Kevin Drum 🕸

This was taken in the Saint-Martin neighborhood near the Place de la Bataille de Stalingrad. This is apparently a guy whose wife/partner/whatev really, really doesn't want him smoking indoors.

It's Tuesday, so it must be gasoline day: Down another nickel! Thanks to Joe Biden's hard work, gasoline now costs less than it did 40 years ago.¹ ¹Adjusted for inflation, of course.² ²Also, 40 years ago was 1982, the aftermath of the Iranian oil embargo. Still, gasoline is less expensive now than it was then. ...continue reading "Gasoline prices are down yet again"

The snowy peak in this photo is Iron Mountain, part of the San Gabriel range. It may not look like much, but here is Wikipedia's description: While this mountain is far lower in elevation than other Southern California summits, it is the most difficult mountain to climb in the entire region. There are no water ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

We now have booster shots aimed at the Omicron strains of COVID-19, and suddenly conservatives are realizing there's a downside to their endless yammering about how the FDA moves too damn slow. Michael Brendan Dougherty fills us in on the FDA's rapid approval of the Omicron boosters: There’s a catch though: These boosters have been ...continue reading "FDA critics are finally having an aha moment"

This is just a "hello, world" post. There's nothing very interesting happening at the moment, and I have to leave soon to submit myself to a truly astonishing array of blood tests.¹ So just to let everyone know that I'm alive, awake, and on the job, here's the cost of natural gas since the war ...continue reading "Raw data: The price of natural gas"

The Washington Post says that fusion power is finally getting close to reality: Scientists are mere years from getting more energy out of fusion reactions than the energy required to create them, they said. Venture capitalists are pumping billions into companies, racing to get a fusion power plant up and running by the early 2030s. ...continue reading "Can we use fusion power to solve California’s drought?"

The Wall Street Journal warns us yet again about the woes of retailers: From Walmart Inc. to Nordstrom Inc., retailers have a glut of inventory and are discounting items to clear out space for holiday goods. Many have already lowered profit expectations for the year and are working to cut costs as consumers are pulling ...continue reading "Raw data: Retail profits in a post-pandemic world"

Diane Ravitch points us to a new study from Paul Peterson and Danish Shakeel that takes a look at student achievement over the past 50 years: Our data consist of more than 7 million student test scores on 160 intertemporally linked math and reading tests administered to nationally representative samples of U.S. student cohorts born ...continue reading "New study says American students are improving. Are they?"

Here is Joe Biden's approval level compared to the three most recent presidents:¹ Biden looks pretty average for this point in time. Of course, all three of these other presidents got whomped in their first midterm election, so Democrats might not consider this a huge morale booster. On the other hand, Biden's recent triumphs seem ...continue reading "Here’s the latest on Joe Biden’s approval level"

Novak Djokovic is the best male tennis player in the world. He would very likely win the upcoming US Open if he were able to play in it. But he can't. US immigration rules require that foreigners can enter the country only if they've been vaccinated against COVID, and Djokovic has steadfastly refused to do ...continue reading "Sorry, but Djokovic doesn’t get a pass"

I've been occupied with other stuff all day, so I haven't written anything for the blog. There's more to it than that, though: The news continues to be dominated by our village idiot and his chamber of secrets, and I hardly feel like there's much to say about that. At this point, the only thing ...continue reading "Disease Update"

This is Hilbert on the second-story balcony looking down upon all that he surveys. And do you know who's king of it?

According to Penn Wharton, the distribution of benefits from President Biden's student loan forgiveness program looks like this: About three-quarters of the benefit goes to working and middle-class families. One-quarter goes to the upper middle class. Because it's paid for out of the general fund, which is mostly individual income tax receipts, the loan forgiveness ...continue reading "Raw data: Who benefits from student loan forgiveness?"

The latest from Texas: A federal judge in Texas on Thursday struck down a state law barring adults under 21 from carrying handguns, ruling that the age limit violated the Second Amendment. U.S. District Judge Mark T. Pittman said the Constitution didn’t put an age restriction on the right to bear arms, meaning adults 18 ...continue reading "Texas judge rules Texas gun laws are too damn liberal"

The PCE inflation rate for July was released today and it showed that inflation has slowed almost to zero: The change from June was -0.8% at an annualized rate. The change in core PCE was +1.0%. As usual, since these are volatile numbers, the trendline gives the best indication of what's really going on. On ...continue reading "PCE inflation rate tumbles below zero in July"

This is a bit of Queen Anne's Lace along the road to Laguna Beach.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis reports today that corporate profits in the second quarter were up 8.1% compared to 2021. That's true as far as it goes, but nominal thinking doesn't get you very far. Like all of us, corporations are affected by inflation, and when you account for that profits were down 0.4%: In ...continue reading "Corporate profits were down slightly in Q2"

In the New York Times today, Maia Szalavitz writes about how Seattle finally tackled chronic homelessness. A few years ago Lisa Daugaard, a lawyer, developed a program called LEAD: Instead of re-incarcerating homeless people who typically already have long histories of minor arrests, police departments that participate in LEAD refer them to case management services. ...continue reading "Here’s how to get the hard-core homeless into homes"

This was my last picture taken in Rome. It's a shot of the Naidi fountain (near the Termini train station) taken at sunset. It was a tough picture to take! I had to position myself in the middle of the street, so I was dodging cars while my camera was acting up and mostly not ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

And here we go with this week's promised announcement on student debt: President Biden announced on Wednesday that he would cancel $10,000 in student loan debt for those earning less than $125,000 per year [or $250,000 per household], with an additional $10,000 for students who received Pell grants for low-income students. So we've split the ...continue reading "Biden announces $10-20,000 student debt cancellation"