Photo: Getty Images
Inflation, CNN+, Florida’s Population Boom - Top 3 Takeaways – April 13th, 2022
- December 1981. Another month, another 40+ year high for inflation, another underestimate by the so-called experts in the Biden administration. Gas was $1.31 per gallon. Olivia Newton-John's Physical was entering its third week at #1 on the charts. The Rubik’s Cube was the hottest toy, and the Atari 2600 was in its prime. It’s also the last time inflation was as high as it is right now. Yesterday’s CPI report showed inflation pacing at 8.5% year-over-year in March. That’s what’s been widely reported. But here’s the next piece of the puzzle. It’s not just that inflation is up from 7.9% in February – it's that we’re continuing to fall farther behind. Wage growth in March for the average American in the workforce was 5.6%. That means the average person working has 2.9% less buying power today compared to a year ago today. And if you’re retired, you’ve fallen behind by 2.6% on your Social Security payments. What’s more, the CORE inflation rate – meaning ex energy and food costs – is 6.5% year-over-year. In other words, inflation continues to come at us from every direction and the average American continues to fall further behind by the day. It’s become as unavoidable as hearing Physical on the radio once was. And since the Federal Reserve was keeping a close eye on this report, you can expect them to get physical – raising interest rates... But hey, at least you can still take solace in there still being no Trump tweets (even with Elon now in the mix), this is still so much better than 1.4% inflation and record prosperity – isn't it?
- There are more of you listening right now than are watching CNN+ in a day. If you ever wondered if the powers that be at CNN were out of touch with reality, their thought that people would pay to stream their content removed all doubt. The CNN+ streaming service which went live March 29th has attracted a total worldwide audience of... fewer than 10,000 people per day according to CNBC. With an average audience of only around 700,000 daily viewers to the traditional product, who could have seen this coming? Yeah, it wouldn’t have exactly been hard to guess demand to pay even more to stream CNN wouldn’t be there. The service which costs $5.99 per month, or $59.99 annually, doesn’t even begin to pay Chris Wallace’s contract – whom they lured over from Fox News for the launch. You’re familiar with the question... If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? A similar question could be asked of CNN+. Right now, all they’re doing is paying Chris Wallace and company to talk to themselves. Though, they’re paying a lot less for that than MSNBC is paying Rachael Maddow to talk to no one most of the time – so there’s that.
- Get ready to grow. Ok, so if you’ve lived in Florida for any length of time you know the only thing this state does is grow. And while it’s not as unusual today as it was twenty years ago to find someone in South Florida who was born here, most of us weren’t. We were just early to the party. It reminds me of my favorite related Florida “fun fact”. These days a lot of people wonder why the University of South Florida is near Tampa. The answer, at the time of its founding in 1957, it was the Southernmost state university in Florida. A lots changed since then but the one thing that hasn’t is growth. There’s been seemingly endless amounts of it in our state. And that’s not about to change anytime soon. In fact, we’re only growing faster. Florida’s population grew by just over 2.7 million people over the previous decade. According to the latest estimates from the Florida Chamber of Commerce – we'll grow by 3.5 million more people this decade. If they’re correct, and who really wants to take the other side of that bet, we’ll continue to average 959 new Floridians per day for the rest of the decade. Where will they go? That’s hard to know but it’s clear Florida’s going to continue to grow – and at a rate that’s easily the fastest in the country.