Here’s The Real Problem With December’s Jobs Report
I suppose one read-through from December's jobs report is simply that the case for more fiscal stimulus is now stronger.
With the Senate set to flip to Democrats, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer will almost invariably move quickly to send larger direct payments to Americans.
The abject malaise apparent in the leisure and hospitality industry underscores the fact that a services-driven economy which lives and dies by consumption will be a volatile beast in the event some exogenous sh
“It’s circular to the point of absurdity. The people providing the services for meager wages are in most cases the same people consuming them when they’re not providing them.”
That, in a nutshell, is the problem with an economy where 77.4 percent of GDP comes from the service sector without an adequate and ubiquitous social safety net.
The United States will either guarantee aid and care for its vulnerable citizens or it will become increasingly divided and unstable.
I have a friend. He and his wife both have master’s degrees. Both are software engineers. Super productive people. Both were immigrants to America. They are good people. They are not angry or violent. One of them was eligible for a Shengen Visa. Found out this morning that they moved to France two months ago. Working as engineers over there now.
The beacon of light on the hill was a bulls*t myth we were fed. We were dumb. Took our country, our system, for granted. Didn’t bother to make sure we educated ourselves. Yes, got kind of screwed over by our elites along the way. Though our elites weren’t particularly cruel during America’s halcyon period, they didn’t give a crap about building a strong country with a future, either. Still, it was a nice thing we had and we let it slip away.
It’s funny you felt the need to say those immigrants were “good people. They are not angry or violent”. It’s hard to decouple that description from the fact they’re immigrants. I can’t see that unexpected safeguarding of their character being linked to the fact they moved to Europe.
I was just out at the St. Louis Fed site looking at the labor force participation rate (LFPR). It’s the big picture chart I like to follow.
More so recently than usual, I’ve been getting a queasy feeling in my stomach that the state of American affairs, today the labor market, and more broadly the nation at large, is just going to be a kind of depressing, long slow grind, gradually down and to the right.
I watched the first 12 minutes of the Sir James Goldsmith interview last night. I thought it particularly poignant given the events of Jan 6th. This has all been in motion for decades as we all know.