Kevin Drum 🕸

Getting a haircut at the American Barber Shop in Santa Ana

Construction spending continues to be flat over the past few months: The good news is that residential construction isn't falling anymore. The bad news is that nonresidential construction isn't rising anymore. We are just puttering along waiting for either something or nothing to happen later this year.

New hiring dropped by more than 300,000 workers in June, taking it to its lowest point since early 2021: In better news, job openings and quits were pretty much flat. More evidence of a soft landing?

A new study is out that compares the amount of work completed in a day by office workers vs. home workers. It's based on random assignment to either home or office of data-entry workers in India, so the measure of "work" is pretty objective. The study has two basic conclusions: Your best workers are the ...continue reading "Yet more evidence that home workers goof off a lot"

Conventional wisdom says that, on average, you should earn more from an investment in stocks than an investment in government bonds. This is the equity premium, the reward you get for making a riskier investment. But the equity premium has been drifting lower for the past year and a half. As of today, it's negative.¹ ...continue reading "The equity premium has disappeared"

Check this out from JAMA: Fair Allocation of Scarce CAR T-Cell Therapies for Relapsed/Refractory Multiple Myeloma I imagine this is of interest to practically nobody, but it's right in my strike zone. So let's see what it says: A 2023 study of centers offering CAR T-cell therapy for multiple myeloma found that for every allocated ...continue reading "Did I receive CAR-T treatment because of white privilege?"

As you may recall from Saturday, the four researchers who wrote "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2" initially believed that it was quite possible—maybe even likely—that the COVID virus originated in a lab leak. One of the big reasons for this belief was the existence of a furin cleavage site in the virus genome, something that ...continue reading "Here’s why a lab leak of COVID seemed unlikely even in 2020"

This is a panoramic shot of night owls rushing to catch the last train out of Gare St. Lazare. How do I know it was the last train? Because as soon as it left they shut down the station and threw everyone out.

For the past couple of decades the most popular promise from presidential candidates has been to get tough with China. Naturally Ron DeSantis did that today. Boring. DeSantis also continued his anti-woke jihad by promising to forbid pension funds from adopting ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance) standards. I doubt this would even be constitutional, ...continue reading "DeSantis promises to get tough on China. Zzzzz."

The Energy Information Administration published its latest report on solar module shipments today, and the news for 2022 wasn't very good. Shipments of photovoltaic modules were up only 10%, much lower than in previous years: And for the first time in six years, the cost of photovoltaic modules increased. In 2022, modules cost 39 cents ...continue reading "Raw data: 2022 was a weak year for solar energy growth"

Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass's signature homeless program is Inside Safe, a program to get people out of encampments and bring them indoors. It's now six months old, and according to the LA Times one out of six participants isn't happy indoors: The agency reported that 153 people, or 10.5% of Inside Safe’s participants, have ...continue reading "LA is finding it hard to keep the newly housed in their housing"

I have a feeling Donald Trump is going to win the Republican nomination for the third time in a row.

This is from a recent Harvard/Politico poll: There's no longer any partisan difference at all. Across all parties, the lab leak theory is favored 2:1 over a natural origin for the COVID-19 virus. Here's how this has changed over time: Since 2020, the virological community has discovered more and more evidence that COVID-19 evolved naturally. ...continue reading "Raw data: Public belief in the COVID-19 lab leak theory"

Detection of the COVID-19 virus in wastewater has doubled since June: Hi US friends- there is a clear rise in SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater, suggesting a rise in cases and all the things that accompany that (https://t.co/FQPYUBJSxj). A reminder of some things you can (still) do to help reduce the risk of COVID: 1. Ensure you ...continue reading "COVID in wastewater has doubled since June"

Today the New York Times reports that it's not just AI that's finally becoming a reality. It's also robots: Use of robots by big brands, retailers and movers of goods accelerated significantly after 2019. According to the Association for Advancing Automation, robot orders in North America jumped 42 percent during the pandemic after essentially being ...continue reading "Robots are taking jobs from workers who aren’t working anymore"

Donald Trump's PAC wants a refund from Donald Trump's super PAC: The political action committee that has been paying former President Donald J. Trump’s legal fees requested a refund on a $60 million contribution it made to the super PAC supporting the Republican front-runner, according to two people familiar with the matter. ....The refund was ...continue reading "Trump is spending $1.5 million per week in legal fees"

Back in March 2020, just as COVID-19 was hitting American shores, a team of researchers published a highly influential article titled "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2." It argued that the evidence was strongly in favor of a natural origin of the virus, and while a lab leak couldn't be completely disproven there was no evidence ...continue reading "I read the entire Slack archive about the origin of SARS-CoV-2. There is no evidence of improper behavior."

The Wall Street Journal says today that the US economy is "sticking" its soft landing: Parts of the economy are cooling, just as the Federal Reserve would like to see to combat inflation. Freight railroads, for instance, are seeing shipping volumes decline. Construction firms are cutting back on equipment purchases. A vending-machine company’s customers are ...continue reading "Economy watch: Hires are down, fires are up"

We have still not caught up to the trend from before the Great Recession. We probably never will:

Here is Hilbert lounging on an antique bureau behind the fan that I use to keep cool in bed. I was playing around with the flash unit, which stops the motion of the fan, so I had to take a lot of pictures to get a few where a fan blade wasn't blocking the view. ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 28 July 2023"