#Federal Government Wage Subsidies

[findheronline]

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[simply-ivanka]

How the Biden-Harris Economy Left Most Americans Behind

A government spending boom fueled inflation that has crushed real average incomes.

By The Editorial Board -- Wall Street Journal

Kamala Harris plans to roll out her economic priorities in a speech on Friday, though leaks to the press say not to expect much different than the last four years. That’s bad news because the Biden-Harris economic record has left most Americans worse off than they were four years ago. The evidence is indisputable.

President Biden claims that he inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression, but this isn’t close to true. The economy in January 2021 was fast recovering from the pandemic as vaccines rolled out and state lockdowns eased. GDP grew 34.8% in the third quarter of 2020, 4.2% in the fourth, and 5.2% in the first quarter of 2021. By the end of that first quarter, real GDP had returned to its pre-pandemic high. All Mr. Biden had to do was let the recovery unfold.

Instead, Democrats in March 2021 used Covid relief as a pretext to pass $1.9 trillion in new spending. This was more than double Barack Obama’s 2009 spending bonanza. State and local governments were the biggest beneficiaries, receiving $350 billion in direct aid, $122 billion for K-12 schools and $30 billion for mass transit. Insolvent union pension funds received a $86 billion rescue.

The rest was mostly transfer payments to individuals, including a five-month extension of enhanced unemployment benefits, a $3,600 fully refundable child tax credit, $1,400 stimulus payments per person, sweetened Affordable Care Act subsidies, an increased earned income tax credit including for folks who didn’t work, housing subsidies and so much more.

The handouts discouraged the unemployed from returning to work and fueled consumer spending, which was already primed to surge owing to pent-up savings from the Covid lockdowns and spending under Donald Trump. By mid-2021, Americans had $2.3 trillion in “excess savings” relative to pre-pandemic levels—equivalent to roughly 12.5% of disposable income.

So much money chasing too few goods fueled inflation, which was supercharged by the Federal Reserve’s accommodative policy. Historically low mortgage rates drove up housing prices. The White House blamed “corporate greed” for inflation that peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, even as the spending party in Washington continued.

In November 2021, Congress passed a $1 trillion bill full of green pork and more money for states. Then came the $280 billion Chips Act and Mr. Biden’s Green New Deal—aka the Inflation Reduction Act—which Goldman Sachs estimates will cost $1.2 trillion over a decade. Such heaps of government spending have distorted private investment.

While investment in new factories has grown, spending on research and development and new equipment has slowed. Overall private fixed investment has grown at roughly half the rate under Mr. Biden as it did under Mr. Trump. Manufacturing output remains lower than before the pandemic.

Magnifying market misallocations, the Administration conditioned subsidies on businesses advancing its priorities such as paying union-level wages and providing child care to workers. It also boosted food stamps, expanded eligibility for ObamaCare subsidies and waved away hundreds of billions of dollars in student debt. The result: $5.8 trillion in deficits during Mr. Biden’s first three years—about twice as much as during Donald Trump’s—and the highest inflation in four decades.

Prices have increased by nearly 20% since January 2021, compared to 7.8% during the Trump Presidency. Inflation-adjusted average weekly earnings are down 3.9% since Mr. Biden entered office, compared to an increase of 2.6% during Mr. Trump’s first three years. (Real wages increased much more in 2020, but partly owing to statistical artifacts.)

Higher interest rates are finally bringing inflation under control, which is allowing real wages to rise again. But the Federal Reserve had to raise rates higher than it otherwise would have to offset the monetary and fiscal gusher. The higher rates have pushed up mortgage costs for new home buyers.

Three years of inflation and higher interest rates are stretching American pocketbooks, especially for lower income workers. Seriously delinquent auto loans and credit cards are higher than any time since the immediate aftermath of the 2008-09 recession.

Ms. Harris boasts that the economy has added nearly 16 million jobs during the Biden Presidency—compared to about 6.4 million during Mr. Trump’s first three years. But most of these “new” jobs are backfilling losses from the pandemic lockdowns. The U.S. has fewer jobs than it was on track to add before the pandemic.

What’s more, all the Biden-Harris spending has yielded little economic bang for the taxpayer buck. Washington has borrowed more than $400,000 for every additional job added under Mr. Biden compared to Mr. Trump’s first three years. Most new jobs are concentrated in government, healthcare and social assistance—60% of new jobs in the last year.

Administrative agencies are also creating uncertainty by blitzing businesses with costly regulations—for instance, expanding overtime pay, restricting independent contractors, setting stricter emissions limits on power plants and factories, micro-managing broadband buildout and requiring CO2 emissions calculations in environmental reviews.

The economy is still expanding, but business investment has slowed. And although the affluent are doing relatively well because of buoyant asset prices, surveys show that most Americans feel financially insecure. Thus another political paradox of the Biden-Harris years: Socioeconomic disparities have increased.

Ms. Harris is promising the same economic policies with a shinier countenance. Don’t expect better results.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Capitalists hate capitalism

As the Marxist agitator Adam Smith once said, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

Smith understood that capitalists hate capitalism. They don’t want to compete with one another, because that would interfere with their ability to raise the prices their customers pay and reduce the wages they pay their workers. Thus Peter Thiel’s anticapitalist rallying cry, “competition is for losers,” or Warren Buffett’s extreme horniness for businesses with “wide, sustainable moats.”

These anti-capitalist capitalists love big government. They love no-bid military contracts, they love ACA subsidies for health insurance companies, they love Farm Bill cash for Cargill and Monsanto. What they don’t love is markets.

Case in point: pharma giant Merck. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) includes a provision that allows Medicare to (finally) start (weakly) negotiating the prices it pays for (a tiny handful of) drugs. If you’re scratching your head and wondering if you understood that correctly, let me assure you, you did: the US government is currently prohibited from negotiating drug prices when it bargains with pharma companies.

In other words: Medicare simply pays a pharma companies — whose products build on billions in publicly funded basic research, whose taxes are reduced by billions in research credits, whose patents are backstopped by billions in enforcement — whatever it demands.

To do otherwise, you see, would be socialism. Markets are “efficient” because they “discover prices” through bidding and selling. In the case of publicly purchased drugs, the price that Uncle Sucker “discovers” is inevitably “a titanic sum” or possibly “add a couple more zeroes, wouldya?”

Enter the IRA. Starting in 2026, Medicare will be permitted to negotiate the price of ten (10) drugs. The negotiations will use the prices of other drugs from the dysfunctional, monopolized market as a starting point and go up from there. The negotiations go on for three years, and there are multiple stages where pharma companies can hit pause with court challenges:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-05-11-regulators-bungling-drug-price-reform/

The system will not consider the prices that Medicaid or the VA (which are allowed to bargain on prices) pay. Nor will it consider the prices that other governments pay — the US is alone in the wealthy world in offering the anticapitalist price-taking posture when dickering with the pharma companies.

But this isn’t enough for Merck. They are suing the Biden administration over the IRA’s drug pricing plan, arguing that it is an unconstitutional taking under the Fifth Amendment:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/06/merck-sues-biden-administration-over-medicare-drug-price-negotiations.html

Merck is represented by Big Law firm Jones Day, who made their bones by representing the RJ Reynolds from smokers with lung-cancer, arguing that the smoking/cancer link wasn’t scientifically sound. That’s not the only fanciful argument they put before a judge: Jones Day also represented Trump in his attempts to overturn the 2020 election (they also hired Trump’s counsel Don McGahn as he exited the White House’s revolving door).

As Ryan Cooper writes for The American Prospect, Merck’s argument is that the “fair market” value of its drugs can only be discovered if its single largest customer — Medicare — simply pays whatever Merck demands of it:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-06-08-merck-negotiating-drug-prices-unconstitutional/

They explicitly denounce the idea that a powerful buyer should use its market power to extract price concessions from sellers like Merck: “leveraging all federal insurance benefits (amounting to over half of the prescription drug market) to coerce companies to abandon their First and Fifth Amendment rights is a quintessential unconstitutional condition.”

Rebutting this argument, Health Secretary Xavier Becerra said, “negotiating for the best price is as American as apple pie. Since when is competition in this American system a bad thing? Why should we be the patsies around the world and pay the highest prices for medicines?”

The irony here is that Merck itself is a very powerful buyer. Whether negotiating commercial leases, raw materials or wages, Merck is ruthless in extracting the lowest prices it can from its suppliers. The company attained its massive scale the old fashioned way: buying it. By drawing on its nearly limitless access to the capital markets, Merck bought out dozens of its competitors:

https://mergr.com/merck-acquisitions

Anticapitalist investors funded these acquisitions in the expectation that Merck would be able to use its market dominance to pay suppliers less, charge customers more, and use some of the resulting windfall to corrupt and bully its regulators so that it could buy still more companies, charge still higher prices, and impose crushingly low prices on still more suppliers.

The IRA’s drug-bargaining provisions are extraordinarily weak. When they were first mooted in 2021, I talked about how Democrats were caving on muscular drug price controls that would benefit every American (except a handful of pharma shareholders):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/18/bipartisan-consensus/#corruption

They did so despite wild, bipartisan support for imposing price discipline on Big Pharma, and ending the 300% premium Americans pay for their drugs relative to their cousins abroad. 95% of Democrats support strong price controls; so do 82% of independents — and 71% of Republicans:

https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2021/11/healthcare-affordability--majority-of-adults-support-significant-changes-to-the-health-system.html

No one believes Big Pharma’s scare stories about how this would kill R&D: 93% of Americans reject this idea, including 90% of Republicans. They’re right — nearly all US basic pharma R&D is directly funded by the federal government, with pharma companies privatizing the gains:

https://khn.org/news/article/public-opinion-prescription-drug-prices-democratic-plan/

Despite the fact that really whipping the shit out of Big Pharma would be both popular and good for America, the Dems’ final version of pharma bargaining is a barely-there nothingburger where ten drugs will become slightly cheaper, after the next federal election. This is called “political realism” and it’s a fantasy.

The idea that limiting drug controls to the faintest, most modest measures would make them easier to attain was obvious nonsense from the start, and Merck’s anticapitalist lawsuit proves it. Merck will settle for nothing less than total central planning — by Merck. For Merck, the role of the federal government is to wave through a stream of mergers culminating in Merck’s ownership of every major drug; patent extensions for these drugs to carry them into the 25th century and beyond, and unlimited sums paid for these drugs on Medicare.

Given all that, there would have been no downside to the Dems passing an IRA that subjected the drug companies the same modest, commensense, market-based discipline we see in Canada, or the UK, or France, or Germany, or Switzerland.

But that’s not the IRA we got. Instead of defending a big, visionary program in court, the Biden admin is facing down Jones Day and Merck to defend the most yawn-inducing, incrementalist half-measure. What a wasted opportunity.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/09/commissar-merck#price-giver

[Image ID: A caricature of a businessman with a money-bag for a head and a stickpin bearing the Merck logo, standing atop a pile of bundled $100 bills. At the bottom of the pile, a frowning, disheveled Uncle Sam offers up a $100 bill.]

Image: Flying Logos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Over_$1,000,000_dollars_in_USD_$100_bill_stacks.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

People in Reddit, (because of course they are) seen to think California is this prosperous utopia that makes so much money and people there just have it made. Except people were moving away in droves because of cost of living for a while and then because of lack of freedom after that.

Then I get greeted with "Nuh uh! They've had net positive people moving there". Sure maybe recently but during and right after covid people fled because of the tyrant state California was acting like. Not too mention the shutdowns on top of cutting off work from so many people while the Governor went out to party with his friends.

California might make a lot of money but it's because they SPEND a lot. And I can explain. California has some is the highest tax rates in the US. And add freakishly high rent and costs there and it's near impossible to live there especially in the big cities. So why are they supposedly so "prosperous". Easy. If a state was to charge you 40% in state taxes. Gas prices are 7$ and you rent is 5k or more a month "income" for the state is going to look insane.

Meanwhile if you have a state that charges no state taxes, costs 3$ in gas and rent costs 1k a month the state will seemingly be less "prosperous". Except that concept should more or less look at conditions of living. And in California the place with the best net positive living conditions for an AVERAGE resident are all red area. Or light purple leaning red. Meanwhile if you're in blue areas you've got streets covered in shit, homeless people, and rampant crime and car break-ins. Sounds SUPER "prosperous" to me. So prosperous in fact the state wanted to charge residents for 10 years after they left the state.

Why? Because no matter how much they are making they aren't making enough. If you compare their GDP against how much they keep spending it's pretty bleak. Never you mind the impropriety in their local governments. Specifically L.A. and SF. Who "misplaced" millions a year that's supposedly supposed to go to the homeless. And other supposed "welfare". Fact is the sheer amount of people who I've talked to that left because they could not afford to live there. It's been quite a few. Income does not equal prosperity. And the fact Cali has had to be bailed out a number of times shows it can't sustain itself. Though the bailouts were not all extravagant. Most ended up being subsidies if I recall correctly. (Though it's been a while since I read up on it).

People dick suck Democrat policies so hard they need to present California as this bastion of perfection. It's not. And GDP doesn't make a place better. Especially not with tax rates as high as the have them. ON TOP OF federal taxes and living costs being that stupid.

Record high of 6.43. FOR UNLEADED!

And then this bullshit.

And a dollar for gas makes a lot of difference

So if it gas wad 3.40 even, 20$ would get you 5.8 gallons. At 4.80? 4.1 gallons. That amount MAKES A DIFFERENCE especially to those not making a lot of money a year. Then Cali mandates a $20/hr min wage for fast for (except Panera bread because a high level executive made a charitable donation to his campaign) 10k people lost our are projected to lose jobs. "Well that's the greedy companies-" I'm going to stop you right there. No it's not companies fault. It's the fault of California government. Because guess what? For those people that will be making more California gets a bigger cut of your money. Oh and guess what? Because of that you're in a higher tax bracket in both your state AND federally. California is mandating you get robbed blind.

Look. No state is perfect. But to pretend California is such a great place because a lot of companies had their head offices there and state taxes are absurd? Isn't a win. And frankly it makes your look stupid. Because it's a pretty nuanced thing. And it completely flies over most of your heads. Because if they were so well of WHY would they even consider an exit tax? Why would their tax rates be so damn high? Oh right because the state is lining it's own pockets while pretending they are the richest place on earth. And all because "the weather is nice". Blow me. Several states have really nice weather. California just sets itself on fire from time to time because they dissolved their foresty departments so they can blame global warming for everything.

[mightyflamethrower]

California has become a test case of the suicide of the West. Never before has such a state, so rich in natural resources and endowed with such a bountiful human inheritance, self-destructed so rapidly.

How and why did California so utterly consume its unmatched natural and ancestral inheritance and end up as a warning to Western civilization of what might be in store for anyone who followed its nihilism?

The symptoms of the state’s suicide are indisputable.

Governor Gavin Newsom enjoyed a recent $98 billion budget surplus—gifted from multibillion-dollar federal COVID-19 subsidies, the highest income and gas taxes in the nation, and among the country’s steepest sales and property taxes.

Yet in a year, he turned it into a growing $45 billion budget deficit.

At a time of an over-regulated, overtaxed, and sputtering economy, Newsom spent lavishly on new entitlements, illegal immigrants, and untried and inefficient green projects.

Newsom was endowed with two of the wettest years in recent California history. Yet he and radical environmentalists squandered the water bounty—as snowmelts and runoff long designated for agricultural irrigation were drained from aqueducts and reservoirs to flow out to sea.

Newsom transferred millions of dollars designated by a voter referendum to build dams and aqueducts for water storage and instead blew up four historic dams on the Klamath River. For decades, these now-destroyed scenic lakes provided clean, green hydroelectric power, irrigation storage, flood control, and recreation.

California hosts one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients. Over a fifth of the population lives below the property line. Nearly half the nation’s homeless sleep on the streets of its major cities.

The state’s downtowns are dirty, dangerous, and increasingly abandoned by businesses—most recently Google—that cannot rely on a defunded and shackled police.

Newsom’s California has spent billions on homeless relief and subsidizing millions of new illegal migrant arrivals across the state’s porous southern border.

The result was predictably even more homeless and more illegal immigrants, all front-loaded onto the state’s already overtaxed and broken healthcare, housing, and welfare entitlements.

Newsome raised the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $22 an hour. The result was wage inflation rippling out to all service areas, unaffordable food for the poor, and massive shut-downs and bankruptcies of fast food outlets.

Twenty-seven percent of Californians were born outside of the United States. It is a minority-majority state. Yet California has long dropped unifying civic education, while the bankrupt state funds exploratory commissions to consider divisive racial reparations.

California’s universities are hotbeds of ethnic, religious, and racial chauvinism and infighting. State officials, however, did little as its campuses were plagued for months by rampant and violent anti-Semitism.

Almost nightly, the nation watches mass smash-and-grab attacks on California retail stores. Carjackers and thieves own the night. They are rarely caught, even more rarely arrested—and almost never convicted.

Currently, Newsom is fighting in the courts to stop the people’s constitutional right to place on the ballot initiatives to restore penalties for violent crime and theft.

Gas prices are the highest in the continental United States, given green mandate formulas and the nation’s highest, and still raising, gasoline taxes—and are scheduled to go well over $6 a gallon.

Yet its ossified roads and highways are among the nation’s most dangerous, as vast sums of transportation funding were siphoned off to the multibillion-dollar high-speed rail boondoggle.

The state imports almost all the costly vitals of modern life, mostly because it prohibits using California’s own vast petroleum, natural gas, timber, and mineral resources.

As California implodes, its embarrassed government turns to the irrelevant, if not ludicrous.

It now outlaws natural gas stoves in new homes. It is adding new income-based surcharges for those who dutifully pay their power bills—to help subsidize the 2.5 million Californians who simply default on their energy bill with impunity.

What happened to the once-beautiful California paradise?

Millions of productive but frustrated, overtaxed, and underserved middle-class residents have fled to low-crime, low-tax, and well-served red states in disgust

In turn, millions of illegal migrants have swarmed the state, given its sanctuary-city policies, refusal to enforce the law, and generous entitlements.

Meanwhile, a tiny coastal elite, empowered by $9 trillion in Silicon Valley market capitalization, fiddled while their state burned.

California became a medieval society of plutocratic barons, subsidized peasants, and a shrinking and fleeing middle class. It is now home to a few rich estates, subsidized apartments, and unaffordable middle-class houses.

California suffers from poorly ranked public schools—but brags about its prestigious private academies. Its highways are lethal—but it hosts the most private jets in the nation.

The fantasies of a protected enclave of Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, and the masters of the Silicon Valley universe have become the abject nightmares of everyone else.

In sum, a privileged Bay Area elite inherited a California paradise and turned it into purgatory.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Brian Stelter at CNN Business:

New YorkCNN —  President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, wasted no time in stating his priorities on Sunday night. Just one hour after thanking the president for the appointment, Carr wrote on X, “We must dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans.” Carr and Trump’s powerful ally Elon Musk immediately replied with one word of affirmation: “Based.” The comments from Carr, who wrote the chapter on the FCC in the conservative blueprint Project 2025, signaled that it won’t be business-as-usual at the country’s communications regulatory agency. Past chairs of the agency, both Republicans and Democrats, have emphasized broadband internet deployment and wireless spectrum policy. Carr didn’t mention those issues on Sunday night.

Instead, he took aim at technology companies for “censorship;” promised to hold broadcast TV and radio stations accountable; and pledged to end the FCC’s promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Carr was very clearly channeling the president-elect, who raised all three topics on the campaign trail, often in misleading ways. Trump appointed Carr to the FCC in 2017. Carr is now the senior Republican at the agency, which meant he was widely expected to get the chairman appointment. He also has a close relationship with Musk (some of it has been visible in their interactions on X) and has accused Democrats of waging “regulatory lawfare” against Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service.

As chairman, Carr may be able to steer generous federal subsidies to Starlink. When Politico published a story titled “the DC bureaucrat who could deliver billions to Elon Musk” last month, Carr told the outlet that he would be an even-handed regulator. Musk celebrated Carr’s appointment on X on Sunday night. Both men talk in much the same way about free speech rights, reflecting widespread concerns on the right about online censorship. (Trump called Carr “a warrior for Free Speech” in the press release about his appointment.) Claims of conservative censorship erupted several years ago as a result of content moderation decisions by social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Officials at the platforms said they were acting in good faith to reduce some of the toxicity – like election lies and Covid pandemic conspiracy theories – that turned off many users. Conservatives charged that the platforms were unfairly silencing their views – factoring into Musk’s decision to buy Twitter and turn it into X.

[...]

In his Project 2025 chapter, Carr laid out an agenda for the federal agency under a future Trump administration. The agency’s top priorities, he wrote, should be “reining in Big Tech, promoting national security, unleashing economic prosperity, and ensuring FCC accountability and good governance.”

In the chapter, Carr also asserted that the Chinese social media platform TikTok “poses a serious and unacceptable risk to America’s national security” and should be banned. Carr’s years-long crusade against TikTok paralleled Trump’s calls, although Trump reversed his position on TikTok earlier this year. Carr has also supported the rollback of net neutrality rules and called for “legislation that scraps” Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives immunity to tech platforms that moderate user-generated content. “Congress should do so by ensuring that Internet companies no longer have carte blanche to censor protected speech while maintaining their Section 230 protections,” he wrote in Project 2025. The FCC does have jurisdiction over local TV and radio licenses. During his reelection campaign, Trump called for every major American TV news network to be punished, often because of interview questions he disliked or programming he detested. He repeatedly said that certain licenses should be revoked – usually while misstating how the licensing process actually works.

The FCC grants eight-year license terms and hasn’t denied any license renewal in decades. But Carr indicated earlier this month that he would take Trump’s complaints seriously. And he wrote on X Sunday night that “broadcast media have had the privilege of using a scarce and valuable public resource — our airwaves. In turn, they are required by law to operate in the public interest.” As chairman, he added, “the FCC will enforce this public interest obligation.”

Donald Trump taps Project 2025 co-writer Brendan Carr to head the FCC for his 2nd term.

The FCC under Carr’s leadership will be a clearinghouse for far-right items, such as protecting far-right misinformation and disinformation from “censorship”, revoke broadcasting licenses from anti-Trump outlets, and more.

See Also:

Mother Jones: Trump’s FCC Pick Wants to Intimidate Broadcasters and Enrich Trump Allies

[beardedmrbean]

About half a million people in Finland will begin receiving smaller subsidies from the Social Insurance Institution (Kela) next week. The changes may reduce an individual jobseeker’s social support by up to 390 euros a month.

The reductions in unemployment benefits and housing allowances are part of the austerity measures implemented by the right-wing government led by Prime Minister Petteri Orpo of the pro-business National Coalition Party (NCP).

As of Monday, 1 April, jobless benefit recipients will no longer receive extra benefits based on having children, and will now see a cut in unemployment payments corresponding to any paid work done while on the dole.

According to a Kela statement, “the child increases that Kela pays as a supplement to labour market subsidies, basic unemployment allowances and commuting and relocation allowances will be abolished” as will the 300-euro monthly “exempt amount” associated with unemployment benefits.

The latter refers to an exemption whereby an unemployment insurance recipient has been allowed to earn up to 300 euros per month without a loss of benefits. Earnings exceeding 300 euros have lowered unemployment insurance by 50 cents per euro.

From Monday, each earned euro will lower unemployment payments by 50 cents, up to a maximum reduction of 150 euros per month.

The cuts equally apply to earnings-related unemployment insurance as to labour market supports and basic daily allowances paid by Kela.

Until now, the unemployment insurance child benefit has been 130–240 euros per month, depending on the number of children. The child allowance will be removed completely.

About 100,000 people will be affected by the removal of child allowances. Meanwhile more than 74,000 people who received unemployment benefits also earned income from work last year. Some beneficiaries may be affected by both cuts.

Cuts particularly affect women

The cuts in the earnings-related allowance will hit women in particular, said Aki Villman, executive director of the Federation of Unemployment Funds in Finland (TYJ).

“The changes will have the greatest impact on parents who do part-time or gig work, who are most often women. Women receive child support more often than men, and are more likely to work part-time or intermittently than men,” he told Yle. According to Signe Jauhiainen, a senior researcher at Kela, women who receive unemployment benefits are also more likely to earn some wages at the same than men. Jauhiainen noted that the groups receiving earnings-related and labour market supports are different.

“There are three major groups of labour market support recipients: young people who don’t yet have a working career, people who have recently moved to Finland and those who have been unemployed for a long time. Doing part-time work is clearly less common among recipients of labour market support than among those receiving earnings-related support,” Jauhiainen explained.

Housing allowance will also be cut

Cuts in the general housing allowance will also take effect in April. In total, around half a million recipients of Kela housing and unemployment benefits will receive smaller payments than before.

About two-thirds of Kela's unemployment insurance recipients also receive housing allowances.

Jauhiainen said that income supports will partially compensate for the cuts in unemployment insurance and housing support.

“Around a third of Kela's unemployment insurance recipients already receive income support, so they will receive less unemployment insurance and housing benefit but more income support than before. As a result of the cuts, there may be new recipients of income support, in other words households that have previously managed without support,” Jauhiainen said.

Finland's main labour unions have cited cuts in social security among the reasons for their ongoing political strikes. They are aimed at pressuring the eight-month-old Orpo government into backtracking on its planned reforms in labour and social security policies. They argue that the reforms will broadly hurt women of working age.

[iww-gnv]

DETROIT – General Motors reported adjusted earnings of $3.2 billion in the second quarter, up 39% over last year and driven almost entirely by North American profits. The Wall Street Journal reported that GM’s quarterly revenue was $44.7 billion, 25% more than last year and “a post-bankruptcy record.” GM far exceeded analysts’ expectations and raised its full-year adjusted earnings forecast to between $12 billion and $14 billion. The 150,000 UAW members at GM, Ford and Stellantis began negotiations for a new contract with the three automakers this month. Altogether, the Big Three made a quarter-trillion dollars in North American profits over the last decade. The car companies’ current contract with the UAW expires on Sept. 14. UAW President Shawn Fain made the following statement today: “General Motors has made mind boggling profits over the last decade. GM’s recently announced quarterly earnings just set a post-bankruptcy record, but autoworkers and our communities have yet to be made whole for the sacrifices we’ve made since the Great Recession. GM executives have closed 31 plants over the last 20 years and are now enriching themselves through joint venture battery plants that get billions from the federal government in taxpayer subsidies but pay poverty wages. It’s long past time for GM to pony up, end tiers, pay their employees competitive wages that keep up with the cost of living and provide everyone the ability to retire with dignity.” UAW Vice President Mike Booth, Director of the union’s GM Department, issued this statement: “The enormous profit General Motors announced today does not happen without the great work of our UAW-GM Members building world-class vehicles, right here in the U.S.A. For a decade now, UAW members have been GM’s profit engine. It’s time for a contract that fully rewards our members for the hard work we do.”

[theculturedmarxist]

Every single "oh please OH PLEASE get out and vote they're so important 🥺" post I see just drips with idealist nonsense. They have no idea how politics work. They have no idea how their government works. They have no idea how political parties work.

Absent an overarching political program, none of this bullshit matters. You can vote and vote and vote, and it doesn't fucking matter one single fucking bit because as long as you're voting for a bourgeois party, you're never, not ever, going to get what you want.

The Republican and Democratic parties are political machines designed to generate outcomes favorable to their donors. Unless you're a millionaire, they don't give a shit about you or what you want, because what you want is diametrically opposed to what millionaires and billionaires want, which is to keep all the misery and oppression of society in place, so that they can keep on being rich and powerful.

Let me give you an example. The USA has some of the worst internet in the world. It's already dogshit if you live in a city, and outside city limits it drops off a cliff and gets worse the further out you go. This was supposed to be fixed when the federal government provided the telecoms with huge subsidies to go out and build rural internet. Instead they took the money and just didn't do that, because it's a lot more profitable to just take the fucking money and then pay whatever piddling penalty they might get slapped with.

Mount Airy, NC, decided to do something about it. They built their own municipal broadband. It was the cheapest and fastest internet in the state, and probably still is. Time Warner Cable got wind of it and did what they usually do: lobby the government to keep competition down. They got what they wanted. The shiteating state assembly passed a law basically making municipal broadband impossible, and the shiteating blue governor Bev Perdue did nothing to stop it, because she's a bourgeois whore just like everyone else in the party.

More recently, Charlotte tried to pass a "bathroom bill" giving trans people the right to use the fucking bathroom, and hardly a day later Raleigh overrode it with their own dick hogging law (which also prevented localities from setting wage requirements for contract workers).

The two parties aren't local, or regional, or federal, they're systemic. Voting for them at the local level, even if they're "progressive," just reinforces the entire rotten apparatus. Because when push comes to shove, those local "progressives" you voted for will do as they're fucking told, or else they'll get primaried by "their own" party. Even if you do manage to swing, say, a state with progressive candidates, they'll just get ratfucked by the party apparatchiks, like they did in Nevada where "progressives and socialists" won, only for party operatives to rob them, then quit.

The entire system is fucking rotten and it can't be reformed from the inside, by design. You can't use it to vote for a better world, because making sure that wasn't an option was the entire point from the fucking beginning.

You're going to either resign yourself to the fact that you need to get your fucking hands dirty, or vote yourself into your grave.

[jkl-fff]

You are ruler of your country for a day! You can enact one law and it will still be in effect after you leave. What do you do?

Only one? Well, in typical USA fashion, I'm going to get around that by drafting one law (a bill) with a fuck ton of riders that are considered part of that one law (yep, even if they have nothing to do with the primary purpose of the bill and are actually something many legislators would oppose) (yet one more thing that's fucked up about this government). AND I'm going to go a step above that to guarantee these all remian in effect by declaring their enactment is as Constitutional Amendments.

Henceforth, all elected positions (presidents, governors, mayors, senators, representatives, etc.) are to be held for a term of four years, with a strict limit of two terms per person. Anyone who will turn 75 during the coming term will be deemed ineligible for office.

ALL judicial positions will be subject to a strict code of ethics (ESPECIALLY the fucking SUPREME COURT gods above, how is this already not a thing), and those who are accused of violating it will be subject to a trial with a jury of 12 judges. If found guilty of violating this code by at least 7 of the 12, they will be cast out of office ... and into prison. Also, judges can only serve at a given level for 16 years (no more of this lifetime terms bullshit).

No elected official may be reimbursed for their service at a rate higher than their state's minimum wage. Nor may they receive government benefits (like health insurance) above what the average citizen is entitled to receive. If they want more, they'd better improve the lives of their poorest citizens.

Their is a wealth cap at $500 million in private or corporate assets. Everything after that is confiscated for the public good. Anyone found guilty of trying to dodge that will lose everything and go to jail for the rest of their life (anyone with more than $10 million must be audited annually to ensure no tax fraud is being committed).

Corporate personhood will be acknowledged, but so will a corporate death penalty. If a company is found to have violated laws protecting the environment or public to a degree greater than $10 million in damages, then the company will be disbanded, and *all* assets of the executives will be seized while *half* of all middle management will be seized. (This way, rank and file workers will be incentivized to keep their company honest so they don't lose a job, management and executives will be incentivized because they stand to lose 50% or 100% of their wealth).

In a similar vein, all punitive fines are to be scaled according to the wealth of the offender. Like, a speeding ticket is $250 for a poor person, $25,000 for a millionaire.

The military can only receive as much funding as the Department of Education, which will disperse its funds to the poorest schools in a district first. But charter and religious schools are prohibited from receiving federal and state funds (if they want to be private, that's fine ... but they gotta pay for everything themselves while still being subject to federal regulations).

Business subsidies can not surpass welfare funding throughout a state. Also, if a business makes a profit one year, they are ineligible to receive subsidies the next.

Election Day is now on a Sunday, and all non essential services are to close so people can go vote. Tiered voting is to be instituted, too.

Convicted felons cannot be president even after serving their time (c'mon, people, seriously). Though they can vote again once released.

I could add others, but this has gone on long enough, and these already would be huge improvements. Thanks!

[argyrocratie]

"The rich already have more money on their hands than they can find profitable investments for; they’re not going to put more money into expanding productive capacity, because working people can’t afford to buy enough stuff to fully utilize existing industrial capacity. That’s why they wind up dumping money into FIRE economy speculative bubbles instead.

(...)

Capitalism is utterly dependent on waste production, financed by government spending, to absorb surplus investment capital and keep the wheels of industry turning. Government military procurement and investment in the automobile-highway-sprawl industry employ enormous amounts of productive capacity and capital that would otherwise be idle, and social spending increases the purchasing power of people who buy stuff and likewise keep the wheels turning.

And government debt is soaking up (and providing a minimum return on) trillions of dollars that would otherwise be dumped into the capital markets and make Black Friday look like the biggest bull market in history by comparison. U.S. bonds are, for capitalist rentiers, the equivalent of USDA subsidies that pay farmers to hold land out of use and thereby effectively turn idle farmland into a guaranteed real estate investment.

To show just how easy it would be to cut spending if those pointy-head gummint wonks would get out of the way, Mr. Dunning Kruger tries his hand at the Washington Post budget game:

By slashing military spending, getting the federal government out of education, raising the retirement age, and eliminating whole areas of spending, I was able to run a budget surplus starting in 2023 and move the federal government 163.2 percent of the way towards a sustainable budget. Hmmm. Looks like I have some room for tax cuts.

Congratulations, J.D.! You’ve removed hundreds of billions of dollars worth of demand from the economy (particularly would-be retirees who’ll wind up in the labor force either unemployed or driving down wages), dumped it in the laps of rentiers who already can’t find profitable things to invest in, caused the value of investment assets to collapse, and caused another Great Depression. Last time around, the only thing that saved American capitalism was a world war; let’s just hope they don’t use nukes in this one.

There’s a real solution that will make deficit spending and public debt unnecessary, but I don’t think J.D. will like it. It would involve abolishing all the state-enforced privileges and artificial property rights — like landlordism, intellectual property, and credit monopolies — that shift income from workers to property owners, and all the entry barriers and cartelizing regulations that shift income from consumers to business owners. There would be a lot less idle capital and idle industrial capacity, and a lot more demand for labor from the purchasing power of ordinary people."

-Kevin Carson, "No, Deficit Spending Isn’t the Problem…"

[lunarsilkscreen]

Fauxflation

On the back of my previous posts on bonds and the housing bubble and/or crisis, I'd like to describe a form of inflation happening that isn't direct inflation.

I've talked before about loan caps, and how bank debt (not to be confused with the country debt of 30trillion+ which is how we determine how much money the fed injects into the economy.) Can be used to inflate the country's debt outside of the control of the government (and thus outside the federal reserve's control).

Banks use debt as assets, they trade them like they would money, because they expect the money to be paid back. However, they are also allowed to give out loans based on the debt they control, and thus expect to be paid back. (This is part of the problem with bonds in 2008).

Banks loans money to Steve, and based on how Steve pays that loan back, the bank is then allowed to loan money to Geoff. Sometimes at the expected interest they expect to make from Steve. And if Geoff is paying back the bank regularly, the bank is able to make another loan out to a third person: Jenny.

If you're tracking; that means the bank has given out three loans based on one pool of money. Effectively tripling that original pool, until those loans are paid back. Which would both cause inflation while the loans are in circulation, and deflation should they be paid back, or even forgiven.

This should be controlled by the digital debt ceiling that the fed allows banks to loan against. *Should* being the operative word.

That's only part of the fauxflation equation.

The next part is companies, who have taken these loans, and are selling goods to end users. They borrow against interest rates and if the interest rates are high, that also compounds inflation. (More money is expected to pay back that initial loan. Thus creating an drain on the revenue of those companies.)

How do those companies make money? They charge the end user more and more. As much money as they are willing to pay. Companies have said as much: "They are willing to charge as much as the customers can afford".

The U.S. subsidizes certain products in order to keep prices down, and to account for increased demand. So that parents can feed their children. It's funny that even those products are starting to see insane price hikes. From $1.50 for a quart of milk to nearly $5 over the course of the past few years.

That's with the subsidies that they get to sell those products.

Simultaneously, corporate profits are at a record high.

Now, I'm going to take this time to explain why record profits might not *actually* be profit. Please bear with me it's stupid. I know.

Many loans have increased, or lowered fees after a certain time period of one-time payments. If companies have taken a loan out like you would on a credit card: "0% APR for 12 months, and then 30% annual after that". That means their payment of their loan is included on their revenue sheet

Some loans, like a car or house loan have a maximum interest based on the term of the loan. And your credit score is based on paying that interest back on time, not early, not late. If you have a six year loan, it's in your best interest to pay it back in six years. So that you have good credit for a better loan after that.

Any Earlier and the banks know that you won't be making them enough money to bother.

But if the company is making record profits, it might behoove them to include that in their future projections. If that APR kicks in at a higher % like on your credit card, then they have to hang onto that profit, possibly invest it (to try to keep up with the APR) because they know they'll be paying back that interest at a later date, since they won't be paying the whole thing off this year.

Basically: what happens if you only make minimum payments on your credit card?

With wage hikes, and with high interest, and with both of those causing fauxflation: you can see where the problem point in this chain is:

Whatever money is owed back to the banks

Now, why do the banks include things like APR increases in some products and not others? They believe it's an effective stick to the loan's carrot. They believe that you'll be encouraged to pay it back at that point, and they have calculations to prove it. (Remember what I said about banks creating higher loans to pay off lower loans because of housing inflation? That circle-k?)

They have a decade of data saying that their loans all got paid off.

So when it comes time that the economy can't handle their projections, because they ommitted the data where things like this happened last time. (Too long ago, who cares)

It's easy to say "we couldn't have accounted for this".

And it's plausible because who accounts for data that long ago?

[kinglermew]

Fact Check: Life sucks because of rich people, but these specifics are wildly off. Here's federal spending:

The bulk of spending is social security and medicare, because old people vote. On a state and local level, most expenses are road and police related. Counting every contractor as a "subsidy" might get you there, but that's not what "subsidy" means. Hiring a contractor is not a subsidy. Federal corporate subsidies are about 1.4% of spending so about $56 of taxes a year on a salary of 50k. Life sucks because - Private equity sucks the life out of businesses without oversight or accountability. - Landlords are free to collude and raise prices. This is illegal, but the government has only started to enforce it. - Companies commit massive wage fraud. - Monopolies continual make their services worse, because they can. Google rolled back anti-spam filters on search about 3 years back, in order to get users to make more searches. - Companies skimp on safety and cause chemical spills. Each penny they save causes hundreds of dollars of damage to people and environment. Generally: Rich people get to ignore laws. They do this to screw everyone else out of money, often profiting less than 1% of the damages they cause.

[newspatrolling]

Inflation: What It Is and How to Control Inflation Rates

BY: Pankaj Bansal , Founder at NewsPatrolling.com

Inflation is the sustained increase in the general price level of goods and services in an economy over a period. When inflation rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services, eroding purchasing power. Economists measure inflation through indices like the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the Producer Price Index (PPI), which track changes in prices over time.

Causes of Inflation

There are several primary causes:

Demand-Pull Inflation: This occurs when demand for goods and services exceeds supply, often due to an increase in consumer spending, government expenditures, or investment. It “pulls” prices up as businesses raise prices in response to higher demand.

Cost-Push Inflation: This is when production costs increase (e.g., due to rising wages or raw material costs), prompting producers to raise prices to maintain profit margins. Cost-push inflation can result from higher commodity prices, increased labor costs, or supply chain disruptions.

Built-In Inflation: Sometimes called “wage-price inflation,” it arises from a feedback loop where rising wages increase production costs, leading businesses to raise prices. Higher prices then lead workers to demand higher wages, creating a cycle of inflation.

Monetary Policy: When central banks increase the money supply too quickly, it can lead to inflation. With more money circulating, demand can outstrip supply, pushing prices higher.

Effects of Inflation

Reduced Purchasing Power: People can buy fewer goods and services with the same amount of money.

Uncertainty in Business Investment: High inflation can create uncertainty, causing businesses to delay or reduce investments.

Income Redistribution: Fixed-income earners and those without investments may find their purchasing power eroding, while borrowers benefit as debts are repaid with devalued currency.

Interest Rate Adjustments: Central banks often raise interest rates to combat high inflation, which can affect borrowing and economic growth.

How to Control Inflation Rates

Controlling inflation involves managing demand and supply factors, which is typically overseen by central banks and government policies. Here are common methods:

Monetary Policy Adjustments:

Interest Rates: Central banks, like the Federal Reserve or the European Central Bank, adjust interest rates to control inflation. Higher interest rates make borrowing more expensive, reducing spending and cooling demand.

Open Market Operations: Central banks can buy or sell government bonds to regulate the money supply. Selling bonds reduces the money supply, potentially slowing inflation.

Reserve Requirements: By adjusting the amount of funds that banks must hold in reserve, central banks can influence how much money is available for lending.

Fiscal Policy:

Reducing Government Spending: Governments can cut spending to reduce demand in the economy, which may help cool inflation.

Tax Adjustments: Raising taxes can reduce disposable income, which can lead to a decrease in demand and, in turn, inflation.

Supply-Side Policies: Improving productivity and reducing production costs can help control inflation from the supply side. Investments in technology, deregulation, and subsidies for production can make it easier for businesses to supply goods at stable prices.

Wage and Price Controls: While controversial and less common in modern economies, governments sometimes impose controls on wages and prices to prevent rapid inflation. However, these measures are often temporary, as they can lead to shortages and other economic distortions.

Exchange Rate Management: Some countries control inflation by managing their currency value. A stronger currency can make imports cheaper, which can reduce inflation, though it can also make exports less competitive.

Challenges in Controlling Inflation Controlling inflation is often a balancing act. Raising interest rates or cutting government spending can control inflation, but it may also slow economic growth or lead to unemployment. Central banks and governments need to assess economic conditions carefully, as measures to curb inflation can sometimes have unintended side effects, like recession.

[jayessentialsblog]

The NLC claims that the increase in petrol prices has rendered the 70,000 minimum wage useless, claiming that they were betrayed by the President

In order to address how employees can deal with the recent increase in petrol prices, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has scheduled a meeting with the federal government. According to NLC President Joe Ajaero, the benefits of the upcoming N70,000 national minimum wage have been undermined by the present petrol price. Ajaero asserted that in order to stop the rise in petrol prices, President Bola Tinubu tricked organised labour into accepting the N70,000 minimum salary. The NLC is trying to resolve the matter. He said: "There is a tactic to distract our attention, to call us names, level allegations against us over cybercrime, financing terrorism, sponsoring terrorism and the rest. "Those things have paid off because while we are facing those allegations, this issue of pump price has remained. "I repeat, we were betrayed by Mr President, That statement we issued over our being betrayed is being denied by officials of the government. I am repeating it that we were betrayed. Some of you here were at the meeting when Mr President said, Ajaero you are the problem. "Since we said subsidy is gone. You don’t want to allow us to increase again. If you allow me to increase we will pay you that N250, 000. Immediately I came out that day I was on Arise Television I repeated what Mr President told us. "The president said I am giving you one hour to decide on this and get back to me. He said he was goig back to his office and we should decide over this (between N250, 000 minimum wage and petrol pump price hike). "We said no sir, Mr President; we can’t be holding our meeting here in your office. Let us take one week break and come back and report back to you. He said okay, I am traveling but I will cancel my trip for one week. That was how we adjourned for one week.  "If you followed the trend of those negotiations, we adjourned for one week. And when we came back after consultations, we said to Mr President, no, we can’t allow you to increase to any length because that will affect all Nigerians and we will be seen to be selfish.  "Even the N250,000 will not be useful to us. If we continue to increase salary, it will make a mess of our economy and then you continue to increase pump price. In fact, that N250,000 may not be enough to even buy fuel. "Mr President equally offered to fund our trip to tour some West African countries, where the least price of petrol is selling at N1,700. He even said in Cameroon, they are selling N2000 and that none of them has a refinery but they are getting their products from Nigeria.  "We responded by telling him to check the borders because that is why they are smuggling those products to those countries.  "We equally said no because Nigerians will say they have given us money; they won’t say it’s money for us to visit those West African states. "On the adjourned date, we went there and told Mr President, we are not here for increase in pump price or negotiation. So let’s concentrate on the minimum wage. Some of these things informed the acceptance of N70,000 minimum wage which some of us here were saying was not enough. But some people are still saying they cannot pay that N70, 000.  "This is the dilemma all of us are facing. In fact, the private sector employers in our meeting gave us tough time. They refused to shift and they wanted to vote with state government, federal government and the private sector on one side, all against labour on the other side. These were some of the things that necessitated all those walkouts you saw." Read the full article

[contemplatingoutlander]

@xeansicemane do you actually live in a blue state? I do. And yes, things are much better here than in red states. Efforts have been made here to ensure abortion rights, bolster renewable energy and subsidies to convert to renewable energy, to provide free public higher education for at least two years, to promote diversity, equity and inclusion, to raise the minimum wage, and to expand Medicaid coverage.

Despite a slim majority in the Senate, and stonewalling senators like Manchin and Sinema, Biden's administration has managed to expand support for renewable energy, has passed an infrastructure bill that not only will improve our crumbling infrastructure but will provide many working class jobs, has tried to provide some student loan forgiveness, has brought down drug costs, increased the affordability of healthcare plans, promoted diversity in the federal government, especially on the judiciary, etc. For a fuller list, see this ARTICLE.

But most important, Biden and the Democrats do NOT want to dismantle the "deep state," which is the ONLY THING that prevents corporations and the wealthy from exploiting workers (even more than they currently do), provides a social safety net for people who are struggling, makes sure our food and drinking water don't poison us, curbs carbon emissions, etc.

Republicans want to completely dismantle the "deep state," and let would-be right-wing oligarchs have complete control of our society.

And honestly, if there were strong Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress, as well as a Democratic president, a lot more could be accomplished--including making sure that right-wing hacks aren't appointed as judges or justices, and finally insisting on an ethical code with teeth for the Supreme Court.

P.S.

Do you know anything about human psychology? Do you really think that if everything is destroyed that humans will rebuild and this time it will be some sort of socialist utopia?

Humans are an incredibly selfish species, prone to violence, tribalism and hoarding resources. Most of us can't even sit at a work meeting and agree on things much less build a cooperative society.

That's why I believe in gradual reform, like they have in social democracies like Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Norway.

Premature revolution when human beings haven't matured emotionally as a species ultimately results in disaster, and often a cruel totalitarianism.

We warned you this is where this is going.