electric catamaran boat to set world record

[NICE PAIR]

[noli]

.

Tesla Model 3 lease is $299 / month ...wow!

[NICE PAIR]

He's gotta do sumthin with them, I hear he has a few extras!

[David - WI]

Laying off 10% of their global workforce... you have to be a little bit wrong about a lot of things or REALLY wrong about a few things, if you have to axe 10%company wide.

[CUDA]

Laying off 10% of their global workforce... you have to be a little bit wrong about a lot of things or REALLY wrong about a few things, if you have to axe 10%company wide.

So, your stock went down? What are you trying to say? UPS just laid off 12,000, so what?

Stellantis spearheading a global wave of job cuts in the auto industry
Jerry White
5 February 2024

Toledo Assembly Complex workers [Photo by Stellantis]
Job cuts in the global auto industry are accelerating as automakers seek to gain an edge in the highly competitive electric vehicle market by slashing employment levels and shifting costs onto the backs of workers around the world.

Stellantis, the world’s third-largest automaker, shut down the third shift at its Detroit Assembly Complex-Mack plant last Friday as it ramps up its Dare Forward 2030 global cost-cutting program. Stellantis claims the 2,455 layoffs are only temporary, but executives have repeatedly threatened to permanently slash jobs at the plant.

“A lot of people were crying here Friday, but most weren’t talking about it,” a Mack worker told the WSWS. “The third shift has been eliminated, so they are assigning people to new jobs.” Workers say among those being let go were 750 supplementary (temporary) workers who have no recall rights despite being ostensibly represented by the United Auto Workers.

Another 1,225 job cuts at Stellantis’ Toledo Assembly Complex, originally slated for Monday, have been postponed until February 19, workers told the WSWS. In an effort to sell its supposedly “record” labor agreement last November, UAW officials told workers the company would be adding a third shift at the plant and hiring more workers. The UAW claimed 1,100 supplemental employees, or SEs, at Toledo would be converted to full-time positions under the new agreement.

“Everyone at the job is talking, but all there is to go on are rumors,” an SE told the WSWS. “I am just waiting to see if I get a layoff notice. Every time you try to get information from the union, they tell you no one has the information. No one knows what’s going on. But they are getting away with it.”

The 5,500 workers, who produce Jeep Wranglers and Gladiators, struck for six weeks during UAW President Shawn Fain’s bogus “stand-up” strike last year, which kept two-thirds of the UAW membership on the job. Despite this effort to wear down their resistance, Toledo workers voted down the sellout agreement. “Everyone on my team said while we were on strike that they would probably end up firing every SE,” the worker said.

On January 12, Stellantis fired 539 SEs in metro Detroit and Kokomo, Indiana, and cut off medical insurance a few weeks later. UAW officials admit the company plans to terminate another 1,600 company-wide in coming weeks and have made clear they will do nothing to oppose it.

Under the terms of its deal with Stellantis, the UAW also agreed to the closure of 10 parts distribution centers and the Tipton Transmission Plant near Kokomo, Indiana. Tipton is likely to be the first of many transmission plants to be closed as Stellantis begins purchasing transmissions from Hyundai Transys, a subsidiary of South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group. The Jeep brand “will be the first to install the Hyundai Transys transmissions,” Maeil Business News Korea reported.


Stellantis is also cutting the jobs of 600 contract workers at its Mulhouse plant in eastern France, with a CFE-CGC union representative saying the company cited “the wider geopolitical situation and its current price race against competitors regarding electric cars as reasons for the cuts,” according to Reuters.

Stellantis’ layoffs are part of a Europe-wide jobs massacre. VW is axing thousands of jobs to reduce costs by $11 billion. Bosch, the world’s largest automotive supplier, said 1,200 employers in its software and electronics division would be fired by the end of 2026. ZF Friedrichshafen, Germany’s second-largest supplier, could slash 12,000 workers in a “worst-case scenario” by 2030, the Financial Times reported.

[JPEROG]

BIDENOMICS--the guy is a genius... If he is re-elected, I predict a full blown recession by early 2026. Please vote accordingly and educate those who are smart enough to understand.

Joe

[JPEROG]

.

Tesla Model 3 lease is $299 / month ...wow!

Amazing what our money gets spent on. These town cars are going to be pushed on us until his captive audience stands up against it. Thank god that Biden didn't try to bring the YOGO back.

Joe

[noli]

Amazing what our money gets spent on. These town cars are going to be pushed on us until his captive audience stands up against it. Thank god that Biden didn't try to bring the YOGO back.

Joe

Joe,

Are you not curious why Europe and other countries are being over-run by China-made vehicles and not USA?

The $7500 credit is a way to keep American made vehicles built by American labor to keep Chinese vehicles out of USA

The $7,500 tax credit is actually composed of (2) credits, $3,750 each.

Here is an exceprt ()

"These requirements are designed to encourage the auto industry to rely less on China and more on the U.S. for these components, in the name of supply chain security and U.S. jobs.
One of the $3,750 credits focuses on the raw materials inside batteries, meaning a certain percentage of critical minerals, like lithium, graphite and cobalt, need to be mined or processed in the U.S. or a trade partner.
The other $3,750 credit is about battery manufacturing: A certain percentage of the battery's components, like anodes, cathodes and electrolytes, need to be manufactured or assembled in North America.

"


Joe, I will help clarify the larger picture advantages as needed to educate us all here, rather than making this a one-sided view by folks who don't understand

or

folks who only see the smaller picture because of their anger towards our government






.

[CUDA]

BIDENOMICS--the guy is a genius... If he is re-elected, I predict a full blown recession by early 2026. Please vote accordingly and educate those who are smart enough to understand.

Joe

You are So IGNORANT, short, fat, and UGLY. Please change your channel.

https://youtu.be/o38n1mSQ-U8

If you would like to know the overstimulation of our economy, is the cause of much of our inflation but giving away 3 trillion dollars because of Covid 19, and we are fighting a Proxy war that trumps buddy Putin started, so yeah that is why fuel prices spiked,


https://www.propublica.org/article/national-debt-trump

You are Ignorant of all the factors that make up a healthy economy.


Donald Trump Built a National Debt So Big (Even Before the Pandemic) That It’ll Weigh Down the Economy for Years
The “King of Debt” promised to reduce the national debt — then his tax cuts made it surge. Add in the pandemic, and he oversaw the third-biggest deficit increase of any president.

by Allan Sloan, ProPublica, and Cezary Podkul for ProPublica Jan. 14, 2021, 5 a.m. EST
President Donald Trump promised to reduce the national debt but instead increased it. It is now at its highest level relative to the U.S. economy since the end of World War II. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
SERIES:A CLOSER LOOK
Examining the News

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This story was co-published with The Washington Post.

One of President Donald Trump’s lesser known but profoundly damaging legacies will be the explosive rise in the national debt that occurred on his watch. The financial burden that he’s inflicted on our government will wreak havoc for decades, saddling our kids and grandkids with debt.

The national debt has risen by almost $7.8 trillion during Trump’s time in office. That’s nearly twice as much as what Americans owe on student loans, car loans, credit cards and every other type of debt other than mortgages, combined, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It amounts to about $23,500 in new federal debt for every person in the country.

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The growth in the annual deficit under Trump ranks as the third-biggest increase, relative to the size of the economy, of any U.S. presidential administration, according to a calculation by a leading Washington budget maven, Eugene Steuerle, co-founder of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. And unlike George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln, who oversaw the larger relative increases in deficits, Trump did not launch two foreign conflicts or have to pay for a civil war.

The National Debt Increased Under Trump Despite His Promise to Reduce It
Daily total national debt from 2009 to present.


Source: U.S. Treasury (Lena V. Groeger/ProPublica)
Economists agree that we needed massive deficit spending during the COVID-19 crisis to ward off an economic cataclysm, but federal finances under Trump had become dire even before the pandemic. That happened even though the economy was booming and unemployment was at historically low levels. By the Trump administration’s own description, the pre-pandemic national debt level was already a “crisis” and a “grave threat.”

The combination of Trump’s 2017 tax cut and the lack of any serious spending restraint helped both the deficit and the debt soar. So when the once-in-a-lifetime viral disaster slammed our country and we threw more than $3 trillion into COVID-19-related stimulus, there was no longer any margin for error.

Our national debt has reached immense levels relative to our economy, nearly as high as it was at the end of World War II. But unlike 75 years ago, the massive financial overhang from Medicare and Social Security will make it dramatically more difficult to dig ourselves out of the debt ditch.

The Debt to GDP Ratio Is the Highest It's Been Since World War II
Federal debt held by the public as a percentage of gross domestic product since 1900.


Source: Congressional Budget Office (Lena V. Groeger/ProPublica)
Falling deeper into the red is the opposite of what Trump, the self-styled “King of Debt,” said would happen if he became president. In a March 31, 2016, interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of The Washington Post, Trump said he could pay down the national debt, then about $19 trillion, “over a period of eight years” by renegotiating trade deals and spurring economic growth.

After he took office, Trump predicted that economic growth created by the 2017 tax cut, combined with the proceeds from the tariffs he imposed on a wide range of goods from numerous countries, would help eliminate the budget deficit and let the U.S. begin to pay down its debt. On July 27, 2018, he told Sean Hannity of Fox News: “We have $21 trillion in debt. When this [the 2017 tax cut] really kicks in, we’ll start paying off that debt like it’s water.”

Nine days later, he tweeted, “Because of Tariffs we will be able to start paying down large amounts of the $21 trillion in debt that has been accumulated, much by the Obama Administration.”

That’s not how it played out. When Trump took office in January 2017, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was projecting that federal budget deficits would be 2% to 3% of our gross domestic product during Trump’s term. Instead, the deficit reached nearly 4% of gross domestic product in 2018 and 4.6% in 2019.

There were multiple culprits. Trump’s tax cuts, especially the sharp reduction in the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%, took a big bite out of federal revenue. The CBO estimated in 2018 that the tax cut would increase deficits by about $1.9 trillion over 11 years.

Meanwhile, Trump’s claim that increased revenue from the tariffs would help eliminate (or at least reduce) our national debt hasn’t panned out. In 2018, Trump’s administration began hiking tariffs on aluminum, steel and many other products, launching what became a global trade war with China, the European Union and other countries.

The tariffs did bring in additional revenue. In fiscal 2019, they netted about $71 billion, up about $36 billion from President Barack Obama’s last year in office. But although $36 billion is a lot of money, it’s less than 1/750th of the national debt. That $36 billion could have covered a bit more than three weeks of interest on the national debt — that is, had Trump not unilaterally decided to send a chunk of the tariff revenue to farmers affected by his trade wars. Businesses that struggled as a result of the tariffs also paid fewer taxes, offsetting some of the increased tariff revenue.

By early 2019, the national debt had climbed to $22 trillion. Trump’s budget proposal for 2020 called it a “grave threat to our economic and societal prosperity” and asserted that the U.S. was experiencing a “national debt crisis.” However, that same budget proposal included substantial growth in the national debt.

By the end of 2019, the debt had risen to $23.2 trillion and more federal officials were sounding the alarm. “Not since World War II has the country seen deficits during times of low unemployment that are as large as those that we project — nor, in the past century, has it experienced large deficits for as long as we project,” Phillip Swagel, director of the CBO, said in January 2020.

Weeks later, COVID-19 erupted and made the financial situation far worse. As of Dec. 31, 2020, the national debt had jumped to $27.75 trillion, up 39% from $19.95 trillion when Trump was sworn in. The government ended its 2020 fiscal year with the portion of the national debt owed to investors, the metric favored by the CBO, at around 100% of GDP. The CBO had predicted less than a year earlier that it would take until 2030 to reach that approximate level of debt. Including the trillions owed to various governmental trust funds, the total debt is now about 130% of GDP.

Normally, this is where we’d give you Trump’s version of events. But we couldn’t get anyone to give us Trump’s side. Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, referred us to the Office of Management and Budget, which is a branch of the White House.

OMB didn’t respond to our requests. The Treasury directed us to comments made by OMB director Russell Vought in October, in which he predicted that as the pandemic eases and economic growth rebounds, the “fiscal picture” will improve. The OMB blamed legislators for deficits when Trump submitted his proposed 2021 budget: “Unfortunately, the Congress continues to reject any efforts to restrain spending. Instead, they have greatly contributed to the continued ballooning of Federal debt and deficits, putting the Nation’s fiscal future at risk.”

Still, the deficit growth under Trump has been historic. Steuerle, of the Tax Policy Center, has done a comparison of every American president using a metric called the “primary deficit.” It’s defined as the deficit minus interest costs, because interest is the only budget expense that presidents and Congress can’t control unless they want to do the unthinkable and default on the debt. Steuerle examined the records of 45 presidents to see how the primary deficit had shrunk or grown relative to the size of the economy between the first and final years of each president’s administration.

Trump had the third-biggest primary deficit growth, 5.2% of GDP, behind only George W. Bush (11.7%) and Abraham Lincoln (9.4%). Bush, of course, not only passed a big tax cut, as Trump has, but also launched two wars, which greatly inflated the defense budget. Lincoln had to pay for the Civil War. By contrast, Trump’s wars have been almost entirely of the political variety.

Our national debt is now at its highest level relative to our economy since the end of World War II. After the war ended, the extraordinary military expenses disappeared, a postwar recovery began and the debt began to fall rapidly relative to the size of the economy.

But that’s not going to happen this time. When World War II ended 75 years ago, Social Security was in its infancy and Medicare didn’t exist. Today, many of our biggest and most rapidly growing expenses, especially Social Security and Medicare, are baked into the budget because of our nation’s aging population. These outlays are slated to rise sharply. Steuerle recently calculated that Social Security, health care and interest costs are projected to absorb 122% of the total growth in federal revenues from 2019 to 2030.

What’s more, our investment in the future — things like research and development, education, infrastructure, workforce training and such — is declining as a proportion of the budget. OMB data shows that in 1970, mandatory spending (such as Social Security and Medicare, but not including interest on the debt) and investment each made up around 30% of total federal spending. But as of 2019, the most recent available year, mandatory spending had doubled to around 61% of total federal spending while investment fell by more than half, to around 12.5%.

Mandatory Spending Outstrips Investment in the Future

[CUDA]

https://www.axios.com/2024/01/31/us-...gdp-g7-nations

U.S. winning world economic war

GDP growth among G7 nations
Table showing GDP growth among G7 nations with 2023 estimates and 2024 projections. The U.S. has the highest economic growth with +2.5% in 2023 and +2.1% expected in 2024. Among G7 nations, Germany has the least expected growth with -0.3% in 2023 and +0.5% in 2024.
Table with 4 columns and 7 rows.
2023
Estimated 2024
Projected
���� U.S. +2.5%
+2.5%+2.5%
+2.1%
+2.1%+2.1%
���� Japan +1.9%
+1.9%+1.9%
+0.9%
+0.9%+0.9%
���� Canada +1.1%
+1.1%+1.1%
+1.4%
+1.4%+1.4%
���� France +0.8%
+0.8%+0.8%
+1.0%
+1.0%+1.0%
���� Italy +0.7%
+0.7%+0.7%
+0.7%
+0.7%+0.7%
���� U.K. +0.5%
+0.5%+0.5%
+0.6%
+0.6%+0.6%
����Germany -⁠0.3%
-⁠0.3%-⁠0.3%
+0.5%
+0.5%+0.5%
Data: January 2024 IMF World Economic Outlook; Chart: Axios Visuals
The United States economy grew faster than any other large advanced economy last year — by a wide margin — and is on track to do so again in 2024.

Why it matters: America's outperformance is rooted in its distinctive structural strengths, policy choices, and some luck. It reflects a fundamental resilience in the world's largest economy that is easy to overlook amid the nation's problems.

By the numbers: U.S. GDP looks to have grown 2.5% in 2023, according to the IMF's hot-off-the-presses World Economic Outlook, the highest among the G7 economies (Japan was second at 1.9%).

IMF economists forecast similarly best-in-class growth this year, with 2.1% U.S. growth (second place: Canada at 1.4%).
State of play: All countries were dealing with the same problems of post-pandemic inflation and high interest rates meant to combat it. But the U.S. managed to achieve solid growth in spite of those headwinds.

Strong growth in the U.S. labor force was one factor — both due to more Americans choosing to enter the workforce and a surge in immigration.
The U.S. also experienced strong productivity growth fueled by an innovative corporate sector and, Biden administration officials argue, big federal investments in infrastructure and manufacturing capacity.
What they're saying: Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, argues that an important part of the story is a U.S. pandemic response that led to more Americans shifting toward higher-productivity work.

"The enormous labor market churn of COVID in 2020-21 had the unintended benefit of moving millions of lower income workers to better jobs, more income security, and/or running their own businesses," Posen tells Axios.
"We are reaping the benefits of it now in labor force participation, wage growth, and improved productivity," which was "very different from Europe and Japan where most workers remained tied to their pre-COVID jobs."
Yes, but: It's not just that the U.S. is doing well — it's that other major economies have distinctive problems holding back growth.


Japan, for example, has a shrinking population and low immigration rates, which means even when its economy is doing well, growth is lower than the U.S.
The United Kingdom is still working through the supply disruptions triggered by Brexit.
Major European economies have been reliant on Russian oil and natural gas, so the war with Ukraine and elevated energy costs are hammering manufacturers in Germany and beyond. Attacks in Red Sea shipping lanes could add further disruption to European industry.
White House economic adviser Lael Brainard, speaking to reporters last week, cited "strong policy actions that were designed to lead to a strong and broad-based recovery faster than we have seen previously in the U.S. — and faster than we saw in other countries."


Jan 30, 2024 -
Economy
No doom and gloom: Global recession risk has receded, IMF says
Illustration of an upward trending bar chart with one of the bars as a springboard, springing the Earth over the proceeding bars.
Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

Gone are the gloomy warnings of an imminent global recession. Economists at the International Monetary Fund see improving results, on both inflation and growth, compared with just a few months ago.

Why it matters: The world survived the great inflation shock better than many had anticipated. Price pressures have receded, and high interest rates didn't crush global activity.

[GaryConn]

The problem is the fact that these electric cars are being shoved down our throat. I like freedom of choice. It's that simple. I won't even get into the fact of the financial incentive for the people who are pushing them on us. Let's just say it has nothing to do with saving the planet. Like they want you to believe.

[CUDA]

OK Facts Joe

Donald Trump Built a National Debt So Big (Even Before the Pandemic) That It’ll Weigh Down the Economy for Years
The “King of Debt” promised to reduce the national debt — then his tax cuts made it surge. Add in the pandemic, and he oversaw the third-biggest deficit increase of any president.

FACT, the first thing he did was give the rich a colossal tax break. Just that little tax break for your rich friends cost us $2.3 Trillion

So yes I understand why the wealthy like Tax breaks.

[Chaz]

I get it now, the $7500.00 re-bait paid with my tax money .. is to sway you from buying a POS golf cart .. with a chink battery.

Nice try nole .. but the "village idiot" award will be in CRAP's hands for a while ..

[Brad Zastrow]

You have choices. Gas, Hybrid or Electric. My wife and I have owned 2 hybrids and now a Tesla Model S. She hates to buy gas. I stated about 40 pages ago in this thread that EV's are not for everyone. As a second car the Tesla is by far the best car we have owned. Ultra cheap to charge at home at night when the rates are really low. She drives about 60-80 miles a day. In the last 30 days we spent $15 on electricity for the car. The Tesla app shows the KW used and the rate. The other night we were at a dinner party and met there after work. I was in my C8 Corvette, and she was driving the Tesla. On the way home she raced me at a stop light. Damn that Tesla is fast. Almost got me. She does not have the performance model which would have killed the Vette. Many of my friends and neighbors are buying EV's as a second car and no one complains. Stop hating on EV's. No one is forcing you to buy one.

[CUDA]

Sounds like you have a COOL wife.

My brother's wife started crying the first time he pushed his Model S twin motor, and told him, never do that again

She never drove the S in over six years of ownership, and now the Lucid Air GT with over 800 HP, she will not drive it.

My brother said when she went new car shopping the only thing that mattered to her was the comfort of the driver's seat,

Since she is 60 lbs overweight you would think he's fat butt would mold to any seat