The Earned-Income Tax Credit is one of the largest social welfare programs run by the federal government. It’s available only to people who work—primarily those with children—and takes the form of a tax refund that generally amounts to a few thousand dollars each year.

Conventional wisdom has long held that the EITC motivates people to work, but a new study suggests this isn’t so. Dylan Matthews says today that this undermines conservative support for the program:

Conservatives and business interests have long grudgingly tolerated or outright supported modest expansions of the EITC because of its tie to work: It isn’t welfare, but an earned benefit that helps the economy by increasing labor force participation. If it doesn’t help labor force participation, that rationale goes away.

Let’s unpack this a bit. What it means is that the business community likes the EITC because they think it increases the size of the labor force. This in turn pushes wages down. In other words, part of the EITC is captured by corporations: they get to cut wages, which are are then made up by the EITC.

As you can imagine, this is a black mark against the EITC among liberals. Why should corporations end up getting a piece of a program meant to help the poor? If, instead, it turns out that the EITC has little impact on labor force participation, that’s a good thing. It means that the poor are getting 100 percent of the benefit.

Back in the days of old, this would probably be a net political negative: maintaining bipartisan support is a good thing even if it costs a bit in terms of help for the working poor. But these are not the olden days, and there hasn’t been bipartisan support for the EITC in ages. So I’d call this unalloyed good news if it’s true. It means the EITC’s benefits are going exactly where we want them, and we could even sever the connection to work if we wanted to. Republicans wouldn’t support this, but so what? They wouldn’t support it anyway.

In other semi-related news, the New York Fed recently completed a detailed study of minimum wage hikes in New York state. There have been loads of similar studies before, but most of them have focused on fairly small changes in the minimum wage, which still leaves us in the dark about the effect of larger changes. This study, however, tracks a minimum wage increase of nearly 50 percent over the course of six years by comparing border counties in New York (which saw an increase) with those in Pennsylvania (which didn’t). Here’s the result:

As the authors says, New York’s minimum wage increase “appears to have had a positive effect on average wages but no discernible effect on employment.”

This is tentatively good news for the $15 minimum wage campaign, since it suggests that even sizeable increases in the minimum wage don’t reduce employment. Keep in mind, however, that it’s still tentative for at least two reasons. First, it’s just one study. Second, it took place entirely during an economic expansion. The effect of a big minimum wage increase might be quite different during a recession.

Bottom line: it appears that both the EITC and the $15 minimum wage are pretty good programs for helping the working poor. What’s more, both have different pluses and minuses and they complement each other pretty well. Given what we know, progressives ought to support them both.

This morning’s big impeachment-related news is that President Trump publicly called on China to investigate Hunter Biden over—

Well, it doesn’t matter what it’s over, does it? As usual, there’s no evidence that either of the Bidens did anything wrong except in the fever swamps of Sean Hannity and Foxland. But Trump marinates in that fever swamp these days, and the fever swamp says that Hunter Biden used his father’s pull to coerce a Chinese stake in an investment fund he owned. If you’re interested, you may read an appropriately breathless account of Biden perfidy by the author of Clinton Cash and other conspiratorial books here.

So why is Trump blathering about this today? It’s not because China is going to investigate it. And it’s not because anyone outside of the fever swamp believes it. He’s doing it for a couple of reasons. First, he’s showing solidarity with the swamp. Second, he’s sending a signal that conservative media should be all over this.

That’s it.

A couple of days ago the ISM manufacturing index dropped below 50 for the second month in a row, suggesting a weakening economy. The non-manufacturing index hasn’t gotten that bad yet, but it’s lost about eight points over the past year and is now hovering just barely above 50:

A level above 48.6 means the services sector is still expanding, but only barely. If it falls below 48.6, that means it’s contracting. As with other signals, this suggests that the economy isn’t plummeting, but it’s definitely weakening.

Axios published a chart today showing the evolution of ATM fees since 1998 and it’s been making the rounds. What do I have to contribute to this? Just the usual: adjusting it for inflation since it’s a time series of money. Here’s the real average ATM fee over the past couple of decades:

In this case, adjusting for inflation genuinely shows you something that you can’t really see in the original chart: virtually all of the increase came in the period 1998-2010. Over the past decade, ATM fees have risen only 6 percent. That may or may not be of interest to you, but it’s certainly worth knowing if you’re planning to mouth off about greedy banks or somesuch.

Getting a late-night haircut in Bogotá.

I’ll be damned if I know what to write about anymore. Donald Trump is just raving these days, both online and off, and a few minutes ago he practically melted down in public while the president of Finland stoically stared into his hands. Meanwhile, his secretary of state is flatly stonewalling Congress and—unless I’ve missed someone—not a single elected Republican is willing to even mildly criticize Trump, let alone support an impeachment inquiry.

Do the details even matter anymore? I suppose they do—or, more accurately, they might eventually. Maybe there’s some limit that even Fox News can’t quite spin away. Maybe.

In the meantime, just remember this: Joe Biden went to Ukraine in 2015 to demand that they crack down harder on corruption. That included investigations of Burisma, the energy company where his son sat on the board. In the real world, this is uncontroversial. Everybody agrees this is what happened. But in Foxland, Biden went to Ukraine to make sure they stopped investigating Burisma. It’s a jaw-dropping fantasy, but thanks to the conservative media machine it’s now gospel for a huge chunk of the country.

And why shouldn’t it be? As a friend asked me—sincerely, I think—if all this stuff he hears on Fox is wrong, then why are they saying it? All I could do was shrug. Because they lie, I told him, and that ended the conversation. He quite reasonably took this as evidence that I was a hopeless partisan hack. But what else is there to say? It just goes to show the power of straight-up lying, repeated 24/7. How do you fight it?

Rick Majewski/ZUMA

Bernie Sanders experienced some chest pain at an event yesterday and has had two coronary stents inserted. He is now resting for a few days.

Regardless of what he does officially, I assume this means his campaign is over. It’s now the Joe and Liz show, with Pete and Kamala and Cory continuing to plod along and hope for something to happen that allows them to catch fire and join the top two.

The Washington Post tells us today, for about the hundredth time, that Midwest farmers are fed up with President Trump. Between his tariffs and his ethanol exemptions and his inability to make a deal with China, farmers are losing patience with a president they eagerly supported at first.

But I’ll save you the trouble of reading the whole thing. Here’s the only sentence that really matters:

Many of those grumbling about Trump today concede they are unlikely to vote for a Democratic presidential candidate next year.

Look: either you’re willing to vote for someone else or you’re not. If you’re not, then your grumbles are meaningless and Trump doesn’t care about you. That goes for both voters and members of Congress. It’s not complicated.

This is a common fiddleneck. I always feel bad for flowers and animals with names like this. I’m sure this fiddleneck is just as pretty as other varieties, and no one really likes being called common, do they? We should strive to do better.

Brett Kavanaugh at the 2019 State of the Union Address a few months after having been confirmed.Doug Mills/Pool/CNP via ZUMA

Roxanne Roberts updates us today on Brett Kavanaugh (nickel summary: doing fine but lots of people still don’t like him) and this gives me an opportunity to express an unpopular opinion.

But let’s start with Bill Clinton. In 1998 Republicans impeached him for perjury but failed to get more than a tiny handful of Democratic votes in the Senate. They were punished for this at the polls later in the year.

Why? Clinton did lie under oath, after all. Everyone agreed about that. But outside of the fever swamps, among ordinary people, it mattered a lot what he lied about. And these ordinary people figured that (a) it was about getting a little nookie on the side, (b) it had nothing to do with his performance of his office, and (c) come on, everyone gets a little on the side and everyone lies about it if they get caught. Get real.

Republicans were in such a lather over Clinton that they just couldn’t get this, and it’s the same mistake Democrats made with Kavanaugh. Did Kavanaugh lie under oath? Of course he did. But outside the lefty Twitter mob it mattered a lot what he lied about. Most people understood that Kavanaugh had (a) engaged in some crude sexual behavior and binge drinking 35 years ago as a teenager, (b) it had nothing to do with the performance of his office, and (c) come on, lots of people are a little wild as teenagers and they all lie about it if they get caught.

Now, I know the lefty rejoinder perfectly well. Crude sexual behavior??? It was assault! It was rape! He ruined Christine Blasey Ford’s life. And then the smarmy prick tried to pretend he was the victim.

In the precincts of modern left Twitter, this stuff is so obvious that it hardly bears saying. Outside those precincts, however, it sounds head-shakingly ridiculous. Among Republicans, even honest ones, the whole thing looked like a cynically calculated attempt to destroy a good man who was guilty of nothing more than a trivial bit of youthful horseplay three decades in the past and had had a sterling career ever since.

I guess this is a long way of saying that I hope progressives don’t try to use Kavanaugh as a way of rallying the Democratic base. Like it or not, it will backfire. If Kavanaugh becomes a campaign talking point, ordinary people will just shake their heads and committed Republicans will be far more fired up to vote than Democrats. They are massively pissed about the whole affair. As always in politics, know your audience.