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内容：iris wang编辑: Humphrey Zhang
Part I: Speaker Once A Blue-Collar Powerhouse, A Chicago Suburb Now Faces A Dim Future September 6, 2017 [Rephrase 1, 04:47] Source: NPR https://www.npr.org/2017/09/06/545794591/once-a-blue-collar-powerhouse-a-chicago-suburb-now-faces-a-dim-future
Part II: Speed
Thanksgiving week is usually good for stocks By Patti Domm - CNBC |Sunday, November 19, 2017 [Time 2] Stocks have a good chance of trading higher in the week ahead, if the typical Thanksgiving holiday week trading patterns take over. The S&P 500 has averaged a gain of 0.6 percent during Thanksgiving week, and has been higher 75 percent of the time since 1945. In the years when the market is already up 10 percent or more, Thanksgiving week was even stronger — gaining nearly 0.8 percent on average, according to Bespoke.
In the past week, the S&P 500 and Dow finished slightly lower, ending their worst two-week streak since August. The Nasdaq, however was in the green, up a half percent in its seventh positive week in eight. All three are within about 1 percent of their record highs.
Trading was choppy with the focus on tax reform, and an eye on the credit markets.High-yield debt sold off for part of the week, and the flattening yield curve, a technical phenomena in the Treasury market continued to cause unease.
Stock traders fear a flatter curve means a weaker economy is on the horizon. In this case the 2-year yield rose closer to the 10-year yield. At 62 basis points, the distance between them reached a 10-year low. The real concern would come in if the curve inverted, with the 2-year rising higher than the 10-year yield.
"I wouldn't read too much into one week. The historical trend is a strong stock market through the year, tends to finish strong," said Paul Hickey, co-founder of Bespoke. He said the S&P, from the closing price on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving through year-end, has averaged a gain of about 2 percent. [270words]
[Time 3] The 2-year yield rose to 1.71 percent by late Friday and is reflecting expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates when it meets in December. Markets will be watching Fed Chair Janet Yellen, when she speaks in New York on Tuesday evening, and also the minutes from the last Fed meeting, released Wednesday afternoon, for any clues on interest rates.
There is little data, but existing home sales are reported Tuesday and durable goods are released Wednesday. Earnings are expected from a few retailers, including Urban OutfittersURBN Monday. HP and Campbell Soup report Tuesday, and Deere reports Wednesday.
"The earnings season has wound down. Now, it's what's the next catalyst? You have people now thinking about going forward, what is the Fed going to do?" said Hickey. "We still have to square the discrepancy between what the market thinks the Fed's going to do and where the Fed thinks it's going."
The Fed forecasts three interest rate hikes for 2018, but the markets expect two at most. This dilemma appears to be showing up in the yield curve, with the lower 10-year yield reflecting global central bank easing and a lack of inflationary pressure to push the Fed to raise rates faster.
"A flat yield curve has never been precursor for recession. It's not until the curve gets inverted," Hickey said, adding it may not invert any time soon. Peter Boockvar, chief market analyst at Lindsey Group, said the stock market could start showing more reaction to rising U.S. interest rates, and central banks reducing their bond purchases in the coming months.
"We're all very focused on the U.S. market, but the European stock market has not been trading well at all," he said. "Each day that goes by we get closer to quantitative easing in Europe getting cut in half....We have another rate hike next month. This is not just about tax reform."
Traders have been focused on each headline from Washington on tax reform, as Congress moves House and Senate bills forward. The House approved its version Thursday, and the Senate bill will be voted on next before the two can be reconciled. [357words]
[The rest] "I think they assume they'll pass some tax reform. Maybe they're questioning what it's going to look like...We priced it in already. We've been rallying since the election," Boockvar said.
Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities, said the focus in the coming week will remain on each detail of the tax plans. "We'll watch how the sausage gets made and we'll continue to react and overreact to each headline," he said.
The week ahead also brings Black Friday, the traditional start of the holiday season, but analysts say it's lost its importance with online shopping wreaking havoc on traditional retail.
"Because of the internet and stores changing their hours, Monday is more relevant now because everybody goes back to work and gets online," said Boockvar. "That's when the deals really kick in."
Hickey said retail stocks are already badly beaten up, but they are also entering their traditionally weak time of year, post Thanksgiving. In the current bull market, the S&P has been virtually flat on average but it has been higher six of the eight past years. [180words] Source：CNBC https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/markets/thanksgiving-week-is-usually-good-for-stocks/ar-BBF6sgJ
Should the upper middle class take the biggest tax hit? By Ben Steverman|Sunday, November 20, 2017 [Time 4] Humans learn the concept of fairness at a very young age. After all, it doesn’t take long for a child to start whining about a sibling who gets an extra serving of ice cream. As the Republican-controlled Congress tries to push through tax reform this year, one group of Americans may similarly question why it’s coming up a scoop short.
The upper middle class gets relatively few benefits and a disproportionate number of tax hikes under the $1.4-trillion Tax Cuts and Jobs Act approved by the U.S. House of Representatives last week. Families earning between $150,000 and $308,000—the 80th to 95th percentile—would still get a tax cut on average. But by 2027, more than a third of those affluent Americans can expect a tax increase, according to the Tax Policy Center.
If the House bill becomes law, overall benefits for the upper middle class will start out small, and later vanish almost entirely.
Is this fair? Some argue it’s only right for the upper middle class to carry a heavier burden. This is because the top fifth of the U.S. by income has done pretty well over the past three decades while the wages and wealth of typical workers have stagnated. People in the 81st to 99th percentiles by income have boosted their inflation-adjusted pre-tax cash flow by 65 percent between 1979 and 2013, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That’s more than twice as much as the income rise seen by the middle 60 percent. (The top 1 percent, meanwhile, saw their income rise by 186 percent over the same period, but that’s another story.)
“Many upper-middle-class families will tell you they do not feel wealthy,” said Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a right-leaning think tank. “Their standard of living [is] closer to the middle class than to the top 1 percent.” The income numbers don’t tell the whole story, he explained. The upper middle class is weighed down by high costs: Affluent workers live in expensive areas, pay a lot for real estate and daycare, and are taxed far more than Americans further down the ladder. [355words]
[Time 5] Richard Reeves, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Brookings Institution, isn’t buying that argument. He’s the author of “Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It.”
“There’s a culture of entitlement at the top of U.S. society,” Reeves said. While others focus on rising wealth of the top 1 percent, Reeves argues that the gap is widening between the top 20 percent and everyone else. The upper middle class is guilty of “hoarding” its privileges, using its power to skew the job market, educational institutions, real estate markets, and tax policy for its own benefit, he contends.
“The American upper middle class know how to take care of themselves,” Reeves said during a presentation at the City University of New York last week. “They know how to organize. They’re numerous enough to be a serious voting bloc, and they run everything.”
So by his measure, the tax legislation’s disproportionate hit to the upper middle class is indeed fair.
A family earning $240,000 a year is bringing in four times the U.S. median household income of $59,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. All that money, along with the upper middle class’s political power, buys some huge advantages, Reeves said. For example, affluent parents compete for access to the best schools, bidding up home values in the best school districts. Then, they use zoning rules to prevent new construction, keep property values high, and prevent lower-income Americans from moving in. In the process, children of this demographic end up at the most prestigious universities, nab the best internships and jobs, and ultimately join their parents at the top of U.S. society.
The very existence of the House tax bill rebuts Reeves’s argument that the upper middle class is in a position to manipulate Washington. (The Senate is considering its own tax legislation, which differs from the House bill in several ways.) Compared with middle class Americans, the upper middle class is less likely to see marginal tax rates fall under the House legislation. The bill also limits or scraps entirely some of the group’s favorite tax breaks, especially deductions for state-and-local taxes, and medical expenses, and tax breaks for education.
[Time 6] If you’re part of the upper middle class and concede you should be paying more, don’t count on wealthier groups making the same sacrifice—at least under the House bill.
While a repeal of the alternative-minimum tax helps some people with incomes below $300,000, it’s more likely to benefit those on the higher wealth rungs. The very rich, including President Donald Trump, who has been pressing for a legislative victory before the end of his first year in office, would benefit from a repeal of the estate tax, lower corporate tax rates and a lower “pass-through” rate on business income. The House bill explicitly tries to limit the pass-through benefit for doctors, lawyers, accountants, and other high-earning professionals—traditional denizens of the upper middle class.
This all may seem terribly unfair to members of the upper middle class, but there are some provisions they can take solace in. The bill leaves untouched some sweet tax breaks that predominately benefit people with lower six-figure salaries, such as 529 college savings plans and 401(k)s and other retirement perks. The CBO calculates that two-thirds of the government’s costs for retirement tax breaks go to the top 20 percent.
But beyond these few exceptions, much of the upper middle class will still take it on the chin.
And maybe they should. Higher taxes on the upper middle class make sense to some liberal tax experts—but only if the proceeds are used the right way, they said, for things like better health care, more affordable college, and rebuilding infrastructure. Under the House bill, though, any new tax revenue is used to offset tax cuts—much of which will benefit the super wealthy and corporations, especially over time.
“There would be a lot of people in the country who would be willing to chip in for those goals,” said Carl Davis, research director of the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. In the House plan, however, the upper middle class is “going to pay more for a bill that’s going to grow the national debt, and provide the lion’s share of the benefits to corporations and their shareholders.”
Riedl, who has advised Republican candidates, argues the upper middle class should get a more generous tax cut under GOP tax reform. “It’s hard to argue the upper middle class is not currently paying its fair share,” he said. Reeves said the U.S. should ultimately tax the upper middle class more—but “the top 5 percent more still.”
Looking at Republican tax plans, Reeves said, “it’s like they only read half my book.” [428words] Source：bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-20/should-the-upper-middle-class-take-the-biggest-tax-hit
Part III: Obstacle
Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last? By Print edition |November 4, 2017 [Paraphrase 7] IF THERE was a defining economic problem for America as it recovered from the financial crisis, it was stagnant wages. In the five years following the end of the recession in June 2009 wages and salaries rose by only 8.7%, while prices increased by 9.5%. In 2014 the median worker’s inflation-adjusted earnings, by one measure, were no higher than they were in 2000. It is commonly said that wage stagnation contributed to an economic anxiety in middle America that carried Donald Trump into the White House.
Yet Mr Trump’s rise seems to have coincided with a turnaround in fortunes for the middle class. In 2015 median household income, adjusted for inflation, rose by 5.2%; in 2016 it was up by another 3.2%. During those two years, poorer households gained more, on average, than richer ones. The latest development—one that will be of particular interest to Mr Trump—is that blue-collar wages have begun to rocket. In the year to the third quarter, wage and salary growth for the likes of factory workers, builders and drivers easily outstripped that for professionals and managers. In some cases, blue-collar pay growth now exceeds 4% has Mr Trump kept his promise to revive American manufacturing, mining and the like? A more probable explanation is that he came to office just as America began to run out of willing workers to fill all of its job vacancies. As unemployment has fallen, from over 6% in mid-2014 to 4.1% today, wage growth has gradually picked up.
At first it seemed as if the biggest beneficiaries of a tight labour market would be those in service occupations, such as waiting and cleaning. A year ago service workers were enjoying the biggest pay rises in the economy—3.4%, on average. (Higher minimum wages also helped; 25 states and localities raised minimum pay in 2016.) Over the past year, however, growth in service wages has decelerated slightly. Blue-collar wage growth has surged ahead.
In some industries the labour shortage seems acute. Now is not a good time for Americans to remodel their bathrooms: tile and terrazzo contractors earn 11% more per hour than a year ago (and fully one-third more than in 2014). Having a bath may get pricier, too: workers who make soap have also enjoyed 11% wage gains over the past year.
Strong demand, rather than a productivity boom, is driving the scramble for workers. In the manufacturing sector, for example, output per hour worked is just 0.1% higher than a year ago, and has not grown at all in the past five years. Production and wages have picked up anyway. One reason is a cheapening dollar. On a trade-weighted basis, the greenback fell by almost 9% between the start of the year and mid-September (it has since recovered a little). A weaker dollar and a strengthening world economy have spurred demand for American goods. In the first three quarters of the year, goods exports were up by nearly 4% on 2016.
At the same time, a rebound in oil prices from their trough in early 2016 has set off another cycle of investment in the shale industry. America currently has 907 active oil rigs, up from 568 a year ago, according to Baker Hughes, an oil-services firm. Economists at UBS, a bank, estimate that energy investment has caused nearly three-fifths of all economic growth in 2017, once the effect of fluctuating inventories has been stripped out of the figures.
If these trends continue, higher wages may begin to tempt more men, who dominate blue-collar occupations, to look for jobs (those who do not seek work do not count as unemployed). For the past two years, the strengthening labour market has encouraged more jobseeking by so-called prime-aged workers, those aged between 25 and 54. But the increase in workforce participation has been almost entirely concentrated among women (see chart). At 89%, male prime-age participation remains close to a record low.
Whether male participation improves may depend on whether men are prepared to up sticks and move to where the labour market is booming. UBS’s economists note that Texas and neighbouring oil states such as Oklahoma account for almost all of the acceleration in manufacturing employment this year. Industries and places where blue-collar employment has been in a decades-long decline are unlikely to stage a recovery. Jed Kolko, chief economist for Indeed, a jobs website, says that even some of the recent wage gains are misleading, because they have occurred in industries, such as textile manufacturing, in which employment continues to fall.
Rising incomes for lower- and middle-earners may help reduce inequality, especially if wage growth for higher-earners remains subdued. A recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think-tank, found that real wages for the top 1% of earners fell by 3.1% in 2016, and were lower that year than they were in 2007. As workers’ wages grow, companies’ profit margins may also come under pressure, reducing, somewhat, the capital income of the rich. Texas Roadhouse, a chain of steak restaurants, recently warned investors that it expects its wage bill to grow by 7-8% in 2017.
After years of imbalance, a shift in economic power towards workers is to be welcomed, so long as inflation remains low. Yet wage growth also helps determine the fate of politicians, whether or not they deserve it. Mr Trump’s election led to soaring small-business confidence, which is yet to abate. His promise to deregulate the energy sector may have spurred some investment. Yet his apparent economic success to date mostly reflects fortunate timing.
That will not stop him from taking the credit should a tight labour market lift America’s spirits as the 2020 presidential election approaches. Rightly or wrongly, the biggest beneficiary of a sustained wage boom for workers may be a suited man sitting in the Oval Office. [970words] Source: THE ECONOMIST https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21731332-weaker-dollar-and-energy-boom-are-pushing-up-pay-blue-collar-wages-are-surging-can-it
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发表于 2017-11-22 03:45:02
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