MSNBC’s McCaskill: ‘Joe Biden Has Done a Great Job on the Economy’
Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” network contributor former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) praised President Joe Biden for his handling of the economy, which saw the consumer prices rising at their fastest rate in decades last month.
As “Morning Joe” discussed an op-ed saying “competence” was hurting the Democratic Party more so than “wokeness,” McCaskill asserted that “Biden has done a great job on the economy with the asterisk around inflation.” She said if both gas prices and inflation go down, there would be “amazing job creation.”
“At the end of the day, Joe Biden has done a great job on the economy with the asterisk around inflation right now,” McCaskill argued. “If gas prices level down; if the inflationary index calms down, you are going to have amazing job creation.”
“And if they execute the infrastructure bill competently, that is turn some dirt, get some stuff built, cut some ribbons on some highways and bridges and all of those things, people will feel that in their communities, but it’s going to take some competence in terms of getting that infrastructure bill out the door in a way that we’re not talking about the future next November — rather, people feel that it is the present that there is a real difference being made in terms of their infrastructure,” she concluded.
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Bidenflation Crushes Consumer Sentiment to Worst Level in a Decade
Consumer optimism buckled under the weight of escalating inflation in the early weeks of November, data from the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey showed Friday.
The Index of Consumer Sentiment fell to 66.8 from 71.7 at the end of October, the lowest read in over a decade. Economists had expected a slight improvement in the index.
“Consumer sentiment fell in early November to its lowest level in a decade due to an escalating inflation rate and the growing belief among consumers that no effective policies have yet been developed to reduce the damage from surging inflation,” said Richard Curtin, the survey’s chief economist.
The measure of current conditions fell to 73.2 from 77.7. The measure of expected future conditions also declined significantly, dropping to 62.8 from 67.9.
One-quarter of consumers said inflation had reduced their living standards in November, with lower income and older consumers saying they had been hit the hardest.
“Rising prices for homes, vehicles, and durables were reported more frequently than any other time in more than half a century,” Curtin said.
Although consumers reported nominal income gains, half of all families said they expected reduced real incomes next year. Breitbart News reported this week that real average weekly and hourly wages fell in October due to high inflation.
“The description that inflation would be ‘transient'” has the undertone that consumers could ‘grin and bear it’ as economic policies counted on a quick and automatic self-correction to supply and labor shortages. Instead, the pandemic caused economic dislocation unlike any prior recession, and has been intertwined with partisan interpretations of economic developments,” Curtin said.
Curtin said that views of the economy differ by political affiliation.
“Partisans with the President’s party have adopted very positive moods, and those in the opposing camp very negative moods. As a result, partisan supporters of one or the other presidents either mentioned or ignored rising home and stock values, inflation and income growth rates, or mentioned or ignored employment or unemployment rates, and so forth,” Curtin said.
Actually-existing America has a lot of problems, many of which cannot be reduced to questions of economics or class power. But it is hard not to suspect that most of our nation’s troubles would be less severe, if America’s working-class had an extra $2.5 trillion to spend each year....BUT THE NAFTA GLOBAIST DEMOCRAT PARTY'S OPEN BORDERS AGENDA FOR 'CHEAP' LABOR WILL ASSURE THIS NEVER HAPPENS!
The Economy is like a Bad Magic Trick - Full of Smoke and Mirrors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTUKpeXiB2U
What Happened To The American Middle Class? | Financial Crash Documentary | Business Stories
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbTlq7A-wVs&list=WL&index=1
VP Harris Urges World Leaders to Close 'Gaps Between the Rich and Poor'
(CNSNews.com) - To reach the ideal of "equality," "we must acknowledge that inequality has always existed in our world," Vice President Kamala Harris said Thursday in a speech to world leaders at the Paris Peace Forum.
The pandemic has made the "gaps between the rich and poor" worse, she said, with global poverty on the rise as well as "extreme wealth."
She said the progress on gender equality is "under threat," and she quoted "experts" as saying that it will take decades for women to "achieve parity with men."
"Well, today we face a dramatic rise in inequality and we must rise to meet this moment. I believe that we as leaders must ask why this inequality persists."
Harris told leaders they must ask the following "why" questions:
Why is it that one percent of the world now owns 45 % of the world's wealth?
Why is it that one in 4 people in our world lack access to clean drinking water at home?
Why is it that one in three women in the world experience sexual or physical violence during her lifetime?
Why is it that only half of the world has access to the Internet?
Why have we allowed so many of the world's children to go hungry when we know that we produce enough food to feed the entire world?
We cannot be aware of these gaps and simply resign ourselves to them. We cannot accept them by thinking simply, this is what has always been and what will always be. We must instead agree that these growing gaps are unacceptable, and we must agree to work together to bridge them.
Harris said it's not about charity -- it's about "our duty and what we owe to each other as human beings."
She said it's also a "strategic imperative" to close the gaps as the world grows more and more interconnected.
‘Challenge the status quo’
And what is Harris's solution? Build Back Better, of course -- President Biden's plan to raise taxes on rich Americans and redistribute the money to the poor and middle class.
"We must challenge the status quo and build something better," Harris told world leaders.
"To get at the root of this challenge we must look critically at the longstanding systems and structures that are fractured and fissured, and we must fix them.”
The solution begins with "action at home," she said, and then then by "showing solidarity as a global community.”
Harris said the Biden administration "is committed to addressing our own systemic gaps," beginning with passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
"Another bill that will support our nation's workers and families and help us meet our climate commitment is poised to pass soon. Together, these bills are designed to lift people out of poverty, to put people to work in good jobs, and to help bridge the gaps that persist in our nation."
Harris said no single nation can take on inequality alone.
"So as we go forward from this place, let us not be burdened by what has been. Let us focus on what can be. And let us realize a better future together."
THE GREATEST TRANSFER OF WEALTH TO THE RICH HAS OCCURRED UNDER LAWYER POLITICIAN ADMINISTRATIONS OF BILLARY CLINTON, OBOMB, AND JOE BIDEN. THESE ARE BRIBES SUCKING LAWYERS GAMING THE LAWS AND BORDERS FOR MASSIVE PERSONAL WEALTH.
SHOPPERS RUSH TO DISCOUNT STORES, TURKEY DINNER PRICE SHOCK, PURCHASING POWER COLLAPSE, LOANS
The nature of neoliberalism and its consequences.
Liberal Hypocrisy is Fueling American Inequality. Here’s How. | NYT Opinion
THE ENTIRE REASON WHY U.S. BORDERS ARE WIDE OPEN IS TOO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED WITH ENDLESS HORDES OF DEM VOTING ILLEGALS JUMPING OUR BORDERS, JOBS, WELFARE LINES AND VOTING BOOTHS!
Study: Inequality Robs $2.5 Trillion From U.S. Workers Each Year
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/09/rand-study-how-high-is-inequality-us.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Intelligencer%20-%20September%2015%2C%202020&utm_term=Subscription%20List%20-%20Daily%20Intelligencer%20%281%20Year%29
By Eric Levitz
Every few months, some group of socially conscious number crunchers will remind Americans that a tiny elite is binge-eating the nation’s economic pie while the rest of us plebeians fight over table scraps. Journalists will then aggregate eye-popping statistics and edifying charts, progressives will share these over social media, adorned with red-faced (and/or guillotine) emoji — and the moral arc of history will carry on bending toward neofeudalism.
So, in the present moment of booming stock markets and child hunger, you might be feeling too inured to America’s grotesque levels of inequality to summon much interest in yet another report testifying to the one percent’s total victory in the 50 Years Class War.
But a new study from the Rand Corporation, in partnership with the Fair Work Center, illustrates the impact of a half-century of upward redistribution in bracingly concrete terms: If income had been distributed as evenly over the past five decades as it was in 1975, the median full-time worker in the U.S. would enjoy annual earnings of roughly $92,000 a year. As is, that worker makes just $50,000.
It’s no secret that wage and productivity growth began decoupling in the 1970s. Charts like this one from the Economic Policy Institute have been ubiquitous in progressive economic policy debates since the Great Recession:
Chart: Economic Policy Institute
But RAND’s innovative methodology — which involved constructing a new metric for inequality that compares income growth to GDP, and then using that metric to gauge changes in the income distribution across every U.S. business cycle since 1975 — allowed it to translate the abstractions of macro-level income shares into something much more tangible. Between the mid-1970s and 2018, per capita GDP growth in the U.S. increased by 118 percent. Had income growth on every rung of America’s class ladder kept pace with those gains, annual earnings at the bottom would be nearly twice as high as they are now. Meanwhile, the bottom 90 percent of U.S. earners would collectively take home $2.5 trillion more in income each year.
Graphic: RAND Education and Labor
The 1970s were a pivotal decade. Graphic: RAND Education and Labor
There are a few significant limitations to RAND’s data. Chief among these is that the study only measures taxable income, which does not capture any potential increase in non-monetary forms of compensation, such as health-care benefits. There is no question that such perks make up a larger share of labor’s compensation today than they did in 1975. That may say more about runaway rent-seeking in America’s health-care system than it does about worker’s true income gains. But a perfect apples-to-apples comparison would take note of the value of benefits.
Separately, it seems likely that had America’s income distribution held constant since 1975, inflation would have been much higher in recent decades — and thus, “2018 dollars” in the counterfactual universe would be worth less than they are in our own. The reason for this is simple: Rich people have a lower propensity to consume each additional dollar of income than working people do. Thus, if you concentrate income gains among the rich, the bulk of those dollars will be invested; which is to say, they will be used to bid up the prices of stocks and real-estate. If you concentrate income gains among workers, meanwhile, the bulk of those gains will be spent on goods and services, thereby bidding up consumer prices.
This is a crucial part of the inequality story in the United States. Under Paul Volcker’s leadership, the Federal Reserve consciously sought to overcome the high inflation of the late 1970s by breaking the bargaining power of U.S. workers, and reducing labor’s share of income. Thanks to the Reagan revolution, among other things, the central bank accomplished this objective too well. Now, instead of contending with inflationary pressures, the Fed must make increasingly audacious interventions in capital markets to ward off the perennial threat of consumer price deflation — even as asset prices rise to evermore spectacular highs.
Nevertheless, RAND’s projections remain a useful approximation. Although the income distribution it posits would probably be one more vulnerable to inflation, it would also probably be more conducive to economic growth. In 2014, OECD economists estimated that increases in income inequality had reduced U.S. GDP growth by as much as 8 percentage points over the preceding two decades.
Further, if we acknowledge that economic power is easily translated into the political variety, it seems likely that in RAND’s counterfactual universe, ordinary Americans would enjoy more generous social benefits and workplace protections than they do in our dimension. Thus, even if we stipulate that a more equitable income distribution would mean a weaker dollar in 2018, it’s possible that RAND’s counterfactual underestimates what the real value of the median workers’ annual income would have been under such a distribution.
Regardless, the paper makes the radical regressivism of the contemporary U.S. political economy plain to see. Progressives often mock nostalgic invocations of some bygone golden era in American life, noting that the postwar period was less than “great” for Black Americans in the Jim Crow South, or women trying to make a place for themselves in the professions. And this allergy to white male-centric nostalgia has much to recommend it. But it is also the case that the first three decades after the Second World War witnessed a degree of shared prosperity that was never seen before or since. And if the income distribution of 1975 had been maintained over the ensuing decades, according to RAND’s methodology, wages for most Black workers would be nearly twice as high as they are now.
Actually-existing America has a lot of problems, many of which cannot be reduced to questions of economics or class power. But it is hard not to suspect that most of our nation’s troubles would be less severe, if America’s working-class had an extra $2.5 trillion to spend each year.
Yang: ‘Return to the Obama Years’ Not Enough for Biden — They Were Left Behind in Those Years,’ ‘They’re Pissed Off’
Late Tuesday on CNN, former Democratic presidential hopeful Andrew Yang, now a CNN contributor, warned that his old opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden could not defeat Trump with just a pledge to return to the years of former President Barack Obama alone.
According to Yang, it needed to start with an understanding of what problems facing the country led to Trump’s presidency.
“Donald Trump needs to be defeated,” he explained. “Forty-two percent of my supporters said they would not support the Democratic nominee in the general, in large part because when I ran, I ran for the problems that predated Trump. Like, Donald Trump would never be our president today if things were going well for a lot of people around the country. Bernie Sanders would not have almost been the nominee last time if things were going well for people around the country. So even as Joe Biden saying, ‘Hey, we need to defeat Donald Trump,’ he also has to say, ‘Look, things have not been working for millions of Americans, and after we defeat Donald Trump,’ we need to get deep into these problems, get our hands dirty and solve them. This can’t be a, ‘Hey, I’m better than Trump’ race. It has to be, ‘Hey. I understand how Trump became our president.'”
Yang told a CNN panel people were left behind in the Obama-Biden years, and they were not happy about it. He called on Biden to recognize that situation and address it, which he said would better his chances in the 2020 general election.
“I think he’s been talking about restoring a culture, tone and a soul of the country,” Yang added. “I was talking about putting more money in Americans’ hands because I saw we decimated entire ways of life in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. And because I was talking in those terms about the real problems these people have experienced, again, 42% of my supporters were not going to support the Democratic nominee. I’m hoping that we can get some of those people to support Joe. But it would be helpful if Joe acknowledged it because one of the weaknesses of saying, ‘Hey, return to Obama years’ is that there are many Americans who were getting behind in those years, too, and they’re pissed off. And so, if you say, I’m going to revert, that loses to that group of people. There are so many Americans who just don’t think their institutions are working for him at all, and Joe Biden’s’s weakness is he represents those institutions. I’m endorsing Joe. We need Joe to beat Trump. But we’ll have a much better chance of that if Joe recognizes that our institutions have been failing many Americans for a long time.”
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