” After the end of the Civil War, Robert E. Lee, the general who commanded the army of the Confederacy, was never tried, convicted, or sentenced for any crimes—not treason, not murder, not torture. Instead, he became president of Washington College, where he attracted students molded in his image, inspired by his lost cause, and motivated to maintain racial hierarchy. Under Lee’s leadership, his students would, among other things, form a KKK chapter and harass and assault Black school children. The board of trustees of Washington College honored this legacy when it decided to rename its institution Washington and Lee University.
Lee is the embodiment of white supremacy—he lived a life, as I previously argued, committed to racial subjugation and terror. He fought to enslave Black people—so the Confederate States of America could continue to profit on Black labor and Black pain while creating an anti-democratic state founded upon white supremacy. For this reason many stakeholders asked the current board of trustees of Washington and Lee University, where I am an assistant professor of law at the law school, to remove Lee as a namesake. After significant and critical national attention, Lee was finally put on trial at the place where his body is buried. Not guilty, the board of trustees announced on Friday. The vote was not even close—a supermajority of trustees (22 out of 28 trustees, or 78 percent) voted to retain Lee as a namesake. That vote, however, did more. It signaled that Washington and Lee University will continue to shine as a beacon of racism, hate, and privilege.”
An F.B.I. memo on Jan. 5 warning of people traveling to Washington for “war” at the Capitol never made its way to top law enforcement officials. The Capitol Police failed to widely circulate information from its intelligence unit that supporters of President Donald J. Trump were posting online about pressuring lawmakers to overturn his election loss.“If they don’t show up, we enter the Capitol as the Third Continental Congress and certify the Trump Electors,” one post said.“Bring guns. It’s now or never,” said another.The first congressional report on the Capitol riotis the most comprehensive and detailed account to date of the dozens of intelligence failures, miscommunications and security lapses that led to what the bipartisan team of senators that assembled it concluded was an “unprecedented attack” on American democracy and the most significant assault on the Capitol in more than 200 years. …
‘Does Anybody Have a Plan?’ Senate Report Details Jan. 6 Security Failures.A 127-page joint report is the most comprehensive and detailed account to date on the intelligence, communications and policing failures around the Capitol riot.
FUTURE-PROOFING THE PRESIDENCYDonald Trump brought our democracy to the brink and exposed its weak spots. How to thwart the next American tyrant. BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD
(A graphics-loaded editorial presentation in the Boston Globe, at the link.)
College subsidies for children and spouses. Free rooms for summer hotel employees and a set of knives for aspiring culinary workers. And appetizers on the house for anyone willing to sit down for a restaurant job interview. Determined to lure new employees and retain existing ones in a suddenly hot job market, employers are turning to new incentives that go beyond traditional monetary rewards. In some cases, the offerings include the potential to reshape career paths, like college scholarships and guaranteed admission to management training programs.Despite an unemployment rate of 5.8 percent in May, the sudden reopening of vast swaths of the economy has left companies scrambling for workers as summer approaches, especially in the service sector. What’s more, in many cases the inducements are on top of increases in hourly pay.The result is a cornucopia of new benefits as human resources officers and employees alike rethink what makes for a compelling compensation package. And in a pathbreaking move, some businesses are extending educational benefits to families of employees. The labor market was relatively tight before the pandemic stuck in early 2020, with an unemployment rate of 3.5 percent, but the rise of noncash offerings is a new wrinkle. Many large companies find themselves pitted against other giants in the search for workers with similar types of skills and experience and want to stand out, especially in the rush to staff back up after the pandemic.“We knew we had to do something radically different to make Waste Management attractive when you have other companies looking for the same type of worker,” said Tamla Oates-Forney, chief people officer at Waste Management. “There is such a war for talent that compensation isn’t a differentiator.”“You can never have too many drivers,” she said. “When you think about Amazon and Walmart, we’re going after the same population.” … https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/business/economy/jobs-hiring-incentives.html?smid=tw-share
From Appetizers to Tuition, Incentives to Job Seekers Grow Employers are finding ways to get applicants in the door, and to retain employees once they’re hired.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The rich really are different from you and me: They’re better at dodging the tax man.Amazon founder Jeff Bezos paid no income tax in 2007 and 2011. Tesla founder Elon Musk’s income tax bill came to zero in 2018. And financier George Soros went three straight years without paying federal income tax, according to a report out Tuesday from the nonprofit investigative journalism organization ProPublica.Overall, the richest 25 Americans pay less in tax — an average of 15.8% of adjusted gross income — than many ordinary workers do, once you include taxes for Social Security and Medicare, ProPublica found.An anonymous source delivered to ProPublica reams of Internal Revenue Service data on the country’s wealthiest people, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg.ProPublica compared the tax data it received with information available from other sources. It reported that “in every instance we were able to check — involving tax filings by more than 50 separate people — the details provided to ProPublica matched the information from other sources.’’Using perfectly legal tax strategies, many of the uber-rich are able to whittle their federal tax bills down to nothing or close to it. Soros went three straight years without paying federal income tax; billionaire investor Carl Icahn, two, ProPublica finds.A spokesman for Soros, who has supported higher taxes on the rich, told ProPublica that the billionaire had lost money on his investments from 2016 to 2018 and so did not owe federal income tax for those years.Musk responded to ProPublica’s initial request for comment with a punctuation mark — “?” — and did not answer detailed follow-up questions.The federal tax code is meant to be progressive — that is, the rich pay a steadily higher tax rate on their income as it rises. And ProPublica found, in fact, that people earning between $2 million and $5 million a year paid an average of 27.5%, the highest of any group of taxpayers.
They define a “true tax rate” based on “how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew”. The last 3/4 of the piece talks about how and why the income tax allowed by the Constitution is not the same thing. The NPR piece I heard this morning did not bother with the distinction – only reporting that ProPublica has found that rich people pay lower rates. NPR did not enlighten listeners as to what was in the latter 3/4 of the ProPublica piece.
The elimination of white space in comments screwed up the link. https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax
President Biden on Tuesday cut off his infrastructure negotiations with leading Senate Republicans after their talks failed to bridge wide divides over the size, scope and financing of the package, turning to a group of centrist senators to try to salvage the chance for a bipartisan deal.The collapse of the effort came after Mr. Biden concluded that Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and other Republicans were unwilling to significantly increase the amount of new money to be invested in the nation’s roads, bridges and other public projects as part of the plan, or offer specifics on how to pay for it.“He informed Senator Capito today that the latest offer from her group did not, in his view, meet the essential needs of our country to restore our roads and bridges, prepare us for our clean energy future, and create jobs,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said in a statement.She said Mr. Biden was disappointed that Republicans had been unwilling to embrace a larger plan, offering to increase their proposal by just $150 billion when he had agreed to shave more than $1 trillion off his initial $2.3 trillion blueprint. … https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/us/biden-capito-infrastructure.html
This ProPublica story is pure bs, and they know it. They state: “”America’s billionaires avail themselves of tax-avoidance strategies beyond the reach of ordinary people. Their wealth derives from the skyrocketing value of their assets, like stock and property. Those gains are not defined by U.S. laws as taxable income unless and until the billionaires sell.” and then go ahead and count it as income.National Enquirer level stuff.
In recent economic news, optimists and pessimists could both find evidence to support their outlooks.The May jobs report showed a gain of 559,000 jobs in May and a decline in the unemployment rate to 5.8 percent. It also showed a marked improvement from last month’s weaker showing across a number of sectors, and average hourly earnings continued to rise. Ahead of the monthly report, the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims report on Thursday also showed the number of new unemployment insurance claims fell from 405,000 the week before to 385,000, less than levels typically indicative of a recession (400,000). This is the first time this has happened since the pandemic-induced closures began. Further wage growth should help draw more workers back to the labor force.Yet at the same time, the recent jobs report showed a big miss relative to the expected gain of 650,000 jobs. Constraints in supply chains and business reopenings still complicate the return to work. And workers still aren’t out of the woods: Thursday’s report indicated the total number of already unemployed individuals claiming benefits hasn’t dropped since mid-March. If job creation is robust, that contrast between falling new claims and those still on the jobless rolls is odd.What explains these confounding tensions? To unpack them, consider the legacies of the economists John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek.In his day, Keynes argued for boosting aggregate demand during a recession to keep workers afloat — a prescription that has clearly shaped the ultra-stimulative fiscal and monetary policies from both the Trump and Biden administrations. His influence also resonates in the recent jobs reports: The coming rebound in the consumption of services — restaurant meals, entertainment and travel — will lift demand above its prepandemic level, while reopening and abundant consumer cash, bolstered by policy, will increase the demand for workers.But while Keynes may have lit the path to recovery after last spring’s cataclysmic job loss, he offers little to guide us through the coming labor-supply crunch. If policy actively disincentivizes the unemployed from returning to the fold, as recent reports suggest, there will be no one in place to meet the coming surge in demand, imperiling our economic rehabilitation.To preserve the still-shaky recovery, we must now turn to Hayek, the godfather of free-market thinking. He argued that policy should allow workers to adjust to changes in the economy. Looking ahead, policymakers must consider curbing elevated unemployment benefits and a focus on old, prepandemic jobs in order to let workers and the economy adjust to new activities and new jobs that are more promising in the post-pandemic world. We don’t want unemployed workers to find the post-pandemic economy has passed them by.As demand revives, supply will need to keep pace. Some industries, like carmakers, can simply sell off excess inventories, something that is already happening. Tool and machinery makers can increase imports to keep up. But eventually, demand must be met by higher domestic production from workers. Once businesses are freed from pandemic restrictions, we can expect to see some improvements in supply.But holding back a faster improvement in employment and output are the very challenges Hayek identifies, including slowing down the process of matching dislocated workers to new, post-pandemic jobs. That is to say, demand growth with supply constraints won’t produce the sustainable jobs recovery we need.Many workers are taking their time to find a new job or are choosing to work less, thanks to their generous pandemic unemployment insurance benefits. These benefits provided extra income for those who lost their jobs early in the crisis. As a result, the economy’s adjustment to a new, post-pandemic paradigm will be slow. These benefits also slow future gains in the form of higher wages workers might earn from a new and better job. But as Hayek tells us, the longer it takes for these workers to rejoin the work force, the longer it will take for them to gain these benefits.In the coming months, we will be able to assess the potency of dealing with these forces of supply and demand by comparing employment gains in the 25 states choosing to end federal pandemic benefit supplements with the 25 states retaining them. While employment is likely to rise quickly as the pandemic fades and extra unemployment insurance benefits fall away, unemployment rates are still likely to remain high relative to prepandemic levels for another year.Looking ahead, wage gains should be robust for those employed, particularly for lower-skilled service-sector workers — especially if some employees delay returning to work. Those higher real wages are good news for recipients.A less welcome wild card would be inflationary pressures, fueled by demand outstripping supply. Those pressures could be a brief blip in an adjusting economy. Or they could suggest a reduction in purchasing power from higher inflation for an extended period. Higher recent inflation readings in consumer prices are a cause for concern.Whether this happens hinges on whether the federal government and the Federal Reserve dial back their extra Keynesian demand support in time to avoid increases in expected inflation. Inflation risks robbing them of purchasing power gains from their higher wages.The latest jobs report, then, favors a more Hayekian solution — with a nudge: Policy should support returning to work and matching workers to jobs by supporting re-employment and training for new skills, not just boosting demand. That shift offers the best chance for a sustained lift in jobs as well as demand as the pandemic recedes. In the matter Keynes v. Hayek, then: Let Hayek now prevail.
(Dan here…this is a direct cut and paste of your quote…I am trying to duplicate what happens to your comments)
Employers added hundreds of thousands of jobs last month as coronavirus infections ebbed, vaccinations spread and businesses reopened, the government reported Friday. But the labor market’s recovery from the pandemic is proving to be choppy.
Hopes that a strong and steady surge of hiring would follow the first wave of vaccinations have so far turned out to be overly optimistic. Job creation in May doubled from the previous month but still fell below most forecasts. And payroll gains, which have bounced up and down this year, may continue their uneven progress through the summer.
Several economists said they did not expect the pace of hiring to pick up steam at least until the fall, when more schools fully reopen, a majority of the population is vaccinated and pandemic-related jobless benefits end.
In recent economic news, optimists and pessimists could both find evidence to support their outlooks.
The May jobs report showed a gain of 559,000 jobs in May and a decline in the unemployment rate to 5.8 percent. It also showed a marked improvement from last month’s weaker showing across a number of sectors, and average hourly earnings continued to rise. Ahead of the monthly report, the unemployment insurance weekly claims report on Thursday showed the number of new unemployment insurance claims fell from 405,000 the week before to 385,000 — lower than levels typically indicative of a recession (400,000). This is the first time this has happened since the pandemic-induced closures began. Further wage growth should help draw more workers back to the labor force.
Yet at the same time, the recent jobs report showed a big miss relative to the expected gain of 650,000 jobs. Constraints in supply chains and business reopenings still complicate the return to work. And workers still aren’t out of the woods: Thursday’s report indicated the total number of already unemployed individuals claiming benefits hasn’t dropped since mid-March. If job creation is robust, that contrast between falling new claims and those still on the jobless rolls is odd.
What explains these confounding tensions? To unpack them, consider the legacies of the economists John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek.
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Continue reading the main story
In his day, Keynes argued for boosting aggregate demand during a recession to keep workers afloat — a prescription that has clearly shaped the ultra-stimulative fiscal and monetary policies from both the Trump and the Biden administrations. His influence also resonates in the recent jobs reports: The coming rebound in the consumption of services — restaurant meals, entertainment and travel — will lift demand above its prepandemic level, and reopening and abundant consumer cash, bolstered by policy, will increase the demand for workers.
While Keynes may have lit the path to recovery after last spring’s cataclysmic job loss, he offers little to guide us through the coming labor-supply crunch. If policy actively disincentivizes the unemployed from returning to the fold, as recent reports suggest, there will be no one in place to meet the coming surge in demand, imperiling our economic rehabilitation.
To preserve the still-shaky recovery, we must now turn to Hayek, the godfather of free-market thinking. He argued that policy should allow workers to adjust to changes in the economy. Looking ahead, policymakers must consider curbing elevated unemployment benefits and a focus on old, prepandemic jobs in order to let workers and the economy adjust to new activities and new jobs that are more promising in the postpandemic world. We don’t want unemployed workers to find the postpandemic economy has passed them by.
As demand revives, supply will need to keep pace. Those in some industries, like carmakers, can simply sell off excess inventories, something that is already happening. Tool and machinery makers can increase imports to keep up. But eventually, demand must be met by higher domestic production from workers. Once businesses are freed from pandemic restrictions, we can expect to see some improvements in supply.
But holding back a faster improvement in employment and output are the very challenges Hayek identifies, including slowing down the process of matching dislocated workers to new, postpandemic jobs. That is to say, demand growth with supply constraints won’t produce the sustainable jobs recovery we need.
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Many workers are taking their time to find a new job or are choosing to work less, thanks to their generous pandemic unemployment insurance benefits. These benefits provided extra income for those who lost their jobs early in the crisis. As a result, the economy’s adjustment to a postpandemic paradigm will be slow. These benefits also slow future gains in the form of higher wages workers might earn from a new and better job. But as Hayek tells us, the longer it takes for these workers to rejoin the work force, the longer it will take for them to gain these benefits.
In the coming months, we will be able to assess the potency of dealing with these forces of supply and demand by comparing employment gains in the 25 states choosing to end federal pandemic benefit supplements with the 25 states retaining them. While employment is likely to rise quickly as the pandemic fades and extra unemployment insurance benefits fall away, unemployment rates are still likely to remain high relative to prepandemic levels for another year.
If we look ahead, wage gains should be robust for those employed, particularly for lower-skilled service-sector workers — especially if some employees delay returning to work. Those higher real wages are good news for recipients.
A less welcome wild card would be inflationary pressures, fueled by demand outstripping supply. Those pressures could be a brief blip in an adjusting economy. Or they could suggest a reduction in purchasing power from higher inflation for an extended period. Higher recent inflation readings in consumer prices are a cause for concern.
Whether this happens hinges on whether the federal government and the Federal Reserve dial back their extra Keynesian demand support in time to avoid increases in expected inflation. Inflation risks robbing them of purchasing power gains from their higher wages.
The latest jobs report, then, favors a more Hayekian solution — with a nudge: Policy should support returning to work and matching workers to jobs by supporting re-employment and training for new skills, not just boosting demand. That shift offers the best chance for a sustained lift in jobs as well as demand as the pandemic recedes. In the matter Keynes v. Hayek, then: Let Hayek now prevail.
EMichael, Did you bother to read the ProPublica piece beyond the objectionable line you quoted? It was a long article. It did present real information about how rich people can concentrate on growing their wealth and live on that without having to generate what the IRS considers “income”. The headline numbers based on their definition of “true tax rate” are sensationalized, but the meat of the story is not National Enquirer stuff. There are real reasons to change the tax rules – as Buffet reportedly would agree.
The NY Times daily newsletter does a much better job than NPR did of pulling the “news” out of the ProPublica piece.They highlight the “Buy, borrow, die” strategy of tax avoidance.
Arne, Using phony numbers to describe a real problem is National Enquirer stuff. What’s wrong with giving actual numbers? They don’t think they are bad enough? Not a fan of dishonest reporting.
row 1row 2row 3When the comment software removes white space it even eliminates the space between sentences where I had a carriage return.Why does the algorithm find white space to be too expensive?
Arne i find its hatred for white space is erratic. Sometimes I get the spaces I want and sometimes I don’t. I don’t think I am doing anything different.
Last time I looked Statistical Abstracts says the top ten per cent of earners pay an effective rate of 17% on their income tax. I was ready to argue that “capital gains” are not income until they are realized, but just the words in this thread “buy, borrow, and die” gave me something to think about. Plenty of reason to get the rich and the corps to pay more taxes for the government they want. but also a good reason for the Left to stop calling for “the rich” to pay for everything, and the “poor” ]that is “people who make what I make”] to pay for nothing. if nothing else, that attitude scares the rich into being unable to think clearly and to fight harder to keep us from stealing all they have.
Cue Warren Buffet. “The differential between me and the rest of the office, not just my secretary but the rest of the office, was greater than that. It’ll be closer, but I’ll probably be the lowest-paying taxpayer in the office.”
Ah, “The Cause” still lives. I mean why would anyone hate a rebel who tried to destroy his former country? Who violated his oath? Who caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans? Who fought to keep Black people slaves? Who received no punishments for his acts and instead went into college administration? A college that allowed students to have a KKK chapter? Assault black children. The question should be why everyone doesn’t hate him.
EMichael one more time: what good does this do? you don’t seem to understand the question. i could run around giving you reasons to hate Caligula. what good would it do? how about hating James I, for Elizabeth I, or George Washington (I have heard some bad things about him.) What good would it do? How about hating Roosevelt? (fwiw: one of my heroes, but he did some bad things.)or, you could just hate me. if you only knew.
Cob, I don’t hate many people, but Lee deserves to be damned by all Americans. His treatment through the years is beyond belief. It also shows the White Supremacy that has afflicted this country throughout its entire history.He should be treated as the horror of a human being he was.
EMichael just for the record when you give people “information” that conflicts with their closely felt beliefs, they reject the new information and embrace their beliefs more strongly, even with hostility. your hating Lee helps no one. not even yourself. all you do is give the people who already hate more reason to stroke their hatred. and you give the people they hate more reason to hate them back. it is not a recipe for progress. it is interesting to me that the people you hate will tell you that Lee was not a racist and did not treat his slaves badly (he freed them). what this means is that they agree with you that being a racist is bad, and that treating slaves badly is bad. So you have already won that much of the argument. why kick them in the teeth by insisting they have to hate their hero and feel guilty and somehow atone for their (“their”) sin. how? i dunno, would it help if they gave you some money? Lee is their hero not because he fought “for slavery” but because he almost won a war against great odds…a war in which their brave “sons and brothers” died for what they believed was freedom from tyranny. I personally think they were wrong about Lincoln’s “tyranny,” but it would be extremely bad manners of me to try to convince them their sons and brothers died stupidly for a bad cause. and quite counterproductive.
Starbucks, Flush With Customers, Is Running Low on Ingredients
At locations across the country, there have been complaints about shortages of key ingredients for popular drinks, breakfast foods and even cups, lids and straws.
… Across the country, customers and baristas are taking to social media to bemoan not only shortages of key ingredients for popular Starbucks drinks, like peach and guava juices, but also a lack of iced and cold-brew coffee, breakfast foods and cake pops, and even cups, lids and straws. …
Starbucks is hardly the only company struggling with supply issues. Earlier this spring, ketchup packets became hotter than GameStop stock. Automakers have slowed production because there are not enough computer chips for their vehicles. And homeowners are waiting weeks, if not months, for major kitchen appliances.But Starbucks is running out of ingredients for Very Berry Hibiscus Refreshers and almond croissants after being one of the clear winners of the pandemic economy. During lockdowns, the coffee chain quickly shifted from its position as a “third place,” where people could linger to work or meet up for long chats, to a focus on frictionless transactions with customers ordering through mobile apps and drive-throughs. Company executives said this year that Starbucks had seen a “full recovery” in sales in the United States, back to prepandemic levels.
WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of senators is eyeing an infrastructure deal with $579 billion in new spending as negotiators try to strike a nearly $1 trillion deal on President Biden’s top priority, according to those briefed on the plan.The 10 senators have been huddling behind closed doors, encouraged by Biden to keep working on the effort after he walked away from a Republican-only proposal this week unable to resolve differences. The senators are briefing their colleagues privately and cautioned changes could still be made.“Our group – comprised of 10 Senators, 5 from each party – has worked in good faith and reached a bipartisan agreement on a realistic, compromise framework to modernize our nation’s infrastructure and energy technologies,” the senators said in a joint statement.“This investment would be fully paid for and not include tax increases,” they added. “We are discussing our approach with our respective colleagues, and the White House, and remain optimistic that this can lay the groundwork to garner broad support from both parties and meet America’s infrastructure needs.”The president and Congress have been straining to reach an agreement on his ideas for an infrastructure investment, stuck over the scope of the package of road, highway, and other projects and how to pay for it. Lawmakers say the group’s tentative agreement represents important progress in fashioning a bill that can pass such an evenly divided Congress this year, but they are also aware that it could easily unravel.At that size, the new package spread over five years would be more than the previous Republican-only effort of $330 billion in new spending in a $928 billion package, but still short of the $1.7 trillion over eight years Biden is seeking. It appears the group is running into the same problems that Biden and lead Republican negotiator Senator Shelley Moore Capito confronted in agreeing on how to pay for it.Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a lead negotiator, would not disclose the final tab. Asked if the new spending was at $600 billion, he said “the president said that was his goal. So I don’t think anybody felt like they had to exceed his goal.”Another member of the group, Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, said they are “fairly close” on a topline amount, but are still debating how to pay for it. One option is to include potential revenue from uncollected income taxes, he said.“We still have to talk,” Tester said.One Republican not in the group, Senator Mike Braun of Indiana, said he was told the package would provide nearly $1 trillion — including $579 billion in new spending over the baseline for transportation projects.Braun also said parts of it would be paid for with untapped COVID-19 relief funds, which has been a nonstarter for the White House. …
Ten Senate Democrats and Republicans say they reached five-year, nearly $1 trillion infrastructure deal
http://a.msn.com/01/en-us/AAKVdU2?ocid=stPhotos of China’s new aircraft carrier are leaking, and they appear to show a…The question FBI Director Wray refused to answer — and why it may mean…A bipartisan group of 10 Senate Democrats and Republicans reached a new deal on infrastructure on Thursday, agreeing to a nearly $1 trillion, five-year package to improve the country’s roads, bridges, pipes and Internet connections.The new blueprint, described by four people familiar with the plan, marks a fresh attempt to resurrect negotiations between congressional lawmakers and the White House after an earlier round of talks between President Biden and the GOP fell apart this week. But it remains unclear if the early accord will prove to be enough to satisfy either the White House or a sufficient number of lawmakers on Capitol Hill at a time when disagreements between the parties are rife.The new deal is the product of five Democrats and five Republicans — Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), and Mark R. Warner (D-Va.). … http://a.msn.com/01/en-us/AAKVdU2?ocid=st
A bipartisan group of 10 Senate Democrats and Republicans reached a new deal on infrastructure on Thursday, agreeing to a nearly $1 trillion, five-year package to improve the country’s roads, bridges, pipes and Internet connections. The new blueprint, described by four people familiar with the plan, marks a fresh attempt to resurrect negotiations between congressional lawmakers and the White House after an earlier round of talks between President Biden and the GOP fell apart this week. But it remains unclear if the early accord will prove to be enough to satisfy either the White House or a sufficient number of lawmakers on Capitol Hill at a time when disagreements between the parties are rife.The new deal is the product of five Democrats and five Republicans — Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), and Mark R. Warner (D-Va.).Their early agreement calls for about $974 billion in infrastructure spending over five years, which comes to about $1.2 trillion when extrapolated over eight years, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details had not yet been released formally. The package includes roughly $579 billion in new spending. …
Interestingly (to geeks like me) the two line feeds and/or carriage returns on the Douthat thread turned into one space on this thread when I copied and pasted. (The single lf-cr disappeared).
My white space question (June 9, 2021 11:48 am) was a read herring.Second line with one space third line with two spaces fourth lineIt preserved the spaces. Only the newline character(s) disappear.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Coberly, No worry, Mate. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, then does it make a sound? OTOH, friend TS Eliot posed the other highly relevant prognosis, “Not with a bang but a whimper.”
continuing in that vain: “in space no one can hear you scream” why is this relevant? a few days ago a congressperson asked if NASA couldn’t change the earth’s orbit to combat climate change. answer is it has already been tried. long before there was life on earth the inhabitants of mars saw their climate getting hotter. not wanting to end up like venus…where they had the same problem and tried just injecting sulfur dioxide into the air to block the sun… with the result you see today… the martians just moved their planet further away from the sun. things did get cooler at first, but, since they kept on making carbon dioxide, that only lasted a little while until they trapped enough heat to boil away their atmosphere. actually, that’s pretty much what happened on venus…except that planet was too big to boil off the atmosphere…but the temperature kept rising until it was 800 degrees in the shade, and, well, you know…planetary engineering: what could possibly go wrong?
@EM,Robert E. Lee fought against the United States of America. As such, he committed treason by definition. No patriotic American defends treason or makes excuses on behalf of treason. Lee deserves our contempt, as does anyone who supported the Confederacy and anyone who defends Lee or the Confederacy today.
Joel Lincoln was careful not to call it treason. up to that time it was not clear that the “union” was not a voluntary confederation of states. andrew jackson thought that “nullification” was treason, and Lincoln at least saw the danger secession posed to “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Your “argument” is a crime against reason, as well as being politically counterproductive. I should ignore it, but I hate to see mad dog attacks from either the Right or the Left. We got a country to run here, Bro.
Shameful.
” After the end of the Civil War, Robert E. Lee, the general who commanded the army of the Confederacy, was never tried, convicted, or sentenced for any crimes—not treason, not murder, not torture. Instead, he became president of Washington College, where he attracted students molded in his image, inspired by his lost cause, and motivated to maintain racial hierarchy. Under Lee’s leadership, his students would, among other things, form a KKK chapter and harass and assault Black school children. The board of trustees of Washington College honored this legacy when it decided to rename its institution Washington and Lee University.
Lee is the embodiment of white supremacy—he lived a life, as I previously argued, committed to racial subjugation and terror. He fought to enslave Black people—so the Confederate States of America could continue to profit on Black labor and Black pain while creating an anti-democratic state founded upon white supremacy. For this reason many stakeholders asked the current board of trustees of Washington and Lee University, where I am an assistant professor of law at the law school, to remove Lee as a namesake. After significant and critical national attention, Lee was finally put on trial at the place where his body is buried. Not guilty, the board of trustees announced on Friday. The vote was not even close—a supermajority of trustees (22 out of 28 trustees, or 78 percent) voted to retain Lee as a namesake. That vote, however, did more. It signaled that Washington and Lee University will continue to shine as a beacon of racism, hate, and privilege.”
https://slate.com/news-and-…
First post I have had in a long time that got lost in the ozone.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/us/capitol-riot-security.html?smid=tw-share
The editing functions on this board keep getting weirder and weirder.Fondly remembering the olden days of WYSIWYG editing.Seemingly gone forever.
https://apps.bostonglobe.com/opinion/graphics/2021/06/future-proofing-the-presidency/
(A graphics-loaded editorial presentation in the Boston Globe, at the link.)
College subsidies for children and spouses. Free rooms for summer hotel employees and a set of knives for aspiring culinary workers. And appetizers on the house for anyone willing to sit down for a restaurant job interview. Determined to lure new employees and retain existing ones in a suddenly hot job market, employers are turning to new incentives that go beyond traditional monetary rewards. In some cases, the offerings include the potential to reshape career paths, like college scholarships and guaranteed admission to management training programs.Despite an unemployment rate of 5.8 percent in May, the sudden reopening of vast swaths of the economy has left companies scrambling for workers as summer approaches, especially in the service sector. What’s more, in many cases the inducements are on top of increases in hourly pay.The result is a cornucopia of new benefits as human resources officers and employees alike rethink what makes for a compelling compensation package. And in a pathbreaking move, some businesses are extending educational benefits to families of employees. The labor market was relatively tight before the pandemic stuck in early 2020, with an unemployment rate of 3.5 percent, but the rise of noncash offerings is a new wrinkle. Many large companies find themselves pitted against other giants in the search for workers with similar types of skills and experience and want to stand out, especially in the rush to staff back up after the pandemic.“We knew we had to do something radically different to make Waste Management attractive when you have other companies looking for the same type of worker,” said Tamla Oates-Forney, chief people officer at Waste Management. “There is such a war for talent that compensation isn’t a differentiator.”“You can never have too many drivers,” she said. “When you think about Amazon and Walmart, we’re going after the same population.” … https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/business/economy/jobs-hiring-incentives.html?smid=tw-share
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/06/08/business/propublica-report-finds-jeff-bezos-paid-no-income-tax-2007-2011-elon-musks-income-tax-bill-was-zero-2018/?event=event25
Rich taxpayers have been very successful in defining income so that it excludes the money they use to live on.
The ProPublica piece; Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax
They define a “true tax rate” based on “how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew”. The last 3/4 of the piece talks about how and why the income tax allowed by the Constitution is not the same thing. The NPR piece I heard this morning did not bother with the distinction – only reporting that ProPublica has found that rich people pay lower rates. NPR did not enlighten listeners as to what was in the latter 3/4 of the ProPublica piece.
Arne; Fixed it. Hope this is ok.
The elimination of white space in comments screwed up the link. https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax
President Biden on Tuesday cut off his infrastructure negotiations with leading Senate Republicans after their talks failed to bridge wide divides over the size, scope and financing of the package, turning to a group of centrist senators to try to salvage the chance for a bipartisan deal.The collapse of the effort came after Mr. Biden concluded that Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and other Republicans were unwilling to significantly increase the amount of new money to be invested in the nation’s roads, bridges and other public projects as part of the plan, or offer specifics on how to pay for it.“He informed Senator Capito today that the latest offer from her group did not, in his view, meet the essential needs of our country to restore our roads and bridges, prepare us for our clean energy future, and create jobs,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said in a statement.She said Mr. Biden was disappointed that Republicans had been unwilling to embrace a larger plan, offering to increase their proposal by just $150 billion when he had agreed to shave more than $1 trillion off his initial $2.3 trillion blueprint. … https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/us/biden-capito-infrastructure.html
This ProPublica story is pure bs, and they know it. They state: “”America’s billionaires avail themselves of tax-avoidance strategies beyond the reach of ordinary people. Their wealth derives from the skyrocketing value of their assets, like stock and property. Those gains are not defined by U.S. laws as taxable income unless and until the billionaires sell.” and then go ahead and count it as income.National Enquirer level stuff.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/opinion/covid-economy-unemployment-jobs.html?smid=tw-share
(Dan here…this is a direct cut and paste of your quote…I am trying to duplicate what happens to your comments)
Employers added hundreds of thousands of jobs last month as coronavirus infections ebbed, vaccinations spread and businesses reopened, the government reported Friday. But the labor market’s recovery from the pandemic is proving to be choppy.
Hopes that a strong and steady surge of hiring would follow the first wave of vaccinations have so far turned out to be overly optimistic. Job creation in May doubled from the previous month but still fell below most forecasts. And payroll gains, which have bounced up and down this year, may continue their uneven progress through the summer.
Several economists said they did not expect the pace of hiring to pick up steam at least until the fall, when more schools fully reopen, a majority of the population is vaccinated and pandemic-related jobless benefits end.
In recent economic news, optimists and pessimists could both find evidence to support their outlooks.
The May jobs report showed a gain of 559,000 jobs in May and a decline in the unemployment rate to 5.8 percent. It also showed a marked improvement from last month’s weaker showing across a number of sectors, and average hourly earnings continued to rise. Ahead of the monthly report, the unemployment insurance weekly claims report on Thursday showed the number of new unemployment insurance claims fell from 405,000 the week before to 385,000 — lower than levels typically indicative of a recession (400,000). This is the first time this has happened since the pandemic-induced closures began. Further wage growth should help draw more workers back to the labor force.
Yet at the same time, the recent jobs report showed a big miss relative to the expected gain of 650,000 jobs. Constraints in supply chains and business reopenings still complicate the return to work. And workers still aren’t out of the woods: Thursday’s report indicated the total number of already unemployed individuals claiming benefits hasn’t dropped since mid-March. If job creation is robust, that contrast between falling new claims and those still on the jobless rolls is odd.
What explains these confounding tensions? To unpack them, consider the legacies of the economists John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek.
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In his day, Keynes argued for boosting aggregate demand during a recession to keep workers afloat — a prescription that has clearly shaped the ultra-stimulative fiscal and monetary policies from both the Trump and the Biden administrations. His influence also resonates in the recent jobs reports: The coming rebound in the consumption of services — restaurant meals, entertainment and travel — will lift demand above its prepandemic level, and reopening and abundant consumer cash, bolstered by policy, will increase the demand for workers.
While Keynes may have lit the path to recovery after last spring’s cataclysmic job loss, he offers little to guide us through the coming labor-supply crunch. If policy actively disincentivizes the unemployed from returning to the fold, as recent reports suggest, there will be no one in place to meet the coming surge in demand, imperiling our economic rehabilitation.
To preserve the still-shaky recovery, we must now turn to Hayek, the godfather of free-market thinking. He argued that policy should allow workers to adjust to changes in the economy. Looking ahead, policymakers must consider curbing elevated unemployment benefits and a focus on old, prepandemic jobs in order to let workers and the economy adjust to new activities and new jobs that are more promising in the postpandemic world. We don’t want unemployed workers to find the postpandemic economy has passed them by.
As demand revives, supply will need to keep pace. Those in some industries, like carmakers, can simply sell off excess inventories, something that is already happening. Tool and machinery makers can increase imports to keep up. But eventually, demand must be met by higher domestic production from workers. Once businesses are freed from pandemic restrictions, we can expect to see some improvements in supply.
But holding back a faster improvement in employment and output are the very challenges Hayek identifies, including slowing down the process of matching dislocated workers to new, postpandemic jobs. That is to say, demand growth with supply constraints won’t produce the sustainable jobs recovery we need.
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Many workers are taking their time to find a new job or are choosing to work less, thanks to their generous pandemic unemployment insurance benefits. These benefits provided extra income for those who lost their jobs early in the crisis. As a result, the economy’s adjustment to a postpandemic paradigm will be slow. These benefits also slow future gains in the form of higher wages workers might earn from a new and better job. But as Hayek tells us, the longer it takes for these workers to rejoin the work force, the longer it will take for them to gain these benefits.
In the coming months, we will be able to assess the potency of dealing with these forces of supply and demand by comparing employment gains in the 25 states choosing to end federal pandemic benefit supplements with the 25 states retaining them. While employment is likely to rise quickly as the pandemic fades and extra unemployment insurance benefits fall away, unemployment rates are still likely to remain high relative to prepandemic levels for another year.
If we look ahead, wage gains should be robust for those employed, particularly for lower-skilled service-sector workers — especially if some employees delay returning to work. Those higher real wages are good news for recipients.
A less welcome wild card would be inflationary pressures, fueled by demand outstripping supply. Those pressures could be a brief blip in an adjusting economy. Or they could suggest a reduction in purchasing power from higher inflation for an extended period. Higher recent inflation readings in consumer prices are a cause for concern.
Whether this happens hinges on whether the federal government and the Federal Reserve dial back their extra Keynesian demand support in time to avoid increases in expected inflation. Inflation risks robbing them of purchasing power gains from their higher wages.
The latest jobs report, then, favors a more Hayekian solution — with a nudge: Policy should support returning to work and matching workers to jobs by supporting re-employment and training for new skills, not just boosting demand. That shift offers the best chance for a sustained lift in jobs as well as demand as the pandemic recedes. In the matter Keynes v. Hayek, then: Let Hayek now prevail.
Dan:
It works for administrators and not for subscribers. I proved it on Eric’s post in the comments section and showed Tonya.
EMichael, Did you bother to read the ProPublica piece beyond the objectionable line you quoted? It was a long article. It did present real information about how rich people can concentrate on growing their wealth and live on that without having to generate what the IRS considers “income”. The headline numbers based on their definition of “true tax rate” are sensationalized, but the meat of the story is not National Enquirer stuff. There are real reasons to change the tax rules – as Buffet reportedly would agree.
The NY Times daily newsletter does a much better job than NPR did of pulling the “news” out of the ProPublica piece.They highlight the “Buy, borrow, die” strategy of tax avoidance.
Arne, Using phony numbers to describe a real problem is National Enquirer stuff. What’s wrong with giving actual numbers? They don’t think they are bad enough? Not a fan of dishonest reporting.
row 1row 2row 3When the comment software removes white space it even eliminates the space between sentences where I had a carriage return.Why does the algorithm find white space to be too expensive?
one space two spaces three spaces four spaces Perhaps it is only carriages returns that it hates?
Arne i find its hatred for white space is erratic. Sometimes I get the spaces I want and sometimes I don’t. I don’t think I am doing anything different.
Last time I looked Statistical Abstracts says the top ten per cent of earners pay an effective rate of 17% on their income tax. I was ready to argue that “capital gains” are not income until they are realized, but just the words in this thread “buy, borrow, and die” gave me something to think about. Plenty of reason to get the rich and the corps to pay more taxes for the government they want. but also a good reason for the Left to stop calling for “the rich” to pay for everything, and the “poor” ]that is “people who make what I make”] to pay for nothing. if nothing else, that attitude scares the rich into being unable to think clearly and to fight harder to keep us from stealing all they have.
Cue Warren Buffet. “The differential between me and the rest of the office, not just my secretary but the rest of the office, was greater than that. It’ll be closer, but I’ll probably be the lowest-paying taxpayer in the office.”
EM hating Rob’t E Lee: what good does it do?
@Coberly, Q: “…hating Rob’t E Lee: what good does it do?” A: Defines anachronism.
Ah, “The Cause” still lives. I mean why would anyone hate a rebel who tried to destroy his former country? Who violated his oath? Who caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans? Who fought to keep Black people slaves? Who received no punishments for his acts and instead went into college administration? A college that allowed students to have a KKK chapter? Assault black children. The question should be why everyone doesn’t hate him.
EMichael one more time: what good does this do? you don’t seem to understand the question. i could run around giving you reasons to hate Caligula. what good would it do? how about hating James I, for Elizabeth I, or George Washington (I have heard some bad things about him.) What good would it do? How about hating Roosevelt? (fwiw: one of my heroes, but he did some bad things.)or, you could just hate me. if you only knew.
typo: “for Elizabeth” should have been “or Elizabeth”
Cob, I don’t hate many people, but Lee deserves to be damned by all Americans. His treatment through the years is beyond belief. It also shows the White Supremacy that has afflicted this country throughout its entire history.He should be treated as the horror of a human being he was.
EMichael just for the record when you give people “information” that conflicts with their closely felt beliefs, they reject the new information and embrace their beliefs more strongly, even with hostility. your hating Lee helps no one. not even yourself. all you do is give the people who already hate more reason to stroke their hatred. and you give the people they hate more reason to hate them back. it is not a recipe for progress. it is interesting to me that the people you hate will tell you that Lee was not a racist and did not treat his slaves badly (he freed them). what this means is that they agree with you that being a racist is bad, and that treating slaves badly is bad. So you have already won that much of the argument. why kick them in the teeth by insisting they have to hate their hero and feel guilty and somehow atone for their (“their”) sin. how? i dunno, would it help if they gave you some money? Lee is their hero not because he fought “for slavery” but because he almost won a war against great odds…a war in which their brave “sons and brothers” died for what they believed was freedom from tyranny. I personally think they were wrong about Lincoln’s “tyranny,” but it would be extremely bad manners of me to try to convince them their sons and brothers died stupidly for a bad cause. and quite counterproductive.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/10/business/starbucks-shortages.html?smid=tw-share
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/business/general-motors-chip-shortage.html?smid=tw-share General Motors said Thursday (June 3) that it expected to increase shipments of pickup trucks and other vehicles to dealers over the next several weeks, a sign that the global shortage of computer chips is beginning to ease. …
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/06/10/nation/senators-eye-579-billion-new-infrastructure-spending-1-trillion-plan/?event=event25
http://a.msn.com/01/en-us/AAKVdU2?ocid=stPhotos of China’s new aircraft carrier are leaking, and they appear to show a…The question FBI Director Wray refused to answer — and why it may mean…A bipartisan group of 10 Senate Democrats and Republicans reached a new deal on infrastructure on Thursday, agreeing to a nearly $1 trillion, five-year package to improve the country’s roads, bridges, pipes and Internet connections.The new blueprint, described by four people familiar with the plan, marks a fresh attempt to resurrect negotiations between congressional lawmakers and the White House after an earlier round of talks between President Biden and the GOP fell apart this week. But it remains unclear if the early accord will prove to be enough to satisfy either the White House or a sufficient number of lawmakers on Capitol Hill at a time when disagreements between the parties are rife.The new deal is the product of five Democrats and five Republicans — Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), and Mark R. Warner (D-Va.). … http://a.msn.com/01/en-us/AAKVdU2?ocid=st
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/06/10/senate-democrats-republicans-infrastructure/?tid=ss_tw
Was a change made? Should I test it too.Line 1Line 2Line 3
not yet.
Finally got a legitimate example of both as an administrator where it all works and as a subscriber where the paragraph spacing does not work
On the Douthat thread (at 11:49) I got the desired spacing though.Single spaced. Double spaced.
cut and paste:June 10, 2021 11:49 pmOver here I get a different result.Single spaced. Double spaced. Another double spaced.
Interestingly (to geeks like me) the two line feeds and/or carriage returns on the Douthat thread turned into one space on this thread when I copied and pasted. (The single lf-cr disappeared).
My white space question (June 9, 2021 11:48 am) was a read herring.Second line with one space third line with two spaces fourth lineIt preserved the spaces. Only the newline character(s) disappear.
Coberly, No worry, Mate. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, then does it make a sound? OTOH, friend TS Eliot posed the other highly relevant prognosis, “Not with a bang but a whimper.”
Ron now you got me worried about that. “if fifty million acres of tres fall in a forest…does it make a sound?” he whimpered.
continuing in that vain: “in space no one can hear you scream” why is this relevant? a few days ago a congressperson asked if NASA couldn’t change the earth’s orbit to combat climate change. answer is it has already been tried. long before there was life on earth the inhabitants of mars saw their climate getting hotter. not wanting to end up like venus…where they had the same problem and tried just injecting sulfur dioxide into the air to block the sun… with the result you see today… the martians just moved their planet further away from the sun. things did get cooler at first, but, since they kept on making carbon dioxide, that only lasted a little while until they trapped enough heat to boil away their atmosphere. actually, that’s pretty much what happened on venus…except that planet was too big to boil off the atmosphere…but the temperature kept rising until it was 800 degrees in the shade, and, well, you know…planetary engineering: what could possibly go wrong?
@EM,Robert E. Lee fought against the United States of America. As such, he committed treason by definition. No patriotic American defends treason or makes excuses on behalf of treason. Lee deserves our contempt, as does anyone who supported the Confederacy and anyone who defends Lee or the Confederacy today.
Joel Lincoln was careful not to call it treason. up to that time it was not clear that the “union” was not a voluntary confederation of states. andrew jackson thought that “nullification” was treason, and Lincoln at least saw the danger secession posed to “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Your “argument” is a crime against reason, as well as being politically counterproductive. I should ignore it, but I hate to see mad dog attacks from either the Right or the Left. We got a country to run here, Bro.