Investing.com — A new study by economists from Harvard and Princeton indicates that 94% of the 10 million new jobs created during the Obama era were temporary positions.
The study shows that the jobs were temporary, contract positions, or part-time “gig” jobs in a variety of fields.
Female workers suffered most heavily in this economy, as work in traditionally feminine fields, like education and medicine, declined during the era.
The research by economists Lawrence Katz of Harvard University and Alan Krueger at Princeton University shows that the proportion of workers throughout the U.S., during the Obama era, who were working in these kinds of temporary jobs, increased from 10.7% of the population to 15.8%.
Veteran financial guru Larry Kudlow, who served as the Donald Trump campaign’s senior economic adviser, predicts to Newsmax TV thatPresident-elect Donald Trump is assembling the type of cabinet “to end the White House war against business that we’ve experienced under the Obama administration.”
“There has been a war against business from day one and that is going to end,” Kudlow told Steve Malzberg on “America Talks Live.”
“I think Trump’s Cabinet picks have been very good and very skillful,” said Kudlow, a Newsmax Finance Insider, radio talk-show host and CNBC senior contributor.
The reaction to the U.S. surgeon general’s first-ever report on e-cigarettes has been swift and severe.
“It is truly terrible,” writes Counterfactual’s Clive Bates, a former executive director of Action on Smoking and Health.
“It’s so bizarrely bad,” said Jeff Stier, risk analyst with the National Center for Public Policy Research.
DOCTORED REPORT: U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy calls e-cigs a public health concern, but leaves out critical evidence.
“The Surgeon General has failed the American people,” Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, said in a statement.
“Full of false, misleading, deceptive statements re #ecigs. Needs a health warning: do not read!” tweeted Derek Yach, a former executive with the World Health Organization.
The primary problem with the 298-page report — E-Cigarette Use Among Youth and Young Adults — according to critics, is that Surgeon General Vivek Murthy ignored science and addressed only risks of e-cigarette use by youth, while neglecting to include the real benefits to adult smokers.
In his scathing review, Bates called the report a “heady mix of emotive propaganda and a completely warped and one-sided account of the science.” He said the findings reveal “a lack of insight into youth behaviors,” as well as ignorance about the tobacco and nicotine market and its consumers.
Murthy acknowledged in the report’s preface that the science is indeed incomplete.
“Gaps in scientific evidence do exists,” he wrote. “[A]nd this report is being issued while these products and their patterns of use continue to change quickly.”
Neither the rapidly changing e-cigarette culture nor the dearth of sound science stopped Murthy from issuing broad policy recommendations to deal with the 900 percent growth in usage among high school students from 2011 to 2015 — “a public health concern,” according to the report.
Among other strategies, Murthy suggests incorporating e-cigarettes into smokefree policies, preventing youth access to e-cigarettes, imposing high taxes and targeting youth with educational programs.
The recommendations stem from what the report considers potential adverse health effects of direct and secondhand exposure to nicotine, chemicals, aerosol and “other particulates.”
While no one thinks young people should use nicotine products, critics say the report fails to show actual harm. “Is this a big deal or not? We have no way to know,” Bates wrote.
He notes that mere exposure to chemicals isn’t enough to show harm, and added that the report “ducks the issue” of whether actual e-cigarette use has negative health effects.
Stier echoed those concerns: “If the surgeon general goes on to make policy recommendations based only on the risk part of the equation, without considering the benefits, he will have failed his fundamental obligation of improving public health.”
Dr. Edward Anselm, senior fellow a the R Street Institute, says use of cigarettes and e-cigarettes is at an all-time low. He also highlighted a link between the two: “Young people who try e-cigarettes are more likely to experiment with other adult behaviors, including smoking. If there were no e-cigarettes, they would go straight to smoking.”
University of Michigan researcher Dr. Ken Warner says the surgeon general ignored a landmark study from England which could be a game-changer for the United States.
“The Royal College of Physicians issued a report in which they concluded that e-cigarettes were likely 95 percent less dangerous than smoking, and should be used by smokers to try to get off of cigarettes, if they have been unable to do so otherwise,” Warner told Watchdog.org.
“The difference in conclusions between these two reports is amazing,” he said.
Warner says the United Kingdom takes a completely different approach to e-cigarettes, viewing vaping as an aid to quit smoking.
“In the U.S., e-cig companies are not even permitted to advertise that their products are less dangerous than smoking because they haven’t gone through the FDA approval process to do so,” he said. “Most of the companies don’t have the resources necessary to get that approval, which requires a long, laborious, and very expensive effort, with no assurance of approval.”
The timing of this report could be fortuitous, as President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is considering candidates for the next commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. The next FDA chief could radically overhaul the agency and upend the huge regulatory regime that includes the recent rules on the e-cigarette industry.
Top names under consideration are Jim O’Neill, a former Health and Human Services advisor, and Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA deputy commissioner and current resident fellow with the American Enterprise Institute.
Murthy is halfway through his four-year post as surgeon general. But in the wake of today’s report, some groups, including Americans for Tax Reform, are calling for Trump to dismiss Murthy. The group’s online petition urges Trump to “fire the Surgeon General and replace him with someone who actually cares about tobacco harm reduction and saving lives.”
Here’s something that many Americans — including some of the smartest and most educated among us — don’t know: The official unemployment rate, as reported by the U.S. Department of Labor, is extremely misleading.
Right now, we’re hearing much celebrating from the media, the White House and Wall Street about how unemployment is “down” to 5.6%. The cheerleading for this number is deafening. The media loves a comeback story, the White House wants to score political points and Wall Street would like you to stay in the market.
None of them will tell you this: If you, a family member or anyone is unemployed and has subsequently given up on finding a job — if you are so hopelessly out of work that you’ve stopped looking over the past four weeks — the Department of Labor doesn’t count you as unemployed. That’s right. While you are as unemployed as one can possibly be, and tragically may never find work again, you are not counted in the figure we see relentlessly in the news — currently 5.6%. Right now, as many as 30 million Americans are either out of work or severely underemployed. Trust me, the vast majority of them aren’t throwing parties to toast “falling” unemployment.
There’s another reason why the official rate is misleading. Say you’re an out-of-work engineer or healthcare worker or construction worker or retail manager: If you perform a minimum of one hour of work in a week and are paid at least $20 — maybe someone pays you to mow their lawn — you’re not officially counted as unemployed in the much-reported 5.6%. Few Americans know this.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Changing the way it does business, Medicare on Friday unveiled a far-reaching overhaul of how it pays doctors and other clinicians.
The goal is to reward quality, penalize poor performance, and avoid paying piecemeal for services. Whether it succeeds or fails, it’s one of the biggest changes in Medicare’s 50-year history.
The complex regulation is nearly 2,400 pages long and will take years to fully implement. It’s meant to carry out bipartisan legislation passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama last year.
By Susan K. Livio | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on September 12, 2016 at 8:18 PM, updated September 13, 2016 at 8:38 AM
TRENTON — Faced with “a deteriorating financial condition,” another health insurance carrier is pulling out of New Jersey’s health exchange marketplace created under the Affordable Care Act, forcing 35,000 policy holders to find a new plan in 2017, the state’s top insurance official announced Monday night.
Health Republic Insurance of New Jersey will serve customers through the end of the year, state Department of Banking and Insurance Commissioner Richard Badolato said.
The state is working out a “rehabilitation” plan that preserves the carrier’s financial assets so medical providers will be reimbursed for the care they provide consumers for the remainder of the year, Badolato said in a statement late Monday.
“We will also be assisting individual consumers as they transition to a new plan during the open enrollment period this fall,” Badolato said. “Similarly, we will work with small employers as they seek replacement plans for their businesses.”
“Obama has managed to put together the most intensive surveillance state in the history of the world,” the ‘Snowden’ director told THR while discussing his film at the Toronto Film Festival. “This is pretty frightening when you think about the implications.”
Oliver Stone warned against the dangers of global surveillance in a sit-down with The Hollywood Reporter at the Toronto Film Festival.
The Snowden director, speaking about his biopic of famous whistleblower Edward Snowden, spoke about the current state of the country’s surveillance system, which says has intensified under the Obama administration.
“I thought Obama, like everyone else, was going to be a reformer. He had criticized the surveillance prior,” Stone told THR. “Since 2013, I have to tell you it’s gotten a lot more serious because they’ve expanded the surveillance. It’s gotten better.”
If the U.S. abdicates internet stewardship, the United Nations might take control.
By L. GORDON CROVITZ
Aug. 28, 2016 5:52 p.m. ET
When the Obama administration announced its plan to give up U.S. protection of the internet, it promised the United Nations would never take control. But because of the administration’s naiveté or arrogance, U.N. control is the likely result if the U.S. gives up internet stewardship as planned at midnight on Sept. 30.
On Friday Americans for Limited Government received a response to its Freedom of Information Act request for “all records relating to legal and policy analysis . . . concerning antitrust issues for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers” if the U.S. gives up oversight. The administration replied it had “conducted a thorough search for responsive records within its possession and control and found no records responsive to your request.”
It’s shocking the administration admits it has no plan for how Icann retains its antitrust exemption. The reason Icann can operate the entire World Wide Web root zone is that it has the status of a legal monopolist, stemming from its contract with the Commerce Department that makes Icann an “instrumentality” of government.
“Then in February the FDA rejected Teva’s generic EpiPen application. In June the FDA required a San Diego-based company called Adamis to expand patient trials and reliability studies for still another auto-injector rival.
Mrs. Clinton claims the EpiPen price hikes show the need for price controls, and she says she’ll require drug makers to “prove that any additional costs are linked to additional patient benefits and better value.”
The government thwarts competition, and so a life-saving Epi-Pen costs $500 where it was just $100 in 2008. When you have a monopoly, you can charge anything you like. The solution is not government price controls, Hillary, but increased competition.
Alieta Eck, MD For Real Health Care Reform
By Eugene Scott, CNN
Updated 1:32 PM ET, Thu August 25, 2016
Washington (CNN)The incredible increase in the cost of EpiPens, auto-injectors that can stop life-threatening emergencies caused by allergic reactions, has hit home on Capitol Hill.
One Democratic senator whose daughter has allergies has called for action and another Democratic senator’s daughter is CEO of the company responsible for the price hike.
Sen. Joe Manchin said Thursday Mylan, the company which manufactures Epipens which is headed by his daughter, is responding to constituent and lawmaker questions.
“I am aware of the questions my colleagues and many parents are asking and frankly I share their concerns about the skyrocketing prices of prescription drugs,” the West Virginia Democrat said in a statement. “Today I heard Mylan’s initial response, and I am sure Mylan will have a more comprehensive and formal response to those questions.”
His daughter, Heather Bresch who is Mylan’s CEO, announced Thursday the company is taking steps to make the product more affordable, including providing $300 savings cards to cut the price in half, though she told CNBC the health care “system” needed to be fixed.
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Productivity, a sore spot for the U.S. economy over the past few years, has now declined in three straight quarters, according to data released Tuesday.
Productivity in the second quarter unexpectedly fell 0.5%, well below expectations,the Labor Department said. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had forecast a 0.3% gain in productivity in the quarter.
Productivity is down 0.4% from a year earlier, the first year-over-year decline since the second quarter of 2013.
Pew survey: Americans and many Europeans gloomy about economy, but the Chinese are sunny about theirs.
By PAUL WISEMAN, AP Economics Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans, Japanese and many Europeans are glum about their national economies. By contrast, Chinese, Indians and Australians feel positive about theirs.
Those are among the findings from a survey of 20,132 people in 16 countries by the Pew Research Center. Just 44 percent of Americans rated the U.S. economy as “good,” although that proportion has risen steadily from 18 percent in 2011.
Despite longevity, total growth during this economic expansion is lower than for much shorter business cycles
By ERIC MORATH
Jul 29, 2016 10:39 am ET
Even seven years after the recession ended, the current stretch of economic gains has yielded less growth than much shorter business cycles.
In terms of average annual growth, the pace of this expansion has been by far the weakest of any since 1949. (And for which we have quarterly data.) The economy has grown at a 2.1% annual rate since the U.S. recovery began in mid-2009, according to gross-domestic-product data the Commerce Department released Friday.
“Today’s (Friday’s)terrible GDP report is another signal that our economy is still struggling. It’s obvious that top-down, Washington-knows-best policies aren’t working and need to be replaced with ideas that empower people over special interests.” Rep. Scott Garrett CD-5
Inventory liquidation weighs on U.S. second-quarter GDP growth
By Lucia Mutikani
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. economy grew far less than expected in the second quarter as inventory investment fell for the first time in nearly five years, but a surge in consumer spending pointed to underlying strength.
Gross domestic product increased at a 1.2 percent annual rate after rising by a downwardly revised 0.8 percent pace in the first quarter, the Commerce Department said on Friday.
“Once the impact of a downward inventory adjustment is considered, the underlying pace of growth looks healthier than the headline number,” said Chris Williamson, chief economist at IHS Markit in London.
The economy was previously reported to have expanded at a 1.1 percent pace in the first quarter. Economists had forecast GDP growth rising at a 2.6 percent rate in the last quarter.
While the inventory drawdown weighed on GDP growth, that is likely to provide a boost to output for the rest of the year. Excluding inventories, the economy grew at a 2.4 percent rate. A measure of domestic demand grew at a 2.7 percent pace.
The Federal Reserve said on Wednesday that near-term risks to the economic outlook had “diminished.” With the second-quarter GDP report, the government also published revisions to data going back to 2013 through the first quarter of 2016.
Reversing growth in small business activity for the first time in four years.
Bad news for aspiring entrepreneurs: Now might not be the best time to launch your own business.
Total entrepreneurial activity in the U.S.—measured by the number of people starting and operating new businesses—fell to 12% in 2015, from 14% in 2014, according to a report released Tuesday by Babson College. The drop reverses upward growth in small business activity during the previous four years.
The findings could indicate that employees are satisfied with their jobs and unwilling to strike out on their own. But the research could also show a lack of confidence in the small business environment in the wake of the recession, Babson professor Donna Kelley told CNBC. The Small Business Optimism Index, a metric from the National Federation of Independent Business, has remained below its 42-year average since the recession.
VIENNA (AP) — Key restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program imposed under an internationally negotiated deal will start to ease years before the 15-year accord expires, advancing Tehran’s ability to build a bomb even before the end of the pact, according to a document obtained Monday by The Associated Press.
The confidential document is the only text linked to last year’s deal between Iran and six foreign powers that hasn’t been made public, although U.S. officials say members of Congress who expressed interest were briefed on its substance. It was given to the AP by a diplomat whose work has focused on Iran’s nuclear program for more than a decade, and its authenticity was confirmed by another diplomat who possesses the same document.
