After withering during the 10-year period from 2000 through 2010, manufacturing employment in the U.S. turned around and started climbing. Sure Twitter and wunderkinds of the digital age make a few people rich and attract big money, but they do not employ vast numbers of people. Those they do employ by and large have digital and creative skills, the products of advanced education. But Twitter is not what General Motors once was, with sprawling factories and tens of thousands of employees, many of them not needing college educations.

The Health Information National Trends Survey reports that 75% of Americans go to the internet first when looking for information about health or medical topics. YouTube is one of the most popular online platforms, with billions of views every day, and has emerged as a significant source of health information.

COVID-19, Nursing Homes and LTC Facilities

The United States Census Bureau has been collecting data in as close to real-time as possible in order to provide empirical insights into how Americans are really doing during COVID-19.

In simple terms, inflation is defined as an increase in the general level of prices for goods and services. Deflation, on the other hand, is defined as a decrease in the general level of prices for goods and services. It matters because inflation decreases the purchasing power of your money in the future

Consider the companies that are sitting on stockpiles of cash. Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway, Alphabet (Google) and Apple were each sitting on more than $100 billion of cash as of the end of last year, according to FactSet. And Facebook and Amazon together are sitting on another $100 billion of cash. (Of course that has likely changed over the past few weeks.) Interesting tidbit: Microsoft has more cash on hand than a lot of countries, including Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Turkey, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Hungary, France, Germany and Italy (according to latest IMF data and excluding gold reserves).