THE DOCTRINE OF THE N.A.F.T.A. GLOBALIST DEMOCRATS IS TO SERVE THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS WITH ENDLESS WAVES OF INVADING 'CHEAP' LABOR SUBSIDIZED WITH WELFARE FUNDED BY TAXES ON MIDDLE AMERICA.
In many speeches, Mayorkas says he is building a mass migration system to deliver workers to wealthy employers and investors and “equity” to poor foreigners. The nation’s border laws are subordinate to elites’ opinion about “the values of our country,” Mayorkas claims.
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
THE REAL ECONOMY - SEARS AND KMART TO CLOSE MORE STORES
Customers shop at Sears store in Chicago, on May 3, 2018. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Sears is slated to close at least 121 Sears and Kmart stores by January of 2020 across the United States, it was reported.
Business Insider compiled a list of the stores that are closing, saying the report was compiled based on company filings and statements to local media outlets.
The news outlet said that employees at several stores confirmed the Sears is closing down.
Following the latest round of closures, there could be fewer than 300 Kmart and Sears locations around the country.
The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, reported that about a fourth of the 425 Sears and Kmart stores that were brought out of bankruptcy by financier Edward Lampert have closed or are set to close. The Journal cited sources close to the situation.
In announcing closures in August, Sears said more closings are a possibility.
A dismantled sign sits leaning outside a Sears department store one day after it closed as part of multiple store closures by Sears Holdings Corp in Nanuet, New York, on Jan. 7, 2019. (Mike Segar/Reuters)
“Following these steps, we will continue to evaluate our network of Sears and Kmart stores and cannot rule out additional store closures in the near term,” the company said at the time, USA Today reported. “Our goal remains to return the company to profitability and preserve as many jobs as possible in the communities we serve.”
Lampert bought 223 Sears stores and 202 Kmart locations in February, along with the Kenmore and DieHard brands for about $5.2 billion under an entity known as Transform Holdco LLC or Transformco.
The WSJ noted that the firm is still struggling after it was bought out of bankruptcy.
The firm hasn’t commented on the two reports, but it issued a statement to CNN on Tuesday.
“Our new real estate term loan provides us with a far more cost effective and flexible capital structure that will allow us to continue to invest in the growth of Sears, Kmart, our leading service offerings and the Shop Your Way rewards program,” said a statement from the hedge fund that owns Sears. “Our ability to secure financing on these terms demonstrates the confidence of our financial partners and helps position us for future success.”
A Kmart store in a file photo. (AFP/Getty Images)
At the time it came out of bankruptcy, more than 400 Kmart and Sears stores existed, which was down from about 1,000 in 2018.
Lampert, Sears’s majority owner, gave up his CEO title during the bankruptcy filing.
Other Bankruptcies
Several U.S. retailers have filed for bankruptcy over the past two years, including Forever 21 and Toys ‘R’ Us.
Forever 21
The fast-fashion retailer filed late on Sunday to restructure its business and requested approval to close up to 178 U.S. stores. Forever 21 listed both assets and liabilities in the range of $1 billion to $10 billion, according to the court filing.
Payless Shoes
The U.S. discount retailer in February filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the second time, along with its North American subsidiaries. The retailer had said it would close about 2,500 stores in North America and wind down its e-commerce operations.
Toys ‘R’ Us
The toy retailer filed for Chapter 11 in September, hoping to restructure some $5 billion in debt, much of which stemmed from a $6.6 billion leveraged buyout by private equity firms in 2005. It liquidated in 2018, a blow to hundreds of toy makers that sold products to the chain, including Barbie maker Mattel Inc and rival Hasbro Inc.
Radio Shack
The U.S. electronics chain filed for bankruptcy in March for the second time in a little over two years, faced with a challenging retail environment and an unsatisfying partnership with wireless provider Sprint Corp.
Fred’s Inc.
In September, the pharmacy and discount retailer said it filed for Chapter 11, months after the company began shuttering hundreds of unprofitable stores in the United States.
Gymboree
The children’s clothing retailer filed for bankruptcy protection in January, the second in almost two years, and said it would close more than 800 Gymboree and Crazy 8 stores.
HhGregg
The appliances and electronics retailer and its Gregg Appliances Inc unit filed for bankruptcy protection in March, as they continue struggling with declining sales for about the past four years.
Workers Slam Target When Hours Were Cut After Pay Raise
Getty Images
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Workers for retailer Target are criticizing their employer for finding their hours cut, leaving them struggling, even after they received a big pay raise.
In 2017, the department store chain announced that it would raise its minimum wage to $15 per hour, a welcome change for many lower-wage employees. But now that the pay scale has been implemented in most areas, some employees have found a pay cut instead of a raise because they have lost hours in the wake of the new wage increases.
CNN Business interviewed two dozen current and former Target employees including stockers, cashiers, and department managers.
One employee identified as “Heather” said she was given a dollar an hour pay raise, but lost $200 a month after her hours were cut. Heather went from working 40 hours a week to only 20 after the pay raise.
Another employee, Caren Morales, told CNN that she was getting good hours and adequate pay for months after hiring on, but just before her healthcare benefits kicked in, her hours were decimated. Morales said she went from between 30 to 45 hours a week to less than 20.
Morales said she was forced to quit because the job did not even cover the cost of daycare for her daughter.
CNN spoke to others and found similar stories.
A spokesman for Target said that employees are working “approximately the same number of hours as they were last year.” The company also claimed that employees are working more hours than three years ago.
Target did note that some employees are finding their jobs affected by “modernization” as duties evolve in the new era of retailing, especially cashiers who found hours cut after the company introduced an expanded self-checkout section in many locations.
The company also insisted that its workforce has been consistent over the past few years and that the number of employees eligible for healthcare is also holding steady, But the company did not provide any specific statistics to CNN.
The
wealthiest Americans are paying a lower tax rate than all other Americans,
groundbreaking analysis from a pair of economists reveals.
For
the first time on record, the wealthiest 400 Americans in 2018 paid a lower tax
rate than all of the income groups in the United States, research highlighted by
the New York Times from
University of California, Berkeley, economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel
Zucman finds.
The
analysis concludes that the country’s top economic elite are paying lower
federal, state, and local tax rates than the nation’s working and middle class.
Overall, these top 400 wealthy Americans paid just a 23 percent tax rate, which
the Times‘ op-ed
columnist David Leonhardt notes is a combined tax payment of “less than
one-quarter of their total income.”
This
23 percent tax rate for the rich means their rate has been slashed by 47
percentage points since 1950 when their tax rate was 70 percent.
(Screenshot via the New York Times)
The
analysis finds that the 23 percent tax rate for the wealthiest Americans is
less than every other income group in the U.S. — including those earning
working and middle-class incomes, as a Times graphic
shows.
Leonhardt
writes:
For
middle-class and poor families, the picture is different. Federal
income taxes have also declined modestly for these families, but they haven’t
benefited much if at all from the decline in the corporate tax or estate tax. And
they now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social
Security) than in the past. Over all, their taxes have remained fairly flat.
[Emphasis added]
The
report comes as Americans increasingly see a growing divide between the rich
and working class, as the Pew Research Center has found.
Sen.
Josh Hawley (R-MO), the leading economic nationalist in the Senate, has warned
against the Left-Right coalition’s consensus on open trade, open markets, and
open borders, a plan that he has called an economy that works solely for the
elite.
“The
same consensus says that we need to pursue and embrace economic globalization
and economic integration at all costs — open markets, open borders, open trade,
open everything no matter whether it’s actually good for American national
security or for American workers or for American families or for American
principles … this is the elite consensus that has governed our politics
for too long and what it has produced is a politics of elite ambition,”
Hawley said in an
August speech in the Senate.
That
increasing worry of rapid income inequality is only further justified by
economic research showing a rise
in servant-class jobs, strong economic recovery for elite zip codes but
not for working-class regions, and skyrocketing wage growth for the billionaire
class at 15 times the rate of
other Americans.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on
Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Census Says U.S. Income Inequality Grew ‘Significantly’ in 2018
(Bloomberg) -- Income inequality in America widened
“significantly” last year, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report published
Thursday.
A measure of inequality known as the Gini index rose to 0.485
from 0.482 in 2017, according to the bureau’s survey of household finances. The
measure compares incomes at the top and bottom of the distribution, and a score
of 0 is perfect equality.
The 2018 reading is the first to incorporate the impact of
President Donald Trump’s end-2017 tax bill, which was reckoned by many
economists to be skewed in favor of the wealthy.
But the distribution of income and wealth in the U.S. has been
worsening for decades, making America the most unequal country in the developed
world. The trend, which has persisted through recessions and recoveries, and
under administrations of both parties, has put inequality at the center of U.S.
politics.
Leading candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential
nomination, including senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, are
promising to rectify the tilt toward the rich with measures such as taxes on
wealth or financial transactions.
Just five states -- California, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana
and New York, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico -- had Gini indexes
higher than the national level, while the reading was lower in 36 states.
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