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In today’s edition:
Grading the economy (and you)
Pop quiz: Is the economy bad? Or good? Or, like, surprisingly good? Let’s take a look.
Providing a point in the happy-surprise category is Heather Long’s analysis of the diaspora of highly educated, highly valuable workers since the pandemic. Time was, their decamping from megacities would have resulted in a human economy spread too thin to be productive; “according to traditional economic thinking, this should bring years of lower growth,” Heather writes.
Obviously, the leaps in remote-work technology have made that less of problem, allowing many Americans to keep their jobs but move southward or suburb-ward.
More interestingly, moving freed up a lot of money for a lot of folks who were previously drowning in housing costs. Heather says we’re seeing that go into consuming more, investing or even starting businesses. Knock on wood (in your new, leafy Charlotte backyard), but that might be putting the country at the start of a productivity boom.
Another potentially surprising economic asset: the surge in immigration, which a new analysis expects to add $7 trillion to the gross domestic product from 2023 to 2034 (and $1 trillion to tax revenue).
“Got that?” Catherine Rampell asks. “The surprise increase in immigration has led a multitrillion-dollar windfall for both the overall economy and federal tax coffers.”
This is only a surprise, she writes, because so many have been conditioned to think of immigration as a curse rather than a blessing — and, to be fair, poorly managed immigration does strain the system. But think about it, Catherine writes: A young cohort more willing to work than an aging native-born population is key to keeping an economy humming.
Now, you thought I was joking about the quiz bit? Well, pencils in hand, please, because the Editorial Board recently put out an actual test of readers’ knowledge about the economy.
Give it a go, and see whether your understanding is in line with reality. And, fine — feel free to peek at Heather’s and Catherine’s answers.
Chaser: The Fed finds itself in a political trap that no monetary-policy decision will get it out of, Ramesh Ponnuru writes. It should just brace for a walloping.
From Leana Wen’s column concerned that far too few patients or even pharmacists know about Paxcess, the program that provides Paxlovid at low or no cost to to all Americans.
It’s a shame, because Paxcess is extremely simple to use, taking Leana less than five minutes during a trial application, she writes. And Leana has pointed out before that Paxlovid has been waaaaay underprescribed, a failure that has led to many unnecessary deaths.
On top of that, pharmacies aren’t proactively flagging Paxcess to patients, causing sick folks not in the know to have to shell out for a five-day course. Leana says pharmacies ought to program an alert for workers any time a co-pay comes up for Paxlovid.
In the meantime, Leana says, patients will have to be their own advocates.
“If someone is ill, people expect that the system will work to help them,” she writes. “But that’s not our reality.”
Chaser: Here’s the Paxcess registration site, just in case you need to send it to a loved one (or even liked one!) who might benefit.
More politics
Democrats often act as though they are entitled to the votes of Latinos — “and not without reason,” writes Marie Arana, author of an upcoming book about the huge and varied minority bloc; most Latinos, she points out, feel that liberals care more about their needs than conservatives do.
But you know how to lose the votes of any group? Acting as though you are entitled to them!
This, Arana writes, is what Republicans understand. Her op-ed, adapted from her new book, examines what work the GOP has done to win Latinos, as well as why many Latinos have been so receptive to it.
The easy narrative would have Republicans win these voters after years of Democratic neglect, but Arana writes that it doesn’t necessarily work that way, either. It’s much more complicated.
She writes of U.S. Latinos: “Increasingly, we are an unclassifiable, protean agglomeration of Americans — a web of contradictions — adrift in a purple sea.”
Smartest, fastest
- Alexi McCammond’s latest Prompt 2024 newsletter (sign up here) asks whether President Biden is the best Democrat to beat Donald Trump.
- Cameras won’t be in most of the Trump courtrooms. That’s why we need daily word-for-word transcripts, former assistant U.S. attorney Nick Akerman writes.
- Jen Rubin praises Biden for conditioning military aid to Israel (and other allies) on better adherence to international humanitarian law.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … the Bye-Ku.
Walkable cities?
Tool around the suburbs on
The revving market
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Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
Opinion | Immigration helps the economy. So does moving to Charlotte. - The Washington Post
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