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It would appear Australia is one step closer to embracing a cashless society after Macquarie Bank announced plans to scrap cash transactions across all of its branches. The fifth-largest bank in Australia revealed they will be dropping cash, cheque, and phone payment services from 2024 with payments to be conducted entirely digitally and all cash withdrawals to take place entirely at ATMs from November 2024. “Between January 2024 and November 2024, we’ll be phasing out our cash and cheque services across all Macquarie banking and wealth management products, including pension and super accounts,” Macquarie Bank said in a statement. “Customers...

The war in Ukraine is so profitable for defense companies in the US and Europe that they're having trouble finding thousands of skilled workers to satisfy a record influx of orders, according to the Wall Street Journal.Ukrainian soldiers fire at Russian positions with a U.S.-supplied howitzer. Photo: LIBKOS/Associated PressPart of the issue is that jobs in the defense industry require niche skills and security clearances - a problem compounded by a flood of defense companies trying to hire at the same time in an industry which has long struggled to meet recruitment goals."Our first priority is really to ramp up...

My late father had a very strong work ethic. He came here with a wife and three kids and worked two jobs to take care of us. Eventually, he got back to banking, his profession in Cuba, but he worked carrying luggage at a hotel for almost four years. My father would be shocked to see people collecting money for doing nothing. Why are so many people walking by those "help wanted" signs rather than inquiring about work? The answer is government benefits, what a friend from Finland once called the "European disease" -- paying people for not working. This...

The 1970s is the ultimate American allegory of inflation. By official measures, it was the worst inflation rout in America’s post-war history, with inflation peaking at 14.6%. It was also a bitter lesson about what happens when policymakers bide their time—for political gain and whatnot. So, naturally, the 1970s is always the reference for the worst—like that naughty kid in school that parents benchmark their own kids against. That comparison is especially tempting this time around. Just like today, the 1970s inflation was a by-product of both extra loose monetary policy (demand-pull inflation) and energy shocks (cost-push inflation). It is,...

Main point of the article:“PSR has [made] engineer’s trains almost impossible to control. Shareholders roll the dice with communities, cities and the environment daily. They don’t live here. Trains have more than doubled in length. Imagine a train 16,400 feet in length weighing 17,500 tons: That is three miles, 560 feet and 35 million pounds. One train. And it is hauling hazmat, tanks of say, chlorine gas, or anhydrous ammonia. Just one tank car alone weighs 131 tons, that is 262,000 pounds. To give an example from history, 262,000 pounds of chlorine gas is approximately two-thirds of what the German...

COVID-19 is not to blame for four-decade-high inflation and an unprecedented labor shortage. Rather, bad government policies, originally enacted as part of a stated attempt to keep people safe from COVID-19, are to blame.Instead of keeping people safe, government policies are doing more harm than good to public health and well-being and restricting the labor supply and artificially increasing demand for goods and services.The current labor shortage is unlike any before in U.S. history, and the opposite of what was expected at the start of the pandemic. But when policymakers establish programs that pay many people more money to be...

I’m afraid I’m just not up to it today so I’m sorry to report that Taco Tuesday has been canceled due to COVID… and the resulting labor shortage and supply chain issues. But as always virtual learning will continue online so be sure to sign in to participate.Raj did get me scheduled for a monoclonal antibody treatment (don’t ask how) on Friday, which seems a long way off right now but I will make it. So carry on, I’m sure there are a few things worth chatting about. I hope to be back in the saddle soon.Posted from: MOTUS A.D.

President Joe Biden’s disastrous economic agenda has set the U.S. economy on a collision course, so what does CNN do? The network pinned blame on older Americans. CNN released a ridiculous story headlined, “The data that shows Boomers are to blame for the labor shortage.” The story suggested that “Early retirement — whether forced by the pandemic or made possible otherwise — is having a huge impact on the labor market. And data show that retiring boomers, far more than ‘lazy’ millennials, are the biggest force behind the labor shortage.” But as Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen pointed out Oct....

We landed at the Rocky Mountain bunker yesterday afternoon. We were blessed with 3 days of fair skies and no weather events other than the usual wind gusts of 60 mph going over the Continental Divide between Cheyenne and Rawlins WY. I can report a few things from the road: gas is expensive everywhere, even in Wyoming where it was once a fraction of the price in other states. As the bargain prices began to disappear a few years back I can only assume their legislature passed a higher gas tax. It’s hard to believe there is a shortage of...

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki blamed corporate greed on Tuesday when asked about the cause of soaring meat prices in the United States. The price index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs has swelled 12.8% over the past year. For certain products, the increase is even more pronounced. The price of beef has soared in price 20.9% since December 2020, according to Department of Labor data. Psaki passed the blame onto “meat conglomerates” that are taking advantage of the pandemic to gouge consumers at the grocery aisle. Psaki’s answer echoed arguments put forward by Brian Deese, director of the...

On Sunday we noted that hospitals in four states have called in the National Guard to help alleviate a severe healthcare worker shortage caused by mass firings of those who refuse to comply with vaccine mandates.Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that some of the largest US hospital systems have dropped vaccine mandates for workers amid soaring labor costs and struggles retaining enough nurses, technicians, 'and even janitors' to handle higher hospitalization rates due to the Delta variant.According to hospital execs, public health authorities and nursing groups, pre-pandemic shortages of workers, including nurses, have been compounded by burnout, as well...

Just imagine, with today’s labor shortage, how difficult it’s going to be to replace this guy: Skating waiter, Grand Hotel St. Moritz – photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1932Table 5 will have another round!Honestly, have you any idea how hard it is to hire a good bartender/waiter these days?Let alone one who can perform double axels, sit spins and death spirals? Good luck with that.Posted from: MOTUS A.D.

* Businesses across the US say they are struggling to find employees, especially for hourly work. * Joey Holz decided to test their claims, submitting two applications a day in September. * Holz got one interview, and his summary of the experiment went viral on multiple platforms. Joey Holz recalled first hearing complaints about a labor shortage last year when he called to donate convalescent plasma at a clinic near Fort Myers, Florida. "The guy went on this rant about how he can't find help and he can't keep anybody in his medical facility because they all quit over the...

Let's investigate the costs of "free" college education with a look at demographics and incentives to not work.Population Change in Last 5, 10, 15 YearsPopulation Change Details In the last 5 years, the total noninstitutional population age 16 and over rose by 7.68 million. The population change of those aged 65 and older rose by 8.24 million, over 100% of the total increase.The population change of those aged 60-64 rose by 1.39 millionThe 60+ total is 9.63 million.The population of the prime-age workers, those aged 25-54 rose by a mere 219,000.Civilian Noninstitutional Population by Age The above chart highlights the...

Costco confirmed it will start limiting purchases on essential household products for what has become a perfect storm of supply chain delays for many retailers. ...Costco's current supply chain and inflationary pressures, which include port delays, higher labor and freight costs, and shortages on everything from shipping containers, trucks, and drivers to various components, raw materials, and ingredients, have caused most of its general items to sell out within two weeks. ...

The unprecedented employment crisis that we are watching unfold around the globe is so bizarre that it could have been pulled straight out of an episode of the Twilight Zone. For the very first time in recorded history, there is an extremely severe shortage of workers in nations all over the planet. When this shortage first started to emerge earlier this year, I thought that it was very strange, because 2020 had been a year when we had seen unemployment absolutely skyrocket in the U.S. and other western nations.In fact, somewhere around 70 million Americans filed claims for unemployment benefits...

The new federal vaccine requirement announced by President Joe Biden has created another worry for large businesses: With help wanted signs up almost everywhere, some could lose valuable employees or won’t be able to find new ones. Biden announced sweeping new orders Thursday that will require employers with more than 100 workers to mandate vaccinations against COVID-19 or offer weekly testing. The new rules could affect as many as 100 million Americans, although it’s not clear how many of those people are currently unvaccinated.

B of A: “Transitory” Inflation And Supply Chain Imbalances Are Hitting Autos Hardest The auto industry is already stuck between a rock and a hard place, as dealers struggle to get production up to speed despite an ongoing semiconductor chip shortage that has hamstrung production for some of the world’s biggest manufacturers. At the same time, the U.S. is letting the inflation genie quietly begin to slip out of the bottle. As rising prices take hold amidst supply chain imbalances, focus has turned to automobiles. With new car inventory crunched due to production constraints, used car prices have skyrocketed, as...

If you’re tired of binge-watching Netflix, there are likely a few restaurants in your neighborhood who would love to hire you. A job might help relieve the boredom. On the other hand, why work when one can just be one of the more than 6 million former workers now collecting “pandemic unemployment insurance”? Those millions are in addition to the 3.6 million former workers collecting ordinary unemployment insurance. For many workers, these benefits now total $300 per week. In March, President Biden extended the program until September. And then there are the many millions more who have recently received a...

The American job market remains tight, and banks are scrambling to find people who want to work at their branches. That’s why Bank of America is raising its minimum wage to $20 an hour in 2020 — a year earlier than expected. Bank of America said Monday it would raise its minimum wage for its more than 208,000 US employees by the end of the first quarter of 2020. It previously planned to boost paychecks to $20 an hour by 2021, and made a down payment on that commitment by hiking wages to $17 an hour on May 1, 2019.