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I just hope that this human trafficing bill actually helps with labor trafficing.
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Jul 28, 2022 15:41
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I think the practical definition of a recession is kind of outdated and increasingly has no real meaning to about 70% of the populace. It feels like semantics right now
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Jul 28, 2022 15:43
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Twincityhacker posted:I just hope that this human trafficing bill actually helps with labor trafficing. It is a reauthorization of a bill from 2000. They added housing assistance for victims and specialized resources for combatting online trafficking of children. But, the vast majority of the bill already existed and is just being renewed. Good news is that it is generally considered very effective. But, this isn't really much "new" that is going to change the current status quo on trafficking.
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Jul 28, 2022 15:47
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Bob Menendez had been making noise about wanting SALT back in the reconciliation bill, but he said he was onboard with it at the Senate Democrat caucus meeting. All 49 Democrats in attendance committed to supporting the reconciliation bill. So, every Senate Democrat there committed to voting for it? Yes. But, wait. All 49 members agreed to vote for it? Shouldn't it be 50? https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1552653791694008320 Cliffhanger: Krysten Sinema did not attend the caucus meeting. https://twitter.com/marianne_levine/status/1552660726740819968 Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Jul 28, 2022 |
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Jul 28, 2022 16:13
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Just lol that people will continue to fall for this kayfabr
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Jul 28, 2022 16:15
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It took 6 months, but they have finally committed to voting on a modified version of the STOCK act. https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1552670215783084035 This may turn out to be a boon for many members of Congress and their staff. They really shouldn't be investing in single stocks. They're too volatile. Index funds and bonds are much safer, especially if they are closer to retirement. It's like a free financial advisor! Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Jul 28, 2022 |
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Jul 28, 2022 16:19
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Discendo Vox posted:Yeah, and it's still not how it's legally defined, modedit: personal info (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) Somebody fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Jul 28, 2022 |
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Jul 28, 2022 16:33
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Feels weird for Manchin to sound like a good spokesperson for the bill, but I'll take it. https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1552667020575100928
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Jul 28, 2022 16:34
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Rask. Please try to provide some sort of content or argument and not just a personal attack. Not probing you for a rule break because of my new enforcement policy, but just a heads up. There's no rule against being condescending or a dick (try not to be, though), but just a single sentence personal attack isn't really useful. If you want to dunk on him, then address his argument and dunk on him for that. Edit: Welp, Fritz got to you before I posted this. But, point still stands for everyone else. And don't post personal info/info not freely available on the forums about people. I missed that you did that when I initially typed this out before Fritz got you, but that should be an obvious thing to not do. Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Jul 28, 2022 |
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Jul 28, 2022 16:40
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https://mobile.twitter.com/ddayen/status/1552647629820989441 Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer Have a Surprise for You --- never don't be Dayen-ing and Prospect-ing. A good article that's worth clicking through and reading in full. Some excerpts: quote:There is no such thing as a genuine surprise in Washington—usually. This was a genuine surprise. I had been talking to people this week who would or should have known that talks between Manchin and Schumer, thought to be moribund, were taking place. The closest I got to foreknowledge was one source saying that they just didn’t believe it. An army of reporters, lobbyists, and hangers-on didn’t know this was happening. what a prestige posted:The reveal was made a few hours after the Senate cleared the CHIPS and Science Act, a bill that offers semiconductor manufacturers subsidies for reshoring and boosts science programs. Mitch McConnell had threatened that bill, something highly cherished by Schumer, if Democrats persisted with a party-line bill that raised taxes and boosted clean energy. When Manchin walked away from negotiations with Schumer just two weeks ago over those two items, McConnell let his guard down and allowed a vote on CHIPS, which was popular with many of his Republican colleagues. Schumer and Manchin waited until that cleared the Senate before announcing a reconciliation deal with taxes and climate back in. A mixed bag on healthcare but one where sins are more of omission than commission quote:Now, all that said: What’s in the bill, and was it worth the agita? The health care piece has already been covered: extending the subsidies that make insurance affordable in the Affordable Care Act (for three years, beyond the end of this presidency, which is important), combined with an exceedingly modest drug price reform that still yields $288 billion in Medicare savings and more for individual seniors, is fine. The Democrats should find a way to get insulin back into the mix, rather than leaving it out so a bipartisan bill can fail. quote:The tax measures are simple. There’s a corporate alternative minimum tax for companies with more than $1 billion in annual profit. It’s based loosely on Elizabeth Warren’s book profits tax from the 2020 campaign, which derived profit from financial statements to investors, not deduction-heavy tax filings; however, it seems like some credits will be able to count against profits, meaning more savings for corporations. There’s also an $80 billion investment in the IRS that CBO believes will raise $124 billion in revenue on net (the Biden administration thinks it will be much higher), and a tweak, not a closure, of the carried interest loophole. I'm thrilled about the book tax (alternatively Corporate AMT), even with it being softened from the 2020 version. The big win from this is it's outside of the taxation ratchet scheme that's been killing tax revenue for a few decades (republicans get acclaim by cutting 10%. Dems raise 5%. Republicans cut by 15%. Dems raise 5%. And so on), and one where the populist messaging is so easy Manchin's already out there with it. The others represent minor wins and a failure to address lasting concerns. quote:As for the climate and energy measures, you will hear a lot that this is the largest climate action taken by the U.S. government in history. Those statements often tell you nothing, because it’s a “compared to what” scenario. On its own terms, this narrows energy investment from $550 billion in the initial Build Back Better Act to $369 billion, though a “climate bank” and “climate accelerator” could allow for another $290 billion in investment from the private sector. This is mostly achieved through scaling back the credits; included in that number is an “all of the above” energy strategy with incentives for fossil fuel production (with carbon capture), offshore oil and gas (with a larger royalty payment), biofuel production, and more. This was of course the only way to get Manchin’s buy-in, a trade of sustaining carbon emissions (hopefully slightly cleaner ones) for the green transition. Yay posted:Other things climate hawks have pointed out include $60 billion in environmental justice provisions (neighborhood block grants, along with port pollution reduction), manufacturing tax credits for renewables, energy efficiency subsidies, a methane leakage fee, and $5 billion in grants to utilities to decarbonize, as well as a direct-pay credit for public power facilities. Boo posted:I don’t have a full breakdown of how much of that $369 billion is for cleantech, but there are hundreds of billions enumerated in the topline summary, and that doesn’t include the electric-vehicle benefit, which is $4,500 for used vehicles and $7,500 for new ones, up to fixed income limits, and available at point of sale. The skeptical net posted:Overall, the claim is that the bill will reduce emissions by 40 percent by 2030. This is roughly four-fifths of what the original BBB did, though the money available is much lower than that. So seeing some independent modeling would be useful. The shoe to drop posted:Manchin also secured a promise from leadership for unspecified “permitting reform” by the end of September. (This is apparently mainly so the natural gas Mountain Valley Pipeline that runs through West Virginia can get approved.) Two final notes: Dayen acknowledges what I also noticed immediately on permits - Manchin is acting now for a future, unspecified promise...one that can be thwarted (or at least forced to rely on bipartisan passage) by a single progressive or a fraction of the house CPC. The dynamic should sound familiar - it's just that the sides are flipped. Secondly, there's an argument (Made months ago by Dayen, who earned his toldyouso) that a year+ was wasted pushing for the doomed BBB that was never going to pass. There is probably more to examine here on the merits of ambitious failure and who gets assigned the blame, but I lean towards the idea of passing this back 6-9-12 months ago would probably have put Dems in a better position than how things actually shook out. Part of an alternative case is that this is likely to be a situation where Dems do A Thing shortly before the election and that hasn't happened in a decade. The last bit that I still see sneaking under the radar is that this appears to be deficit reduction through increased revenue rather than slashed spending. I'm sure someone with a better legislative memory can tell me, but when was the last time a reconciliation bill was deficit-shrinking at this scale due to increased revenues rather than reduced spending? Not counting the magic asterik era of tax cut=revenue growth, of course.
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Jul 28, 2022 16:41
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So it's Sinema who's going to screw everyone this time again?
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Jul 28, 2022 16:47
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Shes going to do that dramatic "thumbs down" thing again.
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Jul 28, 2022 16:49
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Jaxyon posted:Shes going to do that dramatic "thumbs down" thing again. She's back in the spotlight and enjoying it. She just assembled a group of reporters and said that, even though all of the provisions (except for the carried interest elimination) are all things she said she would support previously, that she is waiting to see "what final bill comes out of the parliamentarian process" and then she is going to "personally read the whole bill" and decide. And told everyone to "stay tuned," but she had no further comments at this time.
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Jul 28, 2022 17:25
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:She's back in the spotlight and enjoying it. Perhaps Manchin wanted someone else to take the heat for crashing this version. What fun!
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Jul 28, 2022 17:30
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Jaxyon posted:Perhaps Manchin wanted someone else to take the heat for crashing this version. In a small act of mercy, the longest we will have to wait to figure out whatever she plans to do is a week. Because she'll need to vote on it one way or the other by then.
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Jul 28, 2022 17:32
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https://twitter.com/PatrickSvitek/status/1552687931609026560 Oh god this ad is terrible. The DCCC is setting a new nadir.
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Jul 28, 2022 17:46
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OAquinas posted:https://twitter.com/PatrickSvitek/status/1552687931609026560 someone, somewhere, decided "there is no hope for the future" was the winning message for the Democratic party you have to respect it, in a way
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Jul 28, 2022 17:50
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OAquinas posted:https://twitter.com/PatrickSvitek/status/1552687931609026560 They're doing all they can. Gavin Newsom's ads in Texas caused a lot of problems for them. They need understanding during this time.
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Jul 28, 2022 17:52
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BiggerBoat posted:I think the practical definition of a recession is kind of outdated and increasingly has no real meaning to about 70% of the populace. It feels like semantics right now Yeah, ultimately quarterly growth is less important than wages and standards of living. Of course the two of those things are linked, but mostly they are adversarial in nature. Increasing profits necessarily come at the cost of workers, it's just for a long time those workers weren't American citizens. Edit: Lastly, pinning your definition of economic downturns to corporate profits really is saying the quiet part out loud.
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Jul 28, 2022 18:08
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:She's back in the spotlight and enjoying it. I see two outcomes (well, okay, three, but "The bill fails" is an assumed default). Either she thinks her voters are dumb enough that they'll just remember the last thing she did and votes for it as a Hail Mary, or the other democrats managed to work some backroom deals to get at least one R to splinter off and agree to vote for it.
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Jul 28, 2022 18:16
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The plan of attack against inflation and price increases generally is, in the broader strokes, to "discipline" labor and return the country to the 8-10% real unemployment that is required to keep the current system running as designed. So far the various initiatives to encourage layoffs and increase precarity amongst the productive classes have been yielding results, and thus in their minds they are likely wanting to avoid a situation where they declare RECESSION! only to have to say NO RECESSION! 4 weeks later and look like idiots. There is no legal definition, it's just something they declare when they feel it's necessary as a part of any broader ideological program. They're wrong about this of course, or at least they're not being honest in their public statements as we saw with inflation narratives and the insistent assertion that the root cause of all of this is a 1400 dollar check sent out almost 7 fiscal quarters ago, but it's still what they believe. As ever, the most prudent long term financial strategy is to find someone who has spent decades of their life being wrong about every single thing and being rewarded as a result and just plan for the opposite of whatever they are saying being true. Luckily our system provides no lack of these figures. Summers and Kristol are my go-to media feeds for this.
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Jul 28, 2022 18:21
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OAquinas posted:https://twitter.com/PatrickSvitek/status/1552687931609026560 Lmao. This is a crystallization of the Simpsons DNC thing - "We Hate Ourselves" "We Can't Govern"
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Jul 28, 2022 18:34
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Yeah, ultimately quarterly growth is less important than wages and standards of living. Of course the two of those things are linked, but mostly they are adversarial in nature. Increasing profits necessarily come at the cost of workers, it's just for a long time those workers weren't American citizens. it's been elucidated by posters far more knowledgeable on the subject than I am, but the "basket of goods" used to determine cost-of-living has no explicit standard. This is not because the type of goods necessarily change with time (which does happen), but because they can be used to impact the results in order to support whatever the person or group using them wants to say/conclude. I'd enjoy seeing a summary with links again if anyone wants to put in the effort.  Epic High Five posted:They're wrong about this of course, or at least they're not being honest in their public statements as we saw with inflation narratives and the insistent assertion that the root cause of all of this is a 1400 dollar check sent out almost 7 fiscal quarters ago, but it's still what they believe. As ever, the most prudent long term financial strategy is to find someone who has spent decades of their life being wrong about every single thing and being rewarded as a result and just plan for the opposite of whatever they are saying being true. Luckily our system provides no lack of these figures. Summers and Kristol are my go-to media feeds for this. there is a belief that there is a natural hierarchy within the economic system and people will find their place within it accordingly Cranappleberry fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Jul 28, 2022 |
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Jul 28, 2022 18:43
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lol so wait, is the implication that the public Manchin blowup about not supporting a climate bill was actually a ruse between him and Schumer to get McConnell to let his guard down and they were secretly all in on this plan that they let literally no one else know about?
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Jul 28, 2022 19:17
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It seems that way. Manchin and Schumer got one over on McConnell, and left Sinema holding a hot potato.
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Jul 28, 2022 19:21
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:It seems that way. Manchin and Schumer got one over on McConnell, and left Sinema holding a hot potato. "Oh noooo, I haaate holding hot potatoes" - A grinning Kyrsten Sinema
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Jul 28, 2022 19:25
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My company is already responding to our record profits with a tightening of labor spending. I mean why do you need to hire more people when you can just make people do 2 jobs for the price of one during a time where they can hold your healthcare over you while exposing you to covid in forced office activities? Labor getting uppity will not be allowed to continue.
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Jul 28, 2022 19:28
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Levitate posted:lol so wait, is the implication that the public Manchin blowup about not supporting a climate bill was actually a ruse between him and Schumer to get McConnell to let his guard down and they were secretly all in on this plan that they let literally no one else know about? Either that, or he agreed to it to take heat off himself knowing Sinema would still ensure it dies in the chamber. I don't think this is quite as likely because not only is Manchin seeing zero threats from anybody who could credibly hurt him, it remains the case that the mind of Sinema is unknowable. Initially there was talk about one of the moderates nuking it because of SALT stuff but it seems to have died off, either because it was just someone in the commentariat theorycrafting or nobody believes they have that sort of spine. Certainly the bill as is will give them things to pitch to the portions of their base that are affluent enough to ask about that before signing any checks.
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Jul 28, 2022 19:28
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I'd like to clarify the issue of whether or not "recession" is being redefined, since it involves definitions and is therefore moderatable per linguistic precision. The common definition is either the general and non-rigorous "period of general decline in economic activity," or the more specific "decline in GDP over two successive quarters," which has been brought up in this thread. Since the latter is one of the normal definitions and is occurring, it is not a misuse of language to say we're in a recession. It's also correct to say that most economists don't believe we're currently in a recession, though some worry one is near. This is because they attempt to use more indicators when judging the health of the economy than just GDP, to make the assessment more rigorous. This also leads to a degree of subjectivity, since different economists don't always choose the same ones. When someone talks about whether we are "officially" in a recession, they're referring to the judgement of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a prestigious research nonprofit that is private yet relied upon by the US government for economic information. However a lack of declaration does not indicate, even by the NBER's judgement, that we aren't in a recession; because they rely on lagging indicators and don't declare one until it's already begun. As far as I know, it's also not accurate to say that there is a "legal" definition of a recession, because NBER's authority is based on custom rather than law.
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Jul 28, 2022 19:44
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BiggerBoat posted:I think the practical definition of a recession is kind of outdated and increasingly has no real meaning to about 70% of the populace. It feels like semantics right now I think any definition of economic health that only takes into account growth is incomplete because it is oriented around the interests of capital and not labor, but that is a whole 'nother sack of potatoes.
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Jul 28, 2022 19:51
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e: actually forget it
Lib and let die fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Jul 28, 2022 |
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Jul 28, 2022 19:54
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I don't it's worth policing semantic arguments like that because everyone is loving tired of playing "Who you gonna trust? Me or your lying eyes" with the government. We never went to war with Vietnam, it was a police action. People in power play semantic games and adjust definitions and metrics however they need to look as good as possible.
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Jul 28, 2022 19:56
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Epic High Five posted:The plan of attack against inflation and price increases generally is, in the broader strokes, to "discipline" labor and return the country to the 8-10% real unemployment that is required to keep the current system running as designed. So far the various initiatives to encourage layoffs and increase precarity amongst the productive classes have been yielding results, and thus in their minds they are likely wanting to avoid a situation where they declare RECESSION! only to have to say NO RECESSION! 4 weeks later and look like idiots. There is no legal definition, it's just something they declare when they feel it's necessary as a part of any broader ideological program. are they ever going to have to grapple with the fact that unemployment might be being suppressed by all the covid deaths and the increasingly large number of people disabled from long covid
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Jul 28, 2022 19:58
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Discendo Vox posted:Yeah, and it's still not how it's legally defined, as all the articles I linked describe, including saying why the two quarter definition isn't adequate, where it comes from, and who and how the actual definition is applied. The problem is the legal definition is always late, 6-10 months after the start. So it’s not particularly useful. My expectation is that some point in the future we will be told by the National Bureau of Economic Research that it was already occurring now. This is a general problem, our official metrics are too slow and lag actual conditions and decisions are made late. This allows some to portray decisions as made intentionally late or made incompetently.
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Jul 28, 2022 20:01
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A big flaming stink posted:are they ever going to have to grapple with the fact that unemployment might be being suppressed by all the covid deaths and the increasingly large number of people disabled from long covid Yes, imho. The question is whether it will be as an attempt to mitigate it in advance, or a rearguard and hapless effort to simultaneously try to fix it while refusing to acknowledge it exists. Nobody here should have to wonder where my money is, but historically speaking mass die-offs of productive labor are events that have been able to factored in and worked around. The interesting question here is that so much of this is focused on sectors where automation has already eliminated about as much labor input as it's going to, so the accommodation may be just letting overbuilt sectors like casual dining contract. Problem here is that so much of this country are overgrown babies who go absolutely insane when they can't get waited on or get quick service that avoiding unrest as a result would mean opening up the money spigot even further and heightening different, more intractable contradictions instead. edit - to clarify, I think COVID causing people to reassess their life patterns and relationship to capital is the biggest driver here. The actual loss in terms of deaths is still not on par with things like wartime population losses that are focused more highly on the younger populations that are required to keep a service economy going. Epic High Five fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Jul 28, 2022 |
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Jul 28, 2022 20:06
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A big flaming stink posted:are they ever going to have to grapple with the fact that unemployment might be being suppressed by all the covid deaths and the increasingly large number of people disabled from long covid It likely has little to no impact on the overall unemployment rate. The total amount of people who died from Covid is 0.6% of the total working population. About 1/4 of all people who died were over 85 and ~70% were over 65. That would put most of them out of working age - roughly 68% of people in that age group are retired. If we assume every person who was capable of working was actively employed and roughly in line with overall trends, then about 0.14% of the employed workforce died from Covid or Covid-related causes (pneumonia, etc.)
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Jul 28, 2022 20:13
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A big flaming stink posted:are they ever going to have to grapple with the fact that unemployment might be being suppressed by all the covid deaths and the increasingly large number of people disabled from long covid I think you're putting the cart before the horse. Bourgeois economics does not try to explain trends in order to guide decision making, it works backwards from the decisions it wants to make in order to justify them. For example, there's been a lot of rumbling by the talking heads that wages growth is driving inflation, and therefore wages need to be dropped in order to cut inflation. Meanwhile, anyone with access to the internet can look up that wages have actually sunk when compared to inflation. Wages have risen <5%, and CPI is drat near 10. More than that, cutting wages is effectively identical to inflation. Whether prices increase (inflation) or you have a less money to spend (wage cuts), the end result is people consuming less*. So why all this talk by the economists about the "need" to cut wages to halt inflation? If you start from the premise that these outlets are trying to explain the economy, nothing makes sense. Nobody with a brain and a computer could ever come to this conclusion, certainly not anyone whose job it is to study such things. Instead, you should view the end goal as "cutting wages to increase profits" and suddenly all this obviously wrong bullshit they keep trumpeting on corporate media falls into place as a way to manufacture consent for wage cuts. So look at any unemployment miscalculation not as a mysterious mistake (which may be partially true), but instead ask "what is the end goal they are justifying?" *Or, the short term solution, debt.
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Jul 28, 2022 20:19
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:It likely has little to no impact on the overall unemployment rate. The total amount of people who died from Covid is 0.6% of the total working population. About 1/4 of all people who died were over 85 and ~70% were over 65. It's not just deaths. An extra 2.4 million people retired between early 2020 and late 2021. https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2021/december/excess-retirements-covid-19-pandemic That's still going to track older, but not quite as old as Covid Deaths did. Also statistics show that the shakeup for labor force participation went from 63% in 2019 to 60% in 2020 and only recovered up to 61% part way through 2021. Currently we're still down a percent from 2019's high. Overall we lost around 3 million workers one way or another, and while that's barely 2-3% of the work force, it's still a lot to lose all at once and has clearly had an effect.
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Jul 28, 2022 20:20
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Crain posted:It's not just deaths. An extra 2.4 million people retired between early 2020 and late 2021. https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2021/december/excess-retirements-covid-19-pandemic Yep. All true. The original poster was specifying Covid deaths and disability from long covid, though. Those two specific things are very small amounts. And as you noted, the labor force participation rate is close to the high it was at in 2019 (and the labor force participation rate is likely to lower over time as the U.S. population is currently skewed heavily older thanks to low current birth rates and the baby boomers). So, employment is actually extremely good historically. Basically everyone who wants a job can find one and it is easier to quit/switch jobs now that it has been for a long time. Whether earnings or real income are great is another story (spoiler: they're not). But, having too many jobs/too few workers and falling real incomes is a very different economic problem than we had with previous crises, like the Great Recession, where you had 18-20% of the population who wanted a job, but couldn't get one or couldn't get enough hours no matter how hard they tried.
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Jul 28, 2022 20:27
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Epic High Five posted:it remains the case that the mind of Sinema is unknowable. This is what I hate the most. As much of an rear end in a top hat as he's been in obstructing the Biden agenda, Manchin very clearly walks around Congress wearing a beer hat with a giant blinking "For Sale" sign on it, to the point where I almost blame Biden more simply for not being more adept at figuring out ways to pay Manchin off. Sinema, on the other hand, is an actual Chaos Agent.
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Jul 28, 2022 20:34
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