Wednesday, November 10, 2021


New Inflation Numbers Are Here and They’re Really Bad

At 8.6% pa, people's savings will rapidly become worthless. It is wholesale theft caused by government over-spending. And it looks like getting worse with current big spending plans

New wholesale inflation numbers from September are in and once again prove the rapid increase in prices for everyday items isn't "transitory" as President Joe Biden has repeatedly claimed.

Wholesale prices rose by 8.6 percent compared to September 2020, matching the largest increase on record.

"The Labor Department reported Tuesday that its producer price index — which measures inflation before it hits consumers — rose 0.6% last month from September, pushed higher by surging gasoline prices. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, wholesale inflation was up 0.4% in October from September and 6.8% from a year ago," the Associated Press reports. "More than 60% of the September-October increase in overall producer prices was caused by a 1.2% increase in the price of wholesale goods as opposed to services. A 6.7% jump in wholesale gasoline prices helped drive goods prices up."

In recent weeks, Biden administration officials have essentially told Americans to get used to price increases and that there's nothing they can do to mitigate costs.

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Conservatives Are Happy, Leftists Are Angry

This shows up repeatedly in surveys

The New York Times recently featured an opinion analyzing the happiness levels of conservatives and leftists. The headline says a lot: “Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals. Discuss.” There is definitely plenty to discuss.

Showing extensive social science review over a long period of time, the studies reviewed by Thomas Edsall found that one’s beliefs, moral compass, and subsequent actions determine an individual’s level of happiness and unhappiness. Several of the studies even found that there is a sense of accomplishment from one’s own work and that secular attitudes and habits have loosened the tight knit fabric of our society.

Edsall intellectually meandered over his own opinion that conservatives are happier because they are protected from the inequities of society. He also credited social inequities for leftists’ low scores on self-directed goals, ability to adapt, and personal responsibility and achievement.

Though mainstream and politically correct for the most part, the editorial did have one significant revelation. Edsall observed that this “wide range of scholars” may have missed a broader question of “whether liberals and conservative function on fundamentally different moral planes.”

Without knowing it, Edsall hit upon a brilliant truth: Those on the political Left approach life on a fundamentally different level of morality than those on the political Right.

First, the political Left has redefined life itself. The militant cry for abortion on demand, with some even asserting that life’s value is based on viability, would permit some of our most vulnerable to be in jeopardy on both ends of the age spectrum. The embrace of gender fluidity also discredits the beautiful uniqueness of each human and serves as an absolute rejection of any belief in a Creator.

This foundation of secularism — worshipping Me, Myself, and I — starkly contrasts with the respect of life, living a purposeful life beyond self, and understanding that our best days can be ahead … not lost to some revisions of our past.

For more than three decades, Dr. Carol Dweck, professor of psychology at Stanford University, has researched the study of growth mindset versus fixed mindset, and her studies are accepted and embraced in education, business, and high-performing teams. Reinforcing self-esteem with praise, deserved or not, is characteristic of a fixed mindset. Growth mindset praises children for their hard work in order to encourage them to pursue challenges and develop their skills. The latter group is heralded, even by Harvard Business Review, in the best classrooms and the best boardrooms.

Those with a growth mindset embrace risks and challenges and work to avoid failure. Believing that greater effort will result in greater achievement, mastery, and attainment, those with a growth mindset embrace challenge, view others’ success as inspirations, and accept feedback to be constructive for improvement.

The latter group, in contrast, is resistant, is threatened by the successes of others, takes feedback as criticism, and doesn’t equate greater effort with greater attainment.

These two mindsets line up nicely with the morality levels of the Right versus the Left.

Along with redefining life, leftists tend to deify fairness and shift blame instead of encouraging hard work and persistence. All of culture right now tends to use the fixed mindset or leftist mentality to tell our future generations that they are just fine and don’t have to work for their privileges. We should not be surprised to see little effort in schools or occupations, with poor performance and giving up easily.

In this worldview, it’s always someone else’s fault. Rewriting American history, dividing humanity into oppressed and oppressors (think Critical Race Theory), and blaming today’s problems on past events are all examples of this mindset.

In contrast, the political Right features a work ethic of grit and growth coupled with a worldview that embraces the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God. Does all of this equate with happiness or unhappiness?

Subjective metrics are difficult to measure. However, it’s not difficult to see that ideological differences evident in partisan politics are indeed associated with one’s moral values and worldview.

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President Joe Biden returned the morning of Nov. 3 to a nation that no longer supports him or his party

Virginia, which he carried 55% to 44% in 2020, has elected Republican Glenn Youngkin as governor, Republicans for lieutenant governor and attorney general, and recaptured a majority in the House of Delegates.

Even more startlingly, in New Jersey, which Biden carried 57% to 41%, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy is currently leading Republican Jack Ciattarelli by about 29,000 votes, with a few more to be counted. New Jersey, as part of the New York and Philadelphia media markets, has long been a low-information state politically, and Murphy seems headed to the 50.5% he’s been averaging in polls, with the rest all going to his little-known ex-legislator challenger.

Some Democrats did win. Eric Adams was easily elected mayor of New York City (76% Biden), and Democrats captured a state House district (population 8,333) in Maine.

But that’s about all the good news for the party that one year ago won the Electoral College by 42,000 popular votes and congressional majorities of 51-50 and 222-213. Geographically, Republican wins ranged from a Supreme Court seat in marginal Pennsylvania to a pickup in a 72% Hispanic Texas state House district (population 164,436) that is 72% Hispanic to a city council seat in immigrant-heavy Brooklyn and Queens.

The Democrats’ “progressive” wing fared especially poorly. Voters in Minneapolis (86% Biden), where George Floyd died in May 2020, rejected a ballot proposition to replace the police force with a “public safety” department by 56% to 44%. So much for defunding the police.

And in Buffalo (80% Biden), socialist Democratic primary winner India Walton was beaten by write-in votes for the incumbent mayor she had defeated for the nomination, 59% to 41%. So much for socialism.

The results in Virginia and elsewhere are, as Cook Political’s David Wasserman tweeted at 9:34 p.m. Eastern, “consistent w/ a political environment in which Republicans would comfortably take back both the House and the Senate in 2022.”

In an environment where Donald Trump is no longer the central figure, despite Terry McAuliffe’s constant mentions of him, Youngkin managed to improve on Trump’s numbers with noncollege-graduate white voters while making substantial inroads in affluent suburbs.

Republican victories came despite—actually, because of—two supposedly disabling trends. One is that turnout was up 27% over the last governor race in Virginia, and at least 11% in New Jersey. The rise was 30% to 40% in exurban areas heavy with young families, but only 10% or less in central cities with many minorities and hip singles.

The other trend is that the Virginia race was fought out over cultural issues. Youngkin seized on McAuliffe’s Sept. 29 debate statement, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” That’s holy writ among teachers union members and school administrators, who believe they have special expertise in enlightening the children of backward parents.

But in the Virginia exit poll, 84% said that parents should have a lot of or some say in what schools teach, and only 13% said little or none. And after teachers unions shut down schools for months (a full year in Fairfax County, the nation’s 11th-largest school district), parents have gotten a better view of the sexually explicit materials that supposed experts have put in the hands of even grade schoolers.

Similarly, Youngkin was not afraid to criticize public schools’ use of materials championing critical race theory—the idea that whites are irremediably racist. Children should learn the good and the bad about our history, he said, and to judge others by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.

That predictably prompted charges of racism. Barack Obama, campaigning for McAuliffe, insisted, “We don’t have time to be wasting on these phony, trumped-up culture wars.” Youngkin, he said, was avoiding “serious problems that actually affect serious people.”

But for parents, the education of their children is a serious matter, not a “phony, trumped-up” issue. More generally, cultural issues are more important to Americans, on both sides of the cultural divide, than economics. Although Biden Democrats have argued their economic policies would help the little guy, an ABC/Ipsos poll found that only 25% believe his reconciliation bill would help people like them, while 32% say they would hurt.

That leaves nearly half, 43%, not seeing much difference. A similarly pervasive skepticism explains polls showing majorities against passing Obamacare in 2010 and against repealing Obamacare in 2018. In contrast, attitudes on cultural issues are more firmly rooted in personal experience and moral principles.

Liberals and progressives are vulnerable on cultural issues because their search for the latest underdog cause to champion, while sometimes producing results widely accepted, sometimes puts them in lasting opposition to large majorities of voters. That’s what happened in Virginia. The advice of Democrats’ MSNBC and CNN cheering squads—to double down on accusing voters of racism—is not helpful.

So, for the moment at least … the nation Biden returned to in the wee hours of the morning on Nov. 3 no longer supports him or his party.

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The Jobs Report Actually Isn’t Great

President Joe Biden used the October jobs report to brag about his supposed accomplishments on Friday. In reality, the report was not nearly as encouraging as Biden would have people believe.

According to Yahoo, there were some reasons to be excited about the report. It said a total of 531,000 workers were added to nonfarm payrolls in October. Unemployment also fell to 4.6 percent, the lowest number since the coronavirus pandemic began.

Eager for a much-needed win, Biden took the opportunity to brag about himself in a news briefing Friday morning.

“Americans are getting back to work. Our economy is starting to work for more Americans,” he said. “Thanks to the economic plan we put through in Congress earlier this year and a successful vaccine deployment, America continues to add jobs at a record pace.”

While it is true that 531,000 more people are on payrolls than a month ago, Yahoo said the number was misleading. That is because there are still millions fewer Americans employed today than before the pandemic.

“The ongoing decline in the unemployment rate and strong wage growth suggest labor market slack is diminishing rapidly,” Bank of America analysts wrote, according to Yahoo.

“That said, there are still 4.2 million fewer people employed today than in February 2020 and the labor force participation rate was unchanged at 61.6%.”

Even with his so-called “historic” progress, Biden still faces an unemployment rate that is a full 1.1 percentage points higher than it was in February 2020.

The numbers also suggest that Biden’s progress is largely still a recovery from an artificial downturn created by COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdowns.

In order to claim his economy is better than former President Donald Trump’s, Biden would have to improve upon Trump’s pre-pandemic numbers, not just get back to where things were.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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