Kevin Drum 🕸

Are you in the mood for some rare optimistic climate news? The Rocky Mountain Institute released a report today forecasting that solar and wind are growing so fast and getting so cheap that they're now on track to produce 30% of all electricity by 2030 and upwards of 70-85% by 2050: If we can do ...continue reading "Net zero by 2050?"

Excess mortality is generally considered a better guide to COVID deaths than actual counts of COVID deaths themselves, which are subject to considerable interpretation and dispute. Here are the excess mortality rates for Scandinavia, the US, and a bunch of large European countries: Sweden is at the very bottom. There's only one country that's noticeably ...continue reading "I guess Sweden didn’t kill everyone after all"

Last year Florida lobbed a tactical nuke at groups that register voters by dramatically raising the fines when they make mistakes—like delivering forms late or to the wrong county. Today the Guardian tells us that in less than nine months Florida has collected more than $100,000 in fines, 80% of which have come from three ...continue reading "DeSantis targets—and hits—voter registration drives"

The New York Post cherry picks a few quotes today to imply that Disney CEO Bob Iger isn't happy about going to battle with Ron DeSantis in Florida: “The last thing I want is for the company to be drawn into any culture wars,” he told CNBC of Disney’s First Amendment case against DeSantis that ...continue reading "Bob Iger is in it to win it"

The top photo shows the sun setting over a Marine Corps construction project on the beach at Camp Pendleton. The project is a bunch of concrete boxes, and I don't know what they're for. Urban warfare exercises? The bottom photo is the same scene but from a different angle. The big cloud on the left ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

In the New York Times today, Laura Beamer and Marshall Steinbaum write about the catastrophe of America's student loan epidemic: America’s Student Loans Were Never Going to Be Repaid In recent years, many Americans with student loans weren’t making enough money to pay even the accumulating interest on their debt, let alone make progress on ...continue reading "The truth about student loans"

It's been a long time coming, but the FDA has finally approved an oral contraceptive you can get without a prescription. The US is now one of the dozens of countries that either formally or informally allow women to buy contraceptives over the counter: The reason for approving OTC contraceptives is simple. First, they're safe. ...continue reading "OTC contraceptives are finally here"

I'll confess that even I have a bit of inflation fatigue. But how about one more round? Today the BLS presents us with the latest figures for the Producer Price Index, which is basically wholesale prices. Here it is through June: Although the overall PPI jumped a bit in June, it has been absolutely flat ...continue reading "Wholesale prices in June show almost no inflation"

Here is the full text of the ill-fated Equal Rights Amendment: Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to ...continue reading "Is the ERA already the law of the land?"

Inflation is down. But there are doubters about the cause: All it took for inflation to be transitory was 500bps of rate hikes and 7% mortgage rates. — Conor Sen (@conorsen) July 12, 2023 Oh come on. This really doesn't bear much scrutiny. Here's inflation: Even if you don't believe me when I say that ...continue reading "Why is inflation down?"

According to Rolling Stone, Rupert Murdoch is wavering in his support for Ron DeSantis: In recent weeks, the Murdochs have grown increasingly displeased with the DeSantis campaign’s perceived stumbles, lackluster polling, and inability to swiftly dethrone Trump....According to two of the sources, Murdoch has privately winced at DeSantis’ nonstop cultural-grievance strategy, arguing that it is ...continue reading "Rupert Murdoch hates incompetent bigotry"

I don't know for sure how accurate this is, but it's certainly intriguing: This comes from David Rozado, who says he used ChatGPT to "automatically label a longitudinal sample of 1.7 million headlines from 12 popular U.S. news media outlets." If he's right, there was a big surge in pessimistic headlines in the late '60s ...continue reading "Chart of the day: Headlines are getting more pessimistic"

I've never liked having things in my ears, so on a whim I took advantage of Prime Days to buy a wireless "headphone" that fits around the back of your neck, curls over your ears, and produces sound via bone conduction. They're great! The sound is good,¹ the stereo separation is excellent, and they fit ...continue reading "News you can use, earbud edition"

Here are two views of the Palace of Versailles. They show pretty vividly why I've never much liked it: it's one of the most boring piles of stone in Europe. What's more, I've never been a fan of formal French gardens, so I don't even like the gardens of Versailles that much. And I've never ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Apparently everyone loves Monica Bertagnolli, Joe Biden's pick to run the NIH. Even Bernie Sanders likes her. But Bernie is miffed at Biden over some trivial issues related to drug pricing, so he's blocking her appointment. The impasse is just one of several Biden has encountered with respect to his nominees....Biden’s pick to run the ...continue reading "Unanimous consent is a cancer in the Senate"

Here is a mystery. Ever since the pandemic, Black men have been increasing their participation in the labor force. By March of this year they had increased their participation rate to match white men for the first time in history. Then, in a single month, participation for Black men suddenly tumbled by 2.7 percentage points ...continue reading "Why did Black men suddenly abandon the labor force in April?"

More Clarence Thomas weirdness today. His top aide, Rajan Vasisht, was responsible for collecting payments from guests to Thomas's annual Christmas party: Vasisht’s Venmo account — which was public prior to requesting comment for this article and is no longer — show that he received seven payments in November and December 2019 from lawyers who ...continue reading "Clarence Thomas: It’s Christmas, so pay up"

As usual, if it's CPI day it's also earnings day. Both weekly and hourly earnings for blue-collar workers were up at an annual rate of 4.7% from June to May. With headline inflation running at 2.2%, this means that worker pay went up about 2.5% in real terms. Not too bad. Hourly wages for all ...continue reading "Worker earnings were up modestly in June"

The CPI report for June was released this morning and it's nothing but good news. Headline inflation is at 2.2% and dropping, while core inflation finally cracked and is now down to 1.9%. Inflation is literally running at the rate the Fed wants it to. If you insist on wanting to know the conventional year-over-year ...continue reading "Inflation plummets near zero in June"

Over at the Wall Street Journal, James Mackintosh gets some surprising front-page treatment for a dovish take on inflation: If core inflation came in just below 3%, the Federal Reserve would breathe a huge sigh of relief....It isn’t merely a dream: Measure U.S. price changes the way Europe does, and inflation was already there in ...continue reading "Inflation is over — if you calculate it the way Europe does"