Another Republican President, Another Recession.

[hanimmal]

https://www.rawstory.com/how-the-rich-benefit-under-trump/

Donald Trump's presidency and the Covid pandemic combined to make 2020 a remarkably enriching year for the highest-paid workers in America. Meanwhile, the numbers for the bottom 99.9% are, in a word, awful.

Just one in 900 workers makes $1 million or more, a new Social Security report on wages shows. My annual analysis of this data shows that this thin and rich group made 14% more money in 2020 than in 2019.

On average, the pretax pay of the $1 million-and-up workers increased by $305,600. That's after adjusting for inflation.

The share of all pay going to $1 million-and-up workers grew by a fourth during Trump's four years.

The other 99.9% of American workers got an average raise of just $76 each. But even that overstates how badly most workers did. That's because most of this minuscule pay increase went to the 1/10th of workers making $100,000 to $1 million. The bottom 88%, those making less than $100,000, got next to nothing.

The standard measure for worker pay is the median. It illustrates the typical pay situation because at the median, half of workers make more while half make less. Median pay in 2020 rose by a mere $26.

Put another way, for each $1 of increased pay going to the typical worker, each worker in the two-comma club collected $11,750.

Suppose $26 is the height of the heel of a shoe worn by a man standing on Fifth Avenue outside Trump Tower. The heel is 1 inch. The height for the highest-paid workers' pay would soar 315 feet above that 58-story highrise, for a total of 908 feet. That's a lot of heels. Plus one.

Trump has a policy: One for you, thousands for the rich; another for you, thousands more for the rich…

And don't forget, Trump's 2017 tax law gave the most highly paid workers a roughly 4% federal income-tax cut. Also, those workers tend to be the Americans with significant stock portfolios and Trump gave corporations a 40% tax-rate cut. So, they got a two-fer.

Crumbs for the Rest

You didn't get anything like either of those income-tax cuts. You got crumbs in tax savings plus the burden of $2 trillion in federal debt to pay for the Trump/Radical Republican tax cuts.

Indeed, if you live in the states with most of the high-paying jobs – California, Connecticut, New York, Maryland and the like – Trump and congressional Republicans increased federal incomes for millions of people. That's because Trump and the Radical Republicans took away your deductions for state and local income and property taxes and mortgage interest. The number of Americans who itemize deductions, including charitable gifts, fell by three-fourths after Trump's tax cuts for the rich and the companies they own became law.

More pay going to workers at the top is a long-term trend that began long before Trump. What's significant in the newest data is how much that trend accelerated during the Trump years.

In 2016, just 143 workers made $50 million or more. That number jumped 50% in Trump's first year as president and stayed at that level in 2018 and 2019. But in 2020, Trump's last year as president, the number of workers paid $50 million and up soared to 358, 1.5 times as much as under Barack Obama.

Monthly gross paychecks for those 358 highest-paid workers averaged close to $8 million each. A worker at the median pay would have to labor for more than 225 years to get paid what these workers made in a month.

More for the Top

Even more significant, the share of all pay going to $1 million-and-up workers grew by a fourth during Trump's four years.

Their collective pay rose to 5.2% of all worker compensation, up from 4.2% of total compensation in 2016 under Obama. That means most workers got a thinner slice of the American wage pie under Trump, the opposite of MAGA pledges to improve most incomes and just as I predicted back in 2015 and 2016.

The median worker in 2020 made just $34,612, or less than $3,000 a month before taxes. During Trump's four years, inflation-adjusted median income rose by 5%.

By far the biggest increase in median pay in this century occurred in 2014 under Obama when Social Security data show an increase of 3.44% over 2013.

The average pay for all workers was $53,383.18, or less than $4,500 per month.

More than two-thirds of workers made less than the average. The average is higher than the median because all those very highly paid workers skew the average upward.

One more awful fact: The number of Americans with any work fell in 2020 by more than 1 percentage point. In 2020, more than 1.7 million fewer people found any paid work than in 2019. That's the first time this has happened in all of Trump's life.

While Trump at his inaugural promised that every act he took would be for the benefit of the "forgotten men and women" of America, it was all just another con.

His actions, again and again, favored the highly paid, the already rich and, not least of all, the Trump-Kushner family.

 

[hanimmal]

 

[hanimmal]

https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-health-congress-a48414850126c81c4215f991255b1bed

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has passed a stopgap spending bill that avoids a short-term shutdown and funds the federal government through Feb. 18 after leaders defused a partisan standoff over federal vaccine mandates. The measure now goes to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.

Earlier Thursday, congressional leaders announced they had finally reached an agreement to keep the government running for 11 more weeks, generally at current spending levels, while adding $7 billion to aid Afghanistan evacuees.

Once the House voted to approve the measure, senators soon announced an agreement that would allow them to vote on it quickly.

“I am glad that in the end, cooler heads prevailed. The government will stay open and I thank the members of this chamber for walking us back from the brink of an avoidable, needless and costly shutdown,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

The Senate approved the measure by a vote of 69-28.

The Democratic-led House passed the measure by a 221-212 vote. The Republican leadership urged members to vote no; the lone GOP vote for the bill came from Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger.

Lawmakers bemoaned the short-term fix and blamed the opposing party for the lack of progress on this year’s spending bills. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said the measure would, however, allow for negotiations on a package covering the full budget year through September.

“Make no mistake, a vote against this continuing resolution is a vote to shut government down,” DeLauro said during the House debate.

Before the votes, Biden said he had spoken with Senate leaders and he played down fears of a shutdown.

“There is a plan in place unless somebody decides to be totally erratic, and I don’t think that will happen,” Biden said.

Some Republicans opposed to Biden’s vaccine rules wanted Congress to take a hard stand against the mandated shots for workers at larger businesses, even if that meant shutting down federal offices over the weekend by blocking a request that would expedite a final vote on the spending bill.

It was just the latest instance of the brinkmanship around government funding that has triggered several costly shutdowns and partial closures over the past two decades. The longest shutdown in history happened under President Donald Trump — 35 days stretching into January 2019, when Democrats refused to approve money for his U.S-Mexico border wall. Both parties agree the stoppages are irresponsible, yet few deadlines pass without a late scramble to avoid them.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said Democrats knew last month that several Republicans would use all means at their disposal to oppose legislation that funds or allows the enforcement of the employer vaccine mandate. He blamed Schumer for not negotiating and for ignoring their position.

If the choice is between “suspending nonessential functions” or standing idle while Americans lose their ability to work, “I’ll stand with American workers every time,” Lee said.

Lee and Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., authored an amendment that prohibited federal dollars being spent to implement and enforce a series of vaccine mandates put in place by the Biden administration. The amendment went down to defeat with 48 yes votes and 50 no votes. But having the vote opened the door to taking up the full spending bill immediately.

Lee said millions were being forced to choose between an unwanted medical procedure and losing their job.

“Their jobs are being threatened by their own government,” Lee said.

“Let’s give employers certainty and employees peace of mind that they will still have a job this new year,” Marshall urged before the vote.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., countered that the federal government should be using every tool to keep Americans safe and that is why the Biden administration has taken steps to urge employers to make sure their workers are fully vaccinated or test negative before they come to the workplace.

“No one wants to go to work and be worried they might come home to their family with a deadly virus,” Murray said.

The White House sees the vaccinations as the quickest way to end a pandemic that has killed more than 780,000 people in the United States and is still evolving, as seen Wednesday with the country’s first detected case of a troubling new variant.

Courts have knocked back against the mandates, including a ruling this week blocking enforcement of a requirement for some health care workers.

For some Republicans, the court cases and lawmakers’ fears about a potentially disruptive shutdown were factors against engaging in a high-stakes shutdown.

“One of the things I’m a little concerned about is: Why would we make ourselves the object of public attention by creating the specter of a government shutdown?” said Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a GOP leader.

The administration has pursued vaccine requirements for several groups of workers, but the effort is facing legal setbacks.

A federal judge this week blocked the administration from enforcing a vaccine mandate on thousands of health care workers in 10 states. Earlier, a federal appeals court temporarily halted the OSHA requirement affecting employers with 100 or more workers.

The administration has also put in place policies requiring millions of federal employees and federal contractors, including military troops, to be fully vaccinated. Those efforts are also under challenge.

Polling from The Associated Press shows Americans are divided over Biden’s effort to vaccinate workers, with Democrats overwhelmingly for it while most Republicans are against.

Some Republicans prefer an effort from Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., to vote to reject the administration’s mandates in a congressional review action expected next week, separate from the funding fight.

Separately, some health care providers protested the stopgap spending measure. Hospitals say it does nothing to shield them from Medicare payment cuts scheduled to go into effect amid uncertainty about the new omicron variant.

 

[hanimmal]

Got to wonder what the revision will end up being this time.

The charts are interactive on the AP news website.
https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-business-unemployment-economy-e62c5ed35f69bc763a6d297858ceb084

WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s employers slowed the pace of their hiring in November, adding 210,000 jobs, the lowest monthly gain in nearly a year.

But Friday’s report from the Labor Department also showed that the nation’s unemployment rate tumbled from 4.6% to 4.2% evidence that many more people reported that they had a job. That is a historically low jobless rate though still above the pre-pandemic level of 3.5%.

Overall, the November jobs figures point to a job market and an economic recovery that look resilient though under threat from a spike in inflation, shortages of workers and supplies and the potential impact of the omicron variant of the coronavirus.



For months, employers have been struggling with worker shortages because many people who lost jobs in the pandemic have not, for various reasons, returned to the workforce. But last month, more Americans came off the sidelines to look for jobs and were generally hired quickly.

That positive trend suggests that November was a healthier month for job growth than the modest 210,000 gain the government reported Friday in its survey of businesses. The unemployment rate is calculated from a separate survey of households. This survey found that a much larger 1.1 million more people reported that they were employed last month. The results of the two surveys typically match up over the long run but sometimes diverge sharply in a given month, as they did in November.

The survey of households found that the number of unemployed Americans sank in November to 6.9 million, not far above the pre-pandemic number of 5.7 million. And average wages, which have been rising as employers try to attract or keep workers, increased a strong 4.8% from a year ago.



The government’s survey of businesses showed a slowdown last month in hiring at restaurants, bars and hotels, which added just 23,000 jobs, down from 170,000 in October. That could reflect the effects of an uptick in COVID-19 cases last month and a reduction in outdoor dining.

Retailers cut 20,000 jobs, a sign that holiday hiring hasn’t been as strong as in previous years. But transportation and warehousing firms added 50,000 positions, which indicates that online retailers and shippers anticipate healthy online shopping.

The jobs outlook for the coming months has become hazier with the emergence of the omicron variant. Little is definitively known about omicron, and widespread business shutdowns are considered unlikely. Still, omicron could discourage some Americans from traveling, shopping and eating out in the coming months and potentially slow the economy.

For now, though, Americans are spending freely, and the economy is forecast to expand at a 7% annual rate in the final three months of the year, a big rebound from the 2.1% pace in the previous quarter, when the delta variant hobbled growth.

Nearly 600,000 people joined the workforce last month, increasing the proportion of Americans who are either working or looking for work. If that much-anticipated development continues, it could point to stronger job growth ahead.

The proportion of Americans who are in the workforce rose from 61.6% to 61.8%, the first significant increase since April.

Even as the jobless rate has steadily declined this year, the proportion of Americans who are working or looking for work has barely budged. A shortage of job-seekers tends to limit hiring and force companies to pay more to attract and keep employees. Higher pay can help sustain spending and growth. But it can also feed inflation if businesses raise prices to offset their higher labor costs, which they often do.

One result is that there are now about 3.6 million fewer people with jobs than there were before the pandemic. Yet only about one-third of them are actively looking for work and are classified as unemployed. The remaining two-thirds are no longer job-hunting and so aren’t counted as unemployed. The government classifies people as unemployed only if they’re actively seeking work.



Whether or not more people start searching for jobs is a critical question for the Federal Reserve. If the proportion of people who either have a job or are looking for one doesn’t rise much, it would suggest that the Fed is nearing its goal of maximum employment.

With inflation at a three-decade high and far above the Fed’s 2% annual target, reaching its employment mandate would heighten pressure on Chair Jerome Powell to raise interest rates sooner rather than later. Doing so would make loans more expensive for many individuals and businesses.

About half of those who have dropped out of the workforce have retired. The other half includes parents, mostly mothers, who stayed home to care for children during closings of schools and day cares. For some of these women, child care remains unavailable or unaffordable. Some other people have become self-employed. And others continue to delay their job hunts for fear of contracting COVID-19.

 

[hanimmal]

 

[hanimmal]

This is something I noticed when I got my booster, I was talking with the pharmacist (because he knows/worked with my wife) that was having to do all the normal business (which has been over the years 'optimized' to reduce staff hours, aka short staff their stores and squeeze more from the employees like the business flow is steady over an entire day and not several bursts that put them in the weeds), while also giving the shots to people who are scheduled 2 for every 15 minutes. Without any extra support.

Add in Trump's bullshit immigration bans, and the pandemic's impacts on graduations, and this is a nuts situation.

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-joe-biden-science-business-health-b02158b1530871161f3c78d0ca915b67

A rush of vaccine-seeking customers and staff shortages are squeezing drugstores around the U.S., leading to frazzled workers and temporary pharmacy closures.

Drugstores are normally busy this time of year with flu shots and other vaccines, but now pharmacists are doling out a growing number of COVID-19 shots and giving coronavirus tests.

The push for shots is expected to grow more intense as President Joe Biden urges vaccinated Americans to get booster shots to combat the emerging omicron variant. The White House said Thursday that more than two in three COVID-19 vaccinations are happening at local pharmacies.

And pharmacists worry another job might soon be added to their to-do list: If regulators approve antiviral pills from drugmakers Merck and Pfizer to treat COVID-19, pharmacists may be able to diagnose infections and then prescribe pills to customers.

“There’s crazy increased demand on pharmacies right now,” said Theresa Tolle, an independent pharmacist who has seen COVID-19 vaccine demand quadruple since the summer at her Sebastian, Florida, store.

Pharmacists say demand for COVID-19 vaccines started picking up over the summer as the delta variant spread rapidly. Booster shots and the expansion of vaccine eligibility to include children have since stoked it.

On top of that workload and routine prescriptions, many drugstores also have been asking pharmacists to counsel patients more generally on their health or about chronic conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure.

Pharmacies also have been handling more phone calls from customers with questions about vaccines or COVID-19 tests, noted Justin Wilson, who owns three independent pharmacies in Oklahoma.

“We’re all working a lot harder than we did before, but we’re doing everything we can to take care of people,” Wilson said, adding that he has not had to temporarily close any of his pharmacies or limit hours so far.

Tolle said she was lucky to hire a pharmacy resident just before the delta surge arrived. The new employee was supposed to focus mostly on diabetes programs but has largely been relegated to vaccine duty.

Tolle said her Bay Street Pharmacy is now giving about 80 COVID-19 vaccines a day, up from 20 before the delta wave.

“God’s timing worked out well for me,” she said. “We would not have gotten through without having that additional person here.”

Others haven’t been as fortunate. A CVS Health store on the northeast side of Indianapolis shuttered its pharmacy in the middle of the afternoon Thursday due to staffing issues. A sign taped to the metal gate over the closed pharmacy counter also told customers that the pharmacy will soon start closing for a half hour each afternoon so the pharmacist can have a lunch break.

Such temporary closures have ebbed and flowed in pockets around the country throughout the pandemic, but they have grown more acute in recent months, said Anne Burns, a vice president with the American Pharmacists Association.

Pharmacies all need minimum staffing to operate safely, and they sometimes have to close temporarily if they fall below those levels.

Burns said many pharmacies already had relatively thin staffing levels heading into the pandemic, and a wave of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians left after the virus hit.

“There is a lot of stress and burnout for individuals who have been going at this since March of 2020,” she said.

CVS Health spokesman T.J. Crawford said he couldn’t comment on the circumstances for one store. But he said his company continues “to manage through a workforce shortage that isn’t unique to CVS Health.”

Rival drugstore chain Walgreens also has adjusted pharmacy hours “in a limited number of stores,” spokesman Fraser Engerman said.

Both companies are hiring. CVS Health says it has hired 23,000 employees from a push it started in September. About half of that total was pharmacy technicians, who can deliver vaccines.

As companies scramble to hire or keep staff, Burns and Tolle worry about adding even more responsibilities like diagnosing and treating COVID-19.

Tolle noted that it is not clear yet how pharmacists will be reimbursed for the time they take to diagnose and prescribe. That will have to be clarified, especially if cases surge again and drugstores need to add even more workers to help.

“We want to be able to help our communities,” she said. “I don’t know how pharmacies are going to manage it.”

Sherri Brown, a city employee in Omaha, Nebraska, was searching for a vaccine booster dose, but two nearby pharmacies didn’t have appointments available and a third didn’t have the brand she wanted. She wound up getting a shot at a county-run clinic on Friday.

“I just wanted to protect myself,” said Brown, who suffered through two weeks of coughing, headaches and fatigue when she caught the virus in January, before she was vaccinated. “I guess I’m encouraged to see that people are taking this more seriously.”

 

[HGCC]

Ours are pretty well staffed, but the volume is wild and you can tell they are running nonstop the entire shift. 1 person administering covid/flu shots, 1 or 2 bouncing between registers for pickup/drop off/questions/covid shot, and then a couple in the back taking pills from the big bottles into little ones.

Beats Walgreens I guess, I won't go there anymore. They couldn't figure out how to handle old people getting asthma medicine and a bunch of anti mask people having to get the covid shot. Just dumped em in a big pile.

Kind of curious what the wages are, creeping up slowly but surely, to circle this back around to the thread topic.

 

[hanimmal]

Ours are pretty well staffed, but the volume is wild and you can tell they are running nonstop the entire shift. 1 person administering covid/flu shots, 1 or 2 bouncing between registers for pickup/drop off/questions/covid shot, and then a couple in the back taking pills from the big bottles into little ones.

Beats Walgreens I guess, I won't go there anymore. They couldn't figure out how to handle old people getting asthma medicine and a bunch of anti mask people having to get the covid shot. Just dumped em in a big pile.

Kind of curious what the wages are, creeping up slowly but surely, to circle this back around to the thread topic.

The person with the pharmacist license (in Michigan) gets paid about $60 an hour (takes about 7 years of schooling for the degree). If they have a actual licensed pharmacy tech they can make about $15-$20 an hour and the rest make about $12 an hour (unless they have gotten more lately).

 

[HGCC]

I started indexing everything against McDonald's.

Local minimum wage is 17-18.

 

[hanimmal]

https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-economy-prices-inflation-616055db3bf67691b4fdc0015fc00783

WASHINGTON (AP) — Prices for U.S. consumers jumped 6.8% in November compared with a year earlier as surging costs for food, energy, housing and other items left Americans enduring their highest annual inflation rate in 39 years.

The Labor Department also reported Friday that prices rose 0.8% from October to November — a substantial increase, though slightly less than 0.9% increase from September to October.

Inflation has been inflicting a heavy burden on consumers, especially lower-income households and particularly for everyday necessities. It has also negated the higher wages many workers have received, complicated the Federal Reserve’s plans to reduce its aid for the economy and coincided with flagging public support for President Joe Biden, who has been taking steps to try to ease inflation pressures.

Fueling the inflation has been a mix of factors resulting from the swift rebound from the pandemic recession: A flood of government stimulus, ultra-low rates engineered by the Fed and supply shortages at factories in the U.S and abroad. Manufacturers have been slowed by heavier-than-expected customer demand, COVID-related shutdowns and overwhelmed ports and freight yards.

Employers, struggling with worker shortages, have also been raising pay, and many of them have boosted prices to offset their higher labor costs, thereby adding to inflation.

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The result has been price spikes for goods ranging from food and used vehicles to electronics, household furnishings and rental cars. The average price of a used vehicle rocketed nearly 28% from November 2020 to last month — to a record $29,011, according to data compiled by Edmunds.com.

The acceleration of prices, which began after the pandemic hit as Americans stuck at home flooded factories with orders for goods, has spread to services, from apartment rents and restaurant meals to medical services and entertainment. Even some retailers that built their businesses around the allure of ultra-low prices have begun boosting them.

Consumers have been feeling the pressure. Though Americans’ overall income has accelerated since the pandemic, a new poll finds that far more people are noticing higher inflation than higher wages. Two-thirds say their household costs have risen since the pandemic, compared with only about a quarter who say their incomes have increased, according to the poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The 6.8% jump in prices for the 12 months that ended in November was the largest year-over-year increase since a 7.1% surge for the year ending in June 1982. That spike occurred at a time when the Federal Reserve had driven up interest rates to double digits in its effort to stem runaway inflation triggered by the oil price shocks of the 1970s.

The persistence of high inflation has surprised the Fed, whose chair, Jerome Powell, had for months characterized inflation as only “transitory,” a short-term consequence of bottlenecked supply chains. Two weeks ago, though, Powell signaled a shift, implicitly acknowledging that high inflation has endured longer than he expected. He suggested that the Fed will likely act more quickly to phase out its ultra-low- rate policies than it had previously planned.

Driving much of the inflation last month were energy prices, particularly gasoline pump prices, which are up a dizzying 58.1% from a year ago. The costs of housing, food, vehicles, airline tickets, clothing and household furnishings were also big contributors to the November price surge.

Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, rose 0.5% in November. Over the past 12 months, core prices are up 4.9%, the biggest such increase since 1991.

Some economists are holding out hope that inflation will peak in the coming months and then gradually ease and provide some relief for consumers. They note that supply shortages in some industries have begun to gradually ease. And while higher energy costs will continue to burden consumers in the coming months, Americans will likely be spared from earlier forecasts that energy prices would reach record highs over the winter.

Oil prices have been declining modestly and leading, in turn, to slightly lower gasoline prices. Even more dramatically, natural gas prices have plummeted nearly 40% from a seven-year high reached in October. The result is that while average home heating costs will well exceed last year’s levels, they won’t rise as much as had been feared. Food prices, too, could potentially ease as a result of sharp declines in corn and wheat prices from their highs earlier in the year.

What’s more, the emergence of the omicron variant of the coronavirus has renewed the prospect of more canceled or postponed travel and fewer restaurant meals and shopping trips. All of that, if it happened, would slow consumer and business spending and potentially restrain inflation.

Still, analysts caution that unexpected developments, including heavy winter storms, with potentially increased demand for energy, could send energy prices surging again.

And analysts cautioned that easing overall inflation pressures will depend on further progress in normalizing global supply chains. Senior White House officials have said they believe that a series of actions that the administration has taken, from boosting the processing of cargo from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to the release of crude oil from the petroleum reserve, would help defuse inflation pressures.

Some outside economists have begun to echo that view.

“I think November will be the worst of it, and going forward we will see steady improvement,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “As the delta wave of COVID has receded and supply chains start to repair themselves, we will start to see production and shipments improve.”

Zandi said he believes that inflation will begin improving with the December price report and that by this time next year, annual inflation will be back down to around 3%, closer to the Fed’s 2% target.

For now, though, against the backdrop of persistent high inflation, the Fed is expected to announce after it meets next week an acceleration reduction in its monthly bond purchases. Those purchases have been intended to lower long-term borrowing costs.

Doing so would put the Fed on a path to begin raising its key short-term interest rate as early as the first half of next year. That rate has been pegged at nearly zero since March 2020, when the coronavirus sent the economy into a deep recession.

 

[hanimmal]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/19/economy/goldman-sachs-joe-manchin-build-back-better/index.html

(CNN Business) Senator Joe Manchin's opposition to the Build Back Better Act prompted Goldman Sachs to swiftly dim its US economic outlook.

The Wall Street firm told clients Sunday it no longer assumes President Joe Biden's signature legislation will get through the narrowly divided Congress, citing the West Virginia Democrat's announcement that he's a "no" on the $1.75 trillion bill.

"A failure to pass BBB has negative growth implications," Goldman Sachs economists, led by Jan Hatzius, said in the research report.

Citing the "apparent demise" of Build Back Better, Goldman Sachs now expects GDP to grow at an annualized pace of 2% in the first quarter, down from 3% previously.

The bank also trimmed its GDP forecasts for the second quarter to 3% (from 3.5% previously) and the third quarter to 2.75% (compared with 3% previously). It specifically pointed to the expiration of the child tax credit and the lack of the other new spending that had been anticipated
Goldman Sachs (GS) reiterated that upcoming inflation reports are not likely to help swing the tide back in favor of Build Back Better. The consumer price index (CPI) rose in November by 6.8% from the year earlier, the biggest 12-month jump in 39 years.

"With headline CPI reaching as high as 7% in the next few months in our forecast before it begins to fall, the inflation concerns that Sen. Manchin and others have already expressed are likely to persist, making passage more difficult," Goldman Sachs economists wrote. "The omicron variant is also likely to shift political attention back to virus-related issues and away from long-term reforms."

The lowered chances that Build Back Better has "negative implications for near-term consumption" but will likely have some "offsetting positive effects" for financial markets, Goldman Sachs said.

Specifically, the chances of corporate tax hikes have faded — and those higher tax bills would have eaten into the bottom lines of S&P 500 companies. It's also a positive for biotech companies that would have been hit by $100 billion in price reductions in the Medicare program, Goldman Sachs said.

Still, Goldman Sachs said there is a chance that Congress passes a few smaller short-term provisions aimed at virus-related issues.

There is a lot of uncertainty over the fate of the expanded child tax credit that was a key part of Build Back Better and Goldman Sachs called this the "most important question for the near-term outlook."

While there is "some chance" that Congress extends the credit retroactively, Goldman Sachs said "the odds of this happening seem to be less than even at this point."

 

[hanimmal]

https://www.rawstory.com/joe-biden-economy-2656076844/?cx_testId=6&cx_testVariant=cx_undefined&cx_artPos=2#cxrecs_s

The U.S. economy has improved more in President Joe Biden's first year in office than it has under any president in the last 50 years.

Bloomberg's Matthew A. Winkler made the observation in a column on Monday.

"U.S. financial markets are outperforming the world by the biggest margin in the 21st century, and with good reason: America’s economy improved more in Joe Biden's first 12 months than any president during the past 50 years notwithstanding the contrary media narrative contributing to dour public opinion," Winkler reported.

According to Winkler, Biden's economy ranked either first or second in 10 key measures when compared to the previous 10 presidents.

"[N]o one comes close to matching Biden's combination of No. 1 and No. 2 rankings for each of the measures," Winkler wrote.

The measures include gross domestic product, profit growth and consumer credit among others.

"GDP growth in every incoming administration during the past four decades never exceeded 2.74% until 2021. Biden is now positioned to surpass Carter (5.01%) as the GDP champion of presidents since 1976," Winkler found. "Corporate America was never healthier than under Biden in 2021. Efforts to support consumers flowed through to America’s companies, which are enjoying profit margins of around 15%, the widest since 1950, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis."

Winkler also suggested that inflation would not be as big of a problem for Biden as it was for President Jimmy Carter.

"Biden, unlike Carter, benefits from the $29 trillion U.S. debt market," he explained. "The clear message from the market that tells all other markets what to do is that the people with the most at stake are betting on the Biden economy."

 

[hanimmal]

https://www.rawstory.com/joe-biden-build-back-better/

President Joe Biden got angry when talking about the pieces of his Build Back Better plan that would help American families, particularly children. The plan was shot down by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who said that he refused to support the measure. All Republican senators have indicated that they oppose the bill.

Talking about Manchin, Biden said that he doesn't hold a grudge and he's focused on getting the bill done. He then cited an interview with Manchin who said that it wasn't Biden who misled people it, "I mislead you."

"You saw what happened yesterday," Biden continued. "All the talk about how my Build Back Better plan was going to increase inflation and cause debts and all the like. What happened? Goldman Sachs said if we don't pass Build Back Better, we're in trouble because it will grow the economy. Without it, we're not going to grow. What happened? Stock prices went way down. It took a real dip. If you take a look -- everybody thinks because I quoted 17 Nobel laureates saying this will help inflation — think about it in terms of you're a hard working person and you are making $60,000 if you are alone or a mom or dad making $90,000 like a lot of people do and you are worried about inflation. You should be worried about it. It is devastating for working-class and middle-class folks. It really hurts. Where is most of the cost now?"

He said that while costs like gasoline and food may be going up until the pandemic continues to rage, his plan would help families with other costs that are hurting them.

He cited 20 million women who would be able to reenter the workforce because childcare would be significantly reduced. It would stop the increase in costs for insulin, which has grown significantly over just the past 10 years.

"We have 200,000 kids with type 1 diabetes," Biden said. "It costs between 10 cents and $10 to come up with the formula a while ago. Do you know what it costs on average: $560 -- $640 a month. Up to $1,000 a month. What do you do if you're a mom and dad working with minimum wage busting your neck? You look at your kid and you know if you don't get that drug for them? What happened? He could go in a coma or die."

That's when Biden's voice increased and he seemed angry.

"Not only do you put the kid's life at stake, you strip away the dignity of the parent!" he exclaimed. "I'm not joking. Imagine being a parent. Looking at the child and you can't afford and you have no house to borrow against. You have no savings. It's wrong. All the things in that bill are going to reduce prices and costs for middle-class and working-class people. It will reduce their cost."

He closed by saying he intends to continue talking to Manchin, but didn't say whether he'd reach out to more moderate Republicans up for reelection in 2022.

 

[hanimmal]

https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-pete-buttigieg-797fc9ea60ee9d9a22181a2622867fd5

WASHINGTON (AP) — Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is awarding more than $241 million in grants to bolster U.S ports, part of the Biden administration’s near-term plan to address America’s clogged supply chain with infrastructure improvements to speed the flow of goods.

The transportation money is being made available immediately to 25 projects in 19 states. Next year, the amount of money for port improvements will nearly double to $450 million in grants annually for five years under President Joe Biden’s new infrastructure law.

“U.S. maritime ports play a critical role in our supply chains,” Buttigieg said with Thursday’s announcement. “These investments in our nation’s ports will help support American jobs, efficient and resilient operations and faster delivery of goods to the American people.”

Biden on Wednesday touted the coming grants as one of a series of efforts that will alleviate supply bottlenecks over the short and long term.

JOE BIDEN
Official: Arizonans should 'gently encourage' COVID shots
Buttigieg doles out $241M to US ports to boost supply chain
Milwaukee mayor sworn in as ambassador to Luxembourg
Kansas governor breaks with Biden in appeal to GOP voters

“Earlier this fall we heard a lot of dire warnings about supply chain problems leading to a crisis around the holidays, so we acted,” Biden said. “We brought together business and labor leaders to solve problems and the much predicted crisis didn’t occur. Packages are moving. Gifts are being delivered. Shelves are not empty.”

The grant money includes $52.3 million to help boost rail capacity at the port in Long Beach, Calif., with a new locomotive facility, 10,000-foot support track and extensions of five existing tracks to speed up freight movement while cutting down the number of truck trips required to do that.

Other recipients include:

— Portsmouth, Virginia, $20 million, to help build out a supply chain for the offshore wind industry.

— Brunswick, Georgia, $14.6 million, to build a fourth berth for cargo ships at Colonel’s Island Terminal.

— Houston, $18.3 million, to facilitate more export and import cargo by significantly boosting storage capacity at the Bayport Container Terminal.

— Tell City, Indiana, $1.6 million, to construct a 40-foot diameter pier on the Ohio River that can be used direct barge-to-truck unloading of cargo.

— Delcambre, Louisiana, $2 million, for dock restoration and climate resiliency.

In recent months, higher prices have eaten into wages and turned public sentiment on the economy against Biden in polls. One of the obstacles for reducing inflation amid a coronavirus pandemic has been backlogged ports with ships waiting to dock at major transit hubs, causing shortages and leaving some store shelves depleted.

Buttigieg’s announcement seeks to build upon recent moves by the Transportation Department to reduce supply chain congestion, such as by allowing port authorities to redirect leftover money from grant projects. For example, the Georgia Ports Authority is using $8 million to convert its inland facilities for the port of Savannah into container yards, freeing up dock space and speeding the flow of goods to their final destinations. Buttigieg last Friday toured the port, which his department says has seen the number of ships waiting at anchor fall from over 30 to six last week, while long dwelling containers have been cut in half.

Earlier this year, the Biden administration sought to reduce delays by working to move major ports to 24/7 operations. The administration also is seeking to improve working recruitment and retention in the trucking industry.

Still, supply chain issues linger, and the steps taken by the administration have shown that there is no quick fix to the problems that have been hurting smaller businesses and causing consumers to face higher prices. The Transportation Department said Thursday the projects receiving grants vary widely in readiness to get off the ground and it could take months before consumers can start to feel the effects from the improvements.

 

[captainmorgan]

Looking like China's real estate sector may collapse in January, this should be interesting.

 

[schuylaar]

Ours are pretty well staffed, but the volume is wild and you can tell they are running nonstop the entire shift. 1 person administering covid/flu shots, 1 or 2 bouncing between registers for pickup/drop off/questions/covid shot, and then a couple in the back taking pills from the big bottles into little ones.

Beats Walgreens I guess, I won't go there anymore. They couldn't figure out how to handle old people getting asthma medicine and a bunch of anti mask people having to get the covid shot. Just dumped em in a big pile.

Kind of curious what the wages are, creeping up slowly but surely, to circle this back around to the thread topic.

it's The Great Retirement..1960s+ babies are smart; the secret is in the actuary.

 

[schuylaar]

https://www.rawstory.com/joe-biden-build-back-better/View attachment 5051756

he has every right to be angry; Senator Joe Manchin is a TRAITOR. he made a deal and reneged. BBB is Bidens Legacy even if I don't benefit from those programs..the country will.

Big Coal Union had something to say and Joe's 'no' went to 're-work' after New Year.

a little bio.



'.25 or .50 is a big deal to them- they shop at the Dollar Store.'

so what Joe Manchin is really saying is because Child Tax Credit would be dependent upon number of children- I really hope Senator Manchin is NOT intimating The Welfare Queen ideology.



how many jelly beans are in YOUR jar, President Reagan?

 

[maxamus1]

Do you guys get high of sniffing your own poop? Just curious as to why you guys can't seem to get your head out your a$$?

 

[CatHedral]

Do you guys get high of sniffing your own poop? Just curious as to why you guys can't seem to get your head out your a$$?

 

[maxamus1]

To bad its fact and not opinion.