Worker productivity slumped by much more than expected in the third quarter, data from the Department of Labor showed Thursday.
Hours worked increased by at a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of seven percent in the July through September period, while output increased just 1.7 percent.
This is the worst productivity decline since the second quarter of 1981, when the measure decreased 5.1 percent. Economists had expected a milder decline of around 1.5 percent.
Productivity jumped in the first half of the year as output soared 8.1 percent in the first quarter and 8.5 percent in the second, outpacing the growth in hours worked. The second-quarter productivity figure was revised up to 2.4 percent growth from the earlier estimate of 2.1 percent as output was revised upward and hours worked revised down.
Compared with a year ago, output is up 6.1 percent and hours worked are up 6.7 percent, producing a 0.5 percent productivity loss. That’s the biggest annual decline in 10 years.
It’s likely that the productivity slump reflects supply shortages, which many businesses have said are keeping them from running at full tilt. As well, labor scarcity may have employers pushing existing workers to work longer hours, which can hurt productivity, and hiring less productive workers.
Manufacturing sector labor productivity decreased 1.0 percent in the third quarter of 2021, as output increased 5.7 percent and hours worked increased 6.7 percent. In the durable manufacturing sector, however, productivity increased 1.4 percent because output jumped 9.9 percent while hours worked grew 8.4 percent. Nondurable manufacturing, which is nearly five times as large as the durable segment, saw a 2.6 percent productivity decline, as output grew just 1.3 percent and hours worked were up 4 percent.
Compared with the third quarter of last year, total manufacturing productivity increased 2.4 percent, as hours worked grew 3.8 percent while output jumped 6.3 percent. Durable productivity is up 3.2 percent on a 6.8 percent output gain and 3.5 percent increase in hours worked. Nondurable productivity rose 1.3 percent annually, with output rising 5.8 percent and hours climbing 4.4 percent.
The longer-term figures paint a picture of how the pandemic reshaped the economy. Hours worked remains one percent below the fourth quarter of 2019, the last quarter not affected by the pandemic, and output is 1.8 percent higher. Manufacturing hours worked is 3.3 percent below the prepandemic level but output has jumped, pushing the productivity index up 4.6 percent.
Over the period from the fourth quarter of 2019 through the third quarter of 2021, the index of manufacturing productivity has risen at a 2.6 percent annual rate. That is far above the 2007 through 2019 average of just 0.2 percent and even above the long-term ( 1987 to 2020) rate of 2.3 percent.
JOE BIDEN’S OPEN BORDERS: HOUSTON NATION’S BIGGEST MEX SEX TRAFFICKING CAPITAL
What's causing the supply chain crisis? | Fox News Rundown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SqV0DkxGsA
Jim Banks Reveals the ‘Mind-Blowingly Corrupt’ Carveouts in $3.5 Trillion Infrastructure Bill
SEAN MORAN
Rep. Jim Banks (R-SC), the chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), detailed many of the most radical aspects of the $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill.
Biden has gambled his legislative majority on passing two infrastructure bills, the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the $3.5 trillion reconciliation infrastructure bill, otherwise known as the Build Back Better Act.
Democrats hope to pass their mammoth, $3.5 trillion legislation through reconciliation, which allows the Senate to pass legislation with only a simple majority.
Although Democrats have not agreed to the final tenets of the legislation, Americans can see the tentative details of the Democrats’ marquee legislation.
Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), the chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), released an exhaustive list of some of the most radical aspects of the Democrats’ “socialist takeover bill.”
Banks’ press release hopes to serve as messaging House Republicans can use to rally against Biden’s marquee bill.
The RSC contended in a press release Tuesday that Democrats plans to hide the bill text to prevent Americans from knowing how radical the bill is.
“They’ve played ‘hide the ball’ with the bill text so as not to tip off the public as to what they’re putting in their bills. Then, they bring it to the floor and tout some poll numbers and scare their members into voting for it,” the RSC wrote.
The RSC noted the bill would:
1. Perpetuates labor shortage: Continues welfare benefits without work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents at a time where there are 10.1 million job openings—more openings than there are people looking for work.
2. Commissions a climate police: Democrats stuffed $8 billion into the bill to commission a cabal of federally funded climate police called the Civilian Climate Corps (CCC) who will conduct progressive activism on taxpayers’ dime (pages 8, 21, and 926).
3. Pushes Green New Deal in our public schools: Requires funding for school construction be used largely on enrollment diversity and Green New Deal agenda items (page 55).
4. Pushes Green New Deal in our universities: Democrats include a $10 billion “environmental justice” higher education slush fund to indoctrinate college students and advance Green New Deal policies (page 1,935).
5. Forces faith-based child care providers out: The bill blocks the ability of many faith-based providers from participating in the childcare system and will lead to many of their closures (page 280).
6. Hurts small and in-home daycares: Requires pre-K staff to have a college degree. (page 303)
7. Includes new incentives for illegal immigration: Illegal immigrants will be eligible to take advantage of Democrats’ new ‘free’ college entitlement (page 92) as well be eligible for additional student aid (page 147) and the enhanced child tax credit (page 1,946).
8. Includes legislative hull for Biden’s vaccine mandate: Increases OSHA penalties on businesses that fail to implement the mandate up to $700,000 per violation and includes $2.6 billion in funding for the Department of Labor to increase enforcement of these penalties (page 168).
9. Gives unions near-total control: The bill includes insane prohibitions that would bind employers’ hands in union disputes and dangerously tilt the balance of power, subjecting employers to penalties that exempt union bosses and officials… among other things this bill would prevent employers from permanently replacing striking workers (page 175). It coerces businesses to meet union boss demands by increasing Fair Labor Standards Act penalties by an astronomical 900% (page 168).
10. Makes unions bigger and more powerful: The bill would subsidize union dues that would only serve to strengthen the influence of union bosses and not American workers (page 2323).
11. Pushes Democrats’ wasteful and confusing school lunch agenda: $643 million for, among other things, “procuring…culturally appropriate foods” (page 333).
12. Furthers radical abortion agenda: Does not include the Hyde amendment and would mandate taxpayers pay for abortions (page 198) & (page 336).
13. Drives up costs on Americans’ utility bills: Issues a punitive methane tax (page 367) and includes a tax on natural gas up to $1,500 per ton that could cost the American economy up to $9.1 billion and cost 90,000 Americans their jobs (page 368).
14. Includes dangerous & deadly green energy mandate: Effectively forces Americans to get 40% of their energy from wind, solar and other unreliable forms of energy within 8 years (page 392). Reliance on these energy sources has proven deadly.
15. Includes kickbacks for the Left’s green energy special interest network: $5 billion for “environmental and climate justice block grants” (page 377) and another $100 billion in green energy special interest subsidies, loans and other carve outs.
16. Gives wealthy Americans tax credits: $222 billion in “green energy” tax credits will be given to those who can afford expensive electric vehicles and other “green” innovative products (page 1832).
17. Furthers Democrats’ social justice agenda: Includes “equity” initiatives throughout the bill and, in one instance, Democrats inserted “equity” language into a title which should have been focusing on the maintenance of the United States’ cyber security efforts (page 897).
18. Grants amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants: House Democrats have included in their reconciliation bill a plan to grant amnesty to around 8 million illegal immigrants at a cost of around $100 billion over ten years that would largely be spent on welfare and other entitlements (page 901). Trillions more would be spent long term on their Social Security and Medicare.
19. Opens border even wider: The bill would waive many grounds for immigration inadmissibility, including infection or lack of vaccination status during a Pandemic, failure to attend removal proceedings in previous immigration cases, and the previous renouncement of American citizenship. DHS may also waive previous convictions for human trafficking, narcotics violations, and illegal voting (page 903).
20. Increases visa limit: At least 226,000 family-preference visas would be administered each year (page 905).
21. Grants fast-tracked green cards for those seeking middle-class careers in America: Language included in the bill exempts certain aliens from the annual green card statutory limits and has been described as a “hidden pipeline for U.S. employers to flood more cheap foreign graduates into millions of middle-class careers needed by American graduates” (page 910).
22. Includes pork for Nancy Pelosi: $200 million is earmarked for the Presidio Trust in Speaker Pelosi’s congressional district (page 933).
23. Increases energy dependence on OPEC, Russia and China: The bill prohibits several mineral and energy withdrawals (page 979). It overturns provisions included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that authorized energy production in the Arctic that will result in 130,000 Americans losing their jobs and $440 billion in lost federal revenue (page 983) and the mineral withdrawals it prohibits would, ironically, include minerals necessary for renewable energy sources (pages 934, 940, 943).
24. Exacerbates the chip shortage: The bill would mandate the conversion of the entire federal vehicle fleet from internal combustion engines to electric engines at a time when there is a global microchip shortage and crippled supply chains (page 1,043).
25. Democrats’ feckless China bill is included: Concepts from the insanely weak Endless Frontier Act included, including $11 billion in research funding that will likely result in American intellectual property going to China (page 1079 – 1081).
26. Chases green energy pipe dreams: $264 million to the EPA to conduct research with left-wing environmental justice groups on how to transition away from fossil fuels (page 1063).
27. Fixes “racist” roads and bridges: Adds a nearly $4 billion slush fund that would help left-wing grassroots organizations that, among other things, want to tear down and rebuild or otherwise alter infrastructure deemed “racist” (page 1183).
28. Punishes red states for failing to adopt Green New Deal provisions: Mandates “consequences” for conservative states that don’t meet the radical Left’s “green” climate standards while at the same time adding nearly $4 billion for “Community Climate Incentive Grants” for cooperating states (page 1179).
29. Includes new massive, bankrupting entitlement: The new paid leave entitlement would mandate workers get 12 weeks of paid leave and would cost $500 billion over ten years according to the CBO (page 1245). It would apply to those making up to half a million dollars a year (page 1254).
30. Advances a totalitarian and paternalistic view of the federal government: Includes grants for organizations to treat individuals suffering from “loneliness” and “social isolation.”
31. Further detaches individuals from employment and more reliant on government handouts: The bill spends $835 billion on welfare through manipulating the tax code [not including the expansions of Obamacare subsidies] (page 1943).
32. Tax benefits for the top 1%: The bill will possibly lift the SALT deduction cap meaning many of the top 1% wealthiest Americans would pay less in taxes.
33. Tax credit for wealthy donors who give to woke universities: The bill creates a new tax credit program that gives tax credits worth 40% of cash contribution that are made to university research programs (page 2094).
34. Expands worst parts of Obamacare: Obamacare’s job-killing employer mandate will become more severe by adjusting the definition of “affordable coverage” to mean coverage that costs no more than 8.5 percent of income rather than current law’s 9.5 percent of income (page 2041).
35. Increases taxes on Americans at every income level: $2 trillion in tax hikes will fall on those making under $400,000 per year, contrary to what the White House says. Individuals at all income levels will be affected (Ways and Means GOP).
36. Lowers wages for working families: The corporate tax rate will increase by 5.5%, meaning American companies will face one of the highest tax burdens in the world. According to analysis, two-thirds of this tax hike will fall on lower- and middle-income taxpayers (page 2110).
37. Penalizes marriage: The bill would permanently double the EITC’s marriage penalty on childless worker benefits (page 2036).
38. Imposes crushing taxes on small business: Guts the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act small business deductions that reduced pass-through entity taxes to keep them comparable to taxes imposed on corporations (page 2235) as well as hammer small businesses that file as individual tax earners with the 39.6% rate (page 2221) and Obamacare’s 3.8% tax on net investment income.
39. Crushes family businesses and farms: The bill would impose a 25% capital gains rate (page 2226) and makes alterations to the Death Tax including cutting the Death Tax exemption in half (page 2240).
40. Violates Americans’ financial privacy: $80 billion slush fund to hire an 87,000-IRS-agent army to carry out the Biden administration’s plan to review every account above a $600 balance or with more than $600 of transactions in a year. (page 2283).
41. Increases out of pocket costs for those who rely on prescription drugs: The bill repeals the Trump-era Rebate Rule which passes through rebates directly to consumers at the point of sale (page 2465).
42. Imports policies from countries with socialized medicine: The bill includes healthcare policies imported from systems in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom—all countries that have government-run healthcare systems (page 2349).
The bill also has other lesser-known provisions, including:
· $5 million per year for the Small Business Administration for an entrepreneurial program for formerly incarcerated individuals.
· $2.5 billion for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to award competitive grants or contracts to local governments, community-based organizations, and other groups to support “intervention strategies” to reduce community violence.
“Each of these 42 bullets is enough to vote against the bill. Taken together—it’s mind-blowingly corrupt. We need to loudly oppose it,” Banks charged in the release.
He added, “Democrats are scattered. The Biden agenda is in question. It’s the perfect opportunity to build public sentiment against this bill. The American people need us to be the vanguard against the Left’s radical plans.”
“It’s not an understatement to say this bill, if passed, will fundamentally change our country forever—Americans will wake up in a few years and wonder what happened to their freedom. We can’t let that happen,“ Banks concluded.
Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.
VISUALIZE REVOLUTION!
THEY WILL NOT GO QUIETLY!
The legislation has been shaped entirely by the class interests of the capitalist ruling elite, which demands both a continued supply of cash from the Treasury and a stepped-up supply of low-wage labor in the midst of the pandemic. In the course of these “negotiations,” measures that provide subsidies to businesses or promote the entry of more workers into the labor force have advanced, while measures that cost business money, sustain working people while they are not actively employed, or simply improve their lives, have been killed.
Biden opened the border, flooding our nation with millions of unemployed, unvetted, often terribly sick people who have no knowledge of or respect for our institutions. Most plan to get the welfare and health care Biden promised. Nothing stops terrorists and serious criminals, including killers; rapists; pedophiles; and traffickers of women, children, and drugs. America receives no benefit from opening our border to impoverished, illiterate people from over 120 countries. To add insult to injury, while Americans are being destroyed over the vaccine mandate, illegal aliens need not be vaccinated.
Biden’s incredible shrinking social “reform” bill
Patrick Martin
13 hours ago
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The “framework” for the “Build Back Better” legislation announced by President Biden Thursday morning and presented to the House Democratic caucus signals the collapse of the reformist pretenses of the Democratic administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress. For all the grandiose rhetoric about sweeping social legislation and “the most consequential piece of legislation for working people” since the New Deal (in the words of Bernie Sanders), the Democratic Party leadership has embraced a watered-down plan whose yearly cost ($175 billion) is less than one-quarter of the military budget.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., listens to a question from a reporter during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
The legislation incorporating the “framework,” a draft budget reconciliation bill, was submitted to the House Rules Committee Thursday and runs to nearly 2,200 pages. Its provisions are complex, and the procedures for its approval are both convoluted and highly precarious. It is entirely possible that the legislative process will lead to a complete political debacle for both the Biden White House and the Democratic Party as a whole, with no significant legislation passed.
But there is a unifying thread to the process of legislative horse-trading with two right-wing Senate Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, and a half-dozen right-wing House Democrats, which shrank the initial social spending bill from $6 trillion at the beginning, to the $3.5 trillion bill put forward by the White House, and now to the $1.75 trillion embraced by Biden Thursday—half his original plan, and barely a quarter of the opening bid by Sanders.
All these figures represent expenditures spread out over 10 years. By comparison, the military budget over the same period would be at least $8 trillion, and projected interest payments on the federal debt could be even higher. Every year, the Federal Reserve is pumping close to $1.5 trillion into the markets—nearly as much as the proposed legislation allocates in ten years.
The legislation has been shaped entirely by the class interests of the capitalist ruling elite, which demands both a continued supply of cash from the Treasury and a stepped-up supply of low-wage labor in the midst of the pandemic. In the course of these “negotiations,” measures that provide subsidies to businesses or promote the entry of more workers into the labor force have advanced, while measures that cost business money, sustain working people while they are not actively employed, or simply improve their lives, have been killed.
This rule of thumb explains both what provisions have survived and those which have gone by the wayside. To outline these briefly, based on the descriptions supplied by the White House, the surviving measures include:
· Climate-related spending, for a total of $555 billion. This is the largest single allocation in the much-reduced reconciliation bill, and the lion’s share, $320 billion, is in the form of tax credits to utilities, electric vehicle manufacturers, and companies that build battery-charging stations. Another $110 billion is for direct incentives (subsidies) to producers of “solar, batteries and advanced materials” (of great concern to the Pentagon), as well as “boosting the competitiveness of existing industries, like steel, cement, and aluminum.”
· Universal pre-kindergarten programs for children aged three and four, as well as federally subsidized child care. Despite the glowing rhetoric about expanding the social safety net, the main purpose of this program is to free the mothers of small children to take low-wage jobs.
· Expansion of Medicaid into a dozen states, mainly in the South, all ruled by Republican state governments which refused federal subsidies for expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Since most low-wage employers do not offer health care coverage, workers in those states, including Texas and Florida, have a strong disincentive to take jobs that would raise their incomes only marginally, yet make them ineligible for Medicaid.
· Extension of the expanded Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for around 17 million low-wage workers. This is essentially a wage subsidy for low-wage employers, since it allows workers to survive on extremely low wages with a top-off from the federal government, only available if they stay in their jobs for a minimum number of hours per week. It is not payable to workers who quit their jobs, are laid off or are long-term unemployed.
· Creation of a federally funded home health care program for the elderly and disabled. The class purpose is to return to the work force those who might otherwise have to drop out to take care of elderly parents or disabled relatives. This is of particular importance in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has frightened people away from nursing homes that have become death traps.
Those programs that have been largely or entirely eliminated include:
· Two years of free community college. This would obviously have removed large numbers of workers from the labor force, particularly those working and going to school only part-time, who would be encouraged to enroll in full-time education.
· Paid family and medical leave. This was initially set at 12 weeks, then whittled down to four weeks and then eliminated entirely.
· The child tax credit of $250 a month and $300 a month for children aged six or less. The bill extends the credit for only one year, to avoid its expiration in the midst of the campaign for the 2022 congressional elections. Once promised as a new, permanent benefit that would “cut child poverty in half,” the child credit is now set to terminate December 31, 2022.
· Authorization for Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices using its enormous buying power to bargain with the pharmaceutical companies.
· Expansion of Medicare to provide dental, vision and hearing coverage. One of the “red lines” of Sanders, the proposal has been shrunk to include only hearing coverage, the cheapest of the three. Besides being costly, this coverage was viewed as undesirable competition for insurance companies offering Medicare Advantage plans (a semi-private version of Medicare).
Alongside the tailoring of social spending proposals to meet the class interests of big business, the latest Biden version of the reconciliation package excludes any significant tax rate increases for either corporations or the wealthy, and it does not include even the “billionaires’ tax” proposed by some Senate Democrats this week, after the provision was challenged by several of the billionaires and threatened with protracted litigation on constitutional grounds.
There are a handful of tax provisions thrown in to sustain the pretense of “fairness” and “equity,” such as a minimum corporate income tax, but these will be easily evaded by giant corporations and their well-funded tax and legal departments. Likewise, the surtax on the incomes of millionaires and billionaires is likely to be eliminated because of the adamant opposition of Senator Sinema to any increase in income tax rates.
These spending and tax measures are combined in the “reconciliation” bill, which requires 50 votes in the Senate for passage. The separate “infrastructure” bill has already passed the Senate with bipartisan support, because it is essentially a $1.2 trillion boondoggle for big construction companies and other corporations, such as trucking, shipping, electric utilities and the like.
In the wake of Biden’s meeting with the House Democrats, the “progressives” have embraced the substance of his much-reduced reconciliation bill. While still insisting on the passage of both bills together, they are not arguing for any significant improvements in the reconciliation bill. Medicare expansion, paid family leave, free community college and other measures are off the table.
The whole rotten process exposes not only the nature of the Democratic Party itself. As Biden declared in his remarks Thursday from the White House, after his meeting with the House, “I am a capitalist.” Or to be more precise, he is a paid servant of the capitalists, like every Democratic and Republican politician.
The Democratic Party is a party of Wall Street, the intelligence agencies and the military, resting on privileged sections of the middle class. The role of Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, et al. is to provide this reactionary political organization with the barest fig leaf of social reform.
Moreover, far from “creating space” for social reform, as the pseudo-left promoters of the Democratic Party claimed, the right-wing politics of the Democrats, to the extent that they are not opposed through the independent political mobilization of the working class on a socialist program, only fuel the growth of the far right.
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