RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/06/american-confidence-in-the-presidency-drops-by-15-points-compared-to-last-year/

The latest poll from Gallup shows that Americans’ confidence in many major institutions in the United States, including the presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court, has dropped to a new low this year.

Fox News reports that the poll showed just 27 percent of Americans described themselves as having “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in 14 institutions, which is three points lower than the previous record low in 2014.

With 16 different institutions mentioned in the survey, Gallup noted “significant declines” in 11 institutions in particular, including the presidency and the Supreme Court. Compared to the last poll in June of 2021, American confidence in the presidency has gone down by 15 points, while confidence in the high court has dropped by 11 points. Similarly, Joe Biden’s approval rating has dropped by about 15 points in the same span of time.

Congress remains the lowest-rated institution in the nation. In last year’s poll, only 12 percent of Americans polled reported “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the federal legislative branch. This year, that number is down to a mere 7 percent.

Five other institutions recorded substantial drops in confidence: The police, the criminal justice system, big business, organized religion, and newspapers. The only major institution to see its approval rating hold steady was organized labor, at 28 percent once again.

Respondents across both political parties, as well as independents, all recorded drops in confidence compared to last year. Republican voters’ confidence in the military fell from 81 percent to 78 percent, while their confidence in the police dropped from 71 percent to 67 percent. Independents’ confidence in the presidency plummeted from 31 percent to just 18 percent. Meanwhile, in the wake of numerous major decisions on abortion, Second Amendment rights, and other issues, Democrats’ confidence in the Supreme Court dropped from 31 percent to 13 percent.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/06/the-disappearing-american/

“Help wanted” and “Now hiring” signs are everywhere. Flights, construction projects, and healthcare services are delayed—or unavailable—due to labor shortages.

Hourly and monthly wages spiral. There is a growing disequilibrium between the number of available jobs and the declining pool of workers needed to fill them. 

What is going on?

During the nearly two-year-long COVID shutdown and economic downturn, firms cut costs by laying off millions of employees. 

As a result, some in their early- or mid-60s simply retired early and never came back to work.

Federal and state governments also vastly expanded financial support to the unemployed. Other workers figured they would not make all that much more by working and so are staying home on government checks.

Still other former full-time employees became used to the new, more leisurely lifestyle and are loath to return to a full 40-hour work week.

Employers also are now convinced that a hard recession is on the early 2023 horizon when the trillions of dollars of newly printed money run out.  Many are willing to put up with worker shortages now, rather than hire too many employees only to have them idle when consumer demand soon crashes.

Still other workers fear yet another COVID pandemic and are not eager to return to daily contact with the public.

The government has no idea how Americans remain sick with the mysterious “long COVID” chronic aftermath of the infectious phase of the disease.

Well over 100 million Americans have likely had COVID. An estimated 10-30 percent do not recover for months—or even years.

So, millions of COVID long haulers remain either unable to work or can only work part-time. 

Yet no one yet has fully calibrated the effect of newly disabled millions on the American economy.

Add up all these dark clouds and America is experiencing a perfect storm, in which only 61 percent of the able workforce is currently officially employed.

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-democrats-most-bitter-pill/

On the menu today: You might think that, at this point, Joe Biden must have hit bottom in his job approval rating, but a Monmouth University poll finds him down to 36 percent. What’s notable about the polling lately is how many Democrats can no longer convince themselves that Biden is doing a good job. A lot of this is driven by the runaway-inflation crisis, and there’s a real problem for Democrats, in that the $1.9 trillion in new spending enacted in March 2021 — a massive spending bill that Larry Summers explicitly warned would “set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation” — was passed on party-line votes. As they approach a red tsunami midterm, the Democrats have no one to blame but themselves.

A Dark Day for Biden in the Polls

Normal Democrats are increasingly open about their disappointment with President Biden. Yesterday, the Monmouth University national poll had Biden’s job approval down to 36 percent. If you follow politics, you know the usual split in these polls by party. Usually only about 10 percent of the opposition-party respondents approve of the job the president is doing, usually almost all of the members of the president’s party approve, and independents are usually roughly evenly split.

In the Monmouth poll, just 3 percent of Republicans, 29 percent of independents, and 74 percent of Democrats approved of the job Biden is doing. The survey found that 19 percent of Democrats were willing to tell a pollster they didn’t approve of the job Biden was doing, and another 7 percent volunteered that they didn’t know enough to have an opinion.

In other words, roughly a quarter of Democrats can’t bring themselves to say, “Yes, he’s doing fine.”