Tag Archives: Taxes/regulation

Further considerations on the disappointing April jobs report. Consider the averages! I’ve been threatening for a couple of weeks to run some extended comments on the big miss in the April jobs report. As there’s no economic news of note today, here goes . . . . 1. It’s possible March was the outlier rather than April. The original report for March was that 916,000 jobs were added. In this month’s report it was revised down to 770,000....

Steve Hutkins from Save the Post Office. As you can see, postal service delivery would lengthen from a maximum of 3 – day delivery to 4 and 5-day delivery service for First Class mail and Periodicals. The impact of the changes in delivery would would slow approximately 20.7 billion pieces of First Class Mail, or about 39 percent of FCM volume (see chart below). The Postal Service has requested an Advisory Opinion from the Postal Regulatory...

Big Pharma says they need to charge astronomical prices to pay for research and development. Yet, the amount they spend on manipulating the market to enrich shareholders completely eclipses what's spent on R&D. Today, I confronted a CEO about the industry's lies, with visuals ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/c3jSLr0yVd— Rep. Katie Porter (@RepKatiePorter) May 18, 2021 Tags: big pharma, drug prices...

April’s consumer and producer prices, retail sales, and industrial production; March business inventories and JOLTS, Commenter RJS, Market Watch 666 Producer Prices rose 0.6% in April on Higher Wholesale Food Prices, Wider Margins for Transportation Services The seasonally adjusted Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand rose 0.6% in March, as prices for both finished wholesale goods and margins of final services providers rose 0.6%. That...

Trade Deficit Increases 5.6% to Record High in March on Rising Imports of Consumer Goods, MarketWatch666, Commenter RJS Our trade deficit was at another record high in March, 5.6% higher than in February, as both our imports and exports increased, but our imports increased by more. The Commerce Department’s report on our international trade in goods and services for March indicated that our seasonally adjusted goods and services trade deficit rose...

The executive increases the return to shareholders, in return they increase the executive(s) salaries; and so it goes. The Trump tax cuts were used by corporate executives to buy back shares; increasing the stock value, sending more along to the shareholders who then reward the executive(s) with bigger salaries. What’s missing? The workers. Time was when industrial work forces were huge and unions were strong; when the unions had lots of clout with...

What the USPS 10-year plan may have to say about future rate increases, Steve Hutkins at “Save The Post Office“ The mailers were probably disappointed that the Postal Service’s new 10-year plan released yesterday, “Delivering for America,” did not reveal how big of a rate increase the Postal Service intends to make using the new authority it was granted by the Postal Regulatory Commission. While they wait in suspense, here’s a guess: 3.6 percent....

Every citizen of the United States has the right to be represented in both their state and federal governments by a representative chosen in a free and fair election. In a free and fair and election, each and every vote is equal. By definition a gerrymandered election is unfair because it favors one group of citizens over another. In a gerrymandered district, one’s vote may count for nothing, one party’s vote may count for nothing. In a gerrymandered...

Via Truthout , (https://truthout.org/articles/flood-risks-are-rising-amid-climate-change-but-congress-is-delaying-action) comes a reminder of a perennial problem: Floods are the most common disaster in the United States. And the 2020 hurricane season was the busiest to date in the Atlantic — 73 percent more “active” than normal, The Washington Post reported, with a record number of storms breaking ground on U.S. soil, totaling $37 billion in...

Via the Oklahoman comes this news on Republican state legislation. I believe Florida and other states are enacting radical ideology in more than the voting rights arena: Oklahoma charter schools granted local tax revenue in ‘seismic’ settlement A groundbreaking settlement will fundamentally change the way charter schools are funded in Oklahoma, despite vehement opposition from the state’s top education official. The Oklahoma State Board of...