At the most. The GOP leadership keeps trumpeting work requirements and fraud when asked where they’ll find $880 billion in cuts to health care programs. That’s nonsense according to Merrill Goozner. The fraudulent work requirement meme, GoozNews I was glad to see fellow substacker Paul Krugman weigh in this morning on how the Republican Party is attacking […]
– by New Deal democrat This week’s report on initial jobless claims was of particular interest, because of the issue of whether Federal employees laid off by the new Administration would cause an increase. It appears they did. Initial jobless claims rose 22,000 for the week to 242,000, and the four week moving average rose 8,500 […]
As the EPI article says decades of federal policy and court decisions have placed limit on Labor’s to strike as allowed under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Evolving over the years, millions of workers have been excluded from the NLRA right to strike. As you can see on the graph below the numbers of […]
More unwelcome news in (new) house prices, while sales continue sideways trend – by New Deal democrat I almost always start out my post on new home sales by indicating that, while they are the most leading of all housing metrics, they are very noisy and heavily revised. That was true in spades for this […]
A former mentor once explained to me why America would be better off if scientists ran the country. While technocracy isn’t inherently anti-democratic—America could simply elect scientists and engineers—the notion smacks of elitism. Of course, this country was founded on the idea of elitism. Only property-owning White men could vote. The president was appointed by […]
Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen review Trumps budget cuts. The implication here is it is near impossible to achieve the dramatic cuts without imposing severe penalties on the US Citizenry, The attempt is to balance the budget so as intakes equal outtakes of funds. Except Trump does not want to fix his 2017 tax break. […]
When I started out. it was the money. Kind of hard to buy a house and have kids if together you are pulling in $24,000/year. Then when the family starts, one of us will not be working (that was the plan). Get the first job, change jobs at two years, and work your way up […]
– by New Deal democrat There was unwelcome news in this morning’s repeat home sales reports from the FHFA and Case-Shiller. On a seasonally adjusted basis, in the three-month average through December, according to the Case-Shiller national index (light blue in the graphs below) prices rose 0.5%, and the somewhat more leading FHFA purchase only index (dark […]
Q3 2024 QCEW suggests employment was considerably weaker than we thought last year – by New Deal democrat This will be income, spending, and housing week, but that won’t start until tomorrow. While there’s no news today, there was an important update to employment data last week; namely, the QCEW for Q3 of last year. […]
God has a plan and Congress does not. November 2024 and the election is over. Rep. Mark Alford, a Lake Winnebago Republican, won a second term in Congress Tuesday, gliding to an easy election win in Missouri’s heavily conservative 4th Congressional District. The Associated Press called the race for Alford at 9:24 p.m. At the […]