Beating the "last mile" of inflation

Transcript

NIALA: Good morning! Welcome to Axios Today!

It’s Thursday, June 29th.

I’m Niala Boodhoo.

Here’s what you need to know today: a new effort to prevent drowning deaths. Plus, dangerous Canadian wildfire smoke clouds U.S. skies — again.

But first, today’s One Big Thing: beating the “last mile” of inflation.

President Biden was in Chicago yesterday touting so-called “Bidenomics,” to explain his plan for growing the middle class in America.

But the biggest challenge to that may well be inflation. Even though it’s plunged from its peak levels of a year ago – the hardest part may be what one international report calls the last mile of the inflation race.

Axios’ Courtenay Brown is here to explain — COURTENAY, why are economists saying that the hardest part may lie ahead of us here?

COURTENAY BROWN: It may seem a little strange. We are definitely past the worst part of inflation, the peak levels of inflation in many countries around the world. But inflation has come down for what economists are calling the easy reasons. You know, effects from Russia's invasion of Ukraine have receded. If you remember those pesky supply chain issues that were born out of the pandemic, those have been solved and all of that has put downward pressure on inflation. So as global policymakers look to the final stages of getting inflation really low, they're worried it's gonna be much more difficult than people are anticipating. A top policy maker this week, basically compared the world's inflation battle to “Waiting for Godot.” If you're familiar with the play, you know, it's, you know, these two characters are waiting for what many people, assume is God and it, it never shows up. The second in command at the International Monetary Fund, said that play is very much like the world's inflation battle. We're all waiting for low inflation to reappear. And of course, she hopes that real life ends differently than the play does. But as of right now, we're all still waiting.

NIALA: So this is a problem for every central brink, not just the Fed?

COURTENAY: If you have essentially been following what's going on with the Federal Reserve, inflation's too high in the U.S., the Fed has raised rates at a really, really historically quick pace. If you've been following that, you essentially know what's going on in the rest of the world because a lot of central banks in Europe and and in England are on the same track doing the same thing.

NIALA: One thing that's been notable here in the U.S. is the labor market has remained pretty strong despite all of these inflation pressures. Does that complicate things?

COURTENAY: It does, and if you can believe it, it's a similar situation in Europe and in UK across the Atlantic. Labor markets around the world are really tight for a slew of reasons, many of which have to do with pandemic related disruptions. And they're super worried that this is going to make inflation very, very difficult to wrangle. And the reason is, workers have fallen behind in terms of pay gains. Pay gains have been much slower to rise than overall inflation and what policymakers say is going to happen, workers are going to start to demand that their pay catch up because they've fallen behind for all of these years and they're worried that's gonna put upward pressure on inflation, especially because the labor market is so tight employers may have to bend to those demands.

NIALA: So Courtenay, bringing this back to President Biden, what challenges does this last mile leave for his administration and what he wants to accomplish?

COURTENAY: Right. The president has been touting some pretty notable economic gains, some of which are actually pretty impressive. The labor market has been tight, the unemployment rate's really low. The economy has essentially surprised everyone — we're not in a recession. I think maybe one thing to worry about is that the Fed for its part, has made clear that it's not done raising interest rates. And over the past year we've started to see some of the effects of what those interest rates can do to the economy. We had that scare earlier this year, uh, of those few bank failures that were essentially a result of upward pressure on interest rates. And I think it's just important to remember that the economy is good now, but it's totally possible that it starts to feel these effects of aggressive interest rate hikes, more of which, the Fed has made clear, are still to come.

NIALA: Couretnay Brown is an Axios economics reporter. Thanks Courtenay.

COURTENAY: Thanks, Niala.

NIALA: Here are some other headlines we’re following.

Smoke from the Canadian wildfires is now slamming the Midwest, from Chicago to Detroit to Cincinnati – making the air quality hazardous.

Yesterday, nearly a third of the Americans had an air quality alert. The wildfire smoke has also migrated back to the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic after choking the region just a few weeks ago.

Canada's wildfire season is now the worst on record since at least 1983. On Tuesday it had burned about 19.3 million acres.

And: South Koreans are now a year or even two years younger, thanks to the country changing its policy on age-counting.

For the international standard age counting begins at zero on the day you’re born and goes up each birthday. But in South Korea’s traditional method — you’re one at the time of birth, and gain a year every January 1st.

That means if you’re born on December 31st, you would be 2 years old on your 2nd day out of the womb.

In the 60s, South Korea started using the international standard for medical and legal documents. But now, the nation will adapt it for the majority of administrative and civil matters.

In a moment, what to know about preventing drowning this summer.

NIALA: Welcome back to Axios Today. I’m Niala Boodhoo.

Today the U.S. announces its first-ever National Water Safety Action Plan to raise awareness around drowning – that’s especially important considering the high risk of drowning in kids. Drowning is in fact the leading cause of death among children ages 1-4, according to the CDC.

Will Koon is Vice-Chair of the California Water Safety Coalition - and one of the authors of that state’s water safety plan – and he’s here with what everyone should know this summer.

WILL KOON: Lots of people ask, what does drowning look like, right? Does it look like the movies are people waving and screaming? And the reality is no. Drowning is silent, and drowning happens very, very quickly. There's a couple things though that you should look out for, you know, the first one would be a vertical body position in the water. With the head really tilted back that mouth just at water level. And I kind of call this the sniffing position. So you know, this is when the person is kind of going above the water and below the water. And often people who are in that active drowning process will look like they're climbing a ladder or kind of doing jumping jacks in the water. So remember that vertical body position, head back, trying to keep their head out, and then this kind of climbing, you know, the ladder or jumping jack position if you see that that person is in immediate distress and needs help.

NIALA: So when should adults who were looking after kids become concerned? Is it when there's that silence?

WILL: There's two kind of time periods that we think about. Swim time, right? When you're in the pool and you're having, you know, a fun time in the pool. And then kind of when that pool is closed, this is when you're not expecting anybody to be in the water. And there's a couple layers of protection that are really important. The first, let's talk about non-swim time. Barriers are a critical layer of protection to prevent a against drowning. What do I mean by barriers? That is a four-sided isolation fence that separates that body of water from somebody getting in. And a critical component of that is making sure that latch works, making sure the gate is functional. So you've got barriers that are really important. The second really important piece that parents and anybody with kids or around kids needs to be thinking about is what does active adult supervision mean? Right? And there's this tendency where if we're at a pool party and you know, I think you're watching and you think I'm watching, and we both think that someone else is watching. No one is actually watching. And so active adult supervision is distraction free. That means you're not reading, you're not eating, you're not chatting, you're not scrolling on Instagram, um, you know, or recording your next TikTok. That means that your eyes are watching the kids in the water.

NIALA: Will, you've dedicated your academic life to this field. What else do you think we need to know about this?

WILL: Yeah, so drowning is a really complex problem and the sociodemographic component of, um, the drowning problem from a public health approach is something that's really important to consider, right? Different groups have different risk factors. First of all, 80% of the drowning in the United States is, are men. This is a huge gender disparity issue that's kind of interesting that it, it's actually men who are most at risk.

Different racial and ethnic minorities are also at much higher risk for drowning. So, American Indian and Alaskan native persons drown at two times the rate of white people in the United States and African-Americans drawn at one and a half times the rate and that number actually gets much higher for specific age groups, you know, young people and adolescents. So thinking about the disparities in drowning rates, you know, should give us pause and, think a little bit more deeply about, access to swim lessons for certain communities, access to lifeguarded beaches or lifeguarded open water swim sites for certain communities. And the ability for everyone in the country to not only survive the water, but actually thrive and have a great time, you know, enjoying and recreating in and around the water.

NIALA: Wil Koons is Vice Chair of the California Water Safety Coalition. Thanks, Will.

WILL: Absolutely. Thank you.

NIALA: That’s it for us today! Remember you can always text me your thoughts to (202) 918-4893.

I’m Niala Boodhoo - thanks for listening - stay safe and we’ll see you back here tomorrow morning.