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      Kamala Harris and a New Economic Vision

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      Kamala Harris is beginning to offer the first definitive clues of a new economic vision — one with the potential not only to offer a unifying vision for the Democratic Party but also to serve as the foundation for a governing philosophy that crosses party lines.In recent years, both parties have broken with a markets-know-best default setting. The question is, what comes next?One influential school of thought, advanced by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, argues for increasing the supply of essentials such as housing, health care and clean energy, in part by using government to break the choke points that make these goods too scarce and costly in the first place. This has truth — the much-criticized million-dollar-toilet problem gets at something real.But it doesn’t fully reflect the realities of how powerful interests hold captive parts of our economy, and then our political system. A second intellectual camp focuses on these forces, and its avatars include Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission and the modern antitrust movement, and the U.A.W. leader Shawn Fain and re-energized labor unions. Yet it, too, is incomplete as a governing wisdom, as it lacks affirmative answers for our largest challenges, like how to decarbonize quickly and at scale, and how to contend with a rising geopolitical competitor in China.Ms. Harris’s early proposals suggest she is drawing from both strands in telling a more holistic and entirely new story about how the economy works and the aims it should serve. Put differently, her slogan “We’re not going back” might well extend beyond political and social rights to include a different brand of economics.This new story has two themes — call them “build” and “balance.” The first focuses on pointing and shaping markets toward worthy aims; the second corrects upstream power imbalances so that market outcomes are fairer and need less after-the-fact redistribution.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In Las Vegas, Trump Calls Harris a ‘Copycat’ Over ‘No Tax on Tips’ Plan

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      Former President Donald J. Trump on Friday fumed over the fact that when it comes to exempting tips from being taxed, he and his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, are on the same page.Mr. Trump, before a gathering of supporters at a Las Vegas restaurant, complained that Ms. Harris had stolen his idea and sought to cast her as an opportunist who was pandering to service industry workers by cribbing from one of his signature proposals.“She’s a copycat,” Mr. Trump said. “She’s a flip-flopper, you know. She’s the greatest flip-flopper in history. She went from communism to capitalism in about two weeks.”A Harris campaign spokesman declined to comment. This month, while in Las Vegas herself, Ms. Harris said she would seek to end federal income taxes on tips if she were elected. Mr. Trump first floated the idea in June, and it quickly garnered bipartisan support.He has publicly stewed over her embrace of the plan, especially in Nevada, a battleground state that Mr. Trump lost in 2016 and 2020.Before President Biden withdrew from the race in late July, Mr. Trump had appeared to be on a trajectory to end his electoral drought in the desert — where one of his hotels towers over the Strip. Mr. Biden, whose campaign called the “no tax on tips” overture a “wild campaign promise,” had been trailing Mr. Trump by an average of seven percentage points in Nevada.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Book Review: ‘Orange Blossom Trail,’ by Joshua Lutz and George Saunders

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      In “Orange Blossom Trail,” the photographer Joshua Lutz and the author George Saunders pay tribute to the hard living across one stretch of American highway.With an austere frankness, the 62 photos by Joshua Lutz in ORANGE BLOSSOM TRAIL (Image Text Ithaca Press, $40) document the hard living, low-wage jobs and big-box landscapes along a single stretch of highway that runs 400 miles from Georgia to Miami, cutting right through Orlando, Fla.High shutter speeds hide road workers’ faces in shadow. Corporate storefronts and commercial vans appear without ceremony, as if snapped from a camera phone. Commuters wait for a bus, reduced and sad, while a sign for “Mighty Wings” floats mockingly above them.Though not without dignity — see Lutz’s portraits of fruit inspectors, as they glance up from a conveyor belt of tumbling oranges — his photos lack any social agenda. They find an unlikely manifesto in the three previously published texts by George Saunders, our Chekhov of suburban realism, threaded through the book.Joshua LutzJoshua LutzSaunders’s 2022 allegory of death and hope, “My House,” casts a certain entropy over Lutz’s close-ups of oranges — the region’s alleged cash crop — overtaken by rot and snails. In “Exhortation” (2013), a story told in the voice of an embarrassing middle manager trying to psych up his employees, Saunders expertly confuses the objects of our allegiances. In a sincerely Buddhist essay from 2007, he asks us to view misfortune “with clarity, rather than judging.” It’s almost a caption for Lutz’s images, as attuned to ironically pleasing harmonies of shades of orange — across workers’ safety vests, loan shark signs, a child’s slightly tragic coloring book — as they are to any drama of the working class. Mindfulness, often prescribed for happiness, can be brutal.Joshua LutzNot quite an illustrated Saunders, nor an annotated Lutz, this bizarre almost-collaboration confronts the demoralizing American grind with an attitude between sympathy and resignation. An attitude that’s rare in art because we seldom admit it to ourselves. More

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      John Lansing, Who Guided NPR Through Tumultuous Times, Dies at 67

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      He led the broadcasting organization during the coronavirus pandemic, a decline in revenue and a period of extreme political polarization.John Lansing, who as chief executive of NPR from 2019 until earlier this year guided the broadcasting organization through a global pandemic, an imploding media landscape and widening political polarization that called into question some of its journalistic principles, died on Aug. 14 at his home in Eagle River, Wis. He was 67.An NPR representative confirmed the death but did not cite a cause.Mr. Lansing, who had been in the news business since he graduated from high school, arrived at NPR with a mission to broaden its reach beyond traditional radio into media like podcasts and newsletters.He also announced what he considered his “north star”: a commitment to expand NPR’s audience to include a younger and more diverse demographic, and a parallel commitment to diversify, equity and inclusion in its coverage, sources and staff.His changes included documenting the diversity of sources, introducing unconscious bias training and hiring people of color for both on- and off-air positions.“I felt that we needed to double down our efforts in D.E.I. throughout our organization in order to fulfill the promise to reflect the entire American public in terms of what America looks like,” he told Current, a magazine covering public media, in 2021.Mr. Lansing started as NPR’s chief executive in October 2019 and was still settling into the role when the Covid pandemic hit. It presented a very different challenge: Radio listenership declined precipitously with the shift to remote work, and NPR developed a $25 million deficit as corporations pulled back sponsorship dollars.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Farm Workers Union Battles With California Grower, Wonderful Nurseries

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      Wonderful Nurseries, owned by Stewart and Lynda Resnick, has sued the state to overturn a labor organizing law championed by the United Farm Workers.The allegations ricocheted through the agricultural fields and into a Central Valley courthouse, where one of California’s most powerful companies and an iconic union were trading charges of deception and coercion in a fight over worker representation.Some farmworkers at Wonderful Nurseries — part of the Wonderful Company, the conglomerate behind famous brands of pomegranate juice and pistachios, as well as Fiji Water — said they had been duped into signing cards to join a union. On the other side, the United Farm Workers, the union formed in the 1960s by labor figures including Cesar Chavez, contends that the influential company, owned by the Los Angeles billionaires and powerhouse Democratic donors Stewart and Lynda Resnick, is trying to thwart the will of workers through intimidation and coercion.For months, the back and forth has played out before the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board, which arbitrates labor fights between workers and growers, and in a courthouse not far from Wonderful’s sprawling fields.In May, the company filed a legal challenge against the state that could overturn a 2022 law that made it easier for farmworkers to take part in unionization votes.After vetoing a previous version over procedural concerns, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the measure following public pressure from President Biden and Representative Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker. The U.F.W. heralded the bill’s enactment as a critical victory, but several big growers said that it would allow union organizers to unfairly influence the process.The law paved the way for farmworkers to vote for union representation by signing union authorization cards, a process known simply as card check. Its passage coincided with an era of greater mobilization to unionize workers during the pandemic and a willingness to press demands for better working conditions and respect from employers, said Victor Narro, project director and labor studies professor at the U.C.L.A. Labor Center.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Added 818,000 Fewer Jobs Than Reported Earlier

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      The Labor Department issued revised figures for the 12 months through March that point to greater economic fragility.The U.S. economy added far fewer jobs in 2023 and early 2024 than previously reported, a sign that cracks in the labor market are more severe — and began forming earlier — than initially believed.On Wednesday, the Labor Department said that monthly payroll figures overstated job growth by roughly 818,000 in the 12 months that ended in March. That suggests employers added about 174,000 jobs per month during that period, down from the previously reported pace of about 242,000 jobs — a downward revision of about 28 percent.The revisions, which are preliminary, are part of an annual process in which monthly estimates, based on surveys, are reconciled with more accurate but less timely records from state unemployment offices. The new figures, once finalized, will be incorporated into official government employment statistics early next year.The updated numbers are the latest sign of vulnerability in the job market, which until recently had appeared rock solid despite months of high interest rates and economists’ warnings of an impending recession. More recent data, which wasn’t affected by the revisions, suggest job growth slowed further in the spring and summer, and the unemployment rate, though still relatively low at 4.3 percent, has been gradually rising.Federal Reserve officials are paying close attention to the signs of erosion as they weigh when and how much to begin lowering interest rates. In a speech in Alaska on Tuesday, Michelle W. Bowman, a Fed governor, highlighted “risks that the labor market has not been as strong as the payroll data have been indicating,” although she also said that the increase in the unemployment rate could be overstating the extent of the slowdown.Investors, too, had been watching the revisions closely because of their implications for Fed policy. They were forced to wait longer than expected, however: The data, originally scheduled for a 10 a.m. release, was not published until after 10:30 a.m.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Americans Growing Worried About Losing Their Jobs, Labor Survey Shows

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      The New York Fed’s labor market survey showed cracks just as Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, prepares for a closely watched Friday speech.Americans are increasingly worried about losing their jobs, a new survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released on Monday showed, a worrying sign at a moment when economists and central bankers are warily monitoring for cracks in the job market.The New York Fed’s July survey of labor market expectations showed that the expected likelihood of becoming unemployed rose to 4.4 percent on average, up from 3.9 percent a year earlier and the highest in data going back to 2014.In fact, the new data showed signs of the labor market cracking across a range of metrics. People reported leaving or losing jobs, marked down their salary expectations and increasingly thought that they would need to work past traditional retirement ages. The share of workers who reported searching for a job in the past four weeks jumped to 28.4 percent — the highest level since the data started — up from 19.4 percent in July 2023.The survey, which quizzes a nationally representative sample of people on their recent economic experience, suggested that meaningful fissures may be forming in the labor market. While it is just one report, it comes at a tense moment, as economists and central bankers watch nervously for signs that the job market is taking a turn for the worse.The unemployment rate has moved up notably over the past year, climbing to 4.3 percent in July. That has put many economy watchers on edge. The jobless rate rarely moves up as sharply as is has recently outside of an economic recession.But the slowdown in the labor market has not been widely backed up by other data. Jobless claims have moved up but remain relatively low. Consumer spending remains robust, with both overall retail sales data and company earnings reports suggesting that shoppers continue to open their wallets.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Transfers and Pay Cuts: Pregnant Officers Accuse Border Agency of Discrimination

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      Under a $45 million settlement, Customs and Border Protection agreed to adjust its policy around pregnancy. Some women say the agency has instilled a culture of shame and perpetuated a fear of retaliation.When Roberta Gabaldon was ready to share news of her pregnancy with her colleagues at Customs and Border Protection in 2015, she brought in pink and blue doughnuts with a sign that read: “Pink and blue. Pink and blue. Somebody’s pregnant, guess who?”But her palpable excitement, particularly after a miscarriage months earlier, quickly dissipated.“My boss came into my office and he’s like: ‘You have to leave. You have to get a note about your pregnancy, and you have to go on light duty,’” Ms. Gabaldon, an agriculture specialist in the El Paso office, recalled, describing how she was told she needed to be reassigned to a post with fewer responsibilities regardless of whether she or her doctor believed it was necessary.Her experience reflects that of hundreds of female employees at the agency who have filed suit against Customs and Border Protection, saying that since at least 2016, they were denied equal treatment once they disclosed they were expecting. No matter the physical demands of their jobs, many were transferred to another post, typically centered on administrative or secretarial work and usually unrelated to what skills they had developed in their existing roles. The policy, they say, hurt their opportunities for advancement, and others add that they weathered pay cuts because light duty meant no more overtime.But under a $45 million settlement reached on Monday, Customs and Border Protection agreed to adjust a practice that some employees say has instilled a culture of shame and perpetuated a fear of retaliation as women try to hide their pregnancies at work for as long as possible.The agreement, which is not final until the end of September, requires C.B.P. to draft a new policy for pregnant women, and lawyers representing the women will monitor the agency’s compliance for three years. C.B.P. will also be required to train all managers and supervisors about the rights of pregnant employees.C.B.P. declined to answer questions about its policy toward pregnant women as described in the lawsuit and in interviews, citing its practice of not commenting on pending litigation. The terms of the settlement agreement state that the agency does not admit wrongdoing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More