Tag Archives: economics

The Forgotten Man

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A recent Wall Street Journal editorial correctly pointed out the costs to us ordinary Americans of a variety of Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden administration plans. The editors were particularly concerned with the administration’s plans for bank and credit card fees that these institutions charge individuals who overdraw their account or make late payments on their credit cards and that these institutions charge businesses for using the various ATM and credit card payment networks.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency proximately responsible for the latest round of regulations capping those fees at markedly lower levels,

acknowledges[] the lower penalty may cause more borrowers to pay late, and as a result incur higher “interest charges, penalty rates, credit reporting, and the loss of a grace period.” This would make it harder to qualify for an auto loan or mortgage.
The agency concedes that credit-card issuers may also raise interest rates, reduce rewards, “increase minimum payment amounts or adjust credit limits to reduce credit risk associated with consumers who make late payments.” Because some states cap credit-card interest rates, “some consumers’ access to credit could fall.”

The editors closed their piece with this bit of naivete, though:

The forgotten man always pays.

Who says they’re forgotten? These are the ones the Progressive-Democratic Party wants to trap into welfare, so Party can trade welfare payments for votes. Imperial Rome did bread and circuses; Party does welfare dolings.

Boeing Production Problems and Unions

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Yes, the two are related. This is from a Wall Street Journal article on Boeing’s production sloppiness (my term) in its airline assembly operations. “Traveled work” is work done on the production line at a later station on the line than it should have been done, and generally by the personnel at that later step rather than by those who should have done it moving to the next station to complete it. For instance,

…the plane [whose door had blown out on an Alaska Airlines flight] spent nearly three weeks shuffling down an assembly line with faulty rivets in need of repair.
Workers had spotted the bad parts almost immediately after the plane’s fuselage arrived at the factory. But they didn’t make the fix right away, and the 737 continued on to the next workstation. When crews completed the repair 19 days later….

Boeing’s fix [emphasis added]?

Boeing told staff it was changing how it determines pay for tens of thousands of nonunion employees—from mechanics in South Carolina to its top brass. Quality measures, such as reducing traveled work, will now determine 60% of the annual bonuses for those working on its commercial aircraft.

Boeing’s union employees apparently get to continue to skate. The move appears to single out Boeing’s right-to-work state employees for punishment while not addressing the problem itself.

Government Making Crime Pay

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Now the Progressive-Democratic Party reigning in the New York State government wants to reward felons for their crimes. After those felons have paid their debt to New York society through their jail time (and apparently before they’ve served out the rest of their penalty in the form of parole), the State wants to give them $2,600 for their trouble.

The legislation, introduced by State Senator Kevin Parker [D] and Assemblyman Eddie Gibbs [D], would allow inmates to collect around $400 each month over six months once they leave prison.
As the bill currently stands, there are no limitations on how or where the money can be spent, according to Fox 5 New York.

They’re looking at setting aside $25 million for this reward fund.

Instead of paying criminals for their crime, maybe this taxpayer money (the original $40 the felons routinely get on release came from their garnished wages from the jobs they held while in jail) would be better spent going to a victim rehab/make whole fund instead. Alternatively, maybe this taxpayer money would be better spent countering, if only a little, the State’s Defund the Police movement.

Alternatively alternatively, maybe this taxpayer money—evidently excess collections since it’s aimed at such foolishness—could be returned to the State’s citizens. After all, as Progressive-Democrat Gibbs complains,

In this economy that [the original $40] amount is barely enough to get groceries or purchase clothes for a job interview[.]

That’s also the case for the honest citizens of New York, both jobless and working poor.

It’s highly useful to help released felons readjust to life on the outside and start to recover (or begin) an honest life. Paying them for their crimes doesn’t accomplish that. Thus, and additional alternative: commit the $25 million to programs—not State-run!—jail house training in the trades, half-way house rehab and job prep, and the like. Gibbs and Parker like the idea of no strings attached for the felons’ spending their $2,600 each; they should have no trouble committing, unrestricted, their aggregated $25 mil to private enterprises to run these programs. Or—the horror—paying the $2,600 per to the employer who hires a newly released felon.

It’s instructive that of all the plethora of alternatives available, these Progressive-Democrats picked the absolute worst of the lot, the one that directly rewards the felon with free cash.

Impact of Biden’s Border and Immigration Policies on Employment

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Another outcome of Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s disdain for our national borders and for actually vetting who comes into our nation is this. Notice, too, that the graph isn’t some tenuously done aggregation of data from questionable sources; it’s a FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data, compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) graph.

In just February, 1.2 million immigrants (legal and illegal) gained a job. Meanwhile, 500k native-born Americans LOST their job.
Since Covid, native-born workers have actually LOST 2 million jobs. All of the net job gains are immigrants.

 

The sharp dip is from the Wuhan Virus Situation. After that, the sharp increase in employment is nearly exclusively from a mix of immigrants, temporary and otherwise, and illegal aliens, whom the poster euphemistically terms “illegal immigrants.”

In just February, there were those 1.2 million immigrants of one sort or another. In January, the latest month for which data are publicly available, there were more than 176,000 illegal aliens encountered at the Southern Border, and an unknown number of undetected illegal aliens. Those 176,000 are roughly one-seventh of that total.

The problem here isn’t that immigrants are successfully competing with “native born” Americans for jobs. It’s that all those illegal aliens appear to be successfully competing in an arena they should never have access to.

Virtue-Signaling in the Credit Card Market

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Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden is at it again, attempting to buy votes with another of his sham attempts to save us ordinary Americans money.

The Biden administration on Tuesday finalized a new rule to cap all credit card late fees at $8, a move that is expected to elicit fierce pushback from industry giants.

His Consumer Finance Protection Bureau

estimates the new regulation will save American families more than $10 billion in late fees annually by reducing the typical late fee of about $32. That amounts to an average saving of roughly $220 per year for the 45 million people who are charged late fees.

Stipulate for the moment that the CFPB actually has an accurate, fact-supported basis for its cost claims. Those fees help the banks recoup a significant fraction of the costs they incur when credit card holders are late on their payments. This restriction on cost recovery is only going to lead to tighter bank restrictions on who they’re willing to issue credit cards to.

How much money does Biden think will be saved by those who no longer can get credit cards, or by those whose cards are not renewed on the renewal date?

Biden really thinks we’re stupid enough to not see through his bread and circus shenanigans.