Unemployed? Donald Trump Just Cost You $300.

Lame duck President Donald Trump spent Christmas on his Palm Beach golf course, diligently dithering and refusing to sign the latest COVID economic relief bill, so supplemental payments to 14 million unemployed Americans expired. He finally was cajoled into signing on Sunday, but states could not begin cutting checks until he did, so the delay means January’s first payments could not be processed. Since the supplemental weekly support must end on March 15, Donald Trump trimmed the extension of benefits from 11 weeks to 10.

When unemployment benefits ran out, Mr. Trump was on his golf course with Lindsey Graham, Vice President Mike Pence was skiing in Vail, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin took a private jet down to his vacation home near Cabo San Lucas.

More:

“Trump just cost jobless workers one week of federal unemployment assistance after he failed to sign the relief bill by midnight on Saturday,” Kelsey Vlamis and Joseph Zeballos-Roig, Business Insider

“Extra unemployment benefits may take weeks to arrive. Fewer checks may be coming.” Greg Iacurci, CNBC

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Ivanka Retooling for White House Exit Strategy

Presidential Advisor, sweatshop shmata merchant, book marketer, multimillionaire wife, nanny-hiring mother, retail brand and former runway model Ivanka Trump is also an hôtelièr, earning millions by renting out rooms in a publicly-owned building her Dad’s company leases in Washington. Recently, she became an administration employment coach, urging the 30 million Americans who lost jobs during the pandemic to “Find Something New,” implying that their rich daddies can find them something.

Facing her own unemployment, Ivanka is looking for “Something New” herself, possibly a reality TV show. Good choice. she’s been a cast member of the White House reality show for the past four years.

More:

“What will Ivanka Trump do next? Probably try hard to stay in the public eye,” Arwa Mahdawi, The Guardian

“Goodbye, Ivanka,” Dahlia Lithwick, Slate

Related:

“Ivanka Trump obsessed with status, says former friend in tell-all essay,” Rory Carroll, The Guardian

“Six Things We Learned About Ivanka Trump From Her Ex-BFF’s Vanity Fair Essay,” Mimi Montgomery, Washingtonian

“Ivanka Boldly Highlights Trump Administration’s Big Pandemic Success,” Brian Kahn, Gizmodo Earther

“Ivanka Trump Applies for Job as Biden’s Daughter,” Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker

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Top image (Ivanka’s book-like object) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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The Real Unemployment Rate.

The U.S. Unemployment Rate is measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an arm of the U.S. Deparment of Labor, but BLS recognizes several joblessness measures. The one you read in the media is called U3, the percentage of unemployed civilian adults actively seeking fulltime nonfarm employment. Right now, the U3 rate is 7.9%. A broader measure, U6, includes those working part-time because they can’t find full-time jobs and people who want to work and have looked for jobs anytime in the past year. The latest U6 jobless rate is 12.8%.

But those aren’t the only — or most realistic — measures of unemployment. The Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity, founded by Gene Ludwig, former U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, has a yardstick for U.S. functional unemployment, and it’s unnerving:

“A person who is looking for a full-time job that pays a living wage — but who can’t find one — is unemployed. If you accept that definition, the true unemployment rate in the U.S. is a stunning 26.1% ….”

“If you measure the unemployed as anybody over 16 years old who isn’t earning a living wage, the rate rises even further, to 54.6%. For Black Americans, it’s 59.2%.”

“Only 46.1% of white Americans over the age of 16 — and a mere 40.8% of Black Americans — now have a full-time job paying more than $20,000 per year.”

— “America’s true unemployment rate,” Felix Salmon, Axios

More:

Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP) website

Anthony Weiner Gets Top Job

Disgraced sleazoid and former congressman Anthony Weiner (aka Carlos Danger) has a new top job. That’s right, he’s working for a Brooklyn kitchen countertop company. Wait, you’re gonna eat off of that? Like Mr. Weiner, the countertop materials are recycled.

In case you forgot, Donald Trump, a great judge of character, donated to Anthony Wiener’s 1997 city council campaign and 2007 and 2010 congressional campaigns.

More:

“Anthony Weiner piecing together shattered life as CEO of broken glass factory,” Reuven Fenton and Bruce Golding, NY Post

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Ivanka Trump, Employment Counselor

Presidential Advisor, sweatshop shmata merchant, and former runway model Ivanka Trump is also an hôtelièr, earning millions by renting out rooms in a publicly-owned building her Dad’s company leases in Washington. But wait; now she’s an employment counselor, urging the 30 million Americans who have lost jobs during the pandemic to “Find Something New.” Maybe their rich daddies can find them something.

“Find Something New” is a great slogan. Remember it when you vote in November.

More:

“Ivanka’s Tone-Deaf Advice to Millions of Unemployed Americans: Find Something New,” Mother Jones

“Unemployed Should ‘Find Something New,’ Urge Heirs to Fred Trump’s Fortune,” Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine

“Ivanka Trump: Let The Jobless Eat Cake,” Stephen Robinson, Wonkette

“Ivanka Trump’s Find Something New career campaign is more hype than help,” Michelle Singletary, Washington Post

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Top image (Ivanka’s book-like object) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Mass Layoffs in the US, But Not the UK

Millions of Americans have lost their jobs due to the coronavirus crisis. But it didn’t have to be that way. Liz Scheltens of Vox explains.

More:

“Pandemic shows contrasts between US, European safety nets,” David McHugh., Associated Press

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COVID-19: Trump’s Easter Parade Death March

While Americans shelter at home to slow the spread of a deadly virus and the number of US infected and dead grows, all President Donald Trump can see is plunging numbers on Wall Street. Public health officials advise months of social distancing and the closure of all non-essential businesses, but Mr. Trump wants the lockdown to end by Easter.

“We’re opening up this incredible country. Because we have to do that. I would love to have it open by Easter,” Trump told a Fox News virtual town hall. “I would love to have that. It’s such an important day for other reasons, but I’d love to make it an important day for this. I would love to have the country opened up, and rarin’ to go by Easter.”

“Easter’s a very special day for me,” he told (you guessed it) Fox News. “Wouldn’t it be great to have all of the churches full?”

Maybe the White House Easter Egg Roll can be replaced by a Toilet Paper Roll Roll.

Wilbur Ross on the New U.S. Economic Stimulus: Coronavirus

Commerce Secretary, inveterate liar, and noted grifter Wilbur Ross is going viral for claiming that China’s novel coronavirus epidemic “will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America.” Kinda like how the Black Death stimulated real estate opportunities by emptying Europe’s cities, apparently.

The comment is not just morally appalling, it demonstrates complete ignorance of 21st century manufacturing processes, just what you want in a Secretary of Commerce. Vehicles assembled in the U.S., for example, contain 40 to 50 percent imported parts and components. If China’s factories shut down due to quarantine, U.S. auto assembly lines will grind to a halt. The Rust Belt won’t save the day by sprouting new factories. the corporate billions liberated by the Trump tax cuts were supposed to fund factory development but were used for unproductive stock buybacks instead.

More:

“Wilbur Ross Says Coronavirus Could Bring Jobs Back to the U.S.,” Ana Swanson and Alan Rappeport, New York Times

“Wilbur Ross says Coronavirus could boost US jobs,” BBC News

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Image (“Wilbur Ross Official Portrait”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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What the US gets wrong about the minimum wage.

Alexia Fernández Campbell explains what the US gets wrong about the minimum wage. A Vox video.

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Uber’s Employment Model: Sharecropping.

After the Civil War, when plantation owners were deprived of a chattel slave workforce, they implemented a form of peonage euphemistically called “sharecropping.” The landowners contracted poor black and white laborers to work their fields as tenants. These independent contractors did the backbreaking work in return for a small share of cotton harvest proceeds, often absorbing the costs of farming and bad harvests. That’s the employment model of rideshare companies like Uber.

Think of Uber’s digital platform as the plantation’s cotton fields. Uber lets the drivers plow use it if they turn over most of their cotton fare money to the plantation platform owner. Drivers absorb the costs of fuel, cellphone, car loans, permits, insurance, and maintenence. And if their mule car dies, the platform owner lets them buy a new one at subprime rates. Healthcare and retirement benefits? Nope.

Drivers are catching on, and so is the public. No wonder rideshare companies are pushing so hard for autonomous vehicles. After all, they automated the cotton fields, didn’t they?

 

More:

“Uber and the labor market,” Lawrence Mishel, The Economic Policy Institute

“Strike All You Want. Uber Won’t Pay a Living Wage.” Sarah Jeong, New York Times

“‘It’s a Laughable Fiction’: How Uber’s $82 Billion Valuation Was Built on a Lie to Its Workers.” Brianna Provenzano. Pacific Standard

“How Corporate Delusions of Automation Fuel the Cruelty of Uber and Lyft,” Brian Merchant, Gizmodo

Related:

“Research: Ride Share Has Increased San Francisco Traffic,” Rachen Swan, SF Chronicle, via Government Technology

“Uber Is a Scam,” Doug Henwood, Jacobin

Updates:

“Uber’s Path of Destruction,” Hubert Horan, American Affairs Journal

“Hundreds of Uber Drivers in Toronto Are Joining a Union,” Bryan Menegus, Gizmodo

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Image derived from “In a Cotton Field” by Horace Bradley, from Harper’s Weekly, August 1887 (Library of Congress).

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

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