a Better Bubbleโ„ข

Kevin Drum ๐Ÿ•ธ

Progress is good

1 year 7 months ago
Henry Farrell has critical words for the notion that technological progress is both inevitable and inevitably good: Marc Andreessen’s recent “tech optimist manifesto” is one of the most significant statements of Silicon Valley ideology. As I’ve written elsewhere, it’s actually less a political manifesto than an apostolic credo for the Religion of Progress. The words ...continue reading "Progress is good"
Kevin Drum

Holiday hiring, spending projected to be low this year

1 year 7 months ago
Everyone is forecasting a weak holiday season this year. Here's the latest: The number of seasonal positions publicly advertised this fall fell to the lowest level in a decade, according to outplacement-services firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The National Retail Federation estimates that between 345,000 to 445,000 seasonal workers will be hired this year, down ...continue reading "Holiday hiring, spending projected to be low this year"
Kevin Drum

Raw data: Non-religion by educational level

1 year 7 months ago
Tyler Cowen asks today why more intellectuals don't convert to Protestantism, and I figured the answer was simple: intellectuals tend to be nonreligious and rarely convert to anything. But no! According to GSS data, level of education doesn't correlate in any way with being nonreligious. It doesn't really correlate with any other religious question on ...continue reading "Raw data: Non-religion by educational level"
Kevin Drum

The Fed and the economy

1 year 7 months ago
You all know that I'm a bug about the delayed effects of Fed interest rate hikes. Here's a simple chart that shows why: Fed interest rate hikes don't directly affect inflation. They produce higher long-term rates which in turn slow down the economy. That's what reduces inflation. Long-term rates have indeed gone up since the ...continue reading "The Fed and the economy"
Kevin Drum

Is Donald Trump in default on 40 Wall Street?

1 year 7 months ago
Here's an odd thing: The Trump Organization has defaulted on its CMBS loan on its 40 Wall St building - transferred to special servicer #MacroEdgeCMBS pic.twitter.com/wKgO7gGmwl — MacroEdge (@MacroEdgeRes) November 10, 2023 Trump's 40 Wall Street property has been on watchlist for a while thanks to high costs and vacancy rates, but as near as ...continue reading "Is Donald Trump in default on 40 Wall Street?"
Kevin Drum

Louisiana ordered to redraw racist congressional map

1 year 7 months ago
Louisiana's latest redistricting map is so unfair to Black voters that even the hyper-conservative Fifth Circuit Court has agreed it's illegal: The Louisiana state legislature has until the middle of January to enact a new congressional map after a federal court ruled that the state’s current map illegally disfranchises Black voters in the state.... According ...continue reading "Louisiana ordered to redraw racist congressional map"
Kevin Drum

Raw data: Inflation since 2000

1 year 7 months ago
Here is the quarterly rate of core PCE inflation over the past couple of decades: Excluding the unusual deflation during the start of the Great Recession, average core PCE inflation averaged 2.1% through 2019. In the third quarter of this year it was at 2.4%.
Kevin Drum

Crypto is about to go mainstream by no longer being crypto

1 year 7 months ago
Over at New York, Kevin Dugan notes that BlackRock, a huge investment company, is close to getting SEC approval for a Bitcoin ETF (Exchange Traded Fund). An ETF is a fund that invests in related securities—the S&P 500, for example, or maybe a collection of health care companies—but is traded like an ordinary stock. By ...continue reading "Crypto is about to go mainstream by no longer being crypto"
Kevin Drum

Raw data: House-to-house fighting in Gaza

1 year 7 months ago
I have no special reason for posting this. It's a Google Maps picture of a small piece of Gaza City: Roughly speaking, this is about 1% of Gaza City, which itself is only about a tenth of the Gaza Strip. Multiply this by about a thousand and it's what "house-to-house" fighting looks like.
Kevin Drum

The UAW won pay hikes for everyone in the auto industry

1 year 7 months ago
Hey, look what's happening in the auto industry: Honda Motor is giving many U.S. factory workers an 11% pay bump and making other improvements for these employees, a move that follows major gains secured by the United Auto Workers union in Detroit last month. The base wage increase is effective in January, according to a ...continue reading "The UAW won pay hikes for everyone in the auto industry"
Kevin Drum

No, Hamas should not be part of the Palestinian government

1 year 7 months ago
Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist and a former professor of journalism at Princeton University. Here's how he thinks Gaza should be governed after the war is over: The answer for the question of what happens next should be clear. The Palestine Liberation Organization, which doesn’t include Hamas, needs to forge an agreement with Hamas ...continue reading "No, Hamas should not be part of the Palestinian government"
Kevin Drum

Donald Trump is exempt from all federal campaign finance rules

1 year 7 months ago
Ellen Weintraub, a member of the Federal Election Commission, has something she wants to say: The FEC has six members: three Democrats and three Republicans. Enforcement actions require a majority vote. Since all three Republicans refuse on principle to investigate violations by Donald Trump, it means he's effectively immune from all federal campaign laws.
Kevin Drum

Itโ€™s not social media that has polarized us

1 year 7 months ago
Tim Lee takes a common shot at social media today: This obviously isn't an original observation but I still think almost everyone is underestimating how much the Internet drives polarization on every controversial topic. — Timothy B. Lee (@binarybits) November 9, 2023 I know how appealing this is, but most of the research points in ...continue reading "It’s not social media that has polarized us"
Kevin Drum

Lunchtime Photo

1 year 7 months ago
A couple of days ago a fire broke out at one of our historic World War II blimp hangars. By the time it was over the entire east side had been gutted. The two top pictures show what it looked like on the day after. The bottom picture shows the hangar in better days (the ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"
Kevin Drum