Kevin Drum 🕸

After a long day of eating and snoozing, Hilbert can't be bothered to actually get up on his feet and chase around a toy on a string. Last night he wouldn't even go so far as to roll over. But if you wave it right in front of him he will deign to wave his ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 22 September 2023"

Every year the Koch brothers—or brother, since David Koch died—hold a big donor meeting in Palm Springs. It's an explicitly political event that typically raises hundreds of millions of dollars for conservative and libertarian causes. In other words, it's not really the place for a Supreme Court justice. But that kind of thinking has never ...continue reading "Clarence Thomas has done fundraising for the Koch Network"

Just to remind everyone, here's the basic shape of the federal budget: The orange line is the one that has Republicans tearing each other apart. It is lower today than it was in 1980, and about the same as it was in 1990, 2000, and 2010. But for some reason it's an intolerable problem. In ...continue reading "There are only two ways to rein in federal deficits"

Here's a headline from the Washington Post today: Return to the office? These workers quit instead. At the risk of being a bit of a dick, the text of the story really doesn't back this up. Here's a summary of the people interviewed in this piece: Example #1: Quit because they live in Brooklyn and ...continue reading "Are lots of people really quitting because they have to return to the office?"

Vox writes about our recent increase in traffic deaths: According to a 2021 survey of over 1,000 police officers, nearly 60 percent said they were less likely to stop a vehicle for violating traffic laws than they were prior to 2020, when the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police inspired nationwide protests over police ...continue reading "Traffic deaths aren’t up because of George Floyd"

Grape juice lupine by the side of the road near Palm Springs.

Alex Tabarrok says today that pharmaceutical companies are undervalued because "pharmaceutical innovations earn only a fraction of the value that they create." For this reason, he opposes the Medicare price controls in the Inflation Reduction Act. Trying to quantify innovation is hard. Instead, let's just look at profitability: Pharma is the most profitable major industry ...continue reading "Pharmaceuticals are very, very profitable"

Hurricane Hilary was something of a bust, producing far less rain and wind than predicted. But it turns out that our true reckoning with Hilary was delayed a bit: a huge spike in the mosquito population thanks to pools of water left behind by the storm. And it's one specific mosquito doing most of the ...continue reading "TIL why I’m getting so many mosquito bites"

Here is the history of new one-family home sales in a nutshell: Over the past 60 years, new one-family homes have been built and sold at an average rate of 2,500 per million population. We exceeded that average by a cumulative 2.8 million homes during the boom of 1995-2006, and then lagged it by 4.0 ...continue reading "Raw data: Single-family home sales through history"

President Biden is offering a sorta-kinda-amnesty to half a million Venezuelan refugees who are currently in the country: Biden officials told reporters that Venezuelans who had entered the United States by July 31 would be eligible for temporary protected status, a designation that will shield them from deportation and speed up their ability to obtain ...continue reading "Biden grants semi-amnesty to half a million Venezuelans"

The fine folks at dappGambl are here to answer the question on everyone's mind: Whatever happened to NFTs, anyway? The hype around NFTs peaked in the 2021/22 bull run that saw nearly $2.8 billion in monthly trading volume recorded in August 2021....In July 2023, [trading was] just 3% of its peak back in August 2021. ...continue reading "NFTs are officially bullshit"

Federal spending will clock in at about $6.4 trillion this year. Meanwhile, in Congress, Republicans are threatening to shut down the government because of a disagreement over next year's level of discretionary spending: $1.47 trillion vs. $1.59 trillion. This means that Republicans are squabbling over a difference of 1.9%. This is about like agreeing to ...continue reading "Republicans are squabbling over a 1.9% difference in the federal budget"

This is somebody's bed at the palace of Versailles. I don't remember whose. Not Louis himself, though. Maybe some favored mistress?

Greg Ip says the UAW strike may be misguided when you look at the big picture: Since 2009, manufacturing output per hour in the U.S. has grown just 0.2% a year....In motor-vehicle manufacturing, the picture is especially bad: From 2012 through last year, productivity plummeted 32%, though some of this was no doubt due to ...continue reading "Productivity in the auto sector is fine"

This is a couple of days old, but it's still worth a brief mention. When the House Freedom Caucus put out its demands for a budget bill, one of them was passage of border legislation: The stopgap bill includes a House-passed border security proposal that orders construction of the border wall to resume, boosts the ...continue reading "Once again, Republicans aren’t serious about border security"

I know that South Carolina is famously hostile toward unions, but still: “I think Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal employees decided they were gonna strike … You strike, you're fired. Simple concept to me.” — Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), when asked if he would insert himself into the issue of the ...continue reading "Tim Scott: “You strike, you’re fired”"

In FY22, the budget authority for federal discretionary spending was $1.788 trillion. Actual discretionary spending came in at $1.664 trillion. But the House Freedom Caucus has long been stuck on a figure of $1.471 trillion as "real" FY22 spending, and they want the budget for next year (FY24) to match that. This makes no sense ...continue reading "That weird Freedom Caucus spending number explained (maybe)"

This is the fabulous Irvine City Hall. I've lived here for more than 30 years and I have yet to set foot inside. I suppose I should do that someday.

Housing units under construction stayed about the same in August—a combination of fewer single-family homes but more apartments. However, the construction rates for both are still above their pre-pandemic trends, as is the overall construction rate: As housing prices rose, builders increased their construction rate. That makes sense. But with construction rates above trend for ...continue reading "Housing construction in August remained way above trend"

The LA Times writes today about California's declining population: In the last few years, it ground to halt and then dropped — and all the while developers continued to build. Given the laws of supply and demand, one might think fewer people and more homes would equal lower prices. But California housing costs remain stubbornly ...continue reading "Why is housing so damn expensive?"