August 30 2024

1 U.S. Electric Utilities Brace for AI-Driven Power Surge
2 Pandemic Job Recovery Uneven I
2.5 Pandemic Job Recovery Uneven II
3 Dollar General Reports Financial Strain Among Low-Income Households
4 Election Roundup: Family Policy, Unrealized Gains Tax
5 Friday Ukraine News Roundup
8/30/1963 Hotline established between Washington and Moscow

See the new Ad Astra Podcast! Released on Apple and Spotify around 8a CST.

1 U.S. Electric Utilities Brace for AI-Driven Power Surge

U.S. electric utilities predict a tidal wave of new demand from data centers powering technology like generative AI, with some power companies projecting electricity sales growth several times higher than estimates just months earlier. Nine of the top 10 U.S. electric utilities said data centers were a main source of customer growth, leading many to revise up capital expenditure plans and demand forecasts, according to a Reuters analysis of company earnings reports from the first three months of the year. During the same earnings period last year, only two of the companies mentioned data centers. "The growth is going to kick in faster than it has in decades," said Jim Lydotes, head of equity income for Newton Investment Management, a BNY Mellon IM firm that is shifting its holdings in European electric utilities to U.S. companies. Overall, power use from the thousands of giant computing warehouses that comprise data centers is expected to triple globally from less than 15 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2023 to 46 TWh this year, according to Morgan Stanley research.  

Ed note: the AI power crunch + existing renewable energy rollouts are going to collide in the coming years

Article Source: Reuters

2 Pandemic Job Recovery Uneven I

The U.S. economy has added some 19 million jobs in the past four years — all the jobs lost in the pandemic plus millions more. The comeback has been faster and more complete than any in recent decades, or maybe ever. But it has also been uneven. In some parts of the country, jobs came back quickly once vaccines were available, if not earlier. In many of those places, more people are working, and earning more money, than ever before. In other places, the rebound has been much slower. As of 2023, more than two in five U.S. counties — 43 percent — still hadn’t regained all the jobs they lost in the early months of the pandemic, according to annual data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Some of those places were struggling long before 2020. Others had been thriving economically and were knocked off course by an airborne shock few saw coming. The geography of that unequal recovery helps reveal how the pandemic — and the policies adopted in response to it — reshaped the U.S. economy, changing the kind of work Americans do and where they do it. The patterns could have electoral implications: The battleground states that will help decide November’s presidential election include some of the biggest winners in the recovery — but also several of the losers.

Article Source: NYT

2.5 Pandemic Job Recovery Uneven II

The winners have some things in common. They are concentrated in the South and the Mountain West, particularly in suburban counties, which have done well in an era of remote and hybrid work. They tend to be places where job losses were comparatively mild in the first place, often because their major employers were in industries that were less affected by — or that even benefited from — the disruptions of the pandemic. They are, on average, richer and better educated than counties that have been slower to rebound. They voted disproportionately for Donald J. Trump in the 2020 presidential election. The losers, by contrast, tend to be concentrated both in big cities, which were hit particularly hard by the pandemic, and in rural areas, which were struggling long before the virus struck. They are relatively poor, on average, but with notable exceptions: San Francisco and several of its wealthy neighbors, for example, have yet to regain all the jobs they lost in the pandemic.

Article Source: NYT

3 Dollar General Reports Financial Strain Among Low-Income Households

Lower-income American households are running out of money at the end of every month, the discount retailer Dollar General said as it released dismal results that drove its shares down more than 30 per cent for their sharpest one-day drop on record. The largest US dollar store chain, with more than 20,000 locations across 48 states, painted a bleak financial picture for many of its customers after years of inflation and the depletion of savings built up during the pandemic. Shrink, an industry byword for inventory losses that includes shoplifting, was also on the rise, it added.

Article Source: FT

4 Election Roundup: Family Policy, Unrealized Gains Tax

Family policy   

Trump also said at campaign events in Michigan and Wisconsin on Thursday that if he wins a second term his administration would provide federal financial support or mandate that insurance companies cover in vitro fertilization treatments. Trump said he would let parents deduct major newborn expenses from their taxes, aiming to offset some of the costs associated with parenting and competing with a recent Democratic proposal. He didn’t offer additional details and has now floated several tax breaks on top of a promise to extend his 2017 tax cuts. Earlier this month, Harris announced a different benefit aimed at new parents, offering a $6,000 refundable child tax credit for newborns, along with other expansions of the credit for older children. Vance floated a $5,000 child tax credit, but Trump hadn’t expressed support for that and offered the deduction idea on Thursday.  

Ed note: after Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022, the pro-life movement has become the pro-natalist movement, which is more palatable to the mainstream   

Unrealized gains tax  

Donors to Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign are pushing her to reconsider supporting a proposed tax on the wealthiest Americans, as some Wall Street and Silicon Valley executives try to reshape the Democratic nominee’s governing agenda. Ms. Harris’s campaign last week said she supported the tax increases included in President Biden’s latest White House budget proposal. One of those plans would require Americans worth at least $100 million to pay taxes on investment gains even if they have not sold the stocks, bonds or other assets that have appreciated. Under the plan, those Americans would owe a 25 percent tax on a combination of their regular income, like wages, and so-called unrealized gains. The so-called billionaire minimum income tax could create hefty tax bills for wealthy individuals who derive much of their wealth from the stocks and other assets they own.

Article Source: WSJ, NYT

5 Friday Ukraine News Roundup

Zelenskyy criticism  

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has come under a barrage of criticism from soldiers, lawmakers and military analysts over the rapid advances made by the Russian army in eastern Ukraine since Kyiv launched its bold incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. Many Ukrainians celebrated their army’s invasion of Kursk on August 6, hoping the gamble would force Moscow to divert resources to the new front and swing the momentum of the war in Ukraine’s favour. However, a breach in the frontline in the strategically important Donetsk region this week has triggered a backlash against the leadership in Kyiv, with critics arguing Ukraine’s positions were weakened by the redeployment of thousands of battle-hardened Ukrainian troops to the Kursk operation.  

Massive airstrike  

Moscow launched more than 200 missiles and drones across a wide swath of Ukraine on Monday, damaging energy facilities and sending residents of Kyiv into basements and subways to seek shelter. President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the assault as “one of the largest strikes” of the 30-month-old war. The strikes occurred at a volatile time in the conflict, coming against the backdrop of Ukraine’s cross-border incursion into southern Russia — the first invasion on Russian soil since World War II. On Monday, Ukraine’s forces continued to try to advance in the region.

New F-16 crashes  

Ukraine has lost its first F-16 in a combat operation.  The aircraft was destroyed and the pilot of the aircraft killed. That much has been officially confirmed by Ukraine's Air Force.  Exactly where the shoot down happened, or how it happened, remains unclear.

Telegram  

Russian authorities have reacted with unusual fury to the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov by French authorities. Telegram is more than a mere social-media app to Moscow. Russian soldiers and spies depend on it for battlefield communications, including the guidance of artillery, the coordination of movements and intelligence gathering. WSJ

Article Source: FT, NYT, Weapons and Strategy Substack, WSJ

8/30/1963 Hotline established between Washington and Moscow

Sources

1. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-electric-utilities-brace-surge-power-demand-data-centers-2024-04-10/

2. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/08/27/business/economy/jobs-election-county.html

3. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/08/27/business/economy/jobs-election-county.html

4. https://on.ft.com/4dHXpEH

5. https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/donald-trump-gives-mixed-signals-on-florida-abortion-referendum-2782c55c?mod=hp_lead_pos5; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/29/us/politics/donors-harris-tax-ultrawealthy.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

6. https://on.ft.com/3z1x5WW; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/26/world/europe/russia-ukraine-missiles-kyiv.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb; https://open.substack.com/pub/weapons/p/ukraine-loses-its-first-f-16?r=d9vo5&utm_medium=ios; https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/russia-military-telegram-founder-arrest-b080dd8d?st=fefug6upxpp7ajg&reflink=article_copyURL_share