"After eight years of the Dodd-Frank bank “reform,” the
American financial oligarchy exercises its dictatorship over
society and the government more firmly than ever. This
unaccountable elite will not tolerate even the most minimal
limits on its ability to plunder the economy for its own
personal gain."
There is no economic boom in sight
BY ROBERT SHAPIRO, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
© Getty Images
To understand what is happening in the economy right now, the best advice is to listen intently to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The BEA recently issued its revised GDP report for the first quarter of 2018 and its report on personal income and outlays in April, while the BLS released the employment report for May. The first two reports point to the economy’s continuing weaknesses, and the failure so far of last year’s huge tax cuts to spur investment, while third shows employment continuing to grow at a healthy rate.
The headline number, 2.2 percent GDP growth in the first quarter of 2018, was not encouraging. Economic growth has slowed steadily for three consecutive quarters, and the most recent one was the slowest in a year. Digging further into the data, the report shows consumers pulling back. From January through March, consumer spending grew at barely a 1 percent rate, compared to the last three months of 2017. Residential investment, measured by home sales, did even worse in the first quarter this year, falling at a 2 percent annual rate.
The positive news was an uptick in business investments, which grew at a healthy annual rate of 9.2 percent, following gains at 6.8 percent annual rate in the last three months of 2017. That is an important development for President Trump and the Republican Party because the first quarter this year were the first three months under the big corporate tax changes they enacted last year. To what extent do those gains show that the tax changes are working? That is the remaining question.
According to the data, not a great deal. In the first quarter of 2018, business fixed investments increased at an annual rate of $64.1 billion, including depreciation, compared to the fourth quarter of 2017. But that is not much more than the gains in the previous three quarters, when business investment grew at an average annual rate of $43.2 billion. So, the tax changes, at most, explain a $20.9 billion annual bump in business investment. That comes to less than $1.75 billion per month. Yet, no one should be surprised. As the expansion nears its ninth birthday, attractive investment opportunities have simply become hard to find.
The new income data also show that the 2017 corporate tax cuts, thus far, have done little for average Americans. In fact, over the first four months of this year, wage and salary growth slowed to 0.275 percent on a monthly basis, compared to 0.325 percent throughout 2017. Strikingly, the BEA data also show that corporate profits slowed in early 2018, for the third consecutive quarter. In the first three months of this year, the pre-tax profits of U.S. corporations came in at an annual rate of $2.2 trillion, which was $12.4 billion less than the last three months of 2017. But it is crystal clear the tax cuts are fulfilling their basic purpose, as federal tax on those profits declined at an annual rate of $84.5 billion, nearly seven times as much as those profits themselves.
The good news comes from employment. Jobs grew by more than 200,000 in May, generally in line with the employment gains of the last four years. For economists, strong job numbers along with weakening growth and wages are perfectly consistent for an economy near the tail end of an expansion. Employment has been a “lagging indicator” in every business cycle since the 1940s, which means that it grows faster than GDP or consumer spending in the final year or so of an expansion and more slowly in the early years of each cycle.
Unless there is a real investment boom, GDP and consumer spending eventually overtake employment, and job growth slows tool. If this mediocre expansion receives a nasty shock from a trade war, a crisis for the euro, or sharp increases in energy prices, which are all plausible developments today, it will be time to prepare for the coming recession.
Robert J. Shapiro was undersecretary for economic affairs at the U.S. Department of Commerce during the Clinton administration. He now serves as chairman of the economic advisory firm Sonecon.
Illegal aliens are increasing
Prosecutions deter illegal immigration, avoiding the dangers for families
By Andrew Arthur
USA Today
Excerpt: The government recently said it would prosecute aliens entering illegally, even those traveling with children. This seemingly harsh policy actually protects foreign nationals.
Illegal entry is a crime. Prosecuting illegal entrants deters it. Deterrence avoids the dangers of smuggling, as women and children “often find themselves at risk for assault and abuse such as rape, beatings, kidnapping and robbery” at smugglers’ hands, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Illegal entry is a crime. Prosecuting illegal entrants deters it. Deterrence avoids the dangers of smuggling, as women and children “often find themselves at risk for assault and abuse such as rape, beatings, kidnapping and robbery” at smugglers’ hands, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Americans: Overlooked and Underpaid
By CASEY RYAN
Without considering the needs of his fellow Americans, an activist farmer in Michigan is calling for blanket amnesty on behalf of illegal aliens. His call stems from a lack of American citizens applying for open positions on his farm.
“I spend thousands of dollars every year advertising my job openings, but few Americans reply,” wrote Fred Leitz for the Michigan newspaper The Herald-Palladium. “Those I do hire usually leave after a few weeks, because they find the work too hard.”
This statement by Mr. Leitz, former chairman of the National Council of Agricultural Employers (NCAE), contains a flaw. Americans don’t typically leave jobs simply because they are too hard, they leave because they are underpaid for the work they are doing. If a job offering a fair market wage was presented, it would attract more American workers. With a higher pay, more Americans will stay.
Faced with an alleged lack of workers, Mr. Leitz said he resorted to the H-2A visa program, which allowed him to bring in 160 workers from Mexico.
“First, if an American with agricultural experience shows up asking for a job, I’m required to send an H-2A worker home and hire the American,” he wrote. “And without fail, that American quits shortly after.”
Raising the wages of farmhands up by 40 percent would only increase the price of a pound of produce by four cents. Most Americans wouldn’t mind this increase if it meant their fellow citizens found gainful employment.
Mr. Leitz also said he has to pay approximately $1,600 per immigrant worker for their housing, transportation, and visa when he brings them to the U.S. This is money that could be used to pay Americans a better wage.
Employees at Mr. Leitz’s farm were only guaranteed $11.56 per hour for general labor in 2015, according to a job posting. While Mr. Leitz quit advertising his farm positions by name in 2018, a job opening with the exact same address now pays $13.06 per hour. According to the Department of Labor, unless they fall within an exemption, employers who hire H-2A workers and citizens must pay everyone at least the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR), which is considered the minimum fair wage for agriculture work. In Michigan, that is $13.06 per hour. So Mr. Leitz is paying just enough to avoid trouble. Not only that, his employees have to work Monday through Saturday.
Mr. Leitz said he doesn’t hire illegal aliens, but he does “wish we could turn the undocumented workers into a legal workforce.” After encouraging our government to let illegal aliens work, he also called for a path to citizenship for the illegal aliens in Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
We have a historic precedent that demonstrates that amnesty would not solve Mr. Leitz’s self-induced problem. In 1986 Congress enacted a special amnesty for illegal aliens who had (or claimed to have) worked in agriculture. The result? These newly legalized workers promptly left their poor paying agricultural jobs for better paying jobs in other sectors of the economy, only to be replaced by the next wave of illegal aliens.
Inevitably, the viability of American agriculture will depend on capital investment in mechanization or in paying lawfully present workers a fair wage, not endless amnesties for illegal aliens who are willing to accept the industry’s substandard wages and working conditions.
JAMES WALSH
AMERICAN? TRAITOR: BARACK OBAMA’S
HISPANICAZATION of AMERICA… first ease millions of illegals over our borders and into our voting booths!
How the Democrat party surrendered America to Mexico:
“The watchdogs at Judicial Watch discovered documents that reveal how the Obama administration's close coordination with the Mexican government entices Mexicans to hop over the fence and on to the American dole.” Washington Times
The “zero tolerance” program was dismantled by Attorney General Erc Holder once it had successfully cut the transit of migrants by roughly 95 percent. Initially, officials made 140,000 arrests per year in the mid-2000s, but the northward flow dropped so much that officials only had to make 6,000 arrests in 2013, according to a 2014 letter by two pro-migration Senators, Sen. Jeff Flake and John McCain.
“The cost of the Dream Act is far bigger than the Democrats or their media allies admit. Instead of covering 690,000 younger illegals now enrolled in former President Barack Obama’s 2012 “DACA” amnesty, the Dream Act would legalize at least 3.3 million illegals, according to a pro-immigration group, the Migration Policy Institute.”
PARTNERS WITH MEXICO:
The LA RAZA DEMOCRAT PARTY and the PRO-BUSINESS GOP to keep wages for LEGALS depressed (today they are depressed to 1973 levels).
But you will still get the tax bills for the Mex welfare state and crime tidal wave!
*
“Illegal aliens are not supposed to work, and knowingly providing shelter for illegal aliens can be construed as harboring and shielding, elements of a felony under federal law, Title 8 U.S. Code § 1324.”
“Where aliens and jobs are concerned, even many categories of nonimmigrant aliens (temporary visitors) including aliens who lawfully enter under the Visa Waiver Program or with tourist visas may not work in the United States and immediately become subject to removal (deportation) if they seek gainful employment.” ----MICHAEL CUTLER – FRONTPAGE mag
Chain Migration from DACA Amnesty Could Import Foreign Population Twice the Size of Los Angeles
The Republican establishment and Democrats’ plan to pass an amnesty for young illegal aliens would likely import a foreign population to the United States that is twice the size of Los Angeles, California.
As House and Senate Republicans, Democrats, the big business lobby, the cheap labor industry, and the open borders lobby have teamed up to push an amnesty for potentially millions of illegal aliens who are enrolled and eligible for the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the impact on legal immigration from such a plan would be unprecedented.
The List: Meet the ‘Never Trump’ Republicans Trying to Force a DACA Amnesty for Illegal Alienshttp://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/05/16/never-trump-republicans-trying-force-daca-amnesty/ …
The current U.S. legal immigration system allows for newly naturalized citizens to bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S. This process, known as “chain migration,” makes up more than 70 percent of all legal immigration to the country.
Research by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) reveals that a DACA amnesty deal would give amnesty to anywhere between 800,000 to 3.5 million illegal aliens. Of those, MPI notes that 1.5 million of the estimated 3.5 million would be allowed to obtain U.S. citizenship.
Princeton University researchers Stacie Carr and Marta Tienda have found that newly naturalized Mexican immigrants in the U.S. bring an average of six foreign relatives with them. Therefore, should all 1.5 million amnestied illegal aliens bring six relatives each to the U.S., that would constitute a total chain migration of 9 million new foreign nationals entering the U.S.
The importation of roughly 9 million foreign nationals triggered by a DACA amnesty would be more than twice the population of Los Angeles, California, where about 3.9 million residents live.
Currently, the foreign-born population is already at historic levels, reaching 44 million in 2016 with no end in sight as legal immigration reductions to give relief to America’s working and middle-classes are stalled in the Republican-controlled Congress.
Immigrant Population Booms to 44M, Majority from Mexico http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/11/03/study-44m-foreign-born-residents-living-in-us-majority-from-mexico/ …
President Trump has recently reiterated that an amnesty deal for DACA illegal aliens would have to include an end on chain migration in order to stop surges of legal immigration to the U.S.
Recent polling has revealed that the vast majority of likely GOP voters say they want legal immigration cut in at least half, with more voters supporting zero immigration to the U.S. than current immigration levels where the U.S. imports about 1.5 million immigrants a year.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
IMPOSE E-VERIFY AND YOU INSTANTLY CREATE MILLIONS MORE JOBS AND FORCE WAGES UP!
WE COULD END MEXICO’S INVASION IF WE PUT EMPLOYERS OF ILLEGALS IN JAIL
NumbersUSA’s Rosemary Jenks:
E-Verify Ignored in DACA Negotiations Because ‘Members of Congress Know It Will Work’
Members of Congress broadly oppose a legislative nationwide E-Verify mandate for employers because “they know it will work,” said NumbersUSA’s Rosemary Jenks, explaining why E-Verify is not being pushed in congressional negotiations for an amnesty deal for recipients of the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Jenks further noted that both parties are beholden to special interests supportive of “mass migration.”
CLINTON – OBAMA –
TRUMPERNOMICS: STEAL FROM THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-
CLASS and HAND IT TO
THE SUPER RICH ON A SILVER PLATTER!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/05/clinton-obama-trumpernomics-rich-get.html
"The Wealth-X report shows
that the world’s billionaire population has grown by 15 percent, to 2,754
people, since 2016, and that the wealth of these billionaires “surged by
24 percent to a record level of $9.2 trillion,” equivalent to 12 percent
of the gross domestic product of the entire planet."
THE BANKSTERS’ RENT BOYS &
GIRLS IN CONGRESS GATHER ROUND TO UNLEASH THE WHOLESALE LOOTING OF THEIR BANKSTER
PAYMASTERS EVEN MORE….
BOTTOMLESS BAILOUTS AROUND THE CORNER WAITING!
After eight years of the
Dodd-Frank bank “reform,” the American financial oligarchy exercises its
dictatorship over society and the government more firmly than ever. This
unaccountable elite will not tolerate even the most minimal limits on its
ability to plunder the economy for its own personal gain.
*
This was not because of
difficulties in securing indictments or convictions. On the contrary, Attorney
General Eric Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013 that the Obama
administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their CEOs because to do
so might “have a negative impact on the national economy.”
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