Thursday, October 17, 2019

FUCKING OVER THE AMERICAN WORKER - UBER LAYS OFF HUNDREDS OF WORKERS TO HIRE "CHEAP" FOREIGN WORKERS

H-1B: Uber snatches up more foreign-worker visas as it lays off hundreds of employees

 

San Francisco firm says it’s not replacing U.S. workers with H-1Bs

 

By ETHAN BARON | ebaron@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED:  | UPDATED: 
Uber has doubled the number of government approvals it has received to hire foreign workers through the controversial H-1B visa this year, while laying off hundreds of skilled employees, state and federal data show.
The San Francisco ride-hailing giant revealed in a California employment-department filing this month that it is laying off nearly 400 workers at its offices in the city and in Palo Alto. The filing showed software engineers at the firm were the hardest hit, with more than 125 people cut loose.
Meanwhile, Uber this year received federal government approval for 299 new H-1B visas — work permits intended for jobs requiring specialized skills — compared with 152 in 2018 and 158 in 2017, according to data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. It is unclear whether Uber plans to use all those visas or when new H-1B workers might be brought on. The visas typically cost thousands of dollars each to obtain.
The maneuvers raise questions about whether the Bay Area company is moving to replace U.S. workers with cheaper foreign labor as it struggles to please Wall Street months after its much-hyped IPO.
“When they’re laying off, they shouldn’t be using H-1Bs at all, or maybe sparingly at best,” said Ron Hira, a Howard University professor who studies the use of the visa by companies. “It runs totally contrary to the intent of the H-1B program.”
Uber declined to answer questions in any detail about its increasing pursuit of H-1B workers at a time of significant layoffs, but a company spokesman said, “Any implication that these restructurings were done in order to replace U.S. workers with H-1B workers is simply not true.” Uber declined to say if H-1B workers were among those laid off.
The H-1B has become a flashpoint in America’s debate over immigration. The U.S. Department of Labor specifies that the visa is intended to authorize temporary foreign labor when employers can’t otherwise obtain “needed business skills and abilities” in the U.S. workforce. Major Silicon Valley technology firms have lobbied to increase the annual 85,000 cap on new H-1B visas, arguing that they need more of them to secure the world’s top talent.
Critics have pointed to reported abuses by outsourcing firms — including replacement of U.S. workers by H-1B holders at UC San Francisco and Disney — and contend that outsourcers, along with the tech giants, use the visas to supplant U.S. workers, cut labor costs and drive down wages.
This year, Uber has submitted thousands of preliminary applications for more H-1B workers, two-thirds of them for software engineer jobs.
Uber’s Sept. 10 filing with California’s employment regulator showed that it had laid off 88 workers from its San Francisco offices in August, and this month would lay off 238 more in San Francisco and 82 in its Palo Alto offices. Of the more than 125 software engineers losing jobs, more than 60 were senior software engineers, according to the filing. This week, the company said it had laid off 350 workers but declined to specify to this news organization which job types or office locations were affected.
The layoffs in Palo Alto and San Francisco hit job types that Uber, according to the applications, is seeking to fill with foreign workers. In the first three quarters of this year, Uber filed about 1,800 preliminary applications to the Labor Department for H-1B visas for new software engineer jobs and about 1,500 for new senior software engineer jobs. The applications, filed with the U.S. Department of Labor, are a first step toward obtaining new or renewed visas,  but don’t represent the number of positions to be filled.
Immigration policy analyst David Bier of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, didn’t see evidence of H-1B abuse by Uber in its increased visa approvals and efforts to obtain more.
“The software engineer market, it’s so saturated with H-1Bs that some of the people who are laid off are almost inevitably H-1Bs and some of the people that are being hired are inevitably H-1Bs,” Bier said. “I don’t read into it anything like this is obviously job displacement.”
But Hira questioned why many of Uber’s applications listed the same wage level for “senior” and non-senior software engineers. He also said many of the software engineer jobs could bring lower pay than the Bay Area’s prevailing wages.
Uber’s applications put nearly half the senior software engineer positions at the Labor Department’s “Level 2” wages, the same level it listed for more than half of the non-senior jobs: a minimum $109,242 for employment in Palo Alto and $121,077 in San Francisco.
But the Labor Department says that a Level 3 wage should be considered for jobs with the word “senior” in the title, Hira noted. The Labor Department’s Level 3 wage for software engineers is $132,184 in Palo Alto and $147,597 in San Francisco.
“It makes no sense that you would have a senior software engineer and a software engineer being paid at the same wage level,” Hira said.”That runs contrary to the whole point of having wage levels.”
Hira said that applying for visas using a lower-level salary classification helps companies save money. Obtaining foreign workers at Level 2 wages allows companies to pay about 20 percent less than the average wage for their job and location, Hira said.
“Mis-classification is very common,” Hira said. “That’s why the tech industry loves the (H-1B) program. They get to choose. There’s no check on who’s actually filling that position.”


PARASITE ERIC TRUMP SAYS TRUMP ALWAYS PAYS CONTRACTORS - "The Trump Organization has been criticized for stiffing contractors. Contractors have filed hundreds of complaints, which date back to the 1980s."

BULLSHIT! TRUMP AND HIS PARASITE CHILDREN HAVE SCREWED EVERY CONTRACTOR AND PERSON THEY’VE DONE BUSINESS WITH FROM DAY ONE!


Eric Trump on paying contractors: We pay ‘people when they do great jobs’



The Trump Organization has been criticized for stiffing contractors. Contractors have filed hundreds of complaints, which date back to the 1980s, alleging that the real estate company did not pay them.
“We believe in paying people when they do great jobs. And we get people paid incredibly quickly. And we pay contractors,” said Eric Trump, executive vice president of The Trump Organization at Yahoo Finance’s All Market Summit, adding that the organization only refuses to pay contractors who fail to complete a job.
“Yeah, well, they [the unpaid contractors] didn't finish a job. And they didn't do a good job. And they flaked out. And they were two months behind schedule. And so you had to let go of them. And you had to bring somebody else in to do the job that they otherwise would have. And it's called the real world,” he said, referring to the allegations. “People like to take cheap shots at us.”
Eric Trump’s defense echoes his father’s status quo response.
During the 2016 presidential debate, President Donald Trump said something very similar. “Maybe he didn’t do a good job and I was unsatisfied with his work,” he said in response to nonpayment accusations.



Eric Trump also noted to Yahoo Finance that The Trump Organization has developed institutional knowledge about getting the best deals with contractors. “In New York, we know what contractors are going to be incredible, what contractors are going to — I won't use a word, but — take advantage of you,” he said. “And, you know, you have that institutional knowledge. You know your way around. You know the language. You know the laws. You know how things are built. You know what kind of foundations work in the ground.”

 

A Blockade Against Impeachment Is Crumbling as Witnesses Agree to Talk


Michael D. Shear and Nicholas Fandos
,WASHINGTON — The White House’s trenchant declaration to House impeachment investigators last week was unequivocal: No more witnesses or documents for a “totally compromised kangaroo court.”
But just a week later, it has become clear that President Donald Trump’s attempts to stonewall the Democrat-led inquiry that has imperiled his presidency and ensnared much of his inner circle are crumbling.
One by one, a parade of Trump administration career diplomats and senior officials has offered a cascade of revelations. Those accounts have corroborated and expanded upon key aspects of the whistleblower complaint that spawned the impeachment inquiry into whether the president abused his power to enlist Ukraine to help him in the 2020 presidential election.
The latest disclosures came Wednesday, when a former top aide to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offered an inside account of what he said was a demoralized State Department, where career diplomats were sidelined and others apparently were pressed to use their posts “to advance domestic political objectives.” In six hours of voluntary testimony, the former aide, Michael McKinley, told impeachment investigators that he quit his post as Pompeo’s senior adviser amid mounting frustrations over the Trump administration’s treatment of diplomats and its failure to support them in the face of the impeachment inquiry, according to a copy of his opening remarks.
On Thursday, Democrats are set to hear from Gordon D. Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, a central figure in the president’s pressure campaign on Ukraine. He is expected to testify that he learned that Trump did not intend to invite President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine to a meeting in the Oval Office until Zelenskiy pledged to open an investigation that could benefit Trump’s political fortunes — bolstering a central allegation in the inquiry that the president steered foreign policy for political gain.
And Democratic lawmakers have directed William B. Taylor Jr., one of the top American diplomats in Ukraine, to appear before their committees next Tuesday, according to an official familiar with the investigation. Text messages produced as part of the inquiry suggest that Taylor was deeply uneasy about what he saw as an effort by Trump aides to use a $391 million package of security assistance as leverage over Ukraine for political favors, calling the notion “crazy.”
All three are examples of what can happen when Congress secures cooperation from government witnesses in a rapidly moving investigation aimed at the president.
The White House has had more success blocking the release of documents tied to the case. But the president and his lawyers had hoped to use the power of his office to muzzle current and former diplomats and White House aides, arguing in presidential tweets and a lengthy letter to Democratic lawmakers Oct. 8 that their subpoenas are invalid and unenforceable.
“President Trump cannot permit his administration to participate in this partisan inquiry under these circumstances,” wrote Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel.
And yet the president has been unable to prevent it.
Just since Trump declared war on the impeachment effort, three current and former senior State Department officials and a former top White House aide have testified for nearly 36 total hours, delivering to lawmakers a consistent narrative of how they were effectively pushed aside by allies of the president operating outside America’s usual foreign policy channels.
“It’s partly because this shadow foreign policy that the president was running was so deeply offensive to people in his own administration who took pride in overseeing a professionally run and arguably exemplary policy in support of Ukraine,” said Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J., a former State Department official involved in the inquiry. Referring to Trump’s personal lawyer, he added, “And then to see the official policy undermined by this clownishly corrupt effort led by Rudy Giuliani on behalf of the president was just more than many people apparently could bear.”
Republicans who control the Senate view the fast-building case as serious enough to begin preparing for the trial in their chamber that would follow impeachment by the House. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the majority leader, briefed fellow lawmakers over lunch Wednesday about how a trial would work, expressing his hope of conducting it speedily and completing it by the end of the year, people familiar with his remarks said.
Facing accusations of secrecy from Republicans, Rep Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the Intelligence Committee, informed colleagues Wednesday that he planned to open the inquiry to the public soon. He wrote that he planned to release transcripts of all the interviews as the investigation proceeded and pledged to soon hold public hearings “so that the full Congress and the American people can hear their testimony firsthand.”
For Trump, who is famous for demanding fierce loyalty from those around him, the daily — or even hourly — crush of damaging headlines is an infuriating departure from previous successes in controlling disclosures to Congress from people in his orbit.
During the congressional investigation into Russia’s election meddling, Trump blocked a deposition of Donald F. McGahn II, his former White House counsel, and dramatically limited testimony from some of his closest aides, including Hope Hicks, the former White House communications director, and Corey Lewandowski, his former campaign manager.
But this is different. Many administration officials targeted for depositions by Democrats are diplomatic veterans who have expressed anger and frustration about what they described as the hijacking of U.S. foreign policy. They have no particular loyalty to Trump nor are they subject to the same presidential powers to block them from testifying.
So they have turned up at the secure suite of the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill, disappearing behind doors with a red “RESTRICTED AREA” sign to tell their stories.
Under alternating hourlong question-and-answer sessions by Democratic and Republican staff lawyers, Marie L. Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, said she had been ousted at Trump’s direction on the basis of “unfounded and false claims.” Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council aide, said John R. Bolton, then the national security adviser, was so alarmed by the activities of Giuliani, Sondland and others that he instructed her to alert White House lawyers. She said she reported Sondland to intelligence officials as a possible national security risk as well.
The decision by Yovanovitch, Hill and others to testify is a demonstration of the limits of presidential power and the legal constraints Trump is under as he and his lawyers try to devise a strategy for keeping him in office.
Although the White House has struggled to keep former officials from agreeing to testify, Trump has more leverage with current administration employees, who may fear for their jobs if they defy the blockade. But it is not clear what the political repercussions would be if the president retaliated against them in the middle of a political scandal.
McKinley told investigators Wednesday that State Department officials were discouraging people from testifying and were not supporting diplomats who had received subpoenas and requests to appear before the House, according to a person familiar with his testimony.
Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill expressed frustration this week about the depositions, saying White House lawyers should be present and accusing Democrats of selectively leaking from the testimony. Others were simply baffled by the cooperation of the witnesses.
“I really don’t understand it,” said Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, a member of the Intelligence Committee. “I can’t wrap my head around why some and why not others.”
Veterans of past legal struggles between the White House and Congress said Trump was confronting the reality that he had limited ability to force former or even current government employees to ignore a legally binding subpoena. It is even difficult — though not impossible — to shield top White House aides from appearing, they said.
“Particularly if there’s a subpoena, everybody has to appear or risk being held in contempt,” said W. Neil Eggleston, who served as President Barack Obama’s White House counsel. “It is just not easy to simply refuse to appear.”
Eggleston said that defying a subpoena was sometimes possible for high-profile figures but was especially difficult for functionaries and other career employees.
Trump’s lawyers have had more success in blocking access to emails, text messages, memos and other documents in the government’s possession.
The administration has rejected Democratic subpoenas or requests for documents at the Office of Management and Budget, the State Department, the Defense Department and the office of Vice President Mike Pence. Giuliani has also said he will ignore a subpoena for his records, citing the White House’s stance.
Democrats have said the refusal to hand over documents will be considered obstruction of Congress and may be added to the impeachment charges brought against the president.
The White House has also attempted to limit the questions witnesses can answer.
In the case of Hill, White House lawyers conceded early Monday that they could not stop her from arriving on Capitol Hill for a deposition by the committee later that day, but they demanded that she refrain from speaking about classified material, conversations with the president and other matters.
Even that proved difficult to enforce, as Hill vividly described a dramatic confrontation inside the White House between Bolton and Sondland.
Schiff, the Intelligence Committee chairman, said Tuesday that the sessions with witnesses have been fruitful despite the efforts to block them.
“It’s a way of trying to chill them from cooperating,” Schiff said. “It’s not working, but I think that’s the goal.
“It goes to show the legally insupportable position of the White House,” he added.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

THE REAL ECONOMY - U.S. FACTORY PRODUCTION PLUMMETS - "The International Monetary Fund has cut its forecast for global growth this year to its lowest level since the global financial crisis and recession of 2008-2009 and warned that deepening trade conflicts make the outlook “precarious.”

American Factory Production Slumped in September

General Motors temporarily lays off 6,000 workers in Mexico due to strike
AFP/File JEFF KOWALSKY
1:40

U.S. manufacturing production fell in September, driven down by the strike at General Motors, falling energy prices, and sluggish global demand.

Manufacturing output fell 0.5 percent in September from the prior month, the Federal Reserve said Thursday.
Overall industrial production, which includes manufacturing, mines, and utilities, declined by 0.4 percent. Compared with a year ago, production declined 0.1 percent.
The production numbers largely confirmed the contraction in the manufacturing sector signaled by surveys such as the Institute for Supply Management’s Purchasing Managers Index and regional Fed surveys.
Somewhat softening the blow, the weaker September numbers followed a strong report for August. Both the overall production and the manufacturing figures were revised up in August, indicating that some of the production expected in September had already occurred.
Motor vehicle production fell 4.2 percent compared with a month earlier, highlighting the drag from the General Motors strike. Mining fell a steep 1.3 percent, a decline that probably also weighed on factory production because mining operations require factory-made equipment.
Perhaps more troubling for the broader economy is the decline in business equipment production, down 0.7 percent for the month and 0.8 percent on the year. Sluggish business investment has been one of the major factors giving rise to fears that the economy could slip into recession next year or the year after that.


IMF cuts growth forecast and points to rising financial risks

The International Monetary Fund has cut its forecast for global growth this year to its lowest level since the global financial crisis and recession of 2008-2009 and warned that deepening trade conflicts make the outlook “precarious.”
Apart from the headline numbers in the World Economic Outlook report issued on Tuesday, the most significant aspect of the IMF’s update on the state of the world economy was its forecast on continuing low growth in four key sectors.
It found that the global “big four”—the US, China, Japan and the eurozone—would not see any improvement in their growth rates over the next five years.
The IMF predicted the world economy would grow by only 3 percent this year, down from 3.6 percent in 2018 and 0.3 percent below the forecast at its April meeting.
The Global Financial Stability Report issued on Wednesday added to the darkening outlook. It warned that continuing low interest rates were leading investors to take greater risks in an effort to maintain their returns on capital, and that could have an adverse impact on the broader economy.
“The search for yield among institutional investors—such as insurance companies, asset managers and pension funds—has led them to take on riskier and less-liquid securities,” Tobias Adrian, the IMF’s financial counsellor said. “These exposures may act as an amplifier of shocks.”
The low-interest rate regime was supporting the economy at present, but was putting growth at risk in the medium term.
The IMF’s WEO report said global growth was expected to rise to 3.4 percent in 2020—a downward revision of 0.2 percentage points from its forecast last April. But it warned that even this limited projected upturn, unlike the “synchronised slowdown,” was “not broad based and is precarious.”
Growth for the advanced economies is projected to slow to 1.7 percent in 2019 and 2020. If a global pickup does take place, it will be as a result of expansion in emerging market economies. More than half of this would be driven by “recoveries or shallower recessions in stressed emerging markets, such as Turkey, Argentina and Iran.” In other words, the projected recovery rests on very shaky foundations, given the ongoing slowdown in the major economies.
The report itself acknowledged that the risks to its baseline outlook were “significant.” It warned that “should stress fail to dissipate in a few key emerging market and developing economies that are currently under performing or experiencing severe strains, global growth in 2020 would fall well short of the baseline.”
Further escalation of trade tensions and policy uncertainty could further weaken growth. Financial market sentiment could also deteriorate, resulting in tighter financial conditions that would impact heavily on vulnerable economies.
“Possible triggers for such an episode include worsening trade and geopolitical tensions, a no-deal Brexit withdrawal … and persistently weak economic data pointing to a protracted slowdown in global growth,” it stated.
For the US, the IMF expects the economy to slow from 2.4 percent growth this year to 2.1 percent in the election year of 2020—well below the Trump administration’s target of growth of 3 percent or more.
Largely as a result of the weakness in the German economy, economic growth in the eurozone is expected be only 1.2 percent this year, rising to 1.4 percent in 2020.
The growth rate of the Chinese economy is also forecast to slow. The IMF predicts that it will fall from 6.1 percent in 2019 to 5.5 percent in 2024, with the forecast for this year 0.2 percent lower than the prediction in April.
In her foreword to the WEO report, IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath began by noting that the fall in expected growth to just 3 percent was a “serious climb down” from 2017 when it was 3.8 percent. She cited rising trade barriers and uncertainties surrounding geopolitics as key factors.
The IMF has estimated that the US-China trade tensions have reduced the expected level of global GDP by 0.8 percent for 2020.
Gopinath pointed out that a “noticeable feature” of the sluggish growth for 2019 was the “sharp and geographically broad-based slowdown in manufacturing and global trade.” Higher tariffs and prolonged uncertainty were denting investment and demand for capital goods.
This has led to a virtual standstill in global trade volume growth, which rose by only 1 percent in the first half of 2019—its lowest level since 2012. In the years of economic expansion, prior to the crisis of 2008, trade growth rates consistently exceeded those for an economy as a whole. Now they consistently lag behind.
Gopinath said that in contrast to weak manufacturing and trade, the services sector across much of the world continued to hold up. But this may not continue for much longer.
“The divergence between manufacturing and services has persisted for an atypically long duration, which raises concerns of whether and when weakness in manufacturing may spill over into the services sector,” she said, noting that leading service sector indicators in the US, Germany and Japan had shown some signs of softening.
The chief economist said that as far as policy priorities go “undoing the trade barriers put in place with durable agreements and reining in geopolitical tensions top the list.” She suggested that would boost confidence and rejuvenate investment.
Yet there is no more a chance of such measures being implemented following this report than when similar calls were made last year and the year before that. Even as the consequences of existing actions, and the future dangers they raise, become more pronounced, so the trade conflicts intensify rather than lessen.
The same trend can be seen with regard to the call for governments to take more action on the fiscal front to stimulate their economies. With interest rates around the world at historically low levels—in some cases at zero or even below—the ability of central banks to supply economic stimulus is very limited. According to the IMF report, even easier financial conditions “could also contribute to a further build-up of financial vulnerabilities.”
In line with this assessment, Gopinath called for more government action. “Monetary policy cannot be the only game in town and should be coupled with fiscal support if available and where fiscal policy it not already too expansionary.” She cited Germany as a country that should take advantage of negative borrowing rates to invest in infrastructure projects.
But in the ten tears and more since the global financial crisis, government policy in every country, expressing the most basic interests of the financial oligarchy, has gone in the opposite direction in the form of increased attacks on public facilities and social services. The only significant fiscal action has been taken in the United States where the budget deficit has been increased to provide billions of dollars in tax cuts for corporations and the ultra-wealthy.

In conditions where, as the latest IMF report shows, the 2008-2009 crisis ushered in a period of ongoing stagnation and where the policies followed over the past decade have created the possibility of renewed financial turmoil, government policies are not going to be turned around.


Report: Sears and Kmart to Close at Least 121 Stores by January 2020

 CommentsOctober 15, 2019 Updated: October 15, 2019


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

money
Getty Images
2:11

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.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.



Economists: America’s Elite Pay Lower Tax Rate Than All Other Americans

Getty Images
 8 Oct 201918
2:46

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 taxAnd 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.

Economists: America’s Elite Pay Lower Tax Rate Than All Other Americans

Getty Images
 8 Oct 201918
2:46

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 taxAnd 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.