LyrArc Article Gist
In a 50-50 Senate to pass president Biden's $3.6 trillion Families and Workers plan requires the vote of Kyrsten Simema, Democrat of Arizona. Simema is the lone holdout in the plan to raise $540 billion by increasing corporate tax rates to pay for part of the plan. Tax rate increases on capital gains would raise nearly $300 billion. A law passed by president Trump lowered corporate tax rates to 21% which would go up to 26.5% under the Biden plan. The top individual rate lowered to 37% would go up to 39.6% and capital gains rate from 23.8% to 28.8% under the Biden plan. Democrats say these new rates are fair considering how much wealth distribution is skewed and how much workers and families have failed to benefit in the policies pursued by different administrations since Reagan, through Bush, Clinton, Obama and Trump.

LyrArc Article Gist
About 85% of people in Portugal a country of 10 million people are fully vaccinated in October 2021, highest in Europe. Strict precautions for prevention such as social distancing and mask remained in place after the surge in January 2021 which led to deaths at a rate that was three times the peak rate in the US.

On October 1, 2021 the restrictions such as 30% limit on filling soccer stadiums were lifted. For the Benefica vs Bayern Munich soccer game restrictions were lifted leading to filled stadiums with vaccination pass mandatory. As people return to indoors in winter this could still result in increase in cases. Because Portugal depends on tourism and stadiums are filled to capacity there is the risk of a smaller surge. Cruise ships are back in Portuguese ports and tourists,are back in large numbers. Soccer fans, fill subways, leading to new concern about a limited spread of the coronavirus.

LyrArc Article Gist
Join the author in BBC's travel series Slocomotion as he takes a cycling trip through Adirondack National Park in upstate New York stretching up to the Canadian border. The Empire State Trail in the Adirondacks is the longest trail in the US, a 750 mile bicycle route from southern tip of Manhattan to the Canadian border. It passes through the Hudson Valley, the Catskills, and along Adirondack park's eastern edge.

During the pandemic this is a popular route. The cool thing says one local in Saranac Lake, who guides people on cycling trips, is that people who don't normally venture out in cycling are doing this to get away from the pandemic. The idea of being on a bike and pedaling out in the wilderness to get the beneficial health effects of the outdoors is capturing the imagination of people.

 

LyrArc Article Gist
Xi Jinping's effort to shift the economy of China more towards serving the interests of Chinese who were left behind in the boom years includes a shift away from coal, away from real estate for speculation, and away from reliance on trade with the US and Europe as a driver for growth. This is proving to be difficult as the pandemic has increased demand for Chinese exports making trade a bigger driver for growth than before the pandemic. Introduction of a property tax to cut into real estate speculation has been scaled down to trials in 10 cities.  China did not put stimulus checks in the accounts of its people the way the US did which has led to Chinese domestic consumption not rebounding the way it has done in the US. Figures for consumer spending in China for September show an increase of 4.4% from the year earlier far below the pace of 8% set for 2019. The lack of social security and other safety nets in China makes people to save even more today. Chinese savings rate was 40% in 2019, today it is 45.2% for May 2021, according to one survey. Personal consumption makes up 38% of China's GDP in 2020, it was 39% in 2019. In the US it went up in 2021 June to 69% compared to 67% by the end of 2020. Infrastructure and construction deepened debt problems in China, and expanding exports created trade tensions. Both these problems have deepened with the pandemic. As this report says Chinese exports have gone gangbusters. Problems in production in Vietnam and Malaysia have added to export surge from China. China's trade surplus with the world is now at $535 billion in 2020, and surplus with US increased by 7% to $317 billion in 2020 from 2019.  Chinese government policy is now for "common prosperity" to reduce inequality and spread wealth and income more evenly for all the Chinese people. This is taking time and Chinese government policy is now set for the long run with these short run problems. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
This article in the Financial Times says during a time when income distribution in the US no longer works it is important not to repeat the mistakes made under Clinton and Obama. Biden's appointment of Omarova as Comptroller of the Currency is an effort by Biden to set a new direction. Omarova has considered the direct placing of digitally transferred dollars into the accounts of people in the US who have fallen behind in her paper "The People's Ledger." This is seen as an effort by Biden to get back to an America that works for ordinary Americans.

Anything less would be disastrous for Democrats and even some Republicans politically. A big part of the problem is that financial institutions and markets left to themselves no longer allocate capital in productive or even understandable ways that help the American people.

LyrArc Article Gist
Deforestation is a major cause for carbon emissions yet it gets less attention in environmental concerns than measuring direct corporate emissions. This report in Financial Times looks at corporate activity that leads to deforestation.

LyrArc Article Gist
Germany's Koch Institute says the number of patients admitted to hospitals is 2.68 in last week (October third week ) compared to December 2020 when it was 15.5. The national rate of cases per 100,000 reached 95. 100 per 100,000 was the benchmark for lockdowns but this no longer is the case as hospitalizations are down with the high percentage of fully vaccinated. 

LyrArc Article Gist
Online protest video of 12 year old Zulma Gonzalez leads to Mexican government changing policy to get 1 million at risk children vaccinated.

LyrArc Article Gist
How a small Kansas town of Grinnell in America finds a way to deal with the rural-urban divide and covid anxiety generated in the tumultuous years of 2020-2021, is the subject with pictures of this report in the WSJ. Grinnell is heartland America and its residents find a way to set Kansas and America in the right direction. One one side some resident worried they would end up like Minneapolis or Portland with protesters. An incident of drivers along Highway 70 emptying shelves of toilet paper in neighborhood stores is seen negatively by some  Grinnell residents and leads to forming an Emergency Preparedness Group to prevent outside agitators from creating problems. Others like the Enlightened Ladies Group try to calm things down. Gene Tilton, 84, and his son 63 years, whose family arrived in Kansas in 1880's did'nt see the need for forming some sort of vigilante group. He raises cattle and crops on a 10,000 acre farm. Michael Machen who practiced medicine in Gove County for 35 years also felt the same way and believed law enforcement could tackle the problem if there was one. Sheriff Mesch attended the Gove County emergency Preparedness Group public meeting by invitation in January 2021. This about the time when the Capitol in Washington DC was stormed by protesters and the country was divided after the election. At that time after 19 months of coronavirus deaths, racial unrest and political violence America was on edge, communities all over America were struggling with the idea that the immediate threat they faced was from other Americans not foreign adversaries. The sheriff told everyone at the Emergency Preparedness Group's public meeting where he stood- law enforcement could handle any threat and he didn't anticpate anything his deputies could not handle. He told the Emergency Preparedness Group that he appreciated their sentiment though, if he needed help he would ask, yet concluded that is the only way. From that rebuff by the sheriff the Group paused its activity and shifted its message to offering to help anyone deal with the deep cold spell in February, to cope with snow, tornadoes, fires, rattlesnake bites and similar hazards. They sponsored first aid classes, and a "Homesteader Gardening Class." Soon their idea was "we're here to help people, the last thing we want is for people to be uncomfortable." "Gove County" says Don Tilton, "has moved on." So must America today. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
This discussion on reinventing oneself to try a second career at age 50 or 60 after years spent working on professional careers shows the nature of this road. Much of it involves doing something creative, something that is fulfilling and not boring, and often this involves giving of one's creative potential doing good and giving back. It is a bumpy road though and most people do not realize that it involves trial and error and finding the right kind of work or activity of interest and aptitude. Most of what is written makes it look easy and glamorous, yet it involves slogging through obstacles, carrying a level of humility with you, and working with young people. Sociologist Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot in her book "The Third Chapter" describes the period that follows as an intermission which is marked by some chaotic experiments, to withstand emotion of being unstructured as if on a boat in high seas without navigational devices. Psychologist John Kounos says it is more important to get more sleep and dream take walks in nature, an do any activity that is fun, allow the mind to wander about in unknown ways. Here it is the heart and intutition that speaks and from which one derives inspiration, not the brain and intellect, say others who have tried to chart new paths that have provided major contributions to science, technology and fields related to public service. It is a kind of problem solving in which there is little room for the ego because of the ever winding road. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Major changes have happened in CEO's in 2019-2021 for major American companies in aerospace, automobiles and information technology hardware. Patrick Gelsinger is new CEO of Intel Corp. With Gelsinger come $95 billion in new investments in the US manufacturing of chips. Dave Calhoun is new CEO of Boeing as it increases investments in US manufacturing capabilities. Jim Farley is new CEO of Ford Motor Company. With Farley come billions of dollars in new investments and a shift to electric cars and electric car technologies. All three companies had new Chief Financial Officers within months of new CEO';s assuming their new roles.

LyrArc Article Gist
Pfizer and BioNTech studies show 90.7% effectiveness of their children's vaccine.

LyrArc Article Gist
Apple's new privacy rules are reducing the extensive tracking of internet users that took place in an unregulated industry for the last decade. Apple has introduced a long overdue privacy change that restricts how users can be tracked on apps such as Facebook, Instagram and other apps. Users are now asked if they want to be tracked and can opt out. US users opt to allow tracking only 16% of the time they see the Apple privacy prompt. This will be one more needed step to protect the privacy of users that had suffered  in the last 10 years from rampant and unrestricted tracking of users.

 

LyrArc Article Gist
The situation in Berlin, Germany, where coronavirus is growing among young people. The rate in Berlin is 108 per 100,000 compared to 85 per 100,000 in Germany. Young people in Neukoln neighborhood still spend time outside, wearing jackets and scarves in the autumn cold drinking coffee at street cafes or at parks. Now that they begin to shift to indoors concern is growing that coronavirus cases will increase. Half of new cases are under age 35.

LyrArc Article Gist
This report in WSJ shows that remote work is a lasting trend because companies can now hire talented individuals from anywhere in the country or the world, and pay less for the same talent. In the past talented individuals were attracted with high pay packages to cities such as San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Boston and Los Angeles. Companies can now choose to avoid paying these high pay packages and have a broader talent pool to choose from. This is because these cities became costlier and less attractive with cramped apartments relative to the choices for remote work. In the example cited here a machine learning expert shifted from a small cramped apartment in San Francisco to work for Twitter from a small town named Katy in Texas where she has a 5 bedroom large apartment and a nicer community of 20,000 people to live in west of Houston. One in 8 jobs posted on Linked In as of August 2021 are for remote work, many times the percentage of remote work job postings in 2020, showing this trend is here to stay. There is a large shift of millions of workers in tech related fields exiting the cities of San Francisco, New York, Seattle, and Boston for smaller cities in other parts of the country such as Utah, Texas and other states in the US. A similar trend is observed in Europe. America's professional classes are moving to hybrid or remote work in large numbers says this report in WSJ. At one point in 2020 about 35% of workers in the US or 50 million workers were doing remote work during the lockdowns. In August 2021 this figure is closer to about half of these workers even as workers return to work offices. It is believed that the BLS statistics understate the number of remote workers at 20 million and 14% of workers in August 2021. Large crowded and hugely expensive cities are no longer attractive for employers or for tech employees or professional workers. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The experience of J&J and Novavax in vaccine manufacturing shows the importance of vaccine manufacturing and of Quality Assurance in the production of vaccines for coronavirus. The success of Pfizer and Indian companies in vaccine manufacturing shows how important it is to think early and plan early for vaccine manufacturing technologies, personnel and quality assurance. This is also why the US effort, India's billion vaccine target in 6-12 months of planning, is a great effort in thinking ahead of every aspect of vaccines and vaccinating, planning of all details, hard work, by Pfizer, by Indian pharmaceutical companies, and by the Modi and Biden administrations. 

LyrArc Article Gist
Micron Technology, GlobalFoundaries, Intel, Samsung are planning large investments with the assistance of governments in US, and Japan. Taiwan Semiconductor plans to build a chip plant in Japan. US has allocated $52 billion for domestic investments by chip companies. In recent decades bad policy has led to chip making demise in the US which the Biden administration is determined to reverse by boosting US chip production. Intel Corp has announced large investments in US and Europe, Micron is expected to follow in this direction.