Unemployment, Amazon wages

[Angrboda]

These young immigrants are stranded at the junction of several forces: the Trump administration’s determination to discourage immigrants from trying to cross the border; the continuing flow of children journeying by themselves from Central America; the lingering effects of last summer’s family-separation crisis at the border; and a new government policy that has made it much more difficult for relatives to claim children from federal custody.

At the moment, the government’s rolls include hundreds of children in shelters and temporary foster care programs who were taken from an adult at the border, whether a parent, grandparent or some other companion. About 13,000 children who came to the United States on their own were being held in federally contracted shelters this month, more than five times the number in May 2017.

All of which means there are more children showing up more often to federal immigration courtrooms like Judge Zagzoug’s, at hearings that could determine whether they will be deported, reunited with their parents, or granted the asylum that their parents desperately want for them. They often sit at counsel tables alone, unaccompanied by any family and sometimes without even a lawyer.

(NY Times)

MAGA baby!

---

---

The Trump tax cuts are a lot like Trump University: nowhere near what he promised, for very obvious reasons.

In this case, President Trump has said that his recently passed plan to allow companies to move any future foreign profits back to the United States without being subject to U.S. taxes, and move back any past profits while facing only a nominal tax, will unleash a flood of money into the country.

“We expect to have in excess of $4 trillion brought back very shortly,” he told a group of business leaders in August, and in all likelihood something “close to $5 trillion.”

The only problem is that Trump’s claim shouldn’t be true, and so far, it hasn’t been. The Wall Street Journal estimates that the nation’s biggest publicly traded companies have repatriated $143 billion this year, while the Federal Reserve puts the number at a slightly more than $300 billion. Whichever number is accurate, it’s 94 percent to 97 percent less than Trump predicted.

There’s a simple reason the Trump tax cuts haven’t inspired companies to move that much money to the United States: The money was already here. How is that possible when American companies were allegedly stashing $2.6 trillion overseas to avoid taxes?

The important thing to understand is that foreign profits were taxed when companies brought them back to the United States to put into their businesses but not when they brought them back to put into other things — which, of course, is exactly what cash-rich companies such as Apple did. Of the roughly $250 billion that the tech giant was supposedly holding overseas last year, about $208 billion was in U.S. Treasury bonds, corporate bonds, or Federal National Mortgage Association and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. debt. And that’s pretty low, compared with Apple’s peers. The Brookings Institution estimates that the 15 American companies with the most cash on hand already held 95 percent of it within the United States even before the Trump tax cuts took effect.

(Washington Post)

MAGA Baby!