Morning Wire’s 12.30.22 episode exposes how government assistance in states like Washington and New Jersey now tops $109K annually for families, outpacing working incomes while discouraging labor—Heritage’s E.J. Antoni warns these pandemic-era handouts persist even for earners over $500K. Meanwhile, Beyond Meat’s 21% sales crash and McDonald’s axed McPlant burger reveal plant-based meat’s unsustainable hype despite a projected $166B market. The episode also uncovers Thomas Jefferson High School’s "equal outcomes" policy suppressing merit awards, mirroring LAUSD’s equity-driven grade inflation that masks academic failure—raising questions about whether well-intentioned policies are eroding achievement and fairness. [Automatically generated summary]
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An eye-opening new report found that government assistance programs in some states can pay out more per year than most people's salaries.
We hear from one of the authors of the report and discuss the program's impact on the workforce and the economy.
I'm Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe.
It's Friday, December 30th, and this is Morningwire.
Beyond Meat launched to incredible success in 2019, but now consumers seem to have lost their appetite for plant-based foods.
What's next for the Impossible Burger and other meat alternatives?
And a high school student lost out on potential college scholarships because his principal hid his high test scores.
We take a look at how equity policies are impacting students.
Thanks for waking up with Morningwire.
Stay tuned.
We have the news you need to know.
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A report published this month details how government assistance programs in each state are affecting the workforce, and the implications are significant.
Here to discuss the report's findings is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta-Giacomo.
Hey, Amanda.
So tell us about the top line findings here.
Hey, John.
So the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, an economist founded nonprofit, they analyzed how unemployment benefits and Obamacare subsidies in each state stacked up against employed people's compensation.
The writers of the report found that these two benefits could total up to $120,000 per year for a family of four.
$120,000.
I think that's pretty surprising.
Yeah, it was really shocking.
We're talking about really big numbers here.
And let me illustrate these with some more hard numbers.
In 14 states, including North Dakota, Colorado, Montana, and Minnesota, unemployment benefits and Obamacare subsidies were found to be the equivalent to a head of household earning $80,000 in salary.
In other words, a spouse would have to earn more than $80,000 a year from a 40-hour a week job to have the same after-tax income as certain families with two unemployed spouses receiving government benefits.
The three states with the largest benefits were Washington at nearly $123,000, Massachusetts at $117,000, and New Jersey at nearly $109,000 for the year.
There were only five states where these two benefits were equivalent to under $50,000 for the year, and that was in Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee, Arizona, and Louisiana.
What can you tell us about the ACA or Obamacare subsidies in particular?
The report found that these expanded subsidies were really substantial.
I spoke to Heritage Foundation Economics Research Fellow E.J. Antoni, a co-author of the report, about who qualifies for these benefits.
And here's what he had to say.
You have certain places in the country where you can make over a half a million dollars and you still get these subsidies.
So far from being a hand up to the poor, this has turned into a handout for the middle and upper income classes.
And in fact, I think if people knew that, I don't think we would have anywhere near the support for a lot of these programs that you see today.
And what about COVID's role in this?
How much did the pandemic play into these numbers?
Well, you would think that we'd see these welfare benefits drastically decrease as we move further away from the pandemic, but this report didn't show that at all.
A lot of these boosts are still in place across the country.
Now, the workforce or labor participation has been an issue for the Biden administration and continues to be.
How does that connect to this report?
Yeah, that's right.
Well, right now we're sitting at 62% labor participation.
That's 1.5 percentage points below pre-COVID levels, which means we're around 4 million people below the trend line number pre-pandemic.
Antoni said these sustained assistance boosts clearly serve as a disincentive for people to rejoin or join the labor force.
You know, you may be a machinist.
You may be a truck driver, even something like a secondary school teacher.
Let's say you're teaching high school.
Very oftentimes, you are making less than the people who are sitting at home not working.
I asked Antoni about how we might balance providing a safety net to Americans while avoiding disincentivizing work.
He said this would depend on how much government involvement the American people would want.
But he also pointed to reforms made in the 1990s under former President Bill Clinton, who partnered with Republicans in Congress to make some major changes.
I think the blueprint there would be looking at what the Republican Congress and the Democrat president Bill Clinton did in the 1990s when they reformed welfare and they said the age of big government is over and it was work fair, not welfare.
But I truly believe there's a component here that is damaging to the human spirit because work has dignity.
And without that, we lose a part of our dignity, in my opinion.
So do we expect these numbers to change anytime soon?
Well, without reforms, we really can't expect different results than we're seeing now.
But we could at least expect some pushback from a GOP-led house over spending or assistance measures made through executive orders by President Biden.
One thing that comes to mind would be student loan forgiveness.
Right.
Amanda, thanks for reporting.
Yeah, anytime.
That was Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta-Giacomo.
Coming up, the fake meat fiasco.
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After bursting onto the scene with a multi-billion dollar valuation and promises of revolutionizing the food industry, plant-based meat company Beyond Meats has announced mass layoffs after a year of cratering profits.
Here with the details is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips.
So Cabot, I remember a lot of people talking about Beyond Burgers around 2020, but a lot less since then.
What happened there?
Yeah, so we'll get to those mass layoffs in a bit, but first, just to give a quick recap on the industry as a whole, plant-based meat has been around for decades, but things really took off in the last five years as new technology led to products that advertisers promised would revolutionize the food industry.
And for the first few years, there was serious reason for optimism.
Fast food chains, like you mentioned, started offering plant-based meat and tens of thousands of grocery stores started carrying more meat alternatives.
But the best example of the emerging industry was Beyond Meat.
They launched in 2019 with what the Wall Street Journal called, quote, one of the most successful initial public offerings in more than two decades.
So it was a big deal.
Within a year, they had hit a $10 billion valuation and other similarly successful companies started popping up around the country.
The meat revolution seemed well underway.
Right, but we don't really hear much about Beyond Burgers these days.
What happened?
Yeah, any momentum the industry had over the last decade appears to have vanished.
Last year, there was a 10.5% drop in sales for refrigerated meat alternatives, and we've started to see mass layoffs across the industry.
For example, Impossible Foods let go 6% of their workforce, and Beyond Meats, the golden child of the industry, cut a fifth of their entire workforce last month.
That comes after a year where their sales last quarter plummeted 21% compared to the same quarter last year.
We also saw McDonald's cancel their plans to introduce a McPlant burger after saying that their research showed low demand for the product.
And Plantera Foods, the plant-based meat business sold by Kroger, was shut down entirely last month.
Now, what's behind the sudden drop-off in interest in these products?
Well, it's really a combination of a few things.
First, it's just expensive to produce fake meat.
By the pound, plant-based meat is still twice the cost of beef and four times the cost of chicken.
Industry leaders say their goal is to reach price parity with real meat within the next year.
But keep in mind, they've been offering a similar message for about the last five years or so, promising that as they streamline the process and start to scale up, costs will come down, but they just haven't.
Now, a number of companies are calling for government subsidies to help them bring the costs down.
But there are other barriers hurting the industry.
First, and maybe most important, is the taste.
A number of surveys have shown that people just aren't crazy about the flavor and more importantly, the texture of what's on the market right now.
And there's also a growing body of evidence showing that Beyond Meat and other meat alternatives just cannot provide the same nutritional benefit as regular meat.
That, along with a number of recent studies showing that most Americans, especially older folks and childbearing-aged women, are more likely to develop nutrient deficiencies and other health problems from exclusively plant-based diets, which is really crippling when you take into account that the industry has sort of built itself as a healthier alternative to meat.
Right.
Well, on that note, I know I had heard some talk about the chemicals in the meat as well.
Yep.
And there was also a lawsuit that Beyond Meat faced over concerns that they were inflating the amount of protein that was going into their products.
So there's a legal side to this as well.
Now, what does the future of the fake meat industry look like right now?
Well, if they only rely on vegetarians and vegans, obviously their ceiling is pretty low because at best, that limits their customer base to about a tenth of America.
So the main thing right now is whether they can convince current meat eaters to give their product a try and then keep them on board after that.
And look, there are still plenty of companies that are optimistic about the industry as a whole.
Discussion On Withheld Academic Awards00:04:05
Bloomberg, for example, has a $166 billion forecast over the next decade for the plant-based market.
So it's down, but certainly not out.
All right.
Well, fascinating stuff.
Cabot, thanks for reporting.
That was Daily Wire Senior Editor Cabot Phillips.
Recent reporting reveals that the principal at one of the country's top high schools had a policy of hiding students' academic awards for years, in some cases preventing students from pursuing scholarships they were eligible for.
The principal of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, as well as the school's director of student services, followed a policy of withholding student awards in an attempt to foster a more equitable culture at the school.
Here to discuss the situation is Daily Wire Senior Editor Ash Short.
So Ash, how did all of this come out?
The situation was uncovered by attorney Shana Yasher, whose son is a student at the school and part Arab American.
Yasher's son took the PSAT last fall and his score made him eligible for a National Merit Award, which is a prestigious award that is associated with significant college scholarships.
Unfortunately, Yasher was not told that he won the award until after the application deadline had passed for early decision college applications at the schools he had chosen.
Yasher later learned that the information was purposefully withheld by school administrators.
His mother investigated the situation further and discovered that this was in fact part of a school policy.
Now, what was the purpose of withholding that kind of information about academic awards?
Well, this is the same school that has dropped D and F grades and worked to eliminate the merit-based admission test altogether.
The school district recently adopted a policy of quote, equal outcomes for every student without exception, end quote.
And it appears that downplaying of awards was in keeping with that policy.
According to sources at the school, the official policy was for teachers to discreetly drop an envelope on the student's desk during homeroom with a notification of the award.
But in this case, that didn't happen in the timeframe necessary for Yasher to receive the benefit.
Many other students were not notified at all.
The director of student services, Brandon Kosatka, stated that the school wants to, quote, recognize students for who they are as individuals, not focus on their achievements, end quote.
He also added that the principal didn't want to hurt the feelings of students who did not receive awards.
And just some context, this principal, who is responsible for notifying students about awards, was also involved in the push to get rid of the admissions test, which she thought was hurting the school's diversity.
Parents pushed back, arguing that the new admissions policy would adversely affect Asian American students compared to other applicants.
Now, how important are these awards and what's at stake if students aren't informed about them?
Well, Yasher's mother said the withholding was akin to theft by the state because these awards are tied to a lot of scholarship money, not to mention a boost in college admissions.
A parent advocate told the New York Post that withholding the awards this way could also be a civil rights violation, since most students at this prestigious high school are minorities.
Now, obviously, this is just one school.
Is this a broader trend in education?
This is the only school that has made the news for this specific policy, but equity-based grading policies are pretty widespread, especially grade inflation.
Just to give you a sense of how extreme it's getting in some places, the Los Angeles Unified School District awarded A's, B's, and C's to 73% of 11th graders in math when state tests showed that only 19% were even on grade level.
We see similar numbers at the middle school level.
Baltimore, too, has been pushing students forward despite poor assessment scores.
At one Baltimore high school, a whopping 77% of students were reading at an elementary or kindergarten level, yet they kept advancing to the next grade.
Equity-Based Grading Policies00:00:55
All right, well, Ash, thanks so much for reporting.
That was Daily Wire senior editor, Ash Short.
Well, that's all the time we've got this morning.
Thanks for waking up with us.
We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.
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