Former U.S. President Barack Obama delivers his speech during the 4th Congress of Indonesian Diaspora Network in Jakarta, Indonesia, Saturday, July 1, 2017. (Photo: AP)
Former President Barack Obama has conducted a robocall urging voters in Alabama to “get out and vote” for Democrat Doug Jones on Tuesday. The call is a last ditch effort to stop Judge Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, and increase what Democrats fear could be depressed black turnout.
While the former president never carried the state of Alabama, CNN reported his message is “intended to specifically reach black voters whose turnout is critical for Democratic candidate Jones.”
“Doug Jones is a fighter for equality, for progress,” Mr. Obama says in the robocall. “Doug will be our champion for justice. So get out and vote, Alabama.”
The call comes as President Donald Trump urged supporters to vote for Judge Moore, citing his needed vote in the U.S. Senate to pass the MAGA agenda. This weekend, several big name black lawmakers rallied for Mr. Jone, including New Jersey Senator Cory Booker.
“The decision to have Mr. Obama record a robocall was risky and very telling,” Rich Baris, PPD’s editor and director of Big Data Poll said. “Making such a risky decision is a pretty clear indication that they are nowhere near the 25% turnout among blacks Mr. Jones will need if he even hopes to stand a chance to pull off an upset.”
Far-left liberal Hollywood celebrities Rosie O’Donnell and Alyssa Milano, two of Tinseltown’s top anti-Trump critics, have tweeted their support for Mr. Jones.
Polling for the special election in Alabama to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been all over the map. The final Emerson College Poll released Monday finds Moore leading by 9 points; the Fox News Poll has Jones up by 10; and CBS News has Moore ahead by 6 points.
“This poll is now outside the margin of error. We’re 95% confident Moore will win on Election Day,” Emerson College Polling Director Spencer Kimball said. “We’re more confident that Moore will win by 15 points let’s say than Jones actually pulling off the upset.”
Moore has nearly a 5-point lead on the Real Clear Politics (RCP) average of polls.
Judge Roy Moore, left, and his wife Kayla Moore, right, celebrate his primary victory over incumbent Senator Luther Strange.
DEVELOPING: Republican Judge Roy Moore now leads Democrat Doug Jones by a significant margin in the final Alabama Senate poll by Emerson College. President Donald Trump endorsed the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Alabama, citing the Democrats liberal positions as a threat to his voters’ agenda items.
Judge Moore now leads Jones 53% to 44%, a 6 point bump from the previous Emerson College poll last week. Since their first general election poll conducted before the second round of primary voting, Judge Moore’s lead slipped from more than 20 points to 10 points, and again to 6 points on November 26. His lead was down to 3 points last week on December 3, but has now grown.
President Trump’s endorsement no doubt helped, as he is liked far more than either candidate in the deeply conservative state. The president holds a 55%/40% favorable/unfavorable rating juxtaposed to Judge Moore at 45%/45% and Mr. Jones at 43%/45%.
However, Judge Moore’s favorability also rebounded after Beverly Young Nelson, who made the most serious allegation against him, admitted to “annotating” key parts of the yearbook provided as evidence of their relationship. The Moore campaign had been pressing her attorney Gloria Allred to submit the yearbook to an independent analysis.
She repeatedly refused to do so.
Leigh Corfman, who claimed in the first report that Judge Moore attempted to molest her as a 14-year-old child, told a narrative and story that is directly contradicted by court records.
“This poll is now outside the margin of error. We’re 95% confident Moore will win on Election Day,” Emerson College Polling Director Spencer Kimball said. “We’re more confident that Moore will win by 15 points let’s say than Jones actually pulling off the upset.”
Professor Kimball specifically cited the movement toward Judge Moore in the Fifth District, which had been tipping to Mr. Jones. But it’s now more evenly split and trending from purple to red.
“He’ll [Jones] will carry strongly the Seventh District,” Kimball added. “But outside of those two areas it’s difficult to find a pathway for him to pull off the upset tomorrow night.”
Listen to Emerson College Polling Director Spencer Kimball
Police block off a sidewalk while responding to a report of an explosion near Times Square on Monday, Dec. 11, 2017, in New York. (Photo: AP)
Islamic State (ISIS) chatter spiked before the attack near New York City’s Port Authority on Monday, including references to Times Square, law enforcement sources tell People’s Pundit Daily (PPD).
A suspect is in custody after an explosion near the Port Authority bus terminal during Monday morning’s rush hour. The suspected bomber was a 27-year-old man from Brooklyn, according to law enforcement sources.
The New York Police Department (NYPD) confirmed 4 people all had non-life threatening injuries, including the bomber. Police also said the device, believed to be a pipe bomb, exploded inside the New York City subway in an underground passageway between Seventh and Eighth Avenues on 42nd Street.
The explosion, which was also believed to be premature, filled the passageway with smoke as it was crowded with morning commuters.
“Let’s be clear. This was an attempted terror attack,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a press conference, though he contradicted what law enforcement sources tell PPD. “There is no specific threat.”
However, jihadis recently were passing around an image of Santa Claus with a pipe bomb at Times Square, a graphic meant to inspire so-called lone wolf attacks.
Bill Bratton, the former NYPD commissioner, said the bomber was an “ISIS-inspired Bangladeshi” who had been in the country for roughly 7 years.
“The reality is this is New York. We are a target,” Governor Andrew Cuomo said. “We have the Statue of Liberty in our harbor and that makes us an international target.”
Security guards walk past the entrance to CNN headquarters in Atlanta. (Photo: AP)
It’s been another bad week for the leftwing cable news outlet CNN. The network and website reported an “exclusive” alleging the Trump campaign, including President Donald Trump himself, received WikiLeaks information from an unknown sender before it was public on September 4, 2016.
The story collapsed within hours, even at the hands of the fellow liberal Washington Post. The email was in fact sent on September 14 and linked to scores of documents that WikiLeaks had already publicly released a day earlier.
The Post reported that the emailed information in question was already public before being emailed to the campaign. CNN also assumed the email sender, Michael J. Erickson, who offered a decryption key and access, worked for WikiLeaks and, by extension, the Russians.
He was just a person from the public who felt compelled to give the Trump campaign his suggestion — to look at publicly available emails.
If WaPo is right on the date of the email and @rebeccaballhaus is right on its contents – and CNN is wrong – this is a bigger error than the Brian Ross report. https://t.co/cnh2pIMiqy
Mr. Krakauer was referring to the last story covered by Fake News Watch. Last Friday, ABC News’ Brian Ross reported that former national security advisor Michael Flynn was prepared to testify that President Trump, directed him to contact Russian officials while still a candidate. The markets cratered before the network issued a “clarification.”
Ross, who is known for his long history of fake news before fake news was cool, basically got a vacation over the holiday as punishment.
The Washington Post of course was right and, in reality, was only confirming what numerous people on Twitter began to point out immediately. But CNN refused to own up to the mistake, blaming sources and still taking heavy fire from journalists.
“CNN’s initial reporting of the date on an email sent to members of the Trump campaign about Wikileaks documents, which was confirmed by two sources to CNN, was incorrect,” CNN said in a statement. “We have updated our story to include the correct date, and present the proper context for the timing of email.”
CNN still refuses to address the huge, glaring obvious question: how did "multiple sources" all innocently get the same date on the same email wrong? And how/why did this also happen to MSNBC? What's the explanation for that?? https://t.co/izlKdpeHbRpic.twitter.com/AsZaupZ3Ph
Does anyone think for one second that there would be no action if someone at CNN did something so flagrantly wrong to a Democrat? #witchhunthttps://t.co/bZBjqCEW0p
No one will be held responsible, CNN said in a statement.
This is far from the first fake news story meant to push the “Trump-Russia collusion” narrative at CNN. As PPD’s editor-in-chief pointed out, the collapse of the story wasn’t even the only stain on a CNN article this week.
Another really bad day for @CNN. This latest #FakeNews story demonstrates, at best, research laziness and/or incompetence. But at least it helps overshadow "appalling defense" of the yearbook blunder by their editor @CillizzaCNN. https://t.co/Ody6FWcGux
Beverly Young Nelson, who leveled the most serious sexual misconduct charge against Judge Roy Moore, admitted to forging portions of the yearbook. ABC News coached her through an interview, which attempted to rebrand the admission as an “annotation” rather than flat-out forgery.
CNN editor Chris Cillizza authored an article that demeaned those who questioned the validity of the yearbook inscription Ms. Nelson put forward as evidence of her relationship with Judge Moore, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Alabama.
PPD readers may remember Cillizza as previously writing for “The Fix” at The Washington Post. In mid-September 2014, he published an “analysis” of the 2014 midterm elections, in which he declared the Democrats were favored to hold control of the U.S. Senate.
I wrote yesterday about “the world’s demographic problem,” citing a new study about the fiscal implications of aging populations. The report was produced by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which is not my favorite international bureaucracy when they make policy recommendations, but I’ll be the first to admit that the bureaucrats produce some useful statistics and interesting reports.
To be succinct, the basic message of the study is that developed nations (the U.S., Europe, Asia, etc) face a demographic nightmare of increased longevity and falling birthrates.
It’s good that people are living longer, of course, and there’s nothing wrong with people choosing to have fewer kids. But since most governments maintain tax-and-transfer entitlement programs, the OECD report basically warns that those demographic changes have some very grim fiscal implications. In other words, the world’s demographic shift is actually a policy problem.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is that there’s a policy solution.
The aforementioned OECD study (which can be accessed here) is a survey of how retirement income is provided in key nations. So in addition to grim information about fiscally unstable government-run retirement systems we looked at yesterday, the report also has data about the nations that rely – at least to some degree – on private savings.
Let’s start with this helpful flowchart in the report. It illustrates that there are three approaches for the provision of retirement income. The first tier is government-run programs such as the U.S. Social Security system and the third tier is voluntary savings such as IRAs and 401(k)s in America.
For today’s discussion, let’s focus on the second tier. These are the systems that are “funded” with mandatory savings.
And I highlighted (in green) the two private options. In a “defined contribution” system, retirement income is determined by how much is saved and how well it is invested. Workers accumulate a big nest egg and then choose how to spend the money when retired. In a “defined benefit” system, workers are promised a pre-determined level of retirement income and the managers of their pension funds are expected to ensure that enough money will be available.
Yes, public options based on real savings do exist. And they presumably are better than the pay-as-you-go, tax-and-transfer schemes found in the first tier. But it’s also the case that these systems (such as pension funds for state and local bureaucrats) generally don’t work very well.
So now let’s look at another table from the OECD report. It shows nations that have some degree of mandatory private retirement savings, either defined contribution (highlighted in red) or defined benefit (highlighted in yellow). As you can see, there actually are a lot of “privatized” systems.
I’ve actually written about many of these systems, especially the ones in Australia and Chile.
And I have very recent columns on the Dutch and Swiss systems.
A common theme in these columns is that government-run systems are very risky because workers are at the mercy of politicians, who are great at making extravagant promises. But huge unfunded liabilities show that they’re not very good at delivering on those promises.
Nations with funded systems, by contrast, accumulate private savings. That’s not only good for workers, but it’s very beneficial for national economies.
This table from the OECD report shows that Americans and Canadians have managed to save a lot of money, but all of the other nations with pension assets of more than 100 percent of GDP have mandatory funded systems.
When I talk about how the United States would benefit by moving to a private retirement system, people sometimes say it sounds too good to be true.
That’s obviously not the case since other nations have very successful private systems. But there is a catch, as I acknowledged in 2015.
…a big challenge for real Social Security reform is the “transition cost” of financing promised benefits to current retirees and older workers when younger workers are allowed to shift their payroll taxes to personal accounts. Dealing with this challenge presumably means more borrowing over the next few decades.
The appropriate analogy is that shifting to private retirement accounts for younger workers (while protecting current retirees and older workers) would be like refinancing a mortgage. The short-run costs might be higher, but that temporary burden is overwhelmed by the long-run savings. That’s a good deal, at least if the goal is fiscal stability and secure retirement.
On November 14, we considered the economic challenges of nations escaping communist tyranny.
On November 19, we analyzed the ongoing horror of North Korea’s brutal regime.
Today we’re going to wrap up the series with a look at Che Guevera and contemplate how a mass-murdering racist and homophobe became a cultural icon.
Jay Nordlinger looks at the legacy of Guevera in a column for National Review.
Danilo Maldonado Machado, a.k.a. El Sexto, the Cuban street artist and human-rights activist, who is in and out of prison. I interviewed him at the Oslo Freedom Forum. …At the end of our interview, I asked him a standard question: “What do you wish people could know?” And you know what he said? You know what were the first words out of his mouth? “Che Guevara was a murderer. He wasn’t a hero.” …“Maldonado says he can excuse Cubans who wear Che shirts: They have been propagandized all their lives. He has a much harder time excusing men and women from free societies.”
Writing for the Washington Examiner, Tom Rogan has a good summary of Guevera’s monstrous life.
Che Guevara was definitely evil, almost certainly a moron, and possibly also a psychopath. …Acting as Castro’s Treasury Secretary, Guevara ignored the failures and associated moral hardships his collectivist policies imposed. …Guevara may have been a psychopath. …for ideological zealots like Guevara, purifying the Earth of non-believers is an act of the highest moral order. In Guevara’s blood lust, we see his mental union with the propaganda offerings of ISIS… Guevara was also intellectually defective to the point of being a moron. …Guevara’s fervent obstinance planted the roots of far-left delusion that prevail today. It doesn’t matter that every population that tries out capitalism…does better than under communism. …He might have murdered hundreds of political prisoners…the true metaphor of Guevara’s cigar smoking face is not one of moral courage, insurgent glory, and resolute intellect, but of a useful idiot for totalitarian propaganda.
Even the establishment understands that there’s something wrong about Che idolatry, as illustrated by this Economist column.
In death Che, with his flowing hair and beret, has become one of the world’s favourite revolutionary icons. His fans span the globe. …The ascetic, asthmatic Argentine doctor first fought alongside Fidel Castro in the mountains of Cuba’s Sierra Maestra. After the Cuban revolution had imposed communism on the island, Guevara left to try to “liberate” first Congo and then Bolivia. Those who idolise Che do so because they see him as an idealist who laid down his life for a cause. An aura of Christian sacrifice surrounds him. …In Guevara’s view, equality was to be achieved by levelling down. As minister of industries in Cuba, he wanted to expropriate every farm and shop. …the cost of miserable wages, the denial of opportunity and the brutal suppression of dissent. In Venezuela’s pastiche of the Cuban revolution, installed by the late Hugo Chávez, another Che fan, the masses have been impoverished while insiders have become fabulously and corruptly rich. …Not only does democracy offer the best hope of progress for the masses, it also protects the left against its own mistakes. It is long past time to bury Che and find a better icon.
Let’s go back in time and look at excerpts from a 2004 Slate column.
The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. …Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution’s first firing squads. He founded Cuba’s “labor camp” system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che’s imagination. … “Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become …”— and so on. …The present-day cult of Che—the T-shirts, the bars, the posters—has succeeded in obscuring this dreadful reality. …Che was an enemy of freedom, and yet he has been erected into a symbol of freedom. He helped establish an unjust social system in Cuba and has been erected into a symbol of social justice. He stood for the ancient rigidities of Latin-American thought, in a Marxist-Leninist version… I wonder if people who stand up to cheer a hagiography of Che Guevara…will ever give a damn about the oppressed people of Cuba—will ever lift a finger on behalf of the Cuban liberals and dissidents.
Ernesto Guevara, better known as “Che,” is the ultimate poster boy of “revolutionary chic,” a quintessential icon of mass culture. …the flesh and blood “Che” exhibited a deep contempt for the sanctity of human life. He knew from his communist self-education that terror would be a necessary component of revolutionary order. …from day one of the new revolutionary government, January 1, 1959, he and the Castro brothers set out to take control in Cuba by sheer terror through mass killings. …From January 1 to 3, 1959, Che executed, or left orders to execute, 25 people in Santa Clara. On January 3, Fidel Castro appointed him commander of La Cabaña prison in Havana and supreme judge of the revolutionary tribunals. In the few months Che was in charge of La Cabaña (from January 4 to November 26, 1959), 73 people are believed to have been executed without basic legal guarantees; the vast majority was killed immediately after kangaroo summary trials that often lasted minutes and presented no evidence of the alleged crimes of the accused. …Che spoke frankly to the international community about the revolutionary government’s killings in Cuba. At the United Nations in New York on December 11, 1964, he made his famous statement: “”Fusilamientos” (executions by firing squad), yes, we have executed, we execute, and will continue executing while necessary.”
Here’s some more background on Guevara from Politifact, including his murder of fellow Cubans and his racist attitude.
Ernesto “Ché” Guevara was a Latin American guerrilla leader and Marxist revolutionary, and a major figure in the Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro in the late 1950s. Although hailed in some circles as a legendary icon of rebellion, the Argentine-born doctor is also reviled by many Cubans for ruthlessly ordering the execution of more than 150 prisoners in Cuba without a fair trial. …But was he a racist? …The most compelling evidence was from The Motorcycle Diaries, a book based on diaries he kept while traveling through Latin America in the early 1950s. ” …their different ways of approaching life separate them completely: The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations.”
This story, by the way, attempts to exonerate Guevara even though it acknowledges his racist pedigree.
Guevara’s words in The Motorcycle Diaries were highly critical of the blacks he came across in that Caracas neighborhood, and he placed them beneath Europeans. The experts we consulted said the remarks are real and would not have been unusual coming from a 24-year-old from Argentina at the time. …We rate this claim Mostly False.
So he was racist, but it’s “Mostly False” to say he was racist because he was a product of his times.
Does anyone think Politifact would say that slaveowners in the 1840s weren’t really racist because they were products of their times? Likewise, who thinks defenders of the Jim Crow laws in the 1960s would get a free pass since they were products of their times?
For some bizarre reason, leftists (and lots of vacuous college kids and brainless celebrities) want to excuse – or even justify – Guevara’s unsavory life.
Indeed, notwithstanding a record of cruelty and hate, Che Guevara has a big contingent of fanboys.
An Post have issued a one euro stamp featuring the face of Che Guevara, a leading figure in the Cuban Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. The stamp, which features a famous image of Guevara by Dublin artist Jim Fitzpatrick, commemorates the 50th anniversary of the revolutionary’s death on October 9, 1967. …Designed by Red&Grey, the stamp is based on Mr Fitzpatrick’s artwork, which appears on t-shirts, posters, badges and clothing worldwide and is now rated among the world’s top 10 most iconic images.
I’m assuming Ireland’s vacuous president somehow played a role in the decision to honor Guevera.
In any event, I can’t wait to see the new stamps for Hitler, Mao, and Stalin that the Irish postal service doubtlessly is preparing.
The United Nations (UN) also is part of the Che death cult.
With an impeccable instinct for venerating murderous thugs, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has now added to its Memory of the World Register the writings of Cuba’s Ernesto “Che” Guevara. That means that the documents generated by Che during his bloody career will now be treated as historical treasures, protected and cared for with the help of UNESCO. What’s next? The teachings of Stalin and Pol Pot? …Che’s works were nominated for UNESCO’s special attentions by Cuba and Bolivia, and to be added to the UNESCO Register the nomination had to be endorsed by UNESCO’s director-general, Irina Bokova. You might suppose that as a former Bulgarian government functionary, from the days when Bulgaria orbited the Soviet Union, Bokova would be aware of the horrors behind Che’s radical “cool.” But Bokova appears to suffer from a longstanding infatuation with Cuba’s repressive regime. …one might wish for a UN cultural organization endowed with at least some hint of a moral compass.
Let’s look at a couple of videos.
We’ll start with Johan Norberg’s succinct summary of Guevara.
Reason has a video about the Che fetish, with a special focus on Hollywood’s moral bankruptcy.
Let’s close on an uplifting note.
Some people are waking up on the issue, as noted in a report from the Economist.
Che Guevara was born in Rosario, then Argentina’s second-largest city… A red banner marks the posh apartment block where he was born. A four-metre-high (13-foot) bronze statue stands in Che Guevara Square. The city council finances CELChe, a centre devoted to the study of his life, and celebrates “Che week” around his birthday in June. …Not everyone in Rosario thinks the bereted revolutionary…deserves such reverence. Fundación Bases, a liberal think-tank based in the city, has launched a petition to persuade the city council to remove the monuments. The martyr was himself a killer, says Franco Martín López, the institute’s director. Guevara was second-in-command to Fidel Castro, whose Cuban revolution killed more than 10,000 people. …Under the motto “a murderer doesn’t deserve state tributes”, Mr López’s foundation has produced videos to educate Argentines, and rosarinos in particular. One shows a clip of Guevara promising to “continue the firing squads for as long as necessary” in a speech to the UN General Assembly in 1964. In another, a narrator reads out the accusatory suicide note of Reinaldo Arenas, a gay novelist who died in 1990 after suffering decades of persecution by Cuba’s government. …Norberto Galiotti, the cigar-smoking secretary of Rosario’s Communist Party, …suspects liberals are envious of Che’s posthumous charisma. “You don’t see many kids walking around with Margaret Thatcher T-shirts,” he observes.
I rarely agree with communists, but it is sad that kids are more likely to idolize Guevara than a great leader like Margaret Thatcher.
By the way, my disdain for Che and the Cuban dictatorship does not mean I support a trade embargo by the United States.
Such a policy may have been appropriate when the Soviet Union still existed and was using Cuba as a proxy regime. But that’s no longer the case.
Yes, the current regime in Cuba is still deplorable. It impoverishes and oppresses its own people. But that description applies to a lot of nations that have normal economic relations with the United States. If we allow trade and travel with China, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia, the same should be true for Cuba.
The bottom line is that we can have economic relations with unsavory nations. Even with nations that produce evil people like Che Guevara.
I gave a speech last night at the University of Texas Arlington on the topic of “Is America turning into Greece? How the growth of government and debt risk creating a dismal future for young Americans.”
Not a very succinct title, I realize, but I wanted to warn students that they are the ones who will suffer if today’s politicians fail to enact genuine entitlement reform. And since I told them I wasn’t expecting reform with President Donald Trump in the White House, my message was rather gloomy.
My only good news is that I told students that nations such as Italy, Japan, and France likely would suffer fiscal crises before the you-know-what hit the fan in America.
Though it would have been better if my speech was today. I could have cited this Robert Samuelson column from the Washington Post.
No one can say we weren’t warned. For years, scholars of all shapes and sizes — demographers, economists, political scientists — have cautioned that the populations of most advanced countries are gradually getting older, with dramatic consequences for economics and politics. But we haven’t taken heed by preparing for an unavoidable future. The “we” refers not just to the United States but to virtually all advanced societies. In fact, America’s aging, though substantial, is relatively modest compared with that of many European countries and Japan. …The problem is simple. Low birth rates and increasing life expectancies result in aging populations. Since 1970, average life expectancy at age 60 in OECD countries has risen from 18 years to 23.4 years; by 2050, it’s forecast to increase to 27.9 years — that is, to nearly 90. The costs of Social Security and pensions will explode. …The implication: Unless retirement ages are raised sharply or benefits are cut deeply, more and more of the income of the working-age population will be siphoned off through higher taxes or cuts in other government spending to support retirees.
Here’s a table from the article that shows the radical erosion in the age-dependency ratio for selected nations. To give you an idea what the numbers mean, a ratio of 33 (Greece today) means that each worker is supporting one-third of a retiree while a ratio of 73 (Greece in 2050) means that each worker is supporting three-fourths of a retiree.
The Greek numbers are grim, of course, and Italy and Japan are also in very bad shape.
And it’s worth noting that the ratio in China will rapidly deteriorate.
An article in New Scientist makes a similar observation about dramatic demographic change.
Could the population bomb be about to go off in the most unexpected way? Rather than a Malthusian meltdown, could we instead be on the verge of a demographic implosion? To find out how and why, go to Japan, where a recent survey found that people are giving up on sex. Despite a life expectancy of 85 and rising, the number of Japanese is falling thanks to a fertility rate of just 1.4 children per woman… Half the world’s nations have fertility rates below the replacement level of just over two children per woman. Countries across Europe and the Far East are teetering on a demographic cliff, with rates below 1.5. On recent trends, Germany and Italy could see their populations halve within the next 60 years.
The most sobering information is contained in a new report from my “friends” at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). I’m definitely not a fan of the OECD’s policy work, but it does a good job of collecting apples-to-apples data.
Let’s start with the OECD’s calculations of how the old-age dependency ratio will change in various nations.
It’s not good to have a very tall black line in Figure 1.1, so we can confirm the bad news about Italy, Greece, and Japan. But note that Spain, Portugal, and South Korea also face a grim future. Simply stated, tomorrow’s workers will face an enormous burden.
There are two reasons for these grim numbers.
First, we’re living longer. That’s good news for us, but it’s bad news for the sustainability of tax-and-transfer entitlement programs (i.e., this partially explains why Social Security in the U.S. has a $44 trillion shortfall).
This chart shows that increasing longevity is a big reason why both men and women are spending more years in retirement (though there’s a glimmer of good news since the data shows that we’re no longer retiring at ever-younger ages).
In addition to living longer, we’re also having fewer kids.
This is a big deal because more babies today mean more future taxpayers.
But you can see from this table that birthrates have declined in America, as well as in other developed nations (keep in mind that a fertility rate of 2.1 is needed to keep the native-born population from shrinking).
Even more shocking, check out the demographic data for Japan and South Korea. Birth rates in Japan already had fallen by 1960 and they’re even lower today. But the numbers for South Korea are staggering.
Wow.
I guess it’s now easy to understand this story from South Korea.
Students at two South Korean universities are being offering courses that make it mandatory for them to date their classmates as the country battles to reverse one of the lowest birth rates in the world. Seoul’s Dongguk and Kyung Hee universities say the courses on dating, sex, love and relationships target a generation which is shunning traditional family lives. …She said: ”Korea’s fall in population has made dating and marriage important but young Koreans are too busy these days and clumsy in making new acquaintances.” And as part of the course, students have to date three classmates for a month… Seoul has spent about £50 billion trying to boost the birth rate.
I don’t know what’s the strangest part of the article, the part about having to date your classmates as part of homework (do you get extra credit if the girl gets pregnant?!?) or the part about the government squandering an astounding 50 billion pounds (about 67 billion dollars) on trying to encourage kids
Or this story from Japan that brings back painful memories of high school.
Talk about a shrinking population. A survey of Japanese people aged 18 to 34 found that almost 70 percent of unmarried men and 60 percent of unmarried women are not in a relationship. Moreover, many of them have never got close and cuddly. Around 42 percent of the men and 44.2 percent of the women admitted they were virgins. The government won’t be pleased that sexlessness is becoming as Japanese as sumo and sake. The administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has talked up boosting the birthrate through support for child care, but until the nation bones up on bedroom gymnastics there’ll be no medals to hand out. …Boosting the birthrate is one of the coveted goals of the Abe administration, which has declared it will raise the fertility rate from the current 1.4 to 1.8 by 2025 or so.
Former Alabama Chief Justice and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Roy Moore, left, and Beverly Young Nelson, center, with Gloria Allred, right.
Beverly Young Nelson, who made the most serious allegation against Judge Roy Moore, admitted to forging key parts of the yearbook provided as evidence of their relationship. Flanked by attorney Gloria Allred, Ms. Nelson accused the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Alabama of sexually assaulting her when she was a 16 year-old waitress in Alabama.
In a shameful and coached interview with ABC News reporter Tom Llamas, Ms. Nelson was allowed to explain away the forgery as “notes” added by her to a legitimate signature.
As People’s Pundit Daily (PPD) reported, the inscription was clearly written in two different inks and appeared to be two different sets of handwriting. However, no expert would go on the record without physically analyzing the yearbook, which the Moore campaign called on Allred to agree to do.
She repeatedly refused. And now we know why.
“Nelson admits she did make notes to the inscription,” ABC News’ Llamas says in his narration. “But the message was all Roy Moore.”
“Beverly, he signed your yearbook,” he asked Nelson.
“He did sign it,” she responds.
“And you made some notes underneath,” he coaches in a follow-up.
“Yes,” Nelson replies.
UPDATE: Mark Songer, a former FBI agent and handwriting expert touted by The Washington Post, is now also calling on Allred to submit the yearbook to examination. The discrepancies at least beginning with the last name are at issue, whereas, Ms. Nelson claims she only “annotated” the date and location-specific information. The photo below is a closer image than the image previously given to and circulated by the media.
Yearbook produced by Beverly Young Nelson, who alleges the inscription was made by Judge Roy Moore in 1977.
“I think it is only fair,” he said. “It shouldn’t be hidden or anything like that in my opinion.”
Mr. Songer went on to admit he “didn’t spend a whole lot of time” on his original examination.
“It wasn’t an analysis,” he said of his initial observation.
The inscription in the yearbook reads “Roy Moore D.A,” which was purported to stand for “District Attorney.” Aside from the fact that Judge Moore was a D.D.A., not a DA, the “D.A.” matches initials on court records for “Delbra Adams,” who was Judge Moore’s assistant at the time.
In 1999, Ms. Nelson filed for a divorce against her husband and, as it turns out, the case ended up in Judge Moore’s court. That’s another detail that stood in contrast to her story, which claimed she did not have any contact with Judge Moore after the alleged assault attempt. The ruling made by Judge Moore against Nelson is motive, one that Big Media either failed to uncover or omitted.
“That’s exactly how this signature appears on the divorce decree that Judge Moore signed dismissing the divorce action of Beverly Nelson,” Phillip L. Jauregui, attorney for Judge Moore said at a press conference.
It wouldn’t be the only omission in the series of stories making accusations against the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate.
The Washington Post made an obvious effort to purify the political motivations of the accusers in its first report, but omitted significant details about them, including Debbie Gibson. She not only turned out to be a political activist, but had actually posted a “Doug Jones for U.S. Senate” announcement video on Facebook.
Further, as PPD reported, her business has relied on Democrats for contracts. She has provided sign-language services for Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Joe Biden.
Gibson alleged that she had a relationship with Judge Moore when she was of legal age. It was meant to bolster another allegation of actual misconduct, which also had trouble holding up to scrutiny.
Leigh Corfman, who claimed in the first report that Judge Moore attempted to molest her as a 14-year-old child, told a narrative and story that is directly contradicted by court records.
Tina Johnson, the latest accuser who claimed Judge Moore groped her in his office in 1991, was not in his office “on business” as she stated. If she was at all, it was related to a bitter custody battle where Judge Moore represented her mother, who was trying to get custody of her 12-year-old son. Her mother said Ms. Johnson was an “unfit, absent, and unstable mother.”
While Ms. Nelson’s Facebook timeline has been locked to those who are not friends with her, it wasn’t always the case. PPD pulled several posts that called her previous claims into question, including that she voted for President Donald Trump.
Facebook posts indicate she supported leftwing causes in the form of petitions from the radical, far-left MoveOn.org. She also reposted a meme criticizing the U.S. Constitution for giving people a fundamental right to defend themselves but not to healthcare. She was also less-than thrilled on Inauguration Day, when she posted a meme about getting through difficult times.
A woman pulls a hood over her head as she walks out of a Starbucks store into the cold wind at Times Square in New York, March 25, 2013. (Photo: Reuters)
The Survey of Consumers, a closely-watched gauge of consumer sentiment, remained elevated at a strong 96.8, though the preliminary reading receded in December. The University of Michigan contributed the slight decline to Democrats’ partisan views on the heels of tax reform.
“Consumer sentiment has remained quite favorable although it continued to slowly recede in early December from its October cyclical peak,” Richard Curtain, chief economist for the Surveys of Consumers said. “Most of the recent decline was concentrated in the long-term prospects for the economy, while consumers thought current economic conditions have continued to improve.”
The Current Economic Conditions Index rose to 115.9 in December from 113.5, indicating all feel better about their personal finances before the holidays. The Index of Consumer Expectations on the other hand fell to 84.6 from 88.9, a product of Democrats’ fears about the impact of tax reform on the economy.
Consumer sentiment has been screaming records for the year and remains above historic levels. In November, the Survey of Consumers posted the highest pre-holiday reading in more than 10 years. The current expansion pace is the second-highest its been since the mid-1800s.
The report bodes well for inflation and wage pickup, both of which have been stubborn over the last 9 years.
Worth noting, income gains have been slowly improving during 2017 and the consumer sentiment data indicate that trend will continue and is warranted. By contrast, the rise in inflation expectations in early December was not expected.
Consumers’ buying plans for long-lasting durable goods have also improved in early December, which the survey attributes to “attractive pricing.” Overall, the data signal an expected gain of 2.7% in real consumption expenditures in 2018.
“Importantly, the largest decline in long-term economic prospects was recorded among Democrats, which reflected their concerns about the impact of the proposed changes in taxes,” Mr. Curtain added. “Perhaps the most important changes in early December were higher income expectations as well as a higher expected inflation rate in 2018.”
Next data release: Friday, December 22, 2017 for Final December data at 10am ET
A recruiter talks with a job seeker at the Construction Careers Now! hiring event in Denver, Colorado U.S. August 2, 2017. (Photo: Reuters)
The U.S. economy created 228,000 jobs in the month of November, including 221,000 in the private sector. The unemployment rate remained at a 17-year low at 4.1%.
The jobs report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics beat the median forecast calling for 190,000 in November and follows a strong 261,000 in the post-hurricane jobs report in October. While monthly job creation averaged 174,000 per month thus far in 2017 juxtaposed to 187,000 in 2016, the jobs are higher-quality and “the part-time economy” is receding.
In November, manufacturing added a robust 31,000 jobs, including in machinery (+8,000), fabricated metal products (+7,000), computer and electronic products (+4,000), and plastics and rubber products (+4,000). Since a recent low in November 2016, before President Donald J. Trump was elected on a platform to protect the industry, manufacturing employment has increased by 189,000.
Construction also saw noteworthy, stronger-than-expected gains in November. Employment among specialty trade contractors increased by 23,000 in November and by 132,000 over the year.
The labor force participation rate remained unchanged at 62.7% in November and has shown no clear trend over the past 12 months. The less-cited but equally if not more important employment-population ratio, at 60.1%, changed little in November from the prior month. However, there is a small positive change since early this year.
But there are also other trends beneath the headline numbers worth celebrating.
Involuntary part-time workers, or the number of people employed part time for economic reasons, came in at 4.8 million. While that’s only slightly lower in November from the prior month, it has fallen by 858,000 over the year. These are individuals who want full-time work, but either had their hours had been cut back or are unable to find full-time jobs.
Similarly, the number of people marginally attached to the labor force has fallen by 451,000 from a year earlier. They wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months, but are not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.
Discouraged workers, or those not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them, is down 122,000 from the previous year.
The strong labor market, meaning the demand for labor is high, has not yet proven to be a driver of wages. While wage growth has ticked up, it remains modest. Average hourly earnings came in at $26.55, a 0.2% in the month of November. The year-on-year rate is only 2.5%, which is historically low for this reading.
The positive employment situation in the government jobs report follows the ADP National Employment Report, which also showed a stronger-than-expected labor market in the private sector.
“The job market is red hot, with broad-based job gains across industries and company sizes,” Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, said. “The only soft spots are in industries being disrupted by technology, brick-and-mortar retailing being the best example. There is a mounting threat that the job market will overheat next year.”
In a sign the U.S. economy — specifically, the private sector — is beginning to return to normal reliance on historically higher-paying small businesses, large businesses only added 41,000. Small businesses with 1 – 49 employees added 50,000 jobs and mid-sized businesses with 50 – 499 employees added 99,000.
“The labor market continues to grow at a solid pace,” said Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute. “Notably, manufacturing added the most jobs the industry has seen all year.”
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