economic freedom

My wife and I are seeing firsthand the impact of turmoil in the employment market to include restaurants that have to close for the day because no staff showed up to work. One restaurant is making up stories about masks being government-required.

Previous post on this topic was back on 6/4/21:  What does the economy wide staffing shortage look like to a customer?

This discussion will highlight disruptions I have seen in our local community in the last month. We will discuss separately the wide range of government actions which have caused this turmoil.

In the meantime…

Daily Bulletin – 11/25/21 – “Sorry!” Customers with prepaid Thanksgiving meal orders find doors shut at Boston Market in Rancho Cucamonga – The only employee showing up at the Boston Market stored in my hometown put a note on the door saying

“No employee showing up today… We are unable to fulfill the orders! We are sorry!”

The amount of money Congress has pumped into the economy in an attempt to fight the Covid pandemic is staggering. Don’t quite have enough adjectives to describe the amount of money that is forced into the economy without any corresponding increase in production.

The amount spent directly on the pandemic is more than four times the annual budget at the federal level.

This is one of the primary reasons we are seeing inflation rates running at a thirty year high.

A close cousin on the list of inflation causes is the Fed flooding the economy with liquidity.  See previous discussion: Just how much money has the Federal Reserve created out of thin air and injected into the economy?

I’ve pulled together the amount of money appropriated by Congress in 2020 and 2021 which are focused on fighting the pandemic and stimulating the economy. Here is my tally, with amount of funding in billions of dollars, date Congress passed the legislation, and name of the program:

The demand for private jets is soaring. Those jets generate massively more CO2 emissions that any commercial flight.

The ruling caste, who think they rule over us, have no hesitation to use heavily polluting private jets to scoot around on their planet hopping fun times.

The pandemic has been generous to the super rich.

CNBC – 11/25/21 – The rich are getting richer – and they’re fueling a private jet boom – Demand for private jets is soaring. Even used jets are getting hard to find.

The super-rich are taking their private jets to go around the Covid restrictions on commercial flights.

The double whammy of Covid pandemic and government policies in reaction to the pandemic continue to hammer the educational sector. Unsettling thing is to consider these articles only discuss the current impact and not the long-term destruction of education for all students from pre-K to grad school.

Articles for you to consider:

• Columbia University settles for a refund of fees their class-action lawsuit claiming refund of fees and tuition.
• Freshman enrollment in colleges and universities continued to decline in fall 2021. The anticipated return of students who skipped matriculation in fall 2020 has not happened.
• As an indicator of what is likely happening in all primary and secondary schools across the country, Washington state public schools estimate enrollment for the next two years will be down another 4.5% from their February 2021 estimate.

TaxProf – 11/27/21 – Columbia Settles Covid-19 Class Action Tuition Refund Suit For $12.5 Million – Looks like Columbia University got off easy. Students there established a class and were suing for refund of tuition and fees because they were prohibited from in-person classes and instead attended an Ivy League school on their monitor.