“It is already an incredibly saturated market…The idea that people are just going to open up an OnlyFans account and start raking in the dough is really misguided.”
The measure granted the delivery services an exemption from the law that would have required providing drivers with protections like minimum wage, overtime, health insurance and reimbursement for expenses.
Indeed, millennials are reported to have $4.3 trillion in debt from consumer loans, such as credit card debt or student loans, that may be thwarting mortgages for home buying and real-estate investment opportunities. That compares to their $10.3 trillion in assets.
California’s beachy lifestyle and creative energy in entertainment, the arts and technology still exert a strong pull — but increasingly, only the wealthy can afford these perks. …
Besides the Capitol Hill chaos last week and the worsening coronavirus outbreak in America, a forecast released by the Centre for Economics and Business Research last month projected that China would overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy in dollar terms in 2028, five years earlier than a year ago.
“Stripping out the wild monthly swings of the coronavirus recession, the rise in layoff activity is historically large and surpasses the increases seen at the height of the Great Recession.”
“Much of the optimism for eventual recovery this year is tied to a successful and widespread vaccination program. One of the most substantial risks to the outlook is a significant delay or disruption…It is difficult to imagine a sustained and robust recovery until the virus no longer interferes with day to day decisionmaking.” …
Yet despite all the wailing, the United States is not so much declining as reinventing itself — and, as usual, doing so from the ground up. America as a whole is not a “failed state” but a place where people move from areas of limited opportunity to those with more. The pandemic has accelerated this process.
“The U.S. coffee shop market is enduring the worst trading environment in living memory. However, with a changing political situation, mass vaccinations and operators rapidly adapting with new trading formats, there is light at the end of the tunnel…We expect trading to begin stabilizing from summer 2021, however it will take a number of years for operators to fully readjust to the ‘new normal’”. …
“They’re stuck and they start to face discrimination…Employers believe they are damaged goods.”
“Economic slack in general and labor slack in particular will stifle any sustained pickup in price pressures. This will yield the Fed an extremely long runway before officials will need to legitimately contemplate reducing accommodation.”
It can tell our cells to make whatever protein we want. That includes the antigens of many other diseases besides Covid-19.
People without full-time jobs do face greater challenges with respect to retirement planning. Lower income is only the most obvious one. …
Layoffs announced by U.S. companies surged 18.9% in December, other data on Thursday showed. Though services industry activity accelerated last month, employment fell. The reports followed on the heels of news on Wednesday that private companies shed workers in December, heightening the risk that the economy lost jobs last month for the first time since April.
“The nightmare scenario that was described in the media in the spring with a vaccine only working a month or two is, I think, out of the window…The antibody decay generated by the vaccine in humans goes down very slowly…We believe there will be protection potentially for a couple of years.” …
The company said it intends to create at least 20,000 affordable housing units in Puget Sound area of Washington State, Virginia’s Arlington and Nashville in Tennessee. A large proportion of Amazon’s investment will be through low-cost loans to preserve or build affordable housing for moderate-to-low income families, the company said.
The ADP National Employment Report on Wednesday showed job losses across all industries last month as the coronavirus outbreak kept many consumers and workers at home. …
The new data highlight the recession’s reach, with long-lasting effects, even after a vaccine is widely available and short-term aid from the federal government supports people’s incomes.
England headed back into lockdown. Mexico City’s hospitals hold more virus patients than ever. Germany reported one of its highest daily death tolls to date Tuesday. South Africa and Brazil are struggling to find space for the dead. Even pandemic success story Thailand is fighting an unexpected wave of infections.
But as the summer came, people with jobs started splurging on loaded-out cars, trucks and SUVs late in the year. That and low interest rates drove sales up and pushed the average auto sales price to a record of just over $38,000 in December, according to J.D. …
It’s already clear that the House and President-elect Joe Biden support putting more money into the hands of Americans…Biden referred to the latest stimulus as a “down payment” for dealing with the pandemic.
At least 11 direct-cash experiments will be in effect this year, from Pittsburgh to Compton. Another 20 mayors have said they may launch such pilots in the future, with several cities taking initial legislative steps to implement them.
The power to narrow the yawning gaps in the world’s largest economy begins and ends in the walls of Congress. Unfortunately, for more than a decade, lawmakers have ceded much of that responsibility to the Fed, an institution that is particularly ill-equipped to address wealth inequality. …
America was severely broken and fundamentally changed during 2020 and it will take a long time to fix it — a job that President-elect Biden is unprepared to handle.
“As we get into January, the feeling is that we’re going to gain momentum to be able to catch up.”
With remote learning moving into the long term, experts say the mental, emotional and academic impacts of that shift are likely to be challenging.
The takeover of factory and service jobs by robots will advance, while white-collar workers get to stay home more. There’ll be more inequality between and within countries. …
In a video address Tuesday night, Trump called the proposed stimulus checks of $600 included in the economic relief bill that Congress passed Monday “ridiculously low” and said the payments should be more than tripled — a proposal that many Democrats immediately lined up behind.
“Consumers’ assessment of current conditions deteriorated sharply in December, as the resurgence of COVID-19 remains a drag on confidence…”
Though initial unemployment claims improved more than anticipated last week, claims are still coming in at historically elevated levels.
The virus presents a compounding threat. Not only are these populations some of the most vulnerable to the coronavirus, but by destroying millions of jobs, the pandemic threatens a wave of evictions that experts warn could lead to a catastrophic housing displacement and even more people living on the streets. …
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