Kevin Drum 🕸

A couple of days ago Farhad Manjoo wrote that office workers aren't sick of work, they're sick of the commute to work: For many, the pandemic-era shift to remote work proved that all the schlepping was unnecessary....They can get a lot more done — in their work lives and in the rest of their lives ...continue reading "Commuters are back on the commute"

It's worth going back in time a few months and remembering why the debt ceiling even still exists. Why wasn't it raised unilaterally by Democrats during the November/December lame duck session? Janet Yellen was certainly in favor. Technically, the debt ceiling could have been increased easily via reconciliation. The procedure is straightforward: It starts with ...continue reading "The debt ceiling fiasco is Joe Manchin’s fault"

It's Day 31, more than twice as long as I expected to stay in treatment. But we're home now. Earlier today I had my final consult and everything is going swimmingly. My counts are completely normal; the Bell's palsy is diagnostically gone, though I still feel a few twinges; and my doctor says I'm responding ...continue reading "Health update"

Our stay at City of Hope has stretched out so long that I'm finally running out of cat pictures. So here's a rare file photo of Hilbert and Charlie playing back when Charlie was still sort of kittenish.

Tyler Cowen points me to some truly remarkable research today. The topic is the pay and productivity of women in a large multinational corporation with offices and factories around the world. The central insight of the study is that if women face high barriers to entry into the labor market, then only the best, most ...continue reading "Women around the world aren’t paid nearly enough"

It's inflation day, and the news is once again so-so: Both core and headline PCE inflation clocked in at around 4.5%, though the headline rate continues to be considerably lower on a trendline basis. Overall, though, it was mostly sideways movement in April. PCE inflation has stayed pretty steady since the end of last year. ...continue reading "Inflation holds steady in April"

NBC News reports that state officials working for Ron DeSantis are soliciting campaign contributions from lobbyists with business before the state: NBC News spoke with 10 Republican lobbyists in Florida, all of whom said they couldn't remember being solicited for donations so overtly by administration officials — especially at a time when the governor still ...continue reading "Ron DeSantis really wants your money"

The Supreme Court today severely curtailed the EPA's ability to regulate wetlands under the Clean Water Act. This was a genuinely complicated case, but the big problem is that the court majority was able to do its work only by twisting the clear instructions of Congress. The CWA defines wetlands as anything "adjacent" to lakes, ...continue reading "Supreme Court blows off Congress in wetlands case"

Sunset and fast food on the Louisiana bayou.

According to the Wall Street Journal, same-sex couples account for 1% of all households nationwide. Of that, half are married and a little less than half are unmarried partners. The remainder live alone or in other arrangements.

The American economy is in very squirrely shape right now. I have two things to show you that demonstrate how weird things are. First, you may recall that there are two basic measures of economic growth: GDP and GDI. They are theoretically identical, but in practice they diverge—sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. For that ...continue reading "The US economy is a riddle wrapped in an enigma"

Over at the Washington Monthly, Robert Shapiro argues that Americans—and Democrats in particular—should be more aware of big wage gains over the past year. It's something to brag about. The problem is that it really isn't true. There are several common ways of measuring wages, and nearly all of them show no gains at all ...continue reading "Earnings are not up"

The Washington Post reports that most book challenges come from a tiny number of activists: The majority of the 1,000-plus book challenges analyzed by The Post were filed by just 11 people. Each of these people brought 10 or more challenges against books in their school district; one man filed 92 challenges. Together, these serial ...continue reading "Book banning is a very, very niche activity"

Rock and sky at sunset near Palm Springs, California.

One of the more mysterious aspects of the debt ceiling crisis is what happens if we actually go over the edge. There are two basic possibilities: Treasury simply pays bills on a first-come-first-serve basis. So if X-Day arrives on, say, June 1, and Treasury runs out of cash at 11 am, all the bills still ...continue reading "Who gets paid if the US defaults on its debt?"

I'm feeling back up to making charts, so I thought I'd show you one that clarifies my progress with the CAR-T infusion. This is just the crudest sort of extrapolation, so take it with a grain of salt. As it turns out, I've actually had three M-protein measurements. The first was several days before the ...continue reading "M-Protein update"

I am definitely on the mend. My counts are practically up to normal; the Bell's palsy is receding; my energy is slowly returning; and my appetite has improved. Everything is getting better. But the bigger news is that I finally got my first M-protein result. As you'll recall, this is a proxy for the total ...continue reading "Health update"

Here are two views of Coachella. The first was taken in the early morning while the second was taken on a moonlit evening.

A few days ago, OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, testified that artificial intelligence posed significant dangers and ought to be regulated. Yesterday, though, he released a short brief on the subject and, remarkably, it turns out he doesn't want anything regulated at all. Not in practice, anyway. For starters, here's what he affirmatively does want regulated: ...continue reading "Should AI be regulated?"

Paul Krugman posted this chart today from the Fed's annual survey of economic well-being: There are two interesting things here. First, if you look at the top line it's nearly flat. This is people reporting on their own finances, and COVID-19 had almost no effect at all. None. There's even a slight uptick in 2021, ...continue reading "I’m OK, you’re not"