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Reparations have long seemed a politically impossible dream, but the climate crisis may be changing that. As the planet’s weather has shifted radically in recent years, so has the conversation about paying compensation to black America for centuries of economic injustice. Back in 2003, Chappelle’s Show was lampooning the idea of reparations with after receiving checks from the federal government. Now, in 2019, Democratic presidential hopefuls Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Julián Castro are voicing support for reparations, as has the usually right-of-center New York Times columnist David Brooks. And while no one seems to have noticed it, an implicit call for reparations is embedded in the leading policy response to the climate crisis, the Green New Deal. The Green New Deal sees the fight against climate catastrophe as indivisible from the fight against racial and economic injustice. The introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey articulates a vision—a rapid, far-reaching mobilization of government “to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions”—that will be pursued through a range of legislative and administrative actions. Activists with the Sunrise Movement, the grassroots group working with Ocasio-Cortez to build support for a Green New Deal, say the 14-page resolution serves as more of an organizing tool than a final destination. Yet even in its bare-bones state, the resolution pulls no punches about the need to address racial inequalities, noting in its preamble the “large racial wealth divide [in the United States] amounting to a difference of 20 times more wealth between the average white family and the average black family.” The wording of the Green New Deal resolution is starkly different from the color-blind, economically muffled message that mainstream environmental organizations have long favored: “It is the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal…to promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth.” Note the call for “repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples [and] communities of color.” That phrase can be read narrowly to include what environmental-justice advocates have long pointed out: People of color and limited means generally suffer first and worst from the pollution of air, water, land and climate. Read more expansively, however, and with an eye toward America’s long history of expropriating black labor and wealth through slavery and later racial injustices, “repairing historic oppression” can also refer to paying reparations to black America. The Nation sought comment about this interpretation from the Green New Deal resolution’s co-sponsors, Representative Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Markey. Neither responded. Separately, however, Ocasio-Cortez has not shied away from the reparations argument. In at New York’s Riverside Church on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, Ocasio-Cortez said that the original New Deal in the 1930s had compounded “the existing inequity from the legacy of slavery.” She added, “We drew red lines around black communities, and we said white communities will get home loans and they’ll get access to the basic bedrock of wealth in America…. this will be your heirloom. We gave white America an heirloom that appreciated over time—that people still benefit from today, and we did not give that to African-American, Mexican communities, Puerto Rican communities.” Ocasio-Cortez concluded that “until America tells the truth about itself, we are not going to heal.” “Black, brown, and low-income communities bear the brunt of pollution and environmental degradation, accelerated by climate change,” Representative Barbara Lee, one of the 90 co-sponsors of the Green New Deal resolution, told The Nation. “That’s why addressing climate change is not just an environmental issue, but also an imperative to achieve racial and economic justice.” “Under our current brutal economic system, climate change doesn’t just mean things getting hotter and wetter,” the week the resolution was introduced. “It also means things getting meaner and crueler. That is what happens if we just stay on this course.” A Green New Deal, Klein added, can “repair and redress centuries old and very current crimes against African-Americans, indigenous people, women, [and] migrants.” Prior to the Green New Deal, the bias coursing through the environmentalist movement was notorious. Writing about the landmark green advocacy of the 1970s, Van Jones, who later served as president Barack Obama’s special adviser for green jobs, argued that “the movement to better regulate industrial society was, in its origins, almost entirely the purview of the affluent and white. As a result, it failed to see the toxic pollution that was concentrating in communities of poor and brown-skinned people, even after major environmental laws were passed.” Likewise, the New Deal of the 1930s had excluded minorities. In When Affirmative Action Was White, Columbia University historian and political scientist Ira Katznelson notes that during the New Deal, “new programs produced economic and social opportunity for favored constituencies and thus widened the gap between white and black Americans in the aftermath of the Second World War.” The thinkers and activists behind the Green New Deal have studied this history and are determined not to repeat it. “Our work is about acknowledging past wrongdoings, especially not doing it again,” , a think tank that is helping Ocasio-Cortez flesh out the specifics of a Green New Deal, told The Nation. “If you are going to have this mobilization [to avert a climate catastrophe], and you’re going to put out this money, how do you do it in a way that creates a more just, more prosperous, more sustainable economy for everyone, and do so in a way that centers those who are going to suffer the most in climate change and in our economy?” Gunn-Wright conceptualizes the mission to repair historic oppression as “a really large exercise in intersectionality.” She added, “For our work, I ask how do you think about reparations more holistically. Which is—how do you make our society more just and fair to people of color, especially low-income people of color, and how do you make it more fair to them structurally?” she says. “Right now, our economy, our society isn’t equitable. So, the idea that we just sit something on top [of existing structures] and everyone has equal access? That can be the case, but generally it is not.” Thus the potential Green New Deal projects outlined in New Consensus’s report, , aim not only to slash greenhouse-gas emissions but also to create millions of good green jobs. They pay particular attention to stimulating economic activity and wealth creation in blighted communities that typically get left behind. To close the racial wealth gap, Gunn-Wright and her team are researching mechanisms such as baby bonds and retirement funds that enable families to save and accumulate wealth. And the Green New Deal as a whole includes a commitment to full employment, universal health care, and similar features of a social safety net not as a left-wing wish list but for practical reasons: Such measures help insure that poor and working-class Americans of all colors do not lose out during the transition to a zero-carbon future. Creating a blueprint for this type of climate-, racial-, and economic-justice demands ingenuity and ambition at NASA-like levels. “We’ve never had serious investment in truly green infrastructure in this country. It’s been piecemeal,” says Dr. Robert Collins, professor of urban studies and public policy at Dillard University. “It’s been a few tax credits for solar power here and there. It’s never been a serious investment, and when you did get investment, very few of those programs were concerned with equity.” Despite the Green New Deal’s outspoken commitment to racial justice, the reaction of the nation’s racial-justice organizations has been mixed. Seeding Sovereignty, GreenLatinos, Justice First are among the groups that have supported the Green New Deal resolution. No position has been taken yet by the Congressional Black Caucus, legacy civil-rights organizations such as the NAACP and the Urban League, and groups like Color of Change and Black Lives Matter. Meanwhile, some climate-justice activists and front-line community groups have faulted the resolution’s failure to demand an end to additional fossil-fuel infrastructure and production, arguing that it will be impossible to create a zero-carbon economy or protect vulnerable communities if more drilling and pipelines are allowed. , for example, applauded the Green New Deal resolution “for its vision, intention, and scope,” yet also expressed concern that “unless some changes are made to the resolution, the Green New Deal will leave incentives by industries and governments to continue causing harm to Indigenous communities.” As Green New Deal advocates gear up to build popular support in the coming months, they are soliciting input from such front-line communities. The Sunrise Movement plans a nine-city “Road to the Green New Deal” tour; New Consensus is also exploring a listening tour. “We’re drawing from people like the Movement for Black Lives, the Dreamers movement, even as far back as the civil-rights movement, the Economic Bill of Rights, and the New Deal,” says Alexandra Rojas, the executive director of Justice Democrats, the group that first recruited Ocasio-Cortez and other leftists to run for Congress in 2018. “There are precedents for what we are calling for. In order to get it right this time, the Green New Deal needs to address everybody in this country, and that includes communities of color and others that have been marginalized for far too long.” “We can’t expect people to come to us,” Gunn-Wright says. “That is the next stage of the development of the Green New Deal. We cannot write it without those voices.”

One year ago, – a Black man in Minnesota – was chillingly murdered by a white police officer in a case that rocked the United States and the world and reinvigorated the . Nationwide, the response to Floyd’s killing went beyond calls for criminal justice reform. Activists have rallied to demand more equitable policies to tackle structural violence, as well as racially driven income, health and housing disparities. Promoting environmental justice is also high on the agenda. The Red Black & Green New Deal is part of that movement and represents a new approach to environmental issues that fuses the politics of Black liberation with efforts to tackle climate change. Here’s what you need to know. What is Black Lives Matter (BLM), again? BLM is a decentralised political and social movement begun in 2013 to protest racially motivated violence and police brutality against Black Americans. More activist groups joined the movement following Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020. How did the Red Black & Green New Deal (RBGND) come about? Within the framework of Black Lives Matter, the RBGND campaign asserts that racial justice is climate justice. During the virtual National Black Climate Summit on May 11, activists proposed a national climate agenda as part of the larger Movement for Black Lives, which includes the BLM network. The deal aims to address the fact that minority communities in the US are disproportionately impacted by climate change and environmental racism, which affects everything from the housing available to them to their access to clean air and water. Why are those colours significant? Historically, red, black and green represent the hues of the Pan-African flag designed in 1920 by Black nationalist Marcus Garvey. The three colours are said to represent the unity of Black people and the abundant natural wealth of Africa. Does this idea stem from the Green New Deal? Yes, the name is riffing on the , which calls for legislation to address climate change, job creation and economic inequality. That federal proposal was cosponsored by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez but has failed to advance in the Senate. The Green New Deal is also riffing on the original New Deal, a series of pioneering programmes created by US President Franklin D Roosevelt in the 1930s that kick-started public works projects and regulated the financial sector. The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Social Security Administration were among the results. Got it. Back to the RBGND. How would that proposal work? The proposal lists six pillars its authors say will create a sustainable future: democracy, economy, labour, land, energy and water. The driving force is to address the climate crisis by investing in Black communities while repairing past harms. What exactly does it advocate? According to the RBGND authors, climate change is a byproduct of an “economic system based on extraction, exploitation, accumulation through dispossession, and white supremacy”. They say that extreme weather events will “continually get worse” for Black people if restorative action is not taken soon. And they also argue that calls to defund the police are inextricably linked to climate justice. Could this plan help end systemic racism? A report on fossil fuel racism published in April by Greenpeace USA, the Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy and the Movement for Black Lives explains how phasing out oil, gas and coal will protect vulnerable groups and address acute threats to public health like hazardous air pollution. That can be achieved, advocates say, by immediately dismantling fossil-fuel infrastructure — halting new projects and winding down existing production.

Climate change divides along racial lines. Could tackling it help address longstanding injustices?

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, it was the city's black neighbourhoods that bore the brunt of the storm. Twelve years later, it was the black districts of Houston that took the full force of Hurricane Harvey. In both cases, natural disasters compounded issues in neighbourhoods that were already stretched.  

Environmental racism refers to the unequal access to a clean environment and basic environmental resources based on race. Communities of color are disproportionately victimized by environmental hazards and are far more likely to live in areas with heavy pollution. People of color are more likely to die of environmental causes, and who live close to hazardous waste are people of color. Some activists call environmental racism as it subjects communities of color to inequitable living conditions. This goes back to beliefs initially perpetuated by the institution of slavery when enslaved Africans were considered “disposable” because they were sent to work in conditions deemed too dangerous for white workers. The authorities in the United States, as well as the institutions in place, often treat areas that are home to minority residents as of less value than wealthy and predominantly white neighborhoods. The burdens of pollution, toxic waste, and poisoned resources are not distributed equally across society.

is a social justice movement that seeks to dismantle the flawed environmental policies that have long harmed low-income communities and communities of color, and instead pursue policy and development that work to create a sustainable, cooperative, and equitable future for the environment. It rests on the principle that everyone has a right to a clean and healthy environment, and the environmental justice movement strives to attain that. It also seeks to remedy the ills of environmental racism and to give everyone a liveable future. This movement initially began in the late 1980s, when a report was published () that proved communities of color were subject to environmental degradation and dangerous pollution. 

The federal government deliberately targeted Black Lives Matter protesters via heavy-handed criminal prosecutions in an attempt to disrupt and discourage the global movement that swept the nation last summer in the wake of the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, according to a new report released Wednesday by The Movement for Black Lives. Movement leaders and experts said the prosecution of protesters over the past year continues a century-long practice by the federal government, rooted in structural racism, to suppress Black social movements via the use of surveillance tactics and other mechanisms. "The empirical data and findings in this report largely corroborate what Black organizers have long known intellectually, intuitively, and from lived experience about the federal government's disparate policing and prosecution of racial justice protests and related activity," the report stated. The report, which was first shared with The Associated Press, argues that as the uprisings in the summer of 2020 increased, so did police presence, the deployment of federal agents and prosecution of protesters. Titled "Struggle For Power: The Ongoing Persecution of Black Movement By The U.S. Government," the report details how policing has been used historically as a major tool to deter Black people from engaging in their right to protest and weaken efforts to draw attention to issues impacting Black Americans. It also drew a comparison to how the government used Counterintelligence Program techniques to "disrupt the work of the Black Panther Party and other organizations fighting for Black liberation." "We want to really show how the U.S. government has continued to persecute the Black movement by surveillance, by criminalizing protests, and by using the criminal legal system to prevent people from protesting and punishing them for being engaged in protests by attempting to curtail their First Amendment rights," said Amara Enyia, The Movement for Black Lives' policy research coordinator. "It is undeniable that racism plays a role," Enyia said. "It is structurally built into the fabric of this country and its institutions, which is why it's been so difficult to eradicate. It's based on institutions that were designed around racism and around the devaluing of Black people and the devaluing of Black lives." In the report, published in partnership with the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility clinic at City University of New York School of Law, The Movement for Black Lives is calling for amnesty for all protesters involved in the nationwide protests. The group, also known as M4BL, is demanding reparations from the government that includes an acknowledgment and an apology for the long history of targeting movements "in support of Black life and Black liberation." It also is pushing for passage of the BREATHE Act, proposed federal legislation that would radically transform the nation's criminal justice system, and ending the use of Joint Terrorism Task Forces in local communities. The report also points to the stark difference in how the government handled the COVID-19 protests against local government shutdowns and mask mandates amid the pandemic during the same period. It analyzes 326 criminal cases initiated by U.S. federal prosecutors over alleged conduct related to protests in the wake of Floyd's murder and the police killings of other Black Americans, from May 31, 2020, to Oct. 25, 2020. A key finding of the report was that the push to use federal charges against protesters came from top-down directives from former President Donald Trump and former Attorney General William Barr. M4BL and the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility clinic, also known as CLEAR, found that in 92.6% of the cases, there were equivalent state level charges that could have been brought against defendants. Among those cases where comparable state level charges could have been brought, 88% of the federal criminal charges carried more severe potential sentences than the equivalent state criminal charges for the same or similar conduct. "We saw U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr overnight go from expressing some level of sympathy for racial justice protesters to labeling them as radical and violent agitators with absolutely no basis for that sort of characterization," said Ramzi Kassem, founding director of CLEAR and a law professor at the City University of New York, adding that Barr and Trump used the arrests and prosecutions to justify the "hostile rhetoric" aimed at protesters. "All of this was very transparently aimed at disrupting a Black-led movement for social justice that was happening both spontaneously and in an organized fashion nationwide."

White and black activists alike were often ambivalent toward the “complexional” nature of these conventions. William Whipper, James McCune Smith, and other black activists opposed the 1840 convention because of the expense, the possible diffusion of labor, and their sense that the suffrage movement would be better served by an interracial coalition under the umbrella of human rights.95 After the convention, Whipper famously penned a set of three letters to the Colored American critiquing the 1840 convention’s emphasis on color as “in direct opposition to the ‘rights of humanity.’ ”96 White antislavery activists such as Nathaniel Rogers, editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, went further and accused the organizers of repeating the prejudices of white men in addressing their call to colored citizens. Rogers’s editorial on June 18, 1840, addresses itself to the organizers as a “friend” and then argues, “We oppose all exclusive action on the part of the colored people, except where the clearest necessity demands it.” Rogers continues, “Time should be taken to discuss the measures to be employed deliberately; and the people should be made distinctly to understand that our country is your country; our God your God.” The language implies that at best, the conventioneers’ actions were too hasty, showing a lack of rational deliberation; at worst, Rogers’s commentary implies that this deliberation could only occur with their (white) legitimating presence and direction. Defending the convention against such attacks compelled supporters to articulate the meaning of “color” as an organizing principle, racialization as a political phenomenon, questions of agency vis-a`-vis fracturing antislavery organizations, and the tensions between presenting black citizens as autonomous individuals and the public’s tendency to read their political actions as the result of white patronage or pawns in the jockeying of political parties.97 One defender, “Sidney,” responded to William Whipper’s letters in one of the clearest articulations of a pragmatic political black nationalism in early African America: “Whenever a people are oppressed, peculiarly (not complexionally), distinctive organization or action is required on the part of the oppressed, to destroy that oppression. The colored people of this country are oppressed; therefore the colored people are required to act in accordance with this fundamental principle.”98 In much the same vein, Samuel Ringgold Ward responded to Rogers’s Standard editorial by pointing out white abolitionists’ racial privilege and myopia: their inability “to see a colored man when in the company of other whites necessitates such a convention.”99 Ward upbraids Rogers: “Had you a colored skin from October ’17 to June ’40, as I have, in this pseudo-republic, you would have seen through a very different medium.”100 Sidney and Ward connect being “colored” to a historical experience of antiblackness and to a mode of seeing this oppression as an issue of political power and representation. Being colored in this instance signifies in much the same way as being propertyless might in other circumstances. To have a “colored skin,” their analysis suggests, is to be without property in whiteness, a property worth about $250 in New York.101 This material and historical perspective, Ward and Sidney suggest, gave black citizens a theoretical and experiential understanding of politics different from their would-be white advisors that necessitated naming the racist elements of New York law. There was more at stake here than political perspective, though. The convention welcomed white attendance—even needed their approbation— but organizers maintained that any political progress would require the kind of publicity that only a gathering arranged by an autonomous black political collective could provide. The political exigencies and the way race framed and suffused these politics superseded the sentimental affiliation Rogers suggests in proclaiming, “Every abolitionist should be a colored person in this case.”102 Every abolitionist, Ray argues, cannot be a colored person because being “colored” is shaped by material and political realities that white citizens, no matter how well intentioned, do not share. Black citizens needed to be seen organizing for themselves and in leadership positions in ways that even the antislavery conventions, where, as Ray observed, black participants were often “looked upon as playing second fiddle to” the white organizers, could not produce.103 Such an event, a “different medium,” would demonstrate to the state that, rather than operating as puppets to abolitionist organizations or even the burgeoning Liberty Party, black citizens desired the franchise for their own and the state’s benefit, “that as citizens we should possess the privileges and immunities of citizenship: and . . . we are as capable of appreciating and exercising those rights as others.”104 It would position them as political agents rather than as objects of legislation or the political wards of white philanthropists. It would allow black citizens to exercise their own civic power more visibly and freely and therefore more productively for themselves and the state as a whole. The debates preceding the convention positioned the delegates as representatives of a political community of colored citizens. After the convention, the delegates used print to extend the convention’s performance, with the circulation of the collected “Proceedings” or “Minutes”—including debates, resolutions, addresses, and petitions—and the conventions’ form petitions that articulated the delegates’ central position in a shorter form.105 If, as the convention argued, the suffrage served as the official circuit for civic power, then these documents created an unofficial, alternate route providing a mechanism for black citizens to exercise citizenship by directly engaging the state and their fellow citizens. The organizers of the 1840 New York convention were keenly aware that the convention’s legitimacy—for both white and black onlookers— depended as much on how well it executed its business as a deliberative body (or at least how well it presented this execution to the public) as it did on what the convention actually decided.106 Ray reiterates again and again that the “Proceedings” (both event and printed record) represent the convention’s “respectable and noble” character, revealing the delegates’ ability to conduct business without “angry debate,” settling differences “amicably and yet without compromise.”107 Indeed, the form of these debates and resolutions carried at least as much weight as their content because the text confirms Ray’s claim that the convention adhered to a republican style of politics. And, because audiences would read any sign of disorder as confirmation of black difference, the minutes needed to be especially scrupulous on this point.

You write that urban rebellions in organizations like RAM laid the foundation for the Black Panther Party’s emergence in Oakland, and that the Panthers diverged not only from cultural nationalists but also from other revolutionary nationalists on the left. What made the revolutionary vision of the Panthers so distinct?

ROBIN D. G. KELLEY

Both allyship and contributions to systemic racism, especially in the context of injustice and mistreatment of Black people, are not limited to White individuals. Systemic racism is the large-scale and inescapable hierarchical system of oppression devised by White people and specifically directed at minority racial and ethnic groups (Feagin, 2006). As such, Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) (Garcia, 2020) suffer disproportionately due to inequities created by White people with relative social power, thus resulting in a system where BIPOC are disadvantaged in both social and public policy as a result of racist framing, ideology, attitudes, and discriminatory habits and actions. Due to assimilation, people of color can also engage in the same racist ideology (e.g., non-Black people of color opposing the Black Lives Matter movement). The purpose of this article is to invoke introspection and promote solidarity-aligned behaviors for non-Black ethnic and racial people of color within the field of applied behavior analysis and facilitate a cultural evolution to reduce racism and prejudice toward Black individuals.

Cultural evolution may imply competition as a result of selection; however, cooperation is needed for evolution to construct new levels of organization (Nowak, 2006). Wilson (2007) proposed three distinct characteristics of human evolution: cognition, culture, and cooperation, where cognition and culture only emerge as a result of cooperation first. Therefore, to build an antiracist culture, it is critical that all members within that culture begin to cooperate with one another by engaging in acts of solidarity. The importance of demonstrating solidarity is to unify and ameliorate collective suffering. Solidarity is defined as “unity (as of a group or class) that produces or is based on common interests, objectives, and standards” (“Solidarity,” n.d.). What is a display of solidarity? Solidarity is overt actions that challenge (and in some cases, punish) preexisting racial attitudes, model antiracist verbal behavior, and demonstrate equivalences between injustices faced by Black and non-Black people of color. As Matsuda et al. (2020) reviewed, implicit racial bias persists as a result of longer prior social learning histories. Therefore, changing attitudes and perceptions of adults may be harder to measure and achieve on an individual basis, but engaging in specific overt antiracist actions also help model appropriate and desired antiracist behaviors more pragmatically. Antiracism is not the absence of racist behaviors, but rather the ideas and behaviors that actively promote racial equity (Kendi, 2019).

If you brought back either of the Roosevelts—Teddy or Franklin—from the grave, the most astonishing thing they would find is that the “malefactors of great wealth” have become the benefactors of today’s liberalism, and Democrats have become the party of the rich. In the economic crisis of the 1930s, the rich hated FDR. Most of today’s rich love Barack Obama—so much so that  D.C. area airports ran out of space to handle all of the private jets flying in the well-heeled for both of his inaugurals. Forget the “limousine liberals” of the 1960s and 1970s, sending their own kids to private schools while advocating forced busing for everyone else; behold today’s burgeoning class of “Gulfstream liberals,” who jet about the globe while fretting about global warming.

What accounts for this astonishing state of affairs, and what does it mean for our politics in this age of supposed concern over economic inequality?

An increase to the minimum wage would be far from divisive: American voters have repeatedly signaled broad, bipartisan support for raising the minimum wage to $15. In November, 61 percent of Florida voters supported a ballot measure to do just that, even as the state’s voters backed Donald Trump for reelection. The percentage of Americans who say that they support raising the minimum wage has grown during the pandemic—66 percent of Americans supported raising the minimum wage in February 2020, while 72 percent supported it by August 2020.

This evidence also provides us with many policy implications that help us determine best practices for shaping fiscal policy in developed countries. First of all, according to the evidence seen here, setting a minimum wage to $11.77 would provide the lowest level of income inequality. This shows that for many of the OECD nations, they would be able to help decrease inequality within their country by raising the minimum wage even by a small amount, although there are some countries that have overshot the maximum effectiveness value. The second policy implication from this research is found in the fact that we used the real values of the minimum wage. By seeing that higher real values of the minimum wages decrease inequality, we can state that lower real values of the minimum wage increase inequality. Therefore creating policy to keep a constant real value of the minimum wage will stop inequality from increasing, thereby leading to a more prosperous economy. Looking at this research shows how developed economies can benefit from not only increasing their minimum wages, but also stopping their real value from decreasing. This implies a policy of having the minimum wage increase with inflation would help to keep income inequality from rising further.

Overall, we can conclude that increases to the real value of the minimum wage affect income inequality by redistributing wealth, primarily from the people who buy goods made by minimum wage workers and the stakeholders of companies that higher minimum wage workers. Although we do notice the potential for some disemployment effects when the minimum wage becomes too high, caused by a redistribution of wealth from some low-wage workers losing their jobs to other low-wage workers who continue to work after the minimum wage increase, this effect is not being seen by any OECD country currently due to the need for the minimum wage to be set extremely high for this to occur. Changing policy to reflect these findings would help improve the economy by creating a more equal society and thereby improving the general quality of life.

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour for most workers. The Congressional Budget Office examined how increasing the federal minimum wage to $10, $12, or $15 per hour by 2025 would affect employment and family income.

• In an average week in 2025, the $15 option would boost the wages of 17 million workers who would otherwise earn less than $15 per hour. Another 10 million workers otherwise earning slightly more than $15 per hour might see their wages rise as well. But 1.3 million other workers would become jobless, according to CBO’s median estimate. There is a two thirds chance that the change in employment would be between about zero and a decrease of 3.7 million workers. The number of people with annual income below the poverty threshold in 2025 would fall by 1.3 million.

In August, the U.S. economy added 315,000 jobs, bringing the 3-month average to 378,000 jobs. The private sector added 308,000 jobs. Every sector saw job gains, with the largest gains in professional and business services (+68,000), health care (+48,000) and retail trade (+44,000). With this report, the wholesale trade sector fully recovered.

The unemployment rate rose for a positive reason – more unemployed workers began seeking jobs.

But unemployment does not fall in lockstep with an increase in growth. It is more common for businesses to first try to recover from a downturn by having the same number of employees do more work or turn out more products—that is, to increase their productivity. Only as the recovery takes hold would businesses add workers. As a consequence, unemployment may start to come down only well after an economic recovery begins. In fact, in the last three recessions, the unemployment rate continued to rise after the end of the recessions; a phenomenon called “jobless recoveries.”

The phenomenon works in reverse at the start of a downturn, when firms would rather reduce work hours, or impose some pay cuts before they let workers go. Unemployment starts rising only if the downturn is prolonged. Because unemployment follows growth with a delay, it is called a lagging indicator of economic activity.

The economy has set off emergency sirens this year over growing recession fears, sky-high inflation and a battered stock market. But one area has allayed worries: jobs.

Hiring last month exceeded expectations and defied warnings of a downturn. Moreover, in November, wages grew a blistering 5.1% compared to a year earlier, offering welcome relief for workers strained by price hikes.

Economists will be looking at the unemployment rate as an indicator of whether a recession is on the horizon. While some companies have been laying workers off, most are still desperate to hire workers and are having a hard time finding the workers they need. But those unfilled jobs could limit economic growth.

Throughout the past year, the number of new hires has lagged behind the number of open positions by millions every month.

Increasing the supply of available workers is positive for the economy, even if it does increase the official jobless rate, US Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh said in an interview with CNN’s Jim Sciutto on Friday. It’s a sign that a lot more people are looking for work, which is a plus, given the extraordinary lengths to which employers are going to recruit and retain workers in a labor market with 11.2 million job openings.

“If the unemployment rate goes up a little bit because of that, that’s okay. Because there are still many job openings in United States of America and we need to get more people back into work,” Walsh said, adding that he was “very encouraged” by the growth in labor force participation.

The real problem with the Phillips curve is not that it supposes that inflation and unemployment are related, especially in the short run, but that it misconstrues that relation as involving a direct causal influence of unemployment on inflation, and vice versa, when in fact it is changes in aggregate demand that cause changes in both unemployment and inflation. According to Mickey Levy, chief economist at Berenberg:

The Dickey-Fuller test was applied to both variables to detect if these variables were stationary or non-stationary. Both variables proved to be non-stationary; therefore, our regression tests were applied to the Second differences. Since the unemployment rate and interest rate in percentages, and GDP is presented in trillions of dollars, we regressed second differences of logarithms of GDP on Second differences of logarithms of unemployment rates adn interest rate to standardize the scales.

Table 1 show the output from unit root test Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) Variables Probability Result Constant 1.00 Non-Stationary Unemployment Rate 0.0439 Stationary Interest Rate 0.2424 Non-Stationary Government Expenditure 1.00 Non-Stationary

Back in the depths the global financial crisis in 2009, the International Labour Office announced that global unemployment had reached the highest level on record. More than 200 million people, 7 percent of the global workforce, were looking for jobs in 2009.

It was not a coincidence that the global economy experienced the most severe case of unemployment during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Unemployment is highly dependent on economic activity; in fact, growth and unemployment can be thought of as two sides of the same coin: when economic activity is high, more production happens overall, and more people are needed to produce the higher amount of goods and services. And when economic activity is low, firms cut jobs and unemployment rises. In that sense, unemployment is countercyclical, meaning that it rises when economic growth is low and vice versa.