Kevin Drum 🕸

Today the Supreme Court is hearing arguments in a pair of cases that could spell the end to affirmative action in university admissions. Conversation around the case has been almost entirely about elite universities, which enroll a small fraction of all college kids, but there's good reason for that even so. I'm going to use ...continue reading "Just how effective is affirmative action, anyway?"

We have some genuine good news tonight—though it was a close call: Voters in Brazil on Sunday ousted President Jair Bolsonaro after just one term and elected the leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to replace him, election officials said, a rebuke to Mr. Bolsonaro’s far-right movement and his divisive four years in ...continue reading "The Brazilian Donald Trump lost reelection tonight"

ProPublica and Vanity Fair published a blockbuster story yesterday suggesting that COVID-19 originated with a lab leak in Wuhan, not from natural causes. I've read it, and I feel like I must be missing something. The story is 10,000 words long, but almost all of that is a rehash of past arguments. The only thing ...continue reading "What was the big emergency in Wuhan all about?"

Here is Hilbert deep in thought. As usual, he is being subtly photobombed without ever knowing it.

Let's take stock of the past two years. First a mob attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, hoping to hang Mike Pence so that he couldn't announce that Donald Trump had lost the 2020 election. Then six men tried to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. A couple of months ago a guy assaulted ...continue reading "We live in the age of MAGA violence"

One more thing for chart day. I mentioned yesterday that 30-year fixed mortgage rates had broken the 7% barrier, so this is a good time to update my chart showing the average monthly mortgage payment on a newly purchased house in the United States. Buckle your seat belt: These are annual figures through 2021. For ...continue reading "Average monthly mortgages have increased 71% since last year (so far)"

As long as we're collecting up all the spending and income statistics this morning, here is the newly released Employment Cost Index from the BLS: This is an important number because it tells us how much employers spend on workers. Obviously wages and salaries are the main component, but it also includes other expenses like ...continue reading "Worker comp is down. Corporate profits are up. Imagine that."

If it's PCE inflation day, it's also personal income day. Here is disposable personal income through September: The bad news is that after adjusting for inflation personal income was flat from last month (actually, up 0.02% if you want it to the fourth decimal place). That's a drop of more than $2000 since its trendline ...continue reading "Personal income was flat in September"

Without further ado, here is the core PCE inflation rate through September: Core PCE checked in at 5.5% in September, with the trendline down to about 4.7%. I am, as usual, highlighting the core rate (inflation excluding food and energy) because that's the figure that allegedly drives the Fed's decisionmaking. The good news this month ...continue reading "Core PCE inflation dropped to 5.5% in September. Headline inflation came in at 4.1%."

My M-protein number was up yet again this month: It's not as if my M-protein level is skyrocketing or anything, but it's fairly high and getting steadily higher with my current chemo regime. Here's hoping the folks at City of Hope come through with a spot for the Carvykti CAR-T treatment for me sometime soon. ...continue reading "Health update"

Several UN agencies have issued gloomy reports recently about climate change: Emissions must fall by about half by 2030 to meet the internationally agreed target of 1.5C of heating but are still rising, the reports showed....The UN environment agency’s report found there was “no credible pathway to 1.5C in place” and that “woefully inadequate” progress ...continue reading "Climate change is here to stay"

Why was I so late getting to the GDP numbers this morning? Well, let me tell you. Yesterday was dex day, so I went up to my favorite dark spot in the desert to shoot a picture of the Iris Nebula. Traffic was surprisingly heavy, but when I got there the sky was lovely and ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Everyone is excited that average 30-year fixed mortgage rates broke the 7% barrier this week. Here's the latest from Freddie Mac: It's understandable that mortgage rates are going up, but it's a little hard to understand why they're going up so much. But they are. All those people who've spent the past few years complaining ...continue reading "Mortgage rates just keep going up and up"

Today is GDP day, but I'm a little late with it. However, I have a good excuse! More on that later. For now, let's get to it: Overall, this is a pretty good report. It was driven mostly by final sales to consumers and improved trade, not by things like inventories and IP valuations. Sales of ...continue reading "Chart of the day: GDP was up 2.6% last quarter"

A column by Katrina vanden Heuvel in the Washington Post brings an idea to mind: maybe Democrats need to go small. Instead of trying to brag about big things—DACA, infrastructure, the child tax credit, etc.—brag instead about small, concrete things. The prototype for this is Cash for Clunkers, a program that every serious economist agreed ...continue reading "What have we done for you lately? Here’s a short list."

When I visited Paris I naturally decided I wouldn't take pictures of the Eiffel Tower. I mean, why bother? There are millions of them out there and the world hardly needs a few more. But wherever you go in Paris, the Eiffel Tower is always there and always begging to be photographed. So I did. ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Here's the rate of on-the-job injuries over the past three decades: This is not merely an artifact of job composition, either. If you look, say, only at manufacturing jobs or health care, the injury rate has dropped the same amount. Hooray for OSHA!

If Republicans were running things, about 10 million more of you wouldn't. Which 10 million? That's hard to say. Maybe you should ask a Republican which jobs they think are worth sacrificing on the altar of economics for the rich. Until you get an answer, vote for a Democrat in November. We'll keep everyone working.

I have no special reason for posting this. It's just to remind everyone that, in the end, productivity growth is the single most important metric of economic prosperity and ours has been slowly declining in both the medium and long term. We should ask our presidential candidates what, if anything, they plan to do about ...continue reading "Raw data: Productivity growth in the United States"

Pelicans are generally big, ungainly, semi-comical creatures, but if you can catch them as they're dive bombing for lunch you can see their true selves. This is what nature intended for them.