Hidden in the back of the big omnibus bill that passed just days before Congress broke for the holidays was an important new change in the tax laws. It gives a boost to small and mid-sized businesses, and might help stimulate the economy. The change applies to something called the Section 179 deduction (see179.org and this tax…Read More
@TBPInvictus here: I recently put up some commentary about Mark Perry’s table purporting to show that euro nations without a minimum wage are faring much better – in terms of youth and overall unemployment rates – than those with minimum wages. (Perry subsequently did a fairly extensive update and rewrite to his original post, but…Read More
From Glassdoor, via Bloomberg, the best places to work in America. Note that Google was deposed from the #1 spot by AirBnB this year. Also note these surveys are notoriously unreliable, as they can be personal, with he participants tending towards the more motivated (e.g., very satisfied or very unsatisfied) with specifics that apply to them only….Read More
At RWM, we have been fortunate to be growing our firm rapidly. Over the past quarter alone, we added an institutional division, headed by Ben Carlson, and a unique Educators/403(b) division, led by Tony and Dina Isola. Simultaneously, the firm continues to grow our client base. Since we love to keep our employee to client ratio…Read More
Barring market meltdown at home or abroad, American job creation in November looks strong enough to allow Janet Yellen’s Fed to lift interest rates this month after seven years near zero. The shift…
This article is an excerpt from a previously released Sidoxia Capital Management complementary newsletter (December 1, 2015). Subscribe on the right side of the page for the complete text. It’s that time of year again when an estimated 135 million bargain shoppers set aside personal dignity and topple innocent children in the name of Black Friday holiday weekend, doorbuster […]
@TBPInvictus here The City of Seattle’s minimum wage is now $11, going up to $15 for some employers by 2020. Mark Perry has posted his monthly missive on how April’s minimum wage hike is destroying restaurant employment there: Source: Dissembling Central I’ve pointed out ad nauseum that this larger region is irrelevant to any discussion of the minimum…Read More
From Torsten Sløk: When discussing whether the current uptrend in wages will continue, it is important to look at the group of people who are not working and whether individuals in this group will be coming back to the labor market and hold wages down. The first chart below shows that a significant part of…Read More
A few weeks ago, I described why this economic recovery remainsdoubted and unloved. The improvements have been very unevenly distributed, with wide disparities based on education level, geographic location and industry. Some peoples’ recoveries are far worse than others. However, sometimes we lose sight of the basic facts. The data show the economy is…Read More
@TBPInvictus here In my recent piece on U-6, I mentioned that the labor force participation rate (LFPR) is a favorite target for critics of the economic recovery (and the Obama administration). I mentioned that I’d written about the LFPR quite some time ago, and that Bill McBride had done likewise at Calculated Risk: What is…Read More
@TBPInvictus here. In the wake of last Friday’s October jobs release, conservative economist Stephen Moore (Heritage Foundation, Club for Growth) did a quick hit on Fox Business news with Maria “Should We Believe These Numbers?” Bartiromo (yes, she actually said that). Before getting into the jobs numbers themselves, Moore laments the fact that sometimes, on Wall…Read More
There are five conclusions to draw from this report: 1) We now know that the NAIRU for the US economy is 5.0% 2) The anecdotal evidence we have been hearing throughout the past couple of earnings seasons about a tight labor market can now also be seen in the macro data 3) The modest slowdown…Read More
@TBPInvictus here. Since the economy’s been more or less chugging along like The Little Engine That Could, those with an agenda are having a harder and harder time finding ways to be critical of its performance under Obama. Two of their favorite laments are the Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) and the U-6 Unemployment Rate….Read More
It was October 2nd, the date of the last payroll number that the stock market rebound really got going as after a 30 pt drop in the S&P’s in immediate response to the weak number, it then celebrated with an almost 30 pt rally by the close on the thought the Fed would not be…Read More
@TBPInvictus here. Conservative Seattle talk show host Dori Monson had the (conservative) Washington Policy Center’s (WPC) Erin Shannon on his show to discuss the city’s minimum wage initiative. Hilarity ensued. There can be no doubt that Monson hosted Shannon because of this piece that she’d authored several days ago at WPC’s website. Shannon, sadly, had…Read More
@TBPInvictus here: In a “story” that minimum wage critics couldn’t wait to latch on to, Speedway, a wholly-owned subsidiary of oil giant Marathon Petroleum, announced it would discontinue its Dunkin’ Donuts franchisee operations at about 100 locations. Although the Fortune story mentions nothing about minimum wage being an issue, a Google search using [Speedway “minimum…Read More
This article is an excerpt from a previously released Sidoxia Capital Management complementary newsletter (October 1, 2015). Subscribe on the right side of the page for the complete text. “Anyone can run a hundred meters, it’s the next forty-two thousand and two hundred that count.” Investing is a lot like running a marathon…but it’s not a […]
@TBPInvictus Moe and Larry on Seattle’s minimum wage are now joined by Curly, a fellow by the name of Mike Patton, whose recent screed on the topic can be found here. To demonstrate the deliterious effects of Seattle’s new law, Patton provides us the following chart: (Let’s disregard the fact that what Patton cites as 3.7%…Read More
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