Category Archives: Economy

Government stats about workers

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In 2020, the number of people who did not have access to adequate food increased as much in one year as it had in the past five years combined.

֎ The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today that median weekly earnings of the nation’s 113.6 million full-time wage and salary workers were $990 in the second quarter of 2021. This was 1.2 percent lower than a year earlier, compared with a gain of 4.8 percent in the Consumer Price Index for all consumers over the same period. Inflation rose by 5 percent.

[Mariner notes that wages did not keep up either with the Consumer Price Index (how much food and purchases cost) or the rate of inflation (a lack of unions and more generally, the effects of Reaganomics)]

֎ Over the past three months, the economy has added an average of 832,000 jobs per month – the fastest job growth since August 2020. That’s a sign that economic confidence is returning, even as concerns about the pandemic continue.

֎ The unemployment rate dropped 0.5 percentage points in July. Sometimes a drop occurs because people give up looking for jobs but the Federal government reports that the labor force participation rate and employment-to-population ratio are both up. That suggests people are looking for work and finding jobs.

֎ Statistics suggest employment has recovered 75% of jobs lost in 2020.

֎ Despite the fact that the number of unemployed people fell by 782,000 to 8.7 million in July, long-term unemployment is still far too high. More than 3 million people have been out of work for at least 27 weeks, with 2.5 million of those out of work for 52 weeks or more. Black workers are over represented in this population.

Ancient Mariner

 

Cryptic Cash

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Mariner always has preferred paying cash. There were times though, when having credit was a life saver; credit cards and mortgage loans made life doable. Fortunately, mariner still uses credit cards only when cash is not acceptable. What mariner likes about cash is that it is relatively untraceable; no one knows mariner bought some trendy toy or paid for a trip to a vacation spot. The nosiness of social media and big data don’t know except through post-purchase commercial services that don’t have his profile data. Mariner’s vehicle tracking is disconnected so he can drive where he likes without big data knowing.

But now mariner must learn about a whole new banking system: crypto cash, the bitcoin world. We must all adjust. Even today banks and retail are planning conversion. The U.S. government already is deep into having taxes paid with bitcoin – or as the news media calls it, govcoin.

Understand that bitcoins are not physical and only exist in the digital world! One cannot trade a silver quarter for a bitcoin. That’s why bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are often called digital currencies. The reader won’t need a wallet, only a computer. The reader won’t need a credit card, only a computer. In fact, the reader won’t even need a bank – only a computer. It should be noted that significantly large areas of the U.S. don’t have access to the Internet.

The simplest way to convert cash/credit to bit coin is through a crypto-exchange. One example for demonstration purposes is COINBASE. Bitcoin was invented to remove one type of middleman — the banks. Banks are famous for taking fees for transactions. Banks played a big role in the financial crisis of 2008; bitcoin started in 2009, just after that crisis.

This is a deep statement: In a decentralized network, the data is everywhere, it can’t be shutdown. More important, however, is bitcoin behaves more like the stock market than a bank account. There is a limit to how many bitcoins are available (Bitcoin has a limit of 21 million coins; once there are 21 million bitcoins, no more coins can be created). This means that bitcoin values can rise and fall just like any real estate or stock market investment.

As a new investment source, bitcoins and other self-defined coins are a heady investment but the downside is the coins are not regulated like the reader’s local bank. It truly is like gambling on the stock market hoping a rise in value will pay your tax bill.

Mariner likes his twenty dollar bills.

Ancient Mariner

 

Significant Moves

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֎ If the reader has ever vacationed on South Padre Island and visited the town of Brownsville, Texas they know the laid back, mostly Mexican culture and the abundance of retired old people. It’s just a single purpose town with a pleasant atmosphere and a notable marsh sanctuary. Until now. Elon Musk is moving from California to build his launching pad to Mars. It consumes a lot of beach and open area in Brownsville. Brownsville never will be the same.

֎ Now fly back across the continent to Windsor, Connecticut where construction has been halted at a new Amazon warehouse; Amazon has temporarily shut down its construction site in Connecticut after a seventh noose was found hanging over a beam. The suspected cause, although mixed with doubt, is racism in very New England Windsor. Both construction and future employees will have a significant number of non-whites and, given the enormity of an Amazon warehouse, the quiet style of Connecticut – just as in Brownsville – never will be the same.

֎ Disney has decided to move many of its operations to Orlando, Florida. Is this another gold brick falling from the golden world of California?

֎ Last month, Oracle, the tech giant, announced it is moving its corporate headquarters from Redwood City, California, to Austin, Texas. Hewlett Packard Enterprise also announced last month it was moving its headquarters from San Jose, California, to a Houston suburb.

Several journalists suggest that decades of fighting with California’s effort to restrain blatant capitalism but not doing it very well has become wearying for super big business. So they are moving to two of the most conservative states in the U.S.

Mariner’s first reaction is dismay. Is it a right of big money corporations to move wherever they want with no regard for cultural impact? It would be like an invasion into mariner’s garden by a rabbit that will consume the garden display but the rabbit is the size of an elephant. Brownsville and Austin were nice places back when . . . It takes some imagination but think about Congress before PACs and billionaire businessmen; has big money crushed the democratic culture of Congress in the same way? Corporate profit grows more and more expensive and not just in terms of dollars.

On a less personal tangent, Mariner suggests this may be an interesting transition. Texas, in particular, has a citizenry growing with liberal blue as northern businesses and the new phenomenon of ‘work from home’ move into the state. The last election showed a purple shadow in its profile.

As to Florida, the transition may not be caused by big business but rather by global warming where the bottom third of Florida is seriously threatened by destructive flooding and may actually disappear. In other words, it’s the privatized wealth that will move out of Florida. Think of Tiger Woods’ $44.5 million Florida home on Jupiter Island.

Change can be disabling. Suppose that regular basketball had to be played in knee-deep water. . . A few summers ago Mariner and his wife returned from a California vacation deliberately avoiding the Interstates. We came back on Route 66. Yes, it’s still there like an old jigsaw puzzle with most pieces missing. It was colorful, culturally entertaining and every bit as clean and with good food as any Hampton Inn. A similar experience can be had by dropping off Interstate 80 between Omaha and Pittsburg, where small, clean towns haven’t aged since the Korean Conflict.

Trade Brownsville for Mars? Jesus, have mercy.

Ancient Mariner

Money and Mind

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Here’s a note from Protocol, a tech newsletter:

“Three hundred and thirty-one billion dollars. That’s how much revenue the five biggest companies in tech — Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and Facebook — brought in over the last three months. Here’s some Very Sophisticated Analysis: That’s a lot of money.”

The total GDP for the United States in 2020 was $19,278,194.2 million or simplified 19 trillion and change. Doing the math, the big tech companies made 6.8 percent of all the money made in the US economy in a year. We’re familiar with the impact of a pandemic. This is a techdemic.

In a capitalist system, profit must make more profit even if it has to consume other profit sources to sustain growth; the street term is ‘grow or die’. The tech companies have had enough influence to avoid their greatest enemy – antitrust. Each tech company, and we can include huge entertainment corporations like Disney, must continue to buy up control of larger and larger and more diverse businesses not only to avoid competition but to sustain larger profits.

Mariner doesn’t know anyone who can fix this. Just thought you should know.

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On the mind front, Netflix has a series called ‘The Mind Explained’. It is an informal approach to how memory, dreams and other mind phenomena work. If one follows the episode about memory, one comes away realizing that the mind is designed to help make our best decisions under the circumstances and does not retain unbiased or even truthful histories of our lives. The mind simply decides ‘this is who I am and given this existential situation, this is what I’ll do.’ Our mind certainly is no computer but certainly more complex.

Ancient Mariner

 

Progress for Civilization

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Here’s an interesting side note: Bill Gates is the largest farm owner in the United States. Ol’ farmer Bill.

Gates and his wife have acquired more than 269,000 acres of farm in the United States in the past 10 years. Those purchases, made with the help of the Washington-based firm Cascade Investment and a number of shell companies, include farmland in nearly 20 states that cultivate vegetables such as carrots, soybeans, and potatoes (some of which end up in McDonald’s French fries). These details come after the agriculture outlet The Land Report reported in January that the tech billionaire and his wife were the country’s top private farmland owners in the country. An NBC News analysis also identified Gates as the largest farmland owner in the US.

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The launch of Jeff Bezos is a new scale in bad taste – not to mention that Richard Branson looked any better. It is a sign that massive, really massive resources that are needed in the real world are not applied correctly. Mariner’s opinion is that capitalism must, must pursue greater profits or fail – but those profits are stolen from the lifeblood of a society whose resources have run out.

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It appears there will be no more reprieves for the nation’s roughly 8 million households behind on their rent and mortgage payments. According to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, more than 4 million of those households face the likelihood of eviction in the next two months. Add this fact to the fact that housing for anyone is hard to find; add the impact on the twenty-somethings looking for anything they can afford and add the fact that plain and simple, there aren’t enough physical, actual homes to go around.

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Oh well, there’s a scant chance that some bridges and highways may be repaired. Mariner thinks he will run over to Misty’s and get a milkshake.

Ancient Mariner

How to have a balanced economy

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֎ AXIOS distributed a concise and clear statement about why world population rates are dropping. It is a quality statement about a topic that doesn’t get much news coverage but can be a significant interpretation of social response to unsympathetic governments. It is typical that economic health is measured by GDP, inflation, and stock markets but the Axios article suggests that it is the condition of the population that determines the efficiency of a given economic philosophy. Some excerpts:

Why world population is slowing – Population growth is continuing to slow in the U.S. and China . . . Why it matters: Population growth spurs economic growth because it can increase innovation, workers and goods produced and consumed . . . What’s happening: U.S. immigration, life expectancy and fertility are all trending down.

We focus way too much on percent growth like quarterly GDP. We should think about what people want. What level of immigration people want. What age would people like to die.

Americans still want multiple children, but they’re worried about child care costs, their own student debt and a pause in their careers . . .

China has relaxed restrictions on the number of children families can now have. But the new policy seeks more to bolster the workforce than to promote population: The Chinese Communist Party is also raising the country’s retirement age, curtailing a key source of child care . . .

The bottom line: If countries want population growth to pick up, leaders must first fix underlying causes of the slowdown, including cost of child care and fear of immigration.

֎ From his lofty spot in the esoteric atmosphere, Guru suggests that the problems confronting nations in the 21st century will not subside until it is understood that political theories work best only in tailored economic situations. Guru said:

COMMUNISM works best in primitive conditions where authority is based on contributing to the wellbeing of other citizens and the economy is sustained solely by local labor and predictability. If one watches any of the homesteading shows on television they are watching classic communist behavior. Dictatorships that call themselves communist nations are misleading. Even the term ‘nation’ is stretching the concept. The reader may remember the commune movement in the US during the 60’s and 70’s but it failed because the surrounding economy was too sophisticated.

CAPITALISM works best when authority is based on assuring the freedom of all citizens to compete for available resources – but this works well only in economic conditions where there are plenty of resources to go around. The US was created at a time when an entire continent of unused resources was available and the expansion of worldwide economic resources was exploding as new places were discovered around the world. Capitalism was the perfect economy to scarf up resources at a geometric rate making the US the richest nation in the world. Alas, these resources have been depleted; in the 21st century there no longer are enough resources to go around for everyone. The population is too large to have everyone freely compete for resources.

SOCIALISM works best when authority assures equality among the citizens and the economy is stable and predictable. The Native Americans sustained a socialist economy for thousands of years because the resources, especially on the plains and seacoasts, were stable and predictable – until the capitalist authority killed all the buffalo, beavers, doves and destroyed important estuaries.

AUTHORITARIANISM works best when authority enforces social order in an economy that is inadequate or out of balance with the existing authoritative role. Once authoritarianism is in place it is difficult to remove; authoritarianism has no scruples other than power – just like Lord Acton said in 1887.

There are many other variations on the four basic economic philosophies. Corporatism is a style of capitalism; plutocracy is a form of capitalism; militarism is a variation of authoritarianism; Sheikdoms, China’s communist party and monarchies all are variations of authoritarianism. Tribalism, populism, classism, insurrection and other social movements can become significant and derail unbalanced economies – often allowing authoritarianism to emerge.

To use an allegory, consider the tight wire walker. The walker is authority, the wire is population and the long balance pole is economy. If the wire and the pole aren’t in sync, the situation becomes unstable.

Ancient Mariner

Another Road Metaphor

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The authoritarian revolt of the belligerent right still deserves our attention and requires some serious effort to contain the movement. Whether the electorate understands that movement’s threat to the constitutional government known as the United States of America will be shown in the results of the 2022 election. Aggressive authoritarian behavior is a failed consequence of many different economic and cultural changes.

While we keep one eye on the fires started in the last century we must keep the other eye on the road to the future. Another form of authoritarianism is corporatism. If we don’t manage the road properly, the division between the few wealthy and the many poor will become wider and more adverse, perhaps even superseding the role of government – which many claim is already happening. Many of the business regulations and institutions that were created in the last century are virtually irrelevant in this new world of computers and instant communication. The entire perspective about antitrust must be reconstructed. Further, one nation can no longer control an international corporation. It will require a new set of international laws.

Riding the road into the future already is heavy laden with issues. One issue that should be left on the curb is racism. Many millennials and most Zs don’t have this issue. Older folk should just be done with racism and move on – there’s not enough energy for all the issues let alone worrying about skin color.

This is made more complex by domestic police departments which have been trained in abusive racism for generations. Decommissioning a militarized police force will be difficult. It must be done or a significant portion of our society will be stunted as we ride the road into the future.

Just as old or older than everything else is the concept of taxation. Mariner’s old saw about the plains indians whose hunters shared their hunting success with the tribe doesn’t exist in American capitalism. As a consequence the billionaires who hunt money sit on untold trillions of dollars that, from a societal point of view, simply gather dust. Taxation – especially in times when labor jobs are disappearing – should redistribute a significant amount of the hoarded wealth to help pave the road into the future.

So, let’s hop on our hover boards and get moving down the road. Uncross your eyes; it was a bad metaphor.

Ancient Mariner

A New Sport for These Times

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Does the reader remember the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)? Twelve nations, primarily along the Pacific Ocean, negotiated a trade agreement. The nations were:

United States • Singapore • Brunei • New Zealand • Chile • Australia • Peru • Vietnam • Malaysia • Mexico • Canada • Japan

The TPP was based on a unique concept that each member nation was assured a commensurate share of income based on the Gross Domestic Product of the partnership. Earlier trade, tax and tariff arrangements were modified to accommodate this unique idea of international partnership instead of international balance of trade.

There were progressive economic concepts in the agreement but there were many loopholes that benefited corporate interests above national interests.[1] While the language touted liberal issues like environment, labor rights and humanist politics, there were just as many backdoor caveats that would permit corporate participants to ignore the ‘nice’ language. A good description of the new trade relationship was that nations were investors in the partnership, not traders.

For the United States, this was all for naught when Congress dragged its feet and Donald officially withdrew in 2017. Nevertheless, the new partnership was signed by the remaining eleven nations in 2018 and became the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.

A characteristic of these agreements is that while there are direct economic benefits for being part of a team instead of constantly manipulating trade and tariff, it is more difficult to shift national politics or apply sanctions to other members of the partnership. Unlike today’s supply and demand free-for-all, being part of a supply partnership introduces permanence to international economics – meaning that whichever partnership has the most important partners, the more likely that partnership will dominate the global economy.

Another aspect is that a partnership needs one partner that is large enough to sustain the overall economy for all the nations in the agreement. There are only three nations that can fill this role: China, the United States and possibly India. The economic ballast needed for a successful partnership requires one partner that has global dominance in GDP, population and land mass. Corporations already know this and have constructed supply chains that depend on one massive corporation to sustain the chain. Amazon, Walmart and Google are examples.

Now that the reader has suffered through the rules for the sport for these times, the sport is which of the three anchor nations (China, US and India) can build partnerships with the most nations, the best nations and the nations with the best natural resources in the shortest amount of time? The winner will dominate the global economy for a long time.

The game already is in play:

China understands the concept; in 2013 China started its Belt and Road project using infrastructure as an international connection between 70 nations and intends to dominate politically and militarily as well as economically. The US along with the G7 nations belatedly introduced its own Belt and Road plan; Joe Biden hopes the plan, known as the Build Back Better World (B3W) initiative, will provide a transparent infrastructure partnership to help narrow the $40 trillion needed by developing nations by 2035.

Ancient Mariner

 

[1] To keep this post from becoming a book, if the reader has further interest just type TPP in your search engine – much has been written pro and con.

Trends

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Folks tend to look for clues about climate change in weather patterns. It is true that climates are shifting but on a seasonal basis it is hard to measure how much is change and how much is typical variability. The global indicators, melting glaciers, ocean temperatures and melting permafrost are a more direct way to measure change. All indications are that global warming is accelerating, to wit:

The Washington Post reports that Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier, a river of ice large enough to raise sea levels by 1.6 feet, was already among the fastest-melting glaciers in the world. Now scientists have found that the ice mass is flowing even more rapidly.

Further, Siberia is experiencing active permafrost melt on a grand scale. Some prognosticators suggest that by the end of the century Russia will make more from wheat exports than it does from oil today.

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Mariner has mentioned often that the United States is in the long, painful death throes of Reaganism. Causes are a changing world, changing environment, changing technology and new economic structures. What is trending at the moment is Republican autocracy. Will manipulation of the elections be enough to sustain the twentieth century into the twenty-first?

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Speaking of economics, a growingly obvious trend is the shrinking of Europe’s role in world economics. Europe has tended toward smaller business models; for example, Apple has a larger net value than the top 30 firms in Europe. Perhaps its history of smaller nations and many economies has led Europe to this preference but as a result, there will be only two global business leaders: China and the United States – perhaps, with luck, India. The global trend definitely is toward international, multimarket corporations who will anchor worldwide supply chains similar to Amazon.

The government role is to develop supply chain style arrangements between nations. One new example of this is an agreement by the G7 to levy a worldwide 15 percent tax on corporations to prevent corporations from avoiding taxes by moving operations to the nation with the least tax.

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Several news items have been about seafood. It seems the warming oceans have had an effect on everything from seals and whales to lobsters and commercial fishing species. From Science Magazine:

“… basically what we found all over the ocean, wherever we had data, is that the abundance of large fish, in terms of numbers and weight, were ten times higher originally than they are now. That is, that what we’re left is one-tenth of the original number and weight of large, large fish.”

Here in the United States it already has been noted several years ago that the ‘Maine’ lobster has moved on to other locations.

Ancient Mariner

Everything is the same but different.

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Last Friday on an early, Way To Early, news show there was a piece about how manufacturers were resizing products to compensate for rising production costs rather than raising prices and lose customers. It has a term: ‘shrink-flation’. Demonstrated were toilet paper, potato chips and ice cream, which had fewer sheets, less weight and smaller capacity respectively. Shoppers have been taught to read labels for health reasons; now they must school themselves on size by learning how many grams in a quart or a pound and beware of count in artificial sugar packets; the price doesn’t change.

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Turning to a more sociological vein, everyone agrees the United States is having an identity crisis. It is difficult to know how to handle the situation. For the common citizen, it seems only to be a mish-mash of conflict and pointing fingers. The citizen truly is in the depths of the trenches and even trenches within trenches. How does a citizen gain perspective so that reasonable evaluation can be made?

Learn some facts. Mariner knows this is a tall order for the electorate but if a rational path to recovery is to be available, one must check history for similar situations. Sorry, electorate.

In place of buying textbooks, use Wikipedia to collect information – and make a donation while you’re at it. Search for information on the cause of the French Revolution, the Magna Carta, the Luddite rebellion and the rise of Nazi government (including persecution of Jews) in Germany. Clues for why there were national identity issues may involve financial security of the masses, oppression, racism, power wars and concentration of wealth.

For starters find something in these events comparable to wage freezes for forty years; find something that represents too much cash for the well-to-do; find something that erased major chunks of job availability; find something where power blocks competed too much for the good of the nation. Once historical information has been gained, how were these issues resolved?

Vote accordingly.

Ancient Mariner