US Raw Steel Production Up 15.7 Percent From Depths of the Covid Recession

US raw steel production up 15.7 percent from the depths of the covid recession in the week ending April 3, 2021, when it was 1,766,000 net tons at an ACUR of 77.9 percent.

US Drill Rigs Running Up 13 From Prior Week

There were 430 drill rigs running in the US last week, up 13 rigs from the prior week, down 234 rigs from one year ago. Meanwhile, Canadian drilling dropped by 12 rigs to 69, up 28 rigs from 1 year ago.

From The Wall Street Journal 4/7/2021:

The Biden administration has proposed an array of corporate tax increases with a goal of raising some $1.33 trillion over the next 10 years. That’s three times the $409 billion that the Congressional Budget Office estimated was the cost of the 2017 corporate tax cut. To get a clear picture of who will pay these new taxes, Americans need to understand who benefited from the 2017 corporate tax cut.

Between the pandemic-induced recession and the years of slow growth following the 2008 subprime crisis, a brief respite of stronger growth and rising wages lifted America’s fortunes and spirits. Economic growth is generally viewed as some abstract concept, but when gross domestic product, which was projected in 2016 to grow by only 2.1% on average over the next three years, instead rose 3% in 2018, that small increase in growth made a huge difference to a lot of Americans. The CBO responded to the increase in economic growth by adding $6.2 trillion to its 10-year GDP estimate- an extra $1,900 of annual income on average for every man, woman and child in America. The big difference this little bit of extra growth created was fully revealed in the census figures, when income growth in 2019 was the most broad-based and best ever recorded in a single year, and the poverty rate fell the most in a half a century.

Even the toughest critics of the tax cuts would grudgingly concede that the 2017 reduction in the corporate tax rate increased equity values. Despite the pandemic, the average value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S& P 500 and Nasdaq Composite Index has doubled since the 2016 election when markets began to anticipate a corporate tax cut.

Who benefited from these gains? Numerous studies and polls show that more than half of American households own stocks, most through pension plans, 401(k)s, individual retirement accounts, mutual funds and annuities. Beyond the irrefutable benefits that flowed into retirement plans and annuities, critics never concede that corporate tax relief helped average families, much less low-income workers.

How does that view square with 2019 census data showing that real median household income hit its highest level ever for African-American, Hispanic and Asian-American workers and retirees? Or that the 2019 poverty rate was the lowest in more than 50 years for children, at 14.4%, and the lowest ever for individuals (10.5%), for families (8.5%), and for households headed by unmarried women (22.2%).

More impressive is that, even after 10 years of economic expansion, the 2019 gains shattered all records as real household income leapt $4,379 in 2019 alone, 13 times the average annual gain since data were first collected, almost half again more than the next highest annual income gain, and a quarter more in 2019 alone than in the eight years between 2009 and 2016. Black household incomes in 2019 surged by a record $3,328. Hispanic incomes leapt $3,731-a third higher than their next best year ever recorded-and Asian-American incomes surged $9,400, about two-thirds more than the previous high.

Record income gains, especially among lower-income Americans, caused the poverty rate to plummet 11% in 2019, the most in 53 years. The poverty rate fell the most for Asians since records began in 1987 and for children the most in over half a century. The poverty rate for blacks and Hispanics hit historic lows. This cornucopia, shown so vividly in the 2019 census data, was the product of a reduction in the American corporate tax rate from the highest rate in the world to roughly the average rate among developed countries, and a concentrated effort to reduce regulatory burdens.

The 2017 corporate tax cuts triggered the blue-collar wage boom. Higher rates would reverse it.

DAVID KLEIN

The White House Council of Economic Advisers in 2015 described the potential effect of reducing the corporate tax rate as follows:

When effective marginal rates are higher, potential projects need to generate more income if the business is to pay the tax and still provide investors with the required return. . . . A lower effective marginal rate will tend to encourage additional projects and a larger capital stock.” That was the Obama CEA.

How much of the benefits of the corporate tax-rate reduction went to workers? A CBO study estimated that 70% of the corporate income-tax burden falls on workers. A 2011 study by Matt Jensen and Aparna Mathur of the American Enterprise Institute made a strong case that workers bear more than 50% of the corporate tax burden. But the record income gains in 2019 provide the strongest evidence yet that the corporate tax is a hidden tax on workers.

Giving American business a level playing field on corporate tax rates triggered a blue-collar boom in which the lowest-wage earners enjoyed the fastest wage growth, 10.6% in 2019 alone.

Historically disadvantaged groups like veterans, high-school dropouts and the disabled experienced their lowest unemployment rates ever. Three-fourths of workers hired in the fourth quarter of 2019 were new entrants into the labor market, many forgoing government benefits for a job. When income levels in 2019 were the highest on record, when incomes rose the most ever in a single year, when the poverty rates fell the most in a half a century, and when America’s lowest-income workers gained the most, we know who really benefited from the 2017 corporate tax cut. Does this sound like “a race to the bottom” to you?

For those who burn sacrifices at the altar of big government and believe that progress for ordinary people can come only through expanded government, the Miracle of 2019 was a UFO, some inexplicable event best ignored. No one cheers progress when peddling misery.

So as the chants about greedy corporations, overpaid CEOs and a corrupt market system harmonize in support of an increase in corporate tax rates, it’s important to remember who really benefited from making U.S. corporate tax rates more globally competitive. The 2017 corporate tax-rate reduction enhanced after-tax profits, fueled a rise in economic growth and caused wages to spike even at the end of the longest and weakest recovery of the postwar era. The reduction in corporate tax rates worked for the working people of America.

Mr. Gramm is a former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Solon is a partner of US Policy Metrics.

This is a very revealing article. The American people (in my view) were ripped off in the 2020 election. The policies President Trump instituted were a huge benefit to middle and lower class Americans, as well as corporations. Now, we have in power a collection of idiots who are hell-bent on destroying our country; raising taxes, adding regulations, weakening our borders, weakening our military, weakening our values as Americans. It is a disgusting display of what progressivism really is. This is not going to be an administration legislating for the United States of America. The left fired Trump for these accomplishments? Why? To replace him with this horse shit? My God, what have they done?

The Biden administration has spent $86 MILLION on hotel rooms for illegal aliens (thus far). Unbelievable!

What are we doing?? On Wednesday, United Airlines announced that, going forward, they will seek “equity and diversity” in their hiring practices for pilots. Apparently, most of their pilots are white. Does that mean they have been discriminating in their hiring (that would be racist, and I doubt they pursued that as practice)? Does it mean Blacks, women, Hispanics just do not choose that as a career (more plausible to me)? So now, instead of seeking the best to be our safeguards in the air, we are to accept less competence and safety in order for the airline to be less exposed to the rampant “cancel culture” burning its way across our country? Hardly a beneficial trade-off. After all, who do we want piloting our airplanes? The best and the brightest, right? Do we care what color or ethnicity they are? No. Unless you are a progressive leftist…

If you do not yet see it, “wokeism” and “cancel culture” are destroying our country from within. I am going to do some canceling of my own:
No more facebook
No more twitter
No more buying through amazon
No more flying delta airlines
No more Major League Baseball
No more NFL
No more NBA

“MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN”

and

“KEEP AMERICA GREAT”

Have a great weekend…. God bless America!

Buy American made products whenever you can, it’s good for you, good for your friends and neighbors and good for our country.

If you are hiring…try to hire a veteran…. they are loyal, disciplined, hardworking…and they deserve our support.

By the way, if you wish to comment on my rants or offer any other insights you may have, you are encouraged to email me.

TEDDY ROOSEVELT ON IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA…1907

In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American and nothing but an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag…We have room for but one language here and that is the English language…and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”