service will take the week off. We wish friends and readers a happy holiday season, and will be back next year.
FURTHER READING
Data:
The International Maritime Bureau, noting the lowest piracy rate in a generation, is concerned about a rise in violent attacks this year.
Singapore-based Information Sharing Center for the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy (RECAAP) reports incidents and helps coordinate anti-piracy operations in Southeast Asia.
UNCTAD’s Review of Maritime Transport counts ships (in Chapter 2).
Policy:
Command Task Force 151, led this spring by Korea and now by the Philippines, patrols Somali waters.
And the U.S. Navy monitors the “Houthi” militia now threatening the Bab-el-Mandeb passage and Red Sea shipping from the Yemeni side.
And Sydney-based Lowy Institute looks at piracy in the Singapore Strait.
And some look-backs:
The Brookings Institution has background on the Somali pirate industry.
The standard dates and geography for the “Golden Age of Piracy” — Edward “Blackbeard” Teach, unlucky Captain Kidd, famous female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Reade, master of the game Henry Avery — are respectively (a) 1650-1720 and (b) much of the world. Kidd’s especially well-documented pirate voyage took him from Boston to London, then to Madagascar and the Indian Ocean littoral (where he unwisely targeted one of Emperor Aurangzeb’s ships), and back to the Caribbean before he got caught. The Royal Maritime Museum in Greenwich has lots of good material.
For the big picture on pirate life, David Cordingly’s Under the Black Flag: The Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates.
And Robert Ritchie’s Captain Kidd and the War Against the Pirates zooms in on William Kidd, his murky connections with the Whig Party leadership in London and the Boston city government, and his allegedly lost treasure (don’t bother to look).
ABOUT ED
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
It’s been a dreary political winter for President Joe Biden. He’s buried under anavalanche of adverse polls showing perilously low public approval ratings as well as scant enthusiasm even among loyal Democratic voters.
The blizzard of bad news, however, doesn’t mean Biden will lose his job next November. That’s especially true if his opponent is the rabidly divisive Donald Trump, who is kryptonite to American democracy.
But the president’s consistently poor job performance numbers and the fact that he’s trailing Trump in many polls reflects a general Democratic failure to consolidate and expand the anti-Trump majority Biden assembled in 2020.
Over the past three years, Democrats have made little headway on their top strategic imperative: winning back working Americans. On the contrary, Trump hasexpanded his already enormous margins among white working-class voters even as Democratic support among Black and Hispanic non-college voters continues to erode.
It’s time to revisit one of our favorite topics, the evolution of wages in ecommerce. It is often claimed, falsely, that the entry of Amazon and other large ecommerce firms into local labor markets lowers wages. For example a recent op-ed in the Chicago Sun Times argued that “Amazon’s dominance drives down local wages for warehouse workers, general retail workers and delivery drivers.”
But basic economics tells us that the only way that can be true if ecommerce reduces labor demand. But in fact, the shift to ecommerce has been a massive boost to job growth, both nationally and in most states and large metro areas. The reason? When you order something online, you are creating work for fulfillment center workers and delivery drivers. In other words, the many hours you formerly spent driving to the mall, parking, walking through the mall, standing online to pay, and driving home have now been shifted to the paid labor market.
On a national level, the number of jobs in the retail sector is actually slightly up since February 2020, when the pandemic started, while jobs in delivery and fulfillment have risen by more than 800,000. These new jobs are concentrated in the category entitled “production and nonsupervisory workers,” which tend to be less-educated workers. (These figures are based on PPI tabulations of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics).
The same is true if we take a longer-term perspective. Over the past ten years, the number of jobs in warehousing (fulfillment) and local delivery has gone up by 1.7 million, while the number of jobs in retail has risen by about 400,000. Once again, these new jobs are concentrated in the category entitled “production and nonsupervisory workers.”
This gain in labor demand has pushed up real wages in ecommerce industries. Over the past ten years, the real hourly wages for production and nonsupervisory workers in warehousing (fulfillment) has risen by 15.4%. That’s compared to a 9.8% increase for private sector production and nonsupervisory workers overall.
To put it another way, the 10-year real wage gain for production and nonsupervisory workers in the warehousing industry—where most Amazon and third party fulfillment centers are counted–is significantly higher than the real wage gain for similar workers in the private sector overall.
Real Wages Rise in Ecommerce Industries
10-year change in real hourly wages for production and nonsupervisory workers*
Private Sector
9.8%
Retail (including physical stores)
11.6%
Delivery (couriers and messengers)
14.7%
Fulfillment (warehousing)
15.4%
*BLS CES data downloaded November 20, 2023
What about in the Chicago area in particular, which was the subject of the op-ed mentioned above? Over the past ten years, the number of retail jobs in Cook County has dropped by about 10,000. But the number of jobs in local delivery and warehousing has increased by 21,000, for a net gain.
The positive trend in labor demand is even stronger for the Chicago metro area. Over the past ten years, the number of retail jobs in the Chicago metro area has dropped by about 14,000. But the number of jobs in local delivery and warehousing has increased by 63,000.
Not surprisingly, with that much demand, employers are having to offer higher wages, not lower wages. Amazon is offering a starting wage of $19.50 per hour at its West Humboldt Park fulfillment center in Chicago By comparison, BLS data for the Chicago metro area shows that the average wage for retail salespersons in the Chicago metro area was only $17.49 an hour, way below the starting wage at the new Amazon facility. Similarly, the average wage for “stockers and order fillers” in the Chicago metro area was only $17.80 per hour.
Finally, no discussion of wages would be complete without considering the very important aspect of safety. Amazon’s own analysis shows that in 2021, the “recordable incident rate” at Amazon warehouses in the United States was 7.6, higher than the 6.7 rate for large establishments in the general warehousing industry as a whole, as reported by the BLS (this figure measures the number of injuries and illnesses incurred at work relative to hours worked).
But newly-released data from the BLS show that the safety gap has disappeared almost completely. Amazon’s warehouse incident rate dropped to 6.9 in 2022, according to the company’s calculations, while the incident rate for large establishments in the general warehousing industry ticked up a bit to 6.8 in 2022. While no single number can fully describe the safety picture, the trend is encouraging. Combined with the strong job and wage performance of ecommerce facilities nationally and in the Chicago area, that’s good news for local workers.
The current obstacle holding up Washington’s continued aid to Ukraine seems unconnected to the merits. Republicans, many of whom do not share President Joe Biden’s resolve to stand firm against Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambitions, are refusing to approve new funding unless the administration accepts their position on domestic immigration reform. They are cynically using Ukraine’s fate as a chit in an unrelated political battle. But underpinning this decision is another view held by many of them and their constituents: that the money Washington spends on assistance to Kyiv is a poor use of taxpayer dollars.
The critic’s argument, which can frequently be heard on both the right and thefarleft, is rhetorically powerful: How does it make sense to spend money on Ukraine’s military when we have so many problems here at home? Why should America finance a foreign war when we’re facing ballooning budget deficits, rising consumer prices, and other pressing economic needs? The answer is relatively straightforward: Cutting the Ukrainians off would not only be morally reprehensible, and militarily shortsighted — it would be fiscally irresponsible.
The House Education & Workforce Committee has been busy the past two weeks. On Tuesday, the Committee passed two bipartisan bills, The Workforce Pell Act and A Stronger Workforce for America Act. These policies have huge implications for our nation’s workforce development system. Here is a breakdown of what they mean and how these bills could impact American workers and businesses:
The Workforce Pell Act
The Pell Grant is the current single-largest source of federal grant aid supporting postsecondary students from low-income families. But based on current requirements, Pell Grants can’t be used for all postsecondary programs — excluding many workforce-oriented programs. The Workforce Pell Act reforms this policy and opens doors to high quality short-term workforce programs. Main highlights include:
Program Length: Expands the Pell Grant to cover high-quality short-term workforce programs. Eligible programs must be at least 150 clock hours in length and offered over a minimum of 8 weeks but no more than 15 weeks.
Quality Guardrails: Ensures these shorter term programs are high quality through an array of efforts. Programs must be stackable, lead to a portable industry recognized credential and have strong student outcomes. Programs also have to go through a “triad” approval process involving the state, an accrediting body, and the Department of Education. With these strong guardrails, the bill allows for high-impact programs provided by for-profit and online providers to be eligible for Pell in addition to existing Title IV eligible institutions, like community colleges.
Funding: Lastly, the bill would provide $40 million for fiscal year 2025 and $30 million for four additional years to implement the bill.
While this bill is a step in the right direction, at PPI we don’t believe it goes far enough. In October, PPI released a report “Revisiting Super Pell: Empowering Students to Earn the Skills They Need to Succeed.” PPI’s report calls for much bigger reform — establishing a single higher education grant, “Super Pell,” that would be more generous, easier to access, and financed by folding the myriad of existing tax incentives and higher education spending programs into one offering. The proposal not only ensures more Americans can draw down on this aid but would also include high-quality workforce programs. In our proposal programs would not have to meet the 8-week requirement, allowing providers to develop and offer even more flexible programs, as long as they have strong student outcomes.
Emphasis on Training: The bill would require states to spend no less than 50% of WIOA funds on training rather than administration or other services. The bill also enacts mandatory individual training accounts to support dislocated workers in getting the skills they need to reenter the workforce quickly. These job training grants would be funded by H-1B fee revenue.
Responsiveness to Industry Needs: The bill would establish the Critical Industry Skills Fund as a statewide allowable activity with the governor’s reserve. This fund would allow states to provide partial reimbursements to employers, sector partnerships, and other intermediaries for upskilling workers. Reimbursements would only occur when workers complete their program and are employed — following a pay-for-performance approach. The bill also has a greater focus on incumbent workers, or those who already have jobs, but not good ones — raising the cap for incumbent worker training from 20% to 30% on the proportion of funds that local workforce boards can use to provide upskilling to these individuals.
Data and Outcomes: WIOA’s Eligible Training Provider List (ETPL) has been a challenge for some time with concerns around the inconsistent quality of providers and an archaic approval process to get new providers on the list. This bill would streamline the lists, with a greater focus on regional demands and employment outcomes. Newer programs could also more easily access the list by going through a probationary period, with much greater tracking of their outcomes to prove efficacy. The legislation would also enhance the Workforce Data Quality Initiative — strengthening the workforce data ecosystem by promoting the use of real-time labor market information, facilitating access to wage records data, and improving data transparency via the use of linked, open, and interoperable data formats.
Other Important Changes: Other notable updates include allowing states to use WIOA funds to support employers in implementing skills-based hiring systems and practices; adjusting the out-of-school vs in-school youth funding percentages and codifying the Reentry Employment Opportunities and Strengthening Community Colleges Grant programs.
PPI feels positive about the direction of this reauthorization, supporting efforts to get people into high-quality skill development opportunities, to better align services with employer needs, and to ensure we better understand the efficacy of these programs through strong data initiatives. However, we do have some concerns. With just $3.3 billion in authorized spending, WIOA would remain vastly underfunded – especially given the new and expanded initiatives encouraged throughout the bill. Without higher funding levels, it will make it difficult to meet the new training requirement while maintaining other services and could potentially reduce support for individuals with barriers to employment, especially those who are not covered by the new mandatory job training grants.
Although these two bills have passed out of Committee, there is a long way to the finish line. First, the full House must pass these policies and then they move to the Senate. There is serious concern whether policymakers can sustain this bipartisanship for much longer and few believe these bills will make it to the President’s desk. While PPI hopes this progress continues and negotiations don’t fall apart, we also hope that Congress takes on a more transformative workforce agenda in the future. These bills offer tweaks to existing statutes, but don’t address the comprehensive reform and investments that are needed to support a modern workforce development system. As we wrap up 2023, PPI celebrates this bipartisan momentum, but we ask for Congress to do more to push our workforce forward in 2024.
FACT: The number of “chronically undernourished” people has grown by 163 million since 2017.
THE NUMBERS: Estimated count of “undernourished” world population –
2022
735 million; 9.2% of world population
2021
739 million; 9.3% of world population
2017
571 million; 7.5% of world population
2015
589 million; 7.9% of world population
2010
598 million; 8.6% of world population
2005
793 million; 12.1% of world population
1996
825 million; 14.9% of world population
* UN Food and Agricultural Organization.
WHAT THEY MEAN:
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, marking its 180th anniversary next Tuesday, is more watched on TV than read. The TV versions hold up pretty well to the actual story — after the three Spirits show awful, avaricious Scrooge his past mistakes, his present isolation, and his lonely future grave, he reforms, recovers his own happiness, gives the Cratchits a raise, and so forth. But they do miss some of Dickens’ larger concern, which goes beyond Scrooge’s personal redemption to a more general critique of an affluent society’s indifference to the lives of its poor. A relevant passage at the end, but first a current parallel in the large, recent, and rapid rise in worldwide “food insecurity”:
The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization defines “undernourishment” as follows:
“Undernourishment means that a person is not able to acquire enough food to meet the daily minimum dietary energy requirements, over a period of one year. FAO defines hunger as being synonymous with chronic undernourishment.”
FAO’s definition of “minimum dietary energy” varies by age, body size, etc. — an 18-year-old girl on average needs 2,500 calories daily and an 18-year-old boy 3,400 — but is about 2,410 calories across the population. By way of context, Americans get about 3,500 calories per day, and the world average is about 2,960. Alternatively, a standard hamburger delivers about 375 calories, a single chapati 70, a pupusa 300, and a serving of jollof rice 390.
The FAO has published annual estimates of the number of people living beneath this threshold since the late 1990s. Its first “Food Insecurity in the World” report, released in 1999 and covering the year 1996, reported 825 million chronically undernourished people. This was 14.9%, or one in seven, of a world population then estimated at 5.6 billion. Divided regionally, the total included 525 million Asians (177 million in East Asia, 284 million in South Asia, 64 million in Southeast Asia), 180 million in sub-Saharan Africa, 53 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, 33 million in the Middle East and North Africa, and 34 million in “developed” countries.
Their estimates steadily shrank for nearly two decades. The 2005 report, by then optimistically retitled “State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World,” estimated a 12.1% undernourishment rate; the 2010 report found 8.6%; and the 2017 report 7.5%, or 572 million of 7.6 billion people. During this time, FAO’s estimate of undernourishment in East Asia fell to nearly zero, and that for Latin America and the Caribbean dropped to 38 million, South Asia’s to 167 million, and sub-Saharan Africa’s to 150 million.
Between 2010 and 2017, though, the picture of a general decline in hunger worldwide (if at different rates in different places) had grown equivocal. FAO’s estimates for undernourishment in Southeast Asia dropped by about half during these years. The estimates for Africa and the Middle East, though, began to rise. And since 2017, the two-generation retreat of hunger seems to have ended. By 2019, worldwide undernourishment had rebounded to 7.9% of the world’s population (613 million people). Then, under the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (a large source of corn and wheat in developing countries), the estimate for 2021 came to 9.3% of world population and 739 million people, and the 2022 estimates are only modestly lower at 735 million and 9.2% of the world population. In sum, over the past six years, the count of undernourished people has grown by 163 million, including by 70 million in Africa and 90 million in South Asia.
Back now to Dickens. Most of the Carol’s “Christmas Present” chapter involves the Spirit showing Scrooge the happy parties and friendships he’s missing. Its last passage, though, reveals something that not only Scrooge, but the partiers too, have tried not to see:
From the foldings of its robe, the Spirit brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment. …
Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing.
Scrooge started back, appalled. “Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more. “They are Man’s,” said the Spirit. “This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both.”
We wish our friends and readers a happy holiday season, grateful for our blessings and mindful of those who have less.
Why the rise? The report views the COVID-19 pandemic as the largest cause of the recent rise in undernourishment, responsible for raising long-term hunger counts by over 100 million. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the second cause, responsible for another 23 million:
“It is projected that almost 600 million people will be chronically undernourished in 2030. This is about 119 million more than in a scenario in which neither the pandemic nor the war in Ukraine had occurred, and around 23 million more than if the war in Ukraine had not happened.”
USDA’s map of food and nutrition support programs.
At home:
A PPI report has ideas for improving the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP).
USDA’s Economic Research Service estimates about 5.1% of American households, including 12.6% of single-mom households, living with “very low food security” as of 2022.
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
Energy dynamics in Europe have undergone a significant transformation as the European Union continues to navigate the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent energy shortage. The reliance on Russian gas, which comprised 38% of EU imports in pre-pandemic 2019, has drastically reduced to just 6% through the first nine months of this year. Notably, the United States’ exports of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) has played a pivotal role in filling this gap, reaching historic highs and making the U.S. the largest LNG exporter globally. With approximately half of U.S. LNG cargoes destined for Europe, America has risen to become the second-largest supplier of gas to Europe, following only Norway.
Today, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) released a new policy brief titled “Europe’s Second Winter Without Russian Gas: The Role of American LNG Exports,” assessing the implications and successes of the U.S.’ increase in LNG exports to Europe. Report author Elan Sykes, PPI’s Energy Policy Analyst, evaluates the EU’s strategies, including the expansion of LNG import terminals, demand reduction targets, and the accelerated deployment of renewable energy. Sykes finds that while European energy costs remain high and industrial output reduced, the acute crisis of the energy shortage appears to have subsided.
The policy brief sheds light on the United States’ pivotal role in supporting the EU’s energy transition, as well as fostering unified support for Ukraine. The U.S. is well-positioned to serve as a low-methane backstop LNG supplier while complementary clean energy supply chains scale up as rapidly as possible.
“The U.S. is leading this pragmatic and orderly global transition to net zero,” said Elan Sykes. “In the near future, the U.S. should build on this success by continuing to play a backstop role for world energy markets, implement ambitious IRA policies to push down upstream methane leakage, and expand the global coalition of low-methane producer and consumer markets for LNG with stringent and transparent certification metrics.”
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Find an expert at PPI and follow us on Twitter.
Today, Erin Delaney, Director of Health Care Policy at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), released the following statement on the House passage of the Lower Cost, More Transparency Act:
“PPI applauds the House passage of the bipartisan Lower Cost, More Transparency Act, a critical step to hold the health care system more accountable and encourage much-needed transparency around health care costs. This legislation creates more fairness in what people are paying for health care and provides more accurate and timely information about the cost of services and procedures to empower patients to make more informed decisions about the care they receive. Making patients informed consumers of health care through price transparency can leverage competition to control costs.
“We are particularly pleased to see that through this legislation, Congress is progressing in addressing site-neutral payment reform to prevent patients from being charged more for the exact same care because of the location where they received it. We hear plenty of stories about how patients are increasingly confused by the shockingly expensive bills they receive, especially when their medical care shifts from an outpatient to a hospital-based setting.
“As we head into the holiday season — when millions of Americans and their families are hyper-focused on the high cost of living and struggling to afford medical care — it is a relief to see that lawmakers are taking the next important step to reduce the financial strain that comes from irrationally high medical costs. As PPI continues to support efforts to make health care costs more transparent and affordable for all Americans, we are reassured to see the House passage of this important legislation and encourage a swift passage in the Senate.”
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
