What the World Needs Now [feedly]

What the World Needs Now
https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2021/02/08/what-the-world-needs-now/

What the world needs now is some answers to our problems,
… it looks as though faith alone won't sustain us anymore. – Bad Religion

Last year was a disaster that many did not survive. Many of us will carry deep wounds for the rest of our lives.  More than two million people died from the global pandemic that we are still struggling to contain.  In the US, unprecedented fires shattered the West, even as nomads from past fires were still seeking shelter and some semblance of a normal life.  Strange weather events continued to wreak havoc across the land, whipsawing Colorado from heatwave to snowstorm in a single day.  The stock market continued to climb, even as millions were thrown out of work. Police shot Black people in the back, without consequences.  Armed militias terrorized peaceful protestors and threatened to kidnap a state governor.  And, to top it off, former President Trump refused to leave office, instead inciting an insurrection at the US Capitol in a vain attempt to hold power.  

All this makes clear that we have been working without effective leadership for a long time.  I don't mean just Trump, although his failures propel us well beyond criminal territory.  The problems go back to the years after WWII, when a powerful idea of technocratic rule came into play – as both savior and bogeyman.  While the majority of Americans put their heads down and let the experts guide the ship, a significant minority fell sway to paranoid thinking of global conspiracies involving the UN and other unlikely culprits.  After 2008, any remaining  illusions of capable leadership, whether benevolent or malevolent, have been shattered.  It is increasingly obvious that no one is truly in control here.  Even the capitalists can't get their act together to save their industries. Instead, they  seem to be putting their money into escape plans (to New Zealand bunkers, to Mars). 

In a world gone off the rails, all of our politics seem very tired.  I don't know if left vs right  explains much about what is going on as the ground shifts under our feet, despite the fact that the two political parties like to point their fingers at each other.  We argue over the word "populism" and bemoan its capture by fascists.  Trumpists call anything they don't like — even neoliberalism – "socialist."  Police-loving "patriots" desecrate the US Capitol and wound and kill Capitol Police.  Now truly does seem to be the time of monsters, as a new world struggles to emerge.

It is time, I think, to put aside politics with all its confounding labels and partisanship and think about the world we want to live in.   What does the world need now?   This is not a just a matter of good or bad policies (some of my colleagues have written of these before), but more general thinking on how best to live and work together.  Rather than wait for leaders to save us, we should all think about this. I will start from a premise that has been basic to working-class people for many years.  An injury to one is an injury to all.  Zero-sum politics is a dead end.  We need to recognize our interdependence, not just to each other, but to the planet we inhabit.   So how can we do this?

First, we have to step back and recognize the huge importance moral recognition plays in human life.   For years, the Republican Party has been able to attract voters because they speak in terms of good people and bad people.  "Q" built a party by offering up "evil democrats."  In contrast, the Democratic Party has talked instead about interests of people and how to meet them.  But one of those interests is surely being a good person.   Like Andrew Sayer, I blame the academic Left a little bit here for ignoring the fact that morals matter in people's lives.  No society can exist long without some sense of what it means to be a good person. If we cede this conversation to those who speak of evil others, we are left with measuring value solely in material terms, and we are defenseless against those who would exploit us. 

Because money is not the value of all things, the profit motive should not be at the core of many industries and endeavors.  The US Postal Service does not need to make a profit to provide value to us. Those who work in education, healthcare and public service are not in it for the money but rather to do the right thing, help others, and save lives.  Forcing these industries to make money or to think primarily in terms of reducing costs is wrong.  A sane world would recoil at the very idea of running colleges for profit, privatizing prisons, or making money off of prescription drugs.  We need to take money out of politics, refuse to fund for profit colleges and schools with taxpayer money through financial aid and vouchers, demand that our politicians not profit from policies they enact or companies they greenlight, and eliminate the profiteering insurance network from our healthcare system. 

Second, we have to work on creating a structure that allows everyone to thrive.  The Left has long been committed (at least in words) to a strong safety net, but we need to think bigger here.  We should seriously consider universal basic income.  This is an idea that has broad appeal across the political divide.  In fact, it was first championed by the libertarian thinker Robert Theobald in his 1963 book Free Men and Free Markets .  Among other things, Theobald argued that a Guaranteed Basic Income (GBI) would make the contract between employer and employed a truly free one, removed from dire necessity.  This would be particularly useful in case of poorly paid "service" work (think here of "essential services").  Republicans grumble that some service workers are choosing unemployment benefits over work, but Theobald would argue that when the work is terrible, even life-threatening, this is a reasonable response.  Bad jobs would disappear for lack of demand.  This is how markets are supposed to work, right?  Not coercive, but free.  A GBI could restructure the economic landscape in favor of workers without government regulations. 

To thrive, we need to survive.  There is no way around it: we need healthcare for everyone, as a matter of collective security at a minimum.  And if we want healthcare for everyone, we are going to have to scuttle employer-provided plans.  In the midst of a pandemic, hundreds of thousands lost their health insurance along with their jobs. That is not good.  We also have to strengthen our infrastructure.  The vaccine roll-out is facing many challenges, but one reason for its failure is that our leaders refused to fund the infrastructure to make it work. Instead, the previous administration expected vaccinations to take place at private pharmacies and doctor's offices just like annual flu shots.  In a bid to restrict mail-in voting, last year also saw an attempt to defund the US Postal Service.  The new administration should recommit to funding a service that is essential to building connections to each other. We also need to fund universal internet access, not as state-controlled operation as in China, but as a public utility with democratic oversight.  Last, but certainly by no means least, we need to heal the planet, or at least reduce some of our most earth-shattering impacts.

We also have to remember we are in this fight together. This is a lesson working-class people understand well.  Even if you don't like your neighbor, you have to help her out when she falls (as she does you).  Working-class people can teach us all the value of solidarity.  The enemy is not other people, be they "Evil Democrats" or "wicked capitalists."  There is just us.  After all, Marx's nemesis was never the individual capitalist (witness his lifetime friendship with Engels), but the system that ensnared workers and capitalists alike.  

And, finally, what the world needs now might be some good old-fashioned punk music, the kind that helped many of us through the Reagan era when we thought a nuclear bomb would kill us all.  Human creativity that can bring us together.  We're all going to have to pitch in this time.

Watched the scientists throw up their hands conceding,
'Progress will resolve it all, '
Saw the manufacturers of earth's debris ignore another green peace call,

No one could tell me what to do,
They had not the ability to answer me,

What the world needs now is some accountability,
We can't buy more time because time won't accept our money,

But faith alone won't sustain us anymore,
Faith alone won't sustain us anymore ….

Allison L. Hurst, Oregon State University

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Secretary-General Angel Gurría: We Must Not Fail Humanity’s Greatest Test [feedly]

Amen

We Must Not Fail Humanity's Greatest Test
https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/10/02/2021/we-must-not-fail-humanitys-greatest-test

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría argues that the weak international cooperation and coordination that has plagued the global economy threaten millions of lives and put the pandemic economic recovery at risk.

The lack of international cooperation risks failing the most crucial test: that of vaccinating widely enough to eradicate COVID-19 everywhere. This failure could lead to an unmitigated economic and social disaster. Vaccination is so far confined to a limited number of countries. At the time of writing, ten countries represent around 90% of total vaccination doses administered. Worse, while some of these countries have ordered enough doses to vaccinate their entire population 3 to 5 times over, many countries in the world remain entirely deprived of vaccines at this time.

Beyond the obvious and compelling humanitarian reasons, the world economy badly needs a further effort to eradicate the virus. In December 2020, the OECD Economic Outlook projected the global economy would recover from the worst crisis in a century, provided vaccines were deployed swiftly and globally throughout 2021. Even under these favorable assumptions, global GDP would still be USD 6 trillion less at the end of 2022 than it would have been in the absence of the pandemic. Social costs would still be very high, with many millions of additional unemployed people. Children would have lost months of education, potentially jeopardising their future opportunities. Tens of millions will have fallen into extreme poverty.

However, if vaccines are not deployed fast and globally, the health situation would be dire, and the economic and social outcomes would be even worse. In such an adverse scenario, the projected global income would be a further USD 4 trillion lower than in the "favourable" scenario, for a total loss of USD 10 trillion.This would affect all economies in 2021, but with Europe and North America hit more heavily than the Asia-Pacific region.

The costs of deploying vaccines broadly and swiftly are dwarfed by the fiscal costs to support economies while the virus is circulating and restrictions to mobility remain tight. Globally, fiscal support to the economy amounted to a staggering USD 12 trillion in 2020. By contrast, according to the WHO estimates, to vaccinate the entire world population 15 years and over would cost less than USD 100 billion. This is only a small fraction of the anti-COVID-19 fiscal support of the G7 countries.

One can only be perplexed to see that many advanced economies are not using their aid to accelerate developing economies' vaccination programmes. The OECD has been emphasising the need for maintaining financial support to people, firms and developing countries not only in 2021, but until the crisis is behind us. While countries that can afford it have put in place unprecedented protection for people and firms, many emerging and low-income countries cannot provide such extensive support. Living conditions and wellbeing have worsened and will continue to worsen in the absence of swift vaccination to eradicate the virus. It is thus more urgent than ever to act decisively on the vaccine front.

The weak international cooperation and coordination that have plagued the global economy threaten millions of lives and put the economic recovery at risk. As long as the virus is not suppressed globally and is left to "boil away" somewhere, the risk of more threatening virus mutations is higher and today's restrictions to mobility may have to remain in place.

We're risking a policy failure of massive proportions. No country is leaving this COVID-19 disaster behind unless we act together and invest in rolling vaccines out faster and more globally than we are doing now.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Barkley Rosser: Is Bitcoin Really Real Money? Ontological and Epistemological Questions [feedly]

interesting discussion of bitcoin. Luv the ontology dimension, suggesting a profound philosophical social--conundrum   in the origins -- and evolutions --  of money. 

May have to return to the early Marx, or Adam Smith to pick up the philosophical ('natural philosophy') origins of 'money'.

Is Bitcoin Really Real Money? Ontological and Epistemological Questions
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/espeak/~3/zNgSFW1gOCw/is-bitcoin-really-real-money.html

The movement to make Bitcoin into a de facto form of money has taken a step forward when Elon Musk declared that he would be purchasing over a billion btc.  Some are claiming that Musk did this to pump up an alternative asset because Tesla stock is overpriced and may fall hard soon.  But who knows? Anyway, although btc fell today, it has reached dramatic new highs well over $40,000, with various people calling for it to go to $100,000. Many respectable financial advisers seem to be changing their tune, shifting to maybe one should hold a percent or two of btc along with gold in the non-income-earning part of their portfolios. Gold has remained flat just above $1800, and btc is the "new gold.  But is it (or any other cryptocurrency) really real money?  That is the ontological question of money.

So what is the ontological nature of money?  We know there are debates over which of the standard textbook functions is the most important, with use as a means of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value the standard list. Some emphasize one over another. MMT advocates emphasize the unit of account function, especially when that unit of account is used to pay taxes.  In that view this is the ontological foundation is the declaration by a government that something must be used to pay taxes, with this also resolving the epistemological issue assuming the government has sufficient existing credibility and communications skills as well as enforcement capability to enforce making its citizens actually pay their taxes using the established form of money.

As of now no government mandates taxes be paid in btc, any more than that former official form of money, gold, is so mandated.  We do see gold being held in large amounts by many central banks, with them even occasionally using it to make transfers between each other (and XRP is used by many commercial banks to carry out interbank transactions), but nobody uses any cryptocurrency or gold to pay taxes.  Currently taxes are all paid in pure fiat currencies backed only by the word of the governments involved.

Among non-MMT economists many probably think the most important role of money is the main medium of exchange.  Again, gold is not so used, and even when it was an official money, it was only infrequently used in actual transactions because it has always been scarce and highly valuable. It was only used for high value exchanges.  Bitcoin was initially set up to be a widely used medium of exchange, and gradually more and more entities will accept payments in bitcoin, and some will accept a few other cryptocurrencies.  However, apparently it is rarely used for these established venues. By most accounts its main use as a medium of exchange is by criminals attempting to hide their activities.  This could change, and maybe Elon Musk's move will push it over into wider use.  But it has not happened yet.

As it is the ontological reality of a medium of exchange is ultimately subjective.  It does not matter what a money is "backed by" (and btc is not backed by anything, even a government, while gold is supposedly what some monies were backed by in the past). In fact the ontological reality is that a medium of exchange exists as a self-fulfilling prophecy: people accept it because they believe others will accept it.  If they all believe it, it is real.  The epistemological problem is solved when people find that they can use it.  For btc, maybe people believe it, but it still does not get used much. 

Of course this self-fulfilling prophetic aspect of money is the key to the literature dating to Allais and Samuelson using overlapping generations models that show how a fiat currency with zero "fundamental value" (defined by the value of what it is backed by) can have a stationary positive value that persists.  It is a stationary bubble that is rational because of the overlapping generations, so there is never a need to have it get converted into its fundamental in the lifetime of anybody.  The bubble can just be passed on to the next generation of sucker believers, who are in fact not suckers because they can get to pass it on themselves.  Nobody ever has to "face the music."

Actually this matter of being a self-fulfilling prophecy applies even to the unit of account/usable to pay taxes also ultimately depends on such subjective prophecies. These do not seem like this because governments may be able to have armed police come to arrest you if you do not pay.  But their willingness to do that depends also on the broader public accepting that the government in question has legitimacy and exists. If people stop believing in the government, it ceases to exist, and its money becomes valueless, see the former Confederate States of America, whose money does have value as a collectible, but cannot be used to pay taxes or pay for groceries.

Of course the matter of being a store of value is a function that pretty much any asset can play, land, bonds, famous paintings, etc.  No doubt this function is now being performed by btc and gold. But in the case of cryptocurrencies there is a problem that is the high volatility that they have been experiencing.  That there has been a lot of increases in them, especially btc.  But we have also seen rounds of collapse.  There is all sorts of excitement by many for btc, with Musk's call further encouraging this.  But it remains the case that these do not have the stability of other things, even gold. If it crashes like Gamestop, Elon Musk will not step in to save it, although the Bank of China might step in if gold were to fall below $1000/oz as some claim is something the bank would, although that has never been promised.

In short, the ontological reality of any form of money is actually a social reality, a matter of people believing that other people believe something, rather like the famous beauty contest of Keynes.  This makes the epistemological question being a matter of ascertaining what those beliefs are and how solidly people believe them.  Bitcoin may have become somewhat more real as a possible quasi-money, but for now it remains mostly an asset but not a full form of money.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Biden wants to create millions of clean-energy jobs. China and Europe are way ahead of him. [feedly]

Biden wants to create millions of clean-energy jobs. China and Europe are way ahead of him.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/11/us-battery-production-china-europe/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=wp_business

As the Biden administration promises to jump-start the clean-energy economy, it faces an uphill climb: The United States has fallen behind Asia and Europe in the race to produce the central technology — the high-tech batteries that power electric cars and store solar and wind energy.

China dominates battery production today, with 93 "gigafactories" that manufacture lithium-ion battery cells, vs. only four in the United States, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a prominent data provider. If current trends continue, China is projected to have 140 gigafactories by 2030, while Europe will have 17 and the United States, just 10.

That would leave the United States dependent on China and other trading partners for much of its battery supply, a risky proposition not just for the auto industry but for the military, which is planning to electrify more of its vehicles and gear. It would also mean missing out on much of the jobs boom the sector is expected to bring.

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"This could be a game changer when it comes to jobs, but we have to find a way to ensure we keep the technology in the U.S. and incentivize companies to produce it in the U.S.," said Venkat Srinivasan, a top battery expert at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Ill.

That will happen, say U.S. companies and clean-energy supporters, only if the federal government helps coordinate and finance an aggressive push to boost domestic manufacturing of batteries and their raw materials, as governments in China, Korea and Europe are doing.

"We're naive to pretend this will happen without government dynamism and action," says Danny Kennedy, CEO of New Energy Nexus, a nonprofit in Oakland, Calif., that funds and advises start-ups.

The next China trade battle could be over electric cars

The calls are part of a renewed embrace of industrial policy to help the United States keep its technological edge in an increasingly competitive global economy. Backers of federal action say that without it, the United States risks losing out on another major technology boom — as it did with solar panels and 5G mobile network equipment.

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Thanks to its federally funded universities and national labs, the United States has some of the best early-stage battery research in the world. It also has Tesla, an electric-car leader with big plans for domestic battery production. But other countries are doing far more to support their battery industries and ensure that production jobs stay local.

China is bolstering its battery and electric-vehicle companies with tens of billions of dollars of state support, including research and development funding, subsidies for manufacturers and financing for battery-charging stations. It has also driven demand by subsidizing consumer purchases of electric vehicles, and by making buyers of gasoline-fueled cars wait much longer for a license plate.

The European Union is also closely involved in supporting its battery sector, having established a European Battery Alliance in 2017 that set sweeping goals for manufacturing, charging infrastructure and electric-car uptake. Germany is requiring all gas stations to offer electric-car charging. And last month, the European Commission said it would spend $3.5 billion to subsidize Tesla, BMW and other companies to produce more batteries in Europe and help cut imports from China.

Robots work on Model X cars in the Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., in 2018. (Mason Trinca for The Washington Post)

Under the Obama administration, the United States offered federal loan guarantees to support clean-energy companies including Tesla, which is now one of the world's most valuable auto companies. It also introduced a $7,500 tax credit for electric-car purchases, but the perk was limited to 200,000 cars per manufacturer, which Tesla and GM have already exhausted.

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Some of this federal support dried up during the Trump administration, under withering criticism from conservatives, who dismissed clean energy as a liberal priority.

Aside from California, which has adopted many incentives and regulations to boost electric vehicles and renewable energy, the United States has largely left the sector to the free market.

California to phase out sales of new gas-powered cars by 2035

President Biden has said he will "use all the levers of the federal government, from purchasing power, R&D, tax, trade, and investment policies" to "position America to be the global leader in the manufacture of electric vehicles and their input materials."

He took a first step by signing an executive order calling on government agencies, including the U.S. Postal Service, to start converting their fleets to electric vehicles. He's also pledged to build 500,000 charging stations, revise and extend tax credits for buyers and tighten fuel economy standards for gas-powered vehicles, which the Trump administration relaxed.

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And his Cabinet members and nominees have stressed the need to act quickly to create clean-energy jobs.

"We'd better believe China is in this game. They are competing aggressively," former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, Biden's nominee for energy secretary, told a Senate hearing on Jan. 27. "Without a federal partner to make sure we can get these jobs in America then we will be losing globally."

Republicans have long expressed skepticism about government involvement in the economy and heaped criticism on the Obama administration when a solar-panel company failed after receiving a federal loan guarantee. But some have started to support more government intervention as necessary for competing with China.

To counter China, some Republicans are abandoning free-market orthodoxy

Doug Campbell, co-founder of battery start-up Solid Power in Louisville, Colo., said the United States should boost tax breaks and other financial support for companies building manufacturing plants.

Brandon Kelly, vice president of engineering, and Derek Johnson, chief operating officer, at Solid Power's headquarters in Louisville, Colo. (Chet Strange for The Washington Post)

The United States should boost tax breaks and other financial support for companies building manufacturing plants, said Doug Campbell, co-founder of battery start-up Solid Power. (Chet Strange for The Washington Post)

"One thing we do great here is innovate," said Campbell, whose company was spun out of the University of Colorado. "But where there is a chasm is when it gets to manufacturing scale. That is where other nations step in and provide some of that capital before a bank is willing to lean in."

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He added, "We can choose to step in and entice industry and growth, or we cannot and run the risk that we are ceding all of this overseas." Solid Power so far has established a limited manufacturing line to produce thousands of cells a year, which automakers including Ford and BMW are testing.

Lithium-ion batteries grew out of research that won the 2019 Nobel Prize in chemistry. The powerful, rechargeable batteries first appeared in Sony camcorders in the early 1990s and are now used in everything from smartphones and laptops to electric vehicles.

They are also crucial for harnessing renewable energy, allowing power companies to store solar- and wind-energy for use when the sun goes down and the wind stops blowing. Cars, buses and power companies use large battery packs containing thousands of individual battery cells.

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The Pentagon is "very interested in electrifying" as a means to lower its fuel costs, said Sam Jaffe, a battery expert at Cairn Energy Research Advisors in Boulder, Colo. Drones and other electronic gear are already battery powered, and in the future ships and aircraft may be, too, he said.

That heightens the need for strong domestic production, said William Acker, executive director of NY-BEST, a nonprofit promoting the battery sector in New York.

"If all of our batteries are coming from Asia and you need them to conduct military operations, that's a very concerning situation," Acker said.

Tesla's latest big unveiling isn't a car or truck: It's the battery tech that could power its future

Tesla and its Japanese partner, Panasonic, manufacture lithium-ion battery cells at a giant factory in Nevada. At Tesla's "Battery Day" presentation in September, CEO Elon Musk said the company was preparing to build a new battery-cell factory that would dramatically increase output and cut costs.

Musk didn't say where the plant would be located, but in January Tesla tweeted job postings for battery production at Giga Texas, the new auto factory Tesla is building near Austin.

The new auto factory Tesla is building near Austin. (Bronte Wittpenn/Bloomberg News)

Musk also said Tesla would begin extracting lithium from a deposit in Nevada to supply the new battery factory. He said the mining would involve using salt to extract lithium from heaps of dirt, and then returning the dirt to its original place, a process he called "environmentally friendly."

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Tesla's goal is to exert control over the whole battery supply chain, from base battery materials to the building of battery cells, to their installation directly into Tesla's cars, Musk and other Tesla executives said at Battery Day.

General Motors and its partner, South Korea's LG Chem, began building a battery-cell plant in Lordstown, Ohio, last summer that will eventually create 1,100 jobs. The factory is part of GM's big push to stop selling gas-powered cars and switch to electric by 2035, which the automaker promoted with a Super Bowl ad starring Will Ferrell.

The Chinese company Envision Group gained control of a lithium-ion battery plant in Smyrna, Tenn., after acquiring the battery business of Japan's Nissan in 2019. The factory makes batteries for a nearby Nissan Leaf plant.

And South Korea's SK Innovation is building two lithium-ion battery factories in Commerce, Ga.

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To maximize job creation and to ensure the United States has a secure supply of batteries, it needs to develop the industries that mine and refine the materials needed for production, including lithium, says Kennedy, the head of New Energy Nexus. At the moment, China dominates much of the trade of these materials.

The United Nations warned in a report last year that some battery-related mining has caused environmental damage. Much of the world's current lithium supply comes from Latin America, where some mining has caused groundwater depletion, soil contamination and other forms of environmental degradation, the report said.

The U.N. called the global boom in electric vehicles "great news" for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but said industry should invest in greener mining techniques and better ways to recycle materials from spent batteries.

Kennedy and others point to a fledgling project in Southern California called Lithium Valley, which seeks to extract the mineral from the Salton Sea.

People gather in the Salton Sea, which is actually a lake, in Southern California's Riverside and Imperial counties. The lake is a source of lithium. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Supporters of the project say the lithium could be extracted in an environmentally friendly manner, as a byproduct of geothermal energy production already underway in the area. The California Energy Commission has expressed interest in the idea, and has given grants for further study of the project. California also set up a commission to study the environmental impact.

California is the largest market in the United States for electric vehicles and energy-storage batteries for power grids, "and now we'd like to do more manufacturing of the intermediate steps," David Hochschild, chair of the California Energy Commission, said in an interview. "We have the end use of electric vehicles and energy storage, and we have the raw materials, so the vision of Lithium Valley is to get the full supply chain."

Europe is also pursuing development of its own lithium mines, to reduce its reliance on imports.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

A stalled recovery: Hires fall in the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey [feedly]

A stalled recovery: Hires fall in the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey
https://www.epi.org/blog/a-stalled-recovery-hires-fall-in-the-job-openings-and-labor-turnover-survey/

Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that, as of the middle of January, the economy was still 9.9 million jobs below where it was in February 2020. This translates into a 12.1 million job shortfall when using a reasonable counterfactual of job growth if the recession hadn't occurred. Today's BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) reports little change in December, a clear sign that the recovery is not charging ahead. In fact, hiring and job openings are below where they were before the recession hit, which makes it impossible to recover anytime soon when we have such a massive hole to fill in the labor market.

In December, job openings were little changed while hires softened considerably, falling from 5.9 million to 5.5 million. In particular, hiring decreased in leisure and hospitality—in both accommodation and food services and in arts, entertainment, and recreation. Hiring also declined in transportation, warehousing, and utilities.

One of the most striking indicators from today's report is the job seekers ratio—the ratio of unemployed workers (averaged for mid-December and mid-January) to job openings (at the end of December). On average, there were 10.4 million unemployed workers compared with only 6.6 million job openings. This translates into a job seekers ratio of about 1.6 unemployed workers to every job opening. Put another way, for every 16 workers who were officially counted as unemployed, there were only available jobs for 10 of them. That means, no matter what they did, there were no jobs for 3.8 million unemployed workers. And this misses the fact that many more weren't counted among the unemployed: The economic pain remains widespread with 25.5 million workers hurt by the coronavirus downturn.

On the whole, the U.S. economy is seeing a significantly slower hiring pace than we experienced in May or June. In December, hiring was below where it was before the recession, a big problem given that we have only recovered just over half of the job losses from this spring. And job openings are now substantially below where they were before the recession began (6.6 million at the end of December, compared to 7.1 million on average in the year prior to the recession). With hiring and job openings at these levels, the economy is facing a long, slow recovery without additional action from Congress.

Policymakers need to act now at the scale of the problem to address the continuing economic crisis.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

U.S. trade deficit hits record high in 2020: The Biden administration must prioritize rebuilding domestic manufacturing [feedly]

U.S. trade deficit hits record high in 2020: The Biden administration must prioritize rebuilding domestic manufacturing
https://www.epi.org/blog/u-s-trade-deficit-hits-record-high-in-2020-biden-administration-must-prioritize-rebuilding-domestic-manufacturing/

The U.S. Census Bureau reported recently that the U.S. goods trade deficit reached a record of $915.8 billion in 2020, an increase of $51.5 billion (6.0%). The broader goods and services deficit reached $678.7 billion in 2020, an increase of $101.9 billion (17.7%). The U.S. goods trade deficit in 2020 was the largest on record, and the goods and services deficit was the largest since 2008.

The rapid growth of U.S. trade deficits reflects the combined effects of the COVID-19 crisis, which caused U.S. exports to fall by more ($217.7 billion) than imports ($166.2 billion), and by the persistent failure of U.S. trade and exchange rate policies over the past two decades. The single most important cause of large and growing trade deficits is persistent overvaluation of the U.S. dollar, which makes imports artificially cheap and U.S. exports less competitive.

The U.S. goods trade deficit is increasingly dominated by trade in manufactured products, as shown in the figure below. The manufacturing trade deficit reached record highs of $897.7 billion—98% of the total U.S. goods trade deficit—and 4.3% of U.S. GDP in 2020. Primarily due to these rapidly growing manufacturing trade deficits, the U.S. lost nearly 5 million manufacturing jobs and 91,000 manufacturing plants between 1997 and 2018 alone, and an additional 582,000 manufacturing jobs in 2020.

Figure A

Growing trade deficits with China are the largest single cause of growing manufacturing trade deficits and jobs losses. Between 2001, when China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO), and 2018, growing U.S.–China trade deficits eliminated 3.7 million total U.S. jobs, including 2.8 million jobs lost in manufacturing alone. Although the U.S. trade deficit with China fell by $34.4 million (10.0%) in 2020, China's total trade surplus with the world increased 27% in 2020 to $535 billion, driven by surging exports of medical supplies and electronic goods. U.S. trade deficits with Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Australia, as well as Mexico and Switzerland all increased significantly in 2020. There is growing evidence that China is evading U.S. trade restrictions by shipping products through other countries (e.g. tariff circumvention).

Growing U.S. trade deficits over the past two decades, which reached record levels in 2020, have decimated U.S. manufacturing. The United States can rebuild domestic manufacturing by rebalancing U.S. trade, and by implementing the Biden administration proposal for a $2 trillion, 4-year program for rebuilding U.S. infrastructure and investing in clean energy and energy efficiency improvements.

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The Fed says US unemployment is actually about 10% - nearly double the official rate and matching the worst of the Great Recession [feedly]

The Fed says US unemployment is actually about 10% - nearly double the official rate and matching the worst of the Great Recession
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-unemployment-rate-double-official-rate-fed-worst-great-recession-2021-2?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds

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