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Is the economy really that bad? Why inflation has the middle class so on edge

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Is the economy really that bad? Why inflation has the middle class so on edge

At first, it was only a few issues within the meat and produce sections that caught Gayle Stafford’s eye. However quickly she observed that costs had been rising for soup and cereal. And it wasn’t simply within the grocery store.

With general inflation now working at a 40-year excessive of seven.5%, Stafford, a schoolteacher who lives exterior Cincinnati, immediately finds herself worrying concerning the household’s monetary future, particularly for her two grownup youngsters.

“How are they going to have the ability to afford something?” she asks, nervous that surging inflation may value them out of the marketplace for a home or different staples of the middle-class American dream.

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Stafford and her husband, Gary, who works in tech help for grocers, have safe jobs that pay at or above the nationwide median. Their lives haven’t been considerably affected by inflation.

But like tens of millions of different Individuals, together with households with at the very least a modicum of economic safety, inflation has immediately turn out to be the dominant affect on their outlook, personally and politically.

For economists, the surge in public alarm over inflation is puzzling. By most measures, each the nationwide financial system and the non-public economies of Individuals are doing fairly properly. Gross home product rose final 12 months on the quickest tempo since 1984, recovering all the output misplaced through the pandemic-induced recession in 2020.

Furthermore, the unemployment price has fallen to 4%, and it was right down to 2.8% most just lately for the Cincinnati space. Actual property and different asset costs, which matter for owners just like the Staffords, stay properly above year-ago ranges.

Even so, inflation seems to have an outsize impression on customers’ attitudes, partially as a result of not like most different financial knowledge, larger costs are inclined to have a direct and sometimes visceral influence on individuals’s on a regular basis lives.

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Gayle Stafford, 55, may let you know nearly precisely what the most recent inflation price is, and the way that’s prompted her to drive a bit of farther away to purchase groceries at low cost shops. She’s taught herself to waste much less and serve up extra leftovers.

Her husband now buys sides of beef from a wholesale restaurant provider to avoid wasting the grocery store’s markup for getting ready and packaging separate cuts.

They haven’t but found out comparable methods for coping with the sudden upward spiral in the price of heating their house. Their most up-to-date month-to-month electrical energy invoice was $460, about $100 greater than a 12 months earlier — simply concerning the common 27% enhance over final 12 months in general power costs throughout the nation in January.

U.S. retail gasoline costs, on common, fell to lower than $2 per gallon within the spring of 2020, however have since surged to $3.43. These costs may go even larger if Russia invades Ukraine and its large power exports to the West are interrupted by U.S. and European sanctions.

“Inflation form of greater than cancels out all the great things,” mentioned Jeff Jones, senior editor of Gallup, referring to shopper responses to public opinion polls about financial indicators.

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However there’s one other part that makes households just like the Staffords really feel a specific chew from inflation.

For all staff within the non-public sector, common hourly wages had been up 5.7% in January over the past 12 months. Aside from a few months early within the pandemic, that’s the quickest wage progress in at the very least 15 years. However the higher pay was greater than offset by inflation, which suggests most noticed a lack of buying energy.

And that was a startling and unsettling change after a decade or extra of stability, throughout which wage good points typically had been small however inflation was solely about 2% per 12 months.

Employees on the decrease finish of the earnings scale, who’re hit hardest when inflation rises, have gotten the largest bump up in earnings, particularly in industries corresponding to hospitality.

However middle-income households might really feel as in the event that they obtained pay cuts. Like different college districts going through labor shortages, Stafford’s system sharply boosted beginning pay to draw new lecturers, however veterans like her obtained raises that amounted to about 2%.

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“I’m glad they’re growing the beginning pay and that retail employees are getting extra, and the service trade too. That’s completely essential for a residing wage,” Stafford mentioned. “However what concerning the individuals which can be the in-between — the non-rich individuals, the center class or decrease center class?”

Within the College of Michigan’s newest shopper survey this month, the sentiment index fell to a degree not seen because the tail finish of the Nice Recession in 2009 when unemployment was almost 10%.

Are issues at the moment that unhealthy?

Clearly not, however the survey director, Richard Curtin, mentioned customers had gotten so used to residing with subdued inflation that the sudden run-up in costs has been a shock. Most individuals residing at the moment, together with millennials and Gen Xers earlier than them, weren’t working and even born when the nation final had a severe bout of excessive inflation within the Seventies and early ‘80s.

“One of many untold tales,” Curtin mentioned, “is that in the event you have a look at middle-income and households with a few youngsters, who’ve an enormous meals finances and power finances, their prices have elevated proportionately greater than others. They usually have voiced extra concern about rising inflation than both the youthful or older of us, or the richer or poorer of us.”

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Curtin and different economists fear that due to this phenomenon, extra prime-age employees will likely be demanding greater raises to maintain up with costs, which may lead to broader wage good points that in flip may set off persistent inflation as corporations move on larger prices to customers.

For now, Federal Reserve officers say they don’t but see a wage value spiral. And the Fed is planning to boost rates of interest beginning subsequent month in a bid to chill progress and decrease the inflation price, though many economists fear that policymakers are already behind the curve and will step on the brakes too laborious and set off a recession.

Ricky Volpe, an agribusiness professor at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, says customers are prone to get some reduction on grocery costs quickly.

Though pandemic-driven mismatches in provide and demand have had a job, Volpe mentioned, meals inflation ought to degree off considerably as a result of the climate situations, all the time an necessary issue, have been higher this previous 12 months in California and elsewhere. And agribusiness is responding to the widespread provide chain and labor scarcity challenges.

Nonetheless, Volpe mentioned, it might not do a complete lot for customers’ temper or emotions concerning the financial system. Meals accounts for under about 13% of a typical family’s finances for items and providers, primarily based on the burden in calculating shopper value inflation. However grocery spending appears to have an outsize impact on how they really feel about their funds and financial situations typically.

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Furthermore, whereas meals costs might cease surging, they gained’t be coming down, at the very least not any time quickly. In January, the value of pork was up 14% from a 12 months earlier, and beef rose even quicker. Milk, a form of bellwether merchandise for households, went up 1.8% in a single month.

“Individuals really feel value will increase; they don’t actually really feel value stagnation,” Volpe mentioned.

Inflation additionally could also be serving as a stand-in for different issues persons are sad about, together with political polarization, deeper modifications in society, and the seemingly countless pandemic.

“Even when gasoline continues to price a bit of extra and milk continues to price a bit of extra, however now I don’t must put on a masks round and I can get along with my associates and do what I need, I would simply be feeling higher. And people adverse emotions concerning the financial system usually are not going to essentially really feel so adverse anymore,” mentioned Marc Hetherington, a political scientist on the College of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

However Saria Hawkins-Banda, 30, who together with her husband, Lewis, and their two younger youngsters, isn’t so certain.

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Just like the Staffords, the Fort Price household is solidly center class, their incomes above the median $73,000 for that metro space.

Hawkins-Banda sees — and feels — the squeeze from inflation as a employee, shopper and small-business proprietor all wrapped in a single.

She works full time in gross sales and venture administration for an academic tech firm. She’s been in a position to work from home, saving cash on gasoline and different bills. And the couple took benefit of the housing increase and rock-bottom rates of interest final 12 months, refinancing their mortgage.

However neither she nor her husband, a bodily therapist, obtained raises that saved up with inflation over the past 12 months.

In August 2020, Hawkins-Banda additionally launched a web-based enterprise promoting luxurious workplace stationery and equipment tailor-made for Black ladies. Enterprise at her agency, Manifest Your Goal, has been good. She employed a part-time worker to assist with advertising. And he or she’s bought out of her greatest product: stylized workplace journals.

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However inflation has eaten away at her earnings.

“Inflation has made journals that I used to pay $3 to purchase wholesale, now they’re $4 or $5. So it’s like, how am I going to proceed to show a revenue?” she mentioned.

“You don’t need to lose cash, however you don’t need to upset your clients,” mentioned Hawkins-Banda, noting she’s an enormous shopper herself.

“The whole lot’s gone up. As a enterprise proprietor, I perceive that,” she mentioned. “However as a shopper, it’s like, ‘Oh, my God. Why are these costs going up?’”

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Should You Get a Heat Pump? Take Our 2-Question Quiz.

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Should You Get a Heat Pump? Take Our 2-Question Quiz.

Air source heat pumps are made up of an outside unit and an inside unit. They can also be hooked up to ducts, like a furnace.

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Mitsubishi Electric Trane HVAC US (METUS)

Heat pumps are the future of home heating. They’re essentially two-way air-conditioners that use electricity to heat in the winter — as well as cool in the summer — and are typically far more efficient than other systems. They reduce household greenhouse gas emissions significantly.

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They may also save you money on your monthly bills if you own a home. Answer just two questions below and we’ll give you a rough estimate:

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What do you heat with currently?

Where do you live?

Answer the two questions and we’ll see how much you can save. Or, keep reading.

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Don’t know what a heat pump is? You may already have seen one. It looks a lot like a typical air-conditioner, with a big box that sits just outside a house; inside, you might see small boxes mounted to the wall, or a single large indoor unit, out of sight, connected to vents.

In winter, heat pumps transfer heat from outside to inside. (Even in very cold temperatures, it’s still possible to extract heat from the air outside.) In summer, they do the opposite.

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Because of how efficiently they do this, heat pumps are a critical piece of the green energy transition: One estimate suggests putting a heat pump in every home could reduce U.S. emissions by 5 to 9 percent.

They’re expensive to install but often qualify for subsidies. And they can save some homeowners hundreds or thousands of dollars each year by lowering their utility bills, for both heating and cooling.

But that’s not yet true for everyone, everywhere.

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Share of households that would…

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These numbers, and the information in the quiz above, come from a New York Times analysis that combines data on fuel and electricity costs around the country with estimates of how much energy it takes to heat many different kinds of houses, from research done by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

More than 80 percent of U.S. households would probably see their bills go down if they installed a heat pump.

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But the rest would probably end up with higher bills — mostly people who use natural gas right now, given its low cost.

Nearly all households heating with propane, fuel oil or older electric forms of heating would save money by switching to a heat pump, but only about two-thirds of those currently on natural gas would.

How you currently heat is one major factor in your potential savings; the others are where you live and how the cost of electricity compares with other fuels in your area.

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For households that currently heat with expensive fuels like propane and fuel oil, a heat pump is almost always a good bet. This is why Maine, which relies on fuel oil, has become a big adopter.

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Median annual change in all utility bills represented. Uses 2023 state-level fuel prices. Source: NYT analysis of NREL ResStock and EIA data.

And a heat pump is significantly more efficient than electric furnaces or baseboards. The savings are biggest in the parts of the country that stay colder, longer. But there’s money to be saved in the South, too, in both the mild winters and the hot summers: South Carolina and Florida have some of the current highest rates of heat pump usage.

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Median annual change in all utility bills represented. Uses 2023 state-level fuel prices. Source: NYT analysis of NREL ResStock and E.I.A. data.

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For households that currently heat with less expensive natural gas, however, the financial picture is much more mixed. Whether you save — or lose — depends heavily on your geography. And the savings are often smaller.

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Median annual change in all utility bills represented. Uses 2023 state-level fuel prices. Source: NYT analysis of NREL ResStock and EIA data.

In the South, electricity is relatively cheap, and temperatures are mild. That makes switching from natural gas to a heat pump an easier sell. Modern heat pumps work in very cold temperatures, but they operate at their highest efficiency during mild weather.

In colder parts of the country, heat pumps are somewhat less efficient. They also give you central cooling, which can raise prices in the summer if you relied on fans before.

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But the biggest problem in the North isn’t the weather — it’s the difference between the cost of electricity and the cost of gas.

On average, a heat pump is three to four times as efficient as a natural gas furnace. That means if electricity is only twice as expensive as natural gas for the same amount of energy, a heat pump is a good deal — as is the case in Georgia. But when electricity is five times as expensive as gas, as in Michigan, it’s a much harder sell.

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Ratio of electricity to natural gas cost, for the same amount of energy

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Compares approximate cost per equivalent unit of energy, after accounting for fixed monthly charges. 2023 prices. Source: NYT analysis of Energy Information Administration data

These are just averages, and other factors will influence your actual financial picture. For one, prices for both electricity and gas vary a lot within states. Rates in some places can also change depending on the time of day or the season, and some utilities offer lower rates specifically for heat pump customers. We also can’t know exactly how prices will rise or fall next year — we can only make guesses based on previous years’ costs.

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Your choice should also take into account how well insulated your house is; whether you have solar panels; the efficiency level of the heat pump you’re considering; and whether you keep your boiler or furnace as a backup in colder temperatures, known as a “dual fuel” setup. Many households even in colder parts of the country, with high electricity costs, could still see savings from a heat pump. These are all things our calculations can’t help you with. The only way to be certain is to ask a contractor. (Ideally more than one.)

How long you’re going to stay in your house is important too: Heat pumps have high upfront costs, sometimes twice as much as that of a new gas furnace. Many states and utilities offer rebates to help: Massachusetts homeowners can get $10,000. (Republicans in Congress ended a federal tax credit that gave $2,000 or more toward a heat pump installation, though heat pumps installed this year still qualify.)

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And if you already have central air for cooling, a heat pump is more likely to make financial sense. Installing one may be more expensive than replacing your furnace — or your central air-conditioning — but it can be cheaper than replacing both.

Despite their price tags, heat pumps have outsold furnaces for three years running, according to data from the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute.

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Heating units sold in the U.S.

Meanwhile, summers are getting hotter. If you don’t have central air yet, you might want it at some point.

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And if you’re thinking about climate change in addition to your finances, switching to a heat pump will cut most houses’ carbon emissions significantly.

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Median household emissions reduction from installing a heat pump

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Uses NREL’s mid-case emissions scenario. Reduction includes CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. Source: NYT analysis of NREL ResStock data.

In some very cold places, the emission reductions are huge: The median house in Minnesota could emit around five fewer tons of carbon each year by switching to a high-efficiency heat pump, according to modeled data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. That’s a greater reduction than if you went car-free for a year (if you drive a gas car). And it’s around one-third of the average U.S. resident’s greenhouse gas emissions in a year.

Paradoxically, some of the places where a heat pump could slash emissions the most — including parts of the Northeast and Midwest — are the places where it could be a financial detriment right now. Still, for some, paying a little extra to reduce their carbon footprint might be worth it.

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About the data

Cost calculations use a 2024 dataset from ResStock, a model of the U.S. housing stock by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). ResStock contains estimates of the amount of energy it would take to heat and cool houses with an original heating source and with a heat pump. Houses that currently have a heat pump were excluded.

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The dataset includes homes that did not have central cooling before the heat pump, which raises costs after the transition. It also relies on weather data collected from 1991 to 2005.

For electricity and natural gas prices, the Upshot used 2023 state-level sales, revenue and customer data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) and prior NREL research to calculate the cost per unit of energy. For propane and heating oil, the Upshot used EIA data from 2023 on state-by-state prices, or a national average if data was missing.

The Upshot assigned a basic Energy Star heat pump (SEER2 15.2, HSPF2 7.8) to houses in warmer climates and a higher-efficiency cold climate heat pump (SEER2 19, HSP2 9.8) to colder areas. Both have supplemental electric heating.

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For county-level results, the Upshot used county-only data when there were at least 50 houses using that fuel in that county, and state-level medians when there were fewer.

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These California metro areas are among the most AI-ready in the nation

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These California metro areas are among the most AI-ready in the nation

Despite suggestions it has been losing its edge, California is way ahead of others when it comes to the hottest technology right now: artificial intelligence.

The regions around San Francisco, San José and Los Angeles are among the best prepped for AI in the country, according to a report released Wednesday by the Brookings Institution.

The Washington think tank dubbed the San Francisco and San José metropolitan areas “superstars” when it comes to AI readiness. Three out of the top 10 city regions most ready for AI are in California, according to the report. No other state has more than one region in the top 10. Texas had none in Brookings’ top 10. Austin was ranked 11th.

With tech giants such as Google, Meta and Nvidia headquartered in the area and OpenAI securing a record-breaking $40 billion in funding this year, it’s no surprise that the Bay Area cities dominate.

“They really are in a class of their own, given the sheer scale, dominant big tech headquarters, massive research labs and venture capital,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the metropolitan policy program at Brookings, who co-wrote the study.

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Los Angeles, home to top-tier universities, film studios, defense tech startups, social networks and dating apps, is also a big AI contender. The Los Angeles metro area, which includes Long Beach and Anaheim, is part of the second-highest cluster of AI-ready regions Brookings calls “star hubs,” the report said.

The analysis shows how California metropolitan areas are among the most prepared for AI, technology with the potential to reshape industries as diverse as healthcare and entertainment. The San Diego metro area was also part of a cluster deemed more ready for AI. It was ranked 12th.

Brookings examined venture capital funding, AI job postings, the number of computer science degree holders, patents and other data. The information gathered about 387 metro areas provided insight about whether certain places have more or less AI talent, innovation and adoption.

After analyzing this data, the think tank clustered metro areas into six different groups, indicating which are the most AI-ready. The groups are superstars, star hubs, emerging centers, focused movers, nascent adopters and others. Two metro areas are considered superstars while 28 are star hubs.

The less AI-ready groups lagged behind when it came to major tech employers, computer science graduates, patents, contracts and other factors. Metro areas that included Stockton, Modesto, Visalia and Bakersfield in California were part of the “others” cluster.

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Rural counties and small metro areas fell behind when it came to AI talent and innovation, the report said. The number of AI startups and venture capital funding were “virtually nonexistent” in these areas.

AI has the potential to create new jobs, but it could also displace mundane and tedious tasks, reshaping the job market. Making sure that AI doesn’t just put tech workers and other people out of work is one downside more AI-ready metro areas will have to watch out for, Muro said.

Mass layoffs in the tech industry, the release of AI tools that can code and do other tasks, and executive remarks have heightened concerns that companies will shrink their workforce.

Metropolitan areas that included New York, Boston, Washington, Chicago, Atlanta and Seattle were also deemed more AI-ready than other places. Several Texas metropolitan areas that encompass Austin, Dallas, Houston or San Antonio are part of the “star hubs” cluster.

The region around New York was ranked No. 1 for AI readiness for the sheer volume of talent, AI job postings and high-performance computing usage. But researchers also considered other factors such as a region’s density when coming up with clusters and wanted to highlight the Bay Area’s advantage.

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The tech industry is growing in Texas, where Austin bears the nickname “Silicon Hills.” Some of the world’s largest tech companies, including Google, Meta and Amazon, have offices in Austin. And some entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk, have moved the headquarters of their companies to Texas in recent years.

The Austin area has a large pool of computer science, engineering and math graduates, but the San Francisco Bay Area still has more AI startups, venture capital deals, patents and U.S. worker profiles with AI skills, data from Brookings show.

The AI economy is massively concentrated on the West Coast, but cities throughout the United States are catching up. The Bay Area, Muro said, will probably remain a central AI hub in the future.

“They will likely not displace the importance of the Bay Area, but they will complement it,” he said.

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Commentary: Stephen Miller says Americans will live better lives without immigrants. He's blowing smoke

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Commentary: Stephen Miller says Americans will live better lives without immigrants. He's blowing smoke

Stephen Miller, the front man for Donald Trump’s deportation campaign against immigrants, took to the airwaves the other day to explain why native-born Americans will just love living in a world cleansed of undocumented workers.

“What would Los Angeles look like without illegal aliens?” he asked on Fox News. “Here’s what it would look like: You would be able to see a doctor in the emergency room right away, no wait time, no problems. Your kids would go to a public school that had more money than they know what to do with. Classrooms would be half the size. Students who have special needs would get all the attention that they needed. … There would be no fentanyl, there would be no drug deaths.” Etc., etc.

No one can dispute that the world Miller described on Fox would be a paradise on Earth. No waiting at the ER? School districts flush with cash? No drug deaths? But that doesn’t obscure that pretty much every word Miller uttered was fiction.

The leaders in Los Angeles have formed an alliance with the cartels and criminal aliens.

— Trump aide Stephen Miller concocts a fantasy about L.A.

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The gist of Miller’s spiel — in fact, the worldview that he has been espousing for years — is that “illegal aliens” are responsible for all those ills, and exclusively responsible. It’s nothing but a Trumpian fantasy.

Let’s take a look, starting with overcrowding at the ER.

The issue has been the focus of numerous studies and surveys. Overwhelmingly, they conclude that undocumented immigration is irrelevant to ER overcrowding. In fact, immigrants generally and undocumented immigrants in particular are less likely to get their healthcare at the emergency room than native-born Americans.

In California, according to a 2014 study from UCLA, “one in five U.S.-born adults visits the ER annually, compared with roughly one in 10 undocumented adults — approximately half the rate of U.S.-born residents.”

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Among the reasons, explained Nadereh Pourat, the study’s lead author and director of research at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, was fear of being asked to provide documents.

The result is that undocumented individuals avoid seeking any healthcare until they become critically ill. The UCLA study found that undocumented immigrants’ average number of doctor visits per year was lower than for other cohorts: 2.3 for children and 1.7 for adults, compared with 2.8 doctor visits for U.S.-born children and 3.2 for adults.

ER overcrowding is an issue of long standing in the U.S., but it’s not the result of an influx of undocumented immigrants. It’s due to a confluence of other factors, including the tendency of even insured patients to use the ER as a primary care center, presenting with complicated or chronic ailments for which ER medicine is not well-suited.

While caseloads at emergency departments have surged, their capacities are shrinking.

According to a 2007 report by the National Academy of Sciences, from 1993 to 2003 the U.S. population grew by 12%, hospital admissions by 13% and ER visits by 26%. “Not only is [emergency department] volume increasing, but patients coming to the ED are older and sicker and require more complex and time-consuming workups and treatments,” the report observed. “During this same period, the United States experienced a net loss of 703 hospitals, 198,000 hospital beds, and 425 hospital EDs, mainly in response to cost-cutting measures.”

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President Trump’s immigration policies during his first term suppressed the use of public healthcare facilities by undocumented immigrants and their families. The key policy was the administration’s tightening of the “public charge” rule, which applies to those seeking admission to the United States or hoping to upgrade their immigration status.

The rule, which has been part of U.S. immigration policy for more than a century, allowed immigration authorities to deny entry — or deny citizenship applications of green card holders — to anyone judged to become a recipient of public assistance such as welfare (today known chiefly as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF) or other cash assistance programs.

Until Trump, healthcare programs such as Medicaid, nutrition programs such as food stamps, and subsidized housing programs weren’t part of the public charge test.

Even before Trump implemented the change but after a draft version leaked out, clinics serving immigrant communities across California and nationwide detected a marked drop off in patients.

A clinic on the edge of Boyle Heights in Los Angeles that had been serving 12,000 patients, I reported in 2018, saw monthly patient enrollments fall by about one-third after Trump’s 2016 election, and an additional 25% after the leak. President Biden rescinded the Trump rule within weeks of taking office.

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Undocumented immigrants are sure to be less likely to access public healthcare services, such as those available at emergency rooms, as a result of Trump’s rescinding “sensitive location” restrictions on immigration agents that had been in effect at least since 2011.

That policy barred almost all immigration enforcement actions at schools, places of worship, funerals and weddings, public marches or rallies, and hospitals. Trump rescinded the policy on inauguration day in January.

The goal was for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents “to make substantial efforts to avoid unnecessarily alarming local communities,” agency officials stated. Today, as public shows of force and public raids by ICE have demonstrated, instilling alarm in local communities appears to be the goal.

The change in the sensitive locations policy has prompted hospital and ER managers to establish formal procedures for staff confronted with the arrival of immigration agents.

A model policy drafted by the Emergency Medicine Residents Assn. says staff should request identification and a warrant or other document attesting to the need for the presence of agents. It urges staff to determine whether the agents are enforcing a judicial warrant (signed by a judge) or administrative warrant (issued by ICE). The latter doesn’t grant agents access to private hospital areas such as patient rooms or operating areas.

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What about school funding? Is Miller right to assert that mass deportations will free up a torrent of funding and cutting class sizes in half? He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Most school funding in California and most other places is based on attendance. In California, the number of immigrant children in the schools was 189,634 last year. The total K-12 population was 5,837,700, making the immigrant student body 3.25% of the total. Not half.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the estimated 30,000 children from immigrant families amounted to about 7.35% of last year’s enrollment of 408,083. Also not half.

With the deportation of immigrant children, the schools would lose whatever federal funding was attached to their attendance. Schools nationwide receive enhanced federal funding for English learners and other immigrants. That money, presumably, would disappear if the pupils go.

What Miller failed to mention on Fox is the possible impact of the Trump administration’s determination to shutter the Department of Education, placing billions of dollars of federal funding at risk. California receives more than $16 billion a year in federal aid to K-12 schools through that agency. Disabled students are at heightened risk of being deprived of resources if the agency is dismantled.

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Then there’s fentanyl. The Trump administration’s claim that undocumented immigrants are major players in this crisis appears to be just another example of its scapegoating of immigrants. The vast majority of fentanyl-related criminal convictions — nearly 90% — are of U.S. citizens. The rest included both legally present and undocumented immigrants. (The statistics comes from the U.S. Sentencing Commission.)

In other words, deport every immigrant in the United States, and you still won’t have made a dent in fentanyl trafficking, much less eliminate all drug deaths.

What are we to make of Miller’s spiel about L.A.? At one level, it’s echt Miller: The portrayal of the city as a putative hellscape, larded with accusations of complicity between the city leadership and illegal immigrants — “the leaders in Los Angeles have formed an alliance with the cartels and criminal aliens,” he said, with zero pushback from his Fox News interlocutor.

At another level, it’s a malevolent expression of white privilege. In Miller’s ideology, the only obstacles to the return to a drug-free world of frictionless healthcare and abundantly financed education are immigrants. This ideology depends on the notion that immigrants are raiding the public purse by sponging on public services.

The fact is that most undocumented immigrants aren’t eligible for most such services. They can’t enroll in Medicare, receive premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, or collect Social Security or Medicare benefits (though typically they submit falsified Social Security numbers to employers, so payments for the program are deducted from their paychecks).

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A 2013 study by the libertarian Cato Institute found that low-income immigrants use public benefits for which they’re eligible, such as food stamps, “at a lower rate than native-born low-income residents.”

If there’s an impulse underlying the anti-immigrant project directed by Miller other than racism, it’s hard to detect.

Federal Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, who last week blocked federal agents from using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate immigration arrests in Los Angeles, ruled that during their “roving patrols” in Los Angeles, ICE agents detained individuals principally because of their race, that they were overheard speaking Spanish or accented English, that they were doing work associated with undocumented immigrants, or were in locations frequented by undocumented immigrants seeking day work.

Miller goes down the same road as ICE — indeed, by all accounts, he’s the motivating spirit behind the L.A. raids. Because he can’t justify the raids, he has ginned up a fantasy of immigrants disrupting our healthcare and school programs, and the corollary fantasy that evicting them all will produce an Earthly paradise for the rest of us. Does anybody really believe that?

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