LyrArc Article Gist
Alluring scenery but hollowing out. Rail station in Dunedin New Zealand looks like it is from the 19th or early 20th century. New Zealand wages are 27% lower than Australian wages in 2025. New Zealand's weak, economy cuts in public services in 2025 affect jobs and employment. New Zealand sees emigration of 69,000 for the year to Feb 2025, highest on record.  Australia has mining and huge demand from China and India for its coal to support it's economy. In a paradox black coal in the interior supports a healthy lifestyle with weather and sports in the coastal belt of Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, and further up the coastline in Perth and Adelaide. New Zealand life means higher grocery prices and less quality than Australia, it means health services are not as good, and the public services are being cut to reduce the deficit and borrowing. Most migration is to Auckland and towns in the interior look scenic such as Dunedin but are increasingly seeing people leaving for lack of prospects, lack of pay raises and high cost of living, poor public services. This is a cycle that was felt in 2002 and goes back a long way and is unlikely to change. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Kessler in the WP corrects Obama's claim that he created 800,000 jobs. He says this is clever arithmetic as it takes a low point in Feb. 2010 following the financial crisis. Kessler points out that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. manufacturing jobs were 12.56 million in Jan. 2009 when Obama became president. In Nov. 2016, early estimates show there were 12.26 million manufacturing jobs, a loss of 300,000. This loss does not reflect the problems in the U.S. auto industry and older industries in the midwestern states as a result of trade and globalization that speeded up with the rapid industrialization of China. And led as Greg Ip pointed out in a recent WSJ report to a rapid acceleration of job losses in a decade that did not happen in the same scale during Japan's industrialization and urbanization in the sixties. This aggravated the situation in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, and was met with a feeble response from Democrats. Even a economist like Krugman favoring the Obama administration's efforts came to the conclusion that TPP did not add much to gains from trade as most of the gains had already been realized. More of the gains went to tech and IT in California, at the expense of the auto industry based in the midwest. A report in WP show a president too close to IT in California and failing to grasp the situation in the midwest. Voters punish whoever is in power, regardless of being Conservative or Liberal, in Canada the hollowing out of manufacturing under Harper in Ontario and Quebec led to the win by Trudeau's Liberals.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
There are similarities in the Republican and Democratic party platforms in 2016. One area of agreement is in the reinstatement of Glass Steagall Act. That legislation made in the Depression period to separate commercial banking from investment banking was changed  when president Clinton made changes in a deal with Senators Phil Gramm and Jim Leach in 1999. The too big to fail problems of banks and the problems of investment banks during the 2008 financial crisis are attributed to the lack of Glass Steagall protections for financial stability and safety. The result is that in the post 2016 environment banks can expect a tougher regulatory environment. Another are is in trade where both parties are expected to take tougher positions to protect U.S. interests. The Republican platform calls for "better negotiated trade agreemets that put America first."