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| New to the newsletter? Subscribe to The Daily Money to get the best consumer and financial news from USA TODAY delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. And give our news-inspired Spotify playlist a listen. It features every song quoted here. |
| Good morning and happy Monday, Daily Money readers. it's Jayme Deerwester here with you, quietly willing the caffeine to enter my veins faster. |
💲 The tax day clock is running down 💲 |
| You've got just six days left to file your 2021 federal income tax return and, in most places, your state return. But at least we got three extra days this year. And why is that? (Hint: it has nothing to do with COVID.) |
🚨 We're *this close* to clawing back all the jobs lost to COVID 🚨 |
| The U.S. economy is tantalizingly close to reaching the most significant milestone yet in its long, bumpy comeback from COVID-19': the recovery of all 22 million jobs wiped out in the pandemic. |
| After a string of at least 400,000 payroll gains for 11 straight months, the nation has recouped 20.4 million, or 93%, of the lost jobs. That puts the U.S. just 1.6 million short of its pre-crisis employment level, a target it will likely hit by June or July. |
| But the achievement – which doesn't account for growth in the working-age population – will mask sharply divergent performances among the 50 states. While the South and West, especially the Mountain West, are powering the recovery, the Northeast and Midwest are lagging. |
| Utah, Idaho and Montana reclaimed all their vanished jobs in late 2020 or early 2021 and are hovering well above their peaks, according to a Fitch Ratings analysis of Labor Department figures. Hawaii, Louisiana and Alaska, meanwhile, have regained just 70% or less of the jobs erased. |
📰 More headlines you can't miss 📰 |
| INSIDE ELON'S HEAD: Musk opts not to join Twitter board. So what is he after, then? |
| BABY FORMULA SHORTAGE CONTINUES: Retailers cope with limited supplies and some ration purchases. |
| STOP THESE CYBERSECURITY SCREW-UPS: Or keep skipping software updates and see how that works out for you. |
| CHOCOLATE RECALL: Ferrero recalls Kinder chocolates after salmonella cases in Europe. |
| EWWWWW: Here's the creepy-crawly reason why you should be washing your pillows and not just the pillowcases. |
💰 More states embrace the flat tax 💰 |
| With President Joe Biden proposing to force billionaires to shoulder higher income tax burdens, more states have been employing a handy old idea to head in the opposite direction, embracing the flat tax, where everyone pays the same rate regardless of income. |
| It is hailed by many GOP governors and legislatures as a way to promote what they perceive as greater fairness for all taxpayers and to attract business to their states. Yet the states that have enacted flat tax rates cross the political divide. They include Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Utah – and most recently, Georgia and Iowa. |
| So is a flat tax egalitarian or a big gift to billionaires? |
| "It treats everyone the same," Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said of the flat tax. Because it's uniform, it prevents governors or legislators from trying to soak the rich or any other group. It requires that if income taxes need to be raised, they'll be raised on everyone. |
| "It has nothing to do with reforming taxes and everything to do with cutting taxes," argues Richard Auxier, senior policy associate for the Urban Brookings Tax Policy Center. He contends that much of the tax-cutting is already aimed at wealthier households, not those who need it most. |
🎧 Mood music 🎧 |
| Well, after that warning about all the dead bugs in pillows, I'll be sleeping with one eye open even after I wash them in the hottest water my tank can muster. Therefore, I must go with Metallica's " Enter Sandman" as today's lyric. |
| "Hush, little baby, don't say a word. And never mind that noise you heard. It's just the beasts under your bed, in your closet, in your head." |
| LISTEN WHILE YOU WORK: You can hear just about every song quoted in the newsletter on the Daily Money Mood Music playlist on Spotify. |
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