Kevin Drum 🕸

This is the Place de la Concorde in central Paris. Why not the Place de la Bastille today? Because we didn't go there and I don't have any pictures of it. Besides, the Bastille was stormed and then destroyed by mobs of woke Frenchmen anyway, so why bother? As the favored place for guillotining kings ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Take a look at the subhead in the Washington Post this morning: Nothing? Really? How about this? And there's this, released alongside the inflation report: This is certainly not good news for workers. But if it's a wage-price spiral you're worried about, it's terrific news. Finally, if you could wait a day, BLS released the ...continue reading "Yes, there was good news in the June inflation report"

With inflation in the news today, aren't you curious about how the rest of the world is doing? Sure you are: This only goes through May, since it takes a little while for the OECD to collect everything and put it up. In another week or two we'll see if everyone else joined us in ...continue reading "Raw data: Inflation around the world"

Along with its inflation report, the BLS also released this today: Real wages continue to go down, down, down. Workers are making less than they did before the pandemic—or will by next month, anyway. This is yet another reason to be skeptical that inflation is baked into the economy unless we throw ourselves into a ...continue reading "Hourly earnings were down yet again in June"

This is a little patch of school bells, everyone's favorite flower, on the side of Laguna Canyon Road near the Blue Bell Foundation for Cats.

After that dismal inflation report we could all use a little good news, couldn't we? I forgot to post gasoline prices on Monday, so here they are today: This time I even adjusted for inflation! I wouldn't normally do that for a four-month series, but since inflation has been running high I figured it might ...continue reading "Raw data: The price of gasoline is still dropping"

Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, your inflation rate for June: As usual, I'm less interested in the headline number and more interested in core CPI, which dropped another tenth of a point last month, ending at 5.9%. It has now declined 0.6% since February. If you want a sense of how inflation is running ...continue reading "Chart of the day: Inflation in June"

It's been a while since I posted one of these. That's because I went a month without chemo while I was in Paris and then figured it was hardly worth doing the test until I had gotten home and restarted the chemo for a month. And the news is good: I don't like this Empliciti ...continue reading "Health Update"

In this chart, the top (orange) line represents the annual earnings of Gen Xers. This age group has been part of Gen X for the entire period shown. Likewise, the bottom (blue) line represents the annual earnings of Millennials. This age group has been the heart of the Millennials for the entire period shown. Since ...continue reading "Raw data: Earnings of Gen X vs. Millennials"

This is the owner of one of the famous bookstalls that line the quay of the Seine in Paris. These days most of them sell tourist stuff, back issues of magazines, and copies of old prints that are the same in every stall, but a few still sell old books or, in this case, old ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

My governor has now signed two gun regulation bills that rely on citizen lawsuits for enforcement: California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday that he has signed a bill allowing private citizens to sue companies including gun manufacturers for violating the state’s firearms regulations. It is one of a pair of bills passed by the state’s ...continue reading "California sets up awesome showdown with Supreme Court"

It strikes me that we have been in an almost continuous state of panic this entire year. Some is real, some is media-driven. Here are a few examples: The withdrawal from Afghanistan, even though it had major problems only on the first day and then went pretty well, considering the circumstances. The Fed's panic over ...continue reading "Every month we find something new to panic about"

Now we're talking. Cosmic cliffs & a sea of stars. @NASAWebb reveals baby stars in the Carina Nebula, where ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds shape colossal walls of dust and gas. https://t.co/63zxpNDi4I #UnfoldTheUniverse pic.twitter.com/dXCokBAYGQ — NASA (@NASA) July 12, 2022 Take Five: Captured in exquisite detail, @NASAWebb peered through the thick dust of Stephan’s Quintet, ...continue reading "NASA unveils Webb images of the Carina Nebula, Stephen’s Quintet, and the Southern Ring planetary nebula"

Man, listening to these NASA people you'd think infrared was the greatest invention since the yellow first down line. Are they really trying to explain a chart showing a spectrograph of an exoplanet in the near infrared? Come on. No more infrared boosterism. Let's see some images!

Here's the latest internet meme about monkeypox: Absolute insanity: The Biden Admin won't accept 1 million doses of Monkeypox vaccine from Denmark because the FDA failed to do a timely inspection of the plant -- even though EU authorities did inspect the plant and approved its product for use in the EU. https://t.co/quqedbtVHp — Josh ...continue reading "How big a disaster is the FDA’s monkeypox approval delay?"

According to a new poll, Donald Trump is not very popular these days among Republicans: His post-presidential quest to consolidate his support within the Republican Party has instead left him weakened, with nearly half the party’s primary voters seeking someone different for president in 2024 and a significant number vowing to abandon him if he ...continue reading "Republicans are souring on Donald Trump"

This tweet piqued my interest: What this reminds me of is the fact that LA/LB, which this specialist talks about as being partially automated, has been awarded in efficiency reports the title of the least efficient port in the worldhttps://t.co/AVsUdN8zPl — David Dayen (@ddayen) July 12, 2022 This is true according to the World Bank, ...continue reading "Does automation increase efficiency at container ports?"

There's an odd story in the LA Times today: In the last eight months, the rate of change in annual rental costs for new tenants has more than doubled, reaching its highest level on record, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reviewed by The Times. The data, which are not in the ...continue reading "How much are new rents going up? Not so much!"

Those of you who read this blog on weekends already know about my latest night sky photography adventures. But there's more going on. For quite some time I've been mulling the idea of getting more serious about astrophotography, and lately I've been mulling it more actively. I haven't pulled any triggers yet, but all this ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

A bunch of people have put up complicated charts today showing that wage growth is cooling down. Here's my simple chart: Well, maybe mine isn't really any simpler. But as you can see, wages have been running behind inflation for the past 18 months, and even nominal wage growth (shown quarterly by the cute blue ...continue reading "Wages are moderating no matter how you measure them"