Kevin Drum 🕸

Maybe I just read the wrong people, but I've sure seen a lot of chatter about Kamala Harris's proposal to tax unrealized capital gains. A couple of notes: The proposal is only for people with a net worth above $100 million. In practice it's really not a big deal. It's hardly unknown to tax unrealized ...continue reading "Taxing unrealized gains isn’t unusual, but it’s probably not a good idea anyway"

The Wall Street Journal has this headline in today's paper: How Immigration Remade the U.S. Labor Force That's true enough, but it's also worth noting that it hasn't remade the workforce all that much—not recently, at least. Here's the number of foreign-born workers in the labor force: This is all foreign born workers, both legal ...continue reading "There’s been no surge in foreign born workers in the US"

There's nothing new in this week's YouGov poll of the presidential race: YouGov still has Harris two points ahead of Trump in national polling. Oddly, Harris continues to lead by four points when people are asked who they'd prefer to have as president. Perhaps the "Not Sure" vote breaks heavily for Harris? Also, Black support ...continue reading "Harris maintains lead over Trump"

Paul Krugman's column today is about "left behind" places in the US. Exhibit A is West Virginia, which indeed has the lowest level of prime-age men's employment in the country: But here's the thing: West Virginia has always been poor. Personal income in 1950 was a dismal 32% lower than the US average and central ...continue reading "What’s the matter with West Virginia?"

This has become a weirdly popular right-wing meme lately on Twitter—amplified, of course, by Elon Musk: Kamala will shut down X if she wins pic.twitter.com/sML999zQlB — Clown World ™ 🤡 (@ClownWorld_) August 30, 2024 This interview clip is from 2019 and has nothing to do with shutting down Twitter. It took place during Trump's first ...continue reading "Kamala Harris does not want to shut down Twitter"

I see that Rep. Jamie Raskin is trying to follow up on a weird Washington Post story from a month ago: Democratic leaders on the House Oversight Committee released a letter Tuesday asking former president Donald Trump if he ever illegally received money from the government of Egypt, and whether money from Cairo played a ...continue reading "Did Donald Trump take $10 million from Egypt?"

Rolling Stone has published a list of the 100 best television episodes ever, and there's not much point arguing over it.¹ It's a matter of taste, right? But there's one thing that bugs me. If your reviewers are all people whose TV experience goes back only to the '80s, that's fine. I get that it's ...continue reading "I guess TV really sucked in the ’50s and ’60s"

Today is a do-over. Allow me to explain. Nebulas in the night sky are basically just clouds of gas made luminous by starlight. They consist of hydrogen alpha gas (red), sulphur (a slightly different shade of red), and oxygen (blue). Serious astrophotographers capture this by using monochrome cameras and a set of narrowband filters that ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Are you curious about how Truth Social stock is doing? Sure you are. DJT got a little bounce when the Republican convention started, but that wore off quickly and the stock has tanked completely ever since Kamala Harris entered the race. It's down 40% from its pre-convention price. Mind you, it's still selling for about ...continue reading "DJT stock is down 40% thanks to Kamala Harris"

Residential construction spending dipped slightly last month, but take a look at the longer term: The pre-pandemic growth trend is strong because it was a rebound from the 2006-09 housing bust. But post-pandemic growth is even stronger. Adjusted for both inflation and population growth, residential construction is 20% higher than in 2002 and 28% higher ...continue reading "Raw data: Residential construction spending in the US"

I was diddling around this evening and accidentally typed books into FRED. I discovered two interesting things. First, there's been zero book inflation over the past quarter century: In fact, books today cost a little less than they did in 1998. At the same time, consumption of books has gone up considerably: We buy twice ...continue reading "Raw data: Book and newspaper consumption"

I headed out to the desert on Saturday with the promise of good, cloud-free skies. Ha. As I drove east, I could see huge black thunderheads covering half the Mojave Desert, so I stopped to check things out. The normal weather report said everything was clear. Uh huh. Then I looked at a Doppler radar ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

As always, there's a lot you can say about the Israeli hostages held by Hamas. But one of the things you can say is this: After holding them prisoner for 11 months, Hamas decided last week to murder six of them in cold blood rather than take the chance they might be rescued. Condemn Israel ...continue reading "Hamas murdered six hostages in cold blood"

Regular readers know that I've long been annoyed by the relentless use of the word chaotic to describe the Afghanistan withdrawal. Of course it was chaotic. It's like saying the D-Day landings were chaotic. There's no way anyone conducts an airlift of 100,000 people in a neat and orderly way from a city that's just ...continue reading "Don’t send the Afghanistan withdrawal down the memory hole"

Donald Trump is still obsessed with Hillary Clinton: Trump: Bleach bit… it’s basically acid pic.twitter.com/NXSZ8UqLEQ — Acyn (@Acyn) September 2, 2024 For chrissake. Will anyone ever have the guts to tell Trump that BleachBit is just an ordinary piece of open source disk management software that was used by Platte River Networks, Hillary's email hosting ...continue reading "What is BleachBit?"

Just sayin'. In case you're curious, real GDP per capita for the US increased at an annual rate of 0.84% during Donald Trump's four years in office. It has increased in California at an annual rate of 2.8% during the five years Gavin Newsom has been governor.

This is by no means exhaustive. It's just a short collection of some of the extremely presidential things Donald Trump has said recently. Needless to say, none of it is even remotely true. "The transgender thing is an incredible thing. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation." ...continue reading "A brief look at stuff Donald Trump has said lately"

The New York Times has an astonishing story today about the amount of money college football players are paid these days in NIL (name image and likeness) fees. Here are averages for the Power 4 conferences: The SEC now pays its players three times more than any other conference. SEC quarterbacks are paid an average ...continue reading "The price of college football: $14 million per team in the SEC"

Why have we mostly given up on ornamentation in architecture? Ross Douthat correctly says today (based on an essay by Samuel Hughes) that it's not because ornamentation got too expensive. Just the opposite: we can mass produce high-quality ornamentation today far more cheaply than any previous era—both in absolute and relative terms. So what is ...continue reading "Maybe we build more beautifully today than we think"

I went down a little rabbit hole this afternoon, so I'm going to drag you all down with me. You're welcome. It started with this: J.D. Vance’s D.C. Suburb Is Only ‘Hate-Free’ If You Agree With Democrat Authoritarians https://t.co/X4IlAoQQLD — Mollie (@MZHemingway) August 29, 2024 Democrat authoritarians! I knew it was clickbait, but I clicked ...continue reading "A case study in propaganda"