As Congress negotiates another coronavirus relief package, some are considering sending billions of taxpayer dollars to bail out state and local governments.
The proposal comes at a time when our economy is experiencing one of the greatest comebacks in history. This is the news the left doesn’t want you to hear. Millions of new jobs and businesses are forming, unemployment continues to drop, and the economy is growing at a record-shattering pace. Yet the most irresponsible state and local politicians are still begging for billions in handouts. Now is not the time to bail out our most mismanaged governments.
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“There’s no such thing as a free lunch” is a trite cliché, but it’s useful when thinking about differences in housing costs in different parts of the U.S., especially for anyone considering permanent remote work as a way to save money. Places that look relatively cheap at first glance aren’t necessarily more affordable for most people who might want to live there and some places that seem expensive aren’t as pricey as they look after careful analysis.
Consider the latest data on relative housing costs by metro area, published Tuesday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. This isn’t a measure of house prices, which are affected by everything from interest rates to speculative fervor, but a measure of actual housing costs paid by renters as well as an estimate of how much homeowners would pay if they had to rent their current residence. The ranges are vast: at the top is the San Francisco Bay Area, where housing costs are more than twice the U.S. average.
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Tech, Energy, and Tourism Drive Success for Top-Performing Cities
December 15, 2020 GMT
(PRNewsfoto/Heartland Forward)
BENTONVILLE, Ark., Dec. 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ Today, Heartland Forward published a new report, “Most Dynamic Metropolitan Regions,” that ranks 375 U.S. metropolitans by their economic performance. Midland, Texas, the capital of the oil-rich Permian basin, placed first for the second consecutive year. The rankings draw upon both pre-pandemic data and recent job momentum data to assess each metropolitan’s economic performance before and during the pandemic. Cities with vibrant tech, tourism and oil & gas industries performed best, but some of these sectors are especially vulnerable to the economic fallout of COVID-19 putting these cities’ future success in jeopardy.
American Aircraft Manufacturing Takes Flight
American manufacturers of aircraft and parts boosted their output by 2.1% in November compared with October, according to new data from the Federal Reserve. Remarkably, production of planes and their components has almost completely returned to its February level.
That makes the sector relatively unusual. Among the major categories of manufacturing, only semiconductors and motor vehicles have done as well. By contrast, America’s overall manufacturing sector is still about 4% below where it was before the pandemic, with notable weakness in electrical equipment (including appliances) and fabricated metal products.
This doesn’t mean the aircraft manufacturers are out of the woods. In fact, they began cutting production before the pandemic affected the U.S. and Europe. Output fell sharply in January and February, thanks to lower orders from Chinese airlines. As a result, it’s still down about 16% from the end of 2019. And the growth r
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New data shows residents of San Diego County had more money in their wallets at the end of 2019 but it is hard to imagine the trend continued this year.
San Diegans’ real personal income increased 2.8 percent annually last year, said data released this week by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. That was above the nationwide average of 2.4 percent and the second year San Diego metro was higher than the countrywide average.
The figures show a positive trend for San Diego fortunes but come with a large caveat. The federal data lags by one year, so it is unknown yet what happened in 2020. However, the COVID-19 crisis led unemployment to rise to a high of 15.2 percent in San Diego County and economic pain was widespread with food lines, rent protests and business closures.