Tag Archives: economic activity

It Doesn’t Pay To Lie To People Who Know The Truth

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On Tuesday, Townhall posted an article about a recent appearance on CNBC by Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. It did not go according to the Secretary’s plan.

The article reports:

Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo needs to stop going on CNBC. It might be time for anyone in the Biden-Harris orbit to drop going on a network that reports on the economy because they know the talking points, the spin for this shoddy economy left to us by this administration. Raimondo tried to sell the Democratic Party line on it, but Squawk Box co-host Joe Kernen wouldn’t allow this propaganda to go unchallenged.

He torched Raimondo, adding that there was no recession under Donald Trump, wages were up, the stock market was booming, and the tariff policy he pushed was continued under Biden. Raimondo was trying to paint a picture of economic chaos, only for Kernen to say that everything is in shambles and wages are down under Biden. There’s also an open border and crime crisis engulfing the nation.

These are facts. They are inconvenient to some Americans, but they are facts.

The article notes:

All Raimondo could say was that’s not true, without citing any facts to push against the reality that Biden’s America is one heaping lawless wasteland with no economic activity. The stock market performance right now isn’t sustainable, with everyone and their mother warning that a reset is coming. The unemployment that Democrats like to attach to Trump was over the hysterics brought about by COVID.

Also, no one in the media wants to ask Raimondo and others what happened to the one million jobs never created in 2023. The revised numbers wiped out that figure, discovering they were never created. It’s another damning economic development that Raimondo seemed unfamiliar with, so what does she do all day?

If voters consider the facts and vote for President Trump, we can regain what we have lost under President Biden.

The Coming Storm

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On Thursday, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about productivity in America.

The article reports:

U.S. nonfarm productivity is a measure of economic activity within the engine of the U.S. economy. The U.S. productivity rate is a measure of how much value is produced by the economy through demand for the products and services, and the labor associated with the creation of those products and services.

I have often used the example of making bread {Go Deep}.  If you are making 10 loaves of bread, there is a set amount of cost associated with each loaf created.  The total cost of each loaf is the total cost to produce the entire batch divided by ten. However, if you have customers demanding 15 loaves of bread, you make more profit on the last five because it doesn’t cost 50% more in material or labor to make 50% more loaves.

Your productivity in the last five loaves is higher because the fixed costs of production (raw materials, energy) barely change, and the labor is only slightly higher.  The opposite is also true.  It costs more per loaf to make fewer than ten loaves because the fixed costs and your labor are pretty consistent, yet the finished value of 7 loaves is less than the finished value of ten.

Anecdotally, it has looked for quite some time that around May of this year the economy peaked, plateaued for a few weeks, and then began a slow downward progression.  Today the Bureau of Labor statistics puts some revised data to that third quarter (July, August and Sept) economic activity {data here}.  The quantified results align with what we sensed was taking place.

The value of all products and services generated increased by 1.8 percent.  However, the labor cost of generating that small amount of added value increased by 7.4 percent.  The difference between those two numbers is a drop in productivity of 5.2% over the entire quarter.

This is the largest quarterly drop in productivity since 1960 !

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It includes additional information on employment, wage growth, and other economic issues. Basically, it’s time to batten down the hatches for the oncoming economic storm.