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big idea: census says america needs more babieshttps://www.wsj.com/articles/south-and-mountain-west-gain-political-power-from-population-growth-11619465263 (the first results) of the 2020 census were released this week, which dictates how house seats, electoral college votes, and federal spending are allocated the midwest and northeast did surprisingly well, losing fewer house seats than expected to the south and west, with minnesota not losing a seat by just 26 residents. dems will https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-us-census-data-will-show-which-states-gain-or-lose-house-seats-2021-04-26/ (lose 2-4 reliably blue) house seats as a result. however, the bigger story is that the US population https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/26/us/us-census-numbers.html (grew by only 7.4% since 2010), the second slowest rate of growth ever. this was caused both by reduced immigration and lower birth rates. fewer new americans means slower economic growth, which means fewer new americans...it’s a vicious cycle much of europe and china are already trapped in. who knew babies didn’t just mean two years of no sleep and dirty diapers? demographers believe the US is already locked into lower birth rates (as typically happens in most developed economies, with only the US bucking that trend until now), so Joe wants to make things easier for families, with https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56910884 (proposals unveiled wednesday) to provide free childcare & pre-K. even low immigration numbers will be tough to increase. mexico, our largest source of immigrants, has a growing middle class, resulting in fewer immigrants. we’ll also get out our soapbox and scream into the abyss for an https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/55/why-435/ (expanded house), which could reduce https://gph.is/g/Z2QGdND (gerrymandering's) impact and increase the electoral college’s proportionality story to watch: big tech is winning
this week, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google reported https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/30/tech-giants-q1-earnings-showed-dominance-amzn-aapl-googl-fb-msft.html (massive revenue and profit jumps) so far this year. Google’s YouTube will bring in more money than all of Netflix, the iPhone brings in more money for Apple than all of Microsoft’s products, Amazon’s ad business alone brought in seven times Twitter’s revenues, and Facebook’s Instagram generated more money than https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/27/microsoft-linkedin-topped-3-billion-in-ad-revenue-in-last-year.html (Snap), Pinterest, LinkedIn, and https://www.theinformation.com/articles/tiktoks-u-s-revenues-expected-to-hit-500-million-this-year (TikTok) - combined. big tech didn’t simply survive the pandemic - it thrived and grew beyond anyone’s expectations. while there was an increasing drumbeat to rein in their monopolistic control thru much of last year, it seems that that momentum has been lost. the bigger these companies get, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/29/technology/big-tech-pandemic-economy.html (the easier it is) for them to keep power. while the EU announced https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/30/eu-says-apples-app-store-breaches-competition-rules.html (an antitrust case) against Apple’s App Store this week, it’s clear big tech is winning the overall war. it’s also clear consumers https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/10/survey-americans-think-big-tech-isnt-so-bad-after-all/ (don’t seem to care) about their lack of choice, as long as it means your organic, locally-sourced goat’s milk can be delivered in two hours with Amazon Prime. this week’s image: moonlit babysitting...