Fittingly for a Labor Day weekend, the soon-to-be-6-year-old granddaughter was talking about her career plans Friday.
She is, after all, in kindergarten and had just helped drop off her four-year-old sister for the start of the year’s preschool. Our “older” granddaughter, apparently having become aware of the fleeting nature of time, was contemplating her life’s work – DoorDash.
There were audible groans from the wife and I. Not that I’m impugning DoorDash delivery people. I read on smallbiztrends.com these people make, on average, $15-$25 an hour.
Of course, they are independent contractors, with all the positives and negatives that come with that, things on the downside such as no healthcare benefits, pensions and the like. We stressed to the child this was more of a second job than a main profession.
And the granddaughter audibled to then wanting to become a kindergarten teacher. After all, her father is a high school math teacher. I held my tongue to avoid telling her to keep picking careers.
Despite the magnificent weather we are enjoying locally, this is not a particularly happy labor day weekend for the economy writ large.
The government statistical distorters were out today with a job report for August, showing a major loss of full-time jobs and a big increase in part-time employment. All those jobs you hear about going unfilled, most of them are not the kind of jobs that can support a household or family.
Oh, they might be grabbed up in other lands. But here in the USA, where the government transfer payment system is alive and well, they are not a viable alternative to life on the dole.
And an increasingly large number of Americans who do work find they need to toil at multiple jobs just to keep up with the inflation brought to you by Brandonomics.
An insightful story on zerohedge.com broke down that these government jobs reports, and we use that term in the most generous way, are long on adjustments such as the birth-death model. It’s not that actual jobs are counted, or births and deaths of jobholders. Instead birth-death is a term for the estimating creation and disappearance of businesses.
A certain amount of this is assumed and then, when the facts actually come in later, the reports are adjusted, usually in a negative way.
According to that story, every single month this year to date jobs have been adjusted lower later in the year, after the purported gains have been reported, headlines have been written, stocks have jumped and media types have sung the praises of the Brandon Regime.
It’s the same phenomenon I’ve written about before, with newspapers sometimes sporting glaring headlines on Page 1 and, if the stories need corrected later, a small one-paragraph item appears on an inside page with a tiny headline and in the text beneath the usual “we regret the error” wording. It just doesn’t seem to balance out the error that commanded the front page earlier.
The point is, this economy is in the vapor stage. The government COVID-19 stimulus handouts have gone through the system like a small animal through a snake, boosting inflation and creating a mirage of demand that is waning now as the excess savings have disappeared.
The low-buck retail outlets such as DollarTree and Dollar General are seeing their earnings hit and, by extension, their stock prices.
Retailers in general are coming in light on earnings, with many using the convenient excuse of the moment, “shrinkage.” That’s the polite euphemism for shoplifting, AKA stealing by the masses who have come to find it’s almost a given there will be no punishment for it even if one is caught.
That the job reporting would be suspect under Brandon’s crew should come as no surprise. His head press flack was out proclaiming our borders have never been more secure, a blatant falsehood that even the lapdog media types couldn’t pass along without noting it isn’t exactly true.
You get the feeling this mountain of deception, not to mention HunterGate, is going to crash in around Brandon, and even his former backers will be quick to feed him to the dogs if only to get this bumbling, stumbling, feeble guy out of the picture for the 2024 presidential election.
By the time that election is held, one can only wonder what sort of statistical legerdemain it is going to require to paint the economy in a positive light.
If the national economy goes sour to the Great Recession level some are predicting, it will come as quite a shock for those people of lesser economic circumstances who now are big on DoorDash to deliver ready made food. Imagine if they find themselves having to cut back and – horrors – prepare food at home to save money.
There goes that segment of the gig economy, along with countless Uber or Lyft drivers, YouTube influencers, and other non-essential service providers.
The warmongers seem to be trying to get this country into yet another direct confrontation, moving on from using Ukraine in a proxy war with Russia. An embattled Brandon Regime would welcome the diversion from domestic failures. Can you say wag the dog?
Stay tuned. This should get very interesting within the next year or so.
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