Free Republic

We are in an election year. President Biden, a seasoned politician, has failed miserably in tackling inflation and is now attempting to shift blame for "Bidenflation" onto Trump, a move even noted by The New York Times, which dubbed it Biden's Plan B. Commenting on the latest CPI release, President Biden said: We’re better situated than we were when we took office where we— inflation was skyrocketing. And we have a plan to deal with it, whereas the opposition — my opposition talks about two things. They just want to cut taxes for the wealthy and raise taxes on other...

Prices for burgers, fries and other fast food items have increased at various restaurant chains across California, according to a recent report. A New York Post investigation revealed that some fast food chains in the Los Angeles area raised prices on April 1, after new California statewide legislation went into effect Monday enforcing a $20 minimum wage for restaurants that have at least 60 locations nationwide, except those that make and sell their own bread. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the legislation, AB 1228, into law in September. In addition to the pay raises, it also establishes a "Fast Food Council,"...

Migration cuts wages, Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, said Tuesday as he announced plans to trim his unpopular migration inflows that have forced his nation backward. “Increasingly, more and more businesses are relying on temporary foreign workers in a way that is driving down wages in some sectors,” Trudeau told reporters on April 2 as he announced plans to slightly reduce his mass migration that has imposed much poverty and chaotic diversity on Canadians. He continued: So we want to get those numbers down. It’s a responsible approach to immigration that conntinues on our permanent [immigration] residents as we have,...

Lyft and Uber said they will cease operations in Minneapolis after the city’s council voted Thursday to override a mayoral veto and require that ride-hailing services increase driver wages to the equivalent of the local minimum wage of $15.57 an hour. Lyft called the ordinance “deeply flawed,” saying in a statement that it supports a minimum earning standard for drivers but not the one passed by the council. “It should be done in an honest way that keeps the service affordable for riders,” Lyft said. “This ordinance makes our operations unsustainable, and as a result, we are shutting down operations...

Silence is not golden. Particularly when it comes to a silent DEPRESSION. Talking is cheap, people follow like sheep. Particularly when are told by Biden, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and NY Times economic spinster Paul Krugman says its the best economy in decades. It isn’t. In fact, the US is in a silent depression. Typically, a recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. If we use 2 consecutive quarter of negative GDP growth, we are not in a recession. But …. Challenges include increasing part-time employment in recent months, declining household employment in three of the...

Last fall’s contentious United Auto Workers’ strike changed Ford’s relationship with the union to the point where it will “think carefully” about where it builds future vehicles, Ford’s top executive said Thursday. CEO Jim Farley told the Wolfe Research Global Auto Conference in New York that the company always took pride in its relationship with the UAW, having avoided strikes since the 1970s. But last year, Ford’s highly profitable factory in Louisville, Kentucky, was the first truck plant that the UAW shut down with a strike. Farley said as the company looks at the transition from internal combustion to electric...

Doctors in California who mail abortion pills to patients in other states will be protected from prosecution. Workers will receive more paid sick leave on the heels of a big year for labor. And companies can’t fire employees for using marijuana outside of work. These are among the hundreds of laws that take effect Jan. 1 in the nation’s most populous state. Each year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signs hundreds of laws passed by the state Legislature. Most take effect Jan. 1 the following year. But sometimes lawmakers will delay a law’s effective date for a variety of reasons, including...

Minimum-wage workers in 22 states are going to see more money in their paychecks in the new year. Those increases will affect an estimated 9.9 million workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which estimates that those bumped wages will add up to an additional $6.95 billion in pay.

With 60% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, most U.S. households could use a raise. But an arbitrary, one-size-fits-all increase in the minimum wage imposed by lawmakers in Washington would only exacerbate the struggles of these households. According to a new analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, proposed legislation to increase the federal minimum wage to $17 per hour by 2029, a jump of 134%, would reduce employment and increase prices, interest rates, and federal deficits. Any one of these consequences of the so-called Raise the Wage Act of 2023 would be bad news; all four together would add insult...

President Biden on Thursday issued an executive order implementing his plan to provide civilian federal workers with an average 5.2% pay raise next month. As first proposed in his fiscal 2024 budget plan last March, the increase amounts to a 4.7% across-the-board boost to basic pay, alongside an average 0.5% increase in locality pay. As authorized in the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which Biden is expected to sign this week, military service personnel also will see an average 5.2% pay raise next year. An average 5.2% pay increase marks the largest authorized for federal workers since the Carter...

Story by nluna@insider.com (Nancy Luna) • 5h Two Pizza Hut operators in California are eliminating their in-house delivery services at hundreds of stores, resulting in more than 1,200 driver layoffs, according to federal employment notices reviewed by Business Insider. The layoffs, effective throughout February, affect Pizza Hut delivery drivers across California, including at Sacramento, Palm Springs, and Los Angeles locations. The Pizza Hut franchisees are reducing staff as fast-food chains in the state brace for a new law that increases worker pay to $20 an hour in April. "PacPizza, LLC, operating as Pizza Hut, has made a business decision to...

Twenty-two states are set to increase their minimum wages at the start of 2024. Come January 1, nine states as well as DC will have minimum wages of at least $15, according to an analysis by DailyMail.com. Washington State will introduce a minimum wage of $16.28 an hour, making it the nation's highest. Next is California which will have a minimum wage of $16.00 an hour. There is no state minimum wage law in five Southern states: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, or Tennessee. In those states minimum wages therefore default to the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour -...

Where has all the GDP gone? Not to wages. As expected, Q3 Real GDP was revised upwards to 5.2% annualized. Of course, this shatters JKP’s talking points that Biden inherited a train wreck of an economy from Trump. Q3 2020 Real GDP grew at over 30%. And on a year-over-year (YoY) basis, US real GDP grew at 3.0% in Q3. Unfortunately, real hourly compensation grew at a measly 0.6% YoY. Meanwhile, home prices have hit an all-time high. Too bad real wages are so low.

The majority of U.S. adults are living paycheck to paycheck heading into this holiday season, a report shows. LendingClub’s latest report shows that as of October, 60 percent of adults said they are living paycheck to paycheck. Around 40 percent of consumers consider themselves to be worse off now than in 2022. Even higher earners are struggling to get by, with 42 percent of those making six figures also living check-to-check under President Joe Biden. According to a separate CNBC survey, the number of adults struggling to save between checks is up from 58 percent in March.

The new $20-per-hour minimum wage will force the restaurant to increase prices.

The United Auto Workers (UAW) will end its strike against the Big Three as the labor union has reportedly reached a tentative agreement with General Motors (GM). The UAW had, in the last few days, reached similar deals with Ford and Stellantis. On Monday morning, reports circulated that the UAW had reached a deal with GM. According to details available, the deal mimics many components of the union’s deal with Ford, where base wages will increase 25 percent through April 2028. Likewise, the deal reinstates benefits that GM’s auto workers have not enjoyed since the Great Recession, such as cost-of-living...

Thousands of Canadian auto workers are joining the United Auto Workers (UAW) strike across the United States as American auto workers warn that they face “poverty wages” as a result of President Joe Biden’s rules to mandate electric vehicles (EVs). On Tuesday, about 4,300 Canadians at three Ontario-based General Motors (GM) plants joined the UAW strike, which is also against Ford and Stellantis. GM now faces a production issue, as the plants produce a number of vehicles, including Chevrolet Silverado trucks, one of the automaker’s most profitable. Officials with Unifor, the Canadian labor union equivalent to the UAW, accused GM...

“Two-job Joe” should be Biden’s new nickname for his economy wrecking ball known as Bidenomics. The economic disaster known as Bidenomics (code for wealth transfers to the donor class) can be seen in the following chart. Non-elite households are struggling to cope with higher gasoline, food and house prices (rent) under Bidenomics. As a result, the number of people holding 2 FULL-TIME JOBS hit an all-time high of 447,000 people. Biden spokesperson Karine Jean Pierre is likely to say “See? Bidenomics is working! Not every person is holding 2 full-time jobs to afford that Ford all-electric Lightning F-150 pickup truck!”...

Hey Bartender! The leading employment gain under Bidenomics was … low paying leisure and hospitality jobs at 96k jobs added. The US added a whopping 336K jobs, the highest monthly increase since January. This is surprising given that the ADP report was so weak. And the BLS decided to UPWARD revised past numbers. The BLS revised not only August but also July higher: the change in total nonfarm payroll employment for July was revised up by 79,000, from +157,000 to +236,000, and the change for August was revised up by 40,000, from +187,000 to +227,000. With these revisions, employment in...

Illegal aliens who have been working for cash for years in New York are losing their jobs as newly arrived illegals undercut them and will take day jobs for far less money. Illegals who wait on corners or in big box store parking lots for contractors to drive up and hire them to sling concrete, hang sheetrock, paint, or do other less skilled construction jobs are being run out of the work they have been doing for years after more than 116,000 illegals flooded New York City, the New York Post reported. Thousands of these more established illegals who do...