Kevin Drum 🕸

Adjusted for inflation, the BLS measure of average hourly earnings increased last month at an annualized rate of 3.3%. However, average hours worked continued its downward trend: As a result, weekly earnings were flat from last month: Weekly earnings have been flat for the past year and are now 0.4% above their pre-pandemic level from ...continue reading "Weekly earnings remain flat in July"

The BLS released its July CPI numbers today, and they're down a smidge from last month: On a month-over-month basis, headline CPI is at 2.0% and core CPI is at 1.9%. On a trend basis, headline CPI is at zero. This is two months in a row that core CPI has been below the Fed's ...continue reading "Inflation stays at 2% in July"

I was puttering around looking for some abortion stuff when I ran across a 2018 Wall Street Journal editorial confidently proclaiming that abortion rights were safe no matter who Donald Trump appointed to the Supreme Court: The reason is the power of stare decisis, or precedent, and how conservatives view the role of the Court ...continue reading "In 2018, the Wall Street Journal insisted that abortion rights would never be overturned"

I have now figured out the timeline and details for the Twitter contempt saga. Here it is: January 17: Special counsel Jack Smith gets a warrant ordering Twitter to turn over all records for Donald Trump's account. Marcy Wheeler guesses that it's because Smith is trying to figure out which January 6 tweets Trump himself ...continue reading "A brief timeline of the Twitter contempt fiasco"

This is an (extremely) abandoned gas station in Desert Center, an abandoned town on Interstate 10 about halfway between Indio and Blythe. I'm not sure what the history is here, but I suspect that a better question than "why was it abandoned?" is "why was it ever built in the first place?" In any case, ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

According to a USDA report released on Monday, the number of unauthorized crop pickers on US farms has gone down substantially since 2007: The is largely because the number of guest workers has skyrocketed: Add this all up, and the share of foreign-born workers on US farms (including US citizens) has dropped from 75% to ...continue reading "Raw data: Unauthorized farmworkers in the US"

The latest on Twitter: The special counsel served Twitter with a warrant for Trump's account information in January. Twitter resisted, and was fined $350,000, an appeals court ruling reveals. — Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) August 9, 2023 This is fairly misleading. Twitter had no problem producing the information but objected to a nondisclosure order that prevented ...continue reading "Twitter fined $350,000 because it was three days late"

Well, I see that Ohioans have overwhelmingly rejected the right-wing attempt to change referendums from simple majority vote to needing 60% to pass. This means that November's abortion rights referendum will be decided by a normal majority vote. So why the huge rejection? Is it a harbinger of the abortion vote? Or is it just ...continue reading "Ohio rejects right-wing attempt to rig referendums"

Today I came across a reference to something I hadn't heard of before. It was some kind of conservative meme about how "the Biden family" had created 20 shell companies that funneled $10 million their way, mostly during the time that Joe was vice president. What was this all about, and how had I missed ...continue reading "Hunter Biden was not only sleazy, he was inept"

Politico reports that Rep. Matt Rosendale is ruining the GOP's strategy to beat Sen. Jon Tester in Montana by making plans to run in the Republican primary: GOP leaders launched a concerted campaign to box out Rosendale and clear the path for Tim Sheehy, a Navy SEAL-turned-business executive who launched a Senate bid in June. ...continue reading "Republicans are set to blow yet another winnable election"

I was reading an article this morning that, in passing, blamed the slowdown in world trade on a switch in spending among consumers from goods to services. But not really: It's true that spending on goods has been flat since mid-2021 while spending on services has continued to rise.¹ But trade is all about absolute ...continue reading "Consumer spending on goods is still very high"

This is a happy looking dog, no? And it's no wonder since he was getting his walkies at the Balboa Fun Zone. Who wouldn't be happy?

A few days ago the LA Times passed along survey data from UCLA that says kids in California aren't having sex anymore: In 2021, the survey found, the number of young Californians ages 18 to 30 who reported having no sexual partners in the prior year reached a decade high of 38%. In 2011, 22% ...continue reading "The kids are finally having sex again!"

Atrios on the Wall Street Journal: Regularly people are shocked to discover that the WSJ editorial page is as loony as Fox News....But they rarely take the next step and consider the likely consequences of that being pumped into the heads of the richest people in the country daily. There's this odd belief that those ...continue reading "The genius of the Wall Street Journal editorial page isn’t in what it says"

The Guardian's front page is currently promoting a story that says antibiotic resistance is associated with air pollution—in particular, with small particulates called PM2.5, which are produced mostly by fossil fuels in richer countries and by dust and residential coal burning in poorer ones. Unfortunately, when I clicked through to the study this was based ...continue reading "New study says air pollution causes most antibiotic resistance. Maybe…"

Here is a chart from Semafor that's been making the rounds: Zounds! A 40-point gap has opened up between Democrats and Republicans over the past two decades. What happened?!? To see the simple and obvious answer, all you have to do is look at more than three data points: Republicans generally thought the federal government ...continue reading "Republicans and Democrats agree: The other party is horrible"

Here is your super short guide to tomorrow's election in Ohio: December: Ohio abolishes August elections because they are wasteful and attract low turnouts. February: Two pro-choice groups submit language for a referendum in November to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. May: In a turnaround, Republicans vote for one last August election this ...continue reading "A very brief guide to Tuesday’s election in Ohio"

This is the altar at the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur in the Montmartre district of Paris.

The Washington Post says that American companies are trying to reduce their exposure to China. The result is that we're buying less and less stuff from them: U.S. companies are accelerating efforts to reduce their dependence upon Chinese suppliers, even as officials in Washington and Beijing labor to put a floor under their sour relationship. ...continue reading "Imports from China plummeted in the second half of 2022"

Yesterday I wrote about new regulations limiting sulphur content in the bunker fuel used by oceangoing vessels. I concluded that the effect on climate change of these limits was minuscule, but today Alex Tabarrok links to an article in Science that suggests the effect might have been more substantial. But there are reasons for skepticism. ...continue reading "Update: Sulphur limits still aren’t responsible for the unprecedented heat this year"