Inflation is an everyone problem and unemployment is a some-people problem.Keep that fact in mind as good-to-great headline economic numbers keep rolling in and economic sentiment remains abysmal. This week, the Commerce Department reported that real GDP fell 0.4 percent in the first quarter of the year, largely because of fluctuations in inventory orders and international trade.
This week, California Governor Gavin Newsom proposed a kind of universal basic income for cars. This is, put short, a bad idea.The proposal was part of a package of policies designed to shield families in the state from the wallet-squeezing, impoverishing effects of inflation in general, and spiraling gas prices in particular.
Tonight, at his State of the Union address, Joe Biden plans to pivot to deficit reduction. The move seems designed to persuade just one guy—Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia—to sign on to parts of the president’s Build Back Better proposal.This new emphasis might give wonks and Hill staffers flashbacks.
Phil Bokovoy, a former investment banker and ardent community activist, is giving me a tour of his neighborhood, Elmwood, in Berkeley, California. It is some kind of paradise.
Larry Elder becoming governor of California would be a little like Bernie Sanders winning a Senate seat in Kansas, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez representing suburban Mississippi in the House, or Mike Pence ending his career as the mayor of Portland, Oregon. Yet in less than a week’s time, there’s some chance, albeit a diminishing one, that it might happen.
On a weekday evening in early July, Jim Lysen, a retired health-clinic director, and Ed Fallon, a grandfather and veteran, ignored the pouring summer rain as they knocked on the front door of a townhouse in an affordable-housing development on the banks of the Androscoggin River in Lewiston, Maine.“I am a volunteer with the Maine People’s Alliance, and we’re making sure people know about the child tax credit,” Lysen said.
Photographs by Sarah JohnsonAcathedral-like mountain towers above me; a lake laps at my feet; sunshine distilled through pine needles warms my skin. Close your eyes, a voice intones. Let your shoulders fall naturally and keep your chest open. Take a few full, deep breaths to settle into this moment, inhaling deeply and slowly releasing your breath, allowing any tension you may be holding to soften. Fifteen minutes later, the voice asks me to bring my attention back to the room.
Armed insurrectionists stormed the Capitol, chasing Congress members into hiding and threatening to hang Vice President Mike Pence and shoot House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Congress impeached President Donald Trump for the second time. White nationalists promised further acts of terrorist violence. The COVID-19 daily death toll hit 4,000. Payrolls declined. And in response, the markets rose a touch, with the Nasdaq and the Russell index of small-cap stocks hitting record highs.
As the country plunged into a deep and unusual economic recession last year, it also plunged into a deep and unusual social recession: atomizing families and friends, evaporating hours of laughter and care and touch.This phenomenon hit nobody as hard as America’s seniors, who are much more likely than their younger counterparts to live in care facilities and many of whom have struggled to connect in a socially distanced or virtual fashion.
Ten years ago, the United States was clawing its way out of a miserable recession. Washington was running an annual deficit of $1.3 trillion, and the national debt had reached $9 trillion, roughly 60 percent of GDP. Those figures were frightening enough to spur the Obama White House and Congress to create a panel of experts to address the long-term budget and to kick-start several rounds of government austerity, making cuts to the defense budget and a wide range of domestic programs.
There’s an on-the-shelf policy the Biden administration could enact unilaterally that would save millions of American lives, without costing the government a single cent on net.That policy, one pushed for but never implemented by the Trump administration, is eliminating most nicotine from tobacco products. It would not render cigarettes illegal; they would still be available to adults, and the smoking experience would remain much the same. But the product would no longer be so addictive.
President-elect Joe Biden could conjure a sweeping financial-relief policy into existence on the first day of his presidency, without the participation of Congress, the Federal Reserve, or any other institution. That is, he could forgive student loans.On Monday, Biden said that loan forgiveness figures into his plan to rev up the American economy, citing a provision in the House’s stalled-out HEROES Act that would pay off $10,000 a person in student loans.