Logo for The Tapback from Civic Action [[link removed]]
GIVE IT UP
A core belief of the trickle-down cult is that rich people are the center of the economy , shining their glory on the rest of us. So if things go sideways in the economy, it’s always someone else’s fault — and that someone else is almost always a worker. That’s how the problem of businesses offering low wages gets turned into the idea that “ nobody wants to work ,” the problem of managers being unable to motivate their employees gets turned into the idea of “ quiet quitting ,” and the phrase “ get a better job ” serves as a default response to any complaint at all.
This nonsense has been going on for years, but after all the recent talk of labor shortages, the latest turn is a doozy: the Wall Street Journal is now writing [[link removed]] that the biggest problem facing bosses these days is that not enough employees are quitting. So apparently, the two most damaging things a worker can do is to 1) quit their job, or 2) not quit their job?
Make it make sense.
Three Numbers [[link removed]]
12.8% [[link removed]] of US households were considered food insecure [[link removed].] for at least some part of 2022 , meaning they had difficulty obtaining enough food to meet their nutritional needs. Many states reduced food assistance last year after federal pandemic aid expired.
$2.2 billion [[link removed]] is the estimated current net worth of Adam Neumann, who founded WeWork and was later forced out of the CEO role due to mismanagement. Almost every other WeWork investor besides Neumann was wiped out after the company crashed , went public, was restructured, and finally went bankrupt [[link removed]] last week.
$250,000 signing bonuses [[link removed]] are being offered by American Airlines in an attempt to poach captains [[link removed]] from FedEx and UPS in a highly competitive labor market . Commercial airlines are struggling with staffing shortages, which they call a “captain crunch.”
A Chart [[link removed]]
An excellent way to measure the health of supply chains is to look at what’s happening in the freight market : specifically, are there enough trucks and truck drivers available to move the goods that need moving? One key indicator is the freight rejection rate, which measures how often shippers reject loads. If there’s not enough freight capacity to meet the demand to move goods, shippers will get overbooked and have to reject some loads ; if there’s more freight capacity available than goods that need to be moved, shippers are unlikely to reject any jobs on offer.
As this chart crafted by trade publication FreightWaves shows, after hovering around 25% for all of 2021, freight rejection rates have plummeted below 5%, indicating an abundance of freight capacity and smoothed-out supply chains . Of course, better shipping conditions don’t immediately lead to lower prices, because corporations don’t just cut retail prices because their own costs go down. But it is another indication that at this point, greedflation is the main thing keeping prices elevated — not supply chains, not deficits, and not wage increases.
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Blowing up the Groupchat [[link removed]]
It’s well documented that many major financial institutions have long engaged in discriminatory practices — including steering Black borrowers to subprime loans , selectively choosing where to open bank branches based on neighborhood demographics, and using credit scores inappropriately — even though lenders have been formally barred from discriminating since 1974 by the Equal Credit Opportunity Act . Passing a law doesn’t automatically change corporate practices, but you’d think the existence of the law ought to have at least stopped big banks from overtly rejecting loan applicants solely and explicitly on the basis of their identities.
But that’s not the case at Citibank, which is being charged [[link removed]] with violating federal law by denying credit to people who bank managers believed to be Armenian . And it wasn’t even subtle: anyone with a last name ending in ‑ian or ‑yan was denied credit or subjected to far more intense screening and verification than applicants whose last names didn’t sound to bank staff like they might indicate Armenian heritage. The practice was so standardized in the Glendale, California area (home to a large Armenian-American population) that Citibank staff who failed to flag potentially Armenian loan applicants were disciplined . The penalty for this remarkably overt racism: Citibank will have to pay about $26 million out of its $1.7 trillion in assets.
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