As big box stores thrive,
1 in 5 small businesses expect to close in next 6 months
without urgent federal aid
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/08/as-big-box-stores-thrive-1-in-5-small-businesses-expect-to-close-in-next-6-months-without-urgent-federal-aid
I hope the help comes before the riots
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ictions-crisisAbout 19 to 23 million people are estimated to be at risk of being evicted after federal programs to help 30 million unemployed Americans expired in July
An estimated one-third of job losses since February are permanent, and that share is growing.
The pandemic is a job killer.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...eat-recession/
Fed to allow inflation to rise above 2%
https://www.courthousenews.com/us-bo...-10-year-high/Neil Williams, senior economic adviser at Federated Hermes, said that by pursuing an average, rather than fixed, inflation target, the bank could allow inflation "to travel beyond its preferred 2% destination before tightening rates".
"This should give the recovery extra room to breathe. The challenge, though, will be getting the inflation train to get that far."
limber up your bootstraps
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/08...ty-commission/
Easier to get those late renters out when the AC and lights are off.
A good thumbnail sketch of the dilemma and the parties
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020...e-economy.htmlBefore juxtaposing the U.S. and alternative responses to the coronavirus’s economic effects, I would like to step back in time to show how the pandemic has revealed a deep underlying problem. We are seeing the consequences of Western societies painting themselves into a debt corner by their creditor-oriented philosophy of law. Neoliberal anti-government (or more accurately, anti-democratic) ideology has centralized social planning and state power in “the market,” meaning specifically the financial market on Wall Street and in other financial centers.
At issue is who will lose when employment and business activity are disrupted. Will it be creditors and landlords at the top of the economic scale, or debtors and renters at the bottom? This age-old confrontation over how to deal with the unpaid rents, mortgages and other debt service is at the heart of today’s virus pandemic as large and small businesses, farms, restaurants and neighborhood stores have fallen into arrears, leaving businesses and households – along with their employees who have no wage income to pay these carrying charges that accrue each month.
.Western civilization distinguishes itself from its Near Eastern predecessors in the way it has responded to “acts of God” that disrupt the means of support and leave debts in their wake. The United States has taken the lead in rejecting the path by which China, and even social democratic European nations have prevented the coronavirus from causing widespread insolvency and polarizing their economies. The U.S. coronavirus lockdown is turning rent and debt arrears into an opportunity to impoverish the indebted economy and transfer mortgaged property and its income to creditors
Having given $10 trillion dollars to support financial and mortgage markets, neoliberals in both the Republican and Democratic parties announced that the government had created so large a budget deficit as a result of bailing out the banking and landlord class that it lacked any more room for money creation for actual social spending programs. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell advised states to solve their budget squeeze by raiding their pension funds to pay their bondholders.
For many decades, public employees accepted low wage growth in exchange for pensions. Their patient choice was to defer demands for wage increases in order to secure good pensions for their retirement. But now that they have worked at stagnant wages for many years, the money ostensibly saved for their pensions is to be given to bondholders. Likewise at the federal level, pressure was renewed by both parties to cut back Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, with Obama’s 2010 Simpson-Bowles Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to reduce the deficit at the expense of retirees and the poor.
In sum, money is being created to fuel the financial sector and its stock and bond markets, not to increase the economy’s solvency, employment and living standards. The coronavirus pandemic did not create this shift, but it catalyzed and accelerated the power grab, not least by pushing public-sector budgets into crisis.
Terminating payroll tax could end Social Security benefits in 2023, chief actuary warns
Trump, however, wouldn’t be able to terminate the payroll tax unilaterally. Congress would have to pass legislation for that to happen.
The federal government’s
ability to pay Social Security benefits could stop by mid-2023
if President Donald Trump were to permanently terminate the payroll tax and not offer another revenue source,
the Social Security Administration estimates that the Disability Insurance (DI) Trust Fund “asset reserves would become permanently depleted in about the middle of calendar year 2021, with no ability to pay DI benefits thereafter,”
For the main Social Security Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund for retired workers,
they predict reserves “would become permanently depleted by the middle of calendar year 2023, with no ability to pay OASI benefits thereafter.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...OvXCjU66ybDGZw
The underlying problem is finance capitalism. Its roots lie at the heart of Western civilization itself, rejecting the “circular time” permitting economic renewal by Clean Slates in favor of “linear time” in which debts are permanent and irreversible, without public oversight to manage finance and credit in the economy’s overall long-term interest.
It often is easier to get rich in such times of disaster and need than in times of normal prosperity. While the U.S. economy polarizes between creditors and debtors, the stock market anticipates fortunes being made quickly from the insolvency of business with assets and property to be grabbed. Coupled with the Federal Reserve’s credit creation to support the financial and real estate markets, asset prices are soaring (as of June 2020) for companies that expect to get even richer from the widespread distress to come in autumn 2020 when evictions and foreclosures ae scheduled to begin again.
In that respect, the coronavirus’ effect has been to help defeat the financial sector’s enemy, governments strong enough to regulate it. The fiscal squeeze resulting from widespread unemployment, business closedowns, rent and tax arrears is being seized upon as a means of dismantling and privatizing government at the federal, state and local levels, at the expense of the citizenry at large.
Unprecedented Inverse Correlation
a chart from EddyElfenbein, showing the general lack of correlation between markets and the economy (and me confirming my priors).
In an offline discussion with my alter ego, TBPInvictus, he pointed out that the chart was annual through 2019. The suggestion was made to look at it quarterly up to the present, and that chart above is his handiwork.
The unprecedented occurs all the time,
but if you want to see something that is orders of magnitude off the scale of the usual non-correlation between stocks and the economy,
that negative correlation is really something else.
Man, Q2 2020 is the outlier of all outliers.
https://ritholtz.com/2020/09/unprecedented/
Wall Street's bailout was robust, and is ongoing through the BlackRock-managed Fed lending facilities and uh, accomodative monetary conditions.
By contrast, Main Street is being left to twist in the wind. Pretty soon Wall Street will be buying up it's distressed property for a fraction of its value.
Email from hubby's employer says it's optional and is only a deferral of taxes - they will not be changing their payroll tax withholding method in Sept 2020.
if President Donald Trump were to permanently terminate the payroll tax and not offer another revenue source
It's what he says he wants.
Last edited by ChumpDumper; 09-01-2020 at 11:00 AM.
Like it always has been. The Fed and their corporations will always be the beneficiaries and we will be the ones to cover their losses regardless of who is president. The corruption of our system is the federal reserve and the share holders of it. Every puppet in the oval office bows to the cabal.
[QUOTE=ChumpDumper;10247314]if President Donald Trump were to permanently terminate the payroll tax and not offer another revenue source
It's what he say he wants.[/QUOTE
Trash spouts inconsistent BS, but he did say PERMANENTALLY end payroll taxes and get those $Ts from another (unspecified,mythical, never-to-found)source, having thought through the issue carefully.
Just more bull spewing out his pie hole
yep, next year, employees will have to payback ALL the $100s or $1000s of deferred payroll taxes.
For stimulus purposes, it's totally ineffective.
Nothing but ing Elect-Me Trash campaign tactic.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tears into
'completely inadequate' GOP stimulus proposal
the GOP to make "another unacceptable and ineffective attempt at providing relief,"
"Republicans may call their proposal 'skinny,' but it would be more appropriate to call it 'emaciated,'"
"Their proposal appears to be completely inadequate and, by every measure, fails to meet the needs of the American people."
Schumer derided the slim proposal's
lack of funding for rental assistance,
safe elections, and
food assistance,
among other omissions.
Republicans' proposal tries to "'check the box' and
give the appearance of action
rather than actually meet the truly profound needs of the American people,"
" The parties' joint front on
the CARES Act "allowed for significant improvements to be made" that ultimately helped the economy,
https://www.businessinsider.com/chuc...roposal-2020-9
the multi-millionaire plutocratic Repugs have protected/bailed out BigCorp, Capitalists, BigDonor,
but say " All y'ALL" Labor.
Depicting credit and the financial business plan as having only positive economic effects produces a travesty of history. Viewing debt and its interest charges simply as a bargain between individuals fails to recognize how the economy-wide debt burden tends to grow beyond the ability to be paid. It casts a blind eye toward how financial oligarchies act in the absence of public checks. Money-greed is applauded as if securing creditor claims is the most rational way to organize an economy. The implication is that there is no need for government action from ‘outside’ the market, e.g., by Clean Slates to reverse the effects of the rural usury that eroded traditional land tenure in the Old Babylonian period (2000-1600 BC).
Throughout history debt has been the major lever privatizing land and reducing populations to bondage. Mesopotamia managed to delay this polarizing dynamic by subordinating creditor rights to the aim of dynastic survival. But classical Greece and Rome lacked the tradition of royal Clean Slates. That was the great turning point. Livy, Plutarch and Diodorus described how debt disenfranchised the Roman population, yet a modern survey citing a seemingly comprehensive list of 210 causes on which posterity has blamed Rome’s decline and fall at one time or another does not even include debt. (Demandt, 1984)https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020...chaeology.htmlThe inherent conflict between rulers seeking to keep their citizens free of debt bondage on the one hand, and creditors seeking their own gains at the palace’s expense, has been a thread running down the history of civilization. The distinctive feature of Western economies is privatization of credit, land natural and public infrastructure. That is the real detour from earlier millennia. Archaic societies treated land required for subsistence as a basic right for their citizenry. Instead of commodifying labor and land ownership to make debt bondage and foreclosure irreversible, Mesopotamian rulers proclaimed Clean Slates so as to avoid the financial polarization between creditors and debtors that later brought on a Dark Age. Today the debt dynamic is imposing austerity on today’s Western world, transferring property to creditors who have gained enough control over government to block protection of debtors.
there is no pressure from the oligarchy/Capitalists to help Labor, because the oligarchy FEELS NO PAIN
The ugly numbers are finally in on the 2017 Trump tax rewrite —
and the rich made out like bandits
More than half of Americans had to make ends meet in 2018 on less money than in 2016, my analysis of new income and tax data shows.
The nearly 87 million taxpayers making less than $50,000 had to get by in 2018 on $307 less per household than in 2016, the year before Trump took office,
That 57% of American households were better off under Obama
contradicts Trump’s often-repeated claim that he had created the best economy ever until the pandemic.
Trump policies help the prosperous and rich including half a million rich people
who are not even filing tax returns yet
are not being pursued as tax cheats.
contradicts Trump’s frequent claims that he is the champion of the “forgotten man”
and his vow that “every decision” on taxes
“will be made to benefit American workers and American families.”
The Trump tax law, the most significant tax policy change since 1986, was passed without a single public hearing or a single Democratic vote.
Trump policies overwhelmingly favor the top 7% of Americans, my analysis shows.
The number of households enjoying incomes of $200,000 or more soared by more than 20%.
The number of taxpayers making $10 million or more soared 37% to a record 22,112 households.
The Trump/Republican tax savings were highly concentrated up the income ladder with hardly any tax savings going to the working poor and only a smidgen to the middle class.
The number of households making $1 million or more but paying no income taxes soared 41% under the new Trump tax law.
Under Obama, there were just 394 such households.
With Trump, this grew to
556 households making on average $3.5 million without contributing one cent to our government.
, a group that made nine times as much money enjoyed about 125 times as much in income tax savings, thanks to Trump and Congressional Republicans.
This disparity helps explain Trump’s support among money-conscious high-income Americans.
loopholes and Congressional favors allow many rich and superrich Americans to report much less income than they actually enjoy.
Often they get to defer for years or decades reporting income earned today.
, with Trump’s support Congress has cut IRS staffing so deeply that
it cannot even pursue growing armies of rich people
who have stopped filing tax returns.
The sharp decline in IRS auditing means tax cheating—always a low-risk crime—has become much less risky.
In the three years ending in 2016, the IRS identified 879,415 high-income Americans who did not even bother to file a tax return. These tax cheats owed an estimated $45.7 billion in taxes
Under Trump more than half a million cases of high-income Americans who didn’t file a tax return “will likely not be pursued,”
One of the Koch brothers was under IRS criminal investigation until Trump assumed office and the service abruptly dropped the case.
William Ingraham Koch, who lives one door away from Mar-a-Lago, is collecting more than $100 million a year without paying income taxes.
Borrowing to Help the Rich
Most of the negative effects will fall on the middle class and poor Americans in the form of Trump’s efforts to reduce government services.
The new tax data also shows a sharp shift away from income from work and toward income from investments,
a trend which bodes poorly for working people
but very nicely for those who control businesses, invest in stocks, and have other sources of income from capital.
Overall the share of American income from wages and salaries fell significantly, from almost 71% in 2016 to less than 68% in 2018.
the slice of the American income pie derived from business ownership and investments,
it expanded by nearly one-tenth in two years.
Income from such investments is highly concentrated among the richest Americans.
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/09/the-ugly-numbers-are-finally-in-on-the-2017-trump-tax-rewrite-and-the-rich-made-out-like-bandits
Repugs know that if they don't help Labor now, that they will still get $100Ms in support from Capitalists.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 09-05-2020 at 02:51 PM.
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