Kevin Drum 🕸

Oregon legalized assisted suicide in 1998. The number has grown ever since, reaching 367 last year, about 0.8% of all deaths. In the past decade the growth rate has been 18% per year. Why the steady increase? The median age of assisted suicide was 75, and my guess is that it's an inevitable result of ...continue reading "Raw data: Assisted suicide in Oregon"

Yesterday I mentioned that the national debt as a percent of GDP had declined under Joe Biden. And yet, interest payments on the national debt have skyrocketed from $500 million in 2020 to over a trillion dollars a year today. What's going on? The national debt is held in treasury bills, treasury notes, and treasury ...continue reading "Interest on the national debt: A brief primer"

A recent paper investigated veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan to find out how much they were claiming in VA disability benefits. The answer is: a lot. The study primarily looks at male soldiers who joined up between 2001 and 2011 and were assigned to a brigade combat team. What the chart above shows is that ...continue reading "Why have VA disability payments skyrocketed?"

This is Charlie guarding the upstairs water bowl. Anybody else who needs to hydrate himself is going to have to wait his turn.

The ruble is collapsing: It recovered slightly yesterday when the Russian central bank intervened, but it's still down 30% since the war started and 20% over just the past couple of months. Western sanctions continue to tighten, driving the ruble ever downward.

Big news from our friends at FRED: FRED has added 3 data series for the Fujita, Moscarini, and Postel-Vinay (FMP) Employer-to-Employer (E2E) Transition Probability. The E2E Transition Probability is a monthly measure of the rate at which U.S. workers transition from one employer to another in a given month. This sounds a little dry, doesn't ...continue reading "People were feeling good about the economy this year"

Yes indeed: Trump creating a fake crisis with Mexico over fake tariff threats only to settle it in exchange for fake concessions all over a holiday week when he’s not even in office yet is a reminder of how exhausting-yet-boring four full years of this will be. — Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) November 28, 2024 Whenever ...continue reading "Trump wins fake but real victory over illegal immigration"

I went off in search of turkeys to photograph yesterday, but I had no luck. The ones I knew about seem to have disappeared. However, the neighborhood that formerly had the turkeys still has lots of horses, so how about a nice picture of a horse instead?

Here's a bit of a surprising thing: When the pandemic hit, federal debt spiked up over 100%—partly because of huge spending and partly because GDP plunged. GDP recovered the next quarter and the debt level settled at 97%. Since then we've spent tons of money and run huge annual deficits, and the debt level has ...continue reading "The national debt has declined 2% under Joe Biden"

My Twitter feed is full of a new right-wing grievance: Choke Point 2.0. Naturally I had to figure out what it was all about. First, though, a tiny bit of background. Back in 2013 the Department of Justice started going after online payday lenders they suspected of fraud. They did this primarily by pressuring banks ...continue reading "Choke Point 2.0: A primer on the right’s latest conspiracy theory"

The Washington Post has a story today that inspires two thoughts: President-elect Donald Trump has chosen relatively conventional experts to lead his second administration’s economic policy, even as he pursues tariffs that could upend the international trade order and fills much of his Cabinet with ideologues and loyalists. Trump tapped a former Fox News host ...continue reading "The only thing Republicans (apparently) care about is the Treasury Department"

Here are a couple more boring economic charts. I'm almost done for the day, I promise. (Almost.) The first is new orders per capita for capital goods from manufacturers. It just keeps going down and down. Manufacturing is not going to save us. But here's something a little cheerier: We've all seen the charts showing ...continue reading "A quick peek at manufacturing and semiconductors"

Winter on Mount Baldy a couple of years ago.

Here's another economic chart. The hook is that October sales of new cars were released today, but that's just an excuse. What I really want to show you is the long-term trend: Look at the trendline since that smooths out volatility. On a per capita basis, new car sales have dropped from 57 per thousand ...continue reading "Americans are losing their lust for cars"

Donald Trump's playbook appears to be pretty simple. Internationally, he threatens big tariff increases if countries don't do what he wants. Domestically, he threatens to cut off federal spending if states and cities don't do what he wants. This is of dubious effectiveness in the case of tariffs and of dubious legality in both cases. ...continue reading "Sanctuary cities are no threat to Donald Trump"

More charts! And there are more to come. Today was busy. First up is disposable income, which is basically income minus taxes: Adjusted for inflation, DPI was up a healthy 4.5% last month on an annualized basis. For the entire past year it was up 1.9%. We're still below our pre-pandemic growth rate, but maybe ...continue reading "Disposable income up 4.5% in October"

Remember that Chinese bulk carrier suspected of cutting a couple of internet cables in the Baltic Sea? Apparently it's now a pretty open-and-shut case: Investigators have established that the ship dropped anchor but remained under way in Swedish waters on Nov. 17 at around 9 p.m. local time. The dragging anchor cut the first cable ...continue reading "Rogue Chinese ship cut a pair of Baltic Sea cables last week"

Both the headline and core rates of PCE inflation were up last month: On a conventional year-over-year basis, headline PCE was up 2.3% and core PCE was up 2.8%. Both are higher than they were in September. Sadly, this is the kind of news likely to convince the Fed that "the fight against inflation isn't ...continue reading "PCE inflation ticks up in October"

Just for the record, I want to remind everybody what Donald Trump said about the new USMCA trade deal with Canada and Mexico back when he signed it: We have negotiated this new agreement based on the principle of fairness and reciprocity.... This is a terrific deal for all of us....This new deal will be ...continue reading "A short trip down the NAFTA memory lane"

Here's the latest update on the number of EV chargers that have been built using funds from the bipartisan Infrastructure Act: There have now been 126 chargers built using NEVI funding. The first chargers built using CFI funding also went up last quarter, including a mega-station in Washington state, for a total of 210 chargers, ...continue reading "The federal EV charging program has now built 210 charging ports"