The people at the party were having a good time, enjoying the company of one another and talking and laughing. Suddenly, the woman nudged a man standing next to her and whispered that another guy at the party was the one that she had a disagreement with some years before. The guy, in a flash, decided to do something about the situation. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was in his nature or maybe he just wanted the girl to like him. Who really knows what goes through men’s minds when women and alcohol are involved. In any case, he walked up to the man, who was in his 30’s and took his cell phone and put it into his pocket. The guy, who was caught off-guard, laughed at first, because he thought it was a joke. After a few minutes, when he became aware that the other guy was serious, he got angry, and just like that, his mood changed. At first pushing the other man, who was also in his 30’s, it quickly broke out into outright fisticuffs. Now, if you were wondering what was going on, this was the scene at the MSNBC party that took place last weekend, after the White House correspondent’s dinner. The fight was between a Huffington Post reporter and a Fox news reporter. Now, if you were wondering if this representative of the bigger picture of liberal vs conservative viewpoints or even a working business model vs a facade, you might just be right.
The New York Post reported back in 2015 that –“A decade after its launch, profits for the Huffington Post remain elusive.” That’s right. 10 years after it began, profits for the company are non-existent. The Huffington Post is a liberal light news website that was launched in response to the Drudge Report, a website that has been not only profitable but influential from the very first day it was launched. Adage dot com shed a little more light on the issue when it reported around the same time that — “The Huffington Post generated $146 million in revenue last year…. and yet the site failed to turn a profit, although the author did report that it had broken even.” So, one on hand, it does seem as if there is money coming in, just not enough to have some left over at the end of the day.
The article at Adage continues by saying — “That's a worrisome sign for digital-media startups, which, like the Huffington Post, rely almost entirely on digital advertising for revenue. The amount brands are willing to pay for digital display ads face constant downward pressure because there's a near limitless amount of supply.” The article then highlights an interesting point — “So if The Huffington Post — which is 10-years-old, hauls in more than 200 million unique visitors a month and cranks out roughly 1,200 posts daily on the backs of reportedly poorly paid or unpaid writers — can't turn a profit on $146 million in revenue, then how are the other, venture-capital fueled sites with smaller audiences and fewer relationships with advertisers supposed to achieve profitability? How indeed?
Speaking of profitability or at least the illusion of it, a recent business poll has revealed that — “Bloomberg's Consumer Comfort index has slumped and high-income Americans that make more than $75k a year have suffered their biggest plunge in confidence since October 2013.” That’s right. It appears that people with the most money are slowly picking up on the idea that things just aren’t what they seem. But hasn’t Obama brought back America from the brink of disaster?
According to the State of the Union speech that Obama gave back in January, he has not only saved the United States, but a headline at politicususa.com noted that — “Obama Wipes Out America’s Bush Disaster With Two Strongest Jobs Years Since Bill Clinton” Get that? Life is better now than it has ever been, dear citizen! Specifically, in that speech, Obama said — “Our businesses have now added 14.1 million jobs over 70 straight months, extending the longest streak on record. Today we learned that private employment rose by 275,000 jobs in December, while private employment growth in October and November was revised up by a combined 51,000 jobs. Average hourly earnings for all private employees have now risen … over the past year, the fastest pace since the recovery began. Overall, our businesses have added … millions of jobs over the past twenty-four months—the most in any two-year period since 1997-1999.” That sounds great, right?
However, people on the ground are seemingly seeing something different: Reuters has reported that — “Initial jobless claims spike the most in 16 months.” Other headlines have noted that — “Layoffs in 2016 are the most since 2009.” As a reflection of this, Bloomberg has also noted that — “Rail traffic and air freight both plunge, which could be a signal the economy is crashing.” Business headlines have noted that — “The Baltic Dry Index declines again”, which is a general indicator of the health of the world economy and one that suggests that the economy is slowing down. Even some energy analysts are describing the oil markets as a dead cat bounce.
In fact, recent BLM stats have noted that — “the total number of US potential workers who are not in the labor force has risen to a record 94 million, which is an increase of 1.8 million in the past year, and a whopping 14.9 million since the start of the second great depression in December 2007 while only 4 million new jobs have been created.” So, there we have it. While official talking points say one thing, people at the bottom are experiencing another. In fact, the Washington Free Beacon has just reported that — “There were one in five families in the United States in 2015, or 19.7 percent, in which no one in the family worked.” Imagine that 1 in 5 families didn’t have anyone working, at all! That means that they are living off of government handouts, better known as welfare.
As the clash between the left and the right heat up in the upcoming Presidential election, a lot of rhetoric will be thrown back and forth between the candidates. Some of it will be true, some of it will be false and most of it will be somewhere in between, depending upon who is telling the story. And caught between two people pushing their visions for the future will be the little guy, just trying to survive.
So, what do you think dear listeners, “Is the American economy a Potemkin Village?”
