Democrats for Donald Trump

     Have you heard of this group? Well I'm their President. But seriously folks. I do have a hard time these days believing that he is not a Democratic plant. Anyway, it's nice to see that a political scientist is thinking what I'm thinking:

   "As a political scientist, I am reluctant to make predictions about elections, especially about the behavior of a single individual. But I'm willing to make an exception this year, because the presidential campaign is turning out to be such an exceptionally crucial (and entertaining) one. Here is what I see as the step-by-step best case scenario for putting a Democrat in the White House next year, with a little help from Donald Trump."

  "1. From now until the end of this year, the other GOP presidential candidates continue to criticize Trump, particularly for his outrageous remarks about John McCain's military record. They say he does not represent Republican values and is unfit to be president. (During the Vietnam war, Trump received several draft deferments and did not serve in the military)."

  http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/how-donald-trump-can-help-a-democrat-win-in-2016

 Now, hold on here! Are you telling me you see this circus going on till the end of the year? You mean we get to continually see this for another 5 months? Man that is a long time for the GOP to be twisting in the wind.

  Don't get me wrong without Trump I think the Dems could-and probably would-still have won. But Trump makes it a heck of lot easier and a hell o fa lot more fun. If the Rick Perry, Lindsay Graham, and Scott Walker are still arguing with Trump in December that looks very bad for Republicans and so very good for Democrats.

 "2. Trump refuses to apologize or abandon his campaign for the GOP nomination. Throughout 2015, he continues to attract large crowds and major media coverage as he travels around the country appealing to the Tea Party and Hair Club for Men crowds."

  "3. Panicked by Trump's momentum, all the other GOP candidates—Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Rand Paul, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Carly Fiorina, George Pataki, Lindsay Graham, and Rick Perry, except Ben Carson and Ted Cruz—spend a large chunk of their respective campaign funds and press interviews denouncing Trump, giving him even more media attention."

  If he is still getting this huge crowds by then they will be right to panic-they are already right to panic. Dreier then predicts a third party run in April once Trump sees he can't win. I got to admit if you game this out it all works out perfectly-for liberal Democrats:

 "16. On Election Day in November 2016, Trump wins 3 to 5 percent of the total vote in key swing states like Florida, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, and Indiana, siphoning off enough votes from the GOP candidate to hand those states' Electoral College votes to the Democratic nominee."

  "17. Thanks to Trump, the Democratic candidate—Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders—wins the White House."

 "After the campaign is over, Trump purchases a remote island off the coast of Greece. He retires from his business empire to write a dystopian book about the future of America, although he offers to open a Trump hotel and casino "to provide jobs to the Greek people so they won't come to America as their economy collapses."

 "Trump refuses to allow reporters or visitors (with the exception of Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Don King, Antonin Scalia, and Ann Coulter) to visit or interview him at his island hideaway. However secret aerial photographs of his retreat mansion reveal that Trump flies both the American and Confederate flags on his front lawn."

  I'm going to leave off the gloss about Bernie Sanders.

  http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/07/bernie-sanders-spotty-on-gun-control.html

  I know a lot of these folks can't bear to be 'kingmakers' and just tell the truth but it's not going to be Bernie-it will be Hillary. She could win without Trump but this would make her win more impressive.

 The irony is that Trump is acting like a ferocious bee right now. He is really hurting the Republicans-as he makes it obvious what hypocrites they really are; there is nothing he's said that they don't agree with; as for his insulting McCain-they had no problem when George W. Bush did it.

 So the outcome of this is clear: like a ferocious bee he is giving the GOP a hell of a sting right now. Once it's over and their in intensive care he will see that like a bee he's now lost all his vitality. He may as well move to Greece as his entire tv empire is bust now thanks to his campaign.

 UPDATE: Got to admit it's getting better, it's getting better all the time. Post McCain comments Trump: leads the GOP field.

   http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/26/politics/cnn-poll-presidential-race/

    

  

    

Tyler Cowen and the Schadenfreude of the Very Serious People

     For whatever reason he's taken it upon himself to strike back in defense of the Very Serious People by referring to those who criticize the VSP as being The Not Very Serious People.

     Specifically that's been his term for Syrzia.

    "Arresting the central bank’s governor. Emptying its vaults. Appealing to Moscow for help."

    "These were the elements of a covert plan to return Greece to the drachma hatched by members of the Left Platform faction of Greece’s governing Syriza party.

    "That is from the FT, and there is more:

    "The plan demonstrates the apparently ruthless determination of Syriza’s far leftists to pursue their political aims — but also their lack of awareness of the workings of the eurozone financial system.

    "For one thing, the vaults at the Nomismatokopeion currently hold only about €10bn of cash — enough to keep the country afloat for only a few weeks but not the estimated six to eight months required to prepare, test and launch a new currency."

    "The Syriza government would have quickly found the country’s stash of banknotes unusable. Nor would they be able to print more €10 and €20 banknotes: From the moment the government took over the mint, the European Central Bank would declare Greek euros as counterfeit, “putting anyone who tried to buy something with them at risk of being arrested for forgery,” said a senior central bank official."

   “The consequences would be disastrous. Greece would be isolated from the international financial system with its banks unable to function and its euros worthless,” the official added.

   "For all the flaws of the euro, the case for it has never been made more effectively."

   http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/07/what-the-not-very-serious-people-among-the-not-very-serious-people-were-up-to.html

     So there was a Plan B. Certainly the idea of getting Russia's help seems remote. I don't know about having to trust Putin. But this plan was just a very small faction.

     I like what commentator Thiago Ribeiro said:

    "Eight years (the 1994 change worked for Brazilian values of “worked”, and the currency was kept). It means a change every year and a half. If you remember that planning the specifics of a currency change only starts after the existing one fails (until then, it is TINA all the way–much like second marriages, currency changes are the victory of hope over experience), you see that only a fraction of this year and a half was needed for introducing a currency. As I said, a currency was introduced the day after a new president took the oath without cooperation from the previous administration, with little legal debate or legal consultation(no, it is not the one which worked)."

    Still, it's good to know a Grexit has at least been considered. And what does Cowen consider a serious plan by the Greeks? They really should be planning some kind of exit as Germany wants them gone. If there is any justified criticism of Syrzia, it's that they didn't have a Drachma plan that they're whole plan was to trust in the EU to get them a better deal.

   There was a real Plan B being planned but not this Keystone Cops version about Putin bailing them out that enables Cowen to dismiss them as unserious.

   This is the real Plan B:

   "Varoufakis: "I have to admit we did not have a mandate for bringing Greece out of the euro. What we had a mandate to do was to negotiate for a kind of arrangement with the Eurogroup and the ECB that would render Greece sustainable within the eurozone. The mandate went a bit further, at least in my estimation. I think the Greek people had authorised us to pursue energetically and vigorously that negotiation to the point of saying that if we can’t have a viable agreement, then we should consider getting out."

   "We don't have a currency which we can devalue vis a vis the euro, we have the euro"

   "[Wolfgang] Schaeuble, the finance minister of Germany, is hell-bent on effecting a Grexit so nothing is over. But let me be very specific and very precise on this. The prime minister before he became PM, before we won the election in January, had given me the green light to come up with a Plan B. And I assembled a very able team, a small team as it had to be because that had to be kept completely under wraps for obvious reasons. And we had been working since the end of December or beginning of January on creating one. But let me give you if you are interested some of the political and the institutional impediments that made it hard for us to complete the work and indeed to activate it. The work was more or less complete: We did have a Plan B but the difficulty was to go from the five people who were planning it to the 1,000 people that would have to implement it. For that I would have to receive another authorisation which never came.”

   http://www.ekathimerini.com/199945/article/ekathimerini/news/varoufakis-claims-had-approval-to-plan-parallel-banking-system

  Ambrose Pritchard-who has access to Varoufakis confirms that the Elathmimerihi has a real scoop here.

 Now there is talk of trying Varoufakis for treason though he insists that he was not going rogue-Tsipras had told him to come up with a Plan B.

  "Former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has claimed that he was authorized by Alexis Tsipras last December to look into a parallel payment system that would operate using wiretapped tax registration numbers (AFMs) and could eventually work as a parallel banking system, Kathimerini has learned."

 "In a teleconference call with members of international hedge funds that was allegedly coordinated by former British Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont, Varoufakis claimed to have been given the okay by Tsipras last December – a month before general elections that brought SYRIZA to power – to plan a payment system that could operate in euros but which could be changed into drachmas “overnight” if necessary, Kathimerini understands."

  "Varoufakis worked with a small team to prepare the plan, which would have required a staff of 1,000 to implement but did not get the final go-ahead from Tsipras to proceed, he said."

  "The call took place on July 16, more than a week after Varoufakis left his post as finance minister."

   Here was Barkley Rosser commenting at Cowen:

  "This is a completely reasonable plan,and I am sure Tsipras approved checking it out. The California IOU plan worked, and many serious people have suggested that Greece use it. That they were contemplating it shows in fact they were serious, and not the silly “Not Very Serious” that Tyler has tried so hard to label them. This was completely sensible and not worthy of being treated as some sort of scandal, far from it.

  "Needless to say, this is not the thing that Tyler originally posted about, which seems to have been some renegade faction with absurd fantasies about what they could do, not to mention all this nonsense about seizing the central bank and all that. Clearly Syriza does have its completely wacko faction, and we should hope that they never get into power."

   http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/07/what-the-not-very-serious-people-among-the-not-very-serious-people-were-up-to.html

   Varoufakis spoke to Pritchard and confirmed the story but argued that its' being twisted:

   "Mr Varoufakis told the Telegraph that the quotes were accurate but some reports in the Greek press had been twisted, making it look as if he had been plotting a return to the drachma from the start."

  "The context of all this is that they want to present me as a rogue finance minister, and have me indicted for treason. It is all part of an attempt to annul the first five months of this government and put it in the dustbin of history," he said.

  "It totally distorts my purpose for wanting parallel liquidity. I have always been completely against dismantling the euro because we never know what dark forces that might unleash in Europe," he said.

   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11764018/Varoufakis-reveals-cloak-and-dagger-Plan-B-for-Greece-awaits-treason-charges.html

  

   

Bernie Sanders: Spotty on Gun Control, 'Complicated' on Race and Immigration

     It's hard to get away from it: Sanders is the choice of white liberals who hate President Obama. A vote for him is a vote against Obama. This small group of Obama haters found first and foremost at Firedoglake

    http://firedoglake.com/

    If you want to create true chaos there the word you should scream at a crowded theater not 'fire' but 'Obama.'

   If you look at Sanders he has a questionable record on gun control. For those who say that Hillary is afraid to discuss issues but that Bernie welcomes this, he didn't look so happy to discuss his record on gun control on Meet the Press this morning. 

  The short version is he voted against the Brady bill:

  "Sanders, an economic populist and middle-class pugilist, doesn’t talk much about guns on the campaign trail. But his voting record paints the picture of a legislator who is both skeptical of gun control and invested in the interests of gun owners—and manufacturers. In 1993, then-Rep. Sanders voted againstthe Brady Act, which mandated federal background checks for gun purchasers and restricted felons’ access to firearms. As a senator, Sanders supported bills toallow firearms in checked bags on Amtrak trains and block funding to any foreign aid organization that registered or taxed Americans’ guns. Sanders is dubious that gun control could help prevent gun violence, telling one interviewer after Sandy Hook that “if you passed the strongest gun control legislation tomorrow, I don’t think it will have a profound effect on the tragedies we have seen.” (He has since endorsedsome modest gun control measures.)"

 http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/05/bernie_sanders_on_guns_vermont_independent_voted_against_gun_control_for.html

  He seems to think there is something 'elitist' about gun control:

 "None of these views are particularly shocking for a Vermont representative: Sanders’ deep-blue state has both high gun ownership and incredibly lax gun laws, and it’s perfectly logical for the senator to support his constituents’ firearms enthusiasm. And a close friend of Sanders once said that the senator “thinks there’s an elitism in the anti-gun movement.”

  "But Sanders’ vote for a different kind of pro-gun bill is more puzzling—and profoundly disturbing. In 2005, a Republican-dominated Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA). This law doesn’t protect gun owners; it protects gun manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and importers. The PLCAA was the No. 1 legislative priority of the National Rifle Association for years, because it shields gun makers and dealers from most liability when their firearms are used criminally. It is one of the most noxious pieces of pro-gun legislation ever passed. And Bernie Sanders voted for it. (Sanders’ campaign has not replied to a request for comment.)"

  He doesn't talk much about race at all and his numbers among African-Americas is abysmal. On immigration, his voting record isn't going to excite Latinos:

  "Running as a presidential hopeful in 2016, Bernie Sanders has touted his support for immigration reform and the need to find a solution to a problem that has long vexed Washington."

  "But in 2007, Sanders was part of the charge from the left to kill an immigration overhaul bill."

  "Back then, the Vermont independent warned that the immigration bill — a product from then-Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — would drive down wages for lower-income workers, an argument that’s been used by hard-liner reform opponents. He paired with conservative Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on a restrictive immigration amendment. And Sanders backed provisions characterized as poison pills to unravel the bill, while voting to block the final measure in June 2007."

   Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/bernie-sanders-and-immigration-its-complicated-119190.html#ixzz3h1RXkfDX

  By way of background this post was published just before Sanders difficulties at the Net Roots speech with the issue of 'Black Lives Matter.'

 There is nothing that shows he would be superior on the economy or fighting wage stagnation than Hillary who to the contrary has given some pretty impressive detail on her agenda for the Uber economy. 

 http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/07/hillary-on-uber-economy.html

 His record on race, immigration, and guns on the other hand are much less impressive than hers.

Trouble at Fox News: Another Reason to Love the Trump Campaign

     His candidacy is said to be causing headaches among the big shots at Fox News.

     http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/07/26/cnns-reliable-sources-trump-could-be-causing-a/204600

     His ability to polarize the GOP party establishment is just limitless whatever his intent-does that really matter at this point?

     http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/07/donald-trump-on-scott-walker-wisconsins.html

    Meanwhile, David Brock at Media Matters continues to ask some great questions whether of what happened to the NY Times credibility as a source for journalism

    http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/07/24/david-brock-calls-on-new-york-times-to-commissi/204586

    or why it's necessary for NBC to bring back Pat Buchanan yet again?

   "NBC's Meet the Press this weekend will host Pat Buchanan, a homophobic and racist commentator. MSNBC parted ways with Buchanan in 2012 following blowback over his book Suicide of a Superpower, which claimed to document how diversity and immigration are ruining the country."

   "The Sunday show states on its website that it will interview Buchanan about "the return of populism" on the presidential campaign trail. Buchanan's brand of "populism" has long included bigotry against minorities, immigrants, and LGBT people during his career as a political candidate and commentator."

   "Buchanan has repeatedly defended Adolf Hitler and once labeled him "an individual of great courage." He claimed "in a way, both sides were right" during the Civil War. He declined to disavow the idea that minorities have inferior genes. He defended a school's ban on interracial dating. He opined that "this has been a country built, basically, by white folks" and falsely claimed only "white males" died at Gettysburg and Normandy. He once claimed "conservatives are the niggers of the Nixon administration" and urged President Nixon not to visit Martin Luther King Jr.'s widow because King was "one of the most divisive men in contemporary history."

   "On immigrants, Buchanan claimed America is "committing suicide" while "Asian, African, and Latin American children come to inherit the estate." He complained that immigration will turn the U.S. into "a polyglot boarding house for the world, a tangle of squabbling minorities." He objected to states like California having a majority Hispanic population. He said of Mexican immigrants: "They are militant, and they have no interest, many of them, in becoming American."

   "Buchanan repeatedly appeared on a white nationalist radio program. He wrote the foreword to a book compiling the works of a white supremacist. He relied on the work of white supremacists for research in his own work. He praised David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, as having a "portfolio of winning issues."

    "Buchanan said "homosexual sex is unnatural and immoral" and "that kind of conduct should be discouraged in a good society." He's written of same-sex relationships: "In a healthy society, it will be contained, segregated, controlled, and stigmatized, carrying both a legal and social sanction." He once wrote of AIDS: "The poor homosexuals -- they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is extracting an awful retribution."

   http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/07/25/why-is-nbc-bringing-anti-gay-xenophobe-pat-buch/204592

   Hmmm. Sounds like a Donald Trump man. Maybe the Donald should bring him on as his campaign manager. 

The Lies of Face the Nation and the Rest of the 'Liberal Media'

     So we see again what a piece of creative fiction the claim that there's a 'liberal media ' really is. Just check out Face the Nation this morning. The first 3 interviews were Republicans-Rand Paul, Rick Perry, and Bob Jindal.

    Ok, maybe that was a fluke-I don't think you get preoccupied with a headcount-though if this shows up week after week-as it sometimes has, that's different.

   But it is simply inexcusable that FN host, John Dickerson, in the first interview, with Rand Paul, asks him-for the first question of the show-about the 'reports that the DOJ is investigating Hillary's emails'-without even hinting at the fact that these reports from the NY Times-again putting the lie to the liberal media as the Times is alleged to be the Queen of the liberal media-have been already proven utterly and egregiously false.

  http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/07/with-hillary-ny-times-is-again-playing.html

  The whole liberal media meme has always been a brilliant political weapon: for Republicans.

  As it turns out, because of Dickerson's history at Slate magazine he may feel he has to work twice as hard to show he's not a liberal.

   https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2013/01/22/cbss-john-dickerson-pushes-back-at-conservative-critics/

  If the media is always trying to prove it's not liberal the GOP has already won. Meanwhile as Media Matters says, there a whole host of unanswered questions on the Time's false report of a DOJ criminal investigation into Hillary's emails starting with-who was the source?

  "In its initial article, the Times reported: "Two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government information on a private email account she used as secretary of state, senior government officials said Thursday."

  "It is currently unclear who those "senior government officials" are -- whether they were Justice Department sources who may have been mistaken, Republican congressional sources who may have had an interest in deliberately misleading the paper, or a combination of both."

 http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/07/24/the-unanswered-questions-from-the-ny-times-debu/204589

 The Times is so intent on showing it's not liberal that it is just throwing out all it's journalistic standards. We need an answer to all these raised questions if the Times is not to totally squander the trust it has gained through they years as a very credible journalistic source.

 P.S. I see that Meet the Press is also running with the Times' story without mentioning the correction.






 



   

Donald Trump on Scott Walker: Wisconsin's Doing Terribly

     Again I ask is Donald Trump a Democratic plant? Whether or not doesn't matter-he's really helping the Democrats. Primarily, by giving their whole game away.

     http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/07/trumps-trump-card-against-gop.htmllk

     He's not filtering what conservatives really believe into soundbites fit for public consumption. You're not supposed to say Mexicans are all criminal vermin who talk and smell funny you're supposed to say I fully support the goal of immigration reform but only after the border is secure while thinking Mexicans are all criminal vermin who talk and smell funny. 

    The trouble is that GOPers are so angry about how many battles they've lost recently-ACA, gay rights, college tuition, now the minimum wage-they don't have the patience to run things through the filter. So they are really energized by Trump saying what they think. Trump on some level is perceptive enough to sense this desire of the GOP base.

   Now Trump is attacking Scott Walker with the truth! Again, Trump's candidacy keeps getting better:

  "First Donald Trump questioned whether Sen. John McCain was truly a war hero."

  "Then he revealed to a South Carolina crowd the personal phone number of Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), one of his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination."

  "On Saturday Trump went for the hat trick, gleefully insulting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker because one of Walker’s fundraisers called the billionaire real estate mogul “DumbDumb.”

 “Finally, I can attack!” Trump said at a packed rally at Oskaloosa High School. “Wisconsin’s doing terribly. It’s in turmoil. The roads are a disaster because they don’t have any money to rebuild them. They’re borrowing money like crazy. They projected a $1 billion surplus, and it turns out to be a deficit of $2.2 billion. The schools are a disaster. The hospitals and education was a disaster. And he was totally in favor of Common Core!”

 "The mention of the state-driven education standards — from which Walker, like many Republican governors, has walked away — incited a prolonged boo. That was not enough for Trump, who told a story about Walker giving him a “beautiful plaque” out of gratitude for campaign donations and wondered if “Wisconsin paid for it.”

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-goes-on-the-attack-again-with-scott-walker-as-the-latest-target/2015/07/25/c6727b44-3315-11e5-8f36-18d1d501920d_story.html

 There was talk of his insult of McCain's service hurting his campaign-no one in Iowa seems to now that:

 "Republicans’ hopes of banishing Trump from their presidential primary may have wilted in the heat of the Iowa summer. On his first visit to the caucus state since the McCain insult, Trump drew a crowd of 1,300 in a city of 11,463. He cleaned up his remarks about veterans, from the stage and in the crowd. He talked with characteristic gusto about “killing in the polls and” securing a spot in the party’s first sanctioned debate, scheduled for Aug. 6."

“I’m going to be there,” Trump told reporters, “much to the chagrin of many people.”

 Hey I'd vote for him-if I was allowed to vote in the GOP primary and then in the Democratic primary later-for Hillary of course.



   
     

More on the Effects of Raising the Minimum Wage

     I looked at this extensively at the end of last week in light of NY's decision to raise the MW to $15 for fast-food workers and the inevitable conservative blowback that it garners.

    http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/07/sumner-celebrates-scott-sumner-day.html

    For conservative critics of the MW in general-and of sharp raises of it more specifically-the basic argument is pretty clear. They start from the simple model of supply and demand. Wages like any other prices in the economy are set via the price system where demand for labor supply-the labor supply is held to be no different than the apple market or oil market or any other market even if this market is comprised of human beings-where there is a going wage rate based on the interplay of S and D.

   To raise the price of labor above it's demand will lead to a fall in prices just as if you raised the price of ice cream cones above it's going or equilibrium rate.

   It seems to me that even if you want to stick to simple S&D, it's not quite so simple. Labor could well be more or less inelastic than other goods. It could depend on the market and the industry.

   To say that raising the MW simply will reduce employment assumes that the labor market is perfectly elastic and that there are no other effects that might offset it.

    However, in addition there are new developments not welcome to conservative economists

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/24/opinion/david-brooks-the-minimum-wage-muddle.html?mabReward=CTM&moduleDetail=recommendations-1&action=click&contentCollection=Business%20Day&region=Footer&module=WhatsNext&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&src=recg&pgtype=Blogs&_r=0

   that maybe a simple S&D model is not the right way to analyze effects of the MW.

   http://robertvienneau.blogspot.com/2006/12/wages-and-employment-not-determined-by.html

   There is the recent development of the idea of monospony-that a lot of firms are not passive price takers when it comes to wages as Veinneau discusses in the above link. Then there is the phenomenon of efficiency wages-it may be worth it to pay workers more than you could get away with if these leads them to higher productivity.

   Krugman:

  "There isn’t a sharply defined “going wage”, either because the firm has monopsony power — it can, in effect, choose the going wage in its local labor market — or because efficiency wage considerations lead it to pay more than the minimum, so that there are normally more applicants than places. And as I’ve drawn it, the top of the hill relating the wage rate to profits is fairly flat. In particular, the firm shouldn’t mind very much paying a somewhat higher wage, because this will produce offsetting benefits — a larger supply of labor if it has monoposony power, lower turnover or higher productivity if efficiency wages are an issue, maybe all of the above."

  "The point is that under these circumstances it needn’t be all that hard to push up wages: the threat of union organizing or a consumer boycott, even moral suasion from the government might be enough. So the standard view that it’s very hard to change the distribution of market income, that policy must involve after-market taxes and transfers, may be quite wrong."

  http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/11/the-mutability-of-wages/

  When discussing the recent raising of company's internal minimum wages by companies like Wallmart, it is clear that Obama's simple moral suasion from the government the last few years is a part of that.

  "In a very helpful blog post, Paul Krugman tries to make sense of Wal-Mart’s recent statementthat it is already reaping some gains from raising wages via reduced turnover costs. Krugman’s main point is as follows. If worker productivity is a function of the wage (through improved morale, lower turnover, etc.), and Wal-Mart was initially maximizing profits, then a small change in wages will leave profits largely unchanged."

  "As Krugman points out, this is logic of the “envelope theorem.” What I want to clarify in this post is that the logic behind this argument is more general than the particular efficiency wage model Krugman works through. Any time firms are choosing wages to balance various concerns—as opposed to simply accepting a “market wage” as a constraint—the logic of the envelope theorem applies. What’s more, two types of empirically relevant models of the labor market—monopsonistic competition and efficiency wages—look pretty similar in this regard, and can be thought of as special cases of a more general model."

  "Krugman discusses the efficiency wage case, where worker productivity is a function of the wage, . Krugman mentions monopsony in passing, but doesn’t analyze it explicitly: this is the idea that higher wages allows firms to employ more workers. In presence of search frictions, a higher wage allows a firm to more easily recruit and retain its workers. Such frictions, therefore, give employers some wage setting power. In the textbook monopsony model, the quantity of labor employed becomes a function of the offered wage."

   http://arindube.com/2015/06/10/the-envelope-theorem-please-profits-efficiency-wages-and-monopsony/

   "Part of the reason conservatives are so upset is that there was consensus on this until about 20 years ago. Now as David Brooks bemoans there is this 'minimum wage muddle.'

   "Once upon a time there was a near consensus among economists that raising the minimum wage was a bad idea. The market is really good at setting prices on things, whether it is apples or labor. If you raise the price on a worker, employers will hire fewer and you’ll end up hurting the people you meant to help."

   "Then in 1993 the economists David Card and Alan Krueger looked at fast-food restaurants in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and found that raising the minimum wage gave people more income without hurting employment. A series of studies in Britain buttressed these findings."

   "Today, raising the minimum wage is the central piece of the progressive economic agenda. President Obama and Hillary Clinton champion it. Cities and states across the country have been moving to raise minimum wages to as high as $15 an hour — including New York State just this week."

     http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/24/opinion/david-brooks-the-minimum-wage-muddle.html?mabReward=CTM&moduleDetail=recommendations-1&action=click&contentCollection=Business%20Day&region=Footer&module=WhatsNext&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&src=recg&pgtype=Blogs&_r=0

     Sumner's helpful suggestion is because there is disagreement we should accept the theory that rests on the more 'conventional' basis-read traditional; ie, if there's a tie between conservatives and progressives give it to conservatives. 

    "There are conflicting empirical studies of the effect of minimum wages. When that occurs, it's probably safest to go back to the basic theory. That doesn't necessarily mean that minimum wages are bad policies, perhaps the gains in income outweigh the cost in unemployment. But it's disingenuous to claim that we can raise minimum wages without any disemployment effects."

    http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/07/paul_krugman_on_2.html

    You can see how conservatives might find that reasonable. 

    It actually gets worse for conservative economists however-the standing of macroeconomists with layman policymakers has decreased which makes it even less likely that policymakers will simply follow tradition in making economic policy. 

   http://www.philosophyofmoney.net/share/was-milton-friedman-the-last-economist/