• SOME NINE MILLION JOB POSITIONS ARE NOW OPEN WITH TEN MILLION AMERICANS UNEMPLOYED, but fewer than half are even “passively seeking” work and another 30% are intentionally stalling for at least another 90 days. According to a 5000- person survey by Indeed Hiring Lab, the major factors for “lack of urgency” in three-out-of-four unemployed workers are concern over Covid & vaccinations, having employed spouses, child-care responsibilities, and their “financial cushion of enhanced unemployment benefits.” Urgency is expected to increase by fall when in-person schooling could/should return, and as federal benefits expire. But presently, especially in low-wage areas like the service industry, businesses are struggling for workers.  [AXIOS – 6/29/21]
• ‘ZOMBIE’ RESEARCH PAPERS, based on fake or made-up or un-diligenced data in order to get published and/or win grants, are voluminous and continually cited by academia even when retracted, but “scholarship works like building blocks, with each paper citing myriad previous studies, which makes expunging the taint of a junk article impossible.” A recent analysis of over 20,000 ‘withdrawn’ papers found that: (1) 84% were still cited in some 95,000 subsequent articles post-retraction; (2) In turn, the retracted data was cited in 1.65 million further papers; (3) Authors in political science were “unusually likely to cite retracted work, versus those in education or law; (4) Papers mentioning Covid, often produced with unusual haste, were three times likelier to cite retracted research.” Just a reminder about believing everything you read.  [ECONOMIST – 6/2621]
• PUBLIC PERCEPTION THAT ‘RULES’ DON’T APPLY TO ELECTED LEADERS IS VALID, especially with regard to stock trading. After a series of Congressional ‘insider-trading’ scandals, a Stock Act was enacted, supposedly to remedy that abuse by blocking trading “based on non-public information acquired from official duties, though still allowed in industries they oversee.” But ‘nonpublic info’ is almost impossible to enforce when family/friend/associates can still trade freely, and zero lawmakers have been prosecuted since the Act passed in 2012. A bipartisan bill, called ‘Trust in Congress Act’ is now pending which would at least require legislators (including spouses & dependent kids) to place stockholdings into a ‘Blind Trust’ during their time in office (as Executive branch already do), but “even the strictest measures are unlikely to resolve this conflict-of-interest problem.”  [BLOOMBERG -7/28/21]
• AMAZON’S NEW ‘INCLUSION’ POLICY is latest iteration of how “Big Business birthed Woke Capitalism, by applauding Diversity & Inclusion, appointing token female & minority directors, musing about the racially disparate impact of climate change, then getting together with a bunch of millennials, putting Occupy Wall Street up for adoption and now making money by critiquing itself… Amazon’s Inclusion Playbook promises that half of creative roles in movies & shows will be filled by people who match the color/ gender identity/ nationality/ race/ ethnicity/ sexual orientation/ cultural disability of the characters they play… including those with ‘acquired limb difference’ (otherwise known as amputation), avoiding ‘mean girls’ (characterizing young women as socially aggressive & unkind) and ‘biological clock’ pressure (to have children during peak reproductive years)… Wokeness is almost always a smokescreen to focus attention & energy of the rich and powerful on Words, while letting them off the hook for asking those who could actually make a difference with regard to inequality to sacrifice anything of themselves.”  [SUBSTACK – 6/29/21]