This new gloomy report on the state of the government’s finances couldn’t have come at a worse time for Biden. Just when Joe was taking a bizarre victory lap an "Bidenomics" — and claiming he “cut the deficit by $1.7 trillion” (sic) — the Congressional Budget Office finds a tidal wave of debt spending and more than $6 trillion of new red ink under Biden’s fiscal stewardship.
This is looking more like the Hindenburg rather than the moon landing to us.
We also wonder whether Congress reads its own reports. Are they ever going to CUT SPENDING???
2) Record High 25% of 40 Year-Olds Have Never Married
Marriage is one of the most critical institutions of a stable, healthy, and economically prosperous society. Marriage and having children are pro-growth and pro-happiness. Married people are also more conservative and free market-oriented in their political views.
This stunning and troubling chart may explain why the millennials haven't had the same rightward political shift as previous generations – a record number of them never grew up and got married.
Here’s a good way to defeat the tyrant Vladimir Putin AND make America more prosperous: give a lot more visas to their young and well-educated people to come here.
This is the advice of CTUP Senior Fellow John Fund in the Wall Street Journal on how to weaken Vladimir Putin’s regime while also benefitting America’s high-tech economy.
Putin’s war machine is suffering a severe labor shortage as more of his most talented workers flee. Last fall, Russia created panic among the young by drafting people off the street in Moscow and sending them to the front.
Russia’s Communications Ministry admitted that 10 percent of the country’s IT workers had left in 2022 and not returned.
This gives the U.S. allies the chance to use immigration laws to ratchet up pressure on Putin.
We can create a Russian brain drain by doubling or tripling the number of high-skilled H-1B visas from 85,000 to 250,000 each year. This is a tool used by many technology giants to attract the “brainiacs.” (We should adopt the same strategy with Taiwan – which could be invaded by communist China.)
Using the immigration lever would be a positive-sum game for the U.S. It would deny Putin the skills and services of some of his most prosperous and talented citizens. It would also bring talented, resourceful, and hardworking people to live among us and perhaps eventually become Americans.
4) Is This the Worst Time To Buy a Home Since the Early 1980s?
We mentioned that marriage rates are down. Another iconic institution is in trouble: homeownership.
According to a report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies released Wednesday, several factors are aligning to make this one of the worst environments to buy a home in decades.
A big factor is rising mortgage rates due to Biden’s reckless spending spree. Mortgage rates have risen from under 4% under Trump to 6.7% under Biden. These higher rates and the near all-time highs in home prices, mean higher monthly payments. The monthly mortgage payment on a median-priced home has risen to $2,800 a month, more than 50% higher than in 2018. Is Biden taking this into account when he claims inflation is down to 4%?
On top of that, mortgage rates have surged from around 3.3% in early 2022 to just under 7% today. Taken together with higher home prices, monthly housing payments for prospective homeowners have more than doubled since 2021. Income growth is also starting to slow, putting housing affordability near its most unfavorable levels since the early 1980s, according to data from the National Association of Realtors.
Perhaps less noticeable on the surface, the supply of homes for sale is also still historically low at a little above two months' supply.
