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Last week I met with 25 economists, including a number of Nobel Prize winners, to ponder the next recession. I am sworn to Chatham House rules, so I can’t tell you who was there or what they said. We spoke freely. What did we learn from the last recession? Do governments have the right tools to fight the next one? Fur was flying, as you can imagine. Opinions about interest rates and jailing rogue bankers were all over the place.

But at one point a strange hush and murmuring of agreement came over the group. We all agreed on one thing, one tax that would make the world better: a carbon tax. Right now. Last month, more than 3,500 economists—a record number—signed an open letter calling for a carbon tax to fight climate change. Several of the economists at the meeting told me something to the effect of, “I never signed a letter before but I signed this one.” 

Signers included 27 Nobel Prize winners, the four living former chairs of the Federal Reserve (from Janet Yellen to Alan Greenspan), and all but one of the former heads of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, Republicans and Democrats alike. (Note: I signed it too!)

Many economists distrust government action and prefer markets to work out problems, so the breadth of agreement on the use of a carbon tax to address climate change is striking and rare. President Harry Truman once asked (perhaps apocryphally) for a one-handed economist who wouldn’t always say, “on the one hand, on the other hand.” But if he were advised on climate change, there wouldn’t be a problem.

Why the agreement between left wing and right wing, downbeat and upbeat, political and non-political economists? In part, the carbon tax letter reflects the virtually unanimous scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change. Reducing carbon will massively limit economic, social, and political disruption. Social and natural scientists stand apart from climate change deniers, like the House Republicans who recently forced adjournment of a hearing on climate denialism. There is virtually no debate among scientists that climate change is caused by humans unleashing carbon and methane.

Calling for a carbon tax follows the very principles taught in Economics 101. Markets fail if prices aren’t right. Much of the price paid for carbon use is paid not by the user but by someone else—other humans besides the users and those not yet born. Fossil fuel use imposes an externality, a problem in which a market transaction occurs but the parties don’t pay or recognize the full cost. If the price is artificially too low, too much will be used. One example is vices like cigarettes and alcohol, whose costs spill over to society. So-called sin taxes on cigarettes and alcohol aim to discourage their use.

A carbon tax is the new sin tax. And economists are on record opposing sin.

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Earlier this week I recounted the strange, sad tale of how Amazon jilted New York City on Valentine's Day, reneging on a promise to build part of its second headquarters in Queens over opposition from community groups and politicians. The actual costs of that decision may never be known. But the public subsidies and handouts that generated such an uproar around Amazon will remain a fixture in local U.S. politics. That might not be such a great thing.

New York wasn't the only suitor for Amazon. Indeed, many cities had offered Amazon more than New York's $3 billion, coming mostly in the form of lowered future taxes. After Amazon dumped New York, New Jersey renewed its $7 billion subsidy offer and other cities among the 20 finalists also held renewed hopes. (These were dashed when Amazon announced they would proceed only with the Virginia project while expanding employment in existing locations, most likely including New York—they just won't build the big new headquarters complex.)

Given the amount of money being thrown at Amazon, and the prevalence of these strategies nationwide, you might think subsidies are effective economic development tools, and that using them to lure new business is an effective growth strategy. But economists of all political stripes disagree; over 20 years ago, mainstream economists at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve called on Congress to ban subsidies and “end the economic war among the states.” The consensus is that firm-specific subsidies are bad policy, draining public coffers while not producing promised benefits. Growth is better enhanced by investments in infrastructure, public education, and other amenities, especially those that can attract a highly-skilled labor force; some economists would add that cities should compete over their general business climate, including taxes and regulation.

Research shows that incentives may have a slight impact on business location decisions in some cases, although they are much less important than labor force quality, reliable public services, and proximity to customers and networks of supporting businesses. A recent comprehensive review concluded that subsidies are “excessively costly and may not have the promised effects,” affirming the long-standing consensus among economists.

Firms—and their location consultants, now a thriving industry—sometimes get deep subsidies in one state, use them up, then move on to another state and repeat the process, in what Greg LeRoy of Good Jobs First (the nation’s leading critic of subsidies) calls “the job-creation shell game.” In 2007, Applebee's restaurants cashed in subsidies and moved their headquarters from one Kansas City suburb to another (both on the Kansas side). Then in 2011 they moved across the state line, still in the Kansas City metropolitan area (and only about one block from Kansas), to get millions more from Missouri on a five-year deal. When the five years were up, having milked everything possible from Kansas and Missouri, the company moved its headquarters to Glendale, California (getting still more subsidies in the bargain).

Why do politicians use subsidies so much, if the research says they don't work? First, many politicians (and the public) continue to believe that subsidies work. Second, even for those who are skeptical of subsidies’ value, there is competition with other jurisdictions. In 2003, Indiana Democratic governor Joseph Kernan (full disclosure: Joe was a friend of mine when I lived in Indiana) justified a multimillion-dollar offer to United Airlines by saying, “I understand the argument that taking jobs away from Boston and putting them here is nationally a zero-sum game… But Indiana, like virtually every other state, is not going to unilaterally disarm.''

So reducing your city’s future revenue may not be worth it, in spite of the glowing promises from politicians, businesses, and consultants. For sure, tax money is better spent on public goods that allow all businesses to grow and attract skilled workers, retain retirees, retrain displaced workers, and help develop more equal economies that increase local buying power. Attracting a big company may be worth it if other knock-on benefits are forthcoming, such as developing an area that otherwise would not be developed, or providing good-paying jobs to poor and excluded workers. But such benefits must be verifiable and payments tied to the verification. For example, Amazon is a dedicated non-union employer. Although New York unions potentially could have broken through and shown that Amazon could live with a union, these kinds of benefits require verification.

Only national policy can block subsidies. Yet subsidies are now so deeply embedded in the DNA of state and city economic development practice that a federal change is very unlikely. Instead, cities and states must become better negotiators and educate their voters as to why subsidies could be a waste of money if not negotiated carefully. Promised benefits must be independently verifiable and periodic payments tied to the verification.

How can cities build their negotiating capacity? The answer is with power. Local groups need to build long-term coalitions advocating coherent and united development strategies, to help counter the pressure companies can and will put on their political leaders. Organizations like the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, itself part of an ongoing coalition in southern California, can point the way for others, with a history of broad alliances, productive negotiations with companies and government, and actual benefits for the workers who need them the most. Otherwise, cities that can't resist giving away their precious tax base will continue to be whipsawed by firms.

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We got left on Valentine's Day. New York City was abandoned by Amazon when the company broke its promises to build its second headquarters in Long Island City, across the East River from Manhattan.  City leaders, advocates, and pundits are still trying to understand what happened. One of the possible explanations is that Amazon always had the upper hand and the city was not able to counter its superior bargaining position. Perhaps Amazon pulled out because it wanted to show that no city, not even New York City, can out-negotiate Amazon.

To review the chain of events: last year the mega-firm, Amazon, launched intense competition between twenty cities who fell all over themselves to be the site of the firm’s second headquarters. Last November the company (cannily, it turns out) split the "HQ2" choosing two winners--New York City and northern Virginia. But on Valentine’s Day this year, Amazon abandoned its plans for New York City, and all of its headquarters investment will happen in one place, northern Virginia, part of the metropolitan area where Jeff Bezos lives.

At the announcement last November of New York's win, city politicians hailed the announcement, with Amazon promising up to 25,000 jobs in New York along with the physical revival of the city’s rundown Long Island City neighborhood.  The city has tried for years to create an office center there to take some pressure off of Manhattan, and as Josh Barro has pointed out, Amazon would have helped jump-start that effort.

In return, the company would have received cumulative tax breaks, making their tax bill around $3 billion less than official rates would generate, along with government development of infrastructure in and around the site.  Mind you, the subsidies were not to be paid in the form of a $3 billion check, a point many critics seemed to misunderstand.  The subsidy was in terms of foregone taxes not collected that otherwise would be there to collect if the company paid its full bill.  So the city was still going to be net positive on revenue. It seemed like a win-win.

But on February 14, after several months of contentious politics, Amazon pulled the plug on New York (the Virginia project will go forward).  Some advocates and politicians celebrated the decision, saying they always thought it was a bad deal. One of those politicians, who was always a critic -- U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez -- said it was a victory because Amazon lost. She said Amazon's decision to not come was a defeat for “Amazon’s corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world.”  New York’s Mayor Bill DeBlasio, who enthusiastically sought the project from the beginning and celebrated the win, reversed course and implied that Amazon acted in bad faith when he said, Amazon “took their ball and went home.”

But Governor Andrew Cuomo, the main supporter of the project, called Amazon’s withdrawal “the greatest tragedy that I have seen since I have been in government,” dismissing political opponents as “ignorant.” Labor leaders and people yet to be heard from seem to be more on the side of Cuomo's view than AOC's.  And critics are asking what the opposition's plan is for putting 25,000 high-paying jobs in Long Island City.

Opposition centered around the tax subsidies, which some opponents seemed to misunderstand.  New York was not proposing to give Amazon $3 billion in cash, but to lower future taxes, saving the company money.  This type of subsidy—although not at this scale--is common practice in state and urban economic development, and $900 million of New York City's share was not discretionary--it would have tapped an existing as-of-right program available to any firm that creates new jobs.

New York is licking its wounds, and politicians are circling each other, trying to assign blame.  The jobs lost are enormous, along with the potential jump-start to office development outside of Manhattan.  Although some on the left see Amazon's departure as a victory, we don't yet have enough information to assess the costs versus the benefits.

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An Exclusive Men-Only Club on Wall Street 

In a discreet office in the financial sector at the heart of Wall Street is a club that just says HCF on the door. The club is exclusively for men, but not an exclusive men’s club, if you get my meaning. It’s a hair salon where men can dye their hair, buy overpriced products with oversized claims to “cure” baldness (nothing really cures baldness except hair transplants). As one of the most powerful men in the world once said, “Never let yourself go bald.” Nearly $4 billion is spent annually on hair loss products, so perhaps President Trump and the market for hair conditioners is on to some fundamental truth. Bald men look old and fear their baldness. Is it baldness bigotry? And if so why?

It is really hard to write about bigotry, or even be funny about it. But the fact that the mania that women have had about their appearance is now being adopted by men—that is frightening.

Beauty in the Age of Economic Insecurity

The Great Recession is sometimes called the mancession, due to the fact that men were disproportionately affected by job loss. Of the 6 million jobs lost between December 2007 and June 2009, 74% were held by men, according to the Urban Institute.

And with economic insecurity comes a lot of other kinds of insecurity. Insecurity about brains, brawn, and beauty. Men are not immune to vanity and the beauty industry. My prediction: soaring botox and beauty anxiety for older guys in the coming recession. 

An incisive British article about the male fashion and bodybuilder profession noted that:

"While his clients don’t cite the recession as a key factor in wanting to change their appearance, [personal trainer Matt] Roberts says the language they use—‘getting ahead of the game’, ‘look like I mean business’, ‘on the ball’, ‘powerful and in control’—points to a competitive work culture where job security is no longer a given. ‘I’ve always had clients in the 40-45 age bracket but I’ve definitely seen a rise in numbers. It’s about staying young, staying fit, showing they can be as strong as the 20- to 30-year-olds they’re now competing with."

Men are learning what women have known about beauty and aging for decades. If you are competing in markets you have to look good, and looking good is looking young. Good looks are equated with a body that seems in control: flat bellies, youthful skin, and other signs we know well. Women look old at younger ages than men—ask a female news anchor or actor how long she has on screen—but men age, too.

Beauty Pays

For both women and men, aging in the market means losing status. In the coming recession, older men are going to find that they will be less desirable in the labor market. More research is needed, but I predict male use of cosmetic surgery, beauty products and make-up is more sensitive and correlated with the business cycle than women’s demand for cosmetics and the like. Basically, cosmetics and cosmetic procedures are recession-proof—the so-called lipstick effect.

Economists have long observed a beauty premium, whether in labor markets, in negotiations, or in the corporation. A recent study showed that attractive faces, especially men’s, were remembered better than unattractive faces. And new research provides evidence that physical attractiveness can help boost a person’s success in online peer-to peer lending.When sophisticated institutional investors vote for “All-Star” financial analysts, the analysts' “beauty” plays a role—for men and women—when there isn’t much information about an analyst’s performance. (It is a bit of relief to know the superficial beauty effect disappears when more information about performance is available.)

It might go the other way, too. One study concludes that people who are judged by peers to be “very unattractive” are paid more after statisticians control for education and the like. But I don’t think many people believe that. Economists have widely documented the “beauty premium” and “ugliness penalty” in earnings.

Explanations based on employer and client discrimination might predict a positive association between physical attractiveness and earnings, but in the end we really don’t know why beauty matters. Is it because the “beautiful” are treated better? Good treatment might be reinforced so that people who are told they are beautiful have an edge in confidence, extroversion and other personality traits correlated with success. Or is it because when there is little information about someone, people use superficial traits to judge?

Not only does attractiveness affect labor market outcomes and other social activities, there is also evidence younger people are judged more attractive than the old. Men can get away with a little more age—the “businessman beautiful” look—while older women are notoriously deemed less attractive, especially by older men. A Canadian study found perceived attractiveness declined with the age of a face for men and women, but that the effect was stronger for women's faces.

Yet men are not exempt from prejudice against the old. In a finding that should surprise us all, a younger man’s face was deemed the most attractive by study participants. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? Apparently it's the Prince, not Snow White.

And that is the rub. While men and women’s roles and experiences may become more equal in terms of pay, respect, and authority on the job, the convergence might go the other way as men increasingly face the same age prejudice as women. Maybe we will soon add another recession indicator—men’s spending on beauty products and procedures.

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In America you are mostly on your own for retirement. You would be totally on your own if it weren’t for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. But Social Security replaces only about 40-50% of income and you will need about 70-80% in retirement.

How much do you need to save to be OK in retirement? You need to calculate a target "number" for retirement – how much you'll need to have saved – and then translate that target number into a weekly amount to be deducted from your paycheck.

You have to make a lot of assumptions in determining how much to deduct from every paycheck in order to retire well. If you are a median worker, you need about $350,000 in addition to Social Security. If you are a typical college-educated professional, you will need over a million or two.

Let’s assume that you replace 80% of your preretirement income in retirement; you earn a little above average ($60,000 in 2019); you work and save consistently for 42 years – no taking breaks, no getting laid off or fired, no divorces, no getting sick – you earn 5% on your investments after fees; you live until 95; and you collect Social Security. Whew, lots of assumptions.

You need to save 5% of every paycheck if you start at age 25. You need to save 10% if you start at age 35, 22% if you start at age 45, and 52% of every paycheck(!) if you start at age 55.

To tailor your answers and fiddle with the assumptions, go to calculators. The NerdWallet calculator is OK. Make sure you calculate your Social Security benefit – the NerdWallet calculator will send you to an excellent AARP calculator – and avoid the NerdWallet sales pitches. Just use the calculators. My colleague Anthony Webb provides a great consumer guide to retirement calculators.

When you decide the amount you want to save you have to decide how. First stop is your firm’s 401(k). I know half of workers don’t have a 401(k) plan at work, or any kind of plan at all. Those without a workplace plan need an IRA – choose Vanguard with the lowest fee index funds please. But if you are older and catching up you won’t be able to save enough in your IRA, contributions are capped at $6000 - $7000 per year. You will have to amass wealth outside retirement accounts in the form of a paid off house and no debt, and mutual funds (index please).

The Fantasy Play in American Retirement Planning

The tips and guideposts and links to retirement calculators might have seemed to be grounded in a meaningful reality. I set out to answer the fairly ordinary sounding question, “how much do I deduct from my paycheck to be OK in retirement?” However, most retirement saving advice is not connected in any meaningful way to the ordinary lived experiences of the vast majority of American workers. Basically, almost no one starts saving 5% of their paycheck for retirement when they are 25 and continues to do so for 504 months (12 months*42 years) straight without pause.

And the number of people who plan to save 52% of their paycheck when they are 55 is precisely no one. The only chance people have of having a decent pension supplementing Social Security is starting a career job in a union, a large company, or a government job in which you were likely to have a traditional defined benefit pension or a generous 401(k)-type plan. Your only other hope for a secure retirement is a rich spouse or parent and by definition, there are not many of those to go around. I wrote about savings tips hoping a few people could get lucky and follow the advice, but I acknowledge I am offering tips amid the rubble of a broken retirement system – handing out umbrellas during Hurricane Maria.

Very few people have the savings needed for retirement. Most workers approaching retirement do not have enough saved to maintain their living standards in retirement, regardless of income. The typical older worker in the bottom 50% of the income distribution (earning less than $40,000/year) has nothing saved for retirement. The median savings of workers in the middle 40% (earning between $40,000 and $115,000/year) are only $60,000. Among workers in the top 10% of the income distribution (above $115,000/year), the median amount saved is $200,000.

Bottom line

It is easy to know how much you need in retirement. Figure out when you are going to die, when your employer will throw you out, predict all the recessions and invest accordingly, avoid the predator financial advisers and brokers, know the future of your industry, the success of your love life and the life course of your children. I am tongue in cheek of course in listing this string of dos and don’ts to illustrate a major point. American workers are asked to do the near impossible. Other countries have Social Security systems combined with occupational plans that use rules of thumbs to get most workers, those who have worked 30-40 years, to about 70-80 percent of their pre-retirement income in retirement. America needs a pension plan for all plan. The indefatigable Chris Carosa interviewed me about my plan for a universal pension plan a few days ago.

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*A word about replacement rates. Andrew Biggs has a good paper on retirement targets and Social Security replacement rates. He finds the college teachers retirement plan, TIAA-CREF recommends a desired replacement ratio of 60 percent to 90 percent of an persons salary during their last year of work. Aon Consulting and Georgia State University recommend an average replacement rate of about 75 percent of final earnings, with low earners requiring replacement rates of close to 90 percent.

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In a previous blog, I noted the surprising support for higher personal taxes among some of the world’s wealthiest people. The very next day, Morris Pearl, a former BlackRock executive and chair of the group Patriotic Millionaires, delivered a straightforward message to New York state lawmakers: "Raise my taxes."

Wealthy proponents of higher top tax rates have a number of different motivations. More federal revenue would help get deficits and the debt under control. But calls for higher taxes aren’t just based in fiscal policy and debt reduction. Some advocates have income redistribution in mind, while other observers worry that ever-more concentrated wealth threatens the legitimacy of the American political system. But increasingly, economists worry that inequality impedes economic growth.

Some proponents of higher taxes want income to be redistributed to the poorest Americans, whose real incomes have been stagnating relative to gains for the wealthy. Census data show that for the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution, real family incomes have barely budged since 1980. Meanwhile, the richest 5 percent have enjoyed nearly 80 percent growth in real incomes, with most of the action occurring in the top 1 percent.

But inequality also hurts the middle class, because inequality hurts growth. Recent work from experts at the International Monetary Fund and others confirms that policies promoting inequality slow growth down.

Even so, since the late 1970s, U.S. gross domestic product has almost doubled—but most of the gains have gone to the wealthy. If you define the middle class as the middle 60 percent of the income distribution (those above 20 percent up to 80 percent), then middle-class income has risen more slowly than overall economic growth. As David Leonhardt estimates, “If middle-class pay had increased as fast as the economic growth, the average middle-class family would today earn about $15,000 a year more than it does, after taxes and benefits.”

Finally, in addition to sharing economic growth more fairly, some thoughtful people are worried about the legitimacy of a system that gives such a high share of wealth to such a small number of people. The problem is compounded when you consider that most of the super-wealthy's income comes from capital income, while the vast majority of Americans rely on labor income—their daily work—for their livelihood. A good deal of that high wealth will be passed on to children, making inherited wealth an ever-increasing source of inequality. Inheritances already represent about 40% of wealth, and this could easily grow as the super-wealthy pass their fortunes on to their children.

Highly unequal and seemingly unfair distributions of wealth delegitimize political and economic systems, which in turn can lead to economic decline and political disruption. MIT economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, in their well-circulated and important 2012 book, Why Nations Fail, argued that throughout history and around the globe there is a positive connection between overall economic growth and how much the average person shared in the wealth. If a nation has the right institutions to ensure the middle class receives a fair share, it will flourish economically.

Economists of all political stripes worry about too much concentrated wealth. The very conservative Nobel laureate James Buchanan, who deeply distrusted government power, favored a marginal tax rate of 100% on all estates above very small amounts. As a libertarian, Buchanan didn’t see why children should inherit massive fortunes, but he also was worried that excessive wealth accumulated by heirs who didn’t earn it would delegitimize the market system and democracy.

Progressive Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz describes how wealth concentration allows the super-rich to buy political support for lower taxes and regulations. The ultra-wealthy use what economists call “rents”—excessive unearned income—to protect and increase their wealth, while stifling innovation and healthy economic growth.

We have plenty of evidence that a thriving economy needs healthy sources of government revenue, both to provide stable public finance, and support more equal income and wealth distribution, which in turn can drive innovation and economic growth. The legitimacy of our economic and political system depends on more people who created the prosperity sharing in it.