America’s Healthcare Potemkin Village

 Numerous recent articles advise investors which healthcare stocks to buy and which ones to avoid.  Other economic reports confirm healthcare as one of the fastest growing segments for jobs in the economy.  These writings fail to report that as stockholders profit and as more healthcare jobs are created, patients suffer and die due to the seesaw effect.

Stocks and Patients

A 2020 study compared ten-year (2007–2017) performance of top healthcare stocks to patients’ access to care.  The time period extended from before the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — passed in 2010 and implemented in 2014 — to after full implementation and thus included effects associated with the ACA on stocks and on patients. 

Over the ten years, the seven largest healthcare stocks all increased in share price, with average gain of 307 percent (range: 157 to 635), while the Standard & Poors Index gained 80 percent.  Over the same time period, the maximum average wait time to see a primary care physician increased from 99 days to 122 days. 

As stockholders gained value, patients lost access to medical care.  While this is a statistically significant (p<0.0001) temporal association, that does not prove cause and effect.  One may infer causation based on how health insurance companies profit. 

Health insurance prices are fixed according to contracts with health plans after negotiation with state governments.  Since insurance companies can increase revenue only by signing up more people, their best way to increase profit is by reducing costs — i.e., spending (on patients).  This is done by the “three D” strategy: delay, defer, deny authorization for care.  Thus, the longer people wait for care, the longer insurers keep premium revenue, and profits rise.  

The stock-to-care connection is an inverse relationship called the seesaw effect: as the number of insured individuals rises, care falls.  When insurance companies insure more people, they deploy the three “D” approach, causing more people to wait longer and longer for care, delaying a proper diagnosis (viz., cancer).  Medical ailments progress, and patients’ health worsens, ultimately leading to death by queue — patients who die waiting in line for care.

Simply put, as more Americans are insured, insurance profits rise, and patient care falls.  Washington is the primary insurer of Americans — 194 million — through Medicare, Medicaid, and Tricare. 

Job growth and patient care

One of the triumphs attributed to the ACA by then-president Obama was job growth.  According to Goldman Sachs, “500,000 jobs [were] added to health-care sector under ObamaCare.”  When the data are studied in detail, 47,000 were care providers, meaning that 453,000 (91 percent) were non-clinical jobs, people who did not provide patient care.

Mentally calculate the salaries for millions of bureaucrats, administrators, rule-writers, regulation compliers, compliance officers, overseers, mandate-enforcers.  This is the cost of healthcare BARRCOME associated with regulations such as the ACA, which cost $1.76 trillion.  In fact, to cover part of this BARRCOME cost, $716 billion was taken from the Medicare Trust, money intended to pay for hospital care for seniors.  According to the Trustees, Medicare will be insolvent by 2028 and thus unable to provide this care. 

The ACA was merely one more money sump that diverts healthcare spending away from paying for care.  In 2023, the U.S. expended $4.5 trillion on its healthcare system, an amount greater than the entire GDP of Germany, the fourth largest economy on Earth.  It is estimated that 31 percent to more than 50 percent of U.S. healthcare spending goes to BARRCOME.  That translates to $2 trillion’s worth of patient care Washington denies its citizens while paying itself.

Job growth in healthcare demonstrates a variation of the seesaw effect: as federal BARRCOME goes up, patient care goes down, and Americans die.

Federal healthcare: A Potemkin village

Washington’s takeover (by regulation) of healthcare has produced a Potemkin village. 

Grigori Potemkin was an 18th-century Russian statesman and one of Russian Empress Catherine the Great’s many lovers.  Under his leadership, in 1783, Russia took the fertile lands of Crimea away from the Ottoman Empire.  He promised Catherine a huge bounty of food and a grateful populace.  In 1787, Catherine demanded to see how well her people had done as a result of the war.  Potemkin built a façade of a prosperous village and hired people to smile and bow down as Catherine’s entourage toured the “village.”  While Catherine’s caravan made slow progress, Potemkin’s hirelings moved the fake village and happy actors to the next tour stop so Catherine (again) saw thriving Russians and thought the invasion had been a great success.  In fact, it was a failure — no great agricultural wealth materialized, and Russians continued to starve.

Washington has produced a Potemkin village called Federal Healthcare.  The uninsured rate is the façade of success.  Each reduction of this number is heralded as a new triumph.  Another false building front is added and propped up for viewing pleasure.  Behind the façade, there is reality: Washington paying itself with “healthcare” dollars, and Americans with insurance die waiting in line for care. 

Deane Waldman, M.D., MBA is professor emeritus of pediatrics, pathology, and decision science; former director of the Center for Healthcare Policy at Texas Public Policy Foundation; former director, New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange; and author of 12 books including the multi-award winning Curing the Cancer in U.S. Healthcare: StatesCare and Market-Based Medicine. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/01/americas_healthcare_potemkin_village.html

Forget Michelle Obama or Gavin Newsom -- Dems' Choice to Replace Biden is Nikki Haley

 President Joe Biden is clearly declining cognitively and physically, based on his garbled speech, frequent falls, disorientation on stage, and inappropriate behavior, especially toward young girls.

Voters agree.

In the Democrat stronghold of New York City, 62 percent of New Yorkers believe Biden is unfit to serve another term.

So, who takes his place?

Not Vice President Kamala Harris, whose approval rating, “Is a 2024 problem,” according to Newsweek. She is “notably less popular than Mike Pence, Biden, Dick Cheney, and Al Gore were after the same number of days as vice president.”

Who else is on the Democrat bench to replace Biden? Filmmaker Joel Gilbert makes a compelling case for Michelle Obama swooping into the race at the last minute, avoiding a messy primary season. Her popularity and thin political resume, not to mention her skin color and gender, make her untouchable, buffered by cries of racism or sexism whenever she is questioned or challenged.

Podcaster Dan Bongino says otherwise and makes a good case based on his experience with Mrs. Obama from his time as a Secret Service agent on the presidential detail in the Obama White House. He believes she is far too private, and comfortable in her wealth and idolatry, to go head-to-head with Donald Trump, or whoever the GOP nominee is.

Bongino also correctly adds the caveat that, “Predictions are like a**holes, everyone has one.”

There are also some current Democrat governors like Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer who are suggested as Biden replacements. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a legacy Democrat, is running as an independent candidate because he, like Trump, is reviled by his party’s ruling class and establishment, but he could always revert back to his family roots and run on the Democrat ticket.

It's far simpler for Democrats to replace Joe Biden by letting him lose in November. Forget impeachment or the 25th Amendment. There is already a candidate, already running, who could replace Biden and continue many of his policies, perhaps not as vigorously, but certainly appealing enough to the left and the donor class that they are all in for her candidacy.

I speak of Nikki Haley, ostensibly running as a Republican.

After the Iowa caucuses, she channeled her inner Joe Biden by calling it a two-person race, despite her finishing third in Iowa.

That sounds like Joe Biden “literally” convincing Democrat segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond to vote for the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Biden was 22 at the time, not a U.S. Senator, instead supposedly a football star, triple-major, college kid, appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy.

Humorous tall tales and misstatements aside, why would Haley be Democrats’ Biden replacement?

Are Democrats supporting her candidacy? Hell, yeah!

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and “one of the Democratic Party’s biggest financiers,” also an Epstein Island visitor, gave $250,000 to a Nikki Haley Super PAC. 

Why would a liberal Democrat mega-donor support a Republican candidate? Hoffman must approve of Haley’s platform and plans for America.

Reid Hoffman is not only funding Haley’s campaign, but also E. Jean Carroll’s farcical lawsuit against Donald Trump. Will Haley be beholden to Hoffman’s leftist politics and agenda?

The open borders, Trump-hating Koch Brothers, endorsed and are financially supporting Haley’s campaign, too. Perhaps they like Nikki’s position on the border rather than Trump’s “build the wall” approach.

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who couldn’t lobby his caucus to fund a southern border, is lobbying Congressional Republicans to support Haley.

Pro-war, former conservative Republican, now liberal Democrat, Bill Kristol also endorsed Haley. Perhaps he shares Nikki’s “I love war” platform for America.

What are Haley’s views on illegal migration? She wants to roll out the welcome mat: “We don’t need to talk about them as criminals. They’re not. They’re families that want a better life.”

Do voters, especially Republicans, agree?

Rasmussen Reports asked U.S. likely voters if the current surge of migration was “an invasion.” Some 77 percent of Republicans said it was, perhaps reflecting the hordes of military-aged men streaming across the border, as opposed to “families wanting a better life.”

They are not all criminals, but many are, including this four-time deported migrant from El Salvador who killed a Colorado mother and son in a drunk driving crash.

Who supported the George Floyd BLM riots in the summer of 2020? Democrats certainly did. Some Republicans, like Mitt Romney, marched in the BLM protests. Nikki Haley tweeted, “In order to heal, it needs to be personal and painful for everyone.” Does that mean painful for those who had nothing to do with George Floyd but had their businesses destroyed in the riots? Her position is more aligned with Democrats than Republicans.

What about the Ukraine war? Pew Research found, “About half of Republicans now say the U.S. is providing too much aid to Ukraine.” This compares to only 16 percent of Democrats.

Haley’s position is closer to the Democrats, saying “This is a war about freedom, and it’s one we have to win.” Joe Biden and his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, agree.

Two years into it, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men are dead and the U.S. has spent hundreds of billions of dollars, with nothing to show for it other than a Russian economy “going strong” as NPR observed.

She wants the war to continue, keeping her military industrial complex donors happy and wealthy. She served on the board of Boeing, a company with numerous military contracts, profitable during wartime.

Haley, according to ABC News: “has said that climate change is real and supports carbon capture.”

John Kerry and AOC agree.

She also plays into the current censorship state with her, “Proposed requirement that social media companies ban people from posting anonymously online for national security reasons.” Merrick Garland and Christopher Wray would approve as “Federal investigators asked banks to search and filter customer transactions by using terms like "MAGA" and "Trump" as part of an investigation into January 6.”

If one can’t post anonymously on social media, posting anything pro-Trump will invite scrutiny or worse from Big Brother. Haley supporting this, despite a partial walk back, sounds like a Democrat.

America has had Republicans in the mold of Nikki Haley and the results speak for themselves. President George H.W. Bush raised taxes after proclaiming: “Read my lips, no new taxes” and the electorate responding by choosing a glib, charismatic alternative from Arkansas as president.

Bush’s son drove America into a 20-plus years' war in the Middle East, destroying countries and wasting trillions in American wealth. He also ushered in the surveillance police state, now further weaponized by Obama and Biden against political opponents. He gave us John Roberts leading the high court and wanted Harriet Myers as Roberts’s sidekick.

He also pushed for amnesty for illegal aliens. Haley would likely follow a similar path accepting Gaza refugees into the U.S. under the logic, “America has always been sympathetic to the fact that you can separate civilians from terrorists.” Then why let any in without proper vetting, rather than all of them? That’s Democrat logic.

Speaking of migration, under the natural-born provision of the U.S. Constitution, Haley may not even be eligible to serve as U.S. president as neither of her parents were U.S. citizens at the time of her birth, as Laura Loomer explains in detail. In other words, she has birthright citizenship, quite possibly not natural-born citizenship.

How will Democrats handle this? Those questioning Barack Obama’s eligibility were decried as "birthers.” Will Democrats question Haley’s eligibility? If they don’t, that’s a strong signal that they would welcome her presidency, hardly a ringing endorsement for GOP voters.

Wannabes along the way included John McCain, another warmonger and deciding vote to keep Obamacare in place. Mitt Romney voted to remove Donald Trump from office for asking Ukraine about the Biden family’s involvement in Ukraine corruption and money-laundering.

Nikki Haley is the latest version of the neo-con globalist Republicans who have come before her, bullish on open borders, endless wars, and big government. The donor class is smiling and writing her checks.

Expect under a Haley presidency, war with Russia, China, North Korea, and/or Iran. “Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” Bush-style, will be resurrected with a “path to citizenship” (amnesty) for the tens of millions of migrants who came to America under Biden, forever changing the electoral, demographic, and cultural aspects of America.

Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito will retire from the high court, replaced by “moderates” in the mold of John Roberts or David Souter. The climate agenda will move forward, but in a less radical form than John Kerry would like. Gun rights will shrink.

Expect another 9/11-type event, perhaps blamed on Trump supporters, ushering in version two of Bush’s Patriot Act, with a further erosion of liberty and freedom.

The deep state will remain untouched, with no reckoning for the crimes of Russia-gate, COVID, and a weaponized intelligence and justice system. In fact, Haley would allow her administration to target and harass Trump and his supporters, following the recommendation of David Plouffe and the permanent administrative state, “It is not enough to simply beat Trump. He must be destroyed thoroughly. His kind must not rise again.”

No wonder Democrats are embracing her candidacy. Better her than a Trump-Biden matchup which Trump would likely win. Haley’s GOP primary efforts may be moot after Iowa and with Trump’s 39 point lead in South Carolina, Haley’s home state.

While she won’t be an Obama puppet like Biden, she will govern similarly enough that the ruling class will be happy for her to continue much of the Biden agenda, even if she carries an ‘R’ after her name.

 

Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a physician and writer. Follow me on Twitter @retinaldoctor, Substack Dr. Brian’s Substack, Truth Social @BrianJoondeph, and LinkedIn @Brian Joondeph.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/01/forget_michelle_obama_or_gavin_newsom__dems_choice_to_replace_biden_is_nikki_haley.html

Getting woke and going broke: Now it's Dem Socs' turn to go belly up

 By Monica Showalter

Few things are more satisfying in the era of President Trump's rising star than to read news like this from National Review:

The Democratic Socialists of America are in a “financial crisis” that will require seven-figure budget cuts and staff layoffs to correct.

News of the DSA’s financial condition surfaced as the group leads anti-Israel protests nationwide; including a pro-Hamas rally held in New York just one day after Hamas’s October 7 massacre.

“The current deficit will force us to make 7-figure budget cuts. This will require us to make painful decisions that will impact all levels of the organization. … Given our current financial state, we do not believe we can have a healthy, democratic, and effective organization while spending the amount we currently do on staff,” Alex Pellitteri, Kristin Schall, and Laura Wadlin, members of the DSA 2023-2025 National Political Committee, wrote in a proposal published last week.

“If necessary, we will then explore initiating lay-offs according to the DSA union’s contract. Be it revolved: The Personnel Committee will be responsible for determining the quantity and type of positions to be eligible for buy-out or layoff, and they will assist with logistics and a staff transition plan,” they continued.

The baseline organization of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and some 30 other elected officials is as socialist as such groups get.

They have long had ambitions of becoming a political party, but as of now, are a 501(c)4 organization with around 57,000 dues-paying members (at best -- groups like these have been known to exaggerate their numbers). 

Long the main rival to the Communist Party, USA, they have always played the role of the more democratic player between the two. These days we can now see that by 'democratic,' they probably meant at least the some of the kinds of rigged elections we have been seeing in blue states and now swing states -- which has contributed to their ability to drive the Democrat agenda. Until October 7 they seem to have done that very well.

But it hasn't been good for their finances and for that, and in a letter to members published at Socialist Call, they say they are a little puzzled:

But how did this decline in revenue, membership, and overall excitement happen in the first place? This should actually be a really favorable time for DSA. We’re living in a moment when revived labor struggles and the fight for a free Palestine are galvanizing so many Americans, particularly young people. Biden’s disastrous policy of fueling Israel’s genocide in Gaza has created the kind of space for an independent alternative from the Democratic Party that has not existed since Bernie. 

The New York Post cites Jewish left-wing activists who pin the plunge in revenues to DSA's position of unreserved support for Hamas, which has driven away many left-wing Jewish members.

But they're been pretty pro-Palestine for awhile, so I'm going to disagree, given that the sources cited don't seem to have firsthand knowledge, and although it's possible that DSA's stupid, disgusting stance has given the group's finances a final kick as members drop out, it's far from the whole story of why it's going belly up.

Part of its problem is long-term demographic trends:

The group insists that it's membership-funded, from member dues, which amount to about $11.95 a month for the ones who pay (about a quarter don't). If they're getting money from some Arab sheik or Vlad Putin or the ChiComs, I haven't heard it. Based on what DSA has said, it's membership dues, some online donations, swag sales, and little else.

When DSA's member shot up meteorically in 2016 with the presidential candidacy of DSA member Bernie Sanders, going as high as 94,000 members, much of the new membership was youthful voters, made woke by their university professors and energized by the Bernie campaign.

Now that Joe Biden has gotten into power and been a resounding failure on all fronts, particularly the economy, one of the biggest demographic megatrends is young people moving in droves to President Trump, according to several polls.

By sheer numbers the woke young people who were readily available for the DSA to draw into their membership are growing smaller and smaller in number.

DSA confirms this trend in its own membership numbers:

In 2022, the DSA brought in $5,345,779 in income, 14% less ($906,528) than expected. This corresponds to a decrease in approximately 10,000 members during that year.

The majority of DSA's income come through member dues. In April 2021, the DSA recorded 94,000 Members, approximately 78,000 of which were Members in Good Standing (MIGS), i.e. members who have paid dues within the last year. As of May 2023, the number of "constitutional" members was reduced to ~78,000 (as cited on the June B&F call), of which ~57,000 were recorded as MIGS. To emphasize, that's close to 25% of DSA's MIGS, a net average loss of over 1,000 MIGS per month. Our constitutional membership had decreased by 16,000 members, or about 17%.

 The downward trend has been going on for a few years and pre-dates the Hamas atrocities.

Seven months ago, in a letter to their membership published in Washington Socialist, a DSA publication, they predicted bankruptcy if they couldn't move their trendline:

We don't want to bury the lede — we are seriously concerned about the short-term financial health of our organization. We aren't in an emergency now, but under the current fiscal trajectory the DSA faces a very real — but still very avoidable — risk of insolvency within the next couple of years. The decisions made at the convention, and particularly the decisions made by elected national leaders in the organization, will be critical for pivoting off our path towards illiquidity or retrenchment.

Their chart in the newsletter forecast a $1.4 million hole by 2024.

Gradually, then suddenly, as Ernest Hemingway apocryphically explained the dynamics of bankruptcy. 

An additional spray of poison to the membership has been in recent internal organizational battles in recent years with the Political Committee, which calls all the shots as such groups do, demanding more party discipline on members. Knowing a little bit about what her voters want, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has clashed with DSA on its pro-Hamas stance, and DSA's National Political Committee, forgetting the star power of its most famous member, has doubled down on its pro-Hamas stance. A similar clash happened with then-DSA member Rep. Jamal Bowman in 2022, according to the Post and Wikipedia.

Young people don't like being ordered around, and as new members, the top-down command structure of all socialist groups had to come as a shock. It's likely membership fell on that one, too, and it's not in the numbers yet.

Now, what's the most common reason organizations fall into the hole? Just ask Black Lives Matter -- fiscal mismanagement, sometimes as crude as someone running off with the till.

According to DSA's most recent letter to its members, calling for layoffs, they blamed their own leadership for keeping them in the dark:

 This is not just a natural ebb in the socialist movement or technical issues in our recruitment or fundraising. We have not had strong figures at the top of the organization to lead with a political vision that inspires people to become committed socialists. Working people are inspired to transform the world, but they are doing it elsewhere.

We would ideally be scaling up our operations to meet this moment, hiring fellow capable comrades who are excited to be paid to spend every working day thinking about how to get us closer to socialism. But top directors mismanaged our dues by withholding essential information from elected leaders for years and imposed their own political objectives that would keep DSA in the model of a progressive non-profit rather than a mass party that is capable of getting us closer to a rupture with capitalism. As a result, we are now left holding the bag and tasked with cutting expenses just to keep the organization afloat. 

The top directors almost certainly would be on the National Political Committee which calls the shots, but it's possible it was one of the others, and whether they actually helped themselves to the money or just wasted it is unknown. Their structure is here.

There also was this. emphasis mine:

When we finally saw the numbers, it was much worse than we anticipated — probably too big to fundraise our way out of, and mostly driven by the unstrategic hiring practices over the last few years. This is an example of the dysfunction and distrust created by a lack of transparency between directors and members.

So someone mismanaged dues by hiding something, withholding information? It's pretty interesting that they admitted it openly on a public forum. They claimed they were in surplus a couple years ago. One wonders if some of the people at the top helped themselves to the incoming cash, following the Black Lives Matter economic model, or something else happened. Whatever it was, it sounds like something the government regulators who hand out the 501(c)4 designations ought to look into. This phrase in their membership letter tells us they already know that their membership doesn't know much about economics:

Before getting into it – we want to acknowledge that budgets and numbers can be intimidating and exhausting, but it is incredibly important to understand the shared resources we have available to use. The collective management of financial and capital resources is textbook socialism, and it’s something delegates and lay-members alike should take seriously as we consider what is possible, or what can be done, by the organization we are all building and operating in pursuit of democratic socialism.

All told, the internal conflicts, the ordering around, and open criticism of money mismanagement suggests an organization in very bad shape, and probably heading for a breakup. Back in San Francisco, when some far-left marginal group was breaking up as an organization in the early 1990s following the fall of the Berlin Wall, I recall that a popular button worn around the Mission District by those who had had it with the party's autocratic New York leadership read: "Mass, party, sect, gone." 

It sounds like DSA is on approximately the same trajectory. Good riddance.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/01/getting_woke_and_going_broke_dsa_too_is_going_belly_up.html

Toyota Chairman Says Electric Cars Will Never Dominate Global Market

 Toyota's chairman and former CEO, Akio Toyoda, is at it again: providing the public with a dose of reality that electric vehicles will never dominate the global car market.

Toyoda, grandson of the founder of the world's largest car manufacturer, expressed at a business event this month, as reported by The Telegraph, that EVs will never capture 30% of global market share. 

He explained that petrol-burning vehicles and hybrids, along with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, will dominate. 

Toyoda made the point: How can EVs be the future when a billion people on Earth have no electricity? 

Data from Statista shows nearly a billion people in the world are living without electricity.

He noted: "Customers — not regulations or politics — should make that decision." 

Over the years, Toyota has openly demonstrated defiance against governments and NGOs pushing for 100% EVs in just a few decades, if not earlier. 

In October, Toyoda told reporters at an auto show in Japan that EVs aren't the silver bullet against the supposed ills of carbon emissions they're often made out to be.

Toyota has a history of being at the forefront of adopting new technologies. However, its slow EV adoption is because of its mistrust of lithium-ion batteries, and it has positioned itself to be a leader in hybrid vehicles.  

Perhaps Toyoda has been vindicated to some extent as EV demand slumps. 

In recent days, Ford announced plans to slash production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning in April "to achieve the optimal balance of production, sales growth and profitability." 

For those who purchased EVs during the Covid mania, the average price of a used Tesla has collapsed. 

And used Tesla prices are likely to slide more as rental car company Hertz Global Holdings has decided to dump 20,000 EVs onto the already sliding used car market.  

BloombergNEF data shows prices of EVs that were part of rental car fleets have also crashed. 

Toyoda concluded: "Engines will surely remain."

Will Elon Musk respond to Toyoda's comments?

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/toyota-chairman-says-electric-cars-will-never-dominate-global-market

US union membership rate fell to new low in 2023

The percentage of U.S. workers that hold labor union memberships hit a record low for the second consecutive year in 2023, despite unions racking up big wins and receiving the highest approval rating in decades.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday that the union membership ticked down to 10%, a slight decline from 10.1% in 2022. 

Striking Kaiser Permanente workers hold signs as they march in front of the Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Medical Center on October 04, 2023 in San Francisco, California. More than 75,000 Kaiser Permanente workers went on strike at hospitals and me (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images / Getty Images)

Though the overall number of wage and salary workers belonging to a union rose to 14.4 million in 2023, up from 14.3 million the year before, it was not enough to keep up with the increase in non-union workers added to the workforce last year.

This disproportionately large increase in the total wage and salary employment, compared with the increase in the number of union members, has led to a decrease in the union membership rate for the past two years.

UAW members protest in support of the union strike at the Ford Assembly Plant on the South Side on October 7, 2023 in Chicago, Illinois.  (Jim Vondruska/Getty Images / Getty Images)

Last year's drop in the union membership rate came despite a flurry of labor activity, high-profile victories, and unions reaching their highest approval rating from the public in nearly six decades.

In 2023, organized Hollywood actors and writers hailed reaching new contracts after months of striking, the United Auto Workers achieved record contracts with Ford, General Motors and Stellantis after a striking against all three, and the Teamsters reached a record-breaking contract with UPS.

A United Parcel Service (UPS) driver sits in his delivery truck on January 31, 2023 in San Francisco, California.  (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images / Getty Images)

A Gallup survey from August found 71% of Americans approve of organized labor, up from 68% in 2021 and 64% prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The data from Gallup's annual Work and Education survey also marked the highest rating Gallup has on record sine 1965, the year César Chávez formed AFL-CIO United Farm Workers Organizing Committee. 

Still, union membership has been in steady decline since the 1970s and is now less than a third of its peak rate in the 1950s, when more than 30% of workers were in a union.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/us-union-membership-rate-fell-new-low-2023