Kevin Drum 🕸

Suppose President Biden announces that he is canceling all student debt, as many former students would like him to do. What happens to this year's crop of college seniors when they graduate in 2023? Is their debt canceled too? If not, we have a bright line of people ending with the Class of 2022 who ...continue reading "How do you decide whose student debt to cancel?"

We've heard a lot about how COVID-19 has devastated the commercial office market as more and more people work from home. And it's true that the vacancy rate of office space has gone up over the past couple of years. But the Wall Street Journal tells us the pandemic was not really to blame: America’s ...continue reading "The increase in the office vacancy rate isn’t really a pandemic phenomenon"

The price of gasoline is still going down: But it was only down a nickel last week. That's half its average decline since the June peak, so things might be slowing down. The price of oil has been flat for the past few weeks, so it would make sense if the price of gasoline started ...continue reading "The price of gasoline went down another nickel last week"

How many classified documents did the FBI find in its search of Mar-a-Lago earlier this month? Today the New York Times provides a pretty good estimate, though they leave the arithmetic to us: January: "more than 150." June: "a few dozen more." Total: "more than 300." At a best guess, this means the August haul ...continue reading "The FBI recovered 100 classified documents in its search of Mar-a-Lago this month"

That's right, I've been blogging for 20 years: first on my own; then for the Washington Monthly; then for Mother Jones; and now back on my own again. This is longer than I spent on my allegedly "real" career in the high tech industry from college graduation through 2001. But I haven't yet achieved my ...continue reading "It’s my 20th anniversary"

I don't know why, but I didn't expect the Seine to have locks. I thought it flowed freely to the sea. But this isn't so, and we traversed half a dozen locks on our way from Paris to Normandy. Here's one of them at dawn while I was meandering around the upper deck waiting for ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Matt Yglesias wrote recently on his Substack about the Effective Altruism movement, but I think he makes a serious mistake in his historiography. The EA movement began with a group of rationalists and philosophers who argued we were doing charity all wrong. Instead of wasting your money on, say, a new gym for your alma ...continue reading "Is effective altruism good? Sure, but . . ."

The Washington Post gets us up to speed today on the latest meme/vibe/tiktok taking over the business world. It's called "quiet quittting": Kathy Kacher, founder of Career/Life Alliance Services, said that “quiet quitting” is a new term for an old concept: employee disengagement. But it’s arriving in a moment of “unprecedented burnout,” Kacher said. It’s ...continue reading "“Quiet quitting” is the latest half-witted workplace meme"

A cat and his shadow. This is Charlie sitting on a kitchen cabinet that looks into the late afternoon sun. He's probably watching the birds outside the dining room window, who tend to congregate around the bird feeder at this time of day.

Carl Quintanilla of NBC News provides us with a sampling of charts from a recent JPMorgan report: The easing inflation/supply-chain crisis, in four charts. (via JPMorgan) pic.twitter.com/F38bpA73Mp — Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) August 19, 2022 Of course, there's always this too: The monthly change in CPI (i.e., velocity) peaked in January and has been easing off ...continue reading "Inflationary pressures are easing"

Some of you may have noticed and others might not have, but the blog went kablooey last night and didn't get fixed until this morning. The cause was something to do with a plug-in from my hosting service, which they promptly fixed as soon as I contacted them. In any case, no harm done since ...continue reading "BREAKING NEWS: Blog now working again"

This morning I got a call from the transplant folks and I now have a date for my CAR-T treatment. I'll do a bunch of testing over the next two weeks followed by a plasma collection in early September. The plasma will then be shipped off to the CAR-T factory, where it will be turned ...continue reading "Good news!"

It's the end of the week.

As we all expected, home sales continued to slide in June: The number of existing homes sold in July was 20% lower than it was in July last year. The median selling price is still 2.1% higher, but declined by $10,000 over the past month. The official consensus is that home prices will continue to ...continue reading "Existing home sales drop another 6% in July"

Over at Bob Somerby's place he's pondering the question of whether half of all Americans read at less than a 6th grade level. Long story short, if you follow the links from a recent George Will column they lead you to a report that places everybody at one of three different reading levels. The report ...continue reading "Three-quarters of American adults read above a 6th grade level"

This is a patch of Dame's Rocket blowing in the wind and photographed with a long exposure time. It's my photographic attempt to emulate Monet and his lilies. And while it might not be as good, it sure took a lot less time to make.

I have been thinking that it might be time to get a hearing aid, so I was pleased to hear this: The F.D.A. has now taken a final step that could put more accessible, and potentially less expensive, hearing aids in stores by the fall. People seeking out hearing aids will no longer have to ...continue reading "Hearing aids are about to get rabbit punched by market capitalism"

American Airlines announced yesterday that it planned to buy 20 planes from Boom Supersonic, whose Overture supersonic plane—currently in development and not scheduled to carry passengers until 2029—is alleged to fly about twice as fast as today's commercial jets. That sounds great, of course, if they can pull it off, but then there's this: Boom ...continue reading "Are supersonic flights in our future, eventually?"

Our nation's statistical agencies were busy today, so instead of writing half a dozen posts with half a dozen charts, how about if we just collect them all in one big post? Starting us off today is the Census Bureau with its advance retail sales report for July: Normally I would chastise everyone reporting about ...continue reading "Charts of the day from our nation’s statistical agencies"

This is a midnight picture taken from Les Halles of the Palais Royale with the moon rising behind it. The camera is obviously on full telephoto. I was out with the tripod that night, which led to an unfortunate incident. A pair of Italian teenagers saw that I was taking a picture of la luna ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"