Kevin Drum 🕸

Construction spending increased in May across the board. Nonresidential construction continued to grow, while residential construction increased for the first time in over a year: Nonresidential construction was up at an annualized rate of 4%. Residential construction spiked upward at a 17% rate, though it was still 13% lower than a year ago. The nonresidential ...continue reading "Raw data: Construction spending in May"

What with summer here, I had forgotten all about Southern California's huge spike in natural gas prices during the winter. Whatever happened to that? Here's the answer: The whole thing lasted two months. Daily spot prices shot up in December from 100¢ per therm to 500¢ per therm and were back to 100¢ by February. ...continue reading "Southern California’s natural gas shock lasted two months"

For the past few months I've been more fatigued than usual thanks to the CAR-T treatment. So I've been drowsily watching lots of prestige TV on HBO, which I accidentally subscribed to just before I went to City of Hope. First I watched five seasons of The Wire. Then three seasons of Deadwood. Then eight ...continue reading "HBO sure does like whorehouses"

Something peculiar occurred to me recently about the pandemic year of 2020. Obviously a lot of things changed: businesses shut down, office towers emptied out, product shortages were endemic, and so forth. But there were also a number of sharp changes that had no obvious connection to the pandemic. For example: Pedestrian deaths were up ...continue reading "2020 was a very odd year"

For 20 years the safety of US mass transit systems remained about the same. In the pandemic year that ended: the injury rate went up by half and the death rate more than doubled. The change in 2020 is explicable as related in some way to COVID. But why have death and injury rates stayed ...continue reading "Mass transit deaths have skyrocketed since the pandemic"

Here's a different look at the homeless in Los Angeles: Over the course of more than a decade, LA has managed to add 6,000 shelter beds for the homeless. That's about 10% of the 55,000 needed. Last year they added 1,100, about 2% of what's needed.

Shortly after the 2020 election Donald Trump called the secretary of state of Georgia and begged him to "find" the extra votes to give Trump a victory there. We know this because Brad Raffensperger recorded the conversation. Now it turns out Trump did the same thing with the governor of Arizona. Doug Ducey didn't record ...continue reading "Trump pressured Arizona governor to overturn election"

This is the roughest back-of-the-envelope calculation: There are perhaps 100 highly selective universities in the US where affirmative action makes a significant difference in enrollment. About 4% of Black high school students attend these universities. Without affirmative action, that number will be cut in half. So the impact of the Supreme Court's ban on affirmative ...continue reading "The real life impact of affirmative action is modest"

The group Moms for Liberty is holding its national convention this weekend. It was created in 2021, allegedly by three housewives who were political neophytes but finally decided one day that something had to be done about liberal threats to their kids' education. So they took a deep breath and started organizing, even though this ...continue reading "Moms for Liberty is no grassroots firestorm"

Here is Hilbert rolling around on the patio next to our new digiplexis plant, which Marian very much wanted me to get in the picture. It's the pinkish stalk in the top left.

Today the BLS released annual productivity figures for various industries and I got sort of interested in which industries had done best and worst over various periods of time. Here is annual productivity growth over the past three decades: This is about what you'd expect. The wireless business has become fantastically more productive since 1987, ...continue reading "Raw data: Productivity growth in American industry"

Another day, another Supreme Court opinion. In yet another unsurprising decision, the conservative majority ruled today that President Biden's student loan forgiveness program violates the law. The key argument is about the meaning of the president's authority under the HEROES Act to "waive or modify" the student loan program: The Secretary’s plan has “modified” the ...continue reading "Supreme Court kills off student loan forgiveness"

We got nice inflation news today. The headline PCE inflation rate dropped to 1.5% while the core inflation rate finally showed some modest downward movement to 3.9%. This is the annualized monthly rate. On a year-over-year basis, headline inflation fell to 3.8% while core inflation was stuck at 4.6%. In related news, consumer spending was ...continue reading "Inflation ticks down yet again in May"

The latest homeless counts were released today for Los Angeles, and it just doesn't get any better. The total number of homeless jumped 9% to 75,000 people, and the share with no shelter stayed steady at 73%: About 55,000 people live on the streets in Los Angeles County. The other 20,000 homeless live in emergency ...continue reading "Raw data: The homeless in Los Angeles"

I was noodling around on the KFF site this morning and came across their most recent tracking poll about Obamacare. I was surprised to see how popular it's become: Obamacare has been through a lot: passage by a single vote, endless attempts to repeal it, and multiple Supreme Court challenges that nearly cratered it. Somehow, ...continue reading "America finally loves Obamacare"

Wisteria hanging from a covered walkway at the Huntington Library.

A couple of months ago it looked like GDP growth had slowed down a lot, clocking in at an anemic 1.1% in the first quarter. Then it was revised upward to 1.3%. Then, today, it was revised upward yet again: BEA now says that Q1 growth was 2.0%. That's not barnburning, but it's respectable. GDI ...continue reading "Economic growth is better than you think"

In a ruling that surprised precisely no one, the Supreme Court killed off affirmative action in university admissions today: Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it. And the Equal Protection Clause, we have accordingly held, applies “without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality”—it is “universal in [its] application.” ....The ...continue reading "Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action for good"

I might as well get this over with. Until a couple of weeks ago I was responding beautifully to the CAR-T treatment, with my cancer load dropping smoothly toward zero. Then it all stopped, with my M-protein level stalled at 0.34: This is a "partial response," and for all practical purposes it means the treatment ...continue reading "Health update"

According to the Society of Family Planning, the abortion rate nationwide has dropped 3.3% since last year's Dobbs decision. Here are the states where the abortion rate went up and down the most: Texas went from nearly 3,000 abortions per month to zero. Florida, where abortion bans remain mired in court, saw an increase because ...continue reading "Raw data: Abortion has dropped 3% since Dobbs"