Kevin Drum 🕸

According to the Census Bureau, the average household income of the poorest quintile is roughly $23,000. According to the Congressional Budget Office, that increases to $49,000 after you account for taxes and government benefits. This compares to about $80,000 for the average middle-class household.

Along with CPI, we also got September readings for real wages today. Hourly wages were up slightly, but because hours worked dropped there was a fall in weekly wages: All employees in September (adjusted for inflation) Hourly: +2.2% (annualized) Weekly: -1.2% (annualized) Blue-collar workers in September (adjusted for inflation) Hourly: +1.2% (annualized) Weekly: +1.5% (annualized)

A quick note on inflation: my favorite measure happens to be quarterly CPI, which smooths out a bit of the monthly volatility but still provides a more current measure than the usual year-over-year reading. The downside, of course, is that you only get a quarterly update every three months—although there are times when I think ...continue reading "Quarterly CPI plummets in Q3"

CPI inflation fell slightly in September to 2.2%: Core CPI increased a bit to 3.8%. On a year-over-year basis, CPI came in at 2.4% and core CPI at 3.3%.

Back in the day—i.e., 2022—crypto in politics was all about Sam Bankman-Fried, who lavished his millions on politicians under the guise of altruistic giving. It was a lie, of course, but everyone pretended to accept it for a while. Bankman-Fried is warming a prison cell these days and the crypto industry has moved on. Alexander ...continue reading "Crypto is spending wildly in the 2024 race"

Apparently the latest hotness is to air minor differences with people you normally agree with. I'm in! Noah Smith argues today that our current economy is the best in a very long time, and overall I think he's right. But there's one thing I think he's wrong about: wage growth. Unfortunately, it's been pretty lousy ...continue reading "Wage growth has been sluggish for the past three years"

This is a late afternoon view from Angeles Crest Highway up near Mt. Wilson.

In a new report, the International Energy Agency predicts that renewable electricity will grow considerably by 2030 but won't hit its goal of tripling worldwide. Among large users, only China and India are forecast to triple: Virtually all of this growth is in solar, with about a quarter in wind. Everything else is a rounding ...continue reading "Renewable electricity will almost triple by 2030"

The YouGov weekly tracking poll stubbornly sticks with a 3-point Harris lead this week: Donald Trump is exactly where he was in July with 44% of the vote. It seems like this is pretty much his ceiling. But the undecided/other vote is still around 8%. Harris has made a bit of progress over the past ...continue reading "YouGov poll remains at +3 for Harris this week"

Marjorie Taylor Greene says that recent hurricanes are the result of weather control technology being wielded (presumably) by the Biden/Harris administration. Josh Marshall comments: I think normal upstanding Americans are underestimating how rapidly these weather control conspiracy theories are catching fire in the right. — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 9, 2024 Is this true? I'm ...continue reading "Weather control is trending"

You know, this is a pretty big deal: Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday announced a plan for Medicare to cover long-term-care services at home, a significant expansion of the program that would be aimed at helping tens of millions of Americans who are caring for aging parents. ....Under Harris’s plan, Medicare would cover services ...continue reading "Kamala Harris wants Medicare to cover long-term home care"

California has a housing shortage. As a result, rents are high and vacancies are low. And yet: Housing construction has surpassed population growth and is within a hair's breadth of keeping up with job growth. So where does the shortage come from?

A "ghost gun" is basically a kit: you get a box full of parts, make some tiny modifications, and then put it together. Today the Supreme Court pondered whether ghost guns could be regulated like regular guns—i.e., require serial numbers, background checks, etc. Early in the argument, while Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar was making the ...continue reading "When is a gun not a gun?"

This is a Komodo dragon at the LA Zoo, using its tongue to check things out: As with many other reptiles, the Komodo dragon primarily relies on its tongue to detect, taste, and smell stimuli, with the vomeronasal sense using the Jacobson's organ, rather than using the nostrils. With the help of a favorable wind ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

CNN's Joan Biskupic reports that Chief Justice John Roberts doesn't understand why people were upset about his presidential immunity ruling earlier this year: Roberts was shaken by the adverse public reaction to his decision affording Trump substantial immunity from criminal prosecution. His protestations that the case concerned the presidency, not Trump, held little currency. Is ...continue reading "John Roberts is puzzled"

Early ballots have been mailed out to everyone in California, so it's time for my traditional recommendations about how to vote on the ballot initiatives. As usual, keep in mind a couple of things: I don't like ballot initiatives because they lock things into the state constitution that shouldn't usually be locked in. So my ...continue reading "How to vote on California’s initiatives"

Even the New York Times now shows Kamala Harris leading by more than three percentage points: Another couple of points and Harris will be a sure thing—assuming, of course, that the polls aren't way off because Trump voters aren't responding. That's always a potential confounder.

Apropos of nothing in particular, check this out: A third of a century ago the US accounted for 26% of the world's GDP. Today, even though it's the biggest economy on the planet and developing countries like China and India have skyrocketed, we still account for 26% of world GDP. That is truly remarkable.

As usual, Camilo Montoya-Galvez of CBS News has an early release of the border crossing figures—though they're a little later than normal this month. In any case, he reports that there were 102,000 crossings in September: Of this total, 54,000 were illegal crossings and 48,000 were asylum requests made at border stations.

A few weeks ago I mentioned that California had passed a law banning "materially deceptive" campaign deepfakes created by AI. Today brings this comment: On Sept 27 @nytimes accused @elonmusk of being “misleading” for criticizing a new California law to censor parody. “The laws have exceptions for parody” said the Times Five days later a ...continue reading "California did not ban a parody video"