On Labor Day, 7.5 million Americans lost their federal unemployment benefits, and another 3 million unemployed lost the $300 bonus that had been in place since March.
That’s a lot of people with no immediate way to support themselves and their families trib.al/pK04k9j
What would Franklin Roosevelt — who put America to work during the Great Depression — make of the way Washington has responded to this economic crisis? twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…
The New Deal’s attack on the Great Depression had four main components:
💵Temporary direct relief for the impoverished
🔐A stronger social safety net
🇺🇸An expanded regulatory state
💼Jobs for the legions of unemployed trib.al/pK04k9j
“Our greatest primary task is to put people to work,” FDR said in his inaugural address.
4 weeks later, men aged 18-25 went to plant trees, build reservoirs and improve flood control.
They were paid $30/month but received $5; the rest was sent home trib.al/pK04k9j
By August 1933, 300,000 young men and veterans were working for the CCC.
By winter, more than 4 million more were repairing streets, building dams and constructing schools, playgrounds, pools, post offices and other public facilities trib.al/pK04k9j
Since even before President Joe Biden took office, Democrats have been likening him to FDR: a president with a chance to use an economic crisis to redefine the limits of government and transform the country trib.al/pK04k9j
Biden’s most significant domestic policy accomplishments concern only the first of the New Deal’s four parts — direct relief:
💰2nd stimulus check
🥫30% increase in average monthly food stamps
👨👧👦Temporary expanded tax credit for families with children trib.al/pK04k9j
The $3.5 trillion spending bill takes aim at two of the other New Deal components:
✅Strengthening the safety net
✅Expanding gov't role in economy
It includes funding for childcare, pre-K, family leave, health care, housing and a host of other things trib.al/pK04k9j
These are worthy initiatives. But what about jobs for the unemployed?
The $550 billion in new infrastructure funding will create construction jobs. But these jobs will largely be for career professionals, not the general population of unemployed Americans trib.al/pK04k9j
For the most part, the jobs will not materialize until 2024 and 2025.
Over those two years, the bill is expected to create about 2.5 million jobs, a far cry from New Deal numbers, when the country’s population was two-thirds smaller trib.al/pK04k9j
Today, about 8 million people are out of work.
Unemployment has fallen from last year’s highs, but the nation’s two largest cities, New York and Los Angeles, both have rates above 10%. Chicago and Philadelphia are at or higher than 8% trib.al/pK04k9j
It’s true that Biden’s proposal for Civilian Climate Corps — an echo of Roosevelt’s CCC — is included in the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion spending plan.
Even so, it would create only about 10,000 jobs, a tiny fraction of the army Roosevelt put to work trib.al/pK04k9j
The fact is, though we don’t often think of it this way, Democrats and Republicans have come to share a core economic conviction: In a crisis, government’s role in addressing unemployment is to offer relief, not work trib.al/pK04k9j
Had Biden opted to offer Americans a deal rather than a rescue, temporary jobs could have benefited the nation in a variety of ways:
🔥Fighting wildfires
⛈️Helping communities recover from hurricanes
📝Running summer school sessions trib.al/pK04k9j
We can only guess what FDR might have thought of Biden's response to the pandemic.
But what holds the U.S. back from adopting a large, temporary public employment program has less to do with the skills and fitness of Americans than with changed attitudes trib.al/pK04k9j
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Never ones to miss a chance to cry “hardship,” upper-middle-class, well-educated young Americans are getting in on the Chinese “lie flat” social protest movement, claiming they, too, are burned out and quitting their jobs to do nothing trib.al/e5rjiys
It started among Chinese factory workers burned out from grueling 12-hour, six-day work weeks, and the unrelenting pressure to climb the economic ladder.
So some Chinese millennials formed a movement to opt out of work and the pressures of society trib.al/e5rjiys
What this trend will mean for China is unclear, but Americans who choose to lay down in lieu of work may end up worse off than they think trib.al/e5rjiys
18-year-old Emma Raducanu is taking the tennis world by storm.
Her victory in the U.S. Open turned her into one of those athletes who you can’t help but watch and want to know more, or even pick up a racquet trib.al/VKDcbjm
How big is this win? @ThereseRaphael1 asked Michel Masquelier, former chairman of IMG Media.
“It’s as good as it gets,” he says. “Tennis is an individual sport, so any individual who shines on that stage is instantly recognizable” trib.al/VKDcbjm
Alongside her championship title, Raducanu has other force multipliers for propelling celebrity and commercial success. There’s her international reputation:
🇨🇳Chinese mother
🇷🇴Romanian father
🇬🇧Raised in Britain
🇺🇸Shot to fame in the U.S. trib.al/VKDcbjm
Early in 2020, the world urgently needed to raise its sense of alarm around Covid-19.
But for the vaccinated parts of the planet, Covid is no longer a horseman of the apocalypse. Instead, it is gradually becoming “just a virus” trib.al/QvxD2SE
In Singapore, where 81% are fully immunized, the Ministry of Health has started prioritizing data on hospitalizations rather than infections.
Israel is riding out a surge in new Covid cases without returning to lockdowns for the vaccinated trib.al/jAnL73X
The calls from some quarters to stop publishing daily Covid case totals may be premature for a disease that’s still killing thousands of people a day trib.al/jAnL73X
When Americans began emerging from their homes after the first wave of Covid in spring 2020, many apparently headed straight to their local boat dealers.
Spending on pleasure boats shot up to 20% above the pre-pandemic pace in May 2020 trib.al/xHmYB8x
At a time when crowded indoor spaces can pose deadly risks, small boats are great places to be.
The remote-work arrangements also made it easier for affluent white-collar workers to locate themselves within convenient distance of a body of water trib.al/RiRZvDB
With so many other things that have boomed during the pandemic, one does have to wonder how long this elevated demand for boats will last.
Here’s spending on pleasure boats going back to 1959, adjusted for inflation: trib.al/RiRZvDB
When we talk about workers going back to their offices, the goal for most is to return to the normal routines of life.
🍼 But for parents who had their first child during the past 18 months, the return is uncharted territory trib.al/a3jKClJ
New parents are figuring out for the first time how to manage:
🚍 Commuting
⏰ Long hours away from home
🍼 Parenting small children
All their experience thus far has been in a work-from-home pandemic world trib.al/Rnd0dVG
Data serves mostly to confirm that American work culture isn't particularly family-friendly, generally leaving mothers as the caretakers-of-last-resort in times of need trib.al/Rnd0dVG