Deal of the Year: Why doesn’t Trump say he’ll accept a federal minimum wage hike (which just passed the Dem-run House) if it’s combined with the legal changes necessary to end the border crisis (e.g. amending the “Flores” rule and “Wilberforce” law that require releasing asylum-claiming migrants into the US)?
The deal wouldn’t have to be for the full House increase to $15 an hour. Could be lower—$12?—or phased in over a longer period, maybe with regional variation. It’s only $7.25 now, so $12 would be a substantial change.
You’d lose die-hard GOP chamber of commerce types, who hate minimum wage increases. Sen. McConnell would oppose. Yet Trump might pick up Democrats who actually want to raise wages — as opposed to just having a campaign issue for 2020. Dem voters overwhelmingly support an increase — undoubtedly by a larger margin than they support maintaining the flow of unauthorized migrants.
Why does Trump take orders from McConnell anyway? Is McConnell going to start torpedoing Federalist Society judges if he doesn’t get his way? We didn’t elect Trump over 16 far more respectable GOP rivals in order to empower the Republican Establishment. Anyway, even old-school Republicans like strategist Mike Murphy are going soft on minimum wage hikes (in part because the side effects of increases in cities like Seattle don’t seem that bad).
There’s a word for the presidential strategy behind a minimum wage/border deal: Triangulation. Push back against the entrenched, blindered interests of both parties. Worked for Clinton (most dramatically with 1996’s welfare reform). It helps that the deal would address the central economic problem of my generation.
Trump’s term in office often seems like a spontaneously grasping at whatever leverage floats by. Do Dems hate deportations? ‘Hey, I’ll halt the deportations if you give me an asylum deal!’ Mexico not cooperating on the border? ‘I’ll impose tariffs until they do!’ ** Budget? ‘Not unless you fund the wall.’ Etc.. Well, the minimum wage is Big Leverage.
Seems worth a shot.
P.S.: This wouldn’t be a sandwich of two random issues., The deal’s halves are organically related: Restricting the uncontrolled flow of unauthorized migrant workers (currently running at about 1 million per year) would raise the market price (i.e. wage) for unskilled labor, making the official minimum less of a reach for employers, or no reach at all. Meanwhile, passing a minimum wage increase without controlling the border is a recipe for unemployment, as migrants, drawn by the higher wage, help crowd out millions of the unskilled Americans. (Here’s a paper, if you need one.)
**—The Mexico gambit seems to have actually worked, at least for now. The others failed.
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Today’s Creepy Epstein Passage: From New York’s interview with novelist James Patterson, who wrote a non-fiction book about Jeffrey Epstein:
There was a story, whether it’s accurate or not … [Epstein backer & billionaire Leslie] Wexner was going to get married, and he was going to sign a prenup. Epstein brought him into a conference room, and on the table there was a woman with her legs spread and the prenup between her legs. And the joke, so-called, was you sign that prenup and there’s no more of this. I don’t know if that story was true but it certainly came up a couple of times.
Admittedly not the most solid sourcing. Too creepy to check …
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The Most Important Conference Ever Held: Lots of hype for the National Conservatism Conference last week in Washington D.C.. I came prepared to sneer at the portentousness, but it immediately became clear that this was something worth attending. The NatCons are Republicans, but they are (rightly) obsessed with the centrifugal forces that establishment Republican policies (on trade and immigration, most obviously) have helped unleash. “We don’t want to be left alone,” said co-organizer David Brog. [Sorry, Grover.] “We want to be connected.” There was even discreet talk of “community.” And they’re willing to give up a few “coins of GDP” to get it.
That left a mystery: Having kicked out the K Streeters and Ryanists (you didn’t see them wandering around) … having downplayed tax cuts … having made their peace with big government (they even embraced ”industrial policy”—see below) …. Why not reach out to the Democrats? What’s so Republican about National Conservatism that it couldn’t be a basis for the long-awaited party-busting Third Force, one with some bite? Borders, civility, community, order — I didn’t hear any NatCon goals that a Democrat like Joe Biden couldn’t endorse. Yet the bipartisan possibility was — as far as I could see — not even discussed. I don’t understand it.
Other salient moments:
— American Affairs’ Julius Krein, saying things are so far gone with respect to China that we should stop worrying about them stealing our high tech secrets and start figuring out how we can steal theirs.
— Ex-Romney adviser Oren Cass, winning a debate in favor of government'“industrial policy” (they actually held a post-debate vote). Cass wants to steer economic development so that it boosts productivity “not just in aggregate but for less-productive workers in particular” — i.e. non-college-educated Americans (i.e. Trump’s base). Cass’ actual plans— skewing tax policy toward employment of real people, imposing “local content requirements” on “key supply chains”— seem, at least, to stop short of the feared “picking winners and losers.”
— Law prof Amy Wax, arguing for “low and slow” immigration shaped by explicit cultural considerations (i.e. to mainain Western culture). This was immediately interpreted as racist, though it seemed clear that Wax was saying we shouldn’t be spooked just because the effect of her proposal will inevitably be “fewer non-whites.” Not sure I’m a “culturalist” — I wrestle with the issue here. I tend to think Lincoln had the better idea. But a) even if you have considerable faith in assimilation, “low and slow” might be a prudent policy and b) the attacks on Wax from rival policy types were revealing, like the charge that Wax claimed race was a “reasonable rule of thumb” (something she didn’t say). Faculty politics has nothing on infighting between D.C. think tanks.
— Intriguing contrast between Sen. Josh Hawley and author/investment banker J.D. Vance. Hawley’s often mentioned as a potential post-Trump Trumpian leader, and he said a lot of what he’d need to say to accomplish that.** But my God was his speech pompous. (“For we have come again to one of the great turning points in our national history” etc.) Vance, on the other hand, was calm, down-to-earth, though he made many of the same points — about how most Americans just want to live with dignity and raise their children in their communities, and that this outcome isn’t produced when conservatism is “outsourced to libertarianism.” I know which one seemed presidential timber (especially because, after Trump, the country may be ready for a bit of calm).
**— Hawley also criticized “the cosmopolitan elite,” and was immediately slammed as anti-Semitic, which was immediately disputed. Don’t we need a word to describe leaders with a trans-national perspective? At some point all the word-copping just inhibits useful debate. (Cosmopolitanism has it’s virtues! My grandfather was a bit of a cosmopolitan Jew — an Anglophile German, living in Frankfurt. I believe that’s one reason he had enough perspective to leave his nation as soon as Hitler was elected. Which is why I’m here. I suppose this is off-message for NatConCon.)
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Why do Trump supporters stick with him through the tweetstorms? Answer: “There is no palatable alternative to Trump within the Republican Party unless you want to go back to the pre-Trump GOP consensus. The anti-Trump Republican commentariat essentially wants this … Trump is the only option unless conservatives want Paul Ryan’s economics and George W. Bush’s foreign and immigration policies.” — Henry Olsen, in the column of the week, which you now don’t have to read. …
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Anti-Waxxer: “First World nations have no right to exclude Third World migrants”—whether they’re asylum seekers or simply “economic migrants.” Why? “Due to neocolonial and other forms of imperial interconnection …” For example: “The British people oppressed us; they took our land … It’s our turn to come to this country.” — Law professor E. Tendayi Achiume, in a bid to become the Ta-Nehisi Coates of the immigration debate.
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WokeWatch: I admit I didn’t see the Manhole-Oreo Convergence coming.
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