Monday, November 04, 2024
Respected Poll Has Harris With A Lead In Red State Iowa!
Sunday, November 03, 2024
Trump's Massive Deportation Plan Would Be Disastrous For Our Economy
Donald Trump has been demonizing immigrants - trying to scare U.S. voters into voting for him. And he says he will save the country from those scary immigrants, especially the undocumented ones, with a massive deportation plan. He wants to deport all of the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants.
But there is something about that plan that he's not telling voters - its cost to the U.S. economy. The cost would be huge - large enough to wreck the economy.
Just to deport them would require many more immigration officials, detention facilities, and transportation costs. It has been estimated that it would cost at least $88 billion to deport a million immigrants in a year - and he wants to deport ten times that amount. It could amount to nearly a trillion dollars!
And that's not the only cost to the economy. Trump has claimed that these immigrants are taking jobs away from Americans. That's not true. Many industries (like meatpackers and fruit/vegetable growers) depend on these immigrants to survive, because U.S. citizens don't want those low-paying, dirty, and sometimes dangerous jobs.
If immigrant-dependent industries lose those workers, it is very unlikely that would be unable to replace them. That would results in shortages, and those shortages would create muck higher prices. Inflation would go through the roof!
And then we come to taxes. The Nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that those immigrants pay about $96.7 billion in taxes each year. Someone would have to make up for this tax loss. It won't be the rich, because Trump wants to give them more huge tax cuts. It will be middle and working class families.
The U.S. needs these immigrant workers. They have helped this nation to have a better economy than any other nation. And that economy would be devastated by Trump crazy and massively expensive plan.
Saturday, November 02, 2024
The October Unemployment Rate Remained Steady At 4.1%
The Labor Department released its unemployment report for October on Friday. The number of jobs created dropped to an anemic 12,000, but that was good enough to keep the unemployment rate at 4.1% - the same as in September.
Here are the relevant statistics for October.
SIZE OF THE CIVILIAN WORK FORCE:
168,479,000
OFFICIAL NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS:
6,984,000
OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE:
4.1%
DEMOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN OF OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT:
Adult men...............3.9%
Adult women...............3.6%
Teens (16-19)...............13.8%
Whites...............3.8%
Blacks...............5.7%
Asians...............3.9%
Hispanics...............5.1%
No HS diploma...............6.6%
HS graduate...............4.0%
Some college...............3.4%
Bachelor's deg. or more...............2.5%
NUMBER OF MARGINALLY-ATTACHED WORKERS (unemployed but no longer counted):
1,572,000
MORE REALISTIC NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS (official + marginally-attached):
8,556,000
MORE REALISTIC UNEMPLOYMENT RATE:
5.0%














