Unleash Prosperity Hotline – Weekend Edition Issue #572
07/08/2022, 07/09/2022, 07/10/2022
New to the Hotline? Click here to subscribe–it's free.
1)Over Last Three Months, FEWER Americans Working
We bet you haven’t read THAT headline anywhere else.
To the contrary, the Biden administration and the media are trumpeting Friday's June labor report which counted a healthy 372,000 new jobs added.
Not so fast. Another Labor Department survey - the survey of households and the one used to calculate the monthly unemployment rate - recorded a reduction of 315,000 Americans working last month.
The chart below shows that over the past three months, while the survey of firms found more than one million job gains, the household survey has found 300,000 fewer Americans are working today than in March.
What accounts for the difference in these two reports? The payroll survey is more likely to count the jobs created at larger businesses and corporations, whereas small startup firms and self-employment are often undercounted in that survey. What this suggests is that big businesses are still doing pretty well, but hiring by small entrepreneurial companies appears to be shrinking. Fewer Americans are starting companies or are self-employed — thanks to the Biden war on business.
Our view is that the actual jobs trend is somewhere between these two survey estimates, which means almost no job growth at all. That is unfortunately consistent with our contention that the U.S. is already in recession.
2) Dems Desperately Trying to Court Joe Manchin for Slim Version of Build Back Better
These people never give up. Our congressional sources tell us that The White House and Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer are again negotiating with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin on a “mini me” version of the multi-trillion dollar tax and spend Build Back Better bill.
Schumer and Manchin have reportedly agreed to apply the Obamacare 3.8% investment tax to all business income above $400,000 per year, hitting sole proprietors, partnerships, and S corps.
This would effectively cancel out the pro-Growth income tax rate cuts in the Trump tax plan passed in 2017.
Dems also reportedly want to double count the revenue from the tax hike, using it both to finance BBB’s new spending programs and – to notionally extend Medicare's trust fund solvency. This is the kind of accounting trickery that would get you sent to jail in the private sector.
Here are other features of the plan being chiseled out:
* Price tag $500 billion to $1 trillion
* Drug price controls on pharmaceutical industry
* Carbon tariff tax on imports
* $300 to $500 billion more in tax credits and direct subsidies to wind, solar, and electric vehicle producers.
* A 15% global minimum tax
Manchin’s spokesman denies that any deal has been agreed upon. We hope that Manchin understands that no state would be a bigger loser from any carbon tax and more wind and solar subsidies than coal and natural gas energy rich West Virginia.
3) This Is How Bad Things Have Gotten in Germany
Welcome to the Green New Deal in action. Beware: Biden wants the U.S. to follow Germany’s lead on climate change craziness.
4) Did “The Big Guy” Get His 10% Cut?
We’ve been reporting on these pages the shady deals that Hunter Biden cut with the Chinese by leveraging with his father’s political clout. More than one of these emails reported that Joe - aka “the Big Guy” was always to get his cut. So we were hardly surprised by this story about one million barrels of American oil from the strategic petroleum reserve sold to the Chinese.
5) The Democratic Party Wasn’t Always Insane
1888 Democratic Party Platform
June 05, 1888
One of our favorite presidents was Grover Cleveland, a Democrat. He vetoed some 1,000 spending bills. We dug up this line from the 1888 Democratic platform when Cleveland was running for president:
"All unnecessary taxation is unjust taxation.
It is repugnant to the creed of Democracy, that by such taxation the costs of the necessaries of life should be unjustifiably increased to all our people."
6) Sometimes Real Life Is Funnier than Fiction
The Atlantic Magazine, which was once a highly-respected voice in the public debate has gone so crazy on climate change, they actually published this article:
You Can Spot Climate Change in Old Restaurant Menus
In the 1880s, Vancouver’s seafood joints served lots of salmon. These days they serve squid.
Here is a brief excerpt from this path breaking scientific discovery:
"Climate change is an intensifying reality for the marine species that live near Vancouver and for the people who depend on them. In a new study, a team from the University of British Columbia (UBC) shows one unexpected way that climate effects are already manifesting in our daily lives. To find it, they looked not at thermometers or ice cores, but at restaurant menus."
“With a menu, you have a physical and digital record that you can compare over time,” explains William Cheung, a fisheries biologist at UBC and one of the study’s authors. Cheung has spent his career studying climate change and its effects on the world’s oceans. He has contributed to several of the landmark reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…"
