TOMORROW Thursday, December 12 at 3:00 PM EST, join UP’s Steve Moore, Dr. Arthur Laffer, Alexandra Preate, Tim Doescher, and other special guests for our popular webinar series covering the Trump transition. We will cover the ever-changing landscape here in DC, other timely developments (there are MANY) since Election Day, and always have a little fun. To RSVP, click the link below. See you then!
This chart shows the miracle of the real "green revolution" - which was the spectacular rise in farm productivity.
We now produce ten times more food, with one-tenth as many workers, one-third as much land, and at one-quarter of the cost. (It's incredible how many science experts predicted 50 years ago that we were running out of food and farmland! They are now ringing the bell about catastrophic climate change.)
This same revolution has just begun in industrial production thanks to robotics, 3D imaging, automated vehicles, and other incredible technological advances. One of our UP members has started a company that "employs" robots to build new homes at one-third the cost.
To our friends in the Trump admin: Don't obsess about saving 20th-century factory jobs. Most will be gone in 20 years or less.
The jobs of the future will be centered around creativity, knowledge, and know-how. So we better have smart kids and great schools. We don't. The gap between high and low performing kids is troublingly widening.
The latest fourth-grade math scores show the top students were relatively unaffected by the school disruptions of the lockdown era, but the bottom (which had already been declining before COVID) fell off the table in recent years:
The left obsesses over income inequality, but nothing contributed more to unequal outcomes than school lockdowns – driven by teacher unions who always put kids last.
One of the biggest battles that'll be fought this year to extend the Trump tax cuts will be the state and local tax deduction (SALT). The Trump tax bill wisely capped the deductibility of federal income taxes on state tax forms to $10,000 per return.
The SALT deduction is awful federal policy that rewards states to raise their income tax rates, because in-state residents get to deduct roughly one-third of the tax hike from their federal tax return. It punishes low-tax states.
Our senior fellow, E.J. Antoni, found that when the full SALT deduction was in effect, more than half of the benefits went to six blue states and almost one-third went to wealthy tax filers in California and New York (the nation's highest tax states).
In New York City, someone making $100 million would see their federal tax liability REDUCED by about 9 percent, saving $3.2 million. Progressives who claim they want "to make the wealthy pay their fair share" are now advocating the largest tax cut for millionaires and billionaires in American history.
At least one honest Democrat, Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, a moderate, has called out this hypocrisy:
4) Biden's Farewell Address – I came, I saw, I Bankrupted the Country
Poor Joe Biden. Remember him?
He's forgotten, but not yet gone. He tried to burnish his crumbling legacy yesterday by boasting how much money he spent and borrowed on programs like the American Recovery Act. He said it "was the largest" spending bill ever.
Our friend and budget expert, Paul Winfree of EPIC, summarizes the impact of this spending spree, highlighting what we call the three Ds of the Biden legacy: Debt, Deficits, and Declining Incomes.
Over the course of four years, government spending has increased by the equivalent of $36,100 per American household, tax revenues by $17,100 per household, and debt by $29,700 per household.
The Biden-Harris Administration's policies have driven prices up and real wages down. Prices have increased by about 20 percent since January 2021, but wages have not kept up with rising prices. That means that the average worker has seen the purchasing power of their take home pay fall by about $2,230 since the Biden-Harris Administration's policies began.
