Illustration of what happened to average earnings of working poor because of the economic lockdowns. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Reports keep rolling in on the destruction caused by governmental orders to shut down the economy, our educational system, and large portions of society.
My prediction is we will continue to these reports for the next five or 10 years,
Merely two of recent articles:
Excess deaths are identifiable for people who had mental health struggles.
Harvard study shows lockdowns seriously hurt earnings of poor folk while rich folk were earning more money.
Lockdowns killed people with mental health struggles.
Burning building in thick smoke. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
There is growing resistance to forced, involuntary vaccinations. The most noticable part of the vaccine hesitancy is amongst people who are otherwise happy to receive vaccinations.
We need to be careful on how we proceed. There is danger ahead.
This post continues the discussion of intentional government policies which have the unintended consequence of creating further strain on the economy and the entire supply chain.
Two more of many recent articles pointing to the risks:
Only 55% of firetrucks in New York City were available for dispatch last week,
Protestors against force vaccinations tell of willingly getting fired, loosing annual bonuses, or waiting to get fired in next few days.
Large number of parents in California kept their children at home on 10/18/21 to protest mandatory vaccination of little children.
Large protest in Los Angeles against city requirement for all city employees to be vaccinated.
One has to wonder why so many health care workers are refusing the vaccination.
We as a country are willfully headed for a disaster.
The promised vaccine mandate for private companies with 100 or more employees were published on 11/4/21.
The federal diktat applies to private-sector employers with 100 or more employees. Companies have to verify employees have been fully vaccinated or require a weekly negative test. In addition anyone not vaccinated will have to wear a mask at work.
The vaccinate-or-test requirement goes into effect 1/4/22, two months from now.
Oh yeah, that mask requirement for the unvaccinated goes into effect 12/5/21, a month from now.
Separate federal diktats applied to federal employees, any company with a federal contract (think airlines, trucking companies, defense contractors), and any health facility with billings to either Medicare or Medicaid program.
Newest rules catch another 84 million people the mandatory vaccinate-or-else requirement.
News flash: The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary injunction against the rules on 11/6/21.This circuit covers Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Utah. The ruling cited “grave statutory and constitutional issues.” Brief coverage from Investing on 11/6/21: U.S. federal appeals court freezes Biden’s vaccine rule for companies.
Background on the rules and then the beginning points of issues with the requirements.
This is start of what will be a series of posts describing steps taken by federal, state, and local officials to compound the supply chain problem we are experiencing. Other policies, deliberately imposed, have the foreseeable consequence of being a drag on the economy. There are lots of recent articles pointing out policies, intentional policies by supposedly intelligent bureaucrats, which have the effect of making it more difficult to get things done.
A few policies that come to mind:
Tax on every container not pulled by a zero-emission truck.
Only a fraction of the trucks in the country allowed to pick up a container in California.
Owner/operators not allowed at the ports.
Fines on shipping companies who can’t get their containers out of the port because of congestion in the supply chain.
Additional tax on non-zero-emission trucks picking up cargo
Port Technology – 11/5/21 – Port of Los Angeles accelerates zero-emissions truck efforts – The Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissions approved a requirement for trucks picking up cargo at either Long Beach or Los Angeles ports to be zero emission starting 4/1/22. Or else.
The ‘papers please’ enforcement efforts are getting serious. The first restaurants are now getting shuttered in California.
Another group of elitist ruling overlords ignoring the rules.
Protests are running across the planet against restrictions which prohibit living your life.
One restaurant refuses to become law enforcement enforcers
Before you read my description of this article, consider a comment I read the other day from someone who had visited New York recently. There is a mandatory requirement that all restaurants provide police-level enforcement of the vaccination requirement by checking vaccination and ID of every customer before they enter a restaurant.
This person observed that the staff assign responsibility for screening took a brief glance at whatever was presented to them and waved people in. This means enforcement is light. Restaurants there cannot afford to turn away customers (other, several report their income is down 50% to 60%) and cannot take the time to do a serious check of every single customer that ever enters the restaurant. Essentially the enforcement is quite lax, based on this person’s observations.
The Highwire – 10/18/21 – San Francisco closes In-and-out Burger After Defying City’s Vaxxing Rule– Because In-N-Out Burger allegedly would not check vaccination documents and compare them to photo ID and physically bar entrance by anyone who is not completely vaccinated at one particular restaurant in San Francisco, the county Department of Health issued an order to close the restaurant.
In a published comment, the Chief Legal & Business Officer of the restaurants chain defiantly said:
As you read the following articles, keep in mind the LA County Sheriff and the Riverside County Sheriff have both said they will not enforce any vaccination mandate for their staff. In addition, the Chicago police union is in court trying to get and order to prohibit the vaccination dictat. Officers who are not in full compliance have been pulled off patrol.
Imminent problems:
There are widespread firings on near-term horizon for police officers, firefighters, and hospital workers.
90% of companies with over 100 employees expect to lose staff from their already understaffed organizations because of vaccination mandates.
Chronicles Magazine – 10/18/21 – The Impending Mass Firing of America’s Unvaccinated– In the midst of an existing shortage of workers and a labor force participation rate that has come close to recovering from the government-imposed recession, there is soon to be another major problem hit the economy: the pending firing of large numbers of people who refuse to get vaccinated or for whom employers refuse to provide any exemptions.
The massive hit to employment is likely to hit police, firefighters, doctors, and nurses particularly hard. The resulting, fully expected consequence will be deterioration in public services.
The supply chain for so many of the things we buy is messed up at every step of the logistics system. Former CEO of Walmart pointed out the steps in the supply chain that are tangled up:
Loading ships at ports in Asia.
Ships are stuck in the water waiting to unload.
Unloading at ports in the US is another chokepoint.
There are not enough truck drivers.
Not enough labor and the various points in the distribution system inside the United States.
Shortage of people to put stuff on the shelves.
Essentially every stage of the distribution channel is tangled up. Biggest thing that could be done to get things moving normally would be more people to work at every step of the distribution system. Labor shortages, in other words.
This post discusses two articles:
California has imposed restrictions on trucking which has drastically reduced the number of trucks which can be operated in the state.
One article provides us a survey of a dozen other articles, each of which describes a different aspect of the supply chain disaster.
Rising costs and constrained shipping capacity is driving inflation and disrupting supply chain across the economy. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Indicators I can see suggest inflation is going to continue at a high rate for quite some time. Here are a few of the articles I have read recently pointing towards ongoing rise in prices:
Rent component of CPI will increase substantially over the next year because of the way the index is calculated.
Shipping costs have already skyrocketed.
Multiple food producers are struggling with rapidly increasing costs.
Major food producer expects their costs go up 11% in the next year with prices they charge to go up by 4%.
The phrase “stagflation” is back in play. Oh joy, a possible (likely?) return to the Carter administration.
A friend of mine priced the apartment they are living in to help a relative who was moving into the area. Price for this exact unit is 50% more than when they signed their annual lease a number of months ago.
An acquaintance reports the price for renting a particular house went up while they were thinking about it for a day or so.
Two friends report landlords renting apartments expect six months rent in advance and some landlords renting houses are expecting a year in advance. A year.
Article mentioned above says the reports floating around in the media indicate rent hikes overall are around 10%. Yet the CPI shows only 2% increase in rent.
How can that be?
Fascinating detail of how the CPI is calculated explains the anomaly and also points towards dramatic increase in the rent component of CPI over the next year.
