Trump Sends In the Economic Quacks
Now he’s prescribing hydroxychloroquine to fight recession.
By Paul Krugman
As the U.S. economy careens toward disaster, congressional talks about what to do appear to have ground to a halt. So on Saturday President Trump — speaking at one of his golf courses, of course — announced four executive measures that, he claimed, would rescue the recovery.
Unfortunately, one of the measures was vacuous, one trivial and one unworkable. And the fourth may do substantial harm.
The vacuous measure simply calls on government agencies to “consider” helping renters facing eviction. The trivial measure waives interest and defers principal repayment on student loans.
The unworkable measure supposedly provides new aid to the unemployed, who have lost pandemic benefits because Senate Republicans don’t want to provide them; but the announced program would be an administrative nightmare that might take a long time to put into effect and would require partial matching funds that strapped states don’t have. Remember, states had a very hard time implementing the first round of aid to the unemployed, leaving millions in the cold for many weeks. This would be worse.
But the really substantive measure would direct employers to stop collecting payroll taxes on behalf of their workers.
This is pretty wild stuff from a legal and constitutional point of view. Can presidents just stop collecting duly legislated taxes whenever they feel like it? But put the law to one side and ask, what’s this all about? Who thinks a payroll tax cut, even if enacted through due process, would solve any of the problems we face?
No reputable economist I know considers a payroll tax cut a good idea. Even if the money went to workers, which it almost certainly wouldn’t, it would go to precisely the wrong ones — workers who haven’t lost their jobs in the pandemic, not those who have. It wouldn’t encourage hiring, because what’s holding employers back isn’t cost, it’s the shutdown of activities with a high risk of infection (like indoor dining).
Now, lots of bad economic ideas — like giant tax cuts for the rich — nonetheless have strong political support. But a payroll tax cut isn’t one of them. In fact, Senate Republicans have been dismissive, dropping the idea from their proposals.
Yet there it is, the apparent centerpiece of Trump’s new plan. What’s going on?
The answer is that a payroll tax cut is the hydroxychloroquine of economic policy. It’s a quack remedy that somehow caught Trump’s eye, which he won’t give up because sycophants keep telling him he’s infallible. There may be some ulterior motives — this move might end up undermining the finances of Social Security and Medicare — but that’s all secondary. Basically this is a tantrum from a president temperamentally incapable of owning up to his own mistakes.
I’m not sure who first sold Trump on this bad idea. Its most tireless advocate has been Stephen Moore, who has a history of predicting tax-cut miracles — remember how Kansas was going to be the wonder of the world? — that never pan out. Just a few days ago Moore argued publicly that Trump could slash taxes without congressional authorization; and here we are.
Just to be clear, Trump isn’t actually cutting the payroll tax, which would require legislation. Instead, he’s just deferring its collection; workers will still owe the money a few months later. And knowing this, many if not most employers won’t increase paychecks, they’ll just put the money in escrow on workers’ behalf. As far as most workers are concerned, this whole thing may be a nonevent.
But maybe, just maybe, Trump will both win in November and find a way to retroactively cancel those tax obligations. If so, he’ll tear a big hole in the finances of Social Security and Medicare, programs that, whatever he may say, he has always wanted to kill.
The main point, however, is that we’re facing a moment of crisis. The emergency relief that sustained the U.S. economy through the coronavirus has expired, even though the pandemic is still very much with us. Unless very quick action is taken, consumer spending is about to collapse, bringing the whole economy down with it.
This wasn’t hard to see coming. Indeed, Democrats passed legislation to deal with this situation almost three months ago. But Senate Republicans did nothing, and still haven’t gotten serious about proposing remedies.
This would be a really good time for presidential leadership. But what we have instead is a pitchman hawking miracle cures at his country club. In the process he may well have undermined whatever slim chance there was of reaching an even halfway decent deal to avert disaster.
As I said, I don’t think there’s any deep game here. Yes, Trump’s intentions are bad. But recent interviews and inside reporting make it clear that he really is completely out of his depth, with no understanding of either the epidemiological or the economic reality we face.
At a moment of crisis America is cursed with a president who is incompetent, deeply ignorant, yet so personally insecure that he surrounds himself with people who tell him he’s a universal genius.
Chinese mainland reports 44 new COVID-19 cases, no new deaths
The Chinese mainland registered 44 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases on Monday, with 31 cases from overseas and 13 domestically transmitted, the Chinese health authority said Tuesday.
All of the 13 domestically transmitted cases are in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Among the cases from overseas, 9 were reported in northwestern Shaanxi Province and 8 in Shanghai.
No deaths related to the disease were reported on Monday, while 52 COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals.
… The main point, however, is that we’re facing a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/opinion/coronavirus-us-recession.html" The emergency relief that sustained the U.S. economy through the coronavirus has expired, even though the pandemic is still very much with us. Unless very quick action is taken, consumer spending is about to collapse, bringing the whole economy down with it. …
One pretty good forecasting rule for the coronavirus era has been to take whatever Trump administration officials are saying and assume that the opposite will happen. When President Trump declared in February that the number of cases would soon go close to zero, you knew that a huge pandemic was coming. When Vice President Mike Pence insisted in mid-June that “there isn’t a coronavirus ‘second wave,’” a giant surge in new cases and deaths was clearly imminent.
And when Larry Kudlow, the administration’s chief economist, declared just last week that a “V-shaped recovery” was still on track, it was predictable that the economy would stall. …
(On the Street…)
Stock futures pointed to opening gains today as the benchmark S&P 500 approaches a fresh record high for the first time since February. Dow futures implied a gain of more than 250 points at the opening bell, while S&P and Nasdaq futures also were in the green. (CNBC)
With all the interest in COVID and our upcoming national election I thought I would remind folks that on April 27, 2020 the US Navy confirmed that videos of unexplained aerial phenomena captured by camera systems on carrier-based aircraft in 2004 and in 2015 were authentic. These videos show phenomena that exhibit motion that is not really explainable by known technology and there is no known technology development programs on earth that might explain such motion. The potential adversaries of the United States are still hard at work on conventional – if advanced – flight systems and still hard at work trying to capture US technology from our efforts in this field. The US continues to pursue extremely expensive conventional technology in the field of flight. Even if these phenomena were somehow a type of projection, it would still represent enormous technology advances.
I have worked in aviation for decades and know that phenomenally brilliant folks have been working on propulsion, flight control, structure and other critical technologies for a long time and there are undoubtedly still more brilliant folks doing so in deliberate obscurity. Yet the conclusion I come to is that there is flight technology operating on earth that is far advanced of the current consensus about technology development. I would add that the possibilities that our understanding of other technologies might also be far too modest. I am not asking anyone to vote for Trump after binge watching Ancient Aliens, but something quite big seems in the works.
Occasionally, I have need of greater knowledge on legal questions. Or maybe, I am in need of it more so now then previously as the Republican Party and trump are challenging the law and the constitutional basis for a separation of the branches with no one branch being able to dictate solely to the nation without concurrence of the other two legislative bodies and acceptance of such a decision as measured within the constitution and the law of the nation by the judiciary. Yet, here we are again. I typically turn to an acquaintance who has had columns in the LA Times or the Sacramento Bee. Here is what Dean of the School of Law -Berkley, Erwin Chemerinsky had to say on Trump’s most recent power grab verbatim.
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“OP-ED: Trump just made another huge and illegal power grab. Be very alarmed,” Los Angeles Times, Erwin Chemerinsky, August 10, 2020
President Trump doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about the most basic principle of American government: Power is divided among three branches of government. The president does not possess legislative power, yet on Saturday Trump signed a series of executive orders that were clearly in the purview of the legislative, not the executive branch.
In his order, the president extended unemployment benefits, suspended the payroll tax for many workers, created an eviction moratorium and suspended student loan payments until Dec. 31. Whatever your views of these actions, they are all clearly unconstitutional, in that they exceed presidential authority. Trump is attempting to legislate through executive fiat.
Congress considered versions of all these proposals, but could not reach agreement. Rather than wait for legislators to come to some compromise they could live with, the president decided to impose his vision on the country. We should be very alarmed.
The president has many powers of his own, spelled out clearly in the Constitution. He can by executive order unilaterally change some aspects of how the executive branch of government implements its duties, but he does not possess the power to regulate private behavior or to contravene federal laws or the Constitution.
For example, the Constitution puts the power to tax and spend solely in the hands of Congress. The most that a president may do is veto a bill passed by Congress, and even that can be overridden by two-thirds of both houses of Congress. The president cannot create a tax or suspend one imposed by Congress. Yet that is exactly what President Trump has done in suspending the payroll tax by executive order.
President Trump proposed doing this to Congress, and both Democrats and Republicans thought it was a terrible idea, because it would do nothing to help those out of work, and it would take needed money from the Social Security system. After being rebuffed by Congress, Trump took the legislative reins and simply decreed the payroll tax suspended for millions of workers.
During the early 1970s, President Richard Nixon was frustrated that Congress was passing spending bills, often over his veto, for social programs he did not want to fund. President Nixon declared that he had the power to impound funds and keep them from being spent. Every court to consider his action declared the impoundment unconstitutional because it usurped congressional power. The courts have always been very clear: A president cannot suspend a tax or funding for a program created by federal law.
Likewise, Trump has no authority to extend unemployment benefits, let alone force states to pay one-quarter of the cost. Again, Democrats and Republicans were at an impasse about how to extend these benefits, so Trump just did it. Only Congress can appropriate federal funds and it has not done so. Additionally, the Supreme Court repeatedly has held that the federal government cannot force states to act, so we can expect them to be skeptical of a presidential order requiring them to spend money few states can afford.
And then there’s the eviction moratorium. Congress has power to regulate commerce among the states, and could arguably require such an action under that power. The president has no such constitutional privilege, something even he may recognize, since on the subject of evictions, all the executive order does is ask the Department of Health and Human Services to study the matter.
Some of what the president hopes to accomplish by fiat is important and worthy. For example, he extended the CARES Act, which provided student loan relief that was slated to end on Sept. 30, through Dec. 31. As an educator who sees how students struggle, I would very much like to see that happen. But it requires a law passed by Congress, not unilateral executive action.
Trump’s approach to executive power is extremely dangerous. If he continues as he has in recent days — suspending a tax enacted by Congress, extending a law set by Congress to expire — where will it end? Will any action the president wants and Congress refuses to pass simply be decreed by executive order? That’s how it’s starting to look.
The framers of the Constitution created an elegant system of checks and balances, in which it generally takes two branches of government for any major federal action. Enacting a law requires passage by both houses of Congress and either a presidential signature or a congressional override of a veto. Enforcing a law takes prosecution by the executive branch and conviction in the judiciary. Nominations for cabinet officials, federal judges, ambassadors and others take both a presidential nomination and Senate confirmation.
The system is often inefficient and sometimes fails to produce necessary action. But the alternative is to vest all powers in the president. And as James Madison warned, long ago, that is the very definition of tyranny.
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We went through this with the PPACA when careless Democrats failed to appropriate funds for the Risk Corridor Program which helped to fund insurance companies and Coops who had experienced losses greater than 3% by using funds taken from other company profits greater than 3%. This would occur for three years until the companies stabilized their premiums with relation to costs. CBO scored it positive producing $12 billion a year.
It should have worked but for Dems not appropriating funds in Congress. Instead the HHS was going to acquire the necessary funds. Senator Jeff B. Sessions wrote a letter to the GAO asking whether the administration (HHS) can appropriate funds to which it said no. It also said the administration could transfer funds from other programs. All well and good. Congress was in a hurry to pass the 2015 Cromnibus Budget and Dems missed an addition to the bill – Section 227 put into the budget bill at the last minute by Congressional Representative Jack Kingston(CO) and Fred Upton(MI).
The door slammed shut and constituents lsot insurance and premiums increased, Coops went bankrupt, and insurance companies left the exchanges.
It is interesting that Repubs operated in unison to block the Obama administration from appropriating funds or even transferring funds from other healthcare programs in the Cromnibus bill to the PPACA. Yet here are today with trump as the pres and it is ok for trump to appropriate funds.
Trump just made another huge and illegal power grab. Be very alarmed
By Erwin Chemerinsky – Los Angeles Times
[ While the column is excellent, there is limited room to deal with a problem of the presidency that has grown significantly these last 20 years. The problem is that both Bush and Obama repeatedly “wrote” or changed or refused to follow legislation from the White House. Bush and Obama legislated.
Charlie Savage wrote on the matter extensively for the Boston Globe and New York Times, winning a Pulitzer Prize for the writing at the Globe. ]
Shift on Executive Power Lets Obama Bypass Rivals
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON — One Saturday last fall, President Obama interrupted a White House strategy meeting to raise an issue not on the agenda. He declared, aides recalled, that the administration needed to more aggressively use executive power to govern in the face of Congressional obstructionism.
“We had been attempting to highlight the inability of Congress to do anything,” recalled William M. Daley, who was the White House chief of staff at the time. “The president expressed frustration, saying we have got to scour everything and push the envelope in finding things we can do on our own.”
For Mr. Obama, that meeting was a turning point. As a senator and presidential candidate, he had criticized George W. Bush for flouting the role of Congress. And during his first two years in the White House, when Democrats controlled Congress, Mr. Obama largely worked through the legislative process to achieve his domestic policy goals.
But increasingly in recent months, the administration has been seeking ways to act without Congress….
[ This matter was written about by Charlie Savage in the Boston Globe and New York Times through the Bush and Obama years. ]
Don’t Rely on Bush’s Signing Statements, Obama Orders
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Mr. Bush’s use of signing statements — official legal documents issued by a president the day he signs bills into law, instructing executive officials how to implement the statutes — led to fierce controversy.
Mr. Bush frequently used signing statements to declare that provisions in the bills he was signing were unconstitutional constraints on executive power, claiming that the laws did not need to be enforced or obeyed as written. The laws he challenged included a torture ban and requirements that Congress be given detailed reports about how the Justice Department was using the counter-terrorism powers in the USA Patriot Act.
Dating back to the 19th century, presidents have occasionally signed a bill while declaring that one or more provisions were unconstitutional. Presidents began doing so more frequently starting with the Reagan administration.
But Mr. Bush broke all records, using signing statements to challenge about 1,200 bill sections over his eight years in office — about twice the number challenged by all previous presidents combined, according to data compiled by Christopher Kelley, a political science professor at Miami University in Ohio….
200,000 here we come. We should do a pool and pick dates as to when, when we hit 200,000. I am thinking there is still time to do so this year. And yes, this is morbid.
Having apparently contained the spread of the coronavirus, the Israeli government gave way to political pressure to incautiously open schools and business.
Way past time for people to understand what GOP voters are. And it is not just in districts in GA, it in districts with high percentages of white voters.
Innovation is the engine that drives contemporary economies. Living standards are determined by productivity growth, which in turn depends on the introduction and dissemination of new technologies that allow an ever-wider variety of goods and services to be produced with fewer and fewer of our planet’s resources.
Policymakers and the public at large understand the importance of innovation. What is less well appreciated is the degree to which the innovation agenda has been captured by narrow groups of investors and firms whose values and interests don’t necessarily reflect society’s needs.
In today’s advanced economies, private firms undertake the bulk of research and development. The business sector’s share of total R&D spending ranges from 60 percent in Singapore to 78 percent in South Korea, with the United States closer to the higher end, at 72 percent. But it is the public sector that provides the essential social, legal, and educational infrastructure that sustains private R&D.
Innovation in the private sector depends crucially on government funding of basic science and research labs. It relies on scientific talent trained in universities supported by public funds. The state provides innovators with monopoly rights through the patent system, and ensures the private appropriation of returns to R&D through labor and contract law. Not least, private R&D is heavily subsidized by the state through tax credits and other policies.
As a society, we should care not just about how much innovation takes place, but also about the types of new technologies that are developed. We ought to ensure we are investing in technologies that are safe, environmentally sound, empower rather than simply replace human labor, and are consistent with democratic values and human rights.
The direction of technological change is not fixed or determined from outside the social and economic system. Instead, it is shaped by incentives, values, and the distribution of power.
Despite the state’s heavy involvement in supporting innovation, governments typically pay remarkably little attention to the direction technological change takes in private hands. But private firms’ priorities often lead them to underinvest in technologies that have significant long-run returns, such as those that reduce climate change, or to pay inadequate attention to the human rights or privacy implications of digital innovations. Pharmaceutical companies, for example, seek returns in high-priced medicines for rare diseases affecting advanced economies, instead of vaccines for tropical diseases affecting millions in poor countries.
Moreover, firms tend to over-invest in automation in order to increase the return to capital and managers, at the expense of employees. As the economists Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo have noted, this may result in “so-so technologies” which produce few overall productivity benefits, while leaving workers worse off.
The common fixation with automation can lead the smartest investors astray. In 2016, Elon Musk announced that Tesla’s Model 3 would be built in a new, fully automated car factory, which would operate at speeds exceeding what is feasible for humans. Two years later, the plans had floundered, and severe bottlenecks at the new factory made clear actual production would fall far short of the company’s targets. Musk was forced to set up a new assembly line – full of human workers – on the factory grounds. “Humans are underrated,” he conceded on Twitter.
Innovators’ priorities are naturally shaped by their own cultural and social milieu. In a recent paper, Harvard Business School professor Josh Lerner and Ramana Nanda have quantified how distant their values and priorities may be from those of ordinary people.
In the U.S., venture capital (VC) plays a disproportionate role in financing innovation by startups. The VC industry is highly concentrated, with the top 5 percent of investors accounting for 50 percent of the capital raised.
Three regions – the San Francisco Bay Area, Greater New York, and Greater Boston – account for about two-thirds of the industry and over 90 percent of top firms’ corporate board membership. The top VC firms’ influence goes even further, because they often act as gatekeepers for other investors.
The social and educational background of those who make the investment decisions is equally homogeneous. Lerner and Nanda report that three-quarters of partners with at least one board seat in top VC firms attended an Ivy League university, Caltech, MIT, or Stanford. Nearly a third are graduates of just two business schools (Harvard and Stanford). It would be surprising if the funding decisions taken were not influenced by the social composition of the group.
Lerner and Nanda suggest that the geographic concentration of VC firms may have contributed to the “hollowing out” of innovative activities in other parts of the country. “Venture firms based in other cities,” they argue, “might have chosen very different firms to invest in given their perspectives on their local economies.”
Biased priorities prevail in public innovation programs as well. The largest single program supporting high-tech innovation in the U.S. is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which as the name indicates, is oriented toward military applications. While many DARPA projects have yielded civilian benefits as well (not least the Internet and GPS), agency priorities are clearly shaped by defense considerations.
DARPA’s clean-energy technologies counterpart, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), has barely a tenth of the budget. Perhaps the biggest omission is that no government currently has programs devoted specifically to funding the development of labor-friendly technologies.
If technological innovation is to serve society, the direction it takes must reflect social priorities. Governments have evaded their responsibility here, because of the pervasive belief that it is difficult to alter the course of technology. But we have not tried nearly enough to steer technology in the right directions. Innovation is too important to leave to innovators alone.
Dani Rodrik is professor of international political economy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Chinese mainland reports 25 new COVID-19 cases, no new deaths
The Chinese mainland registered 25 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, with 16 cases from overseas and 9 domestically transmitted, Chinese health authority said Wednesday.
All of the 9 domestically transmitted cases are in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
No deaths related to the disease were reported on Tuesday, while 58 COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals.
The total number of confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland stands at 84,737 and the cumulative death toll at 4,634, with 288 asymptomatic patients under medical observation.
Overall and Core CPI Both Rise 0.6 Percent in July as Price Reversals Continue
By DEAN BAKER
Rental inflation appears to be slowing, especially in high-priced cities.
The overall Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.6 percent in July, the same as the rate in June. The core CPI rose 0.6 percent in July after rising 0.2 percent in June. Over the last year the indexes are up 1.0 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively.
The inflation of the last two months is overwhelmingly a story of bounce-back with sharp price increases in these months reversing large price declines in the period of shutdown. To a lesser extent, higher prices in some areas likely reflect efforts to pass on pandemic-related costs (e.g., reduced capacity in restaurants or airplanes). These costs will largely disappear if the pandemic is brought under control.
Gas prices are probably the clearest example of this pattern. They rose 5.6 percent in July after rising 12.3 percent in June. This follows a cumulative price decline of 33.8 percent from January to May. Over the last year gas prices are still down by 20.3 percent.
In the core index, apparel prices are up 1.1 percent in July after rising 1.7 percent in June. They had fallen 8.8 percent from February to May. They are now down by 6.4percent over the last year. Airfares rose by 2.6 percent and 5.4 percent in June and July, respectively. This followed a price decline of 29.5 percent in the prior three months.
Auto insurance prices rose 9.3 percent in July following a 5.1 percent rise in June. This is after falling 14.9 percent from February to May. The index is down 1.9 percent over the last year.
The CPI auto insurance index (unlike the one used in the personal consumption expenditure deflator) is a gross spending index. It captures what people pay out for their insurance, without netting out claims. Not surprisingly, this gross index fell sharply in the shutdown period as insurers gave rebates due to the fact that people were driving much less and therefore having fewer accidents. The rise in the last two months is the ending of these rebates. The insurance index accounts for almost 1.9 percent of the core CPI.
Restaurant prices rose 0.5 percent in July after rising 0.4 percent and 0.5 percent in the prior two months. Before the pandemic, restaurant prices had been rising 1.0–1.5 percent more rapidly than the price of food at home, reflecting rising wages in the sector. This was reversed during the shutdown period. In March, restaurant prices rose 0.2 percent, while at-home food prices rose 0.5 percent. In April the respective increases were 0.1 percent and 2.6 percent, and in May 0.4 percent and 1.0 percent. The story was sharply reversed in July, as the 0.5 percent rise in restaurant prices went along with a drop of 1.1 percent in the price of food at home. Going forward, restaurant prices are likely to again outpace food prices.
[Graph]
There appears to be some slowing in the rate of rental inflation, with owners’ equivalent rent rising at an annual rate of 2.4 percent, comparing the average of the last three months (May, June, July) with the prior three months (February, March, April). That is down from a rate of 2.8 percent over the last year. For the rent proper index, the increases are 2.6 percent compared to 3.1 percent.
This slowdown is most visible in areas where rents had been rising rapidly. In Los Angeles the rent proper index was rising at an annual rate of 2.5 percent over the last three months, down from 3.6 percent over the last year. In San Francisco the index has fallen at an annual rate of 3.3 percent over the last three months compared to a rise of 2.6 percent over the last year.
The high inflation of June and July is not a surprise and should not be a basis for concern about ongoing problems with inflation. It is overwhelmingly attributable to reversals of sharp price declines during the shutdown period. In addition, there are sectors that are experiencing one-time and temporary cost pressures as a result of adjustments necessary to cope with the pandemic. We may see another month or two of high inflation, but there is little reason to believe that this is the start of an upward spiral.
Israel had apparently contained the spread of coronavirus infections, when giving way to political pressure the government incautiously opened schools and businesses.
The news is all Kalama, and rightly so, but let me counterprogram and talk about economics. Over the next few weeks I'm scheduled to talk everywhere and nowhere about the post-Covid economy — that is, audiences in various places, but all virtually. What is there to say? 1/
The news is all Kalama, and rightly so, but let me counterprogram and talk about economics. Over the next few weeks I’m scheduled to talk everywhere and nowhere about the post-Covid economy — that is, audiences in various places, but all virtually. What is there to say? 1/
11:51 AM · Aug 12, 2020
Covid changes both what we buy and how we work. A few things to say about both aspects. First, the pandemic basically forced us to stop spending on some things. But what would we do with the money? Spend on other things, or save? 2/
And oh my God, I managed to misspell Kamala. Can’t even blame autocorrect, just sloppy typing. KAM – a -la, Kam – a – la 3/
Anyway: people who couldn’t go to bars or take cruises could have just splurged on other things. As it turned out, however, mostly they saved — so far. 4/
[Graph]
That’s why it was so important from a macro point of view to provide generous aid to the pandemic-unemployed, and why disaster looms now that the aid has vanished 5/
But in the longer run, even if we don’t have a vaccine and can resume traditional activities, people will find other ways to spend their money. Here’s a historical example: what happened to tobacco spending when health concerns led to much lower smoking? 6/
Tobacco products were a big part of consumer spending, and mostly went away 7/
[Graph]
But the savings rate didn’t rise; people just found other things to buy. The same will eventually happen for whatever activities we can’t resume post-Covid 8/
We’ll also change the way we work. Still not clear how much remote work will take over; on one side it has received formidable infant industry protection, giving employers an incentive to make it work. But the downsides also becoming apparent over time 9/
One thing I worry about is how much of a long-term blow we’re delivering to the most effective mass transit system ever devised — the elevator 10/
One thing is clear: we will adapt. That’s what modern societies do, given even slightly competent leadership. Oh, wait 11/
Oh, and since I managed to get Harris’s name wrong through sheer fat-finger incompetence, I guess I should sign off as Pual Kurgman 12/
‘A Smoking Gun’: Infectious Coronavirus Retrieved From Hospital Air
Airborne virus plays a significant role in community transmission, many experts believe. A new study fills in the missing piece: Floating virus can infect cells.
By Apoorva Mandavilli
Skeptics of the notion that the coronavirus spreads through the air — including many expert advisers to the World Health Organization — have held out for one missing piece of evidence: proof that floating respiratory droplets called aerosols contain live virus, and not just fragments of genetic material.
Now a team of virologists and aerosol scientists has produced exactly that: * confirmation of infectious virus in the air.
“This is what people have been clamoring for,” said Linsey Marr, an expert in airborne spread of viruses who was not involved in the work. “It’s unambiguous evidence that there is infectious virus in aerosols.”
A research team at the University of Florida succeeded in isolating live virus from aerosols collected at a distance of seven to 16 feet from patients hospitalized with Covid-19 — farther than the six feet recommended in social distancing guidelines.
The findings, posted online last week, have not yet been vetted by peer review, but have already caused something of a stir among scientists. “If this isn’t a smoking gun, then I don’t know what is,” Dr. Marr tweeted last week.
But some experts said it still was not clear that the amount of virus recovered was sufficient to cause infection.
The research was exacting. Aerosols are minute by definition, measuring only up to five micrometers across; evaporation can make them even smaller. Attempts to capture these delicate droplets usually damage the virus they contain.
“It’s very hard to sample biological material from the air and have it be viable,” said Shelly Miller, an environmental engineer at the University of Colorado Boulder who studies air quality and airborne diseases.
“We have to be clever about sampling biological material so that it is more similar to how you might inhale it.”
Viable SARS-CoV-2 in the air of a hospital room with COVID-19 patients
By John A Lednicky, Michael Lauzardo, Z. Hugh Fan, Antarpreet S Jutla, Trevor B Tilly, Mayank Gangwar, Moiz Usmani, Sripriya N Shankar, Karim Mohamed, Arantza Eiguren-Fernandez, Caroline J Stephenson, Md. Mahbubul Alam, Maha A Elbadry, Julia C Loeb, Kuttichantran Subramaniam, Thomas B Waltzek, Kartikeya Cherabuddi, John Glenn Morris Jr. and Chang-Yu Wu
Abstract
Background – There currently is substantial controversy about the role played by SARS-CoV-2 in aerosols in disease transmission, due in part to detections of viral RNA but failures to isolate viable virus from clinically generated aerosols.
Methods – Air samples were collected in the room of two COVID-19 patients, one of whom had an active respiratory infection with a nasopharyngeal (NP) swab positive for SARS-CoV-2 by RT-qPCR. By using VIVAS air samplers that operate on a gentle water-vapor condensation principle, material was collected from room air and subjected to RT-qPCR and virus culture. The genomes of the SARS-CoV-2 collected from the air and of virus isolated in cell culture from air sampling and from a NP swab from a newly admitted patient in the room were sequenced.
Findings – Viable virus was isolated from air samples collected 2 to 4.8m away from the patients. The genome sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 strain isolated from the material collected by the air samplers was identical to that isolated from the NP swab from the patient with an active infection. Estimates of viable viral concentrations ranged from 6 to 74 TCID50 units/L of air.
Interpretation – Patients with respiratory manifestations of COVID-19 produce aerosols in the absence of aerosol-generating procedures that contain viable SARS-CoV-2, and these aerosols may serve as a source of transmission of the virus.
925 Quarantined for Covid. Is This a Successful School Reopening?
A suburban Atlanta county opened its schools amid controversy and a growing case count, previewing a difficult national back-to-school season.
By Richard Fausset
Saw that which is why I stay away from “any” medical facility. Those are cesspools of germs impossible to get rid of inside.
[ Chinese hospitals treating coronavirus patients used and as the infection spread quickly built negative air-pressure rooms. Chinese ambulances were fitted for negative air pressure carrying of coronavirus patients. ]
When the Chinese worked round-the-clock to build entire hospitals with negative air pressure rooms for coronavirus patients, Western press coverage and commentary often subjected the efforts to ridicule. Similarly when the Chinese tested for and isolated asymptomatic patients, the efforts were often dismissed.
This is a reflection of the disdain that has been fostered for China.
The Dominican Republic has been the faster growing country in GDP per capita in the Western Hemisphere since 1971. Cuba has been continually sanctioned economically by the US through these years, however Cuba has a far superior healthcare system as reflected now in the coronavirus experience of the countries.
The True Coronavirus Toll in the U.S. Has Already Surpassed 200,000
By Denise Lu
Estimated deaths above normal, March 1 to July 25
Nationwide, 200,000 more people have died than usual since March. This number is about 60,000 higher than the number of deaths that have been directly linked to the coronavirus.
As the pandemic has moved south and west from its epicenter in New York City, so have the unusual patterns in deaths from all causes. That suggests that the official death counts may be substantially underestimating the overall effects of the virus….
Chinese mainland reports 19 new COVID-19 cases, no new deaths
The Chinese mainland registered 19 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, with 11 cases from overseas and 8 domestically transmitted, Chinese health authority said Thursday.
All of the 8 domestically transmitted cases are in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
No deaths related to the disease were reported on Wednesday, while 56 COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals.
The total number of confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland stands at 84,756 and the cumulative death toll at 4,634, with 295 asymptomatic patients under medical observation.
When Trump Proposes Giving More Money to the Rich, New York Times Mind Readers Know That He’s Doing it to Increase Growth
By Dean Baker
Most of us might think that when Donald Trump proposes a tax break for the rich it is because he wants to give more money to the rich. Fortunately, the New York Times has a staff of mind readers who can keep us better informed. Therefore we are told: *
“Mr. Trump and his advisers have regularly considered unorthodox tax maneuvers that they believe would spur economic growth, including reducing the taxes that investors pay on profits earned from selling assets like stocks or bonds.”
There is a large body * of research indicating that lowering the capital gains tax rate would have a minimal impact on growth. The evidence would suggest that lowering capital gains taxes, which will almost exclusively benefit the rich, is not a good way to boost growth, but the NYT knows that Trump and his advisors believe otherwise. (It is worth mentioning that most middle class people have their stock holdings in retirement accounts, which would not be affected by a reduction in the capital gains tax.)
United Kingdom Economy Contracted at a 59.9 Percent Rate in Second Quarter
By Dean Baker
Some folks may have seen articles * reporting that the United Kingdom’s economy shrank by 20.4 percent in the second quarter. While this number is accurate, it is reporting the quarterly rate of decline.
We typically report GDP changes as annual rates, which implies taking the quarterly growth rate to the fourth power. In the case of the UK, its second quarter pace of decline would imply a drop of 59.9 percent at an annual rate.
It is worth making this calculation for comparative purposes. Readers may recall that the U.S. economy contracted 32.9 percent in the second quarter. This is an annual rate of decline. The contraction in the U.K. was actually far worse than the contraction in the United States.
In N.Y.C.’s Coronavirus Surge, a Frightening Echo of the 1918 Flu
This spring, death rates rivaled those seen during the country’s deadliest pandemic, a new study finds. “What 1918 looked like is basically this.”
By Apoorva Mandavilli
Today the @StateDept designated the Confucius Institute U.S. Center as a foreign mission of the PRC, recognizing it for what it is: an entity controlled by the PRC that advances Beijing’s global propaganda and malign influence campaign on U.S. campuses and K-12 classrooms.
Today the @StateDept designated the Confucius Institute U.S. Center as a foreign mission of the PRC, recognizing it for what it is: an entity controlled by the PRC that advances Beijing’s global propaganda and malign influence campaign on U.S. campuses and K-12 classrooms.
While I have no interest in the nutty economics of conservatives, I am reminded of a severe economic mistake that was made in New York not that long ago. New York City had the chance of having an Amazon headquarters, which several self-styled liberal legislators successfully fought against. Paul Krugman who wrote extensively on location theory considered the loss of Amazon of no account, while I thought of an indefinitely growing advanced technology company that would in turn attract other such companies.
What I am finding right now in my community, is that shopping has been dramatically changed in the wake of the coronavirus. Markets and the like are remarkably uncrowded, while everywhere in the neighborhood there are Amazon deliveries being made. All I hear is how pleasing shopping by Amazon is, which is my experience, and I would guess shopping has been changed for a long time to come.
Yes, I know all about assorted complaints about Amazon, but to have a computer, to Kashi cereal by the carton to, yes, Parmalat milk by the case for the cereal, always at the door, is a revelation. Amazon can easily be fixed, if actually necessary.
Your periodic reminder that, contrary to the Trump claims, people in the United States, not China, paid the Trump tariffs. Price of imports from China fell just 0.5 percent over the last year https://t.co/4g6CZJfjI7
Your periodic reminder that, contrary to the Trump claims, people in the United States, not China, paid the Trump tariffs. Price of imports from China fell just 0.5 percent over the last year
Justice Dept. Accuses Yale of Discrimination in Application Process
The department’s civil rights division accused the university of violating the Civil Rights Act by discriminating against Asian-American and white applicants.
By Anemona Hartocollis
Chinese mainland reports 30 new COVID-19 cases, no new deaths
The Chinese mainland registered 30 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Thursday, with 22 cases from overseas and 8 domestically transmitted, the Chinese health authority said Friday.
All of the 8 domestically transmitted cases are in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
No deaths related to the disease were reported on Thursday, while 64 COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals.
The total number of confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland stands at 84,786 and the cumulative death toll at 4,634, with 309 asymptomatic patients under medical observation.
Trump’s Racist, Statist Suburban Dream
Racial inequality wasn’t an accident. It was an ugly political choice.
By Paul Krugman
Conservatives do love their phony wars. Remember the war on Christmas? Remember the “war on coal”? (Donald Trump promised to end that war, but in the third year of his presidency coal production fell to its lowest level since 1978, and the Department of Energy expects it to keep falling.)
Now, as the Trump campaign desperately searches for political avenues of attack, we’re hearing a lot about the “war on the suburbs.”
It’s probably not a line that will play well outside the G.O.P.’s hard-core base; Joe Biden and Kamala Harris don’t exactly come across as rabble-rousers who will lead raging antifa hordes as they pillage America’s subdivisions.
Yet it is true that a Biden-Harris administration would resume and probably expand on Obama-era efforts to finally make the Fair Housing Act of 1968 effective, seeking in particular to redress some of the injustices created by America’s ugly history of using political power to create and reinforce racial inequality.
For what Trump calls the “Suburban Lifestyle Dream” didn’t just happen; it was created by government policies. The great suburban housing boom that followed World War II was made possible by huge federal subsidies, via programs — especially the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration — that protected lenders from risk by insuring qualifying home mortgages. By 1950 the F.H.A. and the V.A. were insuring half of all mortgages nationwide.
Of course, these subsidies didn’t just help home buyers. They were also a gold mine for real estate developers, among them a guy named Fred Trump, who was later sued for discriminating against Black tenants, and whose son currently occupies the White House.
But these subsidies were only available to white people. In fact, they were only available in all-white communities. As Richard Rothstein reports in his 2017 book “The Color of Law,” F.H.A. guidelines specifically cautioned against loans in communities in which children might share classrooms with other children who “represent a far lower level of society or an incompatible racial element.”
Indeed, the F.H.A. went well beyond favoring all-white locations; it set out to create them. After the war, when developers like William Levitt began building new communities on what had been farmland, they cleared their plans in advance with the F.H.A., thereby guaranteeing that buyers would have automatic access to subsidized mortgages. And one of the things the F.H.A. required from such plans was strict racial segregation, supposedly to insure property values.
Now, all of this may sound like old history. But the raw racism of postwar housing policy cast a long shadow over our society. For the 20 or so years that followed World War II represented a unique opportunity for the middle class to solidify its position — an opportunity that was denied to Black people.
You see, the ’50s and ’60s were an era both of relatively good pay for ordinary workers and of relatively cheap suburban housing. Wages were fairly high, in part because America still had a strong union movement, and houses were affordable, as long as you had access to those federal housing programs. So millions of Americans got a chance to build some wealth.
Then the window of opportunity closed. Wages, adjusted for inflation, stagnated. Housing prices soared, in part because building restrictions in many suburbs banned multifamily units. And Black families, who were shut out of a rising market at a time when many other Americans were sharing in the fruits of a housing boom, found the financial barriers to homeownership especially daunting.
So Trump’s Suburban Lifestyle Dream is basically a walled village that the government built for whites, whose gates were slammed shut when others tried to enter.
What is Biden proposing to remedy at least some of these injustices? Reasonable, significant, but hardly revolutionary stuff — things like expanding rental vouchers while cracking down on redlining and exclusionary zoning. Trump may claim that such policies would “destroy suburbia,” but that only makes sense if you believe that the only alternative to bloody anarchy is a community that looks exactly like Levittown in 1955.
And it’s very important to understand that none of the scare talk about a war on the suburbs has anything to do with the usual conservative rhetoric about “freedom” and not having the government tell Americans what to do. Individual choices and free markets aren’t what made America such a segregated, unequal society. Discrimination was a statist policy, involving the exercise of political power to deny people free choice.
And it still goes on. What the Black Lives Matter movement has done is to reveal to many white Americans that we’re still a long way from being a society in which everyone is treated equally by the law, whatever the skin color. (Black Americans already knew that very well.)
But the big difference between the parties now is that Biden and Harris are trying to make things better, trying to make us more like the country we’re supposed to be. Trump and Mike Pence, by contrast, are basically trying to make open racism great again.
The new Eurostat numbers say that Sweden and Denmark have had identical economic performance: ~8% GDP decline over past year. So all Sweden got from its herd immunity strategy was a bunch of dead Swedes https://t.co/2HGCAX8TcPpic.twitter.com/k9aN9DOZxA
The new Eurostat numbers say that Sweden and Denmark have had identical economic performance: ~8% GDP decline over the past year. So all Sweden got from its herd immunity strategy was a bunch of dead Swedes
White House warns of ‘widespread and expanding’ viral spread in Georgia
President Trump’s coronavirus task force warns that Georgia continues to see “widespread and expanding community viral spread” and that the state’s current policies aren’t enough to curtail COVID-19.
7:01 AM · Aug 14, 2020
Pardon my early morning art work, but here’s GA versus Portugal, which has roughly the same population; scales more or less matching 2/
I don't understand why more people aren't freaking out about the fiscal cliff. State and local governments, with the prospect of aid receding fast, are on the verge of huge cutbacks 1/ pic.twitter.com/RcW0ywbaJt
I don’t understand why more people aren’t freaking out about the fiscal cliff. State and local governments, with the prospect of aid receding fast, are on the verge of huge cutbacks 1/
My back of the envelope says consumer spending cuts ~ 3% of GDP coming, plus S&L govt cuts of ~1% of GDP. That’s a negative demand shock of 4% of GDP, probably with a substantial multiplier. This is financial-crisis level stuff 3/
Business economists I talk to think there will be a deal. But why? The Trump “plan” is totally unworkable, but will probably prevent any real deal for months. Again, why aren’t we panicking? 4/
The way in which Israel, a country with a fine healthcare system, lost control of the coronavirus spread after incautiously opening schools and businesses is important.
How severe the incautious opening of Israel was, after the coronavirus spread had appeared to be controlled, can be understood in realizing that little Israel has experienced 91,080 infections in all now while China has experienced 84,786.
A Black Marxist Scholar Wanted to Talk About Race. It Ignited a Fury.
The cancellation of a speech reflects an intense debate on the left: Is racism the primary problem in America today, or the outgrowth of a system that oppresses all poor people?
By Michael Powell
Adolph Reed is a son of the segregated South, a native of New Orleans who organized poor Black people and antiwar soldiers in the late 1960s and became a leading Socialist scholar at a trio of top universities.
Along the way, he acquired the conviction, controversial today, that the left is too focused on race and not enough on class. Lasting victories were achieved, he believed, when working class and poor people of all races fought shoulder to shoulder for their rights.
In late May, Professor Reed, now 73 and a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, was invited to speak to the Democratic Socialists of America’s New York City chapter. The match seemed a natural. Possessed of a barbed wit, the man who campaigned for Senator Bernie Sanders and skewered President Barack Obama as a man of “vacuous to repressive neoliberal politics” would address the D.S.A.’s largest chapter, the crucible that gave rise to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a new generation of leftist activism.
His chosen topic was unsparing: He planned to argue that the left’s intense focus on the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus on Black people undermined multiracial organizing, which he sees as key to health and economic justice.
Notices went up. Anger built. How could we invite a man to speak, members asked, who downplays racism in a time of plague and protest? To let him talk, the organization’s Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color Caucus stated, was “reactionary, class reductionist and at best, tone deaf.”
“We cannot be afraid to discuss race and racism because it could get mishandled by racists,” the caucus stated. “That’s cowardly and cedes power to the racial capitalists.”
Amid murmurs that opponents might crash his Zoom talk, Professor Reed and D.S.A. leaders agreed to cancel it, a striking moment as perhaps the nation’s most powerful Socialist organization rejected a Black Marxist professor’s talk because of his views on race.
“God have mercy, Adolph is the greatest democratic theorist of his generation,” said Cornel West, a Harvard professor of philosophy and a Socialist. “He has taken some very unpopular stands on identity politics, but he has a track record of a half-century. If you give up discussion, your movement moves toward narrowness.”
The decision to silence Professor Reed came as Americans debate the role of race and racism in policing, health care, media and corporations. Often pushed aside in that discourse are those leftists and liberals who have argued there is too much focus on race and not enough on class in a deeply unequal society. Professor Reed is part of the class of historians, political scientists and intellectuals who argue that race as a construct is overstated.
This debate is particularly potent as activists sense a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make progress on issues ranging from police violence to mass incarceration to health and inequality. And it comes as Socialism in America — long a predominantly white movement — attracts younger and more diverse adherents.
Many leftist and liberal scholars argue that current disparities in health, police brutality and wealth inequality are due primarily to the nation’s history of racism and white supremacy. Race is America’s primal wound, they say, and Black people, after centuries of slavery and Jim Crow segregation, should take the lead in a multiracial fight to dismantle it. To set that battle aside in pursuit of ephemeral class solidarity is preposterous, they argue.
“Adolph Reed and his ilk believe that if we talk about race too much we will alienate too many, and that will keep us from building a movement,” said Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a Princeton professor of African-American studies and a D.S.A. member. “We don’t want that — we want to win white people to an understanding of how their racism has fundamentally distorted the lives of Black people.”
A contrary view is offered by Professor Reed and some prominent scholars and activists, many of whom are Black. They see the current emphasis in the culture on race-based politics as a dead-end….
A Black Marxist Scholar Wanted to Talk About Race. It Ignited a Fury.
The cancellation of a speech reflects an intense debate on the left: Is racism the primary problem in America today, or the outgrowth of a system that oppresses all poor people?
By Michael Powell
[ An especially important writing, when in the wake of an epidemic that has assuredly affected people by class there can be no talk of class not even talk for all the millions who have been affected by the coronavirus of Medicare-for-all or universal healthcare. ]
For almost a month (the last data are from July 14) in the midst of a centennial pandemic, Marin country, just North of SF, in a state whose GDPpc is more than $70,000, cannot produce infection data, that is, % of tests that are positive. https://t.co/FvOkO5CCHB
For almost a month (the last data are from July 14) in the midst of a centennial pandemic, Marin country, just North of SF, in a state whose GDPpc is more than $70,000, cannot produce infection data, that is, % of tests that are positive.
Two countries, 2 healthcare systems. One country, the fastest growing in per capita GDP in the Western Hemisphere since 1971, the other a country continually subject to economic sanctions by the United States. The experience of these countries of the coronavirus reflects other important difference in healthcare systems.
Two countries, 2 healthcare systems. One country, the fastest growing in per capita GDP in the Western Hemisphere since 1971, the other a country continually subject to economic sanctions by the United States. The experience of these countries of the coronavirus reflects other important differences in the healthcare systems.
Cuba has a longer life expectancy and lower infant mortality rate than the United States as well as the Dominican Republic.
‘We’re Clearly Not Doing Enough’: Drop in Testing Hampers Coronavirus Response
For the first time during the pandemic, the United States saw a downward trend in the number of coronavirus tests conducted each day.
By Sarah Mervosh, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Sheryl Gay Stolberg
The Simple Fix For Corporate Income Tax—Tax Stock Returns
The 2017 tax law didn’t accomplish what it promised. Instead of taxing corporate profits, we should be taxing stock returns.
By Dean Baker
It is time for a major and simple overhaul of the corporate income tax system. The main problem with the current system is that it is focused on the wrong target. Instead of taxing corporate profits, we should be taxing stock returns. Before explaining how this alternative would work, it is worth going through some recent history.
Democrats in Congress were unanimous in opposing the Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA) the Republicans pushed through Congress in 2017. However, there is one aspect to the tax cut that nearly all Democratic economists would favor: the idea of lowering the corporate tax rate in exchange for limiting deductions.
Prior to the 2017 tax cut, the corporate income tax rate was 35%, however few companies paid anything close to this rate. Actual tax collections were typically around 20%-22% of corporate profits. While the 35% nominal tax rate put the U.S. at the top of OECD countries, our effective tax rate was slightly below the median.
It makes little sense to have a high tax rate that is easily avoided or evaded. This simply encourages companies to spend large amounts of money gaming the system. This gaming is a complete waste from an economic perspective. We have many highly skilled people spending their time finding ways to play tax tricks rather than doing something that is economically productive. This is why almost all economists would prefer to have a lower tax rate that is actually collected.
Unfortunately, the TCJA did not deliver on this promise. While it did sharply lower the nominal tax rate, from 35% to 21%, companies are still finding it easy to avoid paying taxes. In 2019, the effective tax rate was just 13.3%. The TCJA reduced the effective corporate tax rate by roughly 40%.
Although the Trump administration probably had little interest in actually cutting down on tax avoidance and evasion, the taxation of stock returns gives us a surefire way to accomplish this trick. We simply apply whatever tax rate we are targeting to the returns that shareholders receive in a given year.
Let’s say we have a tax rate of 25%. Suppose a company’s stock has a market value of $100 billion on Jan. 1 and $105 billion on Jan. 1 of the following year, and that it pays out $3 billion in dividends over the course of the year. This means the returns to shareholders have been $8 billion over the year, which would make its tax bill $2 billion (25% of $8 billion).
This calculation is about as simple as it gets. It requires no complex accounting and leaves no room for companies to rip-off the Internal Revenue Service unless they are also ripping off their shareholders, in which case the government will have some powerful allies in collecting the taxes owed.
There will be some complications due to the fact that most major companies now operate in multiple countries. This of course, is a major problem for the current tax code as well. The logical solution is to prorate the tax rate based on sales over some prior period. If 60% of the company’s sales, on average, have been in the U.S. over the last five years then 60% of its stock returns in the current year will be subject to this stock returns tax.
There is also the issue that stock returns are erratic. This can be dealt with through averaging, where taxes are based on the last four or five years of returns. The formula remains simple and can be calculated on any spreadsheet.
There is the obvious point that basing a corporate income tax on stock returns is not feasible for privately traded companies. This is true, but it doesn’t undermine the advantages of this switch. Publicly traded companies earn the vast majority of corporate profits. If determining their tax liability can be reduced to a simple calculation based on stock returns, the IRS will free up an enormous amount of staff for monitoring privately traded companies.
This simplified treatment will also give privately traded companies a large incentive to become publicly traded. Any company that was not actively looking to rip off the IRS could save itself a substantial sum in accounting fees by becoming a publicly traded company and determining its taxes based on a simple calculation.
States can also opt to go this route of taxation based on stock returns. This will substantially reduce the burden states now face in monitoring corporate income tax collections. States would have a targeted tax rate which they can then apply to the share of sales that occurs within the state. This would both be good policy for any state choosing to go this route and an example that could be picked up by other states and the federal government.
The basic story here is that by switching the focus from corporate profits to stock returns we can both make sure that the corporate income tax is collectible and radically reduce the resources required to administer the process. This is what tax reform should be about.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/10/opinion/trump-coronavirus-social-security.html
August 10, 2020
Trump Sends In the Economic Quacks
Now he’s prescribing hydroxychloroquine to fight recession.
By Paul Krugman
As the U.S. economy careens toward disaster, congressional talks about what to do appear to have ground to a halt. So on Saturday President Trump — speaking at one of his golf courses, of course — announced four executive measures that, he claimed, would rescue the recovery.
Unfortunately, one of the measures was vacuous, one trivial and one unworkable. And the fourth may do substantial harm.
The vacuous measure simply calls on government agencies to “consider” helping renters facing eviction. The trivial measure waives interest and defers principal repayment on student loans.
The unworkable measure supposedly provides new aid to the unemployed, who have lost pandemic benefits because Senate Republicans don’t want to provide them; but the announced program would be an administrative nightmare that might take a long time to put into effect and would require partial matching funds that strapped states don’t have. Remember, states had a very hard time implementing the first round of aid to the unemployed, leaving millions in the cold for many weeks. This would be worse.
But the really substantive measure would direct employers to stop collecting payroll taxes on behalf of their workers.
This is pretty wild stuff from a legal and constitutional point of view. Can presidents just stop collecting duly legislated taxes whenever they feel like it? But put the law to one side and ask, what’s this all about? Who thinks a payroll tax cut, even if enacted through due process, would solve any of the problems we face?
No reputable economist I know considers a payroll tax cut a good idea. Even if the money went to workers, which it almost certainly wouldn’t, it would go to precisely the wrong ones — workers who haven’t lost their jobs in the pandemic, not those who have. It wouldn’t encourage hiring, because what’s holding employers back isn’t cost, it’s the shutdown of activities with a high risk of infection (like indoor dining).
Now, lots of bad economic ideas — like giant tax cuts for the rich — nonetheless have strong political support. But a payroll tax cut isn’t one of them. In fact, Senate Republicans have been dismissive, dropping the idea from their proposals.
Yet there it is, the apparent centerpiece of Trump’s new plan. What’s going on?
The answer is that a payroll tax cut is the hydroxychloroquine of economic policy. It’s a quack remedy that somehow caught Trump’s eye, which he won’t give up because sycophants keep telling him he’s infallible. There may be some ulterior motives — this move might end up undermining the finances of Social Security and Medicare — but that’s all secondary. Basically this is a tantrum from a president temperamentally incapable of owning up to his own mistakes.
I’m not sure who first sold Trump on this bad idea. Its most tireless advocate has been Stephen Moore, who has a history of predicting tax-cut miracles — remember how Kansas was going to be the wonder of the world? — that never pan out. Just a few days ago Moore argued publicly that Trump could slash taxes without congressional authorization; and here we are.
Just to be clear, Trump isn’t actually cutting the payroll tax, which would require legislation. Instead, he’s just deferring its collection; workers will still owe the money a few months later. And knowing this, many if not most employers won’t increase paychecks, they’ll just put the money in escrow on workers’ behalf. As far as most workers are concerned, this whole thing may be a nonevent.
But maybe, just maybe, Trump will both win in November and find a way to retroactively cancel those tax obligations. If so, he’ll tear a big hole in the finances of Social Security and Medicare, programs that, whatever he may say, he has always wanted to kill.
The main point, however, is that we’re facing a moment of crisis. The emergency relief that sustained the U.S. economy through the coronavirus has expired, even though the pandemic is still very much with us. Unless very quick action is taken, consumer spending is about to collapse, bringing the whole economy down with it.
This wasn’t hard to see coming. Indeed, Democrats passed legislation to deal with this situation almost three months ago. But Senate Republicans did nothing, and still haven’t gotten serious about proposing remedies.
This would be a really good time for presidential leadership. But what we have instead is a pitchman hawking miracle cures at his country club. In the process he may well have undermined whatever slim chance there was of reaching an even halfway decent deal to avert disaster.
As I said, I don’t think there’s any deep game here. Yes, Trump’s intentions are bad. But recent interviews and inside reporting make it clear that he really is completely out of his depth, with no understanding of either the epidemiological or the economic reality we face.
At a moment of crisis America is cursed with a president who is incompetent, deeply ignorant, yet so personally insecure that he surrounds himself with people who tell him he’s a universal genius.
August 10, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,251,446)
Deaths ( 166,192)
India
Cases ( 2,267,153)
Deaths ( 45,353)
Mexico
Cases ( 480,278)
Deaths ( 52,298)
UK
Cases ( 311,641)
Deaths ( 46,526)
Germany
Cases ( 218,500)
Deaths ( 9,265)
Canada
Cases ( 120,132)
Deaths ( 8,987)
China
Cases ( 84,668)
Deaths ( 4,634)
August 10, 2020
Coronavirus (Deaths per million)
UK ( 685)
US ( 502)
Mexico ( 405)
Canada ( 238)
Germany ( 111)
India ( 33)
China ( 3)
Notice the ratios of deaths to coronavirus cases are 14.9% and 10.9% for the United Kingdom and Mexico respectively.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-11/Chinese-mainland-reports-44-new-COVID-19-cases-SRryjmnvLq/index.html
August 11, 2020
Chinese mainland reports 44 new COVID-19 cases, no new deaths
The Chinese mainland registered 44 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases on Monday, with 31 cases from overseas and 13 domestically transmitted, the Chinese health authority said Tuesday.
All of the 13 domestically transmitted cases are in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Among the cases from overseas, 9 were reported in northwestern Shaanxi Province and 8 in Shanghai.
No deaths related to the disease were reported on Monday, while 52 COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals.
Chinese mainland new locally transmitted cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-11/Chinese-mainland-reports-44-new-COVID-19-cases-SRryjmnvLq/img/ba17b5a94f864297bd8dbde19cd7b0b8/ba17b5a94f864297bd8dbde19cd7b0b8.jpeg
Chinese mainland new imported cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-11/Chinese-mainland-reports-44-new-COVID-19-cases-SRryjmnvLq/img/4de1a03c43f843e5b282e5df9c065b3e/4de1a03c43f843e5b282e5df9c065b3e.jpeg
Chinese mainland new asymptomatic cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-11/Chinese-mainland-reports-44-new-COVID-19-cases-SRryjmnvLq/img/f566cd15c1d746e2a553084948ebbca5/f566cd15c1d746e2a553084948ebbca5.jpeg
Trump Sends In the Economic Quacks
NYT – Paul Krugman – August 10
… The main point, however, is that we’re facing a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/opinion/coronavirus-us-recession.html" The emergency relief that sustained the U.S. economy through the coronavirus has expired, even though the pandemic is still very much with us. Unless very quick action is taken, consumer spending is about to collapse, bringing the whole economy down with it. …
Coming Next: The Greater Recession
NYT – Paul Krugman – August 6
One pretty good forecasting rule for the coronavirus era has been to take whatever Trump administration officials are saying and assume that the opposite will happen. When President Trump declared in February that the number of cases would soon go close to zero, you knew that a huge pandemic was coming. When Vice President Mike Pence insisted in mid-June that “there isn’t a coronavirus ‘second wave,’” a giant surge in new cases and deaths was clearly imminent.
And when Larry Kudlow, the administration’s chief economist, declared just last week that a “V-shaped recovery” was still on track, it was predictable that the economy would stall. …
(On the Street…)
Stock futures pointed to opening gains today as the benchmark S&P 500 approaches a fresh record high for the first time since February. Dow futures implied a gain of more than 250 points at the opening bell, while S&P and Nasdaq futures also were in the green. (CNBC)
Stocks to rise as S&P 500 approaches new record high
The main point, however, is that we’re facing a moment of crisis.>/a>
moment of crisis
Currently:
Dow 30: 28,082.86 +291.42 (+1.05%)
Nasdaq: 10,909.76 -58.60 (-0.53%)
S&P 500: 3,369.29 +8.82 (+0.26%)
The tech heavy Nasdaq is down (profit taking?),
while the broader S&P is up Is this what
Larry Kudlow is watching?
August 11, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,262,890)
Deaths ( 166,680)
With all the interest in COVID and our upcoming national election I thought I would remind folks that on April 27, 2020 the US Navy confirmed that videos of unexplained aerial phenomena captured by camera systems on carrier-based aircraft in 2004 and in 2015 were authentic. These videos show phenomena that exhibit motion that is not really explainable by known technology and there is no known technology development programs on earth that might explain such motion. The potential adversaries of the United States are still hard at work on conventional – if advanced – flight systems and still hard at work trying to capture US technology from our efforts in this field. The US continues to pursue extremely expensive conventional technology in the field of flight. Even if these phenomena were somehow a type of projection, it would still represent enormous technology advances.
I have worked in aviation for decades and know that phenomenally brilliant folks have been working on propulsion, flight control, structure and other critical technologies for a long time and there are undoubtedly still more brilliant folks doing so in deliberate obscurity. Yet the conclusion I come to is that there is flight technology operating on earth that is far advanced of the current consensus about technology development. I would add that the possibilities that our understanding of other technologies might also be far too modest. I am not asking anyone to vote for Trump after binge watching Ancient Aliens, but something quite big seems in the works.
Occasionally, I have need of greater knowledge on legal questions. Or maybe, I am in need of it more so now then previously as the Republican Party and trump are challenging the law and the constitutional basis for a separation of the branches with no one branch being able to dictate solely to the nation without concurrence of the other two legislative bodies and acceptance of such a decision as measured within the constitution and the law of the nation by the judiciary. Yet, here we are again. I typically turn to an acquaintance who has had columns in the LA Times or the Sacramento Bee. Here is what Dean of the School of Law -Berkley, Erwin Chemerinsky had to say on Trump’s most recent power grab verbatim.
*******************************
“OP-ED: Trump just made another huge and illegal power grab. Be very alarmed,” Los Angeles Times, Erwin Chemerinsky, August 10, 2020
President Trump doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about the most basic principle of American government: Power is divided among three branches of government. The president does not possess legislative power, yet on Saturday Trump signed a series of executive orders that were clearly in the purview of the legislative, not the executive branch.
In his order, the president extended unemployment benefits, suspended the payroll tax for many workers, created an eviction moratorium and suspended student loan payments until Dec. 31. Whatever your views of these actions, they are all clearly unconstitutional, in that they exceed presidential authority. Trump is attempting to legislate through executive fiat.
Congress considered versions of all these proposals, but could not reach agreement. Rather than wait for legislators to come to some compromise they could live with, the president decided to impose his vision on the country. We should be very alarmed.
The president has many powers of his own, spelled out clearly in the Constitution. He can by executive order unilaterally change some aspects of how the executive branch of government implements its duties, but he does not possess the power to regulate private behavior or to contravene federal laws or the Constitution.
For example, the Constitution puts the power to tax and spend solely in the hands of Congress. The most that a president may do is veto a bill passed by Congress, and even that can be overridden by two-thirds of both houses of Congress. The president cannot create a tax or suspend one imposed by Congress. Yet that is exactly what President Trump has done in suspending the payroll tax by executive order.
President Trump proposed doing this to Congress, and both Democrats and Republicans thought it was a terrible idea, because it would do nothing to help those out of work, and it would take needed money from the Social Security system. After being rebuffed by Congress, Trump took the legislative reins and simply decreed the payroll tax suspended for millions of workers.
During the early 1970s, President Richard Nixon was frustrated that Congress was passing spending bills, often over his veto, for social programs he did not want to fund. President Nixon declared that he had the power to impound funds and keep them from being spent. Every court to consider his action declared the impoundment unconstitutional because it usurped congressional power. The courts have always been very clear: A president cannot suspend a tax or funding for a program created by federal law.
Likewise, Trump has no authority to extend unemployment benefits, let alone force states to pay one-quarter of the cost. Again, Democrats and Republicans were at an impasse about how to extend these benefits, so Trump just did it. Only Congress can appropriate federal funds and it has not done so. Additionally, the Supreme Court repeatedly has held that the federal government cannot force states to act, so we can expect them to be skeptical of a presidential order requiring them to spend money few states can afford.
And then there’s the eviction moratorium. Congress has power to regulate commerce among the states, and could arguably require such an action under that power. The president has no such constitutional privilege, something even he may recognize, since on the subject of evictions, all the executive order does is ask the Department of Health and Human Services to study the matter.
Some of what the president hopes to accomplish by fiat is important and worthy. For example, he extended the CARES Act, which provided student loan relief that was slated to end on Sept. 30, through Dec. 31. As an educator who sees how students struggle, I would very much like to see that happen. But it requires a law passed by Congress, not unilateral executive action.
Trump’s approach to executive power is extremely dangerous. If he continues as he has in recent days — suspending a tax enacted by Congress, extending a law set by Congress to expire — where will it end? Will any action the president wants and Congress refuses to pass simply be decreed by executive order? That’s how it’s starting to look.
The framers of the Constitution created an elegant system of checks and balances, in which it generally takes two branches of government for any major federal action. Enacting a law requires passage by both houses of Congress and either a presidential signature or a congressional override of a veto. Enforcing a law takes prosecution by the executive branch and conviction in the judiciary. Nominations for cabinet officials, federal judges, ambassadors and others take both a presidential nomination and Senate confirmation.
The system is often inefficient and sometimes fails to produce necessary action. But the alternative is to vest all powers in the president. And as James Madison warned, long ago, that is the very definition of tyranny.
***************
We went through this with the PPACA when careless Democrats failed to appropriate funds for the Risk Corridor Program which helped to fund insurance companies and Coops who had experienced losses greater than 3% by using funds taken from other company profits greater than 3%. This would occur for three years until the companies stabilized their premiums with relation to costs. CBO scored it positive producing $12 billion a year.
It should have worked but for Dems not appropriating funds in Congress. Instead the HHS was going to acquire the necessary funds. Senator Jeff B. Sessions wrote a letter to the GAO asking whether the administration (HHS) can appropriate funds to which it said no. It also said the administration could transfer funds from other programs. All well and good. Congress was in a hurry to pass the 2015 Cromnibus Budget and Dems missed an addition to the bill – Section 227 put into the budget bill at the last minute by Congressional Representative Jack Kingston(CO) and Fred Upton(MI).
The door slammed shut and constituents lsot insurance and premiums increased, Coops went bankrupt, and insurance companies left the exchanges.
It is interesting that Repubs operated in unison to block the Obama administration from appropriating funds or even transferring funds from other healthcare programs in the Cromnibus bill to the PPACA. Yet here are today with trump as the pres and it is ok for trump to appropriate funds.
August 11, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,276,293)
Deaths ( 167,050)
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-08-10/president-trump-executive-order-unconstitutional
August 10, 2020
Trump just made another huge and illegal power grab. Be very alarmed
By Erwin Chemerinsky – Los Angeles Times
[ While the column is excellent, there is limited room to deal with a problem of the presidency that has grown significantly these last 20 years. The problem is that both Bush and Obama repeatedly “wrote” or changed or refused to follow legislation from the White House. Bush and Obama legislated.
Charlie Savage wrote on the matter extensively for the Boston Globe and New York Times, winning a Pulitzer Prize for the writing at the Globe. ]
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/us/politics/shift-on-executive-powers-let-obama-bypass-congress.html
April 22, 2012
Shift on Executive Power Lets Obama Bypass Rivals
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON — One Saturday last fall, President Obama interrupted a White House strategy meeting to raise an issue not on the agenda. He declared, aides recalled, that the administration needed to more aggressively use executive power to govern in the face of Congressional obstructionism.
“We had been attempting to highlight the inability of Congress to do anything,” recalled William M. Daley, who was the White House chief of staff at the time. “The president expressed frustration, saying we have got to scour everything and push the envelope in finding things we can do on our own.”
For Mr. Obama, that meeting was a turning point. As a senator and presidential candidate, he had criticized George W. Bush for flouting the role of Congress. And during his first two years in the White House, when Democrats controlled Congress, Mr. Obama largely worked through the legislative process to achieve his domestic policy goals.
But increasingly in recent months, the administration has been seeking ways to act without Congress….
[ This matter was written about by Charlie Savage in the Boston Globe and New York Times through the Bush and Obama years. ]
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/us/politics/10signing.html
March 10, 2009
Don’t Rely on Bush’s Signing Statements, Obama Orders
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Mr. Bush’s use of signing statements — official legal documents issued by a president the day he signs bills into law, instructing executive officials how to implement the statutes — led to fierce controversy.
Mr. Bush frequently used signing statements to declare that provisions in the bills he was signing were unconstitutional constraints on executive power, claiming that the laws did not need to be enforced or obeyed as written. The laws he challenged included a torture ban and requirements that Congress be given detailed reports about how the Justice Department was using the counter-terrorism powers in the USA Patriot Act.
Dating back to the 19th century, presidents have occasionally signed a bill while declaring that one or more provisions were unconstitutional. Presidents began doing so more frequently starting with the Reagan administration.
But Mr. Bush broke all records, using signing statements to challenge about 1,200 bill sections over his eight years in office — about twice the number challenged by all previous presidents combined, according to data compiled by Christopher Kelley, a political science professor at Miami University in Ohio….
August 11, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,289,616)
Deaths ( 167,198)
200,000 here we come. We should do a pool and pick dates as to when, when we hit 200,000. I am thinking there is still time to do so this year. And yes, this is morbid.
August 11, 2020
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 86,593)
Deaths ( 622)
Deaths per million ( 68)
———————————–
July 4, 2020
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 29,170)
Deaths ( 330)
Deaths per million ( 36)
Having apparently contained the spread of the coronavirus, the Israeli government gave way to political pressure to incautiously open schools and business.
Way past time for people to understand what GOP voters are. And it is not just in districts in GA, it in districts with high percentages of white voters.
” Racist QAnon Follower Marjorie Taylor Greene Wins Georgia GOP Runoff
Greene overwhelmingly defeated her opponent in the heavily Republican 14th Congressional District.”
https://www.huffpost.com/en…
There is only one word to describe people who voted for this thing. Deplorables.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-12/Democratizing-innovation-SSdO5Lt8is/index.html
August 12, 2020
Democratizing innovation
By Dani Rodrik
Innovation is the engine that drives contemporary economies. Living standards are determined by productivity growth, which in turn depends on the introduction and dissemination of new technologies that allow an ever-wider variety of goods and services to be produced with fewer and fewer of our planet’s resources.
Policymakers and the public at large understand the importance of innovation. What is less well appreciated is the degree to which the innovation agenda has been captured by narrow groups of investors and firms whose values and interests don’t necessarily reflect society’s needs.
In today’s advanced economies, private firms undertake the bulk of research and development. The business sector’s share of total R&D spending ranges from 60 percent in Singapore to 78 percent in South Korea, with the United States closer to the higher end, at 72 percent. But it is the public sector that provides the essential social, legal, and educational infrastructure that sustains private R&D.
Innovation in the private sector depends crucially on government funding of basic science and research labs. It relies on scientific talent trained in universities supported by public funds. The state provides innovators with monopoly rights through the patent system, and ensures the private appropriation of returns to R&D through labor and contract law. Not least, private R&D is heavily subsidized by the state through tax credits and other policies.
As a society, we should care not just about how much innovation takes place, but also about the types of new technologies that are developed. We ought to ensure we are investing in technologies that are safe, environmentally sound, empower rather than simply replace human labor, and are consistent with democratic values and human rights.
The direction of technological change is not fixed or determined from outside the social and economic system. Instead, it is shaped by incentives, values, and the distribution of power.
Despite the state’s heavy involvement in supporting innovation, governments typically pay remarkably little attention to the direction technological change takes in private hands. But private firms’ priorities often lead them to underinvest in technologies that have significant long-run returns, such as those that reduce climate change, or to pay inadequate attention to the human rights or privacy implications of digital innovations. Pharmaceutical companies, for example, seek returns in high-priced medicines for rare diseases affecting advanced economies, instead of vaccines for tropical diseases affecting millions in poor countries.
Moreover, firms tend to over-invest in automation in order to increase the return to capital and managers, at the expense of employees. As the economists Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo have noted, this may result in “so-so technologies” which produce few overall productivity benefits, while leaving workers worse off.
The common fixation with automation can lead the smartest investors astray. In 2016, Elon Musk announced that Tesla’s Model 3 would be built in a new, fully automated car factory, which would operate at speeds exceeding what is feasible for humans. Two years later, the plans had floundered, and severe bottlenecks at the new factory made clear actual production would fall far short of the company’s targets. Musk was forced to set up a new assembly line – full of human workers – on the factory grounds. “Humans are underrated,” he conceded on Twitter.
Innovators’ priorities are naturally shaped by their own cultural and social milieu. In a recent paper, Harvard Business School professor Josh Lerner and Ramana Nanda have quantified how distant their values and priorities may be from those of ordinary people.
In the U.S., venture capital (VC) plays a disproportionate role in financing innovation by startups. The VC industry is highly concentrated, with the top 5 percent of investors accounting for 50 percent of the capital raised.
Three regions – the San Francisco Bay Area, Greater New York, and Greater Boston – account for about two-thirds of the industry and over 90 percent of top firms’ corporate board membership. The top VC firms’ influence goes even further, because they often act as gatekeepers for other investors.
The social and educational background of those who make the investment decisions is equally homogeneous. Lerner and Nanda report that three-quarters of partners with at least one board seat in top VC firms attended an Ivy League university, Caltech, MIT, or Stanford. Nearly a third are graduates of just two business schools (Harvard and Stanford). It would be surprising if the funding decisions taken were not influenced by the social composition of the group.
Lerner and Nanda suggest that the geographic concentration of VC firms may have contributed to the “hollowing out” of innovative activities in other parts of the country. “Venture firms based in other cities,” they argue, “might have chosen very different firms to invest in given their perspectives on their local economies.”
Biased priorities prevail in public innovation programs as well. The largest single program supporting high-tech innovation in the U.S. is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which as the name indicates, is oriented toward military applications. While many DARPA projects have yielded civilian benefits as well (not least the Internet and GPS), agency priorities are clearly shaped by defense considerations.
DARPA’s clean-energy technologies counterpart, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), has barely a tenth of the budget. Perhaps the biggest omission is that no government currently has programs devoted specifically to funding the development of labor-friendly technologies.
If technological innovation is to serve society, the direction it takes must reflect social priorities. Governments have evaded their responsibility here, because of the pervasive belief that it is difficult to alter the course of technology. But we have not tried nearly enough to steer technology in the right directions. Innovation is too important to leave to innovators alone.
Dani Rodrik is professor of international political economy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
August 11, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,305,957)
Deaths ( 167,749)
India
Cases ( 2,328,405)
Deaths ( 46,188)
Mexico
Cases ( 485,836)
Deaths ( 53,003)
UK
Cases ( 312,789)
Deaths ( 46,628)
Germany
Cases ( 219,530)
Deaths ( 9,268)
Canada
Cases ( 120,421)
Deaths ( 8,991)
China
Cases ( 84,712)
Deaths ( 4,634)
August 11, 2020
Coronavirus (Deaths per million)
UK ( 686)
US ( 506)
Mexico ( 411)
Canada ( 238)
Germany ( 111)
India ( 33)
China ( 3)
Notice the ratios of deaths to coronavirus cases are 14.9% and 10.9% for the United Kingdom and Mexico respectively.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-12/Chinese-mainland-reports-25-new-COVID-19-cases-ST55DhYCDC/index.html
August 12, 2020
Chinese mainland reports 25 new COVID-19 cases, no new deaths
The Chinese mainland registered 25 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, with 16 cases from overseas and 9 domestically transmitted, Chinese health authority said Wednesday.
All of the 9 domestically transmitted cases are in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
No deaths related to the disease were reported on Tuesday, while 58 COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals.
The total number of confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland stands at 84,737 and the cumulative death toll at 4,634, with 288 asymptomatic patients under medical observation.
Chinese mainland new locally transmitted cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-12/Chinese-mainland-reports-25-new-COVID-19-cases-ST55DhYCDC/img/37e8b77ab9054997b3be9b47dd29c88c/37e8b77ab9054997b3be9b47dd29c88c.jpeg
Chinese mainland new imported cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-12/Chinese-mainland-reports-25-new-COVID-19-cases-ST55DhYCDC/img/4985172122df471f8eb0f8db9d279eef/4985172122df471f8eb0f8db9d279eef.jpeg
Chinese mainland new asymptomatic cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-12/Chinese-mainland-reports-25-new-COVID-19-cases-ST55DhYCDC/img/a9e2d1a6181a4977941d0e66717f4b94/a9e2d1a6181a4977941d0e66717f4b94.jpeg
August 11, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,305,957)
Deaths ( 167,749)
August 12, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,318,524)
Deaths ( 168,012)
https://cepr.net/prices-2020-08/
August 12, 2020
Overall and Core CPI Both Rise 0.6 Percent in July as Price Reversals Continue
By DEAN BAKER
Rental inflation appears to be slowing, especially in high-priced cities.
The overall Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.6 percent in July, the same as the rate in June. The core CPI rose 0.6 percent in July after rising 0.2 percent in June. Over the last year the indexes are up 1.0 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively.
The inflation of the last two months is overwhelmingly a story of bounce-back with sharp price increases in these months reversing large price declines in the period of shutdown. To a lesser extent, higher prices in some areas likely reflect efforts to pass on pandemic-related costs (e.g., reduced capacity in restaurants or airplanes). These costs will largely disappear if the pandemic is brought under control.
Gas prices are probably the clearest example of this pattern. They rose 5.6 percent in July after rising 12.3 percent in June. This follows a cumulative price decline of 33.8 percent from January to May. Over the last year gas prices are still down by 20.3 percent.
In the core index, apparel prices are up 1.1 percent in July after rising 1.7 percent in June. They had fallen 8.8 percent from February to May. They are now down by 6.4percent over the last year. Airfares rose by 2.6 percent and 5.4 percent in June and July, respectively. This followed a price decline of 29.5 percent in the prior three months.
Auto insurance prices rose 9.3 percent in July following a 5.1 percent rise in June. This is after falling 14.9 percent from February to May. The index is down 1.9 percent over the last year.
The CPI auto insurance index (unlike the one used in the personal consumption expenditure deflator) is a gross spending index. It captures what people pay out for their insurance, without netting out claims. Not surprisingly, this gross index fell sharply in the shutdown period as insurers gave rebates due to the fact that people were driving much less and therefore having fewer accidents. The rise in the last two months is the ending of these rebates. The insurance index accounts for almost 1.9 percent of the core CPI.
Restaurant prices rose 0.5 percent in July after rising 0.4 percent and 0.5 percent in the prior two months. Before the pandemic, restaurant prices had been rising 1.0–1.5 percent more rapidly than the price of food at home, reflecting rising wages in the sector. This was reversed during the shutdown period. In March, restaurant prices rose 0.2 percent, while at-home food prices rose 0.5 percent. In April the respective increases were 0.1 percent and 2.6 percent, and in May 0.4 percent and 1.0 percent. The story was sharply reversed in July, as the 0.5 percent rise in restaurant prices went along with a drop of 1.1 percent in the price of food at home. Going forward, restaurant prices are likely to again outpace food prices.
[Graph]
There appears to be some slowing in the rate of rental inflation, with owners’ equivalent rent rising at an annual rate of 2.4 percent, comparing the average of the last three months (May, June, July) with the prior three months (February, March, April). That is down from a rate of 2.8 percent over the last year. For the rent proper index, the increases are 2.6 percent compared to 3.1 percent.
This slowdown is most visible in areas where rents had been rising rapidly. In Los Angeles the rent proper index was rising at an annual rate of 2.5 percent over the last three months, down from 3.6 percent over the last year. In San Francisco the index has fallen at an annual rate of 3.3 percent over the last three months compared to a rise of 2.6 percent over the last year.
The high inflation of June and July is not a surprise and should not be a basis for concern about ongoing problems with inflation. It is overwhelmingly attributable to reversals of sharp price declines during the shutdown period. In addition, there are sectors that are experiencing one-time and temporary cost pressures as a result of adjustments necessary to cope with the pandemic. We may see another month or two of high inflation, but there is little reason to believe that this is the start of an upward spiral.
August 11, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,305,957)
Deaths ( 167,749)
August 12, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,321,520)
Deaths ( 168,236)
August 12, 2020
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 87,878)
Deaths ( 639)
Deaths per million ( 69)
———————————–
July 4, 2020
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 29,170)
Deaths ( 330)
Deaths per million ( 36)
Israel had apparently contained the spread of coronavirus infections, when giving way to political pressure the government incautiously opened schools and businesses.
Paul Krugman @paulkrugman
The news is all Kalama, and rightly so, but let me counterprogram and talk about economics. Over the next few weeks I’m scheduled to talk everywhere and nowhere about the post-Covid economy — that is, audiences in various places, but all virtually. What is there to say? 1/
11:51 AM · Aug 12, 2020
Covid changes both what we buy and how we work. A few things to say about both aspects. First, the pandemic basically forced us to stop spending on some things. But what would we do with the money? Spend on other things, or save? 2/
[ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfO06kBWoAM78mT?format=png&name=small ]
And oh my God, I managed to misspell Kamala. Can’t even blame autocorrect, just sloppy typing. KAM – a -la, Kam – a – la 3/
Anyway: people who couldn’t go to bars or take cruises could have just splurged on other things. As it turned out, however, mostly they saved — so far. 4/
[Graph]
That’s why it was so important from a macro point of view to provide generous aid to the pandemic-unemployed, and why disaster looms now that the aid has vanished 5/
But in the longer run, even if we don’t have a vaccine and can resume traditional activities, people will find other ways to spend their money. Here’s a historical example: what happened to tobacco spending when health concerns led to much lower smoking? 6/
[ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfO21FTXYAE14Y4?format=jpg&name=small ]
Tobacco products were a big part of consumer spending, and mostly went away 7/
[Graph]
But the savings rate didn’t rise; people just found other things to buy. The same will eventually happen for whatever activities we can’t resume post-Covid 8/
We’ll also change the way we work. Still not clear how much remote work will take over; on one side it has received formidable infant industry protection, giving employers an incentive to make it work. But the downsides also becoming apparent over time 9/
One thing I worry about is how much of a long-term blow we’re delivering to the most effective mass transit system ever devised — the elevator 10/
One thing is clear: we will adapt. That’s what modern societies do, given even slightly competent leadership. Oh, wait 11/
Oh, and since I managed to get Harris’s name wrong through sheer fat-finger incompetence, I guess I should sign off as Pual Kurgman 12/
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=tyGR
January 30, 2018
Personal Saving as percent of Disposable Personal Income, 2017-2018
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=tyEX
January 30, 2018
Personal Saving as percent of Disposable Personal Income, 2014-2018
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=u4Uq
January 30, 2018
Personal Consumption Spending on Tobacco as a percent of Personal Consumption Spending, 1960-2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/health/coronavirus-aerosols-indoors.html
August 11, 2020
‘A Smoking Gun’: Infectious Coronavirus Retrieved From Hospital Air
Airborne virus plays a significant role in community transmission, many experts believe. A new study fills in the missing piece: Floating virus can infect cells.
By Apoorva Mandavilli
Skeptics of the notion that the coronavirus spreads through the air — including many expert advisers to the World Health Organization — have held out for one missing piece of evidence: proof that floating respiratory droplets called aerosols contain live virus, and not just fragments of genetic material.
Now a team of virologists and aerosol scientists has produced exactly that: * confirmation of infectious virus in the air.
“This is what people have been clamoring for,” said Linsey Marr, an expert in airborne spread of viruses who was not involved in the work. “It’s unambiguous evidence that there is infectious virus in aerosols.”
A research team at the University of Florida succeeded in isolating live virus from aerosols collected at a distance of seven to 16 feet from patients hospitalized with Covid-19 — farther than the six feet recommended in social distancing guidelines.
The findings, posted online last week, have not yet been vetted by peer review, but have already caused something of a stir among scientists. “If this isn’t a smoking gun, then I don’t know what is,” Dr. Marr tweeted last week.
But some experts said it still was not clear that the amount of virus recovered was sufficient to cause infection.
The research was exacting. Aerosols are minute by definition, measuring only up to five micrometers across; evaporation can make them even smaller. Attempts to capture these delicate droplets usually damage the virus they contain.
“It’s very hard to sample biological material from the air and have it be viable,” said Shelly Miller, an environmental engineer at the University of Colorado Boulder who studies air quality and airborne diseases.
“We have to be clever about sampling biological material so that it is more similar to how you might inhale it.”
* https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.03.20167395v1
anne:
Saw that which is why I stay away from “any” medical facility. Those are cesspools of germs impossible to get rid of inside.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.03.20167395v1
August 3, 2020
Viable SARS-CoV-2 in the air of a hospital room with COVID-19 patients
By John A Lednicky, Michael Lauzardo, Z. Hugh Fan, Antarpreet S Jutla, Trevor B Tilly, Mayank Gangwar, Moiz Usmani, Sripriya N Shankar, Karim Mohamed, Arantza Eiguren-Fernandez, Caroline J Stephenson, Md. Mahbubul Alam, Maha A Elbadry, Julia C Loeb, Kuttichantran Subramaniam, Thomas B Waltzek, Kartikeya Cherabuddi, John Glenn Morris Jr. and Chang-Yu Wu
Abstract
Background – There currently is substantial controversy about the role played by SARS-CoV-2 in aerosols in disease transmission, due in part to detections of viral RNA but failures to isolate viable virus from clinically generated aerosols.
Methods – Air samples were collected in the room of two COVID-19 patients, one of whom had an active respiratory infection with a nasopharyngeal (NP) swab positive for SARS-CoV-2 by RT-qPCR. By using VIVAS air samplers that operate on a gentle water-vapor condensation principle, material was collected from room air and subjected to RT-qPCR and virus culture. The genomes of the SARS-CoV-2 collected from the air and of virus isolated in cell culture from air sampling and from a NP swab from a newly admitted patient in the room were sequenced.
Findings – Viable virus was isolated from air samples collected 2 to 4.8m away from the patients. The genome sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 strain isolated from the material collected by the air samplers was identical to that isolated from the NP swab from the patient with an active infection. Estimates of viable viral concentrations ranged from 6 to 74 TCID50 units/L of air.
Interpretation – Patients with respiratory manifestations of COVID-19 produce aerosols in the absence of aerosol-generating procedures that contain viable SARS-CoV-2, and these aerosols may serve as a source of transmission of the virus.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/us/georgia-school-coronavirus.html
August 12, 2020
925 Quarantined for Covid. Is This a Successful School Reopening?
A suburban Atlanta county opened its schools amid controversy and a growing case count, previewing a difficult national back-to-school season.
By Richard Fausset
August 11, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,305,957)
Deaths ( 167,749)
————————-
August 12, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,337,426)
Deaths ( 168,565)
Run:
Saw that which is why I stay away from “any” medical facility. Those are cesspools of germs impossible to get rid of inside.
[ Chinese hospitals treating coronavirus patients used and as the infection spread quickly built negative air-pressure rooms. Chinese ambulances were fitted for negative air pressure carrying of coronavirus patients. ]
WE are still a long way from having similar
Run:
Saw that * which is why I stay away from “any” medical facility. Those are cesspools of germs impossible to get rid of inside.
[ Imagine then that nursing homes in New York, Massachusetts and beyond were used to treat thousands of coronavirus patients. **
* https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/health/coronavirus-aerosols-indoors.html
** https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/nyregion/nursing-homes-deaths-coronavirus.html ]
When the Chinese worked round-the-clock to build entire hospitals with negative air pressure rooms for coronavirus patients, Western press coverage and commentary often subjected the efforts to ridicule. Similarly when the Chinese tested for and isolated asymptomatic patients, the efforts were often dismissed.
This is a reflection of the disdain that has been fostered for China.
August 12, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,348,436)
Deaths ( 168,729)
August 12, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,353,919)
Deaths ( 168,908)
August 11, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,305,957)
Deaths ( 167,749)
—————————
August 12, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,357,136)
Deaths ( 169,017)
August 12, 2020
Coronavirus
Dominican Republic
Cases ( 82,224)
Deaths ( 1,371)
Deaths per million ( 126)
Cuba
Cases ( 3,128)
Deaths ( 88)
Deaths per million ( 8)
The Dominican Republic has been the faster growing country in GDP per capita in the Western Hemisphere since 1971. Cuba has been continually sanctioned economically by the US through these years, however Cuba has a far superior healthcare system as reflected now in the coronavirus experience of the countries.
This is important and worth studying.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/12/us/covid-deaths-us.html
August 12, 2020
The True Coronavirus Toll in the U.S. Has Already Surpassed 200,000
By Denise Lu
Estimated deaths above normal, March 1 to July 25
Nationwide, 200,000 more people have died than usual since March. This number is about 60,000 higher than the number of deaths that have been directly linked to the coronavirus.
As the pandemic has moved south and west from its epicenter in New York City, so have the unusual patterns in deaths from all causes. That suggests that the official death counts may be substantially underestimating the overall effects of the virus….
August 12, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,360,302)
Deaths ( 169,131)
India
Cases ( 2,395,471)
Deaths ( 47,138)
Mexico
Cases ( 492,522)
Deaths ( 53,929)
UK
Cases ( 313,798)
Deaths ( 41,329)
Germany
Cases ( 220,850)
Deaths ( 9,276)
Canada
Cases ( 120,844)
Deaths ( 9,006)
China
Cases ( 84,737)
Deaths ( 4,634)
August 12, 2020
Coronavirus (Deaths per million)
UK ( 608)
US ( 511)
Mexico ( 418)
Canada ( 238)
Germany ( 111)
India ( 34)
China ( 3)
Notice the ratios of deaths to coronavirus cases are 13.2% and 10.9% for the United Kingdom and Mexico respectively.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-13/Chinese-mainland-reports-19-new-COVID-19-cases-SUI4iDbrfq/index.html
August 13, 2020
Chinese mainland reports 19 new COVID-19 cases, no new deaths
The Chinese mainland registered 19 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, with 11 cases from overseas and 8 domestically transmitted, Chinese health authority said Thursday.
All of the 8 domestically transmitted cases are in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
No deaths related to the disease were reported on Wednesday, while 56 COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals.
The total number of confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland stands at 84,756 and the cumulative death toll at 4,634, with 295 asymptomatic patients under medical observation.
Chinese mainland new locally transmitted cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-13/Chinese-mainland-reports-19-new-COVID-19-cases-SUI4iDbrfq/img/1e3b0412a7c04535b2b5c6986190330d/1e3b0412a7c04535b2b5c6986190330d.jpeg
Chinese mainland new imported cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-13/Chinese-mainland-reports-19-new-COVID-19-cases-SUI4iDbrfq/img/a7d60158bbcb4104a56eddbe8bb4b706/a7d60158bbcb4104a56eddbe8bb4b706.jpeg
Chinese mainland new asymptomatic cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-13/Chinese-mainland-reports-19-new-COVID-19-cases-SUI4iDbrfq/img/43c831d55e66445abfe6e99438ae0374/43c831d55e66445abfe6e99438ae0374.jpeg
https://cepr.net/when-trump-proposes-giving-more-money-to-the-rich-nyt-mind-readers-know-that-hes-doing-it-to-increase-growth/
August 12, 2020
When Trump Proposes Giving More Money to the Rich, New York Times Mind Readers Know That He’s Doing it to Increase Growth
By Dean Baker
Most of us might think that when Donald Trump proposes a tax break for the rich it is because he wants to give more money to the rich. Fortunately, the New York Times has a staff of mind readers who can keep us better informed. Therefore we are told: *
“Mr. Trump and his advisers have regularly considered unorthodox tax maneuvers that they believe would spur economic growth, including reducing the taxes that investors pay on profits earned from selling assets like stocks or bonds.”
There is a large body * of research indicating that lowering the capital gains tax rate would have a minimal impact on growth. The evidence would suggest that lowering capital gains taxes, which will almost exclusively benefit the rich, is not a good way to boost growth, but the NYT knows that Trump and his advisors believe otherwise. (It is worth mentioning that most middle class people have their stock holdings in retirement accounts, which would not be affected by a reduction in the capital gains tax.)
* https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/us/politics/trump-tax-cuts.html
** https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-effect-lower-tax-rate-capital-gains
https://cepr.net/united-kingdom-economy-contracted-at-a-59-9-percent-rate-in-second-quarter/
August 12, 2020
United Kingdom Economy Contracted at a 59.9 Percent Rate in Second Quarter
By Dean Baker
Some folks may have seen articles * reporting that the United Kingdom’s economy shrank by 20.4 percent in the second quarter. While this number is accurate, it is reporting the quarterly rate of decline.
We typically report GDP changes as annual rates, which implies taking the quarterly growth rate to the fourth power. In the case of the UK, its second quarter pace of decline would imply a drop of 59.9 percent at an annual rate.
It is worth making this calculation for comparative purposes. Readers may recall that the U.S. economy contracted 32.9 percent in the second quarter. This is an annual rate of decline. The contraction in the U.K. was actually far worse than the contraction in the United States.
* https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/britain-plunges-into-deep-recession-with-steep-job-losses-and-europes-highest-virus-death-toll/2020/08/12/84190d52-dc85-11ea-b4f1-25b762cdbbf4_story.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/health/coronavirus-flu-new-york.html
August 13, 2020
In N.Y.C.’s Coronavirus Surge, a Frightening Echo of the 1918 Flu
This spring, death rates rivaled those seen during the country’s deadliest pandemic, a new study finds. “What 1918 looked like is basically this.”
By Apoorva Mandavilli
August 13, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,376,756)
Deaths ( 169,427)
Secretary Pompeo @SecPompeo
US government account
Today the @StateDept designated the Confucius Institute U.S. Center as a foreign mission of the PRC, recognizing it for what it is: an entity controlled by the PRC that advances Beijing’s global propaganda and malign influence campaign on U.S. campuses and K-12 classrooms.
12:32 PM · Aug 13, 2020
August 12, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,360,302)
Deaths ( 169,131)
——————————
August 13, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,380,358)
Deaths ( 169,546)
August 13, 2020
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 89,555)
Deaths ( 651)
Deaths per million ( 71)
———————————–
July 4, 2020
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 29,170)
Deaths ( 330)
Deaths per million ( 36)
While I have no interest in the nutty economics of conservatives, I am reminded of a severe economic mistake that was made in New York not that long ago. New York City had the chance of having an Amazon headquarters, which several self-styled liberal legislators successfully fought against. Paul Krugman who wrote extensively on location theory considered the loss of Amazon of no account, while I thought of an indefinitely growing advanced technology company that would in turn attract other such companies.
What I am finding right now in my community, is that shopping has been dramatically changed in the wake of the coronavirus. Markets and the like are remarkably uncrowded, while everywhere in the neighborhood there are Amazon deliveries being made. All I hear is how pleasing shopping by Amazon is, which is my experience, and I would guess shopping has been changed for a long time to come.
Yes, I know all about assorted complaints about Amazon, but to have a computer, to Kashi cereal by the carton to, yes, Parmalat milk by the case for the cereal, always at the door, is a revelation. Amazon can easily be fixed, if actually necessary.
August 13, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,395,447)
Deaths ( 169,848)
August 13, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,400,803)
Deaths ( 169,912)
Dean Baker @DeanBaker13
Your periodic reminder that, contrary to the Trump claims, people in the United States, not China, paid the Trump tariffs. Price of imports from China fell just 0.5 percent over the last year
https://bls.gov/news.release/ximpim.t07.htm…
1:56 PM · Aug 13, 2020
August 13, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,409,060)
Deaths ( 170,160)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/us/yale-discrimination.html
August 13, 2020
Justice Dept. Accuses Yale of Discrimination in Application Process
The department’s civil rights division accused the university of violating the Civil Rights Act by discriminating against Asian-American and white applicants.
By Anemona Hartocollis
August 13, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,415,666)
Deaths ( 170,415)
India
Cases ( 2,459,613)
Deaths ( 48,144)
Mexico
Cases ( 498,380)
Deaths ( 54,666)
UK
Cases ( 313,798)
Deaths ( 41,347)
Germany
Cases ( 222,269)
Deaths ( 9,281)
France
Cases ( 209,365)
Deaths ( 30,388)
Canada
Cases ( 121,234)
Deaths ( 9,015)
China
Cases ( 84,756)
Deaths ( 4,634)
August 13, 2020
Coronavirus (Deaths per million)
UK ( 609)
US ( 515)
France ( 465)
Mexico ( 423)
Canada ( 239)
Germany ( 111)
India ( 35)
China ( 3)
Notice the ratios of deaths to coronavirus cases are 13.2%, 14.5% and 11.0% for the United Kingdom, France and Mexico respectively.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-14/Chinese-mainland-reports-30-new-COVID-19-cases-SWlGBUqJXO/index.html
August 14, 2020
Chinese mainland reports 30 new COVID-19 cases, no new deaths
The Chinese mainland registered 30 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Thursday, with 22 cases from overseas and 8 domestically transmitted, the Chinese health authority said Friday.
All of the 8 domestically transmitted cases are in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
No deaths related to the disease were reported on Thursday, while 64 COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals.
The total number of confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland stands at 84,786 and the cumulative death toll at 4,634, with 309 asymptomatic patients under medical observation.
Chinese mainland new locally transmitted cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-13/Chinese-mainland-reports-19-new-COVID-19-cases-SUI4iDbrfq/img/1e3b0412a7c04535b2b5c6986190330d/1e3b0412a7c04535b2b5c6986190330d.jpeg
Chinese mainland new imported cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-13/Chinese-mainland-reports-19-new-COVID-19-cases-SUI4iDbrfq/img/a7d60158bbcb4104a56eddbe8bb4b706/a7d60158bbcb4104a56eddbe8bb4b706.jpeg
Chinese mainland new asymptomatic cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-13/Chinese-mainland-reports-19-new-COVID-19-cases-SUI4iDbrfq/img/43c831d55e66445abfe6e99438ae0374/43c831d55e66445abfe6e99438ae0374.jpeg
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/opinion/trump-suburbs-racism.html
August 13, 2020
Trump’s Racist, Statist Suburban Dream
Racial inequality wasn’t an accident. It was an ugly political choice.
By Paul Krugman
Conservatives do love their phony wars. Remember the war on Christmas? Remember the “war on coal”? (Donald Trump promised to end that war, but in the third year of his presidency coal production fell to its lowest level since 1978, and the Department of Energy expects it to keep falling.)
Now, as the Trump campaign desperately searches for political avenues of attack, we’re hearing a lot about the “war on the suburbs.”
It’s probably not a line that will play well outside the G.O.P.’s hard-core base; Joe Biden and Kamala Harris don’t exactly come across as rabble-rousers who will lead raging antifa hordes as they pillage America’s subdivisions.
Yet it is true that a Biden-Harris administration would resume and probably expand on Obama-era efforts to finally make the Fair Housing Act of 1968 effective, seeking in particular to redress some of the injustices created by America’s ugly history of using political power to create and reinforce racial inequality.
For what Trump calls the “Suburban Lifestyle Dream” didn’t just happen; it was created by government policies. The great suburban housing boom that followed World War II was made possible by huge federal subsidies, via programs — especially the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration — that protected lenders from risk by insuring qualifying home mortgages. By 1950 the F.H.A. and the V.A. were insuring half of all mortgages nationwide.
Of course, these subsidies didn’t just help home buyers. They were also a gold mine for real estate developers, among them a guy named Fred Trump, who was later sued for discriminating against Black tenants, and whose son currently occupies the White House.
But these subsidies were only available to white people. In fact, they were only available in all-white communities. As Richard Rothstein reports in his 2017 book “The Color of Law,” F.H.A. guidelines specifically cautioned against loans in communities in which children might share classrooms with other children who “represent a far lower level of society or an incompatible racial element.”
Indeed, the F.H.A. went well beyond favoring all-white locations; it set out to create them. After the war, when developers like William Levitt began building new communities on what had been farmland, they cleared their plans in advance with the F.H.A., thereby guaranteeing that buyers would have automatic access to subsidized mortgages. And one of the things the F.H.A. required from such plans was strict racial segregation, supposedly to insure property values.
Now, all of this may sound like old history. But the raw racism of postwar housing policy cast a long shadow over our society. For the 20 or so years that followed World War II represented a unique opportunity for the middle class to solidify its position — an opportunity that was denied to Black people.
You see, the ’50s and ’60s were an era both of relatively good pay for ordinary workers and of relatively cheap suburban housing. Wages were fairly high, in part because America still had a strong union movement, and houses were affordable, as long as you had access to those federal housing programs. So millions of Americans got a chance to build some wealth.
Then the window of opportunity closed. Wages, adjusted for inflation, stagnated. Housing prices soared, in part because building restrictions in many suburbs banned multifamily units. And Black families, who were shut out of a rising market at a time when many other Americans were sharing in the fruits of a housing boom, found the financial barriers to homeownership especially daunting.
So Trump’s Suburban Lifestyle Dream is basically a walled village that the government built for whites, whose gates were slammed shut when others tried to enter.
What is Biden proposing to remedy at least some of these injustices? Reasonable, significant, but hardly revolutionary stuff — things like expanding rental vouchers while cracking down on redlining and exclusionary zoning. Trump may claim that such policies would “destroy suburbia,” but that only makes sense if you believe that the only alternative to bloody anarchy is a community that looks exactly like Levittown in 1955.
And it’s very important to understand that none of the scare talk about a war on the suburbs has anything to do with the usual conservative rhetoric about “freedom” and not having the government tell Americans what to do. Individual choices and free markets aren’t what made America such a segregated, unequal society. Discrimination was a statist policy, involving the exercise of political power to deny people free choice.
And it still goes on. What the Black Lives Matter movement has done is to reveal to many white Americans that we’re still a long way from being a society in which everyone is treated equally by the law, whatever the skin color. (Black Americans already knew that very well.)
But the big difference between the parties now is that Biden and Harris are trying to make things better, trying to make us more like the country we’re supposed to be. Trump and Mike Pence, by contrast, are basically trying to make open racism great again.
Paul Krugman @paulkrugman
The new Eurostat numbers say that Sweden and Denmark have had identical economic performance: ~8% GDP decline over the past year. So all Sweden got from its herd immunity strategy was a bunch of dead Swedes
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/10545332/2-14082020-AP-EN.pdf/7f30c3cf-b2c9-98ad-3451-17fed0230b57…
8:04 AM · Aug 14, 2020
Paul Krugman @paulkrugman
Ya think? 1/
https://www.ajc.com/news/white-house-warns-of-widespread-and-expanding-viral-spread-in-georgia/5DEVU3BSCZAIHCSI3A3KTTGGIY/
White House warns of ‘widespread and expanding’ viral spread in Georgia
President Trump’s coronavirus task force warns that Georgia continues to see “widespread and expanding community viral spread” and that the state’s current policies aren’t enough to curtail COVID-19.
7:01 AM · Aug 14, 2020
Pardon my early morning art work, but here’s GA versus Portugal, which has roughly the same population; scales more or less matching 2/
[ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfYF0FyWAAAPKSl?format=jpg&name=small ]
Paul Krugman @paulkrugman
I don’t understand why more people aren’t freaking out about the fiscal cliff. State and local governments, with the prospect of aid receding fast, are on the verge of huge cutbacks 1/
[ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfYCFUHX0AEK2Z4?format=png&name=small ]
6:48 AM · Aug 14, 2020
From the Congressional Budget Office: Huge fiscal support for families in business last month, almost all of it disappearing 2/
[ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfYCdi8XYAAfYzY?format=png&name=small ]
My back of the envelope says consumer spending cuts ~ 3% of GDP coming, plus S&L govt cuts of ~1% of GDP. That’s a negative demand shock of 4% of GDP, probably with a substantial multiplier. This is financial-crisis level stuff 3/
Business economists I talk to think there will be a deal. But why? The Trump “plan” is totally unworkable, but will probably prevent any real deal for months. Again, why aren’t we panicking? 4/
S&L = State and Local government
August 14, 2020
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 91,080)
Deaths ( 665)
Deaths per million ( 72)
———————————–
July 4, 2020
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 29,170)
Deaths ( 330)
Deaths per million ( 36)
The way in which Israel, a country with a fine healthcare system, lost control of the coronavirus spread after incautiously opening schools and businesses is important.
August 14, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,436,490)
Deaths ( 170,859)
How severe the incautious opening of Israel was, after the coronavirus spread had appeared to be controlled, can be understood in realizing that little Israel has experienced 91,080 infections in all now while China has experienced 84,786.
August 14, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,440,779)
Deaths ( 170,941)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/us/adolph-reed-controversy.html
August 14, 2020
A Black Marxist Scholar Wanted to Talk About Race. It Ignited a Fury.
The cancellation of a speech reflects an intense debate on the left: Is racism the primary problem in America today, or the outgrowth of a system that oppresses all poor people?
By Michael Powell
Adolph Reed is a son of the segregated South, a native of New Orleans who organized poor Black people and antiwar soldiers in the late 1960s and became a leading Socialist scholar at a trio of top universities.
Along the way, he acquired the conviction, controversial today, that the left is too focused on race and not enough on class. Lasting victories were achieved, he believed, when working class and poor people of all races fought shoulder to shoulder for their rights.
In late May, Professor Reed, now 73 and a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, was invited to speak to the Democratic Socialists of America’s New York City chapter. The match seemed a natural. Possessed of a barbed wit, the man who campaigned for Senator Bernie Sanders and skewered President Barack Obama as a man of “vacuous to repressive neoliberal politics” would address the D.S.A.’s largest chapter, the crucible that gave rise to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a new generation of leftist activism.
His chosen topic was unsparing: He planned to argue that the left’s intense focus on the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus on Black people undermined multiracial organizing, which he sees as key to health and economic justice.
Notices went up. Anger built. How could we invite a man to speak, members asked, who downplays racism in a time of plague and protest? To let him talk, the organization’s Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color Caucus stated, was “reactionary, class reductionist and at best, tone deaf.”
“We cannot be afraid to discuss race and racism because it could get mishandled by racists,” the caucus stated. “That’s cowardly and cedes power to the racial capitalists.”
Amid murmurs that opponents might crash his Zoom talk, Professor Reed and D.S.A. leaders agreed to cancel it, a striking moment as perhaps the nation’s most powerful Socialist organization rejected a Black Marxist professor’s talk because of his views on race.
“God have mercy, Adolph is the greatest democratic theorist of his generation,” said Cornel West, a Harvard professor of philosophy and a Socialist. “He has taken some very unpopular stands on identity politics, but he has a track record of a half-century. If you give up discussion, your movement moves toward narrowness.”
The decision to silence Professor Reed came as Americans debate the role of race and racism in policing, health care, media and corporations. Often pushed aside in that discourse are those leftists and liberals who have argued there is too much focus on race and not enough on class in a deeply unequal society. Professor Reed is part of the class of historians, political scientists and intellectuals who argue that race as a construct is overstated.
This debate is particularly potent as activists sense a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make progress on issues ranging from police violence to mass incarceration to health and inequality. And it comes as Socialism in America — long a predominantly white movement — attracts younger and more diverse adherents.
Many leftist and liberal scholars argue that current disparities in health, police brutality and wealth inequality are due primarily to the nation’s history of racism and white supremacy. Race is America’s primal wound, they say, and Black people, after centuries of slavery and Jim Crow segregation, should take the lead in a multiracial fight to dismantle it. To set that battle aside in pursuit of ephemeral class solidarity is preposterous, they argue.
“Adolph Reed and his ilk believe that if we talk about race too much we will alienate too many, and that will keep us from building a movement,” said Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a Princeton professor of African-American studies and a D.S.A. member. “We don’t want that — we want to win white people to an understanding of how their racism has fundamentally distorted the lives of Black people.”
A contrary view is offered by Professor Reed and some prominent scholars and activists, many of whom are Black. They see the current emphasis in the culture on race-based politics as a dead-end….
August 14, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,450,937)
Deaths ( 171,027)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/us/adolph-reed-controversy.html
August 14, 2020
A Black Marxist Scholar Wanted to Talk About Race. It Ignited a Fury.
The cancellation of a speech reflects an intense debate on the left: Is racism the primary problem in America today, or the outgrowth of a system that oppresses all poor people?
By Michael Powell
[ An especially important writing, when in the wake of an epidemic that has assuredly affected people by class there can be no talk of class not even talk for all the millions who have been affected by the coronavirus of Medicare-for-all or universal healthcare. ]
August 14, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,456,106)
Deaths ( 171,072)
Branko Milanovic @BrankoMilan
For almost a month (the last data are from July 14) in the midst of a centennial pandemic, Marin country, just North of SF, in a state whose GDPpc is more than $70,000, cannot produce infection data, that is, % of tests that are positive.
https://coronavirus.marinhhs.org/surveillance#today…
8:23 PM · Aug 13, 2020
August 14, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,464,224)
Deaths ( 171,281)
August 14, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,471,985)
Deaths ( 171,433)
August 14, 2020
Coronavirus
Dominican Republic
Cases ( 84,488)
Deaths ( 1,409)
Deaths per million ( 130)
Cuba
Cases ( 3,229)
Deaths ( 89)
Deaths per million ( 8)
Two countries, 2 healthcare systems. One country, the fastest growing in per capita GDP in the Western Hemisphere since 1971, the other a country continually subject to economic sanctions by the United States. The experience of these countries of the coronavirus reflects other important difference in healthcare systems.
Correcting and extending:
Two countries, 2 healthcare systems. One country, the fastest growing in per capita GDP in the Western Hemisphere since 1971, the other a country continually subject to economic sanctions by the United States. The experience of these countries of the coronavirus reflects other important differences in the healthcare systems.
Cuba has a longer life expectancy and lower infant mortality rate than the United States as well as the Dominican Republic.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/15/us/coronavirus-testing-decrease.html
August 15, 2020
‘We’re Clearly Not Doing Enough’: Drop in Testing Hampers Coronavirus Response
For the first time during the pandemic, the United States saw a downward trend in the number of coronavirus tests conducted each day.
By Sarah Mervosh, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Sheryl Gay Stolberg
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-tax-report/insight-the-simple-fix-for-corporate-income-tax-tax-stock-returns#
August 14, 2020
The Simple Fix For Corporate Income Tax—Tax Stock Returns
The 2017 tax law didn’t accomplish what it promised. Instead of taxing corporate profits, we should be taxing stock returns.
By Dean Baker
It is time for a major and simple overhaul of the corporate income tax system. The main problem with the current system is that it is focused on the wrong target. Instead of taxing corporate profits, we should be taxing stock returns. Before explaining how this alternative would work, it is worth going through some recent history.
Democrats in Congress were unanimous in opposing the Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA) the Republicans pushed through Congress in 2017. However, there is one aspect to the tax cut that nearly all Democratic economists would favor: the idea of lowering the corporate tax rate in exchange for limiting deductions.
Prior to the 2017 tax cut, the corporate income tax rate was 35%, however few companies paid anything close to this rate. Actual tax collections were typically around 20%-22% of corporate profits. While the 35% nominal tax rate put the U.S. at the top of OECD countries, our effective tax rate was slightly below the median.
It makes little sense to have a high tax rate that is easily avoided or evaded. This simply encourages companies to spend large amounts of money gaming the system. This gaming is a complete waste from an economic perspective. We have many highly skilled people spending their time finding ways to play tax tricks rather than doing something that is economically productive. This is why almost all economists would prefer to have a lower tax rate that is actually collected.
Unfortunately, the TCJA did not deliver on this promise. While it did sharply lower the nominal tax rate, from 35% to 21%, companies are still finding it easy to avoid paying taxes. In 2019, the effective tax rate was just 13.3%. The TCJA reduced the effective corporate tax rate by roughly 40%.
Although the Trump administration probably had little interest in actually cutting down on tax avoidance and evasion, the taxation of stock returns gives us a surefire way to accomplish this trick. We simply apply whatever tax rate we are targeting to the returns that shareholders receive in a given year.
Let’s say we have a tax rate of 25%. Suppose a company’s stock has a market value of $100 billion on Jan. 1 and $105 billion on Jan. 1 of the following year, and that it pays out $3 billion in dividends over the course of the year. This means the returns to shareholders have been $8 billion over the year, which would make its tax bill $2 billion (25% of $8 billion).
This calculation is about as simple as it gets. It requires no complex accounting and leaves no room for companies to rip-off the Internal Revenue Service unless they are also ripping off their shareholders, in which case the government will have some powerful allies in collecting the taxes owed.
There will be some complications due to the fact that most major companies now operate in multiple countries. This of course, is a major problem for the current tax code as well. The logical solution is to prorate the tax rate based on sales over some prior period. If 60% of the company’s sales, on average, have been in the U.S. over the last five years then 60% of its stock returns in the current year will be subject to this stock returns tax.
There is also the issue that stock returns are erratic. This can be dealt with through averaging, where taxes are based on the last four or five years of returns. The formula remains simple and can be calculated on any spreadsheet.
There is the obvious point that basing a corporate income tax on stock returns is not feasible for privately traded companies. This is true, but it doesn’t undermine the advantages of this switch. Publicly traded companies earn the vast majority of corporate profits. If determining their tax liability can be reduced to a simple calculation based on stock returns, the IRS will free up an enormous amount of staff for monitoring privately traded companies.
This simplified treatment will also give privately traded companies a large incentive to become publicly traded. Any company that was not actively looking to rip off the IRS could save itself a substantial sum in accounting fees by becoming a publicly traded company and determining its taxes based on a simple calculation.
States can also opt to go this route of taxation based on stock returns. This will substantially reduce the burden states now face in monitoring corporate income tax collections. States would have a targeted tax rate which they can then apply to the share of sales that occurs within the state. This would both be good policy for any state choosing to go this route and an example that could be picked up by other states and the federal government.
The basic story here is that by switching the focus from corporate profits to stock returns we can both make sure that the corporate income tax is collectible and radically reduce the resources required to administer the process. This is what tax reform should be about.