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CDA, City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Good Ideas, Housing, Local Government

Daily Bread for 1.6.25: Proposals That Will Make Whitewater Stronger and More Prosperous

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 26. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:36, for 9 hours, 11 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 45.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1941, President Roosevelt delivers his Four Freedoms speech in the State of the Union address.

Whitewater has before her a better future, should she choose it. There are two proposals before Whitewater Common Council on Tuesday night that together will make Whitewater stronger and more secure. A link to the portion of the packet with these proposals is available here. I’ll use documents from that packet to describe each proposal. Each proposal was sensibly approved by the Whitewater Community Development Authority on votes of 5-1-1 (one of the votes in each case being an abstention).

A person, a prudent person, takes care of himself or herself adjusting to the different stages of his or her life. A household, a prudent household, takes care of its members adjusting to the different stages of their lives. So it is with a community: prudent communities take care of themselves by embracing the opportunities around them. Prudent people don’t willingly stop eating and breathing, prudent households don’t allow their members to stop eating and breathing, and prudent communities don’t stop adjusting and adapting. Those communities that stop decline and perish.

Communities that sensibly adjust and adapt thrive, for themselves and their posterity.

These proposals are an extraordinary (lit., remarkable) opportunity for Whitewater. One might say the success of these efforts is bringing to Whitewater the Extraordinary Ordinary from which successful communities elsewhere have been made stronger.

Together, the proposals are worth many millions in new investment for Whitewater.

A bit about each proposal — those who have crafted these opportunities will, certainly, address them far more thoroughly tomorrow evening and in the months ahead.

The first proposal, of Premier Real Estate Management, is an offer to purchase a 10.96 acre parcel of vacant land (Tax Parcel No. /A4444200001) owned by the City located on East Main Court to develop a 60-unit multi-family housing project on the property. The City of Whitewater would receive $317,840.00 for the sale of the now-vacant land. It’s a good price for land now unused.

The proposal has the support of the Whitewater Police Department, the Whitewater Fire Department, and the Whitewater Public Works Department for low call-volume or limited demand on city services. See Reports of Respective City Departments for Proposal @ Parcel /A4444200001.

The proposed construction presents with a design and features suitable for market-rate residences.

The developer has a record of success for market-rate residences in other Wisconsin communities. By design and location, these two-bedroom, two-bathroom units with private entrances and garages are obviously crafted for professionals and families looking for market-rate residences.

In the second proposal, the Neumann-Hoffmann project, Neumann Companies proposes a significant residential project at a portion of Tax Parcel WUP 00324 lying north of the Hwy. 12 Bypass and a portion of Tax Parcel WUP 00325 lying north of the Hwy. 12 Bypass and east of Indian Mound Parkway on about 67 acres.

This area is now vacant, but would bring to the community about 150 single-family homes
60 multi-family apartments. This is the larger of the two projects and quite impressive.

The city’s agenda packet shows the proposal has the support of the Whitewater Police Department and the Whitewater Public Works Department for low call-volume or limited demand on city services. See Reports of Respective City Departments for Neumann-Hoffmann.

This spot has been waiting for a project like this. Everyone gains from this proposal: those many who buy homes, a smaller number who rent apartments, and an entire community that gains more families with children for our schools, more employment, more shoppers our merchants, and more members for our clubs & associations.

In projects like these, with much-improved tax incremental financing (more about that and other points tomorrow), Whitewater fortifies and strengthens herself for the decade ahead.

Rain or shine, so to speak, our community will be stronger for these new additions.

Both proposals deserve the support of the Whitewater Common Council.

CDA, City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Good Ideas, Housing, Local Government

Daily Bread for 1.5.25: At Last, the Right Economic Development Structure for Whitewater

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 21. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:35, for 9 hours, 10 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 34.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1933, construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begins in San Francisco Bay.

On the evening of December 19th, the Whitewater Community Development Authority held its monthly meeting. Embedded above is the full video of that meeting. Item 3 of the meeting agenda included PowerPoint slides describing the process tax incremental financing in Whitewater. (I’ll address general and particular elements of tax incremental financing tomorrow. For today, what’s of interest is the orderly & transparent process of Whitewater’s new Office of Economic Development and much-improved Community Development Authority.) Embedded below are the slides that describe Whitewater’s process:

MEET-Packet-2af5740a7b9543a49b8e60080f7b80a8 copyDownload

Methodical: an invitation to meet, a written proposal from a developer, a burden of proof on the developer, a review by the city of the plan’s feasibility, a calculation of a payback period, a legal draft agreement if the proposal meets the requirements of the city, and then a presentation to the CDA1.

What does a private man, this libertarian blogger, see in these slides? An orderly and transparent process, embodying principles of open government, visible and understandable to anyone in our city.

That orderly and transparent process offers the best chance of producing sound results through government action in support of a common prosperity. If there is to be government, and I recognize that there need be, then it should — and must — be like this.

How it should be — how it always should have been.

It hasn’t always been like this. Indeed, only four years ago, under a prior municipal administration, an effort at reform failed, and was quickly, regrettably abandoned.

On January 23, 2020, at a meeting of the Whitewater Community Development Authority, then City Manager Cameron Clapper proposed that Whitewater come into alignment with the best practices of other cities, by suggesting (as part of a longer discussion), placing the development director in our city hall to make his or her work more conventional and transparent.

His remarks begin at 2:58 on the video below, and a lengthy discussion continues thereafter:

One month later, for a February 20, 2020, the agenda for that meeting included an item for a new and more modern development structure. It was, however, pulled from the agenda and so left unrealized. At that meeting, the men who for so long dominated development in this city offered a revisionist history that cast their influence as the most productive, and self-servingly omitted their many mistakes2. See Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom.

We’ve a new and transparent structure now. At last, we’ve something open, rational, reliable. Long time coming. The days under the old CDA of a distressed tax incremental district, a cease and desist order from the federal government over a conflict of interest, hundreds of thousands wasted on low-quality startups, and years without a grocery until this administration made it happen are now over.

Whitewater’s past development structure was opaque, its efforts ineffectual at best, and wasteful or conflicted at worst. How much did residents know about what was happening under the old structure? Not enough, that’s how much.

And look, and look: no one has to be a government man to see that these processes are objectively more open. (I’m not in the government, in any role, and never will be.) Open and transparent government, by the way, is a right of all private residents that benefits all private residents. It wasn’t easy to get to this point, I wouldn’t wonder. All the community benefits from it.

The fruits of that better process include a superior grasp and use of tax incremental financing3, and a high-quality set of housing proposals recently approved on 12.19.24 on a 5-1-1 (one abstention) vote at the Whitewater Community Development Authority.

Those are topics for Monday and Tuesday, respectively.

Update, evening of 1.5.24: I’ll switch the order, with discussion of high-quality set of housing proposals for Monday and various topics including tax incremental financing on Tuesday.

  1. Much better than times past when the CDA couldn’t even find its paperwork. (Those times were always blamed on someone or something else, making Whitewater’s old CDA perhaps the state’s biggest user of the dog-ate-my homework defense.) ↩︎
  2. They’ll talk about the past, if it’s their contrived version of the past. Otherwise, they’d rather move on. ↩︎
  3. I’ve been a longtime critic of how Whitewater approached tax incremental financing in the past, and rightly so. The municipal administration’s present approach is wholly different and far sounder. ↩︎

CDA, City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Free Markets, Housing, Local Government, Special Interests

Daily Bread for 1.4.25: Reliable Measurements of the City

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 20. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:34, for 9 hours, 9 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 24.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1958, Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite, launched by the Soviet Union in 1957, falls to Earth from orbit.

For today, before going further over the next three days about an upcoming proposal before the Whitewater Common Council on Tuesday, a word about reliable measurements for Whitewater. Sound argumentation rests on a trustworthy foundation.

First, and foremost, what are conditions like truly like? How do people live and carry on each day? Not how a few who have wrung profit out of the city claim Whitewater is, but how ordinary residents living each day know Whitewater is? Will you believe what they tell you, or your own experience?

Second, good data and good reasoning carry the day. A few — too many, really — people in this town have traditionally used bad metrics in bad faith to win the day at the expense of general conditions all around us. They’ll mix and match any number of inapplicable measures or standards to prevent change. Those peddling in fear, uncertainty, and doubt use those techniques to their advantage, at the expense of market opportunities for others.

Fair use. Link

Ferocious opponents of progress, no matter how edgy and agitated, no matter how long-winded, are then and there simply blocking opportunity with a puffed-up display. Even the most furious Tasmanian Devil, it turns out, is no more than a creation of Warner Bros.

Those who stick to sound observation and sound data will serve Whitewater well.

CDA, City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Free Markets, Housing, Local Government, Special Interests

Daily Bread for 1.3.25: The Market Barriers in Whitewater

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 22. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:33, for 9 hours, 8 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 15.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1777, after victory at the Second Battle of Trenton the day before,  American forces under Genera Washington then defeat British forces at the Battle of Princeton, helping boost Patriot morale.

There’s a story one sometimes hears, including in Whitewater, that there are only two forces shaping an economy: private and public. In this story, the private endeavors of individuals and businesses are defined as necessarily encouraging of general prosperity, and the public reach of government as necessarily restrictive of general prosperity.

While it’s a story, it’s also a false story, and sometimes no more than a self-serving lie.

Prosperity rests on the free interactions between individuals, businesses, and government. The relationship (of free action) precedes the result. That’s why libertarians (bona fide ones, who read more than superficially) are free-market men and women.

Government constrains, but not only government constrains. There are private men and private business, including those who proudly tout their ‘pro-business,’ ‘pro-growth’ outlook, but who stifle growth and inhibit the economic liberty of others.

They’re not the champions of positive change but its adversaries. They oppose competition.

How does this happen, that private men and incumbent businesses work against the economic liberty of others?

Here are a few ways (and residents of Whitewater will recognize them):

Control of government agencies and boards to favor cronies and limit alternatives. These private men don’t bother to count to 15,000, but instead stop at 4 of 7, simply enough to run a board or commission for their benefit and to the detriment rival businesses or individuals. This is regulatory or agency capture (shaping regulations their way, or controlling the whole agency and dismissing anyone who won’t go along with their selfish ambitions).

They’ll say this is what the people want, but they’ve not bothered to poll a community; they merely assert that they know the popular will. They’ll point to a few co-opted people as though a few were many. To gather these few, a special interest will rely on any claim imaginable, spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt about potential rivals with better ideas and new approaches.

Control of a market by monopoly or oligopoly. We think of this approach as applicable only on a large scale, but it happens in small communities, too. One or a few private men will control an entire market and fight to keep new, rival businesses (especially ones with fresh ideas) from forming. They’ll buy resources and deny access to those who’d like to compete in a free market. Many are the one-horse towns where the old horse fights like hell to keep new horses from showing up, so to speak.

Whitewater has had both of these problems for many years. In Whitewater, specifically, It’s not government that has held people back, it’s scheming and selfish private men who think that they own the place and work to keep new enterprises from taking root.

When they talk ‘pro-business,’ they mean their businesses, their opportunities, their way. Indeed, they simply deny, at bottom, that there could be any other way than their businesses, their opportunities, their way.

Here’s a key technique: they’ll argue against any better opportunity for others in favor of an imagined perfect opportunity that they know won’t arrive. They’re like bakers who tell the hungry not to make their own bread but instead to wait for cake and caviar.

Again and again: Who owns Whitewater? Everyone and no one.

There’s no reason for residents in this town to deny themselves better opportunities for the sake of a few old men who insist that it must be their way or no way. The adversaries of free markets in Whitewater are private men who want to deny opportunity for others. No one in Whitewater lives at the pleasure of these aged schemers, no one here was born merely to deny himself or herself better life on an incumbent’s behalf.

Open the market to alternatives, and let people freely choose among them.

CDA, City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Local Government

Daily Bread for 1.2.25: The Extraordinary Ordinary

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 28. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:32, for 9 hours, 7 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 8.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1777, American forces under the command of General Washington repulse a British attack led by General Charles Cornwallis at the Second Battle of Trenton near Trenton, New Jersey:

After assaulting the American positions three times and being repulsed each time, Cornwallis decided to wait and finish the battle the next day. Washington moved his army around Cornwallis’s camp that night and  attacked [Lieutenant Colonel Charles] Mawhood at Princeton the next day.

Somewhere in America, perhaps even in Whitewater, a grammarian is pondering whether nouns or adjectives are more important as parts of speech. And so, and so, in the expression the extraordinary ordinary, that person might wonder: does the noun ordinary matter more, or might the modifier extraordinary tell the crucial tale?

The public policy of Whitewater offers an answer.

Bringing the city into an ordinary development position, like other cities, is for Whitewater an act that should be ordinary, but requires instead extraordinary effort.

It’s in this way that Whitewater’s politics (and culture) are best understood. What should be easy is often hard, and what should be embraced often meets special-interest opposition.

Whitewater’s like a community where a few people have always eaten well, but some of those few have left others with less and worse, all the while insisting falsely that less and worse is somehow more and better.

If we’d had better policies before, one could say that this city for the last generation was meeting an ordinary development standard; as we had worse policies before, Whitewater is only now overcoming below-average standards.

We’re now on a proper diet after years of missed meals and poor nutrition. It’s simply that a few would like the community to believe that the past’s poor nutrition is preferable to the present’s proper diet.

For Whitewater, it’s extraordinary to be, at long last, ordinary in policy. It’s from the ordinary — the normal, and business-standard — that we can at last take advantage of the national and state growth that other communities have enjoyed.

Whitewater has waited long for ordinary, long for normal, long for business-standard.

There’s the answer to a grammarian pondering whether the noun or adjective of extraordinary ordinary is more important. For Whitewater, it’s extraordinary to be, at long last, ordinary in policy. It’s from the ordinary — the normal and business-standard — that we can at last take advantage of the national and state growth that other communities have enjoyed.

That’s a notable accomplishment.

A methodical, patient look at recent development projects, post by post, is overdue. Not so overdue as the projects themselves, of course, but that fault lies with the past.

Looking at these projects, of the last two years, is a good way to begin this year.

That’s what this libertarian blogger will do.

City, Daily Bread, Economy

Daily Bread for 12.26.24: Economic Growth Remains Strong

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 43. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset is 4:27, for 9 hours, 2 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 17.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1776, at the Battle of Trenton, the Continental Army under George Washington executes a successful surprise attack and defeats a garrison of Hessian forces serving Great Britain.

A reminder, as the year ends, that American economic growth has been strong:

The US economy expanded at a faster pace in the third quarter than previously estimated, owing in part to to stronger consumer spending and exports.

Gross domestic product increased at a 3.1% annualized rate in the third quarter, the third estimate of the figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis showed Thursday. That compared to a previous projection of 2.8%. Consumer spending was marked up to a 3.7% pace — the fastest since early 2023 — boosted by stronger outlays on services.

Exports expanded by 9.6% in the July-to-September period, up from 7.5% in the prior estimate. That was also entirely due to services.

The numbers reinforce the notion that the economy is still powering ahead despite expectations among forecasters for an eventual slowdown. 

See Matthew Boseler, US Growth Revised to 3.1% on Stronger Consumer Spending, Exports, Bloomberg, December 19, 2024.

Of inflation, a similar good story is true: national inflation peaked two years ago, and has since fallen drastically. See Greg Iacurci, Here’s the inflation breakdown for November 2024, CNBC, December 11, 2024.

The contention that the economy has been terrible, most notably these last two years, is false. And yet, and yet, one hears each day new contentions that distort to the point of mythology the state of the economy. If the economic continues to do well, expect the populists to insist that it was only strong from January 20th onward. If the economy does poorly, expect the populists to say that the fault lies with anyone and anything other than the populists themselves.

One more point, evergreen in Whitewater: Whitewater’s old guard, its special interest faction, has never produced through its policies for this city broad economic gains for individuals and households. For themselves, of course. For others, no.

On the contrary, even in solid national conditions they found themselves bemoaning their own policies’ inability to capitalize. See Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom.

In this respect, these transactional, special-interest men in Whitewater are like the populists: they don’t care about the accuracy of what they’re saying, but only that what they’re saying serves their particular political interests.

PBS Wisconsin Visits the Yerkes Observatory:

Daily Bread, Economy

Daily Bread for 12.12.24: November Inflation Numbers

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 13. Sunrise is 7:16, and sunset is 4:21, for 9 hours, 4 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 90.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1941, Hitler declares the imminent extermination of the Jews at a meeting in the Reich Chancellery.

CNBC offers a summary of national inflation numbers for November:

Consumers saw inflation pick up slightly in November as price increases in categories including groceries, gasoline and new cars outweighed a deceleration in others such as shelter during the month.

The consumer price index, a key inflation gauge, rose 2.7% last month relative to November 2023, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. The annual rate was up from 2.6% in October.

….

See Greg Iacurci, Here’s the inflation breakdown for November 2024, CNBC, December 11, 2024.

Volcanic eruption covers a Philippine town in ash:

Homes, roads and buildings were covered in ash in the aftermath of the Kanlaon volcano eruption in the Central Philippine province of Negros Occidental, drone footage released by the Philippine Red Cross on December 10 showed.

City, Daily Bread, Economy, Special Interests

Daily Bread for 12.9.24: A Fundamentally Strong National Economy (and a Local Reminder)

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 49. Sunrise is 7:14, and sunset is 4:20, for 9 hours, 6 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 61.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School Board meets at 5:30 PM to review a community referendum survey.

On this day in 1775, British troops and Loyalists, misinformed about Patriot militia strength, lose the Battle of Great Bridge, ending British rule in Virginia.

Now, in December 2024, America has a fundamentally sound economy:

The economy added 227,000 jobs in November, making for a strong jobs report despite a slight increase in the unemployment rate. Although the labor market has cooled this year, the Trump administration stands to inherit a fairly healthy labor market, with decent job growth across many sectors.

The number of jobs was bolstered by the return of striking workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report. Employment in transportation equipment manufacturing rose by 32,000 jobs. Boeing machinists who went on strike in September seeking higher pay and better retirement benefits reached a deal in November.

The agency also revised up the number of jobs added in the October and September reports by 56,000 jobs combined.

Although the unemployment rate ticked up from 4.1% to 4.2%, the economy is looking strong, particularly when you look at gross domestic product, said Louise Sheiner, with the nonpartisan Brookings Institution.

“It’s been remarkably strong. If you look at what the Congressional Budget Office projected the level of real GDP before the pandemic, it’s higher now. We’ve just had a really strong economy,” said Sheiner, who focuses on fiscal policy.

See Casey Quinlan, US adds 227,000 jobs in what analysts say is a healthy economy, Wisconsin Examiner, December 8, 2024.

There are three reasons to mark the present state of the national economy: (1) a simple affirmation of the truth, (2) a reminder that the national economy has been good before when local special-interest types failed to capitalize on it (notably 2014 to 2017 and 2019 to early 2020) in Whitewater, and (3) a reminder that these old-guard types expect deference today despite serial failures for many years.

Amazon is using generative AI to drive more same-day shipping using smarter robots and better routes:

Agriculture, Daily Bread, Economy, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 12.2.24: Wisconsin Agriculture Grows More Slowly than Rest of State’s Economy

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 28. Sunrise is 7:07, and sunset is 4:21, for 9 hours, 14 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Police & Fire Commission meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 2001, Enron files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Hope Kirwan reports that while the Wisconsin agriculture industry grew over a 5-year period, agriculture became a smaller part of Wisconsin’s overall economy:

Wisconsin’s agriculture industry has grown over the last five years. But new data shows farming and food’s contribution to the state’s economy has gotten smaller.

The study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that agricultural production and food processing contributed $116.3 billion in revenues to the state’s economy in 2022.

That’s nearly 11 percent higher than the same report from 2017, growth that’s been celebrated by Gov. Tony Evers’ administration and the ag industry.

The study also found that farming and food processing made up 14.3 percent of the state’s total revenues, which is 2 percentage points less than in 2017.

Steve Deller, UW-Madison professor of agricultural and applied economics and co-author of the report, said that’s because the state’s overall economy is growing.

“The size of the pie is getting bigger,” Deller said. “Agriculture’s slice of that pie is also getting a little bit bigger, but it’s not growing at the same pace as the state’s economy is growing.”

See Hope Kirwan, Report: Wisconsin farm, food industry grows slightly behind the rest of state’s economy, Wisconsin Public Radio, December 2, 2024.

Wind power is making a comeback in shipping:

Daily Bread, Economy, Travel, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 11.27.24: Big Travel for Wisconsinites (and What It Reveals About the Economy)

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 40. Sunrise is 7:02, and sunset is 4:23, for 9 hours, 21 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 12 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1924, in New York City, the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is held:

The Parade first took place in 1924, tying it for the second-oldest Thanksgiving parade in the United States with America’s Thanksgiving Parade in Detroit (with both parades being four years younger than Philadelphia’s Thanksgiving Day Parade). The three-hour parade is held in Manhattan, ending outside Macy’s Herald Square, and takes place from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Thanksgiving Day, and has been televised nationally on NBC since 1953.

And so, and so, one reads that over a million and a half Wisconsinites plan to travel over Thanksgiving:

A record number of Wisconsinites are expected to travel for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, according to AAA. The group says nearly 1.6 million residents are expected to drive or fly this week.

Wisconsin’s last record for Thanksgiving travel recorded by AAA was set in 2019. Midwest Public Affairs Director Nick Jarmusz told WPR that holiday travel overall declined in subsequent years due to concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic. 

….

Between Tuesday and Monday, Dec. 2, AAA projects more than 1.4 million Wisconsin residents will hit the roads for their Thanksgiving holiday festivities. Around another 115,000 are expected to fly to their family gatherings.

….

“It’s a reflection of what we’ve seen throughout the year with other travel holidays during the summer that we monitored, and just you know, a reflection of people’s improving confidence in the economy and their ability to spend the money necessary to take trips like these,” [American Automobile Association Midwest Public Affairs Director Nick] Jarmusz said.

See Rich Kremer, AAA predicts record-breaking Thanksgiving travel in Wisconsin, Wisconsin Public Radio, November 25, 2024.

This many would not have been traveling over the summer of 2024 and would not travel over Thanksgiving 2024 if economic conditions were poor. The summer of 2024 and Thanksgiving 2024 precede January 20, 2025. It’s not until then but instead right now that we have good economic conditions.

Trail walk:

America, Daily Bread, Economy

Daily Bread for 10.30.24: National Economy Grows, Inflation Cools

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 76. Sunrise is 7:27, and sunset is 5:49, for 10 hours, 22 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent, with 3.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 4 PM.

On this day in 1938,  Orson Welles broadcasts a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, causing a panic in some of the audience in the United States.

Megan Leonhardt reports U.S. Economy Sees Solid Growth and Cooling Inflation in Third Quarter, GDP Report Shows:

The U.S. economy expanded at a healthy pace during the third quarter, keeping fears of a downturn at bay while Federal Reserve officials eye further interest-rate cuts.

Inflation-adjusted, or real, gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of 2.8% over the three months ended in September, according to the first estimate by the Bureau of Economic Analysis released Wednesday. The consensus call among economists surveyed by FactSet was for growth of 2.6% in the third quarter, though Bloomberg’s forecast was for 2.9%.

Wednesday’s solid third-quarter growth is a tick slower from real GDP growth of 3% during the second quarter. The economy expanded 1.6% during the first three months of the year.

The third quarter’s real GDP growth was primarily driven by increases in consumer spending, as well as federal expenditures and net exports, the bureau said Wednesday. Imports, which act as a drag on GDP, did increase markedly during the past quarter and weighed on the overall growth. Economists noted Tuesday, however, that this uptick in imports is likely a short-term trend due to the threat of the longshoremen strike in October.

….

Wednesday’s data included a quarterly update on the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, the personal consumption expenditures, or PCE, price index. During the third quarter, PCE inflation increased 1.5%, putting it lower than the Fed’s 2% target. That should make it easier for policymakers to justify additional rate cuts. It also marked a slower pace of price growth than the 2.5% rate logged during the second quarter.

Favorable, notably favorable.

POV Part 2: You are the pumpkin:

Daily Bread, Economy, Employment, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 10.18.24: Wisconsin’s Strong Employment Numbers

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 68. Sunrise is 7:12, and sunset is 6:06, for 10 hours, 54 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous, with 98.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1867,  the United States takes possession of Alaska after purchasing it from Russia for $7.2 million. Celebrated annually in the state as Alaska Day.

September was another good month for Wisconsin’s economy. Erik Gunn reports Wisconsin employment, jobs numbers stayed strong in September, state reports:

Unemployment in Wisconsin remained at a record-low rate in September while the number of jobs was still close to a record high, the state labor department reported Thursday.

The projected number of Wisconsinites employed in September topped 3,059,700 — a state record, according to the state Department of Workforce Development (DWD). The department reported that September was the fifth month in a row that the state employment number reached a new record high.

The unemployment rate for the month remained at 2.9%, according to DWD. Employment numbers are projections drawn from a federal survey of households.

We’ve reason to feel optimistic that this favorable, months-long trend will continue.

Rescued sea otters make their debut at the New York Aquarium:

Two rescued southern sea otters made their formal debut at the New York Aquarium on October 17. The two female otters were rescued off the coast of California at young ages and were deemed non-releasable as pups. They were cared for at other Association of Zoos and Aquariums before arriving in New York, where they will now reside.

America, City, Daily Bread, Economy, Immigration, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 10.17.24: Mass Deportation Would Be Economically ($1,000,000,000,000) Devastating

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 64. Sunrise is 7:11, and sunset is 6:08, for 10 hours, 57 minutes of daytime. The moon is full, with 100 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 5 PM, and the Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1781, British General Charles, Earl Cornwallis surrenders at the Battle (Siege) of Yorktown:

The British Prime Minister, Lord North, is reported to have exclaimed “Oh God, it’s all over” when told of the defeat.[87] Three months after the battle, a motion to end “further prosecution of offensive warfare on the continent of North America” – effectively a no confidence motion – passed in the British House of Commons. Lord North and his government resigned.

Anti-immigrant rhetoric often proposes with mass deportation, although in neither Wisconsin nor Whitewater is there majority support for that extreme approach. See The Curious Case of the ‘Invasion’ that Didn’t Bark in the Night and Wisconsin Polling on Immigration.

Mass deportation would be a moral failure, as wholesale detention and dispossession would be an ethic cleansing abhorrent to the reasonable & civilized. It would, secondarily, be an economic catastrophe for America.

In a review of mass deportation, Eric Boehm @ Reason writes Trump’s Deportation Plan Would Cost Nearly $1 Trillion (‘And it would wreck the economy’):

The governmental infrastructure required to arrest, process, and remove 13 million undocumented immigrants would cost nearly $1 trillion over 10 years and would deal a “devastating” hit to economic growth, according to a report published last week by the American Immigration Council (AIC). The think tank estimates that a mass deportation plan would shrink America’s gross domestic product by at least 4.2 percent, due to the loss of workers in industries already struggling to find enough labor.

Trump has promised to create a “deportation force” to round up undocumented immigrants and eject them from the country. This would entail targeting two groups: the roughly 11 million people who lacked permanent legal status as of 2022 (that’s the most recent number from the American Community Survey) and the estimated 2.3 million people who have entered the country without legal status since January 2023 (that figure come from the Department of Homeland Security).

The notion that the native born would fill jobs and gaps is false, as Boehm writes:

The costs of mass deportation would rebound into the economy in several ways. The economy would shrink and federal tax revenues would decline. The construction industry, where an estimated 14 percent of workers are undocumented migrants, would be particularly hard hit, but the effects would be felt throughout the economy.

“Removing that labor would disrupt all forms of construction across the nation, from homes to businesses to basic infrastructure,” the AIC notes. “As industries suffer, hundreds of thousands of U.S.-born workers could lose their jobs.”

That’s an important point. Immigration restrictionists often assume that deporting millions of undocumented workers would allow more Americans to fill those jobs, but the economy is not a zero-sum game. A shrinking economy would be bad news for many workers who aren’t directly impacted by Trump’s deportation plan.

The AIC’s estimates are generally in line with the estimates made earlier this year by analysts at the Penn Wharton Budget Center (PWBM), a fiscal policy think tank housed at the University of Pennsylvania. “The costs of the former president’s plan to deport the more than 14 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. today could easily reach more than $1 trillion over 10 years, before taking into account the labor costs necessary for such a project or the unforeseen consequences of reducing the labor supply by such drastic amounts over a short period,” reported Marketwatch, which requested the PWBM estimate.

Of the AIC report, see Mass Deportation Devastating Costs to America, Its Budget and Economy.

Mass deportation would be morally reprehensible and economically devastating.

Commuter distracted by phone survives close call with train:

A commuter distracted by their phone survived a close call with an oncoming train in Buenos Aires.

America, City, Daily Bread, Economy

Daily Bread for 10.10.24: National Inflation Rate Falls Again

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 73. Sunrise is 7:03, and sunset is 6:19, for 11 hours, 17 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent, with 48 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Board of Zoning Appeals meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1985,  US Navy aircraft intercept an Egyptian airliner carrying the perpetrators of the Achille Lauro hijacking, and force it to land in Italy.

Christopher Rugaber reports US inflation reaches lowest point since February 2021, though some price pressures remain:

Inflation in the United States dropped last month to its lowest point since it first began surging more than three years ago, adding to a spate of encouraging economic news in the closing weeks of the presidential race. 

Consumer prices rose just 2.4% in September from a year earlier, down from 2.5% in August, and the smallest annual rise since February 2021. Measured from month to month, prices increased 0.2% from August to September, the Labor Department reported Thursday, the same as in the previous month.

These favorable national measures are beneficial throughout the county.

Go ahead, Whitewater, make the most of these better times. Take someone’s recommendation and turn the page.

Nearly One Hundred — 100! — Raccoons Surround Seattle-Area Woman’s House: