By Jack Nicastro, RodeMarch 4, 2025.
Extract:
Empower, a ride reservation service, has been Hunted by Washington, DC, supervisorsSince it started his activities in 2020. CEO Joshua Sear will be arrested on Wednesday to violate the Department of For-Hire Vehicles’ (DFHV) Stop and stop Order if the app is not closed by that time. Mayor Muriel Bowser has the power to send the DFHV to withdraw his order, so that Empower would continue to operate in the city.
Sear founded Empower in 2019, not as a transport company, but as a software company that serves independent professional drivers. Empower differs in several ways from the Ride-Share Services flagship. Unlike Uber and Lyft, drivers who use Empower do not receive 1099 Forms– They are not contractors, but customers, according to the company.
The company also does not collect a percentage of each rate, nor has it set them; The drivers set their own rates by adjusting their minimum and basic rates, per minute, per mile and rising prices, and is rising to their own way. They then pay a fixed monthly fee of $ 349.99 for access to the DC monthly Platina PlanThat “provides unlimited access to the Empower software and support services.” Empower’s Proposed rates His “Make sure that drivers earn on average 20% – 25% more than if they were driving on behalf of Uber/Lyft [and] Riders also save on average 15-20%. “
By Liz Wolfe, RodeMarch 5, 2025.
Extract:
“Part of the confusion comes from the social security software system based on the Cobol programming language, which has a lack of date type,” reported The Associated Press last month in response to DOG reports on incorrect payments. “This means that some entries with missing or incomplete birth dates are in default more than 150 years ago.” (The desk Auto-stop payments To those who are older than 115.) The Inspector General of the Social Security Administration has admitted So much: the agency is really struggling to find out how “the death information in its database” can annotate “according to the AP, and there were almost 20 million sofi -numbers of people born in 1920 and previously they were not marked as dead. But Trump combines” not marked as dead in a database “in fact the benefits” – a definite of the benefit ” – a definitely wild”. July 2023 report From the inspector’s general comments that “almost none of the number holders discussed in the report receives SSA payments.”
By Timothy Taylor, Sprayable economistMarch 5, 2025.
Extract:
The American uncertainty index is not an official government data. It is based on a method developed by three economists, Scott R. Baker, Nick Bloom and Steven J. Davis. I called their approach here When it was first developed 2012. They combine three data sources: “The frequency of newspaper articles that refer to economic uncertainty and the role of policy; the number of provisions of federal tax legislation that will expire in the coming years; And the degree of disagreement among economic predictors about future inflation and future government spending on goods and services. “The average value of 1985-2010 is randomly set to 100. So you can see Spikes during the big recession, the pandemic and now early 2025.
Editors, Washington PostMarch 4, 2025.
Extract:
All this could cost the typical American household about $ 1,245 in lost purchasing power, according to a projection of the Budget lab at Yale. Another model estimates that if Canada, China and Mexico take symmetrical revenge-the rates of the same size would impose 0.5 percent on American goods-American income in real terms. The real wages in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio would fall by almost 0.6 percent.
To see how this works, consider the car industry, the most integrated in North America. Thirty -eight From the value of cars imported from Mexico comes from parts and components made in the United States. Seventeen to 36 percent of Cadillac Models Make -up assembled in the United States is from Mexico. Auto -parts, North -American borders cross several times before they ended up on a dealer. A rate of 25 percent would increase their price at every intersection, so that the competitiveness of the industry is decimated.
DRH NOTE: Washington Post Owner Jeff Bezos recently told his editorial writers that they should write editorial articles in favor of free markets. This editorial is implicit for free markets. Maybe the editorial writers pay attention?
by Jeffrey Miron and Karthi Gottipati, Libertarian countryMarch 5, 2025.
Extract:
However, Libertarians make a distinction between the government imposed by the government and those of private entities, whereby the emphasis is placed on the unintended and potentially harmful consequences of government mandates. For example, One study suggests that such mandates have eroded public faith in government institutions and, paradoxically, vaccine-sided people have less willing to be vaccinated.
That said, Libertarians defend the right of private entities to demand vaccinations for employees, customers or other stakeholders.
A recent study illustrates the effectiveness of this approach of the private sector:
Our findings show that employer vaccinum mandates considerably increased the vaccination rates of staff. This had life-saving effects on the health of residents of nursing homes, which experienced a reduction in both COVID-19 cases and mortality. For every two facilities that have implemented a mandate, about one life was saved. Since a typical nursing home only houses 100 residents, this impact is considerable.
Note: The corresponding image is a graph of economic uncertainty.