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| Presented By Meta |
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| Axios AM |
| By Mike Allen · Oct 27, 2022 |
| Hello, Thursday. Smart Brevity™ count: 1,197 words ... 4½ minutes. Edited by Noah Bressner. |
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| 🔮 1 big thing: Coming insurance storm |
 Data: Kaiser Family Foundation. Chart: Erin Davis/Axios Visuals Employers face a brutal increase in health-insurance premiums for 2023, Axios' Arielle Dreher writes from a Kaiser Family Foundation report out this morning. - Why it matters: Premiums stayed relatively flat this year, even as wages and inflation surged. That reprieve was because many 2022 premiums were finalized last fall, before inflation took off.
"Employers are already concerned about what they pay for health premiums," KFF president and CEO Drew Altman said. - "[B]ut this could be the calm before the storm ... Given the tight labor market and rising wages, it will be tough for employers to shift costs onto workers when costs spike."
🧠 What's happening: Nearly 159 million Americans get health coverage through work — and coverage costs and benefits have become a critical factor in a tight labor market. 🔎 Between the lines: In the tight labor market, some employers absorbed rising costs of coverage instead of passing them on to workers. - An October survey of 1,200 small businesses found that nearly half had raised prices to offset rising costs of health care.
🧮 By the numbers: It cost an average of $22,463 to cover a family through employer-sponsored health insurance in 2022, KFF found. - Workers contributed an average of $6,106.
Read the report ... Share this story. |
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| 2. 🗳️ Midterm zeitgeist |
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| Above: Today's Washington Post, New York Times lead stories. Screenshot: DSCC First look: Former President Obama cut an ad for Democrats in Pennsylvania ahead of his trip there with President Biden the weekend before Election Day, Axios' Andrew Solender reports. - "[T]he fate of our democracy and a woman's right to choose are on the line," Obama says in the 15-second spot for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Besides his Philly/Pittsburgh swing with Biden on Nov. 5, Obama will campaign in Atlanta tomorrow ... Detroit and Milwaukee on Saturday ... and Vegas on Tuesday. |
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| 3. 🎤 Axios BFD interview: Humbling of Silicon Valley |
| Chamath Palihapitiya is interviewed by Axios' Dan Primack yesterday. Photo: Beatrice Moritz for Axios The once bombastic "SPAC King" Chamath Palihapitiya is reinventing himself as a chastened elder statesman of the tech community, Axios chief financial correspondent Felix Salmon writes. - Why it matters: It's an A+ illustration of how humbling these times are for Silicon Valley.
Chamath made his name as a boastful memelord, leading a crowd of retail-investor apes into SPACs and crypto. - Now he's wearing a dark suit, talking about risk-adjusted returns and intellectual rigor, and remorsefully saying that he was blinded by zero interest rates.
"I have evolved as a human being," Chamath told Axios' Dan Primack at Axios' inaugural BFD dealmaker conference in Manhattan yesterday. "I've become a better, calmer, more focused person." - "Silicon Valley desperately needs reasonably decent brand ambassadors," added Chamath, who as recently as last year was tweeting things like "Im about to really [f@#$] some shit up."
"There are professional, serious people there that understand how to interface in the rest of the world, and I think that that is part of my responsibility now," Chamath said. - Flashback: In December 2020 he tweeted that when Bitcoin "gets to $150k, I will buy The Hamptons and convert it to sleepaway camps for kids."
"I sort of blame [Fed Chair] Jay Powell," said Chamath, for slashing interest rates to zero and allowing him to reap the benefits of a broad speculative fervor. - "The biggest thing that I learned was how much of my early success was probably not attributable to myself."
- "We have actually had a massive tailwind, because we had a zero interest rate environment that allowed us to raise unbelievable amounts of money."
- "What it allowed us to do is crowd into companies. Many of those companies had unbelievable valuations. Eventually, these unprofitable businesses went public. Only now are we starting to sort out what are good and what are not-so-good businesses."
Chamath is painting his excesses as being very much in the past: "That dog doesn't hunt when you're 46." |
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| A message from Meta |
| Future surgeons will get hands-on practice in the metaverse |
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| Surgeons will engage in countless hours of additional low-risk practice in the metaverse. The impact: Patients undergoing complex care will know their doctors are as prepared as possible. The metaverse may be virtual, but the impact will be real. See how Meta is helping build the metaverse. |
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| 4. Hot job: Charger tech |
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| Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios |
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| Electric-vehicle charging stations are popping up everywhere, sparking a growing demand for technicians trained to service them, Joann Muller reports in Axios What's Next. - Certified EV Supply Equipment technicians are among the many new kinds of jobs being created by the shift toward cleaner transportation.
Where it stands: About 48,000 public chargers currently dot the U.S., offering a range of power levels and speeds. That number will grow, in part thanks to a $5 billion federal program for building charging stations along the nation's highways. |
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| 5. 🔋 New frontier: Upstate "Megafab" |
| Map: The White House President Biden will travel to Syracuse this afternoon to showcase Micron's plan to invest $100 million over 20+ years to build a "Megafab" semiconductor factory in nearby Clay, N.Y. (Onondaga County). - Why it matters: The plans, fueled by Biden's CHIPS and Science Act, include the largest semiconductor plant in U.S. history, and tens of thousands of New York jobs.
The map above shows major investments announced since Biden took office for battery factories, auto/EV plants, semiconductor fabs, biomanufacturing facilities and other "industries of the future." |
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| 6. 🇨🇳 Exclusive: China's angry email |
| Xi Jinping last weekend at the Communist Party congress in Beijing. Photo: Ng Han Guan/AP Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) provoked an unusually direct rebuke from China by proposing sanctions on President Xi Jinping for human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Axios World author Dave Lawler reports. - The Chinese Embassy in D.C. sent a furious, 800-word email dated Monday in response to what it called an "arrogant and despicable" bill.
Why it matters: The email, sent to Hawley's office by a counselor at the embassy, foreshadows new tensions if Republicans regain control of Congress in next month's midterms. 💭 Our thought bubble: The focus on Xi himself was likely the trigger for this response, notes Axios China reporter Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian. |
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| 7. 💉 Biden's vaccine influencers |
| Photo: Adam Schultz, The White House Eight TikTok and Instagram influencers with a collective 58 million followers visited President Biden at the White House this week to help promote COVID vaccination, Axios' Caitlin Owens reports. - Why it matters: Uptake of the updated shots — authorized at the end of August — has been slow. Just around 20 million Americans have received one so far, per the CDC. Biden joined their ranks Tuesday.
The influencers: @olivia.ponton ... @niasioux ... @westbrouck ... @indiana ... @drjenniferlincoln ... @underthedesknews ... @katwellington ... and @monaswain. |
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| 8. ⚾ 2 World Series stats |
| Umpires huddle at home plate before wild-card game between the Tampa Bay Rays and Cleveland Guardians, in Cleveland on Oct. 8. Photo: Sue Ogrocki/AP Ahead of tomorrow night's World Series Game 1 (Philly @ Houston, 8 p.m. ET on Fox), AP notes these two stats: - For the first time since 1950, shortly after Jackie Robinson broke the MLB color barrier in 1947, not a single U.S.-born Black player is projected to play in this World Series. Black players made up 7.2% of this year's MLB opening day rosters — the lowest percentage in at least 30 years. Go deeper.
- At 45.7 years old, the seven umpires average more than five years younger than World Series crews over the past decade. The most surprising factor: Younger umps tend to score more highly with ball-strike calls that follow MLB guidelines. With popularity rising for the robot umps being used in the minors, MLB wants to minimize complaints about bad calls. Go deeper.
World Series schedule. |
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| A message from Meta |
| Future surgeons will get hands-on practice in the metaverse |
| |
| |
| |
| Surgeons will engage in countless hours of additional low-risk practice in the metaverse. The impact: Patients undergoing complex care will know their doctors are as prepared as possible. The metaverse may be virtual, but the impact will be real. See how Meta is helping build the metaverse. |
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