Labor

Poor Elon Musk really, really can't catch a break.  Just over the past couple of weeks he's been forced to push back his Model 3 delivery schedule due to some "production hell" issues (like not knowing how to weld...a fairly critical component of auto manufacturing), got one-upped by Daimler who beat him to the punch by revealing an all electric semi-truck earlier today (several weeks ahead of Elon), was sued by former employees who alleged a "hostile and racist work environment" in his Fremont plant...and the list goes on and on. 

A ‘fixer upper’ is a charitable term for what this is.

In a story that exposes just how obscenely overvalued San Francisco’s housing market has become, Business Insider reports that one motivated real estate agent in San Francisco is seeking a buyer for a home in the tony Bernal Heights neighborhood that was completely gutted in a fire last year, and needs to be demolished and completely rebuilt – a project that would likely run into the millions of dollars.

One of our preferred "off beat" economic indicators is how many workers apply at any one given moment in time for jobs that are hardly considered career-track. An example of this is the number of applicants for minimum wage line cook jobs at McDonalds, or flight attendant positions at Delta Airlines; conveniently, this is a series which we have tracked on and off for the past 7 years.

Authored by Chris Martenson via PeakProsperity.com,

More and more, I'm encountering people who are simply infuriated with how our "leaders" are running (or to put it more accurately, ruining) things right now. And I share that fury.

It’s perfectly normal human response to be infuriated when an outside agent hurts you, especially if the pain seems unnecessary, illogical or random.

Just last week, amid their Model 3 "production hell," Tesla shocked the auto world with news that they would be firing hundreds of workers.  Of course, firing seasoned production staff is somewhat atypical for a 'growing' company (shrinking cash flow aside) that was already having difficulty meeting their own production schedule.  Of course, the irony was apparently 'lost' on Tesla who tried to dismiss the mass firings as "performance-based terminations."  Per Capital and Main: