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David Brooks describes the efforts of Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute that calls for a global capitalism that embraces the needs and hope of the middle class. A society to aspire to in their view is one that improves average incomes, promotes upward mobility, with a greater share of national income going to the majority of hardworking Americans, Europeans, Asians and Latin Americans.

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David Wessel points to some problems with the Paul Ryan budget proposal. Ryan's plan does not balance the budget till after 2030, and Congress would have to raise the debt ceiling each year till then. The changes to Medicare Ryan proposes would limit how much the government spends, but the savings from this do not come for a decade, as people expected to retire in the next 10 years will still have Medicare. Ryan's proposal shows how deep the cuts will have to be if deficit reduction is done without raising taxes. Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin who developed a deficit reduction plan, said they were disappointed that the Ryan plan "fails to address the need for new revenue," which they consider crucial for truly tackling deficit reduction. The Obama budget failed to offer a comprehensive deficit reduction plan, leading to openness for new ideas. The health care delivery system in the U.S. needs to be efficient and costs need to come down. Ryan's proposal gives no idea where the efficiencies will come from. Would they come from competition between private insurers? How will escalating healthcare costs be controlled. Another consideration is that even with its problems Medicare is less costly to administer than private insurance. Everything depends on seniors shopping vigorously for the best premiums because risks and costs are borne by seniors, with the idea that this will somehow control escalating medical costs....

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Health insurance premiums for family plans increased by 9% in 2011 according to a survey by Kaiser Family Foundation. A similiar survey by Mercer showed premium increases around 6%. Another change is that health insurance plans are becoming less comprehensive and deductibles are higher, with higher copays and employees contributing more to premiums.

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Wallsten describes the tense and now frayed relationship between Obama and immigration groups and the way this has evolved from idealism to frustration to mere coexistence amid loss of faith. Obama's frustration expressed in words such as "I am not a king." And the immigration groups voicing their concerns about Obama's loss of credibility, as minorities especially Hispanics have fared poorly during his adminsitration, hit by rising deportations, foreclosures and the impact of high unemployment in construction and other sectors.

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According to recent Center for Disease Control numbers, about two-thirds of American women are obese or overweight. Retail stores like Target are trying to appeal to women in the 14 plus sizes where demand is growing.

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Taylor goes over details of the Romney Plan and why it is better for economic recovery in the U.S.

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The president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce China Center says the White House has a supportive community when it comes to getting China to abide by fair rules relating to intellectual property. Mr. Bolton talking to the CEO Council was frank about the U.S. government's efforts to get China to to implement a broad set of reforms. He even called for a show of hands from executives who think its acceptable to live by the situation today which hurts the U.S. when it comes to intellectual property. No one showed their hand. U.S. executives once skeptical about the tariffs from president Trump on Chinese products are now shifting their views on the confrontational approach taken by president Trump on issues of U.S. technology transferred to companies in China that lead to the U.S. losing its technological advantage.

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The Japanese economy went through asevere contraction in the first quarter 2009, declining 15% on an annualized basis. But Japan's unemployment rate in April was 4.8%, compared with much higher rates in EUrope and even higher rates in the USA. France and Germany have social democratic states that protect workers jobs, and Germany even after the Harz reforms continues to help workers deal with unemployment making it least painful as possible with government help. Japan takes this astep further. The law in Japan requires that even though companies can cut worker's hours, they must pay at least 60% of their hourly wages during that time. THe government provides help. It has budgeted $624 million this year to reimburse companies for half of these payments. In March 48,000 companies got subsidies for 2.38 million employees according to government figures. This includes large companies like NEC Electronics and Nissan Motor. THey have to find things for the workers to do, community service like keeping the area clean, vegetable gardens, handicrafts shop, anything that helps the communities. A recent survey by the Nikkei financial daily, shows zero percent of large business owners said they had plans to layoff permanent staff members, compared with 39% in South Korea. WIthout this the unemployment rate, say experts, would be 2 percentage points higher....

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Lower prices have boosted unit sales for Microsoft and Autodesk for Chinese operations. Autodesk now sells its software for about half the price in the USA. Autodesk saw a doubling of licenses in China to 300,000 after slashing prices. Microsoft sells Windows 7 Home Basic for 399 yuan or $59, a third of the price in the USA. By reducing margins, Microsoft makes up for it in volumes, says Microsoft's China CEO. IDC and Business Software Alliance estimate that 79% of the PC software installed in China in 2009 was pirated, down from 86% in 2005. Lower prices make Chinese buyers more willing to invest, and education helps to increase the value of using legitimate copies. China's PC market is expected to be 67 million units in 2010, behind 78 million in the USA, but software sales in China are only $5.8 billion, behind the US sales of $143.6 billion. This makes the potential for software sales large at the right prices.

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China's leaders including president Xi Jinping, and China's financial regulators have frowned on the lack of regulation of the financial businesses of Alibaba. They see the state banks which are highly regulated with capital requirements as supplying the capital on which Alibaba makes a profit on transactions, yet having to take on the risks if something was to fail. Alibaba itself has avoided the financial regulation needed for stability in its rush for growth. At one point says the WSJ, Xi and other leaders were infuriated and decided to halt the Ant initial public offering that would provide accumulation of wealth and a pay day while increasing risks in the financial system for China.

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China's effort under president Xi to expand the state run sector by providing more credit to state run enterprises and expecting private companies to pursue goals of the state's planned economy. Tackling the coronavirus economic impact required state planning and that experience has further renewed the effort to build the state run companies as a reliable partner for the government. There is also a conviction that private companies are unreliable in a large and complex economy as China's.

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China is moving to shift its economy in a new direction of self-reliance on domestic consumers and local investors. Mr. Xi calls it "domestic circulation." This also means less dependence on imported technologies and inward looking policies. As the pandemic has reduced demand in other countries and as the U.S. and West tighten controls on imports and introduce new restrictions, there is the sense that the entire policy has to shift quickly to dependence on domestic consumers and investors.

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Damian Paletta of the Washington Post says that credit goes to Gary Cohn a former Goldman Sachs president, and head of the president's National Economic Council for the way he has quietly built up a group of leading experts on major initiatives of the Trump administration such as tax reform, infrastructure plans. Compared to the infighting and other problems in the first 100 days of the Trump presidency, Cohn is credited with building a core of ideas and experts that bring Trump more to the centre and with the prospect of winning Democratic party support. He has helped shift the president to set up a more balanced approach, less confrontational with China and not calling China a currency manipulator, getting support for the Export Import Bank, and more receptive to the Federal Reserve led by Janet Yellen. This report says an alliance of moderates is centering around Adviser Jared Kushner, Cohn, and in other reports Tillerson in foreign affairs is seen as being part of this group. On NAFTA the president has moved to a less confrontational approach with Mexico, which has helped the Mexican peso recover and improved prospects for the Mexican economy.  On infrastructure new ideas to find financing are needed and a plan to tax carbon emissions is intended to draw Democratic support as well as provide some of the funding. About $200 billion in taxpayer money and $800 billion from private investors is being discussed at the National Economic Council. This report says Cohn suffered from dyslexia in childhood, graduated from American University, and joined Goldman Sachs in an unconventional way. He shares a passion for deal making with president Trump, yet at the same time values the views of experts he has brought to formulate concrete plans for the way ahead. About 25 experts with extensive experience in government helped put together new tax changes, infrastructure plans, and international trade deal plans. His predecessor at the NEC, Gene Sperling, gives him credit for quietly pulling together the experts and doing the planning that the Trump administration now depends on. ...

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Roosevelt say experts was a great crisis manager but not great when it comes to policies to create jobs. His achievements were stabilizing the banking system with deposit insurance, government investment in banks, and restrictions on banking practices, creation of the SEC, and fireside chats that steadied the national mood. Unemployment when he took office in 1933 was 25% from 3% in 1929, and industrial production had dropped 40% since 1929. So FDR took office when a lot of the damage had already been done, compared to that Obama takes office earlier in this downturn. And Roosevelt did not fully grasp John Maynard Keynes's advice when he visited the White House in 1934. Keynes complained to Labor Secretary Ms. Perkins that he had thought the President was more literate economically speaking, while the President felt Keynes had a rigmarole of figures he did not understand. Roosevelt said of Keynes: "He must be a mathematician rather than a political economist." It took some time for government spending to take hold. Throughout the 1930's government spending remained around 20% as a share of the economy. Today its 35%. And the average unemployment stayed at stubborn 17% on average for the decade of the 1930's. It was not till the 1940's that things changed. Total government spending as a share of the economy reached 52% in 1942 with the onset of the war, and peaked at 70% in 1944 when the unemployment rate dropped to 1%. One lesson experts say is that its easier to stem unemployment and job losses by action earlier in the downward spiral through vigorous action by government. In retrospect because industrial production fell by 40% during the 1930's experts say Roosevelt was actually timid in his response. U.S. Fed chairman Bernanke is a student of this period and draws a similiar lesson from that period for vigorous action early in the crisis....

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The U.S. unemployment rate drops from 5.8% in Nov. 2014 to 5.6% in Dec. 2014, according to the Labor Department. But hourly earnings failed to register growth. Average hourly earnings declined in Dec. 2014 from the prior month, and increased by only 1.7% over the prior year, just a little bit above the inflation rate of 1.3%. Overall 2.95 million jobs were created in 2014. Yet 8.7 million Americans looking for a job could not find one. The U.S. Federal Reserve officials see tepid wage growth as a sign of slack in the labor market. The Dec. 16-17 Fed meeting minutes show that "most participants saw no clear evidence of a broad based acceleration in wages." The labor force participation rate is also stuck at a low level- 62.7% in Dec. 2014. The U-unemployment rate that includes involuntary part time workers and workers marginally attached to the labor force was at 11.2% in Dec. 2014. This includes workers too discouraged to look for work and people working parttime because they could not get full time work. It is steadily dropping from 16.6% in 2010 to 14.4% by 2012, 13.1% by 2013, and now 11.2% in 2014, showing steady improvement but still high....

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America will not long remember what happened in 2018 or 2024, but it can never forget the loss of literacy and cultural literacy from loss of reading comprehension, among American children, the basic building blocks for democracy or economic progress. This WSJ report by Randazzo and Barnum uses a lower bar for reading proficiency called the Basic. There is a second bar that is the Proficient Level for Reading Proficiency in NAEP test scores which is shown here. The US should strive for NAEP Proficient standard in Reading Comprehension not some Basic standard, to strive for leadership in a world that strives for NAEP Advanced. Only 8% of NAEP Test scores for 4th graders were at Advanced level in the US schools in 2024, only 31% making it to Proficient level standards. NAEP defines Basic as- "This level denotes partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills that are fundamental for performance at the NAEP Proficient level." This is an inadequate standard and only leads to student in 4th grade struggling as readers in 9th grade leading to being not proficient for entry to college or skills programs for work. Dismal reading scores from before pandemic only get worse in 2025. Two thirds of American 4th graders across the 51 states, across urban, rural and suburbs fail to pass PROFICIENT reading levels on NAEP test scores in 2024. Lyrarc.com's Movement for Global Literacy was launched in 2016 in response to raise the reading comprehension and cultural literacy across America. This is across party lines, across gender, race, incomes and region- a goal for ALL AMERICANS and a basic entry point to meet the aspirations of all Americans for a better life through knowledge and education. 2024 NAEP Test results students performing 4 percentage points below the level in 2019 for 4th graders in reading comprehension. Thirty-one percent of fourth-grade students performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level on the 2024 NAEP reading assessment, which was 2 percentage points lower compared to 2022 and 4 percentage points lower than 2019. This WSJ report by Randazzo and Barnum uses a lower bar for reading proficiency called the Basic. There is a second bar that is the Proficient Level for Reading Proficiency in NAEP test scores which is what we are showing here. The US should drive for NAEP Proficient standard in Reading Comprehension not some Basic standard, to strive for leadership in a world that strives for NAEP Advanced. Only 8% of NAEP Test scores for 4th graders were at Advanced level in the US schools in 2024. NAEP defines Basic as- "This level denotes partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills that are fundamental for performance at the NAEP Proficient level." This is an inadequate standard and only leads to student in 4th grade struggling as readers in 9th grade leading to being not proficient for entry to college or skills programs for work.   ...

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Krueger and Posner, eminent economists, say the reason wages have stagnated in the U.S. with wages not having budged much over a decade 2008-2018, is not only because of globalization and automation as long term trends. They attribute this stagnation in wages to "monopsony power," or power American corporations have over workers because of their stronger bargaining position and because workers have few alternatives.  For most of this period 2008-2018 high unemployment as reflected by the people out of work and taking part time jobs or having stopped looking for work, shifted bargaining power to companies. The Economist magazine pointed out that workers have not shared in the profit and gains corporations made during this period. Here Krueger and Posner show additional factors such as non compete clauses in worker agreements that have depressed wages. Half of franchise agreements prohibit competition for labor. Outsourcing work to other companies that hire workers means these outsourcing companies have more power over workers than the original companies using the labor. Unions represent only 7 percent of private sector workers by 2017, compared to 35 percent in the 1950's, so that there are no mechanisms to counteract the greater bargaining power gained by companies vs. workers. The way workers have roots in the communities they live and the consolidation of employers into a few companies in a particular area, mean fewer options exist for workers.  Senators Warren and Booker and the anti-trust division of the U.S. Justice Department are in agreement on this issue of widespread use of noncompete agreements that is considered unlawful, says this report in the NYT, offering hope for a solution to bring a better balance between the rights of workers to fair wages and companies seeking profit for stakeholders. Issues about workers, lack of gains for workers, prevalent outsourcing, and the frustrations of labor with parties that had lost touch with their worker base- such as Labor in Britain, SPD in Germany, Socialist Party in France and the Democratic Party in the U.S. - have led to political upsets with support shifting to other parties. This has not led to significant change to improve bargaining power of workers to correct the imbalance that now exists between labor and companies, leading to calls for change. Eric Posner is a law professor at the University of Chicago law school and co-author of a new book "Radical Markets: uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society." This book turns the popular notion on its head that free markets have produced the imbalances that hurt social cohesion and democracy, by saying it is precisely the suppression of free competition such as for labor that have created this unhealthy situation. This is true in other areas where monopoly power has developed in other parts of the U.S and European economies in 2008-2018, as also for distortions in capital allocation that hurt infrastructure and other public investment. Krueger is a professor of public affairs at Princeton University and former head of the President's Council of Economic Advisors in 2011 under Obama, showing that Democrats themselves failed to correct this imbalance leading to a shift to other parties and Mr. Trump, who also appear to lack ideas or solutions to this problem that affects social cohesion and democracy. This is contrary to the vision of American or European society of better opportunity for all shared by all Americans and Europeans for most of the twentieth century. ...

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This is an exceptionally humorous operating room story of Dr. Trump and Dr. McConnell by Kristof of the NYT. Sometimes humor tells the story- and Kristof does this using a story of a surgeon president Trump in the operating Room trying to address the concerns of the patient Janet, as he keeps telling her she needs a new heart with great benefits, great benefits, before she implodes or goes down failing. Flat out take the old heart out even if a replacement hasn't been found, believe me great benefits the surgeon tells her, just that the patient just isn't getting convinced as its happening to her. The analogy is with replacing a health care plan, not just the Obama plan, any plan without something to take its place. For a few days before this article by Kristof, the Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act without having a replacement was presented as a good idea. Janet is like the three Republican women- Collins of Maine, Capito of West Virginia, and Murkowski of Alaska who wanted to keep the heart they had till a replacement was found, against the surgeon Trump's advice. In a way it is about politicians in the last decade who never had any discussions as they rushed through with their own agendas, as the Republican and Democratic health care plans were rushed through Congress with relatively little participation and debate to hear all viewpoints. ...

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Hillary Clinton returns on September 15, 2016, to the campaign trail after 3 days of rest to recover from pneumonia. She chose to speak at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, with N. Carolina  now considered a state that is winnable, and with a new focus on young people on campuses where she wants to regain her once large lead in the summer. She said that the break had given her time to reflect on what it is she represents. "The campaign trail doesn't really encourage reflection and its important to sit with your thoughts every now and then. It helped me reconnect with what this campaign is all about." Adding that it was about quality health care, financial security, clean water and other critical needs of people.

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What happens to the 70,000 residents of Anacostia, near the Capitol in Washington DC where a third of the people live in poverty and there is a 40% dropout rate, and only 8% of all students there attend college. Vacant homes, drug use and crime sap the neighborhood here. Obama said he would bring 20 cities an antipoverty program successful in Harlem, New York that would include parenting and infant care classes, as well as early childhopod education and free medical care for children. An investment of $1 billion for 5 years for a transitional jobs program, to place the unemployed in temporary jobs. The Obama transition team did not return requests seeking comment on the 20 city plan or the $1 billion for transitional jobs, says the WSJ on January 20, 2008, the day of the inauguration. Its incredible that right in the nation's capital there exists another Washington DC of such neighborhood decline within sight of the Capitol.