Real Take Home Pay Still Underwater

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Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #939
01/22/2024
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1) Real Take-Home Pay Still Underwater
Yes, the economy is improving. And yes, inflation is down. But what is also down under Biden is what Reagan used to call “real after-tax take-home pay.”

Our CTUP senior fellow E.J. Antoni has been crunching the latest numbers from the BLS and he finds that workers in the bottom half of incomes still haven’t caught up to inflation. There are a record number of Americans working multiple jobs and 60% of them are still living paycheck to paycheck, unable to afford what they could buy just 3 years ago.

And the media, the Biden economics team, and the Washington talking heads still can’t understand why everyone is so negative about Bidenomics.

Here’s why: real median earnings are still in the red.
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Wage Gains​
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2) NO, NO, a Thousand Times NO, to a Bipartisan Tax Increase Commission
Some Republicans – even some of our well-meaning friends – are foolishly supporting a bipartisan “fiscal commission” to reduce the debt.

But mark our words: this will be a tax increase commission.

Those of us of a certain age remember when in 1982 Ronald Reagan was snookered into a “bipartisan deficit reduction” deal – the benignly named “The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act” – endorsed by then-House Speaker Tip O’Neill. He was promised three dollars of spending cuts for every dollar of new taxes. Well, we got the new taxes and Reagan spent the next six years asking Congress: “when do I get the $3 of spending cuts?” The answer, as it turned out, was never.

George H.W. Bush was suckered into such a “bipartisan” deal which raised taxes, killed the economy, and made him a “one-termer.”

This is such an obvious trap, we’re shocked that ANY Republicans have been bamboozled into it. Jeb Hensarling and Mike Solon reminded us of the perils of this commission last week in the WSJ ([link removed]) .

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​Democrats won’t agree to a single dollar of spending cuts without tax increases “on the rich.” This will slow or even kill growth and investment and make the debt situation worse.

What Republicans SHOULD create is a Government Waste Commission much like the famous Grace Commission of the early 1980s that Reagan started. It identified hundreds of billions of dollars of waste and redundancy in hundreds of agencies. Those savings are now in the multiple trillions of dollars.

Who in the world other than Joe Biden and Chucky Schumer is against eliminating waste?

What Biden wants is a tax increase commission to pay for his $6 trillion spending spree.

NO DEAL. If Republicans go along then we don’t have one, but two stupid and evil parties in Washington.

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3) And Now for Some Good News: We’re Winning Our Fight Against ESG
Our report card on “environment and social justice” investing by dozens of major money management firms from State Street to Fidelity with tens of trillions of dollars invested found that most got a D or F grade by putting ESG issues over getting optimal returns for their clients.

But the tide is changing, and here’s a New York Times headline from this weekend that brought a smile to our faces:

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Why has ESG suddenly fallen out of favor? The NYTimes says (in part) because of outside pressure from watchdog groups like CTUP. We warned that these climate change and racial justice funds would be lousy investments ([link removed]) , and so they have. A Morningstar report ([link removed]) calculates that ESG funds underperformed the market by six percentage points, meaning lower returns for everyday investors.

The trend is in our direction, but we aren’t letting up until money management firms and state pension funds follow their fiduciary duty and stop playing politics with Americans’ pensions.
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We will be updating our landmark report ([link removed]) from last April in the weeks ahead.
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4) Sports Illustrated, RIP
SI has announced that it is firing most of its staff. Whether it will continue as a weekly publication is in great doubt.

This is a sad – even tragic – story of how wokism and progressive ideology have ruined one of America’s most iconic magazines.
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For many decades Sports Illustrated was a must-read for sports fans throughout the country. It was pure entertainment with spectacular photography, brilliant writing, wit, and humor. It was an adrenaline rush every week to see which spectacular athlete would don the cover. (Michael Jordan and Muhamad Ali have the most multiple covers.)

But in recent years, the editors decided that SI should be a political and social commentary rag – not a sports magazine. It embraced a radical climate change agenda, celebrated the unpatriotic Colin Kaepernick for taking a knee as if he were the Jackie Robinson of our era, trashed Donald Trump regularly, embraced the LGBTQ and DEI agenda, and on and on. We weren’t getting sports stories, but scalding social statements and lectures.

Sports is supposed to be an escape from society’s problems, not a preachy New York Times editorial page.

For many of us, the end came a few years ago when SI started self-righteously using the swimsuit issue to make political points. Subscribers longed for the days of beauties like Kathy Ireland, Cheryl Tiegs, and Christie Brinkley.
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5) Jordan Peterson Tweets CTUP Elites Study
Now we know we’ve hit ([link removed]) the big time!

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Thanks, doc!

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6) Guess Who Will Pick Up the Tab?
Last week Biden announced yet another unconstitutional $5 billion student loan forgiveness program. Here’s a simple explanation of how this program works:
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