The 800 Pound Gorilla

So while we’re all wondering about the whacked out cherub and his missile and nukes, and what China is prepared to do to keep their aggressive swiped gains in the SCS, and whether Putin really wanted the Patriots in the election instead of the Falcons, and if NATO has paid it’s bill, and if AQ or ISIS or the Taliban deserves immediate attention today or how many US troops are the right number in the Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan (IF ANY), I read the following in an article about why Americans are moving less now than ever.

EVER.

That locked-in syndrome is a factor in economic stagnation, too: A recent Wells Fargo survey found that white-collar office productivity growth was zero.

As the economy was supposedly recovering from the financial crisis, from 2009 to 2014, American median wages fell 4 percent. Men’s median incomes today are actually below 1969 levels. Had we retained our pre-1973 rates of productivity growth, the typical household would earn about $30,000 a year more than it does.

Despite all the hype attached to a few tech companies, far fewer companies are being formed than in the 1980s, and fewer Americans are working for startups. Such new companies are linked with rapid job creation.

So let’s see, if we had only kept doing what we were doing BEFORE free trade (~1979) each of us would have about $925 more (after all taxes) in our twice a month paycheck.

So when we hear the data about these companies and the market doing so well, WHO GAINED?

Never mind that incredibly anger inducing fact, however. This is the knot Trump has chosen to untie.

Anyone think Trump can conquer all these foreign policy questions and get re-elected without some kind of major progress for the AVERAGE AMERICAN FAMILY towards that $925 which SHOULD be in our pockets TWICE A MONTH?

If you think so, I have a name for you: GEORGE HW BUSH. (41). More successful in FP than any president since the end of WW2, BUT…ONE TERM despite 80%+ approval at one point.

Trump’s selected Gorilla is worse than that …

Studies show major benefits for the children of poor people who move to better-off neighborhoods via, for instance, a program called Moving to Opportunity. If a poor child from a bad neighborhood moved to a middle-class neighborhood at age 8, his expected lifetime income would be $302,000 higher than if he stayed put. Still, the bias toward inertia is so strong that 52 percent of impoverished black families told about Moving to Opportunity declined offers to participate.

One reason people don’t move where the jobs are is because of real-estate prices — which in turn are kept at high levels by regulatory restrictions and NIMBY-ism. In New York City in the 1950s a typical apartment rented for $60 a month, or $530 today if you adjust for inflation. Two researchers found that if you reduced regulations for building new homes in places like New York and San Francisco to the median level, the resulting expanded workforce would increase US GDP by $1.7 trillion. That won’t happen, though: More homes would diminish the property values of existing homeowners.

That’s both institutional and cultural resistance.

So while hopefully the guys from the NSA/CIA/FBI who smile and tell us…

have gotten into the Nork strategic systems and inserted something like

< do while
kim pushes button;
launch;
wait (15);
fly into ground;>

and no one knows the better (and GOOD ON THEM, on this one), Trump can expect that all this necessary stuff to DOING that job is NOT going to help him or the Republican party unless he laser focuses on the BIG GORILLA.

If no progress is made on that front for WHATEVER REASON, expect a Bernie.

PUSH IT, TRUMP.