The greatest threat to the United States economy continues to be containing the spread of Covid-19. President Biden's top economic priority is to get to the other side of this crisis by ramping up the production and distribution of the vaccine, supporting businesses and households that need it most, and launching an inclusive, equitable recovery.
On Monday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that without additional government spending, the unemployment rate will remain above its pre-pandemic projections until 2024. This means millions would be unemployed for years after the health threat has lessened, unless we take action.
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Senate Rejects Minimum Wage Increase as Biden's Economic Plan Moves Forward - The New York Times
WASHINGTON — As lawmakers advanced President Biden's $1.9 trillion stimulus package on Thursday, the Senate dealt a setback to a major tenet of the plan: raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
By a voice vote, senators backed an amendment from Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, to "prohibit the increase of the federal minimum wage during a global pandemic." It was a signal that the wage increase would be difficult to pass in an evenly split Senate, where at least one Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, was on record opposing it.
Despite a pandemic winter, economists see green shoots
Initial signs of economic recovery are tenuous, but there are a growing number of them now giving hope to investors, business owners and ordinary Americans alike.
In addition to a continuing fall in weekly jobless claims, a cross-section of economic indicators offers a glimmer of hope for recovery, while corporate bottom lines and household finances both suggest the emergence of an economy that is inching closer to normalcy.
"The most important thing is to keep this economy going while we're still in this area of uncertainty with regard to the virus," said Tom Martin, senior portfolio manager at Globalt Investments. "What's most important is that people can keep their jobs, or be able to pay their bills and not end up on the street if they don't have a job," he said.
What is causing burnout during the pandemic? | Medical Economics
While burnout can come from a variety of sources, the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic's impact on those on the front lines is still being revealed.
A recent survey by The Joint Commission gathered the comments of more than 2,000 health care workers on what is causing their burnout. The results were published in the Feb. 2 issue pf the Sentinel Event Alert.
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The Joint Commission makes a number of recommendations on ways to support health care workers. These include:
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Daughters and divorce - Daughters provoke parental strife | Science & technology | The
Taken over the years, the daughter effect, though real, is small. In the Netherlands, by the time their first-born is 18, 20.12% of couples will have divorced if that child is a son, compared with 20.48% if she is a daughter—an increase in probability of 1.8%. But in the five years when the first-born is between the ages of 13 and 18, that increase goes up to 5%. And it peaks, at 9%, when the child is 15.
Anyone who has—or has been—a teenager knows how turbulent those years can be. Surveys confirm that teenage daughters and fathers, in particular, get on each other's nerves. They also show that parents of teenage daughters argue more about parenting than do the parents of sons, and that mothers of teenage daughters report significantly more disagreements with their partners over money, and become more open to the idea of divorce.
Transfer of power - A new epoch for retail investors is just beginning | Finance & economics
F OR NEARLY a fortnight, the world was mesmerised by the fortunes of GameStop. Shares in the beleaguered brick-and-mortar purveyor of video games soared from a few dollars in 2020 to above $480 on January 28th, before sinking as low as $81 on February 2nd. A firm that was worth $200m in April last year was briefly valued at $30bn before falling back to Earth.
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Look beyond the memes and the mania, though, and the story tells you something about the deep structural changes in financial markets. The fact that the fast-paced frenzy was possible is a testament to just how frictionless trading stocks has become, aided by technological advances. Shares can be bought on an app while you queue for a coffee, at a price that is whisker-close to the wholesale price.
Economics' failure over destruction of nature presents 'extreme risks' | Biodiversity | The
The world is being put at "extreme risk" by the failure of economics to take account of the rapid depletion of the natural world and needs to find new measures of success to avoid a catastrophic breakdown, a landmark review has concluded.
Prosperity was coming at a "devastating cost" to the ecosystems that provide humanity with food, water and clean air, said Prof Sir Partha Dasgupta, the Cambridge University economist who conducted the review. Radical global changes to production, consumption, finance and education were urgently needed, he said.
The Economist Placing Value on Black Women's Overlooked Work - The New York Times
Tracing community activism back a hundred years, Nina Banks says this labor by Black women should be counted as part of the economy.
Nina Banks, who became president of the National Economic Association this week, has studied the work done by women that provided services to predominantly Black communities. Credit... Hannah Yoon for The New York Times
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Every year women do trillions of dollars' worth of unpaid household work . In the United States alone, that total amounted to roughly $1.2 trillion in 2019, a figure nearly the size of the New York State economy .
Happening on Twitter
Our strategy in response to this pandemic-induced economic crisis is centered around the belief that the costs of i… https://t.co/w4mqJMj4xk WhiteHouse (from United States of America) Wed Feb 03 17:10:35 +0000 2021
New: the @WhiteHouse blog! Read the first post by Council of Economic Advisors members @econjared46 and @HBoushey… https://t.co/m4wnOzipYs MattHill46 (from Washington, DC) Wed Feb 03 17:52:15 +0000 2021
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