Kevin Drum 🕸

How tight is the labor market? I've long been mildly skeptical that it's as tight as people seem to think, and today Jason Furman tweets the following chart: If this is correct, the labor market was equivocal around 2021, with two measures suggesting looseness and three measures suggesting tightness. Since then, the measures showing tightness ...continue reading "Are we in a tight labor market? Have we ever been?"

Here's a pigeon hanging out on a traditional French chimney. But where? I can't quite remember. It's just across one of the bridges on the right bank of the Seine, but I can't put my finger on exactly where I was.

Here's a little something not to take too seriously. Today the Institute for Supply Management released its latest indexes, one of which is a price index for services. This is a number worth following since services continue to be the component of inflation that's staying stubbornly high. However, ISM doesn't report a specific price increase ...continue reading "Inflation for services is (probably) coming down"

The latest JOLTS data is out. Here's a nickel summary of changes from the previous month: Hires are up 1.8%. Job openings are down 4.8%. Quits are up 6.6% (shows confidence about getting new job). Layoffs are down 2.2%. Aside from the drop in job openings, these are decent numbers. However, the longer term trends ...continue reading "JOLTS data shows softening economy"

Over at the New York Times, Jessica Grose urges us to be optimistic about vaccines even with nutballs like RFK Jr. running around badmouthing them. And she's right. Here's the latest CDC data for childhood vaccines: Vaccine takeup has been generally flat or up for the past decade and showed no sign of slowing down ...continue reading "Vaccination rates are going up despite everything"

Judge Terry Doughty's judicial handiwork is having an immediate impact. He must be feeling so proud: One day after a Louisiana federal judge set limits on the Biden administration's communications with tech firms, the State Department canceled its regular meeting Wednesday with Facebook officials to discuss 2024 election preparations and hacking threats. ....The canceled meetings ...continue reading "Judge Doughty has driven off the State Department. Who’s next?"

I know this is obvious, but . . . Everybody seems to have forgotten what Elon Musk's real problem with Twitter is. The wellspring of everything that's happened since last year was a single moment of stupidity in which he agreed to massively overpay for it. And it's not like he doesn't know this. He ...continue reading "The real problem with Twitter"

The state of Wisconsin allows the governor to eliminate parts of legislation he doesn't like using a line item veto. Today, Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a couple of digits and a hyphen from a two-year increase in the school budget. The original said this: for the 2023-24 school year and the 2024-25 school year, add ...continue reading "News of the weird, Wisconsin line-item veto edition"

Who has the most new solar capacity? Obviously big states do. But what if you adjust for population and look at solar module shipments per capita? It turns out it's mostly still the big states that are solar leaders: California, Texas, Georgia, and Illinois. But Nevada has them all beat by a mile.

Here are last night's fireworks. This year I decided to trek around to the far side of the lake and shoot with our (patriotically lighted) bridge in the foreground. Much hilarity ensued because my flashlight didn't work and I kept fumbling with the camera buttons. Eventually I got everything set right and captured a few ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

The other recent Supreme Court case that I'm on the fence about is 303 Creative. In that one, Lorie Smith didn't want to create a website celebrating a same-sex marriage and the Court upheld her refusal. In my initial post about it, I said the Court relied on a "thin distinction indeed": namely that while ...continue reading "Can a shop owner be compelled to celebrate same-sex marriage?"

Earlier this morning I said there were two recent Supreme Court cases that left me conflicted. One of them was the decision that killed off the student loan forgiveness program, so let's take a closer look at that. The easiest legal argument in favor of allowing the program to continue is a simple syllogism: The ...continue reading "Why can the Supreme Court overturn the student loan forgiveness program?"

The Washington Post has a devastating but deadpan story today about the efforts of a private equity firm to buy up anesthesiology practices all over the country and then jack up prices for everyone. It starts in Denver: The multibillion-dollar private equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe took less than a year to create, ...continue reading "How to build a monopoly in less than a year"

I suppose it's just a coincidence that these three headlines all appeared on the same day from major new outlets: Republicans are "divided" about impeaching President Biden. Sure. Is it possible that this is because he's obviously done nothing wrong aside from pursuing policies that many Republicans don't like? Is it possible that modern Republicans ...continue reading "Republicans desperately want to impeach Biden, but for what?"

The Supreme Court ended its term with a flurry of important decisions that covered a lot of important ground. How did it do? There are some clunkers on the list, but overall I think their performance was better than most liberals give credit for. Affirmative action: A poorly argued decision that relies on a time ...continue reading "The Supreme Court didn’t do too badly in its flurry of late decisions"

I've been thinking all evening about just how crazy this latest court order from Louisiana is. You really have to read it to believe it. The whole 155-page opinion is an insane, rambling stew of right-wing paranoia about "mass censorship" and "unrelenting pressure" from an Orwellian White House that you'd sooner expect to see at ...continue reading "Right wing paranoia takes over the judiciary"

What the hell? A federal judge ruled that the Biden administration likely trampled on the First Amendment in trying to eliminate what it saw as disinformation on social media, issuing a broad preliminary injunction limiting the federal government from policing online content. In a 155-page ruling issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty of Louisiana ...continue reading "Another Trump judge, another ridiculous national injunction"

The Wall Street Journal concedes that remote work is down since 2020, as are job listings that advertise remote options. But remote work is "sticking" anyway: Many lower-wage office and call-center jobs went remote at the onset of the pandemic. Business executives viewed the shift as a temporary emergency measure, said Julia Pollak, chief economist ...continue reading "Home workers spend a ton of time goofing off"

Flags waving in the breeze at the United States of Ikea.

I've been obsessing over an obscure part of the Supreme Court ruling on student loan forgiveness. The relevant text of the HEROES Act says the Secretary of Education can "waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision applicable to the student financial assistance programs under title IV," but Chief Justice Roberts makes a startling claim ...continue reading "Are students required to pay back loans in the first place?"