Kevin Drum 🕸

This is a patch of primroses in Borrego Park, a small overlook in Lake Forest.

By now you're all aware that GDP declined in the first quarter. Here's why: Consumer spending, government spending, and private investment—the key components of GDP—were up 1.8% on an annualized basis last quarter. That's no great shakes, but it's not too bad either. However, imports and exports are also a part of GDP. Normally they ...continue reading "GDP was down 1.4% last quarter, but it’s not all bad news"

Monday was the start of Milky Way season. It was the first time in 2022 that the core of the Milky Way rose at a decent hour (around 1 am) and there was no moon. Since it was a dex night for me, I went out to take some pictures. But I couldn't find it. ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

How's the economy doing? Inflation is up, but other than that GDP is growing; unemployment is down; consumption is high; investment is strong; corporate earnings are good; and businesses are growing. Here are the latest numbers for that: About 80% of job gains come from expanding businesses. Ditto for job losses. The other 20% come ...continue reading "Net job gains were up yet again last year"

A couple of days ago Vox published a trend piece about how young Gen Z folks "have created an abundance of memes and pithy commentary about their generational disillusionment toward work. The jokes, which correspond with the rise of anti-work ideology online, range from shallow and shameless (“Rich housewife is the goal”) to candid and ...continue reading "Gen Z loves to work"

LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who got elected by appealing to the Hispanic community and promising to represent them, has turned out to be an unbelievable piece of shit. His latest stunt is to open a criminal investigation of an LA Times reporter who obtained surveillance video that Villanueva didn't want her to have: Los ...continue reading "Alex Villanueva is a horrible human being"

The Wall Street Journal editorial page is obsessed with Elon Musk and Twitter: Two-thirds of their featured opinion pieces are about Musk and Twitter. Why are conservatives so preoccupied with Twitter? For that matter, why is everyone so preoccupied with the fate of America's 15th biggest social media company?

This is the interior of a subway car on the LA Metro. If I were, say, Cindy Sherman, the MOMA label next to this photo would explain how COVID masks were used to immediately mark the era as late capitalism; the Foot Locker bags connect the metro to modern consumerism; and the height of the ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Why don't Americans trust experts anymore? Sean Illing interviewed Michael Lewis about this recently, but they somehow managed to miss the obvious. Here are three charts from the GSS survey: There are blip and bloops, but around 1990 Republican trust in experts started a steady downward trend compared to Democrats. Republican distrust of the press ...continue reading "Why don’t we trust experts anymore? Well, some of us do."

Let's review what's going on in Florida. Walt Disney Corp., under pressure from its employees, publicly opposed Ron DeSantis's "Don't Say Gay" bill, but they were the only theme park that did so. There wasn't a peep from SeaWorld, Busch Gardens, Legoland, or Universal Studios (though their parent signed a petition opposing the bill). SeaWorld ...continue reading "Why did Florida only go after Disney?"

I'm trying to think of what Elon Musk might do with Twitter and why I should care. I'm coming up pretty dry, but let's go through the list. Conservatives periodically go up in arms over the belief that Twitter has "shadow banned" them. That is to say, Twitter's algorithm has quietly reduced their influence without ...continue reading "What will Elon Musk do with Twitter?"

The best analysis I've read of Emmanuel Macron's victory in the French presidential election yesterday comes from Helen Lewis in the New Statesman. The satire is subtle, however, unless you're well versed in the mainstream media's habit of parachuting into small town diners looking for "real Americans." But give it a look regardless. UPDATE: This ...continue reading "In search of lost Frenchmen"

Our highways are littered with electronic signs that provide us with information. Sometimes they're amber alerts. Sometimes they tell us about traffic conditions. Sometimes they urge us to get vaccinated. Most often, though, they tell us to drive carefully. But what messages work best? In Texas the signs tell you how many people have died ...continue reading "Scary traffic signs don’t always reduce highway crashes"

Moonrise over Silverado Canyon.

I am not always a big fan of Ian Millhiser, who writes about legal issues for Vox. He tends to sound the alarm over practically every Supreme Court decision, declaring it not just obviously wrong but perhaps the most dangerous ruling this century. After a while you tend to shut out this kind of thing. ...continue reading "Ron DeSantis should be in prison."

On Wednesday I wrote a post saying we didn't have a housing shortage. I got a lot of pushback on that, so I figured I'd take a deeper look. The result is a big pile of charts. Basically, it's everything I could think of related to housing with no cherry picking and no game playing. ...continue reading "Here’s a long, boring look at the housing market"

We had a bit of rain last night, so this morning Hilbert got to jump on the fence¹ and pose for a beauty shot with a lovely background of puffy white clouds. Here's hoping the rest of the day is clear and brilliant too. ¹OK, fine, he didn't jump. I picked him up and put ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 22 April 2022"

Last night the eye folks dumped so much dilation fluid into my baby blues that I'm still dilated today. Because of that I can only barely see at close distances, which means that blogging will be slow. I'll return as my pupils slowly get smaller than a trash can lid and I can see again.

Huh. I guess the hot ticket for Republicans right after January 6 was to haul out the 25th Amendment and boot Donald Trump out of office: Recording of McCarthy and Cheney pic.twitter.com/oHMMV7TXbo — Acyn (@Acyn) April 22, 2022 Halfway through, McCarthy switches gears and tells Liz Cheney: "We know it'll pass the House. I think ...continue reading "For a few minutes in January, Republicans wanted to impeach Trump"

The Florida Department of Education finally released a few examples of "unacceptable" math problems today. Here is one of them: So the lesson here is that conservatives are racist, as proven by a test that's of dubious reliability. Nice work, textbook people. This is insane. I can't imagine there's a conservative governor anywhere in the ...continue reading "Florida finally shows us some of their woke mathematics"