Kevin Drum 🕸

Bruce Bartlett has something to say about the public's frustration and resentment toward government bureaucrats: Corporate bureaucrats are probably worse than government bureaucrats, and we deal with the corporate-types far more frequently. Try calling customer service for any big company. The irony is that only government bureaucrats can control the corporate bureaucrats. — Bruce Bartlett ...continue reading "Corporate bureaucracy is the worst bureaucracy"

This is quite the cobweb, non? I took the picture at the Javel metro stop, right along the Seine, on our first night in Paris last year.

Ruby Cramer has a long profile of Florida first lady Casey DeSantis in the Washington Post today, and the main takeaway is that "Ron and Casey" are a unit—a very private, very intimidating unit. It's worth a read. But I was amused by this bit of gratuitous shade thrown on Ron: In 2011, [Casey] was ...continue reading "Ha ha. Obama’s book was better than DeSantis’s."

Here are some new poll results from Gallup: Even Democrats are down. What explains this? Is it just the effect of unending propaganda from the MAGAnauts spilling over to everyone? Or is it yet more evidence that Americans have suddenly shifted right on cultural issues?

This chart comes from a report released a couple of days ago by Policy Impact, a think tank dedicated to standardized analysis of public policy. It shows how much it costs to perform an IRS audit: Up through the middle class, the cost of an audit is the same as the amount brought in. Net ...continue reading "Raw data: The cost of an IRS audit"

Over at Politico, Rich Lowry has joined the throng of Republicans saying that President Biden should pardon Donald Trump. It has a chance of "sapping some of the poison out of the system," he says. That poison, Lowry says, is largely due to conservative anger over unpunished Democratic wrongdoing in the cases of Hillary Clinton ...continue reading "Let’s not forget the history behind the Mueller investigation"

Everyone wants to be let in! Of course, five minutes later they'll be demanding to be let out. This is annoying enough that I usually just leave the door open, but lately they've been dragging lizards into the house. So now I keep the door closed, which lets me check them out before they come ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 16 June 2023"

The BLS released its estimate of total worker compensation for Q1 today. This includes both wages and benefits. Here's where pay is highest and lowest: The nationwide average for private industry workers is $41 per hour. It's significantly higher for public workers ($58), union workers ($54), and big companies ($59). Adjusted for inflation, total compensation ...continue reading "Total worker comp in Q1 is highest in San Francisco, lowest in Miami"

This is just a coincidence, but let's pick on Matt Yglesias again today. The topic is how best to calculate CEO pay. There are two basic methods. The bulk of most CEO pay is in stock options, and you can value stock options as either granted or realized. The former is an estimate of their ...continue reading "CEO pay has doubled in the past decade"

No, this is not from Texas. It's a lovely yellow rose from our backyard. I suppose it has a formal name, but I don't know what it is.

A few days ago the New York Times ran a piece about how doctors were using ChatGPT in their work. Many of them, it turns out, aren't using it to help with diagnoses. They're using it to help them talk to patients better. One of them is Dr. Michael Pignone at the University of Texas ...continue reading "ChatGPT helps doctors talk better"

Adjusted for inflation, retail sales increased at an annualized rate of 2.7% from April to May. However, this small increase did nothing to change the overall downward trend in retail sales over the past year:

Tyler Cowen pointed me toward an odd new research paper today. The authors set out to determine the effect on economic growth of changing temperatures, which they broke this into two parts: steadily changing temperatures (from global warming) and temporary temperature shocks. Their basic finding is that temperature changes have had negative economic effects on ...continue reading "Rich and poor countries are opposites in how they respond to global warming"

I sure got this wrong: I figured the boycott of Bud Light would have only a smallish and temporary effect. But it's now lasted two months and has caused Bud Light sales to plummet by about a third. When you consider that most of the decline is probably due to Republicans, it suggests that more ...continue reading "The Bud Light boycott has been stunningly effective"

Silhouette of a horse on a ridge on a stormy day in Trabuco Canyon.

The Fed is finally backing off its endless series of interest rate hikes—but only slightly: The Federal Reserve is leaving interest rates unchanged for the first time since spring 2022, signaling a new chapter in the central bank’s fraught fight against inflation. ....The Fed also signaled more rate hikes would come before the end of ...continue reading "Fed finally backs away from yet another rate increase"

In 2014, after more than a decade of lobbying, Congress passed a bill that transferred land near Oak Flat, Arizona, to a mining company that planned to build a huge copper mine on the land. This prompted opposition—and a lawsuit—from an Apache resistance group led by Wendsler Nosie Sr., a 64-year-old Apache elder, which claims ...continue reading "Is Oak Flat sacred?"

Over at his substack, Matt Yglesias muses about television and suggests that maybe it's something we should panic about: As Tim Cook encourages us to spend more time sitting alone in dark rooms, enjoying immersive audiovisual experiences, I can’t help but think that the panickers, at least those of the last few decades, might have ...continue reading "TV may be better than ever, but TV watching is down"

If yesterday was CPI day then today must be PPI day. Here's what the Producer Price Index looks like through May: If you look at goods and services separately, even the PPI for services was up only 2.9%—largely because of autos and auto parts. That's an excellent number since services are the prime contributor to ...continue reading "PPI drops to -3.7% in May"

Section 702 of the FISA Act allows agencies like the NSA to eavesdrop on foreign nationals overseas. It prohibits spying on US citizens or anyone who's within the United States. But sometimes NSA ends up collecting the communications of US citizens anyway. Quite often, in fact. This is legal as long as it's not intentional. ...continue reading "The FBI abused its surveillance of Americans 278,000 times in 18 months"