Author: Steven Hill
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Are Trump’s tariffs good for the economy or will they increase prices?
By Steven Hill, The Fulcrum, December 23, 2024
As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to the Oval Office, there is much talk about tariffs as the foundation for his economic policy. Trump himself says he’s “a Tariff Man,” and in fact implemented tariffs on a number of countries in his first term.…
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America votes: Will Trump or Harris be better for the economy?
By Steven Hill, The Fulcrum, Nov 5, 2024
There is no question that Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are offering two very different visions of America and the economy. But amidst all the campaign noise and insults from the two sides, it becomes difficult to separate what’s real from what’s campaign bluster.…
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Project 2025: The Federal Reserve
By Steven Hill, The Fulcrum, September 9, 2024
This is part of a series offering a nonpartisan counter to Project 2025, a conservative guideline to reforming government and policymaking during the first 180 days of a second Trump administration. The Fulcrum’s cross partisan analysis of Project 2025 relies on unbiased critical thinking, reexamines outdated assumptions, and uses reason, scientific evidence, and data in analyzing and critiquing Project 2025.…
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Project 2025: Federal Trade Commission
By Steven Hill, The Fulcrum, August 12, 2024
This is part of a series offering a nonpartisan counter to Project 2025, a conservative guideline to reforming government and policymaking during the first 180 days of a second Trump administration. The Fulcrum’s cross partisan analysis of Project 2025 relies on unbiased critical thinking, reexamines outdated assumptions, and uses reason, scientific evidence, and data in analyzing and critiquing Project 2025.…
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Project 2025: Federal Communications Commission
By Steven Hill, The Fulcrum, August 05, 2024
This is part of a series offering a nonpartisan counter to Project 2025, a conservative guideline to reforming government and policymaking during the first 180 days of a second Trump administration. The Fulcrum’s cross partisan analysis of Project 2025 relies on unbiased critical thinking, reexamines outdated assumptions, and uses reason, scientific evidence, and data in analyzing and critiquing Project 2025.…
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Project 2025: The Department of Labor
By Steven Hill, The Fulcrum, July 25, 2024
This is part of a series offering a nonpartisan counter to Project 2025, a conservative guideline to reforming government and policymaking during the first 180 days of a second Trump administration. The Fulcrum’s cross partisan analysis of Project 2025 relies on unbiased critical thinking, reexamines outdated assumptions, and uses reason, scientific evidence, and data in analyzing and critiquing Project 2025.…
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San Francisco: a Multi-Everything City that needs a new approach to local democracy
By Steven Hill, New Democracy Institute, May 11, 2023
How should urban zones structure local democracy to ensure fewer turf wars, broad participation and greater engagement of its human talent and genius?
San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, Boston, San Jose, Atlanta, San Diego, Houston, Chicago – these large metropolises are what I call “multi-everything cities.”…
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Another shooting, another crazy day in Winner-Take-All land
By Steven Hill, DemocracySOS, March 28, 2023
America’s winner-take-all elections bedevil common sense and ensure a vast gap between public opinion and policy
Another shooting. Another SHOOTING? ANOTHER SHOOTING!!!
Another SCHOOL shooting. I can hardly believe it. Three school children are dead, gunned down at nine years of age, along with three of their adult care keepers.…
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How Trump could win the GOP nomination–again
By Steven Hill, DemocracySOS, March 23, 2023
Like in 2016, the pathway to the nomination is clear due to the “winner take all” rules in most GOP states; RCV would ensure a true majority of GOP primary voters prevail
Donald Trump seems to be showing up more and more in the headlines these days.…
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American Dream(s)
A play in three acts
By Steven Hill
A mixed racial family struggles to accept their transitioning son and brother. When he goes missing, the Armstrongs are torn by conflict. A mysterious envelope arrives during a snowy Christmas, unlocking secrets that send the family hurtling toward a bitter clash in which identity — as well as life itself — is at stake: can we be who we want to be?…
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Employer surveillance against workers spreads
By Steven Hill, Hans Böckler Stiftung, December 2, 2022
Silicon Valley says technology will liberate. In reality, it is trapping workers inside a Big Brother panopticon where you don’t even know when and how you are being watched.
The relentless tentacles of Big Brother digital surveillance continue to creep into the workplace and the lives of workers.…
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If it seems too good to be true…it probably is
By Steven Hill, Hans Böckler Stiftung, July 6, 2022
Why it’s important to separate worker reality from corporate media hype, which often tries to decree what is best for workers – despite being wrong again and again and again.
There is an old saying: “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”…
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The center is not holding – here’s why, and how to fix it
By Steven Hill, DemocracySOS, June 28, 2022
Recent Supreme Court rulings are the latest examples of a future under “minority rule”
Over the last few months, we have slowly awoken to a troubling new world. The unfamiliar America that is emerging has become post-Roe, post-gun control, post-safe schools, post-Supreme Court impartiality, post-majoritarian and possibly post-fair elections (we shall see in November and in 2024).…
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Why electoral systems matter: a thought experiment
By Steven Hill, DemocracySOS, June 24, 2022
What’s this? The same votes cast through different electoral systems can elect completely different representatives?
Imagine a mythical city in the heartland, which is seeking a better method to ensure that all of its residents in their “multi-everything” city feel like they have adequate political representation and a vested interest in participating in a healthy society.…
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Why no gun control? Because of the failure of winner-take-all elections
By Steven Hill, DemocracySOS, May 26, 2022
“Swing voter-ocracy” is contributing to this tragedy for America’s children
FairVote’s Rob Richie and I first wrote about the role of swing voters blocking popular gun control legislation in the 1990s. The problem remains true today.
We have seen this movie too many times.…
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Helping gig workers help themselves
By Steven Hill, Hans Böckler Stiftung, April 11, 2022
From new technologies to new organizing methods, tools and training for gig workers: Support is starting to emerge. Will it help? Will organized labor in the US pitch in?
Gig workers emerged from an economy flattened by the contraction of 2008-9, which saw massive layoffs and a growing reserve labor pool.…
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Workers of the world…QUIT?
By Steven Hill, Hans Böckler Stiftung, December 9, 2021
US workers are leaving their jobs in record numbers. Are they newly empowered? Or just taking a break from reality?
US workers of all ages and occupations have been voluntarily quitting their jobs in record numbers. In April 2021, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded a giant surge in the number of people who left their jobs, with just under 4 million workers quitting voluntarily.…
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The Digital Wild West Needs a Sheriff
By Steven Hill, American Purpose, October 6, 2021
Licenses and permits are standard fare in the brick-and-mortar world. Why not for internet companies?
Since the birth of the Big Tech media platforms fifteen years ago, democracies around the world have been the subjects of an unfolding experiment based on this question: Can a nation’s crucial news and information infrastructure depend on digital technologies that facilitate (a) a global free-speech zone of (b) unlimited audience size with (c) non-human, algorithmic curation of massive volumes of disinformation that (d) can be spread with unprecedented ease?…
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Will US labor unions stand by Uber drivers and gig workers?
By Steven Hill, Hans Böckler Stiftung, August 23, 2021
Following the labor movement’s defeat by Uber over gig drivers in California’s Proposition 22, key unions appear ready to imitate a weak version of Germany’s sectoral bargaining as a desperate compromise.
In September 2019, California passed a law, known as AB 5, that gave gig workers and other types of freelancers/solo self-employed workers the legal standing of employees.…
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The Rise of the Distributariat
By Steven Hill, Project Syndicate, July 16, 2021
The shift to remote work during the pandemic has brought both disturbing developments, like the increased use of surveillance technology, and promising ones, like the de-linking of employment from geographic location. But without new rules of the road, workers overall will be worse off than they were before COVID-19.…
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The Perils of “Minority Rule”
By Steven Hill, Common Dreams, July 16, 2021
Minority rule has metastasized like a cancer and is now pervasive throughout the US political system.
After a strong start with his ambitious Covid relief bill and vaccination rollout, President Joe Biden’s momentum has slowed considerably. Like President Barack Obama before him, he has now hit the buzzsaw of…Republican minority rule.…
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The ‘Uber Economy’ Needs Guardrails
By Steven Hill, American Compass, June 3, 2021
Part of the “Lost in the Super Market” panel discussion
Wingham Rowan wants to “remake the modern [labor] market,” while Neil Chilson wants “freedom from [labor] market frictions.” Yet neither seems to understand these markets from the perspective of the many freelancers and so-called “independent” contractors whom they purport to advocate for.…