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This is not just offering something to every group, it is rebuilding the middle class when seen in the larger context of rebuilding America's industrial base and taking  it to new heights after losing it to China under Bush-Obama 2000-2016. Under MAGA Trump inequality is tackled just differently from the way Democrats tackled it under Biden. The tax break for auto loans, interest on auto loans is deductible for taxes, is part of the new Tax Bill to appeal to auto workers. It is only applicable to US made cars and this promotes US made cars over foreign factory made cars such as the Germans and Koreans and some Japanese auto makers did before 2025. Reagan scrapped this tax break, it is back under Trump as the Republican base now includes auto workers and the now back to growth mode middle class. The deduction in local and state taxes increases to 30,000 to benefit small business owners. There is also the tax on tips which is removed. Retired people get an added $4000 deduction and not elimination of taxes on social security benefits entirely because of the Bryd rule that prevents changes to retirement with a simple majority vote not the 60 votes in the Senate.  ...

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Joe Nocera visits two plants built by Gray Construction in N. Carolina. One is a Siemens plant in Charlotte, N.C., and the other is a Caterpillar plant in Winston-Salem. Both towns have community colleges that stress manufacturing skills. Forsyth Tech created a program working with Caterpillar to train its graduates in machining skills needed at the plant. The Caterpillar plant is huge at 850,000 square feet, and makes axles for mining trucks. The Siemens plant will make 280 ton gas turbines. Siemen's manager Richard Voorberg, tells Nocera the labor cost difference is not that much of a factor in highly skilled work, with shipping costs, and other efficiencies being more significant. Gray's backlog of 22 projects suggests a similiar conclusion. The problem is that the number of skilled workers needed in an highly automated plant with complex robotics is small. Caterpillar's plant will need about 500 workers, and the Siemens plant will need about 800 workers. This makes only a small dent in the enormous job losses of the last decade. And in N. Carolina the jobs lost in the furniture industry as the industry moved to China. Dow Chemical CEO, Andrew Liveris, points to the jobs created in the supply chain for every manufacturing job. And Ford Motor Company CEO, Mullaly, points to the innovation required in state of the art manufacturing, that creates sustainable advantage. The process of creating enough manufacturing jobs will take a long time, including shifts to new technologies and new products....

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As this report in WSJ shows underreporting of coronavirus cases is a serious problem for Africa, and the figures from Africa's CDC, part of the African Union, do not show the magnitude of the problem. It shows that health workers in places from Yaounde in Cameroon to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, to cities in Somalia, are reporting a situation quite different from what the CDC shows, with hotspots emerging in some places with little in the way of resources.

Only 1 million tests have been done and half are in SOuth Africa and Ghana. WIthout the testing it is hard to know how many cases there are. Capetown area in South Africa is emerging as a hotspot and hospitals are expected to be overwhelmed within weeks. Officially Tanzania a country with 56 million has 509 cases and 21 deaths, yet this contrasts with reports from health experts. Cameroon and South Sudan are also possible emerging hotspots in addition to Tanzania says this report in WSJ.

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The remarkable story of how a CEO of a $4 billion food company is running the business from a children's bedroom. The founder of the plant based alternative meat maker is a biochemist who lives in Northern California Bay area. His employees are based in Redwood City, California. Mr. Brown, 65, communicates with his employees from here. He is also a marathon runner and a believer in fitness. He sets a 90 minute no meting time for employees when they can take a breather, get some fresh air, and walk around.

He has given employees, including hourly and temporary workers, paid leave so they can stay and work from home. The plant is closed with a third party in Chicago meeting commitments for its products manufacturing.He will reconsider restarting the plant April 7 if demand is higher than the supply. He views this as the right action and right thinking, as by stickling with his employees he believes they will stick with him in the long run.

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India has done well with low cost, scalable, low tech solutions in the past. This is also being done now to tackle the coronavirus. This is being used to support what may be the largest lockdown in history. Everyone is expected to remain at home. Only shops selling essential items such as food and pharmaceuticals are allowed to remain open. All but essential offices are closed, with workers told to stay home. Indelible ink that takes two weeks to wash away was widely available following the election. It is being widely used with high numbers of infections having the back of their hand stamped "Home Quarantined." After India announced a nationwide lockdown all wireless carriers were asked by the government to  insert a taped coronavirus health advisory that comes on after callers dial and before the call connects.Th recorded message talks about how to protect against the coronavirus. Prime time news shows are interrupted three times a day for back to back news conferences from the prime minister, and local officials.   ...

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Peter Coy, a veteran reporter at BW, who was prescient about the housing crisis, asks if defaltion is a possibility,; something hat happened in Japan in the 1990's and in the US in the 1930's. There is adownward ressure on wages from growing joblessness. With 7.2 million added to the unemployed since December 2008 and 263,000 in September 2009 alone, this pressure for labor to accept lower wages is growing.Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs predicts a drop in average hourly earnings of half a percent from the fourth quarter of 2009 through the fourth quarter of 2010. Hatzius accounts for workers strong aversion for wage cuts, without that the wages go down by 2%. Some experts say someone who lost his job 6 months ago is likely to accept alower wage now. If prices fall faster than salaries are workers better off. Not likely because of the destructive effects of defaltion from unused capacity an underutilized labor.

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Peter Coy of Bloomberg Business Week points out that the debt ceiling and proposed deficit reductions in the range of $4 trillion really obscure the real size of the problem which is much larger. The real problems hit when the U.S. faces a larger graying population by 2020 with sharply higher per capita health care spending; and at the same time workers from this generation retire and become beneficiaries of Social Security and Medicare with fewer younger workers to support the system with tax revenues. Another problem is that older Americans are likely as a voting bloc to vote themselves benefits that will cost the younger generation, benefits that the younger generation will not be able to enjoy. Even the Paul Ryan plan with its cuts to Medicare insulated todays seniors from the sharp cuts, as it becomes political necessity for both Republicans and Democrats to shy away from touching the current beneficiaries.

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Japan's Business Federation Keidanren chairman, Sadayuki Sakakibara, says he "expects companies to make aggressive action" to increase wages. Keidanren says wage increases of at least 2.2% should be given. Prime minister Abe attended the new year's eve party hosted by Japan's three business lobbies and asked business leaders "to make a brave decision, when can you take action if not now?" Bank of Japan chief has talked to corporate leaders asking for wage increases. He also visited the new year's eve reception of the Japan Trade Union Confederation, as a way of supporting labor's demands for higher wages. BOJ's target is for 2% inflation, and Kuroda says wage movement is critical. About 17.5% of the total workforce are union workers at large companies who are affected by union-company wage negotiations in spring. Non-regular workers make up 38% of the workforce, and the wages for this group also need to be raised to have a serious impact on overall wages.

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Discussion at a U.S. Fed meeting in Jan 28-29, 2014, as revealed in the minutes for that meeting. It shows Fed officials such as Bullard of the St Louis Fed asked for a debate on interest rates, but most Fed oficials at the meeting including Lockhart of the Atlanta Fed, supported current tapering policy to wind down bond purchases buy the end of 2014. Some of the discussion went to how fast the unemployment rate had declined from 7.9% to the 6.5% threshold set by the Fed, and what this meant as other signs show weakness in the U.S. economy. The drop in the unemployment rate reflected more older workers retiring and to an unusual degree discouraged workers dropping out and not looking for work. Should the Fed put more weight on inflation and financial stability some officials argued, especially as inflation was still about a percentage point below the 2% target by some estimates.

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Joe Nocera of NYT on a bankruptcy like option in which the government loans money but sets tough terms, and has someone with the experience and strength and the governmental powers to set tough terms and insist on them being followed without vacillation by the unions or management. And the Congress passing new legislation under the President's leadership to override the state laws that prevent closure of dealerships. The union benefits and mindset and management mindset would go through the wrenching changes that the GM bureaucracy and the unions need to implement to eliminate the legacy costs, the higher benefits costs so that GM does not pay a penny more than Toyota or Honda to its workers when all costs are added up period. And plants that need to be closed would be closed without long negotiations and job retraining and new industries in energy and infrastructure and technology would create opportunities for these displaced workers by 2010 as part of the stimulus program.

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President Macron takes up a difficult part of his promised changes in the election campaign- an effort to rewrite the rules and consolidate disparate pension plans in France. It comes at a difficult time and requires considerable courage as yellow vest protests against inequality had led to Macron holding townhall meetings in France to hear public opinion, after what appeared as a presidency that had lost touch with ordinary people. Macron has revised his plan to allow a retirement age of 62, yet the plan calls for combining many disparate plans with different rules into a streamlined national plan. Most affected are transport workers, lawyers and other professions that have generous benefits, with early retirement, leading to more strikes. Not taking action means the pension plans would become insolvent in the near future.

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The wind energy industry in the USA is seeking government mandates for renewable wind energy to prevent aslodown. Its argument is that wind turbines are large and have many parts which require many of the workers laid off in the auto and related industries. 35,000 new jobs were created in wind energy business in 2008.

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The ECB's effort to attract talent from national central banks to fulfill its role as supervisor of 7000 banks in the eurozone countries by the second half of 2014. Supervisors who are hired will be located at the ECB's headquarters in Frankfurt. The ECB positions offer attractive perks for young workers with families and children.

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The 60,000 workers from places like Jamaica, Barbados and other places who built the Panama Canal, the lives recreated in The Canal Builders, by Julie Greene, a history Professor at the University of Maryland. Who were they, what were their jobs, what were their daily lives like, what did they eat, how were they governed.

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Gao points to the huge gap between the opportunities available for urban students compared to that of the sixty million rural students, who are "left behind" by their parents and cared for by grandparents. The rural students have much fewer opportunities and fewer resources for learning.

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This piece in the oped pages of the WPost reminds readers about one conspicuous failure at General Motors, the failure in good labor relations. It quotes columnist Marquis Childs during the booming business years of the war, July 10, 1944. Childs wrote about a visit to Detroit where he saw a broad gulf between business leaders and labor leaders, between management and workers, where he said they could not hear each other except when they raised their voices. By 1958 when the auto sales had dropped and strikes loomed, the union demands during negotiations were described by the WPost in an editorial as extravagant proposals. Elsewhere in the coverage on Alfred Sloan's contribution, one writer describes Sloan's success as a manager but also points to his failure to setup good labor relations. This failure played an important part in GM's eventual failure and filing for bankruptcy on June 1, 2009.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets U.S. president Donald Trump in June 2017. Trade with India, and the strategic relationship in Asia, will come up in the discussions. This report says the discussions could be sensitive on trade, immigration and climate change. The U.S. provided $2.38 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) to India in 2016, about 5.5% of the total, and 47% of the U.S. H1-B Visa program for skilled workers benefits Indian companies. The H1-B program will not be discussed, though climate change may come up. Defense collaboration, regional security, energy projects, are likely to be important topics, including transfer of high technology. 

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Kamala Harris to visit Arizona and the Southern Border today. Will call for tough border action and signing into law immigration legislation negotiated by Republican Senator Lankford that would close the Southern Border. Labour's Starmer is taking the same steps in Britain, so is France under Macron and Barnier, so are Northern European socialist leaders such as Mette Frederiksen of Denmark who want to see immigration stopped so that cost of living and the economy, childcare, issues of importance for workers and families can be addressed vigorously.

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The Obama healthcare law is expected to reduce the total number of hours Americans work by equivalent of 2.3 million full time jobs in 2021, according to Congressional Budget Office projections. Earlier forecasts for this were 800,000 equivalent full time jobs. Some of these hours will be taken up by other workers looking for jobs, according to CBO's report.

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As remittances fall and in some places disappear from workers in developed countries to their families in developing countries, Kristof says about 46 million people there will fall into poverty. Something Zoellick of the World Bank has been warning for some time. Everything from food, school lunches, tution for children to go to school, housing, will be affected.

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In 1933 Roosevelt helped set up the minimum wage but failed to index it to inflation. At $7.25 an hour in 2009 it still leaves people below the poverty line. "A self supporting and self respecting democracy sees no economic reason for chiselig workers' wages" FDR said at the time. It was set at 30 cents in 1933.

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The lives of China's female migrant workers many of them as young as 15 or 16 right from the villages and rural interior. Leslie Chang a Chinese American spent time living with them in Dongguan and gives an account of their lives and struggles as they leave the farm for a new life in the factories of China.

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Payne and Applebaum take a look at the Airbus factory in Mobile, Alabama. The $600 million manufacturing facility could have been built anywhere, as parts are made in many different countries. There are no special advantages in assembly at Mobile, that could not be obtained elsewhere. It is mainly the result of a decision at Airbus to make the planes in the large markets, and gaining a larger share of America's military budget. Airbus got $158.5 million in state and local incentives, including a school that trains Airbus workers. The goal is to make it cost not a cent more than it costs to make the airplanes in Europe, even though it costs a lot to ship parts from Hamburg. The non unionized labor makes it possible to have lower labor costs with the starting wage at $16.50 an hour.

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In areas such as elderly care facilities Japan leads the world in designing such robots for staff and for aging seniors. Robots are also seen as useful for housecleaning services, simple yet complex tasks as washing dishes, cleaning rooms, vacuuming, are tackled by robots as the number of workers available for such tasks is small. Robots are also used at the entry of buildings. With low immigration and resistance to immigration, Japan prefers to use robots. The robots will be in display for the Olympics with Toyota having a special set of welcoming robots. 

Japan leads the way in making robots human, cuddly and friendly, and are presented in this way in popular culture. A big difference from the way robots are used in manufacturing by U.S., Taiwan, South Korea and China, and how robots are seen in other countries.