Tied Race - Polls, Math, Gas Prices, and Health

Funky Friday - Parliament, Chaka Khan and Rufus, and Cameo! WORD UP

Chris Saxman

Aug 02, 2024

VP Kamala Harris raised $200MM and signed up 170,000 volunteers in the first week of her campaign. Not too shabby!

At $20/hour per worker that equates to 59 hours of work for all 170,000. Not including benefits.

Oh! Wait a second. Volunteers! That’s FREE labor.

My bad. Must be nice to run a multi billion dollar company using FREE labor.

That $200MM?? Paying consultants HUGE commissions on ad buys.

Speaking of helping working people…

Pennsylvania gas prices are down in the Keystone State.

Approximately 51% of Pennsylvanians have private health insurance.

Look for Team Trump to run clips on Kamala Harris saying (in her own voice) that she wants to get rid of private health insurance. Should go over well in the suburbs.

Also watch for Team Trump to dial back some the mass deportation language:

Team Trump will be dialing UP the ongoing cover up and gaslighting of Joe Biden’s cognitive condition:

How are the new labor laws working out in the market place? #California

About like expected. Machines replacing humans.

Didn’t see that coming? How about Disney?

“It’s Just Math” continues :

WHRO - Article More homes aren’t a sure way to make rents cheaper in Hampton Roads, new analysis says

Response from private equity investor with $1.7B Assets Under Management (AUM)

1 – the Fed hugely encouraged private equity and hedge funds to buy up homes post GFC when rates were at 0%. Was a way for investors to get a cash yield via rents and to theoretically buy up homes to increase underlying real estate prices which in turn helped banks and owners of mortgage backed securities (again going far far far beyond their remit to pick selective assets to pump up in value)
2 – they then pumped in $T of unnecessary money at the start of and during covid while putting interest rates again down at 0%, combined with consumers getting $T of free money from Trump & Biden irresponsibility which created massive demand against the same supply resulting in much higher homes prices and in turn rents
3 – the result is that many young / middle age and lower/middle income are completely priced of affording their own home and achieving a fundamental American dream
4 – unacceptable on so many levels that a very philosophically biased group at the Fed is allowed and permitted to so undermine a basic American right – should be rightly fried over this
As it pertains to HR’s housing issues, the non-profit guy also is very likely heavily biased as there are a wide range of reasons that rents can go up even with more supply such as the condition of the competing properties / trade areas, the attractiveness of same in terms of crime, schools, convenience, terms of the rentals, etc etc etc – for that “researcher” to make a unilateral statement that supply / demand doesn’t work in housing is simply a moronic statement and no surprise as his philosophical biases likely prohibit him from considering other factors as noted above

Virginia Out Migration:

UVA Weldon Cooper Center’s Hamilton Lombard pointed to Northern Virginia housing prices as the #1 factor. True to a degree.

Richmond Times Dispatch article on the Webinar we hosted this week: N.Va. housing costs drive exodus to Richmond area, out of state

“The rent’s too damn high,” said Hamilton Lombard, manager of the center’s estimates program for demographic research, when asked to sum up his findings in five words during an online webinar Tuesday sponsored by the business group Virginia FREE. “Housing will be number one. It’s too expensive.”

Bottom line - it’s not just the cost, it’s the value.

And it is spiraling into commercial properties.