Unleash Prosperity Hotline – Weekend Edition Issue #585
07/29/2022, 07/30/2022, 07/31/2022
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1) Don’t Go Breaking Our Hearts
Ok, we admit it. We bought Joe Manchin’s lies for the past 12 months and many of you warned us not to take Joe seriously. He has renounced everything he has said about Build Back Better. He played us all.
Republicans share the blame here for voting for a $200 billion corporate welfare bill once Democrats threw in the towel on BBB, and then they pulled off a classic bait and switch. There’s a reason the Republicans are known as the stupid party how do you get outsmarted by Chuck Schumer?
Democrats, who are acting like it’s Christmas morning, are now actually trying to add more spending and goodies to the bill. There is talk of bringing back the state and local tax deduction for rich blue-staters.
They even count the billions to hire some 75,000 more IRS agents to be a revenue raiser. Of course, they will use this money to target conservative and Republican donors. Does anyone remember Lois Lerner?
Perhaps the bill can be stopped on the basis of false advertising They call this bill the “Inflation Reduction Act.” Sure.
Some $300 billion of new government spending is going to SLOW inflation. Dumb. Evil. Or Both?
We still don’t know why so many Wall Street economic geniuses predicted that the GDP report would show a positive number, given that inflation is running at 9%.
Consumption grew a mere 1.0% but it was fueled by people continuing to dip into savings, not rising real incomes. Real disposable incomes and savings continued their freefall. Investment utterly collapsed in the second quarter, falling 13.5%. Nominal output rose (as shown by the chart below) but real output and incomes fell. Investment collapsed by 13.5%. That’s a leading indicator, so recovery is not around the corner. Strap in!
We are calling this a “Disposable Income Recession,” because all the pain in the purchasing power of the typical family is down roughly $4,000 this year relative to wages and salaries.
Congress and the media have demonized the pharmaceutical industry – how do you hate an industry that saves lives? – and their new bloated spending bill is paid for by extracting $288 billion from Medicare prescription drug spending and transferring the money to the green energy industry. The latter gives lots of money to Democrats. This is pay-to-play at its worst.
But here are the latest numbers on consumer prices. Drug prices aren’t at the top of the list, but near the bottom.
Incidentally. We can’t help wondering where the American Cancer Society and the Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and Epilepsy and MS foundations are financially assaulting the race for the cure. Our board member John Childs has a good piece on this.
While panicked politicians in the City of Angels debate new Covid mandates and restrictions, LA County health director (not a doctor) Ferrer, the county's largest safety net hospital, LA County-USC, explained how their already very low COVID burden continues to decline.
Some highlights:
"Right now, by my count, we have approximately 45 COVID positives in the hospital of whom five were admitted due to COVID, none of whom have severe COVID. Half of those 45 are simply awaiting placement of one type or another and actually don't need to be in the hospital at all...
"Most people have a test positive only because we test every human being who is admitted to the hospital. There is no medical reason that one would have gotten a COVID test on the vast majority of these people. So we wouldn't see this spike if we were only testing people who came in for respiratory illnesses, which is a very small number."
