A new poll from the Pew Foundation finds that young people now have the lowest job approval rates for Joe Biden. Results appear below. Perhaps they are now realizing that they will be paying the bills for the Biden presidency for the rest of their lives. Even worse news for Biden is that 30 percent of blacks and over 40 percent of Hispanics and Asian disapprove of the job he's doing.
The Mises Institute has a great post on how QE has driven up wealth inequality in America. Read the whole thing! And buy Katherine Petrou's book (you don't need to get it from Amazon either--you don't need to deal with oligopolists).
While the QE discussion is framed as one that benefits the wealthy at the expense of everyone else there is another dimension which I have been blogging about. Ultralow interest rates benefit asset owners most of whom are baby boomers and older. On the other hand, low rates hurt asset purchasers who have to buy into overvalued markets or save at rates that are below inflation--negative interest rates. Asset purchasers and savers are mainly young people who0 are looking to accumulate some wealth in the economy. By pulling assets returns forward QE reduces the returns earned by asset purchasers and increases their exposure to downside risk.
The most recent chatter from the Federal Reserve is that they could maybe, possibly start reducing QE by the end of the year. This is way too late. By historical measures assets prices are way overinflated. The Fed's own financial stability report warns of heightened risks from declines in asset prices.
I would rate the possibility that the Fed reduces QE in the next two years as slim to none. Biden's deficits means that Treasury needs to find a lot of places to stuff Uncle Sam's paper. Most of that for the past two years has been put on the Fed's balance sheet. Look for that to continue as spending and deficits continue to swell.
Over the next decade the consequences of the COVID lockdowns will become increasingly apparent. This is especially the of the costs to young people who bore little risk from COVID but suffered mightily from the measures taken to protect the old and infirm from the disease.
The CDC is now warning that the lockdowns have created an epidemic of obesity among young Americans. As if this couldn't have been foreseen from closing the gym and schools and most ridiculous of all, restricting people from going outside in the fresh air.
From the Epoch Times:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said children and teenagers in the United States saw their body mass index (BMI) increase at almost double the normal rate during the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that COVID-19 lockdowns and rules may have contributed to the higher-than-usual weight gain.
According to the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, released Thursday, officials noted that individuals aged 2 to 19 saw their BMI “increase approximately doubled during the pandemic compared to a prepandemic period,” adding that “persons with prepandemic overweight or obesity and younger school-aged children experienced the largest increases.”
The consensus, based on 17 studies using a range of media, including literature passages, photographs, and film clips: Trigger warnings do not alleviate emotional distress. They do not significantly reduce negative affect or minimize intrusive thoughts, two hallmarks of PTSD. Notably, these findings hold for individuals with and without a history of trauma. (For a review of the relevant research, see the 2020 Clinical Psychological Science article “Helping or Harming? The Effect of Trigger Warnings on Individuals With Trauma Histories” by Payton J. Jones, Benjamin W. Bellet, and Richard J. McNally.)We are not aware of a single experimental study that has found significant benefits of using trigger warnings. Looking specifically at trauma survivors, including those with a diagnosis of PTSD, the Jones et al. study found that trigger warnings “were not helpful even when they warned about content that closely matched survivors’ traumas.”What’s more, they found that trigger warnings actually increased the anxiety of individuals with the most severe PTSD, prompting them to “view trauma as more central to their life narrative.” “Trigger warnings,” they concluded, “may be most harmful to the very individuals they were designed to protect.”
A few weeks ago I was a participant in a webinar Harvard University. The speaker warned the audience before presenting a table of statistics. Yes, statistics. If students can't handle look at a table of numbers, yes numbers, America is lost.
The Wall Street Journal has a long piece on low rates of male college enrollment in the United States. Enrollment rates among white men are lower than among other racial groups after accounting for family income.
Men are abandoning higher education in such numbers that they now trail female college students by record levels.
At the close of the 2020-21 academic year, women made up 59.5% of college students, an all-time high, and men 40.5%, according to enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research group. U.S. colleges and universities had 1.5 million fewer students compared with five years ago, and men accounted for 71% of the decline.
This education gap, which holds at both two- and four-year colleges, has been slowly widening for 40 years. The divergence increases at graduation: After six years of college, 65% of women in the U.S. who started a four-year university in 2012 received diplomas by 2018 compared with 59% of men during the same period, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
In the next few years, two women will earn a college degree for every man, if the trend continues, said Douglas Shapiro, executive director of the research center at the National Student Clearinghouse.
That men are not enrolling in college. Most colleges are ultra-woke. Nobody wants to be charged exorbitant tuition rates to be treated as an oppressor for four to six years. In addition, most white collar employers discriminate against men in terms of training and promotional opportunities. That is particularly true of government and quasi-governmental organizations.
The Social Security System is going to run onto the rocks long before young people hit retirement. The new report from the trustees of the Social Security System predicts that the trust fund is going to run out in 2034. That means big tax increases or benefit cuts for the Gen X, the Millennial generation and those generations to come.
To illustrate the magnitude of the 75-year actuarial deficit, consider that for the combined OASI and DI Trust Funds to remain fully solvent throughout the 75-year projection period:
(1) revenue would have to increase by an amount equivalent to an immediate and permanent payroll tax rate increase of 3.36 percentage points to 15.76 percent;
(2) scheduled benefits would have to be reduced by an amount equivalent to an immediate and permanent reduction of about 21 percent applied to all current and future beneficiaries, or about 25 percent if the reductions were applied only to those who become initially eligible for benefits in 2021 or later;
(3) some combination of these approaches would have to be adopted.
Social Security is a better shape than Medicare.
Professor Martin Kulldorf, a Harvard epidemiologist has been making the case against COVID passports and mandates. In a recent post, he notes the discriminatory effects of the mandates against the working class. A similar analysis could be applied to the differences in the effects on the mandates on the young versus the old. Young people have an extremely low morality risk from COVID in the first place but they have suffered far greater harm from the lockdowns and mandates that the old.
Even posh kids are fed up with lockdowns. American colleges have long resembled left-wing madrassas in terms of ideological uniformity so perhaps it's fitting that they adopt the same social practices.
BOSTON (AP) — Hundreds of students at Amherst College in Massachusetts are pushing back against what they call the school’s overly restrictive COVID-19 protocols that include double masking indoors, restrictions on off-campus activities, and no in-person campus dining. ...
Students are allowed to leave campus to take care of personal business and to pick up takeout meals, but should not go to restaurants, cafes, or bars, she said.
More here.
