Today's Belle

What's to stop him?

If he does what he says he intends to do (admittedly, always a big if), and it stands to trigger the kinda of global shit storm they say it will, who's there to stop him this time?

And if it gets to be as bad as they say it's bound to get, how fast can the Republicans move to finish totally fucking up the elections process so 'we the people' can't do anything about it either?

The explainers from Impartial Points:

Today's Vic

Book mark this one for your MAGA friends on social media.

Booming Right Along

WaPo puts the usual razor blades in this apple, but one thing that sticks out for me that's barely hinted at here:

Pressure from "conservatives" to get the US to retreat - and to hide from both the opportunities afforded by a global economy, and from the responsibilities that the US needs to shoulder because of our "dominant" position - makes their shitty little plans a bit more obvious.

So I think maybe I see why there is such a strong push for isolationism. If we back off, it may push our allies to step up their game (not a bad thing in general), but it leaves them out there on a limb, while at the same time giving Putin and Xi a better shot at recovering just as we've got those two biggest assholes on the planet kinda pinned against the ropes. MAGA and MAGA-like dickheads all over the world would love to see us pull back.

Surprising U.S. economy is powering better global outlook, World Bank says

High interest rates and trade tensions pose risks to a newly upbeat forecast, though.

The global economy is in better shape than it was at the start of the year, thanks largely to the performance of the United States, the World Bank said in its latest forecast Tuesday. But the sunnier outlook could cloud over if major central banks — including the Federal Reserve — keep interest rates at elevated levels.

Global growth is expected to reach an annual rate of 2.6 percent this year, up from a January forecast of 2.4 percent, the bank said. The global economy is drawing closer to a “soft landing” after recent price spikes, with average inflation dropping to a three-year low amid continuing growth, bank economists said.

While Americans’ unhappiness with high prices remains a key vulnerability for President Biden’s reelection bid, the World Bank now expects the U.S. economy to grow at an annual rate of 2.5 percent, nearly a full percentage point higher than it predicted in January. The United States is the only advanced economy growing significantly faster than the bank anticipated at the start of the year.

“Globally, overall things are better today than they were just four or five months ago,” said Indermit Gill, the World Bank’s chief economist. “A big part of this has to do with the resilience of the U.S. economy.”

The bank credited “U.S. dynamism” with helping stabilize the global economy, despite the highest interest rates in years and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. Employers added 272,000 jobs in May, topping analysts’ estimates, the Labor Department reported last week.

Expected global growth this year and next, however, will remain below the pre-pandemic average of 3.1 percent. Three out of four developing countries are now expected to grow more slowly than the bank forecast in January, leaving them little hope of narrowing the income gap with richer nations.

Despite their mostly upbeat tone, bank officials warned that central banks including the Fed are likely to move slowly to begin reversing the past two years of interest rate increases. That means global interest rates will remain high, averaging around 4 percent over the next two years, roughly twice the average recorded during the two decades before the pandemic.

Global inflation should ease to 3.5 percent this year, before dropping to 2.9 percent next year. But the decline is proving more gradual than the bank anticipated. And any deterioration that causes monetary authorities to delay cuts in borrowing costs could strip 0.3 percentage points from the forecast growth rates.

“This is a major risk confronting the global economy — interest rates remaining higher for longer and an already weak growth outlook becoming weaker,” Gill said.

Bank officials also flagged global trade — which is on course this year to complete its weakest half-decade since the 1990s — as a concern. Trading nations in 2024 have implemented more than 700 restrictions on merchandise trade and nearly 160 barriers to services trade.

“Trade restrictive measures have skyrocketed. They have more than doubled since the pre-pandemic period,” Gill said.

Rising protectionism risks becoming a drag on the global economy’s already modest pace of growth. Popular support in many countries for tariffs on imported goods and industrial subsidies that favor domestic production could further constrict trade flows that are already under pressure from the U.S.-China rivalry and other geopolitical risks.

“The world might become stuck in the slow lane,” said Ayhan Kose, the bank’s deputy chief economist.

Among those likely to suffer if key interest rates stay higher for longer are the 40 percent of developing countries at risk of a debt crisis. Many borrowed heavily to fund pandemic-related health care and subsequently to cover food and fertilizer bills that soared following the war in Ukraine.

They have little immediate prospect of securing debt relief and now risk losing out on trade gains as larger economies turn inward, Gill said.

We have to keep working on the wealth equity problem. A booming economy doesn't mean we're all enjoying a nice ride that's just getting better for everybody. The plutocrats are working hard to get an even bigger advantage over normal people.

That bit about "a rising tide lifts all boats" is just peachy as long your boat isn't chained to the fuckin' bottom.

Today's Uncle Bob

What kind of society do we want to live in?

Myth #1: Economics is objective

Today's Lesson

@RyanStygar 

Overheard

Somebody working at a McDonalds franchise in Denmark makes about $21 an hour.

They're in a union. They get 5 or 6 weeks paid vacation every year. They can take up to a year paid maternity leave. They get life insurance, healthcare insurance, and a pension plan if they're over 20 years old.

A Big Mac in Denmark will run you about $5.50

Somebody working at a McDonalds franchise in USAmerica Inc makes about $9.50 an hour with no benefits.

A Big Mac in the US goes for about $5.50

McDonald's gross profit for the twelve months ending December 31, 2023 was $14,563,000,000 - 14½ billion dollars - a 10.26% increase year-over-year. And they paid the CEO almost $20 million.

Confirming

60% of inflation increases can be directly attributed to corporate profits.

So Far So Good

... but

a) don't count on the weather

b) don't count on ending the shit in Ukraine any time soon (it could happen, but don't count on it, cuz Russia will go on fucking with everything as long as Putin stays in place

More Trump Lunacy

Tariffs are almost universally considered a monumentally stoopid idea. Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum (et al) - primarily aimed at China - ended up costing us trillions of dollars because American consumers paid more for imported manufactured goods, American farmers lost some primary markets due to retaliatory tariffs (which meant we had to subsidize them), and on top of all that, Trump's trade policies damaged the relationships with dozens of our historically vital allies.

And they're planning on doing it all again - but even more this time.

These assholes won't quit until they've torn us down completely, in order to put us on an equal footing with their fellow assholes - like Putin and Xi and Orban - dividing the world into nuclear-armed corporate entities - operating the whole planet as one big worldwide conglomerate.

And the rubes go right along with it, cheering on this self-destructive version of globalization even as they constantly bitch about "the globalists".

Trump trade advisers plot dollar devaluation

Advisers close to the former president — particularly his former trade chief Robert Lighthizer — are considering policies that would weaken the dollar relative to other currencies, which could juice U.S. exports but also fuel inflation.

Economic advisers close to former President Donald Trump are actively debating ways to devalue the U.S. dollar if he’s elected to a second term — a dramatic move that could boost U.S. exports but also reignite inflation and threaten the dollar’s position as the world’s dominant currency.

The idea is being discussed by former trade chief Robert Lighthizer — a potential Treasury secretary pick for Trump and the architect of the former president’s bruising tariff campaign against China — and policy advisers allied with him, according to three former Trump administration officials granted anonymity to discuss confidential policy plans.

Purposely devaluing the U.S. dollar by pressing other countries to alter their own currency values would represent the most aggressive proposal yet in Trump’s attempts to reshape global trade. The potential moves would go beyond the tariffs of Trump’s first term and the expansive industrial subsidies for clean energy enacted by President Joe Biden. A weaker dollar would make U.S. exports cheaper on the world market and potentially reduce the U.S.’ yawning trade deficit.

“Currency revaluation is likely to be a priority for some members of a potential second Trump administration, mainly because of the viewpoint that [an overvalued dollar] contributes to the trade deficit,” said one former Trump administration official, adding that Lighthizer and his team are the primary advocates for the approach.

But weakening the dollar could have other far-reaching consequences, from sending consumer prices for imported products soaring, to inviting retaliation from other countries and threatening the dollar’s role as world reserve currency, which would undermine U.S. sanctions on adversaries like Iran and Russia.

The potential policy shift during a second Trump term could further fragment the global economy — a post-pandemic trend top finance officials are already grappling with as they gather in Washington this week for the yearly Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

Each of the former officials stressed that all of the “nuances” of the currency policies are not worked out yet, and could shift before or after the election. Among other things, Lighthizer is considering ways to weaken the dollar unilaterally or through negotiations with foreign nations using the threat of tariffs, the former officials said.

Lighthizer — one of the few Cabinet members to survive Trump’s full first term — retains significant influence on the former president’s trade and economic policies from his post as the trade chief at the America First Policy Institute, a think tank set up to devise policies for a second Trump administration.

But such efforts would face stiff opposition from Wall Street and its supporters in Washington because a weaker dollar could make assets based on the currency less valuable. Should Trump tap one of the finance executives he’s also considering to lead the Treasury Department, it’s much less likely he would pursue currency devaluation.

“This would only happen if Bob [Lighthizer] was the Treasury secretary,” a second former Trump administration economic official said.

Trump’s first administration dabbled in currency policy back in 2019 by taking the rare step of designating China a currency manipulator, meaning it was unfairly devaluing its currency, the yuan, to make its exports cheaper and gain an advantage in global trade. But that designation took place after Trump had already imposed tariffs on the Chinese economy, and his White House never went further to address the currency imbalance with policies like the ones that Lighthizer is considering today. Biden did not renew China’s designation as a currency manipulator when he took office.

The former president’s allies in Congress say they would not be surprised if a new Trump administration — particularly with Lighthizer in a position of influence — tries to do more.

“The perspective that I know [Lighthizer] brings is that when countries like China manipulate their currency, we should address that,” said Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), who was ambassador to Japan under Trump and worked closely with Lighthizer. “That sort of inherent unfairness is what Bob was constantly talking about, and I respect his position.”

Lighthizer declined to comment, and the Trump campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment. But the former trade adviser endorses the idea of dollar devaluation in his 2023 book, No Trade Is Free, writing that it is “clear” that the dollar is “well overvalued” and that the U.S. could make a number of moves to correct that imbalance.

Lighthizer “frequently” brought up currency devaluation during Trump’s first term, said one former administration official with knowledge of the discussions, as did Trump economic adviser Peter Navarro. But they faced opposition from Wall Street-aligned officials like Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and former National Economic Council Chair Gary Cohn, and the idea never got off the ground. Trump even reportedly squashed a dollar devaluation proposal from Navarro during a White House meeting, POLITICO reported in 2019.

“Lighthizer brought that up all the time because he felt like tariffs weren’t enough to achieve the objective” of rebalancing trade with the rest of the world, said one of the former Trump administration officials. “Mnuchin didn’t want to do it.”

Mnuchin is not alone. Wall Street banks and large U.S. retailers would also oppose efforts to weaken the U.S. dollar, arguing it would hurt U.S. consumers and drive up already problematic inflation. Other corporate actors worry about the ripple effects if the U.S. government moves into currency markets aggressively, concerned it could spark a global trade conflict.

Robert Lighthizer testifies before the Senate Finance Committee on Capitol Hill.
Lighthizer’s ideal situation is to try to strike a grand bargain with foreign governments on currency, similar to the Plaza Accords struck by the Reagan administration in 1985 that weakened the dollar relative to the Japanese yen and European currencies. | Susan Walsh/AP

The ultimate effects of an “orderly and durable devaluation” of the dollar would be “uncertain” for American business, said Jake Colvin, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, which represents dozens of the largest U.S. companies. But, he added, “there is the additional risk that pursuit of a weaker dollar could spark a number of unintended consequences including inflationary global currency and trade wars.”

National security hawks also worry that weakening the dollar could take the bite out of U.S. sanctions on foreign countries like Russia and Iran. Those sanctions rely on the dollar’s use as the dominant currency in world trade and finance. If the dollar was devalued enough to make other nations switch to using another currency in international transactions, the U.S. Treasury would no longer have the ability to freeze those assets, as it has done with officials in adversarial nations.

“Sanction effectiveness depends on the U.S. having a world reserve currency,” said the first former Trump administration official, “and so I think there’s a clear tension there between two objectives — one of reducing the trade deficit and two of ensuring that there’s sanctions effectiveness.”

In theory, dollar devaluation could happen through multiple avenues. Lighthizer’s ideal situation, as outlined in his 2023 book, is to try to strike a grand bargain with foreign governments on currency, similar to the Plaza Accords struck by the Reagan administration in 1985 that weakened the dollar relative to the Japanese yen and European currencies.

It’s “very clear” that such a pact will be “an objective of folks like Lighthizer” if they retake the White House, said the former Trump administration official.

When the Plaza Accords were negotiated in the 1980s, the implicit threat of tariffs from the U.S. government — then, pushed by Democratic members of Congress — helped push foreign governments to renegotiate their exchange rates.

World governments should expect the tariff threat to be more explicit if Lighthizer is empowered in a future Trump administration, said the former officials with knowledge of the plans, noting that Lighthizer endorses the idea in his book, saying that it’s “hard to believe” other nations would have agreed to the Plaza Accord “if they had not been concerned about the possibility that Congress would raise tariffs.” The administration could even impose tariffs preemptively and then offer currency negotiations as a way to get the duties reduced, the former officials added.

Short of a multilateral agreement, the Trump administration could use the threat of tariffs to force individual countries — especially China — to the table for bilateral currency negotiations, said the former officials. One legal tool that’s been floated is Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which authorizes tariffs of up to 15 percent against countries that have “large and serious” trade surpluses with the U.S.

The Trump administration could also impose across-the-board tariffs on imports, making them more expensive for U.S. consumers, the former officials said. Trump is considering a 10 percent universal import tariff, the former administration officials said, and one result of that policy could be to make the dollar weaker relative to other currencies.

But even economists that support a currency revaluation stress that those approaches have drawbacks — even from the perspective of reducing the trade deficit, one of Lighthizer’s clear goals. Unless there is a multilateral grand bargain like the Plaza Accords — which even Lighthizer’s allies acknowledge will be difficult — trading partners could negate efforts to weaken the dollar by cutting their own interest rates, imposing their own tariffs or subsidizing their domestic producers, all of which could undermine the effect of U.S. policy shifts.

“One of the problems with many of these solutions is that countries that are determined to implement mercantilist policies can get around the solutions very quickly,” said Michael Pettis, a Beijing-based economist influential among economic advisers to both Trump and Biden. “It’s the countries that don’t ‘cheat’ that pay the cost.”

No - we don't want government

to be run like a business.

Because no business is a democracy.

Every business is a dictatorship.

And Plenty More To Do

An awful lot of the jobs available aren't great jobs. And an awful lot of Americans aren't prepared to step into the really good jobs because we've spent better than 25 years allowing Republicans to fuck up our school systems.

So there's lots and lots we need to do yet. The article below points out some of the glitches.

But when the number of jobs overtakes the number of people available to fill those jobs, the labor market should tip in favor of paying people a better wage (eg). Plus, with a president who stands with unions and wage-earners in general, employers should start to feel some heat to bring back some of the benefits we used to be able to count on.

It's appalling to me when I remember my days as an hourly guy and compare it with what youngsters are going through now.

• It was a given that we'd work 40 hours a week
• We got overtime pay for anything over 40 hours
• We had 10 days paid vacation time
• We got 10 paid holidays a year
• We got paid 2½ times our regular rate for working a holiday
• Healthcare insurance
• The company matched dollar-for-dollar whatever you put into your retirement plan

Employers added 303,000 jobs in March, soaring past expectations
The unemployment rate fell to 3.8 percent

Employers in the United States added 303,000 jobs in March, soaring past expectations and reflecting renewed strength in a labor market that continues to prop up the broader U.S. economy.

The unemployment rate fell to 3.8 percent last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, extending the longest stretch of unemployment below 4 percent in five decades.

The jobs market is charging ahead in 2024, churning out more jobs per month on average than before the pandemic. The March job growth was notably higher than the average monthly gain over the past year, which was around 231,000, according to the agency.

“This was a very strong jobs report across a variety of metrics,” said Nick Bunker, economic research director at the jobs site Indeed. “It gives really positive implications for the short-term of health of the labor market and labor market’s capacity to bounce back from the pandemic.”

President Biden has been making an election-year case that economic gains made during his administration help all voters, and he trumpeted Friday’s jobs report.

“Today’s report marks a milestone in America’s comeback,” Biden said in a statement about the job gains. “Three years ago, I inherited an economy on the brink. With today’s report of 303,000 new jobs in March, we have passed the milestone of 15 million jobs created since I took office.”

Recent data indicates that Americans’ gloomy mood about the economy, consumer sentiment in March was up 28 percent from a year earlier, but those better vibes have yet to translate into political enthusiasm. Biden is trailing former president Trump in six of the seven most competitive states in the 2024 election, according to a Wall Street Journal poll from late March, due in part to voter dissatisfaction with the economy.

Major stock indexes all edged up after markets opened Friday, as investors cheered on the good news.

Workers benefited in March from rising wages and more work hours. Average hourly earnings accelerated in March to $34.69 per hour, which is up 4.1 percent from the previous year. Wages have consistently beat inflation since last May 2023, after years of falling behind.

Service-related industries continue to prop up the greater economy and contribute to low unemployment that has benefited workers.

Health-care job growth accelerated, adding 72,000 jobs in March largely in hospitals and residential care facilities and nursing homes in a reflection of surging demand from the aging baby boomer population. Government payrolls expanded by 71,000, mostly in local and federal government, as the sector has remained flush with cash.

And leisure and hospitality also grew by 49,000 jobs, and in a major milestone, finally caught up to its February 2020 pre-pandemic levels, as demand for dining out and other experiences has continued to swell.

Job growth has also begun to spread into industries that had gone slack over the past year.

Construction added 39,000 jobs in March, more than double its monthly average gain of the past 12 months, surprising experts because that industry tends to be sensitive to higher interest rates. Nonresidential specialty trade contractors led gains. Retail added 18,000 jobs mostly in general merchandise employers, such as big box stores.

“There’s a pocket of strength in the U.S. labor market right now,” Bunker said. “Part of it could be some sectors have slowed down from 2022 to 2023 and are starting to grow again. They’re working through some of the constraints of higher interest rates.”

Still, many rate-sensitive industries appear to remain cautious about hiring as they wait for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates this year. Employers in manufacturing, wholesale trade, warehousing and transportation, information, professional and business services, which includes parts of tech, and financial services saw little or no growth in March.

The latest job figures will shape Federal Reserve’s review of how the economy is performing. For the past two years, the central bank’s overwhelming focus has been on fighting inflation, namely through an aggressive interest rate campaign that brought borrowing costs to the highest level in more than 20 years. But officials are also keeping close watch for any signs that their moves have put too much pressure on the economy, like if the job market starts to weaken, or employers pulling back fearing tougher times ahead.

Inflation has come in higher than expected since the start of the year. If that turns out to be a lasting trend, the Fed may end up changing their plans for three possible interest rate cuts this year, which markets expect could start in June.

Consistently, the message from Fed leaders is that they need more time to see how the data unfolds. Friday’s report was no exception.

“There is no weakness in the job market which would impel the Fed to quickly cut, but no tightness which would prohibit a cut either,” Preston Caldwell, chief U.S. economist at Morningstar, wrote in an analyst note. “Fed decisions in upcoming meetings will hinge mainly on the inflation data.”

Lately, Americans have been spending big on vacations, dining out and entertainment. And that demand is driving employers to hire in those sectors.

Hiring in the leisure and hospitality sector is vastly outpacing the overall labor market. Employers made the most hires on record in arts, entertainment and recreation in February, according to a separate report by the Labor Department released Tuesday.

The leisure and hospitality industry has added 458,000 jobs in the past year, accounting for nearly 1 in 6 new jobs across the country.

More than 53,000 restaurants opened last year, up 10 percent from 2022 and exceeding pre-pandemic levels, according to data from online review site Yelp. That has helped boost hiring across the board, in entry-level positions as well as managerial roles.

Restaurateurs say it is finally becoming easier to find employees, after years of worker shortages, relieving the pressure to raise wages. A major pickup in immigration has also helped fill many long-standing openings, with 3.3 million immigrants arriving in 2023, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Brent Frederick, who owns five restaurants in Minneapolis and St. Paul, has hired 40 people in the past month.

“There have been pullbacks in tech and other industries, and we’re noticing that a lot of people are landing back in hospitality,” he said. “There’s been influx in the pool of people available to us.”

Franco Campilongo, a restaurateur in the Bay Area, has hired seven new workers, including servers, cooks and dishwashers, in the last few weeks. Recent layoffs at tech firms and downtown cafeterias rocked by work-from-home norms have made it easier to recruit employees, he said.

“When Google and Apple started laying off, we got more people,” he said. “We used to have to negotiate — people would say ‘Facebook gives me $35 an hour’ — but that’s changed. Now I have a stack of applications.”

The industry has also been changing, with restaurants following remote-work customers who moved to suburbs from cities.

That shift to the outskirts of town is expected to fuel brisk hiring in hospitality this year. Che Fico, one of San Francisco’s top restaurants, recently expanded to Menlo Park. Perry’s Steakhouse & Grille, which has 21 locations nationwide, is heading to Vernon Hills, outside Chicago. And Old Ebbitt Grill, a D.C. institution near the White House, is opening its first spinoff in Reston, Va.

“We’re calling it our ‘sexy sister in the suburbs,’” said Jeff Owens, chief financial officer at Clyde’s Restaurant Group, which operates 11 Washington area restaurants. (Clyde’s is owned by Graham Holdings, which owned The Washington Post until 2013.)

Last month, Jaime James of Minnesota picked up a second job as a bartender on top of her day job in health care. The single mother said she hadn’t worked in the service industry in a decade but that she needed the extra cash. She rents a $2,000-a-month apartment in a safer and cleaner building than her previous mice-infested one.

“As a single mom, it’s very tough to survive right now on one income for two people,” James said. “The service industry appealed to me because of the possibility of immediate cash after every shift with tips.”

But James struggled to find an employer that would schedule her around her day job, as well as child-care needs. She applied for 24 restaurant jobs between November and March and got only two callbacks before she landed her current position.

And in case you're one of those hard-ass jerks who loves to piss on anybody you think doesn't measure up to your phony standards:

If you want people to suffer

because you suffered,

and you turned out OK,

I've got news for you:

You did not turn out OK

Econ 201

Capital is free to go where the highest profit potential is.

Labor is chained to the country of its origin.

Opinion

If you want to know where the world economy is headed, look at the bottom of this toy car

What if I said you could read real world history on the underside of your kids’ Hot Wheels?

In my Philippine childhood in the 1970s, my brother Hector and I played with die-cast toy cars. I remember the first time I looked at the underside of these cars, soon after I had learned to read, and realized they had been made in different countries in different years. Some were made in the United Kingdom and the United States; the newer ones were made in Japan. Decades later, as my work as an economist brought my family to the United States, my two children got toy cars nearly identical to mine — first made in China and, later, Vietnam.

We now have a small collection of these cars, and occasionally I use them as a teaching tool. I ask students in my economics classes to inspect the cars’ undersides, and together we trace the gradual movement of toy car manufacturing: from England and the United States in the 1960s to Japan in the mid-1970s, from South Korea in the mid-1980s to China in the late 1990s and Vietnam after.

I tell them the process of making die-cast toy cars is nearly unchanged since the 1960s and has been steadily passed from one country to another, marking the beginning of the transformation of entire economies. We observe how toy-export data mirrors worldwide trends in industrial sector employment over the past 60 years: the gradual rise of toy manufacturing and toy exports in developing economies, the expansion of light manufacturing in those countries, followed by the growth of more complex production and the entire industrial sector, soon dwarfing the traditional agriculture sector and lifting people out of low-paid, low-productivity work.

And then we see, almost as rapidly, the decline of the industrial sector in a now-richer economy, as production at lower prices becomes available from the next industrializing country. In the graphical representation of this phenomenon, individual countries’ data looks like hills all over the world and over time; it is a beautiful, astonishing understatement of how countless lives have been changed in the process.

This much world history reflected in a handful of toy cars.

Several years ago, at the end of those class conversations on economic transformation, I would boldly tell my students: If you would like to know where the world economy is headed, go to a toy store and look at the underside of a die-cast car. I was confident they would find some from Vietnam, considering my children’s cars and the country’s rapid industrial transformation. Or maybe from fast-growing Bangladesh or Ethiopia.

I was wrong.

Then came the covid-19 pandemic, and the industrial world reeled from massive supply chain disruptions. In early 2022, Mattel — which makes Hot Wheels and Matchbox toy cars — made a move to “near-source” some production, bringing its supply chain closer to the United States and away from Asia and China: It announced an injection of $50 million to its factory in Mexico. So I expected to start seeing toy cars manufactured in Mexico.

Wrong again. In two years, sometimes things change, sometimes things remain the same.

This past holiday season, my children and I took turns visiting the toy section of a large store just outside Washington. It was like a game: find a random car, take a picture of the box and the car’s underside, send it to our group chat. We found none from Bangladesh, Ethiopia or Mexico. They came from Malaysia, Thailand and, surprisingly, China, still. In the journey toward the inevitable transformation of economies, it seemed the world had taken a few detours.

It turns out that near-sourcing is more complicated than expected, as recently documented in the case of Mexico. Part of the difficulty involves scaling and coordination: As more businesses seek nearby production facilities, the nearby economy, with its limited human and infrastructure resources, is quickly overwhelmed. And just as critical pieces in toy manufacturing are still imported from China, inputs from China more generally are integral parts of more sophisticated global supply chains.

In addition, toy manufacturing reflects not only the promise of industrialization but also its disappointments. In late 2022, Mattel commemorated its 40th year of manufacturing in Malaysia by announcing the growth of its Hot Wheels factory there, the world’s biggest. This was a positive development, but Malaysia’s economy reached middle-income status decades ago; in the familiar pattern, it would by now have progressed to manufacturing more complex, profitable products. Instead, the country has remained in what economists Indermit Gill and Homi Kharas defined as the “middle-income trap” — caught between developing and rich nations.

As my children and I inspected this generation of toy cars, I struggled to explain what we were seeing. Not because toy cars do not tell us something about the world but because they do. They reflect the world’s reality, including its surprises.

Workin' For A Livin'

I was never a fan of unions. Growing up in the 60s, there was always the perception that unions were mobbed up, and there was just something kinda dirty about the whole thing.

Then in the 70s, when things started to come apart, unions were seen as being a big part of the problem. They weren't really, but the prevailing narrative was that we were paying too much for everything because the unions were feather-bedding the crap out of American manufacturing, so the noble capitalists had no choice but to say 'fuck this shit, we're moving it all to Indonesia'.

Working people have been always been the targets of cynical manipulators who tell us the wrong thing is the problem, and that we need to blame the wrong people for it.

Maybe we're finally start to get wise, and maybe the pendulum has started to swing back in the other direction.

Union membership is growing in the state after years of declines.

Employee walkouts, work stoppages and union drives seemed like a big part of 2023. But you may not know it from national data released earlier this week. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said union membership was “little changed” last year, comprising 10% of the national workforce. In 2022, it was an iota higher, 10.1%.

Rates, of course, don’t tell the whole story.

“I can say that both phenomena are true: There has been a lot of union activity over the past year and the unionization rate hasn’t changed much,” said Johnnie Kallas, director of the Labor Action Tracker, which tracks work stoppages and other labor actions nationwide. The tracker, which Kallas helped develop while at Cornell University’s Industrial and Labor Relations School, documented 451 labor actions in the U.S. last year, 414 in the prior year and 270 in 2021.

A key explanation? “There were nearly 200,000 more union members in 2023 than 2022, but those increases did not keep pace with considerable job growth last year, hence a stagnant or very slightly decreasing unionization rate,” said Kallas, now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois School of Labor and Employment Relations.

While there have been worries of a recession for the past couple of years, there was no recession in 2023. The nation’s economy grew 3.3% annually in the fourth quarter and 3.1% for the year, according to the U.S. Commerce Department update Friday. And overall job growth continued to surprise economists.

Colorado experiencing more union activity

But Colorado was different. The state’s union membership rate ticked up, at least from a low point in 2021. Last year, the number of union members increased 6.2% to 189,000 workers. Union members make up 6.9% of the state’s employed population. A year earlier it was at 6.7%, which is below the national average.

The state added 11,000 union members last year, and 13,000 in the prior year. Those included baristas at Starbucks and staff at Urban Peak, the first unionized shelter for unhoused people in Colorado. Momentum, especially among service workers, continued this month with more filing with the National Labor Relations Board to start a union, including 238 employees at the Denver Art Museum, about 180 workers from Alamo Drafthouse Cinema locations in Westminster and Denver and five at the CobbleStone Car Wash in Lakewood.

But few, if any, actually have a contract.

“It takes a tremendous amount of new organizing to translate into increased union density,” Kallas said. “In some cases, workers have made important organizing gains, but have had difficulty achieving a first contract.”

Membership has thrived at the Service Employees International Union Local 105, which has increased membership by 50% in 10 years. About 70% was new growth of workers at companies seeking representation, said Stephanie Felix-Sowy, who helped 3,000 Kaiser Permanente health workers in Colorado get a new contract after a three-day strike in October. Local 105 also represents janitors, security staff and other service workers, including more recently, about 2,000 who work at Denver International Airport.

“Colorado historically is not a super union-dense state,” Felix-Sowy said. “Being able to do that work within those particular industries has been really game changing for our members and their ability to move their priorities forward.”

After COVID, the union saw even more interest in collective bargaining. It’s currently working with home care workers and expanding its reach into airport workers. Last month, it helped organize a walkout of dozens of Denver airport cargo workers seeking safer working conditions from their employer, Swissport International.

“It’s starting to come to light and workers in these industries are fed up with seeing record profits,” Felix-Sowy said. “Even through COVID, we saw airports getting millions and millions of dollars from the government and workers not seeing that, and then a few years later, seeing record profits again. It’s just like all of these pieces, specifically in Colorado, have really led to folks looking for an outlet. I think it’s the same way that we saw generations ago.”

➔ On the other hand … union membership has been in decline for years. During the early 1950s, about one-third of private sector workers belonged to unions. Now it’s 6%. The Associated Builders and Contractors said Friday that most construction workers employed by private companies aren’t in a union. Nationally, the industry reached an all-time high of 89.3% who are not part of a union. ABC is a trade group primarily for construction companies.

Housing: Rent or buy?

With mortgage rates still above 6%, buying a house hasn’t gotten any cheaper even as sales prices halted their spectacular rise in 2021 and 2022. Interest rates, according to the Colorado Association of Realtors, “defined the 2023 housing market.”

In 2023, potential sellers held on to their homes and “stopped the move-up market where a huge percentage of current homeowners have mortgages under 3.5% and don’t want to trade that in,” said Fort Collins Realtor Chris Hardy in a CAR update.

Last year, Colorado sellers listed 81,115 single-family homes for sale. Before the pandemic, there were 108,007, according to CAR data. Even just counting the past 12 months, the number of available houses for sale — or sold — fell by double digit rates from 2022. The median sales price in 2023? Up in some parts of the state, down in others.

But in December, prices inched up again, from a year ago, with the median price of single-family houses in Colorado at $549,950, up 3.8%. Median prices for the full year, though, were down 0.7%. The townhouse and condo market was up 3% in December to $424,995, and the annual median price was unchanged at $420,000.

Home prices are still high, though, so sellers are getting more than they paid for if they’ve owned it for more than a couple of years. But it’s become more difficult for renters to save up and qualify for a mortgage. However, interest rates are expected to fall this year, at least that’s what the body that makes that decision said it will consider.

Meanwhile, rent or buy? That’s a personal question. But even with a 20% down payment on December’s median-priced house in Denver ($593,500), the monthly mortgage is more expensive than a two-bedroom rental (at $1,914 a month), according to Realtor.com’s “Rent or buy calculator.”

Here’s how the rental numbers stack up:

“Despite all the craziness around increasing costs and increasing affordability challenges that we’ve been facing, the homeownership rate in Colorado actually continues to climb steadily since 2016. In 2022, we reached 67.4%, which is the highest level since 2010,” said Cooper Thayer, a Castle Rock Realtor at Thayer Group who presented the economic update at the Colorado Association of Realtors housing market update this week. “We’re seeing the cost of buying exceed the cost of renting right now so it’s really great to see, in Colorado specifically, our home ownership rate is still on the rise despite these challenges.”

Today's Dr Bob

Today's Dr Bob

• Worker-centered policies
• Strong anti-monopoly enforcement
• Bolstering labor unions

Better But Not Good Yet

The "conservative" attack on education over the last 40 years is having the desired effect. People don't care much about things like politics and government and economics because they're not being taught the importance of knowing something about that stuff to begin with, and once they get out into the real world, they're so tied up trying to make their lives work they get frustrated and start looking for somebody to blame, and that makes them vulnerable to the constant flow of propaganda flowing from "the right" (mostly).

And it'd be so gosh darned nice if the Press Poodles would remember to include corporate profits in the calculations of how shittily people are being treated, and how our attitudes are being cynically manipulated so we blame all the wrong people for all the wrong things.

Corporate America has blown past a brief wobble to its bottom line.

Driving the news:

The latest numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, out Wednesday, showed that total corporate profits in the third quarter grew 3.3% to an annualized rate of $3.28 trillion.

That's just shy of the all-time peak of $3.3 trillion reached in Q3 2022.

Why it matters:

The rise in profits last quarter shows that U.S. companies have been able to adjust to the post-COVID operating environment, which includes higher wages and higher borrowing costs.

So of course corporate critters are doing just fine

But then we have to remember: "The news" is a corporate profit center, so the "coverage" might be just a tiny bit skewed.

‘Excess profits’ at big energy and consumer companies pushed up inflation, report claims

KEY POINTS

• New research argues that the impact of companies maintaining margins by passing on higher prices to consumers should not be overlooked as a contributing factor to inflation.
• Researchers say this has made inflation “peak higher and remain more persistent.”
• They note that corporate profits are not the sole cause of inflation and did not cause shocks such as that to the energy market, but note that big international energy and food firms have an outsized influence on the wider economy.

The economy is improving under Biden. But many voters aren’t giving him credit

Despite the statistics, the kitchen-table experience of Biden’s first term has meant that many voters have experienced the last few years as a time of relative economic hardship

LAS VEGAS — Near the base of the Rainbow Mountains, Daniel Busby looks up longingly at his two-story “dream” townhouse, with the sliding glass door on its second floor, the balcony that wraps around the master bedroom, the five-minute walk from his kids’ elementary school.

“I just fell in love,” said Busby, 33, doing a chef’s kiss and smacking his lips together. “And then we started doing the math.”

The gregarious fry cook has enjoyed the windfalls of pandemic economic recovery overseen by President Biden. The president’s stimulus plan gave lower-wage workers more leverage to demand higher pay from their employers, with those in the service sector — like Busby — seeing particularly robust gains.

He went from being unemployed and working part-time at $15 an hour during the pandemic to a full-time job at the Paris Hotel, mostly at the Martha Stewart franchise, earning $19 an hour preparing a risotto dish and, his favorite, the whole chicken dinner. Busby and his wife now make a combined salary of just under six figures — a previously unimaginable sum.

But the gains have not kept up with rising costs, and that has become a major issue for voters like him. When Biden took the oath of office in January 2021, the average monthly mortgage payment in Las Vegas was about $1,200, according to calculations by Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. That number, for new mortgages, has soared to $2,350 today due to rising interest rates and robust housing prices — the outer edge of what Busby was willing to spend.

By many measures, the U.S. economy is a great success story — recession fears have fallen, along with gas prices and the unemployment rate, while manufacturing construction is up along with nominal wages and the stock market. The United States has grown faster since covid-19 than any peer country. Gas prices, once averaging over $5 a gallon, are now approaching $3. The Federal Reserve projects three interest rate cuts in 2024 that could help buyers like Busby.

But the kitchen-table experience of Biden’s first term — a roller coaster of covid adjustment and international shocks — has meant that many voters have experienced the last few years as a time of relative economic hardship. Despite rising wages, voters as a group lost spending power during 2021 and 2022 and have only recently climbed out of the hole. And even though wages are now outpacing inflation, prices are still continuing to rise: The latest government report showed inflation up 3.4 percent relative to the year before, fueling the anxiety even amid positive economic indicators.

A broad and diverse cross-section of American voters say they are experiencing the Biden economy as a challenging time of rising prices and high interest rates, according to interviews with more than 80 voters in four parts of the country — Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Phoenix and rural Georgia — that will play a major role in choosing the next president.

Adjusted for inflation, the per capita disposable income of U.S. residents rose nearly 1 percent from October 2021 to October 2023, a period that excludes the extraordinary one-time stimulus payments when Biden arrived, according to calculation by Robert Shapiro, a Democratic economist who advised Bill Clinton as president. By comparison, per capita disposable income, after inflation, grew about 7 percent under Donald Trump, during the first 34 months of his presidency.

The good news for Democrats is that the growth in spending power has been picking up over the last year at 3.7 percent through November, potentially setting the stage for a banner 2024, when wages will continue to grow even as the rate of inflation continues to fall.

“If incomes continue to rise rapidly over the next year, people will accept it by the election, especially since Biden’s record on jobs and growth is so much stronger,” Shapiro predicts. “Biden can overcome the fact that his income record — the growth of income — will not be strong over the whole term.”

But that is not the nation’s present-day reality. Biden’s polling on the economy has fallen with consumer confidence since he got into office, only recently stabilizing as confidence has begun to rebound. Wages are up, but the sting of higher grocery, coffee and restaurant bills remain. The president is still looking for credit from the budding manufacturing renaissance brought about by recent bipartisan legislation, though relatively few projects have been announced or begun production yet.

White House advisers are optimistic that the American public will soon internalize the good news and give the president credit before November. His political advisers note that other presidents who won reelection, like Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, overcame challenging first-term economic conditions.

“We’re seeing real progress,” said Jared Bernstein, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, in a statement. “We have more work to do as we execute President Biden’s agenda, a sharp contrast with congressional Republicans’ plans to cut taxes for the wealthy and big corporations while raising health care and prescription drug costs for hard-working American families.”

People like Busby, who voted twice for Obama before sitting out the 2016 and 2020 elections, are not sure they will vote for Biden in 2024 — indecision that could tip the scale in a narrowly divided country. He has chosen, for the moment, to stay with his wife and two daughters, ages 10 and 6, in their 1,100-square-foot Vegas apartment, where the rent recently jumped from $1,100 to $1,600 a month.

After touring more than 30 houses, relentlessly monitoring Zillow and Redfin, and investigating all the first-time home buyer programs they could find, they have put their dream on hold.

“We work full-time hours, but we still can’t afford things. You think, ‘I work full time. I should be able to afford a house,'” he said. “I don’t want to come home one day and then realize I have to pack up and leave. It’s that sense of stability we’re missing.”

Barbers cut hair at Gee’s Clippers on Nov. 26. (Alex Wroblewski for The Washington Post)
‘It’s really hard to keep up’
Milwaukee

‘It’s really hard to keep up’

Milwaukee WI:

Ceree Huley, 75, looked around Gee’s Clippers, the Black-owned Milwaukee barber shop where he works. “This place on a Thursday would be full of people,” he said of the those years before the pandemic.

“I don’t know what the reason they’re not here. … A lot of people are going to do it to themselves,” Huley said, referring to individual haircuts. “Or are they hiding from the costs of the prices that went up 10 dollars or 5 dollars? That could be a factor too.”

After 50 years as a barber, Huley has seen his own wages go up recently but is also paying more for rent after moving to a new place. Unlike some of his customers, he doesn’t blame Biden for his economic situation.

“I don’t know why it is, it seems like the economy gets worse,” said Zontayveon Mosley, a 21-year-old warehouse supervisor, who had come in for a cut. “For the average person who’s making $45,000 to $50,000 a year, it’s really hard to keep up.”

He said he would have backed Biden in 2020, but didn’t vote. He added that he will not vote for him this year and would consider supporting Trump, citing U.S. aid to other countries and the economy.

“Like giving billions of dollars to support others, when we have people that can’t eat, we have people that can’t pay bills, it’s just insane to me,” he said. “I feel like most Black people just lean towards Democrats. But I don’t know, entering the workforce and making money, I own a home. I’ve got to worry about interest rates and all of that. I feel like Trump is a better businessman.”

A stream of Black customers provided a nuanced take on the economy under Biden as they came in and out of the barber shop — decorated with basketball hoops, framed photos of athletes and the forest green Milwaukee Bucks logo sprawled across a gymnasium-style floor, razors buzzing in the background.

Posters decorate an employee breakroom at Gee’s Clippers, a basketball-themed barbershop owned by Ceree “Gee” Huley, in Milwaukee. (Alex Wroblewski for The Washington Post)

The economy here has largely tracked national trends, with weekly wages just below the national average and a nearly identical unemployment rate. William Robinson, a 47-year-old FedEx package handler, said he ends the month with less money than he starts, and it’s “kind of more survival than living” when he goes food shopping. He supported Obama both in 2008 and 2012, but said he will not vote for either Biden or Trump in 2024, describing them as “pretty much the same.”

“You can’t set prices. Inflation, you really don’t control none of that. Really it’s all the stuff that I can’t control that’s kind of making it difficult,” said Robinson, who added that he now needs to make adjustments between wants and needs. “Everybody got their little cheat foods, you know what I’m saying? Like the little cakes outside of the nutritious stuff. You just can’t enjoy it. And even with the stuff that’s nutritious, you got to prioritize, you know?”

Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School poll, said that voter views of the president and the economy “moved in tandem with objective economic indicators tolerably well up until the early 2000s.” Since then, partisanship has become more powerful and the link has begun to break.

In a recent survey, twice as many respondents said they’d heard about inflation compared with the unemployment rate. As for voters’ current perceptions of the economy, Franklin sees a combination of partisan bias and the effect of inflation on real disposable income, especially “coming after this sugar high of transfer payments in the pandemic years.”

It’s a trend that cuts both ways. Ken McClendon, a 51-year-old in the health-care-manufacturing business, said his wages have gone up but his economic situation was better before covid, given that “everything is more expensive now.”

Biden’s handling of the economy was a “little shaky,” he said, before adding, “You have to realize what he walked into.” If the election comes down to a choice between Biden and Trump?

Biden “all the way,” he said.

‘Who gets credit for a dumb idea?’

Dalton, GA:

One of Biden’s legislative triumphs can be seen through the trees 80 miles north of Atlanta along Interstate 75, a gray, low-slung roof factory of Qcells North America.

The South Korean-owned plant expanded after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, adding 510 jobs to the growing solar industry. The panels its workers make in a 12-hour shift can produce as much solar power annually as the Hoover Dam’s peak output.

But few at the Oakwood Cafe in nearby Dalton have noticed in this conservative corner of the state, represented by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R). Dalton Mayor David Pennington (R) dismissed the government support of solar panels as the pet project of politicians, embraced both by Vice President Harris, who visited the plant in April, and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R).

“Who gets credit for a dumb idea?” Pennington said, laughing. “When both sides are agreeing on something, it probably proves it is a stupid idea.”

When a guy deliberately misunderstands what's going on, and he shits on the simple fact that more of his constituents are getting fairly decent jobs, we see how intellectually corrupt way too many Republicans and Libertarians have become.

Pennington says residents most often ask him what he’s doing to help address the falling test scores of the city’s students. Families tell him that their grocery bills have gone up in the last three years. Pennington said that the night before, after a governmental meeting, he and his wife went to Krystal, a regional fast food joint, and ordered burgers, fries and drinks for $23, a meal he remembers costing $12 five years ago.

At a nearby table, Eric Azua, a local Realtor and registered Republican, made the same point: He has benefited himself from the Qcells expansion. He said he has sold homes to workers who are able to afford more given higher wages, offering Azua better commissions. But he credits local officials for the new jobs, rather than the Biden administration. Like many others in the area, Azua plans to vote for Trump.

“He needs to be replaced,” he said of Biden.

In 2018, Trump’s steep tariffs on solar panels from China prompted Qcells to build the facility in Dalton. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act — including a provision by Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) — provided tax credits for every stage of the solar manufacturing supply chain, incentivizing Qcells to expand.

Such expansions of U.S. manufacturing have been happening around the country in recent years, spurred by federal incentives supported by Biden. Monthly manufacturing construction spending rose from $77 million to $207 million between January 2021 and October 2023, a jump of 170 percent, according to census data. It’s progress that Biden has highlighted in his television ads this fall, talking about new manufacturing jobs, new green energy to lower power costs.

“For Joe Biden, it’s about restoring the sense of security working people deserve,” says one Biden spot that has run in Georgia.

The industrial park near the highway that cuts through Dalton has boomed since Qcells first opened there. Beside the first Qcells facility at the site, a second sleek, brightly lit warehouse has popped up, where workers are assembling commercial and residential solar panels with the help of automated machines.

“There are not other jobs similar in the area,” said Lisa Nash, general manager of the Qcells factory. “We can take high school students, people who have made other products, and if they have an aptitude, we can train them. And it’s upskilling.”

Other jobs have come downstream. Mary Sumner, who voted for Biden in 2020, recently started working for the local janitorial company that contracts with Qcells as an extra source of income aside from her job managing an apartment complex. She knows she is part of a minority in her family of 10 and hometown that would give any credit to Biden for anything positive, including the new source of money she receives.

“Four more years and there’s even better things to come,” Sumner said.

Jan Pourquoi, a Democrat and owner of a small Dalton carpet company, attended Harris’s visit to the site. When he looked around the room, he didn’t see anyone who lived in Dalton.

His neighbors and friends tell him they are worse off financially than they were under Trump and they believe Republicans are doing more to address immigration and drugs — or at least they seem to talk about it more. In the last local election, 9 percent of registered voters cast a ballot. In 2024, Pourquoi expects there won’t be any surge of voters supporting Biden, especially for the solar initiatives.

“There are more people aware of Qcells outside this area than in this area,” he said. “What it definitely will not do is change anything on the political dial.”

‘Everything has gone up in price’

Phoenix AZ:

Martha Isela Rodriguez remembers when she would go just once a week to buy her groceries at the Fry’s right around the corner from her house.

Now, she checks her mail daily to see the weekly ads with specials and coupons for grocery stores. El Rancho Market has deals on fruits and vegetables on Wednesdays and meat on Thursdays. On the weekend, Food City tends to have some good specials, too.

For Rodriguez, it has become the norm to visit three grocery stores a week — and even then, she’s still paying more than before.

Standing in the kitchen heating tortillas on a comal, a cast-iron skillet, Rodriguez recalled how she used to pay much less for groceries when Trump was president. Everything, from the chuletas de cerdo to the jalapeños she uses for her salsa, was cheaper. And that $380 electricity bill she just paid? It had never been so high, she remarked.

For her, all these higher costs spell trouble for Biden, who she voted for and knocked on doors to get elected in 2020. Her home county of Maricopa went for Trump in 2016 by under three percentage points and then backed Biden in 2020 by just over two percentage points. But she’s skeptical that Biden will win Arizona — or the 2024 election.

“Personally, I see it difficult for Biden to win. There’s already so many people who feel he hasn’t done anything, that the economy isn’t working,” Rodriguez, 48, said as she passed her 1-year-old granddaughter, Maria Daniela, an apple, mango and spinach baby food puree as a snack.

She was hearing it from her co-workers whom she had convinced to vote for Biden in 2020. Now, they either say they won’t vote this year or they’re considering backing Trump. They taunt her for pushing them to support Biden in 2020 — complaining to her about how bad inflation was under Biden and how he was letting in too many migrants and helping them when he wasn’t helping the undocumented immigrants already living here.

“They tell me things like, ‘Look at the gas. It hasn’t gone down at all since your Biden came into power.’ Your Biden, they tell me,” she said. “They say the same with a box of eggs or a gallon of milk. ‘Now that your Biden is around, the prices are up and the salaries don’t match it.’”

“And what can I say? Yes, it’s true,” she added. “Everything has gone up in price.”

Due to inflation, it cost an Arizona family over $2,700 a year more to purchase the same goods and services last August as it would have cost in August 2022, according to an analysis in September by the nonpartisan Common Sense Institute.

The sharpest increases came in distinct sectors, including gas prices, which rocketed higher in early 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine, and have since fallen back to 2021 levels. The pain of those increases was felt especially in suburban and rural areas, where people like Rodriguez drive long distances on a daily basis.

Rodriguez said she knew it wasn’t necessarily Biden’s fault that inflation remained an issue in Phoenix, as she’d heard of it being a challenge globally. But she said she wished he would project more confidence and stability like Obama, the politician whom she said she became a U.S. citizen just to vote for. In her eyes, she said, Obama was handed a terrible economy after George W. Bush’s administration and was able to turn it around.

“Biden just doesn’t have that magic, that energy to get things done,” she said.

In a matchup between Biden and Trump, Rodriguez said she’ll vote for Biden again. It won’t be because he’s done a good job, she said, but because of just how strongly she dislikes Trump.

She added, however, that she doesn’t plan to repeat her election-year summer of knocking on doors in the Phoenix heat to get other Latinos out to vote for Biden this time.