Biden’s attempt to expand Medicaid and Medicare coverage to so called Dreamers will not stand. Dreamers are not in the U.S. legally.
Obama could not make law. Biden cannot make law, and neither could Trump.
Congress legislates.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/13/us/politics/biden-health-care-daca-immigrants.html
The Economist magazine of Great Britain says:
The anxiety of Americans obscures a stunning success story—one of enduring but underappreciated outperformance. America remains the world’s richest, most productive and most innovative big economy. By an impressive number of measures, it is leaving its peers ever further in the dust.
Start with the familiar measure of economic success: gdp. In 1990 America accounted for a quarter of the world’s output, at market exchange rates. Thirty years on, that share is almost unchanged, even as China has gained economic clout.
America’s dominance of the rich world is startling. Today it accounts for 58% of the g7’s gdp, compared with 40% in 1990.
Adjusted for purchasing power, only those in über-rich petrostates and financial hubs enjoy a higher income per person. Average incomes have grown much faster than in western Europe or Japan.
Also adjusted for purchasing power, they exceed $50,000 in Mississippi, America’s poorest state—higher than in France.
Democrats, right wing populists and free loaders need to stop whining. And they need to start telling the truth: free market capitalism works.
Markets and Stocks
JP Morgan blew the doors off with its Q1 earnings. I see 20% upside over the balance of the year. Jamie Dimon says the consumer remains resilient and that the bank’s commercial real estate portfolio is in good shape.
Wells Fargo also had good numbers. It too said its commercial real estate portfolio is in good shape.
Both C and PNC reported solid numbers.
A Boeing supplier screwed up. Deliveries of the 737 Max will be delayed. Patience is running out.
UNH had great numbers.
Wages and prices will converge. The latest Atlanta Fed wage inflation data indicates that wages are running up 6% plus. That is consistent with 5% inflation. Jason Furman tweets: It was very high--6.4% over the last 12 months, a tiny bit below its high earlier this year. Consistent with ~5% inflation.
For now the banking crisis is over.
Lending at the Fed's discount window and the Bank Term Funding Program declined by a combined $9.3 billion for the week ending Wednesday
It's the first week where discount window and BTFP borrowing each declined (though aggregate volumes are still high)
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/20230413/
https://twitter.com/nicktimiraos/status/1646620706245951489?s=66&t=hi3LjJ8kVbN50WgSIEfnAg
March retail sales were soft. March industrial production was strong. If a recession is coming, it will be very shallow.
Economics
People making under $100,000 account for 70% of people filing tax returns. They make 30% of all income. They pay 1.5% of federal income taxes.
Taxpayers making between $ 100,000-500,000 account for 25% of filers. They make 50% of all income and they pay about half of all federal taxes.
Taxpayers making over $1,000,000 make up 0.6% of taxpayers. They make 16% of income. They pay 40% of federal income taxes.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/income-tax-who-pays-the-most-a4d9f65d
Politics
State-run NTPC Ltd., India’s largest electricity producer, plans to start building more coal plants this year as the country continues to lean on the fuel to meet its growing energy needs.
New Delhi-based NTPC will likely award construction orders for about 4.5 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity during the fiscal year that began this month, according to an official aware of the plans, who asked not be named before a final decision is made. The projects will be built across three sites where the utility already runs power plants. See Bloomberg.
David Brooks of the New York Times opines:
There are a lot of us in the Northeastern media who properly spend a lot of time slamming the Republican Party for what a mess it’s become. I have only one question: If we’re right, why are so many people leaving blue states so they can live in red ones?
Between 2010 and 2020, the fastest-growing states were mostly red— places like Texas, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and South Carolina. During the pandemic that trend accelerated, and once again, most of the big population-gaining states are governed by Republicans.
If you go back further, you see decade after decade of migration toward the more conservative South. The Brookings Institution demographer William Frey has noted that in 1920, the Northeast and the Midwest accounted for 60 percent of America’s population. A century later, the Sunbelt accounts for 62 percent of the nation’s population. These days we are mostly a Sunbelt nation.
Why are these red states growing so rapidly? The short answer is that they are more pro-business. In a study for the American Enterprise Institute, Mark J. Perry compared the top 10 states people were flocking to in 2021 with the top 10 states people were flocking from.
The places they are flocking to have lower taxes. The 10 states that saw the biggest population gains have an average maximum income tax of 3.8 percent. The 10 states with the biggest population loss have an 8 percent average rate.
The growing states also have fewer restrictions on home construction. That contributes to lower housing prices. The median home price in those 10 population-gaining states is an average of 23 percent less than that of the 10 biggest population-losing states.
Perry goes down a range of other factors and concludes that Americans are moving away from blue states with high energy costs, byzantine regulatory regimes and unfriendly business climates. They are moving to economically vibrant red states with lower costs, more conservative fiscal policies and more job opportunities.
I repeat free market capitalism works. And on social matters the Golden Rule works. As long as people are not hurting anyone else with their behavior, then leave those people alone.
Gays don’t hurt me. They don’t hurt you. The transsexual community is harmless so live and let live. People have a right to privacy. In prison staying in your own lane is good policy.
In life minding your own damn business is good policy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/13/opinion/sun-belt-migration.html
Sociology
Jósef Sigurdsson of Stockholm University finds that a change to the Icelandic tax code led men to drop out of school without similarly affecting women. Iceland collected no income tax on earnings in 1987 as it changed its national taxation system, creating an opportunity for Icelanders to earn substantially more in the short term. Dropout rates for men who were just old enough to leave high school and start working were 5 percentage points higher than for men just below the cutoff, while dropout rates for women were unchanged. Dropouts rarely returned to school and suffered large losses in lifetime income despite higher earnings in the years after 1987. The findings indicate that short-term earnings opportunities affect men and women differently, suggesting “gender differences in nonpecuniary costs of school attendance, myopia, or perceived returns to education.”
Men are impetuous and short term orientated. At the University of Connecticut Professor F.C. Turner impressed upon me the importance of deferred gratification.
Medicare and Medicaid coverage for mental illness is inadequate. But expansion of coverage would cost money. The federal government is broke. No one wants to pay higher taxes.