Kevin Drum 🕸

Buckle up, I've got an exciting post for you today! As you know, Gross Domestic Product is the size of the economy. It's calculated by adding up the value of all the goods and services produced in the United States. But you can calculate the same number by adding up all the income needed to ...continue reading "How big is the US economy, anyway?"

Every week I try to post at least one picture in the categories Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral. I've always wondered if anyone noticed that. I've already done animals and minerals this week, so that leaves vegetables, which are typically either flowers or gardens. So here's a picture of the Coulée Verte in Paris, an old ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Well now, here's a fascinating story. In 2017 Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey because he was pissed off over Comey's investigation of him. A year later Comey was chosen by the IRS as a lucky recipient of the rectal probe version of a tax audit, an audit so intensive and so rare that ...continue reading "Did Donald Trump deploy the IRS in his war against the FBI?"

In comments last night, skeptonomist accused me of rarely being interested in showing income inequality. This cut me to the core, but there's truth to it and it's worth showing you why. The single best set of numbers for income inequality come from the CBO. There are two reasons: (a) they collect a broad set ...continue reading "Income inequality hasn’t grown much since the Great Recession"

This is a surprisingly tricky question, but with a twist at the end. When you talk about earnings you have to account for at least three different things: Mean or median? Mean (aka "average" or "per capita") income is usually not a great measure because the ultra-wealthy skew it. If you have ten people making ...continue reading "Raw data: How much do Americans earn?"

The Fed minutes for their June 14-15 meeting were released today, and they explained why the Fed took such aggressive action on interest rates: “The near-term inflation outlook had deteriorated since the time of the May meeting,” the minutes said. “Participants were concerned that the May CPI release indicated that inflation pressures had yet to ...continue reading "The bulk of the evidence suggests that inflationary pressures are abating"

Every year I spend a few days taking pictures of hummingbirds in our garden. Here is our 2022 hummingbird posing in front of a Rose of Sharon. Such a beautiful little creature.

Over in England, there's been a long-running case involving an international development researcher who was let go for tweeting about transgender women. In particular, she repeatedly expressed skepticism that trans women are really women and the tribunal ruled that this was largely the reason her employment contract wasn't renewed. I had never heard of this ...continue reading "Maya Forstater wins her transgender case. Good."

The New York Times wrote today about a moderate Republican woman who loathed the Dobbs decision removing the constitutional right to abortion: As Gov. Gretchen Whitmer prepared to kick off a round-table discussion about abortion rights at a brewery recently, Alisha Meneely sat at one corner of the table, feeling politically abandoned. “This scares me ...continue reading "How to make friends and influence abortion wafflers"

As usual, the Woodbridge Village Association did its part to increase small particulate matter in the local ecosystem on July 4th. But at least their show was prettier than the one most PM polluters put on. Every year I try to experiment with something different, and in 2022 I decided to (a) use a long ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

In today's Wall Street Journal we learn why the Fed is so concerned about inflation: At the root of [the Fed's aggressive interest rate increases] is the fear that households and businesses will come to expect high inflation to persist, which can cause it to do so. That would require the Fed to increase rates ...continue reading "The Fed is gunning for a completely unnecessary recession"

In the Atlantic today, Mitt Romney writes about our bipartisan refusal to address national (and global) crises: Even as we watch the reservoirs and lakes of the West go dry, we keep watering our lawns, soaking our golf courses, and growing water-thirsty crops. As inflation mounts and the national debt balloons, progressive politicians vote for ...continue reading "One Cheer for Mitt Romney . . . But That’s All"

Some of the most hardcore anti-abortion advocates are hoping to get state laws passed that would not only ban abortion in their own states, but would prohibit women from traveling to another state to get an abortion. A few of them even want to ban the right to speak about reproductive choice options in other ...continue reading "Abortion travel bans are ridiculous"

As an aside in a recent email I mentioned that I thought Dobbs would "get better." What did I mean by that? Let me make clear that my answer is speculation. And I'll admit up front that it's the kind of speculation liberals and progressives have engaged in for a long time without it coming ...continue reading "Republicans are in trouble now"

The top picture today is Juno Beach, site of the Canadian landing on D-Day. The bottom picture shows a circle of flags whipping in the stiff breeze that followed us around the entire day. Why show you Juno Beach on July 4th? Because that's where our particular tour took us.¹ Besides, Friday was Canada Day ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Last night I was chatting with some friends about all the recent problems with air travel. This led to someone mentioning the lack of workers to fully staff flights and then to the usual denouement of conversations like this: "No one wants to work anymore. They just want to sit at home and collect unemployment/stimulus ...continue reading "We are at full employment, more or less"

Oh thank God: We can now return to our normal lives. All is well.

Last weekend I did some night sky photography that, unfortunately, turned out to be mostly a dismal failure. But there was a silver lining: Photography failures often eat up a lot of time, so when I was finally finished it was getting on towards dawn. This meant that it was possible for me to see ...continue reading "Venus and Mars (and Jupiter)"

Today the Census Bureau released construction spending numbers for May. As usual for the past two years, nonresidential construction spending was down: More interestingly, residential construction spending is down for the first time since mid-2020: I imagine this is just the start of a longer turndown in housing. But it probably won't be severe. I ...continue reading "Raw data: Construction spending in the US"

Hilbert saw a newspaper tossed into the sink and immediately knew he had to curl up on it. The fixtures even match his eyes. It's a match made in heaven.