The CATO Institute, DOGE's favorite think tank, is out with a new op-ed today calling for Musk's pet project to "reform" Social Security & Medicare.

We dug a little deeper into CATO's DOGE agenda. Their recommendation for reform?

Defund Social Security, Medicare, and more. 🧵 Calling Social Security a "ponzi scheme," CATO wants to shrink it:

Even as inflation has cooled, grocery prices have increased 25% since the pandemic. @BharatRamamurti, @ENPancotti, & @ClaraEWilson investigate the causes of grocery inflation in our newest report.

Quick thread on their findings (1/6)
groundworkcollaborative.org/wp-content/upl…
They find that five categories drove nearly 30% of grocery inflation: beef and veal; poultry; non-frozen non-carbonated juices and drinks; fresh fruits and vegetables; and snacks. (2/6)

NEW: Corporate profits drove 53% of inflation during the 2nd and 3rd quarters of 2023. Corporations line their pockets while consumers pay the price.

Why? Because they can.

Quick thread on our new report. 1/6 groundworkcollaborative.org/news/new-groun… In the wake of the pandemic, corporations across industries faced rising costs to make products & stock shelves.

Businesses jumped on the opportunity to pass these costs on to consumers — and added a little extra to pad their profits. 2/6

🚨NEW PAPER ALERT🚨

@IsabellaMWeber, @luizanassif, @larajauregui17 & Lucas Teixeira show that tamping down prices in "systemically significant" industries would bring down overall inflation and lay out new ideas for bringing down prices. 1/

https://twitter.com/IsabellaMWeber/status/1598897305880760321

Systemically significant industries like oil or farming produce inputs that other industries use in production. So, price increases in these sectors translate to *cost* increases for other sectors creating inflation ripple effects throughout the economy. 2/

Today’s release finds that another 2.2M people filed for unemployment insurance (UI) last week. This includes 1.6M people who filed for regular state unemployment assistance AND 600K people who filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA - more on this below). 👇🏾 1/ Based on this calculation, it is likely that 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗳𝗶𝘃𝗲 workers is unemployed. 2/

This months #jobsday release is already outdated and does NOT reflect the true economic situation facing most people. This is, in part, because the reference period for this month’s release is for the week of March 12th, before things really started to deteriorate. Below we discuss important indicators that will give us insight into how the economic downturn is affecting working people and families in the coming releases.

🚨THREAD🚨 Today, we released a paper with Christopher Wimer & Sophie Collyer at @CpspPoverty, and Xavier Jaravel at @LSEnews.

Key takeaway: 3 million more ppl would have been considered in #poverty in 2018 if we account for inflation inequality. 1/ bit.ly/2ChAvUk In a supposed strong economy, how did we get here? Skyrocketing inequality in recent decades—driven almost exclusively by soaring incomes for the wealthiest Americans—has undermined the strength of our economy and our democracy. 2/