#Inflation (Major economic factor)

[luxuryroof]

Budget 2025: A Game Changer for Indian Real Estate? Key Expectations & Market Impact

Will This Budget Unlock Growth, Affordability, and Investment in Real Estate?

As India gears up for Union Budget 2025, the real estate sector is on high alert, anticipating policy shifts that could redefine housing affordability, taxation benefits, and infrastructure expansion. With the industry contributing nearly 7% to the GDP and projected to reach $1 trillion by 2030, real estate stakeholders—homebuyers, investors, and developers—are eyeing reforms that can boost demand, streamline regulations, and fuel long-term growth.

From tax breaks for homebuyers to incentives for green real estate, this year’s budget could be a make-or-break moment for the property market. Here’s what the industry is hoping for:

1. Affordable Housing: Bigger Incentives, Bigger Opportunities

One of the biggest expectations from Budget 2025 is an aggressive push for affordable housing, a segment that remains a key government priority. With the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) in full swing, developers and buyers alike are looking for:

✅ Extension of PMAY Benefits – Increased funding and subsidies for first-time homebuyers under Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme (CLSS). ✅ Higher Tax Deductions – Raising the Section 80EEA benefit (currently ₹1.5 lakh) to ₹2.5 lakh to help middle-income buyers. ✅ Lower GST on Under-Construction Properties – Reducing the current 5% GST (without ITC) to 3% or reinstating input tax credit (ITC) for builders to cut costs.

These moves could enhance affordability, improve sales volumes, and strengthen India’s housing demand.

2. Tax Benefits: More Savings for Homebuyers & Developers

Industry players have long demanded higher tax exemptions to boost liquidity and sales. Key tax-related expectations from Budget 2025 include:

📌 Increase in Home Loan Interest Deduction – Raising the Section 24(b) limit from ₹2 lakh to ₹5 lakh can make home loans more attractive. 📌 Relaxation in Capital Gains Tax – Expanding Section 54 exemptions to encourage reinvestment in real estate. 📌 GST Input Tax Credit (ITC) for Developers – Allowing builders to claim ITC can reduce project costs and make homes more affordable.

A well-balanced tax regime could encourage new home purchases, attract more investors, and drive fresh capital into the sector.

3. Infrastructure & Urban Expansion: Driving Real Estate Growth

Real estate thrives on strong infrastructure, and this budget is expected to boost metro expansions, smart city projects, and expressway networks. Experts are calling for:

🏗️ More Funding for Smart Cities & Urban Development – Expanding beyond metros to Tier 2 & Tier 3 cities. 🚆 Increased Connectivity Through Highways & Metro Rail – Unlocking new investment zones for real estate growth. 🏢 SEZ Reforms & Commercial Hubs – Making it easier to develop and sell properties in Special Economic Zones.

With India’s urbanization rate growing at 2.3% annually, these measures could expand real estate demand beyond metro cities.

4. REITs, Co-Living & Rental Housing: Unlocking the Next Big Market

The rental housing sector and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are emerging as game-changers, and Budget 2025 could further boost these markets with:

💼 Tax Incentives for REIT Investors – Offering capital gains tax exemptions or tax-free dividends to increase retail participation. 🏘️ Rental Housing & Co-Living Support – Special incentives for rental housing projects, student housing, and senior living. 📊 New Rental Housing Policy – Making it easier for private players to set up and manage large-scale rental properties.

With millennials and Gen Z preferring rental options, a structured rental housing framework could increase affordability and expand investment opportunities.

5. Stamp Duty & Registration Charges: A Much-Needed Rationalization

One of the biggest roadblocks in real estate transactions is high stamp duty and registration charges, which vary across states. The sector is hoping for:

📉 Reduction in Stamp Duty for First-Time Buyers – A centralized reduction policy to increase home sales. 🏡 Tax Deduction on Stamp Duty Costs – Making stamp duty partially deductible under income tax laws to improve affordability.

These measures could significantly lower property acquisition costs and encourage more real estate transactions.

6. Green Real Estate & Sustainable Development

Sustainability is the future, and Budget 2025 is expected to encourage eco-friendly real estate practices by:

🌱 Tax Benefits for Green Buildings – Reduced GST and subsidies for energy-efficient and sustainable real estate projects. ⚡ Incentives for Solar & Renewable Energy in Housing – Subsidies for solar power, rainwater harvesting, and energy-efficient homes. 🏗️ Higher Floor Space Index (FSI) for Green Certified Projects – Allowing eco-friendly buildings to have higher permissible construction limits.

With climate change concerns rising, incentivizing green real estate can attract global investors and ensure long-term sustainability.

Final Thoughts: Will Budget 2025 Be a Game Changer?

The Union Budget 2025 has the potential to revolutionize the real estate sector by focusing on affordability, infrastructure expansion, taxation benefits, and sustainable development.

For homebuyers, tax relaxations and lower interest rates could make homeownership easier. For developers, GST simplifications and incentives could reduce costs and increase profitability. For investors, REIT incentives and rental housing policies could unlock new income streams.

A progressive and real-estate-friendly budget could fuel industry growth, attract foreign investments, and make housing more accessible for millions of Indians. All eyes are now on the finance ministry—will Budget 2025 deliver the much-needed boost? Only time will tell. 🚀

[beesmygod]

we can all look back on and laugh at this when im wrong, but it seems like social media in its current incarnation is dying an undignified and overdue death. it turns out throwing all of humanity into one room and expecting everyone to develop a single ethos was beyond insane conceptually and the artists who built their following on social media are probably in a tail spin right now. people jumping to bluesky are insane lol. did you forget jack dorsey is the idiot who got us into this mess in the first place. why would you choose to subject yourself to this shit again. for what purpose?

the stock answer i got was that "for discoverability/audience" and if that's true thats a problem. i've been hollerin about this to anyone who would listen prior to this but the customer base of twitter (and all social media) is its advertisers. they have not been shy from the start about that fact because its the only way they generate income, as far as i know. YOU (the user) are the product. YOU (still the user) are also what draws people to the site. there is not a social media website on earth that has figured out that making a good website (which would require hiring and paying for quality labor over an extended period of time) is more likely to result in economic success than exclusively courting the businesses whose interest is in making the website worse to use with ads. at no point were our interests ever a factor.

in fact, imo, the number of people following you is not an accurate representational sample of your audience. the reasonable assumption you should make is that the vast majority of numbers involved with any website (esp those with a vested interest in showing off big numbers to VC investors or advertising execs) are inflated or just outright fake. the numbers exist solely to drive you insane and make awful people happy. the numbers cause you and everyone around you to start spontaneously spawning myths about a beast called "the algorithm" that possesses the incredible traits of being both something you can game for success or blame for your failures. it coerces you into enacting out nonsense superstitions to try to counteract or appease it in the hopes of, let's be honest, breaking it big and going viral. this way, you, the creator, do not have to do the hard work of building up a rapport with an audience. none of this goes anything but adds more numbers for the ceos to look at and nod approvingly or disapprovingly at.

the people running the world today are, without exaggeration, cartoon villains. they are deeply stupid, devoid of empathy, and open about their intent to do deeply evil acts in order to further their economic interests. trying to derive some kind of financial benefit from the creations of these unapologetic losers was always bound to be a wasted effort. the best thing i can say about twitter, a website i was banned from countless times and returned to out of stubborn desire, was that i got to make some great jokes with friends and cause some chaos lol. letting people know i have a web comic was always a secondary function once the realization of what social media was turning out to be set in like 7 years ago. any artist who insists that you have to do this or that on this or that social media site is trying to drag you down into the quagmire of online numbers poisoning.

run away!!! children heed my advice!!! the joy of creation does not lie on a path that encourages you to cater to the lowest common denominators while casting your net. just fucking have fun with it. if its not fun then it wont even be fun to do financially anyway. and isnt that, like. the point.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The state of the economy was the single biggest motive for Trump voters in 2024. Liberals, snarking about the “vibecession” – the mistaken belief by the public that the economy is in recession – say GDP is growing and inflation is modest at 2.4%. But headline figures don’t reflect how most people experience the economy. Prices are 20% higher than before the pandemic and, more importantly, prices for essentials such as food are up 28%. Household debt was a major stress factor. Biden also cut a raft of popular benefits established during the pandemic. Unsurprisingly, most people don’t believe the headline figures. Yet this narrative barely scratches the surface. First, the evidence suggests that people don’t always vote with their wallets: studies from the 20th century up to the present show that simple measures of economic self-interest aren’t a very good predictor of voting behaviour. The economy matters, of course, but not as a simple metric of aggregate wellbeing. It is a space in which people judge their personal standing relative to how they perceive the state of society. Personal setbacks are generally only politicised when they are perceived as part of a wider crisis. Second, while the far right can’t win without gaining some working-class support, in the US, Brazil, India and the Philippines, it relies on a bedrock of middle-class support. Besides, millions regularly have their economic lives wrecked without going far right: the poorest in most societies generally aren’t very susceptible to their message. Third, in strictly material terms the economic offer of today’s far right is paltry, yet incumbency has been incredibly forgiving for nationalist governments.

[...]

Today’s far right offers a different answer – what the political theorist William Connolly calls a “politics of existential revenge”. It replaces real disasters with imaginary disasters. Trump warns of “communist” takeover and amplifies the “great replacement” conspiracy theory. His supporters rail against “white genocide” and satanic child-molesting elites. Instead of opposing injustice, they vilify those who threaten social hierarchies like class, race and gender. Instead of confronting systems, they give you enemies you can kill. This is disaster nationalism.

11 November 2024

[collapsedsquid]

The despair goes deeper. Almost a quarter of renters report skipping meals to make their monthly rent payments. The expiration of pandemic-era tenant protections and rental assistance programs—which Biden and congressional Democrats did nothing to prevent—has caused evictions to spike back to pre-Covid levels. Homelessness is at an all-time high. Wider economic discontent can also be connected to housing. An astonishing 75 percent of swing-state voters said housing costs were the most stressful economic issue for their families, and nearly two-thirds said housing unaffordability made them feel negatively about the economy. Rent remains the single largest factor keeping inflation high, accounting for half the overall increase in inflation as recently as September.

It's too damn high

[mariacallous]

On Tuesday morning, five days after Hurricane Helene ripped through Boone, North Carolina, David Marlett was on his way to the campus of Appalachian State University. The managing director of the university’s Brantley Risk & Insurance Center, Marlett was planning to spend the day working with his colleagues to help students and community members understand their insurance policies and file claims in the wake of the storm. He didn’t sound hopeful. “I’m dreading it,” he said. “So many people are just not going to have coverage.”

Helene made landfall southeast of Tallahassee, Florida, last week with winds up to 140 miles per hour, downing trees and bringing record-breaking storm surges to areas along the Gulf Coast before charging up through Georgia. But perhaps its most shocking impacts have been on inland North Carolina, where it first started raining while the storm was still over Mexico. At least 57 people are dead in Buncombe County in the west of the state alone. Communities like Boone received dozens of inches of rainfall despite being hundreds of miles from the coast. Waters rose in main streets, sinkholes and mudslides wreaked havoc, and major roads were blocked, flooded, or degraded by the storm.

Now, there’s a good chance that many homeowners in North Carolina won’t see any payouts from their insurance companies—even if they have policies they thought were comprehensive.

“The property insurance market for homes was already a patchwork system that really doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Marlett says. “Now you’re adding in the last couple of years of economic uncertainty, inflation, climate change, population migration—it’s just an unbelievably bad combination happening all at once.”

For North Carolinians, the issue right now has to do with what, exactly, private insurance is on the hook for when it comes to a storm. An average homeowner policy covers damage from wind, but private homeowners’ insurance plans in the US do not cover flooding. Instead, homeowners in areas at risk of flooding usually purchase plans from the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).

The way a hurricane wreaks havoc on a state is a crucial deciding factor for insurers’ wallets. Hurricane Ian, which hit Florida as a category 4 storm with some of the highest wind speeds on record, caused $63 billion in private insurance claims. In contrast, the bulk of the $17 billion in damage caused by 2018’s Hurricane Florence, which tore up the North Carolina coast, was water damage, not wind; as a result, private insurers largely avoided picking up the check for that disaster.

This breakout of flood insurance from home policies dates back to the 1940s, says Donald Hornstein, a law professor at the University of North Carolina and a member of the board of directors of the North Carolina Insurance Underwriting Association. Private insurance companies decided that they did not have enough data to be able to accurately predict flooding and therefore could not insure it. “In some ways, that calculation of 50 years ago is still the calculation insurers make today,” he says.

While the NFIP, which was created in the late 1960s, provides virtually the only backup against flood damage, the program is saddled with debt and has become a political hot potato. (Project 2025, for instance, recommends phasing out the program entirely and replacing it with private options.) Part of the problem with the NFIP is low uptake. Across the country, FEMA statistics show that just 4 percent of homeowners have flood insurance. Some areas hit by Helene in Appalachia, initial statistics show, have less than 2.5 percent of homeowners signed up for the federal program.

“Even in coastal areas, not many people buy that, much less here in the mountains,” Marlett says. “People have never seemed to fully understand that flood is a separate policy.”

Flooding is not unprecedented in the mountains of North Carolina: Hurricane Ivan swept through Appalachia in 2004, and flash floods from rivers are not unheard of. Purchasing flood insurance is mandatory with a government-backed mortgage in some areas of the country, based on flood zones set by FEMA. But the data is based on extremely outdated floodplain maps that have not taken the most recent climate science on record rainfall into account.

“The biggest non-secret in Washington for decades is how hopelessly out of date these flood maps are,” Hornstein says.

Even if water wasn’t the cause of destruction for some homeowners in North Carolina, the storm’s disastrous mudslides—another risk supercharged by climate change—may not be covered either. Many home insurance policies have carve-outs for what are known as “earth movements,” which includes landslides, sinkholes, and earthquakes. In some states, like California, insurers are mandated to offer additional earthquake insurance, and homeowners can purchase private additional policies that cover earth movements. But in a state like North Carolina, where earthquake risk is extremely low, homeowners may not even know that such policies exist.

It’s also been a tough few years for the insurance industry across the country. A New York Times analysis from May showed that homeowners’ insurers lost money in 18 states in 2023—up from eight states in 2013—largely thanks to expensive disasters like hurricanes and wildfires. Payouts are increasingly costing insurers more than they are getting in premiums. Homeowners are seeing their policies jump as a result: According to statistics compiled by insurance comparison shopping site Insurify, the average annual cost of home insurance climbed nearly 20 percent between 2021 and 2023. In Florida, which has the highest insurance costs in the country, the average homeowner paid over $10,000 a year in 2023—more than $8,600 above the national rate.

Florida has made headlines in recent months as ground zero for the climate-change insurance crisis. More than 30 insurance companies have either fully or partially pulled out of Florida over the past few years, including big names like Farmers’ and AAA, after mounting losses from repeated major hurricanes like 2022’s Ian, the most expensive natural disaster in the state’s history. Florida’s insurer of last resort, now saddled with risk from multiple homeowners, has proposed a rate increase of 14 percent, set to go into effect next year.

In comparison, North Carolina’s insurance market looks pretty good. No insurers have exited the state since 2008, while homeowners pay an average of $2,100 per year—high, but avoiding the sky-high rates of states like Florida, California, and Texas.

“What traditionally has happened is that there’s a rate increase every few years of 8 to 9 percent for homeowner’s insurance,” says Hornstein. “That has kept the market stable, especially when it comes to the coast.”

But as natural disasters of all kinds mount, it’s tough to see a way forward for insurance business as usual. The NFIP is undergoing a series of changes to update the way it calculates rates for flood insurance—but it faces political minefields in potentially expanding the number of homeowners mandated to buy policies. What’s more, many homeowners are seeing the prices for their flood insurance rise as the NFIP adjusts its rates for existing floodplains using new climate models.

Many experts agree that the private market needs to reflect in some way the true cost of living in a disaster-prone area: in other words, it should be more expensive for people to move to a city where it’s more likely your house will be wiped off the map by a storm. The cost of climate change does not seem to be a deterrent in Florida, one of the fastest-growing states in the country, where coastal regions like Panama City, Jacksonville, and Port St. Lucie are booming. (Some research suggests that the mere existence of the NFIP shielded policyholders from the true costs of living in flood-prone areas.)

Asheville, at the heart of Buncombe County, was once hailed as a climate haven safe from disasters; the city is now reeling in the wake of Helene. For many homeowners, small business owners, and renters in western North Carolina, the damage from Helene will be life-changing. FEMA payouts may bring, at best, only a fraction of what a home would be worth. Auto insurance generally covers all types of damage, including flooding—a small bright spot of relief, but not enough to offset the loss of a family’s main asset.

“People at the coast, at some point after the nth storm, they start to get the message,” Hornstein says. “But for people in the western part of the state, this is just Armageddon. And you can certainly forgive them for not having before appreciated the fine points of these impenetrable contracts.”

Marlett says that there are models for insurance that are designed to better withstand the challenges of climate change. New Zealand, for instance, offers policies that cover all types of damage that could happen to your house; while these policies are increasingly tailored price-wise to different types of risk, there’s no chance a homeowner would experience a climate disaster not covered by their existing policies. But it’s hard, he says, to see the US system getting the wholesale overhaul it needs, given how long the piecemeal system has been in place.

“I sound so pessimistic,” he said. “I’m normally an optimistic person.”

[ngdrb]

Positives about Joe Biden and Negatives about Donald Trump

Positives about Joe Biden

Over the years, Joe Biden has demonstrated an evolution on key issues. Notably, on criminal justice, he has moved far from his much-criticized "tough-on-crime" position of the 1990s. His proposed policies aim to reduce incarceration, address disparities in the justice system, and rehabilitate released prisoners .

Accomplishments: Throughout his extensive political career, Joe Biden has dedicated himself to serving the American people. As a U.S. Senator and Vice President alongside Barack Obama, he has been involved in various initiatives and policies aimed at fighting for Americans .

Leadership and Resilience: Despite facing challenges and uncertainties, President Biden has demonstrated resilience and leadership. His administration has achieved significant milestones, such as the passage of the infrastructure bill, which had been a longstanding goal for previous administrations.

Public Perception: Joe Biden's favorability ratings have been relatively positive, with a net favorability rating of +9 points in recent high-quality live interview polls. His favorability rating is above his unfavorable rating in almost all polls, reflecting a generally positive public perception .

Health and Vigor: Despite facing health challenges, including testing positive for COVID-19, President Biden has shown vigor and determination in fulfilling his duties as the head of state.

Likability and Personal Conduct: According to a Pew Research Center study, voters are more likely to view Joe Biden as warm and likeable compared to Donald Trump. A larger percentage of voters give Biden warm ratings, with about one-in-three voters expressing intensely positive feelings about him .

Accomplishments: President Biden has outperformed Trump on various fronts, including inequality, green spending, and crime. His third year in office was marked by an economy that remained resilient despite challenges like inflation and surging borrowing costs.

Personal Qualities: Despite a decline in public impressions of Biden's personal qualities, he is still perceived as able to manage government effectively. Additionally, a significant percentage of voters believe that Biden cares about the needs of ordinary people.

In summary: Joe Biden's presidency has been considered highly positive due to several key factors. His administration managed to implement significant legislation aimed at economic recovery, infrastructure development, and climate change mitigation. Biden also re-established international alliances and restored a sense of stability and decorum to the presidency. His efforts in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, including successful vaccination campaigns, were pivotal in saving lives and reviving the economy.

Negatives about Donald Trump

Donald Trump's presidency has been marked by various controversies and criticisms, as evidenced by a range of factors and public opinion.

Worker Safety and Health: The Trump administration has been criticized for disregarding negative impacts on worker safety and health, such as proposing rules that could endanger young workers and patients.

Handling of Race Relations: Trump received negative marks for his handling of race relations, with a majority of adults expressing concerns about his approach and the divisions along racial, ethnic, and partisan lines.

COVID-19 Response: Trump's legacy has been defined by the controversial handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, with widespread criticism of his administration's response to the crisis.

Controversial Statements and Actions: Throughout his political career, Trump has been associated with a series of controversial statements and actions, including derogatory remarks about immigrants and divisive rhetoric.

Erosion of Democratic Institutions: Trump has been criticized for questioning the legitimacy of democratic institutions, including the free press, federal judiciary, and the electoral process, leading to concerns about the erosion of democratic norms.

Tax and Financial Practices: Trump's financial practices, including tax-related issues and potential conflicts of interest, have been the subject of scrutiny and criticism.

Policy Priorities: Critics argue that Trump's policy priorities have favored corporations and the wealthiest few at the expense of other segments of the population.

Public Perception: Public opinion reflects stronger negative views on the potential downsides of a Trump presidency, with concerns about his personality traits, views on immigration, and the economy.

In summary, Donald Trump's presidency has been marked by a range of controversies and criticisms, including concerns about worker safety, race relations, the COVID-19 response, controversial statements, erosion of democratic institutions, financial practices, policy priorities, and public perception. These factors have contributed to a complex and divisive public perception of his presidency.

[foreverlogical]

We have been seeing numerous stories in the media about how people support Donald Trump because he did such a great job with the economy. Obviously, people can believe whatever they want about the world, but it is worth reminding people what the world actually looked like when Trump left office (kicking and screaming) and Biden stepped into the White House.

Trump’s Legacy: Mass Unemployment

The economy had largely shut down in the spring of 2020 because of the pandemic. It was still very far from fully reopening at the point of the transition.

In January of 2021, the unemployment rate was 6.4 percent, up from 3.5 percent before the pandemic hit at the start of the year. A more striking figure than the unemployment rate was the employment rate, the percentage of the population that was working. This had fallen from 61.1 percent to 57.4 percent, a level that was lower than the low point of the Great Recession.

The number of people employed in January of 2021 was nearly 8 million people below what it had been before the pandemic. We see the same story if we look at the measure of jobs in the Bureau of Labor Statistics establishment survey. The number of jobs was down by more than 9.4 million from the pre-pandemic level.

We were also not on a clear path toward regaining these jobs rapidly. The economy actually lost 268,000 jobs in December of 2020. The average rate of job creation in the last three months of the Trump administration was just 163,000.

What the World Looked Like When Donald Trump Left Office

In the fourth quarter of 2020 the economy was still being shaped in a very big way by the pandemic. Most of the closures mandated at the start of the pandemic had been lifted, but most people were not conducting their lives as if the pandemic had gone away. We can see this very clearly in the consumption data.

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis and author’s calculations.

The figure above shows the falloff in consumption between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the fourth quarter of 2020 in some of the areas hardest hit by the pandemic. While overall consumption was down just 0.8 percent, there has been an enormous shift from services to goods.

Inflation-adjusted spending at restaurants was down by 21.5 percent, and much of this spending went for picking up food rather than sit-down meals. Spending at bars was down 47.7 percent. Spending at hotels and motels was down by 43.8 percent as people had hugely cut back travel. Air travel was down 52.4 percent.

Spending on football games, baseball games, and sports events was down by 68.3 percent. Spending on live concerts and other entertainment was down a bit less, at 67.4 percent. And movie going was down 92.7 percent.

The Story of Cheap Gas

Donald Trump and his supporters have often boasted about the cheap gas we had when he was in office. This is true. Gas prices did fall below $2.00 a gallon in the spring of 2020 when the economy was largely shut down, although they had risen above $2.30 a gallon by the time Trump left office. The cause of low prices was hardly a secret, demand in the U.S. and around the world had collapsed. In the fourth quarter of 2020 gas consumption was still 12.5 percent below where it had been before the pandemic.

In fact, gas prices likely would have been even lower in this period if not for Trump’s actions, which he boasted about at the time. Trump claimed to have worked a deal with Russia and OPEC to slash production and keep gas prices from falling further. The sharp cutbacks in production were a major factor in the high prices when the economy began to normalize after President Biden came into office since oil production cannot be instantly restarted.

The End of the Trump Economy Was a Sad Story

Donald Trump handed President Biden an incredibly damaged economy at the start of 2021. People can rightfully say that the problems were due to the pandemic, not Trump’s mismanagement, but the impact of the pandemic did not end on January 21. The problems associated with the pandemic were the main reason the United States, like every other wealthy country, suffered a major bout of inflation in 2021 and 2022.

It is often said that people don’t care about causes, they just care about results. This is entirely plausible, but the results in the last year of the Trump administration were truly horrible by almost any measure.

It may be the case that people are more willing to forgive Trump for the damage the pandemic did to the economy than Biden, but that is not an explanation based on the reality in people’s lives, or “lived experience” to use the fashionable term.

That would mean that for some reason people recognize and forgive Trump for the difficult circumstances he faced as a result of the pandemic, but they don’t with Biden. It would be worth asking why that could be the case.    

[sundusbhattiportfolio]

Sterling Heights: A Growing Suburban Hub in Michigan

Sterling Heights, Michigan, is a city that continues to evolve, with steady population growth, rising incomes, and a shifting demographic landscape. As the fourth-largest city in Michigan, it plays a significant role in Macomb County’s urban development, offering a mix of residential stability, economic opportunities, and strategic infrastructure.

By analyzing population trends, housing shifts, and income changes from 2014 to 2019, we can better understand Sterling Heights’ strengths and challenges as it moves toward 2040. Compared to its neighboring cities—Warren, Troy, and Clinton Township—Sterling Heights presents a unique case of economic resilience and suburban expansion.

A Brief History of Sterling Heights

Originally a rural farming community, Sterling Heights transitioned into a suburban city during the post-World War II era, as Detroit residents moved to the suburbs. Incorporated as a city in 1968, it quickly became a key player in southeast Michigan’s economy, benefiting from its proximity to Detroit and the automotive industry.

Strategically located along the Clinton River, with access to major highways (I-75, I-94, and I-696), Sterling Heights has become a desirable destination for both residents and businesses. Today, its continued growth suggests an attractive housing market and strong economic foundation.

Sterling Heights vs. Neighboring Cities: Key Demographic Trends (2014-2019)

1️⃣ Population Growth: A City on the Rise

Unlike nearby Warren and Clinton Township, which saw population declines, Sterling Heights experienced a slight population increase, growing by 700 residents (0.53%) between 2014 and 2019.

📈 Troy also grew (by 1.16%), but unlike Sterling Heights, it saw a drop in housing units. This suggests that while Troy remains attractive, it may face challenges in expanding its housing capacity.

📉 Warren and Clinton Township both lost residents, indicating possible suburban migration trends or economic challenges affecting these communities.

2️⃣ Housing & Household Trends: Expanding Options for Residents

🏠 Sterling Heights increased both housing units (+1.49%) and total households (+3.49%), aligning with Macomb County’s overall housing expansion.

📉 Warren and Clinton Township, however, experienced a loss in housing units and households, suggesting possible declining demand or aging housing stock.

📉 Troy had fewer housing units but saw an increase in households, indicating a shift toward higher occupancy rates or more multi-family housing options.

3️⃣ Median Income: Economic Strength Despite Inflation

💰 Sterling Heights showed the highest median income growth, rising from $59,011 in 2014 to $67,238 in 2019 (a 13.95% increase). Adjusted for inflation, the real increase was 5.89%.

📉 Warren, Troy, and Clinton Township all saw income declines when inflation was factored in, indicating regional economic challenges.

📈 Macomb County as a whole saw a strong 27.65% income increase (18.68% inflation-adjusted), suggesting that Sterling Heights is contributing significantly to the county’s overall economic resilience.

Who’s Moving In & Who’s Moving Out? Analyzing Age Trends

🔹 Young adults (20-24) decreased by 30.4%, possibly due to college attendance or job relocation. 🔹 The 25-34 age group grew by 16.5%, suggesting Sterling Heights is attracting young professionals. 🔹 The 35-54 age group declined, indicating that some middle-aged professionals may be relocating. 🔹 Older residents (55-59) increased significantly, likely due to aging Baby Boomers.

📉 The slight decrease in the oldest age groups suggests that Sterling Heights may need more senior-friendly amenities and healthcare options to retain aging residents.

What’s Next for Sterling Heights? Projections for 2040

Using three forecasting methods, projections for Sterling Heights’ 2040 population suggest continued modest growth:

✅ SEMCOG Projection: 140,404 residents ✅ Average Annual Absolute Change (AAAC): 140,791 residents ✅ Growth Share Method: 139,485 residents

📌 The AAAC method aligns best with regional trends, reinforcing Sterling Heights’ steady expansion.

What This Means for Urban Planning & Policy

As Sterling Heights continues to evolve, urban planners must address key demographic trends to ensure sustainable, inclusive growth.

🏡 Housing Diversity is Key – With more young professionals and smaller households, the city should prioritize affordable, mixed-use housing options to meet future demand.

💼 Sustaining Economic Growth – Policies should support local businesses, attract new industries, and enhance job opportunities to maintain income growth and economic resilience.

👵 Senior-Friendly Infrastructure – Expanding healthcare, accessible housing, and public transit could help retain aging residents and maintain community stability.

📊 Smart Growth Strategies – Continued data-driven planning can help Sterling Heights manage growth effectively while ensuring it remains an attractive place to live and work.

Final Thoughts: Sterling Heights as a Model for Sustainable Suburban Growth

Sterling Heights has positioned itself as one of Michigan’s strongest suburban communities, balancing economic development, housing expansion, and demographic shifts. While challenges remain—such as retaining younger residents and addressing income disparities—its steady growth and economic resilience set it apart from neighboring cities.

As we look toward 2040, the city has an opportunity to build on its strengths, ensuring that growth is inclusive, sustainable, and beneficial for all residents.

[coingabbarnew]

Why Crypto Market Is Down Today: Is FOMC Meeting 2025 the Reason?

The crypto market is down today, and many experts believe the upcoming FOMC Meeting 2025 could be a major factor behind the decline. Investors are reacting cautiously to potential decisions on interest rates, inflation control, and monetary policy, which can significantly impact risk assets like cryptocurrencies. Market uncertainty often leads to volatility, with traders adjusting their positions in anticipation of economic shifts. To know more- Crypto crash

[olden-towne]

Our inflation was caused by external factors (namely covid wrecking supply lines and a major oil producer getting sanctioned for declaring war on a major global breadbasket) not by Biden era economic policy, and we are currently on our way out of said inflationary period with a soft landing. Do you realize how impressive that is? For the most part, the only way to escape an inflationary period is to plunge the economy into recession, and we're on our way out of it with unemployment at a record low.

No, "Bidenomics" is not causing inflation.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Christian Pax at Vox:

Is Donald Trump on track to win a historic share of voters of color in November’s presidential election? On the surface, it’s one of the most confounding questions of the Trump years in American politics. Trump — and the Republican Party in his thrall — has embraced anti-immigrant policies and proposals, peddled racist stereotypes, and demonized immigrants. So why does it look like he might win over and hold the support of greater numbers of nonwhite voters than the Republican Party of years past? In poll after poll, he’s hitting or exceeding the levels of support he received in 2020 from Latino and Hispanic voters. He’s primed to make inroads among Asian American voters, whose Democratic loyalty has gradually been declining over the last few election cycles. And the numbers he’s posting with Black voters suggest the largest racial realignment in an election since the signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

There are a plethora of explanations for this shift, but first, some points of clarification. The pro-Trump shift is concentrated among Hispanic and Latino voters, though it has appeared to be spreading to parts of the Black and Asian American electorate. Second, things have changed since Vice President Kamala Harris took over the Democratic ticket in late July. Polling confirms that Harris has posted significant improvements among nonwhite voters, young voters, Democrats, and suburban voters. In other words, Harris has managed to revive the party’s standing with its base, suggesting that a part of Trump’s gains were due to unique problems that Biden had with these groups of voters. Thus, it’s not entirely clear to what extent this great racial realignment, as some have described the Trump-era phenomenon, will manifest itself in November.

[...]

Why? Putting aside environmental factors and shifts in the American electorate that are happening independent of the candidates, there are a few theories to explain how Trump has uniquely weakened political polarization along the lines of race and ethnicity. 1) Trump has successfully associated himself with a message of economic nostalgia, heightening nonwhite Americans’ memories of the pre-Covid economy in contrast to the period of inflation we’re now exiting. 2) Trump and his campaign have also zeroed in specifically on outreach and messaging to nonwhite men as part of their larger focus on appealing to male voters. 3) Trump and his party have taken advantage of a confluence of social factors, including messaging on immigration and cultural issues, to shore up support from conservative voters of color who have traditionally voted for Democrats or not voted at all.

[...]

Theory 1: Effective campaigning on the economy

Trump’s loudest message — the one that gets the most headlines — is his bombastic attacks on immigrants and his pledge to conduct mass deportations. His most successful appeal to voters, though, which he has held on to despite an improving economy under Biden, is economic. Trump claims to have presided over a time of broad and magnificent prosperity, arguing that there was a Trump economic renaissance before Biden bungled it. That pitch doesn’t comport with reality, but it may be resonating with voters who disproportionately prioritize economic concerns in casting their votes, particularly Latino and Asian American voters. Polling suggests that voters at large remember the Trump-era economy fondly and view Trump’s policies more favorably than Biden’s. Black and Latino voters in particular may have more negative memories about Biden and Democrats’ economic stewardship because they experienced worse rates of inflation��than white Americans and Asian Americans did during 2021 and 2022.

[...]

Theory 2: Direct appeals to nonwhite men

The political realignment of women voters has been one of the major stories of 2024; the gender gap in American politics exploded in 2016, took a break in 2020, and seems like it’s about to be historic in 2024, with a huge pro-Democrat shift among women. At the same time, though, the rightward drift of men, including men of color, is a quiet undercurrent that may end up explaining what happened if Trump wins in November. Plenty of theories have been raised in the past about what kind of appeal Trump might have specifically to men and to men of color: Does his businessman persona resonate with upwardly mobile, financially aspirational men? Is there a “macho” appeal there for Hispanic men? Could his gritty, outsider, everyman posturing and brash rhetoric resonate with Black and Latino men, particularly those living in traditionally Democratic cities?

[...]

Theory 3: Championing conservative social issues

Trump and the GOP may also have found the right social issues to emphasize and campaign on in order to exploit some of the cultural divides between conservative and moderate nonwhite voters, and liberal white voters who also make up part of the Democratic base (in addition to liberal nonwhite voters). In 2021 and 2022, that looked like fearmongering on gender identity and crime, playing up concerns over affirmative action, and campaigning on the overturning of Roe v Wade. In 2023 and 2024, the Trump focus has shifted strongly toward immigration, an issue that has divided the Democratic coalition as hostility toward immigration has grown. That’s true even for Latino and Hispanic voters — long seen as being the voting group most amenable to a pro-immigrant, Democratic message — and it’s being used as a wedge issue by Republicans among Black voters as well.

Though it was seen as a gaffe, Trump’s “black jobs” comment during the first presidential debate got to this tension — the idea of migrants taking jobs, resources, and opportunities from non-white citizens. Florida Republican Rep. Byron Donalds, one of Trump’s go-to Black surrogates, explained the argument to me like this: “If you’re a Black man, Hispanic man, white man, you’re working hard every day, and the money you earn doesn’t go as far. That hurts your family, that hurts your kids. So they look at this situation, this immigration problem. People are saying, ‘Wait a minute. Why are illegal aliens getting food, getting shelter, getting an education, while my family and my child is struggling. It’s not right, and it’s not fair.’” And for Asian American voters, now the fastest growing ethnic segment of the electorate, immigration is also becoming a wedge issue, Zarsadiaz told me. “This feeling, ‘I’ve waited my turn, I waited my time’ — there’s long been Latino and Asian American immigrants who have felt this way. The assumption has long been that if you’re an immigrant, you must be very liberal on immigration, and that’s definitely not the case,” Zarsadiaz said. “Some of the staunchest critics of immigration, especially on amnesty or Dreamers, are immigrants themselves, and with Asian Americans that’s an issue that has been drawing more voters to Trump and Trumpism — those immigrant voters who feel like they’re being wronged.” Democrats are now moderating on immigration, but only after years of moving left. And that shift left has been true on a range of issues, contributing to another part of this theory of Trump’s gains: that Democrats have pushed conservative or moderate nonwhite Americans away as they embraced beliefs more popular with white, college-educated, and suburban voters. The political scientist Ruy Teixeira and Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini have been theorizing for a while now that a disjuncture over social issues in general — and Trump’s seizure of these issues — has complicated the idea that Democrats would benefit from greater numbers and rates of participation from nonwhite America. It may explain why conservative and moderate voters of color, who may have voted for Democrats in the past, are now realigning with the Republican Party.

[...]

There are signs that some of this shift may be happening independently of Trump. It could be a product of the growing diversification of America, upward mobility and changing understandings of class, and growing educational divides. For example, as rates of immigration change and the share of US-born Latino and Asian Americans grows, their partisan loyalties may continue to change. Those born closer to the immigrant experience may have had more of a willingness to back the party seen as more welcoming of immigrants, but as generations get further away from that experience, racial and ethnic identity may become less of a factor in the development of political thinking.

Concepts of racial identity and memory are also changing — younger Black Americans, for example, have less of a tie to the Civil Rights era — potentially contributing to less strong political polarization among Black and Latino people in the US independently of any given candidate — and creating more persuadable voters in future elections. At the same time, younger generations are increasingly identifying as independents or outside of the two-party paradigm — a change in loyalty that stands to hurt Democrats first, since Democrats tend to do better with younger voters.

Vox explores how Donald Trump made inroads with a portion of the POC vote this election: young men of color.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Topics: health care, monopoly

In a recent article for Tikkun, Dr. Arnold Relman argued that the versions of health care reform currently proposed by “progressives” all primarily involve financing health care and expanding coverage to the uninsured rather than addressing the way current models of service delivery make it so expensive. Editing out all the pro forma tut-tutting of “private markets,” the substance that’s left is considerable:

What are those inflationary forces? . . . [M]ost important among them are the incentives in the payment and organization of medical care that cause physicians, hospitals and other medical care facilities to focus at least as much on income and profit as on meeting the needs of patients. . . . The incentives in such a system reward and stimulate the delivery of more services. That is why medical expenditures in the U.S. are so much higher than in any other country, and are rising more rapidly. . . . Physicians, who supply the services, control most of the decisions to use medical resources. . . . The economic incentives in the medical market are attracting the great majority of physicians into specialty practice, and these incentives, combined with the continued introduction of new and more expensive technology, are a major factor in causing inflation of medical expenditures. Physicians and ambulatory care and diagnostic facilities are largely paid on a piecework basis for each item of service provided.

As a health care worker, I have personally witnessed this kind of mutual log-rolling between specialists and the never-ending addition of tests to the bill without any explanation to the patient. The patient simply lies in bed and watches an endless parade of unknown doctors poking their heads in the door for a microsecond, along with an endless series of lab techs drawing body fluids for one test after another that’s “been ordered,” with no further explanation. The post-discharge avalanche of bills includes duns from two or three dozen doctors, most of whom the patient couldn’t pick out of a police lineup. It’s the same kind of quid pro quo that takes place in academia, with professors assigning each other’s (extremely expensive and copyrighted) texts and systematically citing each other’s works in order to game their stats in the Social Sciences Citation Index. (I was also a grad assistant once.) You might also consider Dilbert creator Scott Adams’s account of what happens when you pay programmers for the number of bugs they fix.

One solution to this particular problem is to have a one-to-one relationship between the patient and a general practitioner on retainer. That’s how the old “lodge practice” worked. (See David Beito’s “Lodge Doctors and the Poor,” The Freeman, May 1994).

But that’s illegal, you know. In New York City, John Muney recently introduced an updated version of lodge practice: the AMG Medical Group, which for a monthly premium of $79 and a flat office fee of $10 per visit provides a wide range of services (limited to what its own practitioners can perform in-house). But because AMG is a fixed-rate plan and doesn’t charge more for “unplanned procedures,” the New York Department of Insurance considers it an unlicensed insurance policy. Muney may agree, unwillingly, to a settlement arranged by his lawyer in which he charges more for unplanned procedures like treatment for a sudden ear infection. So the State is forcing a modern-day lodge practitioner to charge more, thereby keeping the medical and insurance cartels happy—all in the name of “protecting the public.” How’s that for irony?

Regarding expensive machinery, I wonder how much of the cost is embedded rent on patents or regulatorily mandated overhead. I’ll bet if you removed all the legal barriers that prevent a bunch of open-source hardware hackers from reverse-engineering a homebrew version of it, you could get an MRI machine with a twentyfold reduction in cost. I know that’s the case in an area I’m more familiar with: micromanufacturing technology. For example, the RepRap—a homebrew, open-source 3-D printer—costs roughly $500 in materials to make, compared to tens of thousands for proprietary commercial versions.

More generally, the system is racked by artificial scarcity, as editor Sheldon Richman observed in an interview a few months back. For example, licensing systems limit the number of practitioners and arbitrarily impose levels of educational overhead beyond the requirements of the procedures actually being performed.

Libertarians sometimes—and rightly—use “grocery insurance” as an analogy to explain medical price inflation: If there were such a thing as grocery insurance, with low deductibles, to provide third-party payments at the checkout register, people would be buying a lot more rib-eye and porterhouse steaks and a lot less hamburger.

The problem is we’ve got a regulatory system that outlaws hamburger and compels you to buy porterhouse if you’re going to buy anything at all. It’s a multiple-tier finance system with one tier of service. Dental hygienists can’t set up independent teeth-cleaning practices in most states, and nurse-practitioners are required to operate under a physician’s “supervision” (when he’s out golfing). No matter how simple and straightforward the procedure, you can’t hire someone who’s adequately trained just to perform the service you need; you’ve got to pay amortization on a full med school education and residency.

Drug patents have the same effect, increasing the cost per pill by up to 2,000 percent. They also have a perverse effect on drug development, diverting R&D money primarily into developing “me, too” drugs that tweak the formulas of drugs whose patents are about to expire just enough to allow repatenting. Drug-company propaganda about high R&D costs, as a justification for patents to recoup capital outlays, is highly misleading. A major part of the basic research for identifying therapeutic pathways is done in small biotech startups, or at taxpayer expense in university laboratories, and then bought up by big drug companies. The main expense of the drug companies is the FDA-imposed testing regimen—and most of that is not to test the version actually marketed, but to secure patent lockdown on other possible variants of the marketed version. In other words, gaming the patent system grossly inflates R&D spending.

The prescription medicine system, along with state licensing of pharmacists and Drug Enforcement Administration licensing of pharmacies, is another severe restraint on competition. At the local natural-foods cooperative I can buy foods in bulk, at a generic commodity price; even organic flour, sugar, and other items are usually cheaper than the name-brand conventional equivalent at the supermarket. Such food cooperatives have their origins in the food-buying clubs of the 1970s, which applied the principle of bulk purchasing. The pharmaceutical licensing system obviously prohibits such bulk purchasing (unless you can get a licensed pharmacist to cooperate).

I work with a nurse from a farming background who frequently buys veterinary-grade drugs to treat her family for common illnesses without paying either Big Pharma’s markup or the price of an office visit. Veterinary supply catalogs are also quite popular in the homesteading and survivalist movements, as I understand. Two years ago I had a bad case of poison ivy and made an expensive office visit to get a prescription for prednisone. The next year the poison ivy came back; I’d been weeding the same area on the edge of my garden and had exactly the same symptoms as before. But the doctor’s office refused to give me a new prescription without my first coming in for an office visit, at full price—for my own safety, of course. So I ordered prednisone from a foreign online pharmacy and got enough of the drug for half a dozen bouts of poison ivy—all for less money than that office visit would have cost me.

Of course people who resort to these kinds of measures are putting themselves at serious risk of harassment from law enforcement. But until 1914, as Sheldon Richman pointed out (“The Right to Self-Treatment,” Freedom Daily, January 1995), “adult citizens could enter a pharmacy and buy any drug they wished, from headache powders to opium.”

The main impetus to creating the licensing systems on which artificial scarcity depends came from the medical profession early in the twentieth century. As described by Richman:

Accreditation of medical schools regulated how many doctors would graduate each year. Licensing similarly metered the number of practitioners and prohibited competitors, such as nurses and paramedics, from performing services they were perfectly capable of performing. Finally, prescription laws guaranteed that people would have to see a doctor to obtain medicines they had previously been able to get on their own.

The medical licensing cartels were also the primary force behind the move to shut down lodge practice, mentioned above.

In the case of all these forms of artificial scarcity, the government creates a “honey pot” by making some forms of practice artificially lucrative. It’s only natural, under those circumstances, that health care business models gravitate to where the money is.

Health care is a classic example of what Ivan Illich, in Tools for Conviviality, called a “radical monopoly.” State-sponsored crowding out makes other, cheaper (but often more appropriate) forms of treatment less usable, and renders cheaper (but adequate) treatments artificially scarce. Artificially centralized, high-tech, and skill-intensive ways of doing things make it harder for ordinary people to translate their skills and knowledge into use-value. The State’s regulations put an artificial floor beneath overhead cost, so that there’s a markup of several hundred percent to do anything; decent, comfortable poverty becomes impossible.

A good analogy is subsidies to freeways and urban sprawl, which make our feet less usable and raise living expenses by enforcing artificial dependence on cars. Local building codes primarily reflect the influence of building contractors, so competition from low-cost unconventional techniques (T-slot and other modular designs, vernacular materials like bales and papercrete, and so on) is artificially locked out of the market. Charles Johnson described the way governments erect barriers to people meeting their own needs and make comfortable subsistence artificially costly, in the specific case of homelessness, in “Scratching By: How the Government Creates Poverty as We Know It” (The Freeman, December 2007).

The major proposals for health care “reform” that went before Congress would do little or nothing to address the institutional sources of high cost. As Jesse Walker argued at Reason.com, a 100 percent single-payer system, far from being a “radical” solution,

would still accept the institutional premises of the present medical system. Consider the typical American health care transaction. On one side of the exchange you’ll have one of an artificially limited number of providers, many of them concentrated in those enormous, faceless institutions called hospitals. On the other side, making the purchase, is not a patient but one of those enormous, faceless institutions called insurers. The insurers, some of which are actual arms of the government and some of which merely owe their customers to the government’s tax incentives and shape their coverage to fit the government’s mandates, are expected to pay all or a share of even routine medical expenses. The result is higher costs, less competition, less transparency, and, in general, a system where the consumer gets about as much autonomy and respect as the stethoscope. Radical reform would restore power to the patient. Instead, the issue on the table is whether the behemoths we answer to will be purely public or public-private partnerships. [“Obama is No Radical,” September 30, 2009]

I’m a strong advocate of cooperative models of health care finance, like the Ithaca Health Alliance (created by the same people, including Paul Glover, who created the Ithaca Hours local currency system), or the friendly societies and mutuals of the nineteenth century described by writers like Pyotr Kropotkin and E. P. Thompson. But far more important than reforming finance is reforming the way delivery of service is organized.

Consider the libertarian alternatives that might exist. A neighborhood cooperative clinic might keep a doctor of family medicine or a nurse practitioner on retainer, along the lines of the lodge-practice system. The doctor might have his med school debt and his malpractice premiums assumed by the clinic in return for accepting a reasonable upper middle-class salary.

As an alternative to arbitrarily inflated educational mandates, on the other hand, there might be many competing tiers of professional training depending on the patient’s needs and ability to pay. There might be a free-market equivalent of the Chinese “barefoot doctors.” Such practitioners might attend school for a year and learn enough to identify and treat common infectious diseases, simple traumas, and so on. For example, the “barefoot doctor” at the neighborhood cooperative clinic might listen to your chest, do a sputum culture, and give you a round of Zithro for your pneumonia; he might stitch up a laceration or set a simple fracture. His training would include recognizing cases that were clearly beyond his competence and calling in a doctor for backup when necessary. He might provide most services at the cooperative clinic, with several clinics keeping a common M.D. on retainer for more serious cases. He would be certified by a professional association or guild of his choice, chosen from among competing guilds based on its market reputation for enforcing high standards. (That’s how competing kosher certification bodies work today, without any government-defined standards). Such voluntary licensing bodies, unlike state licensing boards, would face competition—and hence, unlike state boards, would have a strong market incentive to police their memberships in order to maintain a reputation for quality.

The clinic would use generic medicines (of course, since that’s all that would exist in a free market). Since local juries or arbitration bodies would likely take a much more common-sense view of the standards for reasonable care, there would be far less pressure for expensive CYA testing and far lower malpractice premiums.

Basic care could be financed by monthly membership dues, with additional catastrophic-care insurance (cheap and with a high deductible) available to those who wanted it. The monthly dues might be as cheap as or even cheaper than Dr. Muney’s. It would be a no-frills, bare-bones system, true enough—but to the 40 million or so people who are currently uninsured, it would be a pretty damned good deal.

[dhaaruni]

I get that there’s a multitude of factors that led to both Trump and Claudia Sheinbaum being elected at roughly the same time, but I have to wonder what caused the majority of Latino men here to vote for Trump while Sheinbaum won comfortably in Mexico.

Of course Mexico is one nation in Central/Latin America and doesn’t determine the political attitudes of Latin Americans everywhere, but I understand many theorize that the “macho” look of Trump had a hand in many Latino men voting for him. It’s just a little wild to me that a progressive woman won in Mexico when it’s been a rough election cycle for progressives generally across the globe. Perhaps it’s more of the post-Covid ire that people hold towards incumbent administrations more than anything.

Well for one thing Claudia Sheinbaum’s election was almost certainly rigged by AMLO's government to ensure his chosen successor would win (listen to this episode of The Bulwark for more information), which the United States government agreed to turn a blind eye to it in exchange for AMLO blocking migrants from coming for the US-Mexico border during the election year. Obviously, that didn't work out for Democrats but that's one major reason the number of asylum seekers has plummeted since 2023. Without Mexico's explicit cooperation, that would be impossible!

Also, for another thing, Sheinbaum might be a leftist but aside from the fact she's socially conservative (she literally avoids all questions about abortion and LGBT rights), the only reason left-wing economic populism can work in Latin America but not the United States is simply because Latin America is a whole lot poorer and the US is just too wealthy and prosperous to be economically leftist.

And, generally speaking, I think that dismissing Kamala Harris losing as just about inflation and global anger at incumbents ignores that Trump really shouldn't have won given the campaign he ran (see: swaying awkwardly on stage with the puppy-killing governor of South Dakota and his virulently racist surrogates) but he swept every swing state, won the popular vote, and improved in blue states, and especially blue cities, often by double digits. Grace Meng outperformed Harris by 27.8% in her majority Asian New York City district! Trump didn't just squeak by, Democrats lost major ground with our longstanding base and it's a real indictment on the party as a whole.

Does that make sense?

[unpluggedfinancial]

The Psychological Impact of Bitcoin on Traditional Investors

The rise of Bitcoin has not only disrupted financial systems but also had a profound psychological impact on traditional investors. For those accustomed to the well-trodden paths of stocks, bonds, and real estate, Bitcoin represents a paradigm shift that challenges their deeply held beliefs about value, risk, and the nature of money itself.

Traditional investors have long relied on a framework where value is backed by tangible assets or government authority, and where market movements, while volatile, often follow patterns shaped by economic fundamentals. Enter Bitcoin: an asset that is purely digital, decentralized, and whose value is shaped largely by network effects, market sentiment, and scarcity. For many investors, this has been a source of cognitive dissonance. The idea of trusting an algorithm rather than a central authority or corporate entity can be unsettling, leaving some traditional investors dismissive or outright fearful of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin's volatility has also created a psychological barrier. Traditional investors, especially those trained in risk management, often find it hard to reconcile Bitcoin's dramatic price swings with their approach to wealth preservation. Seeing an asset fluctuate by double-digit percentages in a single day triggers fear, skepticism, and, at times, outright disdain. This volatility stands in stark contrast to the relative predictability of blue-chip stocks or government bonds, making Bitcoin seem more like a gamble than a legitimate investment.

Yet, there's also a growing sense of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) among traditional investors. As institutional players like BlackRock and MicroStrategy have embraced Bitcoin, many who were previously skeptical are beginning to question their stance. The psychological pressure of potentially missing out on a generational opportunity is forcing a reevaluation. For some, this has led to the slow, cautious entry into Bitcoin—often in the form of small allocations, just enough to hedge against the possibility that Bitcoin could indeed become a significant part of the financial future.

The narratives around Bitcoin have also played a major role in shaping its psychological impact on traditional investors. Bitcoin advocates often describe it as "digital gold," a hedge against inflation and a store of value that cannot be manipulated by central banks or governments. This framing has intrigued some traditional investors, particularly in times of economic uncertainty, when fears of inflation or currency devaluation loom large. The appeal of an asset that operates outside of the traditional financial system, immune to government interference, is increasingly compelling for those seeking to diversify their risk.

Moreover, Bitcoin's decentralization challenges the traditional power dynamics of finance. Traditional investors are used to dealing with intermediaries—banks, brokers, and other financial institutions that act as gatekeepers. Bitcoin, however, removes these intermediaries and hands control back to individuals. For some, this is liberating; for others, it is unnerving. The idea of personal responsibility for one's wealth, without the safety nets provided by banks or the regulatory frameworks of traditional finance, can be intimidating. This fear of losing control, or making a mistake without recourse, is a significant psychological hurdle for many traditional investors.

Another psychological factor is the generational divide. Younger investors, more comfortable with technology and less trusting of traditional financial institutions, have been quick to embrace Bitcoin. For older investors, who may have spent decades building wealth through traditional means, Bitcoin's rise can feel like a challenge to their expertise and experience. This generational tension adds another layer of complexity, as traditional investors must confront not only their own biases but also the changing landscape of investor behavior and preferences.

The media's portrayal of Bitcoin also plays into the psychological narrative. Sensational headlines about Bitcoin's meteoric rises and dramatic crashes contribute to a perception of extreme risk. Traditional investors, who are accustomed to a more measured approach to investing, may find these stories off-putting. The media's focus on the speculative aspects of Bitcoin, rather than its underlying technology and potential for financial innovation, often reinforces negative perceptions among those who value stability and predictability in their investments.

Despite these challenges, the psychological journey for many traditional investors is evolving. As they see more institutional adoption, regulatory clarity, and integration of Bitcoin into mainstream financial services, their perception is slowly shifting. Bitcoin is no longer just the domain of tech enthusiasts and libertarians; it is becoming a legitimate asset class that demands consideration. The psychological impact of this shift cannot be understated—it is transforming skepticism into curiosity, and in some cases, into cautious participation.

Ultimately, the psychological impact of Bitcoin on traditional investors is a mix of fear, curiosity, and evolving acceptance. It challenges conventional wisdom, forcing many to confront their biases about what constitutes "real" money and value. The journey from skepticism to understanding is not easy, but as Bitcoin continues to gain traction, it's a journey that more and more traditional investors are beginning to undertake. This journey is not just about financial returns; it is about rethinking the nature of money, value, and the future of the financial system.

[dallasareaopinion]

The campaigns are heading…..?  and other thoughts

I wanted to use a horse racing analogy, you know there headed down the back stretch, rounding the final curve, or headed down the stretch, but I occasionally go to the horse races and I really like them so I didn’t want to taint something fun.

Anyway I was reading an article discussing the paycheck to paycheck people who might vote for Trump since many people feel they were better off under Trump’s administration than Biden’s. And technically they were, but what they do not realize is that mostly a President’s administration is a lagging economic indicator not a leading economic indicator. Of course you need to understand a bit of basic economics to understand where I might be going with this, so what a President does that might influence the economy shows up late in their administration or at the beginning of the next administration.

And in many cases what a President does cannot even be a leading economic indicator, many times circumstances dictate more of what happens and it is how the President responds that effects the economy. Bush wasn’t the direct cause of the 2008 recession, but it fell under his administration so many people blame him for it. Obama reacted accordingly and some of his policies eventually helped the economy, but also the Fed dropping interest rates to historic lows benefitted the perception of some people (Democrats) on how well Obama did. Eventually our economy started growing again and Trump ended up benefitting from that growth. Then Trump cut taxes for the rich, they bought stock like crazy since they had free money with low interest rates and more of it with the tax cuts so the stock market boomed under Trump. The actual economy was good, but stock price growth was stronger than the actual economy.

Then the pandemic happened and even though the stock market did a roller coaster drop then bounced right back again with the continuation of historically low interest rates, the actual economy took a hit, not in growth, but in inflation which occurred as the economy transitioned from Trump to Biden. Trump’s lack of reaction to the pandemic and other factors lead to the high levels of inflation we saw, but since it happened under Biden’s administration many people feel inflation is Biden’s fault. And of course in this election cycle the Republicans are playing this tune to no end. With most people not having majored in economics in college the understanding of all the factors of inflation are easily manipulated.

So for the paycheck to paycheck voter it is easy for them to mistake the economy under Trump and Biden so after all the above I tend to agree with the author’s premise that they might be more likely to vote for Trump than many Democratic operatives want to realize or admit and Trump still has a strong chance of winning the election.

And before you say Biden had a hand in reducing inflation over the last year or so, it was the Fed raising interest rates that also had a stronger affect on inflation than anything Biden did.

And now that inflation is slowing the Fed is thinking of cutting interest rates, which is what they should do, but the Republicans are going to cry foul since it is coincidentally going to happen a month or so before the election. And the Republicans I am predicting will scream loud and hard that the Fed is trying to help the Democrats by lowering interest rates now.  I bet you dimes to donuts and donuts are worth more now because of inflation you will see this messaging from the Republicans next week if interest rates are cut which seems to be likely. It will be all Biden’s doing that interest rates are lowered now and they will twist this more ways than a pretzel to try and make their case.

And even though the policies of both Presidents exacerbated inflation for different reasons, neither is directly responsible for it. Yet tell that to millions of Americans suffering from it right now so again there is going to be way too much of a tendency by Republicans to tie inflation to Biden, too much of them yelling foul when interest rates get lowered, but in the end neither party not sure what to do next for our economy and that is where we stand in the campaign, a bunch of people in Washington touting stuff they only have a partial handle on and blaming the other side for all they don’t have a handle on.

Throw in the hundredth let’s shut down the government threat from the Republicans and all sorts of madness is going to be spouted on the campaign trail for the next 50 or so days with neither party exactly sure what they are doing.

Or you know why Trump and Harris don’t have an economic plan, well…..

because they don’t have a clue.

Other thoughts:

I am not a big fan of class action lawsuits for the same reason most people are mad about them. You hear about grotesquely large sums being touted, yet everyone gets thirty eight cents or whatever. I am saying this because I read about two this weekend and you know the attorneys will make hundreds of millions of dollars, but we all doubt we will get a hundred cents from them. The two I heard about where one about banks and Mastercard and Visa settling for excessive ATM fees that blocked competition and the other for Navient being sued for predatory practices regarding refinancing student loans. Millions of Americans are affected by these suits, but what we will see. Hmmmmmmm

What is going on with right wing women and their looks. You see so many derogatory comments about left wing women with meme pictures spread on right wing social media sites including “X” formerly Twitter (when can we stop saying formerly Twitter?) looking well memeish. Yet what is with Laura Loomer? She looks like a Kimberly Guilfoyle wanna be and ugh, why would she want that look. Both look scary, like some serious technical flaws in a Stepford wife design. Or where the manufacturing of said Stepford wife had serious breakdowns. And I saw a recent picture of Megha Kelly and she looks overly emaciated. What has happened to her? No matter what, I would think some of these right wing social media influencers may want to say something to some of their own before posting anymore comments.

And finally going back to the economics situation above, I have been touting my own ideas to lower the deficit and debt of our country for decades and first put into print for the 2012 election. It isn’t that hard folks.

Cheers

[mariacallous]

The Farm Bill is a critical piece of legislation that reauthorizes the country’s agricultural and nutrition programs about every five years—and the 2024 version is now on legislators’ desks, with some major changes. 

Originally designed to support farmers, the Farm Bill has evolved over time to prioritize nutrition assistance, with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) now comprising 76% of the budget—projected to increase to 84% in the current version. This shift underscores the growing emphasis on addressing food insecurity among low-income Americans, as SNAP currently serves over 42 million individuals, or about 12% of the population.

The 2024 Farm Bill will fund SNAP, agriculture subsidies, and crop insurance through 2029, at a projected cost of $1.5 trillion. However, as the first Farm Bill to exceed $1 trillion, it faces heightened scrutiny as both parties clash over the allocation of funding between SNAP, subsidies, and other key programs.  

The current version of the bill, introduced by the Republican-led House Agriculture Committee, has sparked controversy by proposing a $30 billion cut to SNAP funding over the next decade. This reduction would be achieved by limiting adjustments to the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP)—a low-cost, standardized estimate of the minimum cost of a nutritious diet, used to determine SNAP benefit levels—to inflation rates only.  

The TFP is reevaluated every five years to reflect current food costs. In 2021, the Biden administration reevaluated the TFP to respond to high food costs due to COVID-19 and supply chain issues in the global food industry, resulting in the largest-ever increase in SNAP benefits, totaling $256 billion. Now, Republicans are seeking to restrict future adjustments to reflect only inflation costs, marking the largest SNAP reduction in nearly three decades. But Democrats and researchers argue that such a restriction could have significant impacts on the 42 million SNAP recipients, including 17 million children, 6 million older adults, and 4 million people with disabilities.

Americans face rising food insecurity and barriers in accessing nutritious diets  

The proposed cuts, along with provisions to outsource program operations, could undermine SNAP’s ability to effectively combat food insecurity. This is especially concerning given that food insecurity rates rose to 13.5% of U.S. households in 2023, affecting 18 million families—a statistically significantly increase from 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Food insecurity rates are notably higher for single-parent, female-headed households; Black and Latino or Hispanic households; and households in principal cities and rural areas. In addition, voters are growing increasingly worried about inflation and high food costs, with 70% citing food prices as a major concern. This view is especially pronounced among younger voters, who have been hit hard by a 20% surge in food costs since 2020, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  

In addition to concerns surrounding food insecurity and rising costs, the TFP debate risks being a superficial fix that overlooks deeper, more critical challenges low-income families face in accessing nutritious diets. A USDA study found that 88% of SNAP participants encounter challenges in maintaining a healthy diet, with 61% citing the high cost of healthy foods as a key barrier. Other reasons include a lack of time to prepare meals at home and transportation difficulties in accessing healthy foods.  

Access barriers—combined with broader economic factors such as regional variations in real food prices and other costs of living, shifts in food composition data, changing consumption patterns, and updated dietary guidance—significantly impact low-income households’ ability to maintain affordable, nutritious diets. Addressing such factors is crucial for creating a more sustainable and impactful SNAP program, yet they remain sidelined in favor of quick, inflation-focused approaches that do little to address systemic barriers to healthy food access for vulnerable families.

The proposed $30 billion cut to SNAP funding over the next decade by restricting the USDA’s authority to adjust the TFP beyond inflation rates will have serious and multidimensional challenges for these low-income, food-insecure households. In addition, the bill’s proposal to outsource core SNAP operations to private entities could create complications in the application process and eligibility criteria, while also increasing federal costs by $1 million.  

Notably, the current version of the bill proposes to expand SNAP’s purpose to include the prevention of diet-related chronic diseases. Critics, such as the HEAL (Health, Environment, Agriculture, Labor) Food Alliance, argue that this risks diverting attention away from SNAP’s core mission of reducing food insecurity, and instead shifts the focus to diet-related concerns facing low-income populations. Yet these diet-related concerns are often a result of multifaceted challenges such as stress (or “bandwidth poverty”), food insecurity, and other factors such households face. The current version of the bill also proposes to cut climate-focused conservation efforts introduced by the Inflation Reduction Act. 

Proposed changes to agricultural subsidies have sparked equity concerns 

The proposed Farm Bill aims to reallocate funds by raising price floors for key agricultural commodities such as corn, wheat, and soybeans, while cutting SNAP funding. A large portion of the increased spending is directed toward farm programs and crop insurance—raising concerns about equity and the disproportionate benefits to large, wealthy farms. 

A report from the American Enterprise Institute highlights this disparity, revealing that the top 10% of farms receive 56.4% of all crop insurance subsidies, with the top 5% receiving 36.4%. Since these subsidies are not means-tested—and the level of subsidies is directly proportional to an agri-business’s production levels—the wealthiest and largest businesses capture the most significant share of these benefits. Research from the Environmental Working Group confirms evidence on the concentration of these subsidies toward the wealthiest agri-business owners. They found that between 1995 and 2021, the top 1% of recipients received 27% of the total $478 billion in farm subsidies—underscoring the disproportionate benefits to large-scale, wealthy farmers. Moreover, these subsidies favor a narrow range of commodity crops such as corn, soybeans, wheat, and cotton, which accumulates benefits to white, wealthy farmers while farmers of color receive little support. This inequitable allocation of resources raises important questions about the Farm Bill’s broader social and economic implications.  

The Government Accountability Office and Congressional Budget Office have proposed reforms to the current inequitable structure of these subsidies. Such reforms have the potential to reduce the fiscal deficit while protecting rights of farmers, ensuring food assistance to low-income populations, and maintaining price levels of key commodities. Reforms include implementing income limits on premium subsidies for wealthy farmers, adjusting compensation for insurance companies to reflect market rates, and reducing taxpayer reimbursements for administrative costs.

SNAP benefits aren’t keeping up with the true costs of a healthy diet 

A critical aspect of SNAP that is often overlooked in fiscal policy debates is the economic adequacy of the program’s benefits. There is a growing body of research suggesting that SNAP benefits in their current form are insufficient to cover the “real” cost of a healthy diet. 

In other words, the TFP might not truly reflect the real value of food costs low-income households face. The TFP was originally intended to represent the minimum food expenditure basket that would allow low-income households to avoid food insecurity. It is not necessarily based on the most recent scientific methodologies that factor in food prices, accessibility, and dietary needs.  

Recent evaluations have shown that the TFP often underestimates the cost of a nutritious diet, particularly in areas with higher living costs. An Urban Institute study found that despite food price inflation moderating in 2023, SNAP benefits remained inadequate for covering food costs: By the end of 2023, the average modestly priced meal cost $3.37, which was 19% more than the average maximum SNAP benefit of $2.84. Families with zero net income faced a shortfall of $49.29 per month by the end of the year, with urban areas experiencing a 28% gap between meal costs and SNAP benefits, compared to 17% in rural areas. In the five counties with the largest gaps, the shortfall exceeded 70% throughout the year. 

Recent economic research indicates that current SNAP benefits often fall short of covering the actual cost of a low-budget, healthy diet, with significant variations in benefit adequacy across U.S. regions. Researchers have found that these geographic variations in SNAP purchasing power significantly affect welfare outcomes such as child health and food insecurity. Despite deductions for housing and child care, many regions face much higher real costs of food, and SNAP dollars do not go far in such high-cost areas. To ensure equitable support, social scientists have put forth proposals to index SNAP benefits to local area food prices.   

Therefore, the proposed cuts to SNAP funding risk exacerbating systemic and multidimensional challenges low-income populations already face. Concerns about food insecurity and diet-related chronic diseases are symptomatic of deeper systemic challenges related to health insurance access, stress and bandwidth poverty, access to healthy foods, the higher cost of healthy foods, and structural oligopolies in the American food industry. Research suggests that SNAP inadequacy is linked to worse health outcomes, such as increased risk of obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. Yet instead of focusing on deeper systemic issues, the current Farm Bill proposes a quick fix, Band-Aid solution by proposing to cut SNAP funding further.

Policy recommendations for a stronger Farm Bill 

Despite proposing massive cuts to SNAP, increasing inequitable farm subsidies, and cutting climate funding for conservation efforts, the 2024 Farm Bill does lay out some positive measures. These include raising the income cutoff for SNAP eligibility (the Earned Income Deduction) from 20% to 22% of income, which will ensure more households just at the margin of earned income now have access to SNAP benefits. It proposes to give benefits access to individuals with drug-related convictions, who were previously excluded. Further, it proposes to extend the age limit for high school students on SNAP from 18 to 22 years, allowing students to work without disincentivizing income for eligibility. However, despite these positives, the proposed cuts and other changes could undermine the Farm Bill’s effectiveness in addressing food insecurity and equity concerns in agricultural subsidies.  

The proposed cuts based on restricting SNAP increases to only reflect inflation diverge significantly from academic research underscoring that the TFP should be updated regularly to factor in food prices, consumption patterns, and nutritional guidelines. While this measure could save $29 billion between 2025 and 2033, it will further dampen SNAP’s purchasing power as food costs continue to rise and vary across regions. 

The polarization of the Farm Bill reflects a broader ideological divide over the role of welfare in American society. Republicans have historically advocated for limited assistance and stricter work requirements for SNAP recipients. In contrast, Democrats have historically perceived welfare programs such as SNAP as essential tools for reducing poverty and inequality, and advocated for expanded benefits and more coverage.  

Politicians need to look beyond this ideological gap and focus instead on creating a more equitable and effective Farm Bill that addresses society’s economic and welfare needs. A zero-sum approach that pits agricultural interests against the needs of food-insecure, low-income consumers is not proving to be effective.  

What follows are key policy recommendations for crafting an inclusive and equitable Farm Bill that addresses the economic and welfare needs of vulnerable populations, including low-income households and underrepresented farmers. 

Evidence-based SNAP adjustments: Use scientific methodologies to measure the TFP’s adequacy and issue frequent and regular updates to SNAP benefits. Factors that impact the TFP beyond inflation include other costs of living, regional variations in SNAP adequacy, food consumption patterns, and healthy diet guidelines. 

Index benefits to reflect local economic conditions: Implement regional cost-of-living adjustments to SNAP benefits, which can address disparities in food costs and improve equity across geographic regions.  

Expand access to healthy foods: Invest in initiatives that improve access to healthier food options, such as affordable farmers markets, community gardens, and incentives for retailers in underserved areas to improve food access and support local economies.  

Rebalance agricultural subsidies: Impose income limits on farm subsidies and expand efforts to improve subsidy access for small-scale and BIPOC farmers.   

Integrate climate goals: Allocate funding for climate-resilient agricultural practices and provide financial assistance and incentives to small-scale and BIPOC farmers to invest in such technologies.  

Foster bipartisan collaboration: Encourage cooperation across party lines to create a Farm Bill that balances agricultural support with food assistance—recognizing their interdependence rather than treating them as competing interests. 

Engage stakeholders: Involve farmers, nutrition advocates, and SNAP recipients in the legislative process to ensure policies reflect the needs and realities of those directly impacted. 

The 2024 Farm Bill represents a critical opportunity for Congress to craft a more equitable and inclusive policy that addresses the dual needs of supporting agricultural production as well as nutrition assistance. However, as it currently stands, proposals such as the $30 billion cut to SNAP funding, the shift in focus toward preventing diet-related diseases, and the continued expansion of agricultural subsidies that disproportionately benefit white, wealthy farmers and a limited number of commodity crops risk undermining SNAP’s response to food insecurity and worsening inequality in the agriculture sector. 

Policymakers must look beyond zero-sum dynamics that pit agricultural subsidies against nutrition assistance, when the fundamental issues farmers and low-income households face are symptomatic of deeper systemic inequalities in the economic and welfare structures of fiscal policy. Therefore, rather than continuing to concentrate support in the hands of wealthy, large-scale agricultural producers, the Farm Bill should prioritize uplifting smaller, diverse farmers and ensuring low-income households have the resources they need to access nutritious food. Encouraging small-scale and low-income BIPOC farmers to invest in green technology is also essential, as this would foster more sustainable agricultural practices while supporting communities’ economic growth. At the same time, Congress must ensure that commodity prices remain stable and affordable, preventing further economic burdens on consumers. 

An equitable and welfare-focused Farm Bill would embrace a broader vision—one that balances the needs of both rural farming communities and urban, food-insecure families. By aligning agricultural subsidies with sustainable practices and expanding SNAP’s effectiveness, Congress can craft a policy that not only strengthens food security, but also builds a more just, resilient, and environmentally responsible food system for all Americans.