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Will Restart of Student Loan Payments Be the Last Straw for Consumers?

Jordyn Holman, Jeanna Smialek and Jason Karaian
Sat, September 16, 2023

Mykail James owes about $75,000 in federal student loans. She’s planning to cut back on attending concerts and travel she’s enjoyed over the past few years.

 (Sarah Silbiger/The New York Times)

Mykail James has a plan for when payments on her roughly $75,000 in student loans restart next month. She’ll cut back on her “fun budget” — money reserved for travel and concerts — and she expects to limit her holiday spending.

“With the holidays coming up — I have a really big family — we will definitely be scaling back how much we’re spending on Christmas and how many things we can afford,” James said. “It’s just going to be a tighter income overall.”

In October, roughly 27 million borrowers like James will once again be on the hook for repaying their federal student loans after a three-year hiatus. President Joe Biden tried to use his executive powers to forgive about $400 billion in student debt last year, but the Supreme Court overruled that decision in June, and payments kick in again in October.

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Now there are big questions about how those people — many of whom had expected to have at least some of their debt erased — may change their spending habits as they budget for student loan payments again. It could crimp the economy if a large share of consumers cut back simultaneously, especially because the resumption in payments comes just as the retail and hospitality industry begin to eye the crucial holiday shopping season.

Most economists think that while the hit could be substantial, it will not be so big that it would plunge America into a recession. Goldman Sachs analysts expect renewed student loan payments to cost households about $70 billion per year. That would probably be enough to subtract 0.8 percentage points from consumer spending growth in the fourth quarter, helping to slow it to 1.4%, they estimate.

Yet major uncertainties remain. Such estimates of just how big the drag will be are rough at best, it is unclear when exactly it will bite, and economists are unsure what it will do to consumer confidence. There are factors that could make the impact smaller: The Biden administration has taken steps to ease the pain, allowing for people with lower incomes to repay their loans more slowly and creating a one-year grace period in which missed payments will not be reported to credit-rating agencies.

But the student loan payments will also restart at the same time consumers face a number of other headwinds, including shrinking savings piles, a cooler job market and higher price levels after two years of rapid inflation. It could also coincide with major strikes; Hollywood actors and writers have been locked in a work stoppage all summer, and the United Auto Workers began a targeted strike Friday — one that economists warn could be disruptive if it lasts. Adding another source of looming uncertainty, Congress could fail to reach a funding agreement by the end of this month, forcing a government shutdown.

Retailers have begun to publicly fret that the resumption of student loan payments could collide with those other developments, pushing their shoppers closer to a breaking point. Executives from companies like Walmart, Macy’s, Best Buy and Gap have all warned analysts and investors that student loan payments may put pressure on shoppers’ budgets, eating into some of their sales in the process.

“I don’t think we have a very good grasp” on how the hit to consumers will play out, said Julia Coronado, the founder of MacroPolicy Perspectives, a research firm. “It’s still very unclear exactly what the impact will be.”

Consumers have, so far, been surprisingly resilient in the face of rapid inflation, higher Federal Reserve interest rates and a gradually cooling economy.

Retail sales came in stronger than many economists had expected in August, data released Thursday showed. Companies have regularly predicted a pullback that has been more modest than expected, as still-low unemployment and decent pay gains have proved enough to buoy shoppers.

But some companies worry that student loans could pile on — finally cracking the American consumer.

The resumption of student loan payments for a retailer like J.C. Penney, which caters to middle-income consumers, would be the latest unwelcome squeeze on their budgets. Their core customer makes an annual income of $55,000 to $75,000 and has had their monthly household expenses increase by $700 from two years ago. The department store chain said 17% of its credit card customers have student loans.

“I do think that student loans are going to have an impact,” Marc Rosen, the CEO of J.C. Penney, said in an interview. “It’s another thing that comes into that family that puts another stress on their budget and, again, brings back trade-offs, forces them to make other trade-offs.”

James is among the many American consumers expecting to make tough decisions. The 27-year-old, who works in aerospace defense and whose parents owe additional student loans on her behalf, said she had been spending hours doing research on her options for debt relief. She’s even contemplating a job switch to the public sector, which might require a pay cut but offers a clearer path to loan forgiveness.

In addition to cutting back on travel and concerts, she plans to work more on her side jobs to earn extra cash. In the past, she’s driven for UberEats and Instacart. (She said she would also continue expanding her financial education business.)

Phil Esempio, a 65-year-old high school chemistry and biology teacher in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, who owes around $150,000 in student loans, also expects to rein in his budget. Coming out of the pandemic, he excitedly returned to attending live shows in places like New York City — 78 concerts last year — and eating out while he’s there with his friends.

But Esempio said that his period of big spending might have been an overreaction to the end of the pandemic. As the restart of student loan payments looms, “a lot of that is being throttled back,” he said. He expects to make it to 35 shows this year. He thinks he’ll have to start paying $1,100 a month on his federal loans, which is equivalent to what he’s been paying for his private loans.

If other consumers behave similarly, it could come as an unpleasant surprise to companies including Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster. Live Nation executives on a recent earnings call predicted that people’s excitement for live events would outweigh any additional financial burdens.

Still, it is possible that other retailers are being overly glum, given the Biden policies and a few other factors that could help to limit the impact of student loans restarting. In fact, Alec Phillips, a Goldman Sachs economist, said that he thought his projection for a $70 billion annual cost from the payment restart was probably pessimistic.

“I don’t think that there’s a scenario where it turns out to be substantially worse,” Phillips said.

Among the factors that could limit the hit, borrowers may enroll in a new income-based repayment program offered by the administration, which would decrease monthly payments for people earning low and moderate incomes. If everyone who is eligible did so, it could reduce student loan payments by around $14 billion per year, Phillips estimates.

And some borrowers may simply not pay, at least for a while. Because missing payments will not be reported to credit reporting agencies for a year — the so called “on-ramp” period — households have wiggle room, said Constantine Yannelis, an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Finally, debt holders are more heavily middle- and high-earning workers. Those people may have more budgetary leeway to help deal with the renewed payments, Phillips said.

That is not to say that no groups will suffer. Many low-income people do have outstanding balances, just smaller ones, and Black borrowers in particular hold an outsize chunk of student debt. And the hit could come at a moment when some household budgets are already coming under stress amid high prices and high interest rates. Delinquencies on credit cards have recently jumped back above their levels from before the pandemic.

The result may be a painful strain on some families — but a more muted one for the economy as a whole.

The upshot is that “it will matter economically,” Yannelis said of the student loan resumption. “It is most likely not going to be huge, though, and it’s not likely to be the type of thing that would tip us into recession.”

c.2023 The New York Times Company

Two Russians, American reach space station

AFP
Fri, September 15, 2023 

Two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut docked with the International Space Station on Friday after blasting off from Baikonur amid raging tensions between Moscow and Washington over Ukraine.

Earlier Friday Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub and NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara lifted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft.

The crew docked at the ISS three hours later, the Russian space agency said.

At the orbiting station the trio will join three Russians, two Americans, a Japanese astronaut and a representative of the European Space Agency.

The liftoff took place after Russia's first lunar mission in nearly 50 years failed last month.

The ISS is a rare venue for cooperation between the United States and Russia, whose ties broke down after Moscow unleashed its offensive in Ukraine last year.

Kononenko alluded to the tensions during a pre-flight press conference on Thursday, saying that "unlike on earth" cosmonauts and astronauts took care of each other in space.

"We hear each other there, and we understand each other, and we are very sensitive to our relationships," he said. "We always take care of each other."

- 'ISS legacy' -

O'Hara praised the station's "legacy" and said it had been bringing the countries together.

"I'm excited to get on board and see the crewmates who are waiting for us," she added.

Kononenko, 59, and Chub, 39, were scheduled to spend a year on the ISS, while O'Hara, 40, was to spend six months aboard. It was the first mission to space for both O'Hara and Chub.

Chub said that travelling to space was his "childhood dream" and he had dedicated "all his life" to reaching that goal.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is looking to strengthen space cooperation with China after ties with the West broke down following the start of Moscow's offensive in Ukraine last year.

On Wednesday, Putin hosted the reclusive leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, at Russia's new Vostochny spaceport in the Far East, and the two discussed the possibility of sending a North Korean into space.

Last month Russia's Luna-25 module crashed on the Moon's surface after an incident during pre-landing manoeuvres, in a huge embarrassment for Moscow.

The Luna-25 mission was meant to mark Russia's return to independent Moon exploration in the face of financial troubles and corruption scandals, and its growing isolation from the West.

Moscow last landed a probe on the Moon in 1976, before shifting away from lunar exploration in favour of missions to Venus and building the Mir space station.

Astronauts explain why no human has visited the moon in 50 years — and the reasons why are depressing

Dave Mosher,Hilary Brueck,Maiya Focht
Fri, September 15, 2023 

Apollo 11 astronauts planted a flag on the moon on July 20, 1969.NASA

The last time a person visited the moon was in December 1972, during NASA's Apollo 17 mission.


Astronauts say the reasons why are budgetary and political, not scientific or technical.


It's possible NASA could land people on the moon again by 2025, at the very earliest.

Landing 12 people on the moon remains one of NASA's greatest achievements, if not the greatest.

Astronauts on the Apollo missions of the 1960s and '70s collected rocks, took photos, performed experiments, planted flags, and then came home. But those stays didn't establish a lasting human presence on the moon.

More than 50 years after the most recent crewed moon landing — Apollo 17 in December 1972 — there are plenty of reasons to return people to Earth's giant, dusty satellite and stay there.


NASA has promised that we will see US astronauts on the moon again soon-ish — maybe by 2025 at the earliest, in a program called Artemis, which will include the first woman, Black astronaut, and Canadian to touch the lunar surface.

Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, who ran the agency during the Trump administration, said it's not science or technology hurdles that have held the US back from doing this sooner.

"If it wasn't for the political risk, we would be on the moon right now," Bridenstine said on a phone call with reporters in 2018. "In fact, we would probably be on Mars."

So why haven't astronauts been back to the moon in more than 50 years?

"It was the political risks that prevented it from happening," Bridenstine said. "The program took too long and it costs too much money."

Researchers and entrepreneurs have long pushed for the creation of a crewed base on the moon — a lunar space station.

"A permanent human research station on the moon is the next logical step. It's only three days away. We can afford to get it wrong and not kill everybody," Chris Hadfield, a former astronaut, previously told Insider. "And we have a whole bunch of stuff we have to invent and then test in order to learn before we can go deeper out."

A lunar base could evolve into a fuel depot for deep-space missions, lead to the creation of unprecedented space telescopes, make it easier to live on Mars, and solve long standing scientific mysteries about Earth and the moon's creation. It could even spur a thriving off-world economy, perhaps one built around lunar space tourism.

But many astronauts and other experts suggest the biggest impediments to making new crewed moon missions a reality are banal and somewhat depressing.
It's really expensive to get to the moon — but not that expensive


The Saturn V rocket helped power the Apollo missions.Bloomsbury Auctions

A tried-and-true hurdle for any spaceflight program, especially missions that involve people, is the steep cost.

NASA's 2023 budget is $25.4 billion, and the Biden administration is asking Congress to boost that to $27.2 billion for 2024.

Those amounts may sound like a windfall, until you consider that the total gets split among all the agency's divisions and ambitious projects: the James Webb Space Telescope, the giant rocket project called Space Launch System, and far-flung missions to the sun, Jupiter, Mars, the asteroid belt, the Kuiper belt, and the edge of our solar system.

By contrast, the US defense budget for 2023 is about $858 billion.

Plus, NASA's budget is somewhat small relative to its past.

"NASA's portion of the federal budget peaked at 4% in 1965," Apollo 7 astronaut Walter Cunningham said during congressional testimony in 2015.

To compare, NASA's 2023 budget represents roughly 0.5% of US spending, according to a report from the Planetary Society. It has fluctuated between 0.4% and 1% since the 1970s, the report said.

Returning to the moon costs a significant chunk of that budget. A 2021 report from NASA estimated that the Artemis program to return people to the moon would cost a total of $93 billion from 2012 through 2025.

The Apollo program, for comparison, cost about $257 billion in today's dollars.

"Manned exploration is the most expensive space venture and, consequently, the most difficult for which to obtain political support," Cunningham said during his 2015 testimony.

He added, according to Scientific American: "Unless the country, which is Congress here, decided to put more money in it, this is just talk that we're doing here."

Referring to Mars missions and a return to the moon, Cunningham said, "NASA's budget is way too low to do all the things that we've talked about."

The problem with presidents

Former US President Donald Trump wanted to get astronauts back on the moon in 2024.Reuters/Carlos Barria

President Joe Biden may — or may not — be in office the next time NASA plans to land astronauts back on the moon in 2025, or later.

And therein lies another major problem: partisan political whiplash.

"Why would you believe what any president said about a prediction of something that was going to happen two administrations in the future?" Hadfield previously told Insider. "That's just talk."

The process of designing, engineering, and testing a spacecraft that could get people to another world easily outlasts a two-term president. But incoming presidents and lawmakers often scrap the previous leader's space-exploration priorities.

"I would like the next president to support a budget that allows us to accomplish the mission that we are asked to perform, whatever that mission may be," Scott Kelly, an astronaut who spent a year in space, wrote in a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" thread in January 2016, before Trump took office.

But presidents and Congress don't often seem to care about staying the course.

In 2004, for example, the Bush administration tasked NASA to come up with a way to replace the space shuttle, which was set to retire, and also return to the moon. The agency came up with the Constellation program to land astronauts on the moon using a rocket called Ares and a spaceship called Orion.

NASA spent $9 billion over five years designing, building, and testing hardware for that human-spaceflight program.

Yet after President Barack Obama took office — and the Government Accountability Office released a report about NASA's inability to estimate a realistic cost for Constellation — Obama pushed to scrap the program and signed off on the SLS rocket instead.

The crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission (left to right): NASA astronauts Christina Hammock Koch, Reid Wiseman (seated), Victor Glover, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.NASA

Trump didn't scrap SLS. But he did change Obama's goal of launching astronauts to an asteroid, shifting priorities to moon and Mars missions. Trump wanted to see Artemis land astronauts back on the moon in 2024.

Such frequent changes to NASA's expensive priorities have led to cancellation after cancellation, a loss of about $20 billion, and years of wasted time and momentum.

Biden seems to be a rare exception to the shifty presidential trend: he hasn't toyed with Trump's Artemis priority for NASA, and he's also kept the Space Force intact.

Buzz Aldrin said in testimony to Congress in 2015 that he believes the will to return to the moon must come from Capitol Hill.

"American leadership is inspiring the world by consistently doing what no other nation is capable of doing. We demonstrated that for a brief time 45 years ago. I do not believe we have done it since," Aldrin wrote in a statement. "I believe it begins with a bipartisan congressional and administration commitment to sustained leadership."

The real driving force behind that government commitment to return to the moon is the will of the American people, who vote for politicians and help shape their policy priorities. But public interest in lunar exploration has always been lukewarm.

Samantha Lee/Business Insider

Even at the height of the Apollo program, after Aldrin and Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, only 53% of Americans said they thought the program was worth the cost. Most of the rest of the time, US approval of Apollo hovered below 50%.

Most Americans think NASA should continue leading space exploration, a 2023 Pew Research Poll found. But that doesn't mean people care about going back to the moon – only 12% of the 10,329 respondents said NASA should prioritize human lunar missions.

Support for crewed Mars exploration isn't much stronger, with 11% of the poll's respondents saying it should be a NASA priority. Meanwhile, 60% think that scanning the skies for killer asteroids is important.
Many space enthusiasts have long hoped to build a base on the moon, but the lunar surface's harsh environment wouldn't be an ideal place for humans to thrive.NASA
The challenges beyond politics include problematic regolith and eye-popping temperature fluctuations

The political tug-of-war over NASA's mission and budget isn't the only reason people haven't returned to the moon. The moon is also a 4.5-billion-year-old death trap for humans and must not be trifled with or underestimated.

Its surface is littered with craters and boulders that threaten safe landings. The US government spent what would be tens of billions in today's dollars to develop, launch, and deliver satellites to the moon to map its surface, and help mission planners scout for possible Apollo landing sites.

But a bigger worry is what eons of meteorite impacts have created: regolith, also called moon dust.

Following the Apollo missions, scientists quarantined the astronauts for two weeks after they landed, in part because they were worried about the effects of the dust, according to a 2022 NASA study. The fine powder that sits on the moon's surface stuck to their suits, vehicles, and even got inside their spacecraft.

Peggy Whitson, an astronaut who has spent 675 days in space, previously told Insider that the Apollo missions "had a lot of problems with dust."

"If we're going to spend long durations and build permanent habitats, we have to figure out how to handle that," Whitson said.

There's also a problem with sunlight and deadly solar radiation.

For about 14 days at a time, the side of the moon facing Earth is a boiling hellscape that is exposed directly to the sun's harsh rays; the moon has very little atmosphere, and therefore no protection against solar radiation.

The next 14 days that same side is in total darkness, dipping to temperatures below -200 degrees Fahrenheit, making the moon's surface one of the colder places in the solar system.

NASA is developing a fission power system that could supply astronauts with electricity during weeks-long lunar nights — which would also be useful on other worlds, including Mars.

"There is not a more environmentally unforgiving or harsher place to live than the moon," astronautical engineer Madhu Thangavelu wrote. "And yet, since it is so close to the Earth, there is not a better place to learn how to live, away from planet Earth."

NASA has designed dust- and sun-resistant spacesuits and rovers, though it's uncertain whether that equipment is anywhere near ready to launch.

"I already knew going to the moon was hard," Reid Weisman, Artemis II Mission Commander, said at a press conference in August 2023. "But boy, it's harder than I thought."

A generation of billionaire 'space nuts' may get there

Another issue, astronauts say, is NASA's graying workforce. In 2019, more American kids polled said they dreamt about becoming YouTube stars, rather than astronauts.

"You've got to realize young people are essential to this kind of an effort," Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt previously told Insider. "The average age of the people in Mission Control for Apollo 13 was 26 years old, and they'd already been on a bunch of missions."

An estimated 14% of NASA's workforce is over 40 years old, according to a Zippia analysis.

"That's not where innovation and excitement comes from. Excitement comes from when you've got teenagers and 20-year-olds running programs," Rusty Schweickart, former NASA astronaut, said. "When Elon Musk lands a [rocket booster], his whole company is yelling and screaming and jumping up and down."

Musk is part of what astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman has called a "generation of billionaires who are space nuts," developing a new, private suite of moon-capable rockets.

"The innovation that's been going on over the last 10 years in spaceflight never would've happened if it was just NASA and Boeing and Lockheed," Hoffman told journalists during a roundtable in 2018. "Because there was no motivation to reduce the cost or change the way we do it."

Hoffman was referring to the innovative work of Musk's rocket company, SpaceX, as well as by Jeff Bezos, who founded aerospace company Blue Origin.

"There's no question: If we're going to go farther, especially if we're going to go farther than the moon, we need new transportation," Hoffman added. "Right now we're still in the horse-and-buggy days of spaceflight."

Many astronauts' desire to return to the moon aligns with Bezos' long-term vision. Bezos has floated a plan to start building the first moon base using Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket system.

"We will move all heavy industry off of Earth, and Earth will be zoned residential and light industry," he said in April 2018.

Musk has also spoken at length about how SpaceX's Starship launch system could pave the way for affordable, regular lunar visits. SpaceX might even visit the moon before NASA in this century.


A picture shows Starship fully stacked on its launchpad. Elon Musk said Wednesday the rocket is 'ready to launch' on its second fully integrated flight, pending regulatory approval.SpaceX

"My dream would be that someday the moon would become part of the economic sphere of the Earth — just like geostationary orbit and low-Earth orbit," Hoffman said. "Space out as far as geostationary orbit is part of our everyday economy. Someday I think the moon will be, and that's something to work for."

SpaceX launched its complete Starship system for the first time in April.

But the rocket didn't make it to orbit as planned. Leaking propellant triggered fires in the booster, causing the system to veer off course, ultimately triggering the mega-rocket to self-destruct.

Even so, astronauts don't doubt whether or not we'll get back to the moon and onto Mars. It's just a matter of when.

"I guess eventually things will come to pass where they will go back to the moon and eventually go to Mars — probably not in my lifetime," 95-year-old retired NASA Astronaut Jim Lovell, who flew to the moon on Apollo 8 and Apollo 13, said. "Hopefully they'll be successful."

Business Insider

BUILD THE MASS STRIKE

UAW strike: Autoworkers walk out on Big 3 car companies as U.S. labor movement intensifies

13,000 auto workers walked off the job, joining tens of thousands of striking workers in Hollywood and across the country.

Christopher Wilson
·Senior Writer

YAHOO NEWS
Fri, September 15, 2023 

The United Auto Workers walked off the job Thursday night after failing to come to an agreement with the Big 3 car companies, joining a wave of high-profile labor action across the country.

President Biden weighed in on the strike Friday, saying that while Ford, General Motors and Stellantis had made “significant offers, he believed that “they should go further to ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts for the UAW." Biden urged the two sides to continue talking and said he had dispatched acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and senior adviser Gene Sperling to Detroit to assist in the negotiations.

“Auto companies have seen record profits, including in the last few years, because of the extraordinary skill and sacrifices of UAW workers,” Biden said. “But those record profits have not been shared fairly, in my view, with those workers.”

United Auto Workers hold up strike signs as their fellow union members walk out of the job at the Ford Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Michigan, U.S., September 15, 2023. REUTERS/Eric Cox

The UAW was unable to agree to a contract and is using a targeted “stand up” strike, with 13,000 workers walking off the line at select plants and the potential to expand to other factories. Citing industry profits, the union is pushing for a raise in wages and to reclaim benefits lost in the negotiations that followed the Great Recession of the late 2000s. GM CEO Mary Barra attempted to defend her $30 million pay package during an interview with CNN, saying it was tied to company performance.

“The Big Three can afford to give us our fair share,” UAW President Shawn Fain told workers Wednesday. “If they choose not to, they're choosing to strike themselves. We are not afraid to take action."

Biden has touted himself as the most pro-labor president in history, but has yet to be endorsed by the UAW for his 2024 reelection bid over concerns about funding for electric vehicle production going to “right to work” states, which make unionizing more difficult. The president faced union blowback last year for undercutting striking railroad workers.

Recent Gallup polling found 67% support for unions overall, down from a high of 71% last year but still above the recent average. That same poll, taken last month, found that 75% of Americans sided with the UAW in the labor dispute, versus only 19% who sided with the Big 3.

Earlier this summer, UPS averted what would have been a historically large strike by more than 300,000 drivers and warehouse employees represented by the Teamsters union that would have crippled the U.S. economy, agreeing to higher wages and protections for workers like air conditioning in delivery trucks. Additionally, an agreement between the country’s largest train manufacturer and Pennsylvania workers was struck last month, ending a two-month walkout.

Even with those agreements, the UAW is not alone in their labor action.

Read more: Auto worker strike explained: the pay gap, the talks and what Biden is doing, from The Guardian

Read more: Biden says striking UAW workers deserve 'fair share' of record automaker profits, from ABC News

The Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA

SAG-AFTRA actors and Writers Guild of America (WGA) writers rally during their ongoing strike, in Los Angeles, California, U.S. September 13, 2023. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

The entertainment industry has been shut down for weeks, with the writers going on strike in May and the actors following them in July, marking the first time both unions have been striking at the same time in over half a century. The demands of the unions are centered around residual payments from streaming services and concerns over studios and streaming companies using artificial intelligence to replace human writers and actors.

Last month, Deadline reported internal strife among studio heads, all of whom recently hired a crisis PR firm. Thousands of actors and writers marched through Los Angeles on Wednesday for a rally in front of Paramount Studios.

“I know that this strike is not easy,” said SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher to the assembled demonstrators. “In fact, it's hard. It's very hard. And with the passing of time it's going to even get harder, but the reason why we had the largest strike authorization in our union history is because we stand at an inflection point.”

The sides are expected to return to the negotiating table next week. Earlier this week, visual effects artists at Marvel Studios voted unanimously to unionize, organizing one of the few areas of Hollywood labor not already represented by a union. Workers had documented complaints about being taken advantage of for long hours and short wages.

Read more: Talks Between WGA and AMPTP Are Expected to Resume Next Week, from IndieWire

Read more: American manufacturing is coming back. So are strikes, from FreightWaves
Hotel workers and city employees

Striking Hotel workers from Unite Here Local 11 join the picketing actors of SAG-AFTRA, and writers of the WGA, outside Netflix studios on Friday, July 21, 2023, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

The entertainment industry isn’t the only one affected by labor action in Los Angeles this summer, as thousands of hotel workers have been staging rolling walkouts since their contract expired at the end of June. Those striking include housekeepers, front-desk workers and cooks, who’ve urged boycotts of struck hotels. Last month, the union claimed that workers were being roughed up by hotel security as guests complained about noise from the picket lines.

Additionally, 11,000 municipal workers in Los Angeles launched a 24-hour strike in August to protest what they called bad-faith negotiating by the city. SEIU Local 721’s contract was agreed to last year and runs through the end of 2023, but workers say the city has not considered hundreds of proposals as was promised. City mechanics, sanitation workers, lifeguards, traffic officers and airport personnel were among those who walked off the job.

Developing countries double down on technology at Havana summit

Marc, Frank and Nelson Acosta
Sat, September 16, 2023 







G77 + China summit opens in Havana

By Marc, Frank and Nelson Acosta

HAVANA (Reuters) - Developing nations on Saturday declared Sept. 16 the annual "Day of Science, Technology and Innovation in the South" as they prepared to wrap up a two-day summit on the subject.

"We note with deep concern the existing disparities between developed and developing countries in terms of conditions, possibilities and capacities to produce new scientific and technological knowledge," the final declaration of the G77 group of developing nations and China said.

"We call upon the international community, the United Nations System and the International Financial Institutions to support the efforts of the countries of the South to develop and strengthen their national science, technology and innovation systems," the organization, which now counts 134 countries, stated.

The statement cited the pandemic and unequal distribution of vaccines as an example, pointing out that all but Cuba's were developed outside the block and rich nations were disproportionately vaccinated.

China maintains that it is not a G77 member, despite being listed as one by the bloc, but Beijing says it has supported the group's legitimate claims and maintained cooperative relations.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, whose country holds the organization's presidency this year, said on Friday that U.N. data shows that 10 countries account for 90% of patents and 70% of exports of advanced digital production technologies.

"Creation and dissemination of advanced digital production technologies worldwide remain concentrated, with minor activity in most of the emerging economies," he said.

The G77, which is the largest within the United Nations by population and number of members, called for a special meeting to tackle the issues raised at the summit.

The 46-point final declaration reiterates long-standing demands for a more equitable international economic and social order which it states is impossible without ending developed country technological domination.

At the same time, it calls for more cooperation between member nations in science, technology and innovation as strategies for their development.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told the gathering Saturday the group should promote sustainable industrialization, investment in renewable energy, in the bioeconomy and low-carbon agriculture "without forgetting that we do not have the same historical debt as rich countries for global warming."

While more than 100 member delegations participated in the summit, only Brazil and a few dozen others were led by heads of state.

(Reporting by Marc Frank and Nelson Acosta; Editing by David Gregorio)

MANRAY'S MUSE

Kate Winslet Personally Paid for ‘Lee’ Production Salaries for Two Weeks

Christian Zilko
Sat, September 16, 2023 

Kate Winslet’s latest role in “Lee” sees her collaborating with legendary cinematographer Ellen Kuras to tell the story of Lee Miller, a former fashion model who became one of America’s most important photographers on the frontlines of World War II. Winslet wasn’t afraid to get down and dirty to embody Miller and the horrors she photographed, but her involvement in the film went far beyond her performance.

In a new interview with Vogue (the same magazine that published many of Miller’s photos), “Lee” producer Kate Solomon explained that Winslet was extremely involved in the business and creative aspects of the film as a producer. In addition to helping the film obtain financing, the profile revealed that Winslet personally paid the crew’s salaries for two weeks during the shoot.

“Kate held the film in her,” Solomon said. “If you spoke to her about any aspect of it, she knew what her opinion was. And when you have that, you can galvanize everyone behind that person. It looks effortless, but having lived with her, you can say: My God, it is a lot of work to get to that point.”

In a recent interview with IndieWire at the Toronto International Film Festival, Kuras agreed that Winslet was an extremely involved producer who played a key role in the casting process.

“She was very involved in the film from A to Z,” Kuras said of Winslet. “From all the research to us having extensive conversations about who we wanted to cast, talking about who could be in different roles.”

While responses to the overall film have been mixed, critics have praised Winslet’s performance, with many citing her uniquely cinematic screen presence as a high point.

“If there were an award for the most cinematic cigarette-sucking on film, ‘Lee’ would be a shoo-in,” Natalia Winkelman wrote in her IndieWire review of the film. “Over the course of the nearly two-hour biopic, Kate Winslet, who stars as the war photographer Lee Miller, is consistently depicted amid a cloud of smoke, satisfying her oral fixation. Sometimes she puffs urgently, seeking to ease her jittery anxiety. In other scenes, she takes her time, her dramatic drags and pregnant pauses signaling that this lady has seen some things, kept some secrets, and survived it all.”

Free Speech Fundamentalist Elon Musk Mass Fired Staff for Saying Mean Things About Him

Maggie Harrison
Sat, September 16, 2023

Not So Absolute

It would appear that billionaire Elon Musk's self-avowed free speech "absolutism" has its limits — and according to Bloomberg, saying mean things about Musk is one of those non-absolute ceilings. Convenient!

Serial biographer Walter Isaacson's new book about the founder, "Elon Musk," unsurprisingly includes several anecdotes about Musk's takeover of the social media company formerly known as Twitter (it's since been rebranded to just "X," for some reason.) Per Bloomberg, one such Isaacson-penned vignette from Musk's purchase of the platform explains that during the mass layoffs that took place at the beginning of Musk's Twitter tenure, the billionaire had a team take a fine-tooth comb to the platform's Slack, using keywords like "Elon" to find and log any less-than-favorable remarks. Any employees found making "snarky comments" about Musk, as Isaacson apparently put it, were added to a list, and everyone on that list was fired.

In the SpaceX and Tesla CEO's world, "unfettered free speech," as Isaacson wrote, "does not extend to the workplace."

Cherry Picking

As Bloomberg points out, free speech laws don't technically extend to the workplace. Musk also famously retains a certain degree of paranoia, so it's not terribly surprising to see the world's richest man fire naysayers for the sake of perceived loyalty.

Regardless of whether firing employees for making fun of their boss is technically legal, though, it's still wildly uncool, and certainly seems to speak to Musk's long record of really, really needing people to like him. And still, considering the billionaire's eternal quest to prove his loyalty to the cause of inhibited First Amendment rights — even spending $44 billion on the internet's slowly-dying-and-probably-former town square to do it — it's usually worth calling out the founder's wide-ranging bending, and occasional all-out breaking, of his own proclaimed ideology. From penning columns for censored Chinese state media, to suspending journalists and even shadowbanning entire publications that he doesn't like, the alleged emerald scion's absolutism is known to warp to his whims and mood swings.

We'd also be remiss to note that Musk is currently waging war on the antisemitism nonprofit the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which Musk is threatening to sue for, uh, defamation, on grounds that the ADL's claims that Twitter's antisemitism problem has gotten worse since the billionaire's purchase of the platform (it has) has caused the social media platform to lose massive amounts of revenue. You know, because Free Speech.

‘Seriously Sick’ Elon Musk Gets Trash-Talked All Over Ukraine

Anna Nemtsova
Fri, September 15, 2023 

Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images


America’s richest man appears to be going through something of a public image crisis in Ukraine, with leading public figures across the country accusing Elon Musk of being selfish, ignorant—and an alien, even.

The outpouring of criticism and insults comes days after the Tesla founder said he rejected a request from the Ukrainian military to re-activate his satellite communications system, Starlink, to help with an attack on Russian forces in the Crimean peninsula last year.

Musk, for his part, has blamed the U.S. government, arguing that sanctions against Russia in the Kremlin-occupied region left him with no choice but to deny the request. But prominent Ukrainian politicians, businessmen, and media professionals—who spoke with The Daily Beast about their views on Musk in the aftermath of the Starlink controversy—aren’t quite buying it.

“What Musk has done was an unfriendly act against Ukraine, a present for Putin,” Svyatoslav Dubina, a Ukrainian platoon commander, told The Daily Beast.

Starlink began providing a nationwide service to Ukraine in February 2022, after a Ukrainian minister appealed to Elon Musk for help on Twitter. The service was initially funded by SpaceX, but the Pentagon reached a deal with the company to purchase the Starlink service for Ukraine in June. The service, which provides high-speed internet access to remote areas, has been an invaluable resource for the Ukrainian resistance effort.

The U.S. Government Can’t Allow Elon Musk the Power to Intervene in Wars

“We depend on Starlink. It plays a number one role, together with drones and artillery on the front, in our war against the occupiers,” Serhiy Leschenko, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, told The Daily Beast.

For Garik Korogotsky, one of Ukraine’s leading philanthropists, Musk has gone from being “a hero of Ukraine” to a person he views as “seriously sick with a God complex” after the Crimea ordeal.

“Musk made a fatal mistake, a wrong moral choice,” he said. “Ukraine does not like its dependence on Musk, and the United States should put an end to its dependence on him very soon.”

Some of those on the front lines shared similar concerns: “U.S. law enforcement agencies and courts should be looking into Musk’s influence on the course of history; a private company cannot be controlling the security systems of other countries,” said Dubina, the platoon commander.
Betrayal

Meanwhile, Russia’s state media has been spotlighting Musk’s decision to deny Ukraine’s request in Crimea as a victory for the Kremlin. Shortly after news of the Crimea incident broke, Russian President Vladimir Putin heaped praise on the Tesla founder, likely fueling the outrage against Musk in Ukraine.

Musk “is an active and talented businessman and he is succeeding a lot, including with the support of the American state,” the Russian President said this week. “As far as private business and Elon Musk is concerned, he is undoubtedly an outstanding person.”

Peter Zalmayev, a prominent Ukrainian TV presenter, recently told his viewers that he believes “Musk is influenced by Russian propaganda”—before cracking a joke about Tesla bumper stickers that read: “I bought this car before I knew that Elon was crazy.”

Speaking with The Daily Beast, Zalmayev echoed concerns of other Ukrainians who believe it’s “very risky to rely on one individual when it comes to Starlink for Ukraine.”

“As far as the messaging goes, Musk’s voice is so amplified, it is very disturbing. In Ukraine, truth is our key appeal to the world,” he said. “We understand that nations represent their often narrowly divided interests. But the unity around Ukraine’s defense showed that the truth is still there.”

The ex-governor of the Donetsk region, Serhiy Taruta, knows all too well the price Ukraine is paying for Putin’s brutal war after witnessing the destruction of his hometown of Mariupol.

“Musk helped us a lot in the beginning of the war, we should not cross that out and now—and he should come to Ukraine and see with his own eyes the level of destruction,” Taruta told The Daily Beast on Friday. “Over 100,000 people died from Russia’s violence in my home city of Mariupol. Let Musk imagine that one of his 11 kids was kidnapped… that is what we feel, when our territories get occupied.”

Others, like Ivan Petukhov—the Vice President of the Ukrainian League of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, which represents 10,000 businessmen across the country—have chalked up the matter to a simple lack of intellect.

“Every Ukrainian has turned away from Musk,” Petukhov told The Daily Beast. “He stabbed us in the back, and he is not smart.”

Does Elon Musk have too much power? Ukraine Starlink episode sparks concern

The tech mogul’s refusal to let Kyiv use SpaceX’s satellite communications to launch a surprise attack on Russia draws scrutiny in Washington.

Dylan Stableford
·Senior Writer
Fri, September 15, 2023 

Elon Musk speaks at a satellite conference in Washington, D.C., in 2020. (Susan Walsh/AP)


Elon Musk — the Tesla co-founder and SpaceX chief technology officer; owner, chairman and CTO of X, the company formerly known as Twitter, and world’s richest person — has long been a powerful figure on the global stage.

But revelations in a newly published biography of the outspoken entrepreneur suggest that Musk may have amassed too much power, especially when it comes to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Satellite communications

According to Walter Issacson's book, “Elon Musk,” the mercurial tech mogul refused to allow Ukraine to use SpaceX’s Starlink satellite communications to launch a surprise drone submarine attack on Russian forces in Crimea last September. Musk refused over concerns that Russia would launch a nuclear attack in response, telling Isaacson that he was trying to avoid a “mini-Pearl Harbor.”

“He believed it was reckless for Ukraine to launch an attack on Crimea, which Russia had annexed in 2014,” Isaacson wrote. “He had just spoken to the Russian ambassador to the United States [who] had explicitly told him that a Ukrainian attack on Crimea would lead to a nuclear response.

So Musk “decided not to enable Starlink coverage of the Crimean coast,” Isaacson continued. “When the Ukrainian military learned that Starlink would not allow a successful attack, Musk got frantic calls and texts asking him to turn the coverage on.”

Elon Musk departs from a closed-door meeting with lawmakers and tech CEO on artificial intelligence in Washington, D.C., Wednesday. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, begged Musk to reconsider. “We made the sea drones ourselves, they can destroy any cruiser or submarine,” he texted using an encrypted app. “I did not share this information with anyone. I just want you — the person who is changing the world through technology — to know this.”

According to Isaacson, Musk was soon on the phone with Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other high-ranking administration officials to address their concerns about his decision.

“Whether intended or not, he had become a power broker U.S. officials couldn’t ignore,” CNN noted this week.

Read more on Yahoo News: ‘How am I in this war?’: New Musk biography offers fresh details about the billionaire’s Ukraine dilemma, via CNN

“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor,” Musk explained in a post on X last week. “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

The decision drew praise from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who called Musk “an outstanding person” at an economic forum in eastern Russia earlier this week.

"He is undoubtedly an outstanding person,” Putin said, according to a Reuters translation of his remarks. “This must be recognized, and I think it is recognized all over the world."
Senate launches probe

Elon Musk laughs while speaking to reporters after attending a closed-door meeting with lawmakers and fellow tech CEOs on artificial intelligence in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

The episode has drawn the attention of Congress, which has launched an investigation into Musk’s actions in Ukraine.

Bloomberg reported that the Senate Armed Services committee is looking into national security issues raised by Musk’s decision not to extend the private Starlink satellite network to aid a Ukrainian attack on Russian warships.

Read more on Yahoo News: Musk’s denial of Ukraine’s Starlink request prompts Senate probe, via Bloomberg

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the committee’s chairman, said in a statement Thursday that the reports on the use of Starlink exposed “serious national-security liability issues” given the “outsized role Mr. Musk and his company have taken.”

“Neither Elon Musk, nor any private citizen, can have the last word when it comes to U.S. national security,” Reed added.
Musk to meet with Netanyahu

Elon Musk poses prior to his meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on May 15. (Michel Euler/AP)

The tech billionaire’s influence on world affairs does not appear to be waning.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet Musk during a trip to the United States next week, Netanyahu's office said Thursday.

Their meeting, which is scheduled for Monday, will reportedly include discussions about artificial intelligence.

Read more on Yahoo News: 

Israel's Netanyahu is to meet Elon Musk. Their sit-down comes as X faces antisemitism controversy, via AP

“It comes at a time when Musk is facing accusations of tolerating antisemitic messages on his social media platform X,” the Associated Press noted. “The Anti-Defamation League, a prominent Jewish civil-rights organization, has accused Musk of allowing antisemitism and hate speech to spread on X. Its director, Jonathan Greenblatt, said Musk had ‘amplified’ the messages of neo-Nazis and white supremacists who want to ban the league by engaging with them recently on X.”

I GOT MINE JACK

Ramaswamy wants to end the H-1B visa program he used 29 times

Myah Ward
Sat, September 16, 2023 

Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo

GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has vowed to “gut” the system for H-1B temporary worker visas if he wins the White House.

It’s the very system he’s used in the past to hire high-skilled foreign workers for the pharma company that built much of his wealth.

From 2018 through 2023, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved 29 applications for Ramaswamy’s former company, Roivant Sciences, to hire employees under H-1B visas, which allow U.S. companies to employ foreign workers in tech and other specialized jobs.

Yet, the H-1B system is “bad for everyone involved,” Ramaswamy told POLITICO.

“The lottery system needs to be replaced by actual meritocratic admission. It’s a form of indentured servitude that only accrues to the benefit of the company that sponsored an H-1B immigrant. I’ll gut it,” he said in a statement, adding that the U.S. needs to eliminate chain-based migration.

“The people who come as family members are not the meritocratic immigrants who make skills-based contributions to this country.”

Ramaswamy stepped down as chief executive officer of Roivant in February 2021, but remained the chair of the company’s board of directors until February this year when he announced his presidential campaign. As of March 31, the company and its subsidiaries had 904 full-time employees, including 825 in the U.S., according to its SEC filings.

When asked about the mismatch in the GOP presidential hopeful’s policy stance and his past business practices, press secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the role of a policymaker “is to do what’s right for a country overall: the system is broken and needs to be fixed.”

“Vivek believes that regulations overseeing the U.S. energy sector are badly broken, but he still uses water and electricity,” she said in a statement. “This is the same.”

Ramaswamy, who is himself the child of immigrants, has captured headlines for his restrictionist immigration policy agenda.

While not new to the GOP playbook, his rhetoric has at times gone farther than the other candidates, as he calls for lottery-based visas, such as the H-1B worker visas, to be replaced with “meritocratic” admission. He’s also said he’d use military force to secure the border, and that he would deport U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants.

H-1B visas are highly sought after, and the demand for these workers continues to increase: For fiscal year 2021, U.S. businesses submitted 780,884 applications for just 85,000 available slots, jumping by more than 60 percent.

Ramaswamy acknowledged his own experience with immigration during his opening remarks at the first GOP debate in Milwaukee.

“My parents came to this country with no money 40 years ago,” he said. “I have gone on to found multi billion-dollar companies.”

Ramaswamy’s stance on H-1B visas is reminiscent of the 2016 Trump campaign, when then-candidate Donald Trump, who has also hired a number of foreign workers under H-1B visas for his businesses, took a hardline stance on these foreign workers before later softening his rhetoric.

As president, Trump temporarily suspended new work visas and blocked hundreds of thousands of foreign workers from U.S. employment, as part of his sweeping effort to limit the number of immigrants coming into the United States.