A big change that has occurred in my household this year is the amount of shopping we do online – it has gone up a lot. It extends to food – a significant part of my daily calories now get delivered to our house. It isn’t just price driving that change; some of what we […]
An interview on CNBC with Rep.Tom Cole offers some insight into the path to voting yes on the tax bill… Alhough mainstream forecasters like the Joint Committee on Taxation and University of Pennsylvania have issued unflattering analyses of GOP proposals, Cole says his tax-committee colleagues tell him other models offer sunnier results in line with […]
Real wages stagnate YoY, decline significantly since July So lackluster has wage growth been that even the modest uptick in consumer inflation to 2.2% YoY in November means that non-managerial workers have seen virtually no real growth in their paychecks over the last 12 months. With yesterday’s +0.4% increase in consumer prices, here’s what YoY […]
by Hale Stewart (originally published at Bonddadd blog) The Ugly Picture of US Wage Growth The chart above shows the Y/Y percentage change in the average hourly earnings of nonsupervisory employees. We can break this data down into two sections. Due to higher inflation and stronger unions, the pace of growth was far stronger before […]
The Utterly Terrible GOP Tax “Reform” Scam The Republicans in the House and Senate continue on their downhill rush to pass their so-called “tax reform” plan before the holiday break. It’s a mad rush to nowhere, a corrupt process of “please the oligarch” that will cause a huge deficit increase (on the scale of $1 […]
October JOLTS report: a good post-hurricane rebound The August and September hurricanes continue to make their impacts felt in the economic data. Yesterday’s JOLTS report for October, like the October and November jobs reports, shows a rebound from those impacts. The best way to look at the data is to average the last two months […]
The wage – debt deflation dynamic and the next recession One of the important dynamics why recessions end is that inflation decelerates more than wage growth. Thus, for the 90% or so of people who still have jobs, there are some compelling bargains, enough to jumpstart more spending. That all gets short-circuited if wages actually […]
Via the International Monetary Fund: Income inequality among people around the world has been declining in recent decades. But the news is not all good. Inequality within many countries has increased, particularly in advanced economies. In addition to income inequality, wealth inequality—what you have accumulated, as opposed to what you earn—is closely related, and reflects differences in […]
The End Of The “Islamic State.” There are two aspects of this debate, one about the term, “Islamic State,” and the other about the its application. So, until about a month ago the entity calling itself ” al-Dawla al Islamiyya fi al-Iraq wa al Sham(s),” was claiming to be the most important Muslim political entity […]
November Jobs Report: good month, same caveats HEADLINES: +228,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate unchanged at 4.1% U6 underemployment rate rose +0.1% from 7.9% to 8.0% Here are the headlines on wages and the chronic heightened underemployment: Wages and participation rates Not in Labor Force, but Want a Job Now: rose +53,000 from 5.175 million […]