Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• Everything the press said about the economy was wrong: It’s surging Worker wages are up this year as employees enjoy unmatched leverage in the marketplace. Job gains are soaring. And companies are printing profits thanks to sky-high consumer demand —Target’s sales spiked 13 percent in the last quarter and the retail giant expects double-digit gains over the holiday shopping season. That’s crucial because consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of the economy. All the while, mortgage interest rates hover around 2.5% (PressRun) see also Where did all the workers go? Labour shortages are spreading in many countries. Are they a result of reduced migration? Early retirement? And will they last? (Financial Times)
• Covid misinformation spreads because so many Americans are awful at math Two-step calculations are hard enough for some, but assessing vaccine effectiveness requires multiple steps. (Washington Post)
• Sons of Guns The story of the 1977 Revolt at Cincinnati, and the men who changed the course of the NRA forever. These men saw an entirely different future for the NRA, led by two rising members, both originally from Texas. Harlon Carter, the former head of the U.S. Border Patrol, was the voice of the NRA’s growing political heft, creating its Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) in 1975 to lobby, testify, and rake in new members. Meanwhile, Neal Knox, an editor who had led the publications Gun Week, Handloader, and Rifle, built power from the periphery, writing widely-read pieces on every niche of gun legislation that passed through Congress. They were the figureheads of the NRA’s New Guard, whose foot soldiers had been rallying support from American gun owners for months, and wanted the Old Guard out of the way. (Medium)
• ‘Inflation Guy’ Has Been Waiting Years to Tell You About the I-Word After decades of modest growth in consumer prices, investors had stopped worrying about it much—until now. Suddenly, Michael Ashton finds himself really busy. (Businessweek)
• Chakras, crystals and conspiracy theories: how the wellness industry turned its back on Covid science Its gurus increasingly promote vaccine scepticism, conspiracy theories and the myth that ill people have themselves to blame. How did self-care turn so nasty? (The Guardian)
• How Child Care Became the Most Broken Business in America Biden has a plan to make day care more affordable for parents—if the providers don’t go out of business first. (BusinessWeek)
• How Police Justify Killing Drivers: The Vehicle Was a Weapon The officer’s defense of killing someone who wielded neither a gun nor a knife, is one repeated over and over across the country: The vehicle was a weapon. An investigation of car stops that left more than 400 similarly unarmed people dead over the last five years, those words were routinely used to explain why police officers had fired at drivers. Most of the time, it was not true. (New York Times)
• Leaked Texts: Jan. 6 Organizers Say They Were ‘Following POTUS’ Lead’ Rally planners coordinated closely with the White House before Jan. 6 and readied a dinner party while the Capitol was under siege, according to leaked group text messages obtained by Rolling Stone (Rolling Stone)
• The Bonnie and Clyde of MAGA World: For a decade, Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lawrence had surfed the wave of populist-right politics like few other people in America. Then came Jan. 6. The stories of many of the people who descended on the Capitol that day in January are by now well-known: the millionaires flown in on private planes, the militia members spoiling for a fight, the QAnon cosplayers searching for conspiratorial clues. Then there are Dustin Stockton and Jen Lawrence. The Jan. 6 rally was, for them, the culmination of work they had been doing for the past decade — work that long predated the election conspiracy, or QAnon, or Donald Trump’s political career. They were dedicated to tearing down the establishment of both parties and the government itself, replacing it with a government they saw as closer to the people, closer to God, closer to the Constitution. (Politico)
• Why Do So Many Young Americans Hate Sports? Why the decline in live sports viewership? Nielsen, the ratings analytics giant, said in 2019 that Gen Z individuals “have higher expectations for entertainment experiences than their elders, and new ways to discover and consume content.” Given the size of the sports industry complex — worth tens of billions of dollars a year in revenue, including about $20 billion in media rights — such precipitous drops of interest among young people raise concerns about the long-term sustainability of sports leagues and the media companies broadcasting their content. Market data paints a grim picture for the future of pro sports. In league offices around the country, the campaign to secure it is well underway. Stakeholders have taken notice. (Inside Hook)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this weekend with Steven Fradkin, President of Northern Trust Wealth Management, a division of the insurance giant. The group has $355 billion in assets under management, serving 1 in 5 of the wealthiest families in America. Fradkin was previously Chief Financial Officer and was head of the international business for NT.
How Is Inflation Being Covered On Television News?
Source: Real Clear Politics
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