Pizza Inflation Slices Through New York

The quintessential New York street food is a slice of pizza. While pizza-shaped objects appear in other cities, travelers and ex-New Yorkers have long considered the cheesy wedges of neighborhood slice joints throughout the Five Boroughs the ne plus ultra, exemplar and cornerstone of the city’s unique curbside cuisine.

Pandemic-related supplychain snags and inflation have now hit New Yorkers where they eat. The average cost for a cheese slice in the Big Apple is now 3 dollars.

More:

“Mapping the Death of NYC’s Cheap Slice,” Sarah Holder, Bloomberg

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Photo (Cheese slice, Joe’s Pizza, 14th Street, NYC) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht,NotionsCapital.com

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High-Ticket Turkeys This Thanksgiving

A nationwide pandemic has raised the price of your Thanksgiving turkey this year. No, not that one. Rampant Avian influenza killed millions of birds practically overnight and forced farmers to euthanized hundreds of thousands more to curb further infection. All told, six million turkeys were killed, about 14 percent of the nation’s total turkey production. Prices will rise this year, perhaps as much as 70% percent.

— “Turkeys will cost more because 6 million of them died during bird flu outbreak,” By Erica Werner and Laura Reiley, Washington Post

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We’re In the Pandemic Depression

“What’s clear is that the Pandemic Depression resembles the Great Depression of the 1930s more than it does the typical post-World War II recession. To simplify slightly: The typical postwar slump occurred when the Fed raised interest rates to reduce consumer price inflation. They lowered rates to stimulate growth.

By contrast, both the Great Recession and the Pandemic Depression had other causes. The Great Recession reflected runaway real estate and financial speculation and their adverse effects on the banking system. The Pandemic Depression occurred when infection fears and government mandates led to layoffs and an implosion of consumer spending.”

— “Let’s call it what it is. We’re in a Pandemic Depression.” Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post

 

“The shared nature of this shock—the novel coronavirus does not respect national borders—has put a larger proportion of the global community in recession than at any other time since the Great Depression. As a result, the recovery will not be as robust or rapid as the downturn. And ultimately, the fiscal and monetary policies used to combat the contraction will mitigate, rather than eliminate, the economic losses, leaving an extended stretch of time before the global economy claws back to where it was at the start of 2020.”

“The Pandemic Depression: The Global Economy Will Never Be the Same,” Carmen Reinhart and Vincent Reinhart, Foreign Affairs

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Image (based on a WPA photo by John E. Allen) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Trickle-Down Economics Is Trickling Away

That old voodoo economics has the president in its spell, but where’s the magic?

Noah Smith: “If Trump’s corporate tax cuts end up having no observable effect on workers’ pay, it will be the final blow to the supply-side worldview.”

— “Trump Puts Supply-Side Economics to Its Final Test,” Noah Smith, Bloomberg

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Trump Victory Greeted With Global Financial Panic

The political triumph of reality TV star Donald J. Trump in the United States presidential election was greeted by a 700-point drop in the stock market and a plunging US dollar. This is all familiar territory for President-Elect Trump, who has pledged to run the government like the businesses he bankrupted six times.

God Save the Republic.

More:

“Financial markets tumble amid Trump’s surprising election-night performance,” Jim Puzzanghera, Los Angeles Times

“Markets plunge worldwide as Trump shows surprising strength,” Ylan Q. Mui and Simon Denyer, Washington Post

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Image from the Chicago Tribune, 1931.

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Trump Economic Policy

Donald Trump — meat purveyor, TV reality star, and Republican presidential candidate — trotted out some phrases disguised as an economic plan on Monday. They were phases familiar from the last 30 years of the GOP’s trickle-down, deregulating, big-corporate, no-taxes-for-the-rich philosophy, the failed policies that crashed the world economy when Republican leadership was last inflicted upon the nation, making the rich even wealthier at the expense of the rest.

After lambasting the Republican elites and their policies during the primaries, why is Mr. Trump suddenly embracing the old GOP worldview? Looks like he wants those wealthy guys to fund his general election campaign– he’s peddling high-dollar tickets to fundraising events at the homes of the rich. No wonder he named “six guys named Steve” and other billionaire hedge fund and real estate speculators as his “economic advisers“.

More:

“Sliding Trump Seeks Solidarity With Establishment He Spurned,” Sahil Kapur, Bloomberg

“Donald Trump Sells Out to Trickle-Down Economics,” John Cassidy, The New Yorker

“Trump’s Frankenstein economics,” Ben White, Politico

Related:

“Donald Trump wants to slash your child care bill. But he’s doing it all wrong.” Jeff Spross, The Week

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Davos 2016

The billionaire masters of Planet Earth and their pet politicians are in Davos this week for the 46th World Economic Forum. The US is sending a high-powered team led by Joe Biden, John Kerry, Kevin Spacey, will.i.am, and Leonardo DiCaprio. You can join them for a mere $31,473 a ticket, if you’ve paid your $50,000 WEF dues. Hotel, dining, and valet parking are extra. Gatecrashers and the improperly dressed will be politely turned away by police and 5,000 Swiss soldiers.

 

The Forum is going to be really inconvenient this year due to security concerns. You’ll have to land your private jet at Dübendorf military airbase and get to Davos by limo, helicopter, or horse-drawn carriage.

This year’s agenda will focus on Industry 4.0, aka “The Fourth Industrial Revolution … the fusion of technologies across the physical, digital and biological worlds which is creating entirely new capabilities”and replacing laborers with robot employees. Naturally, Forum members want to speed up that process. And WEF is concerned about women, too, and that’s why this year almost 20% of Davos attendees are women. Progress!

More:

“62 People Own Half the World’s Wealth, Oxfam Says Ahead of World Economic Forum,” Pan Pylas, NBC New York

“Get a grip on inequality, leaders urged in run-up to World Economic Forum,”  AP via Chicago Tribune

“The 2016 World Economic Forum Misfires With Its Fourth Industrial Revolution Theme,” Jeremy Rifkin, Huffington Post

“Davos Robot Eclipses Davos Man as Gloom Descends on World Elite,” Simon Kennedy, Matthew Campbell, The Guardian

“Industry 4.0 to be huge job killer,” Deutsche Welle

“Robots put five million jobs at risk,” SwissInfo.ch

“Report from Davos: ‘Men still run the world—and it’s not going that well,’” Jenny Anderson, Quartz

“The failure of Davos,” Felix Salmon, Fusion

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Americans Sell Off Stocks, Buy Lottery Tickets

It’s 2016. Wall Street is down, but lottery ticket sales are up. Wednesday’s Powerball grand prize is expected to be around $1.5 billion.

Powerball includes 44 state lotteries and those in DC, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Odds of winning: 1 in 292 million.

The 40 Percent

On-call, part-time, provisional, and non-permanent workers, freelancers, temporary contract workers, independent contractors and consultants. Put them all together and you’ve got about 40 percent of America’s workers.

It breaks down like this:

Agency temps: 1.3%
On-call workers (work when needed): 3.5%
Contract company workers: 3.0%
Independent contractors: 12.9%
Self-employed workers (shop owners, etc.) 3.3%
Part-time workers: 16.2%

It’s possible to define this group down and pretend that many of these under-employed, under-paid workers are “independent small business owners,” but that doesn’t make their lives any less precarious. Many contingent workers in this “1099 Economy” are also contingent social service clients.

China: Capitalism? You Wanted It, You Got It.

Update: “China’s stock market falls for the 5th straight day,”  Timothy B. Lee,Vox

“China’s stock market plunges for the fourth straight day,” Timothy B. Lee, Vox

“China 2015: beware the links with 1929,” Larry Elliott, The Guardian

“Why the Chinese slowdown everybody knew was coming is causing a freak-out,” Chico Harlan, Washington Post