Kevin Drum 🕸

Here is the history of new one-family home sales in a nutshell: Over the past 60 years, new one-family homes have been built and sold at an average rate of 2,500 per million population. We exceeded that average by a cumulative 2.8 million homes during the boom of 1995-2006, and then lagged it by 4.0 ...continue reading "Raw data: Single-family home sales through history"

President Biden is offering a sorta-kinda-amnesty to half a million Venezuelan refugees who are currently in the country: Biden officials told reporters that Venezuelans who had entered the United States by July 31 would be eligible for temporary protected status, a designation that will shield them from deportation and speed up their ability to obtain ...continue reading "Biden grants semi-amnesty to half a million Venezuelans"

The fine folks at dappGambl are here to answer the question on everyone's mind: Whatever happened to NFTs, anyway? The hype around NFTs peaked in the 2021/22 bull run that saw nearly $2.8 billion in monthly trading volume recorded in August 2021....In July 2023, [trading was] just 3% of its peak back in August 2021. ...continue reading "NFTs are officially bullshit"

Federal spending will clock in at about $6.4 trillion this year. Meanwhile, in Congress, Republicans are threatening to shut down the government because of a disagreement over next year's level of discretionary spending: $1.47 trillion vs. $1.59 trillion. This means that Republicans are squabbling over a difference of 1.9%. This is about like agreeing to ...continue reading "Republicans are squabbling over a 1.9% difference in the federal budget"

This is somebody's bed at the palace of Versailles. I don't remember whose. Not Louis himself, though. Maybe some favored mistress?

Greg Ip says the UAW strike may be misguided when you look at the big picture: Since 2009, manufacturing output per hour in the U.S. has grown just 0.2% a year....In motor-vehicle manufacturing, the picture is especially bad: From 2012 through last year, productivity plummeted 32%, though some of this was no doubt due to ...continue reading "Productivity in the auto sector is fine"

This is a couple of days old, but it's still worth a brief mention. When the House Freedom Caucus put out its demands for a budget bill, one of them was passage of border legislation: The stopgap bill includes a House-passed border security proposal that orders construction of the border wall to resume, boosts the ...continue reading "Once again, Republicans aren’t serious about border security"

I know that South Carolina is famously hostile toward unions, but still: “I think Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal employees decided they were gonna strike … You strike, you're fired. Simple concept to me.” — Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), when asked if he would insert himself into the issue of the ...continue reading "Tim Scott: “You strike, you’re fired”"

In FY22, the budget authority for federal discretionary spending was $1.788 trillion. Actual discretionary spending came in at $1.664 trillion. But the House Freedom Caucus has long been stuck on a figure of $1.471 trillion as "real" FY22 spending, and they want the budget for next year (FY24) to match that. This makes no sense ...continue reading "That weird Freedom Caucus spending number explained (maybe)"

This is the fabulous Irvine City Hall. I've lived here for more than 30 years and I have yet to set foot inside. I suppose I should do that someday.

Housing units under construction stayed about the same in August—a combination of fewer single-family homes but more apartments. However, the construction rates for both are still above their pre-pandemic trends, as is the overall construction rate: As housing prices rose, builders increased their construction rate. That makes sense. But with construction rates above trend for ...continue reading "Housing construction in August remained way above trend"

The LA Times writes today about California's declining population: In the last few years, it ground to halt and then dropped — and all the while developers continued to build. Given the laws of supply and demand, one might think fewer people and more homes would equal lower prices. But California housing costs remain stubbornly ...continue reading "Why is housing so damn expensive?"

The New York Times ventured out to the UAW picket line over the weekend in order to figure out why so many union workers don't think very highly of Joe Biden. Most of it was just the usual blather, but for some reason my curiosity was piqued by a guy who works at the Jeep ...continue reading "Electricity prices are up in Toledo. That’s bad news for Joe Biden"

Here are the number of workers who have gone on strike during each month since the start of 2000 through August of 2023: Generally speaking, years with a lot of workers on strike include one or two big strikes, not a whole bunch of smaller ones. A variety of industries are involved when you look ...continue reading "Raw data: Workers on strike"

I was out in the desert on Saturday night on my third attempt to photograph the Wizard Nebula, aka NGC 7380, an emission nebula in the constellation of Cepheus. On the first attempt my battery pack ran out of juice and I only got two hours of exposures. The second time I had a complete ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Donald Trump appeared on Meet the Press yesterday to deliver his usual word salad and outright lies on a variety of subjects. Here are some excerpts from his musings on abortion: five months, six months, seven months, eight months, nine months five, six, seven, eight, nine months four and five and six months. you're going ...continue reading "Donald Trump wants to soften Republican opposition to abortion"

Sometimes I like to highlight deceitful charts. Other times I highlight misleading ones. It's rare to find a chart that's completely useless, but that's what the Wall Street Journal has on its front page today: What is this even supposed to mean? How can you interpret it unless you know what percentage of jobs come ...continue reading "Public sector jobs are lagging way behind the private sector"

Atrios today: Calling those programs "AI" is only slightly less stupid than thinking a link to an ape.jpg is worth millions. I think it's losing — by giving it too much credibility — to get into arguments about why it isn't in any sense "artificial intelligence." But it isn't! Everyone knows it isn't! It's funny ...continue reading "ChatGPT is not AI"

LA Times columnist Mark Barabak recently tooled up to Bakersfield, the deep-red heart of Kevin McCarthy's congressional district, to find out what his constituents thought about impeaching Joe Biden. Here's a sampling: “We as conservatives need to fight back. You have to keep the enemy off balance at all times.” Biden has “made a mockery ...continue reading "Impeach Biden? Sure, the SOB deserves it."

The wingnut caucus in the House has proposed a short-term spending bill that would cut outlays by "1%." But it's not really that: The 1 percent cut is an average for the federal budget. The Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs would not receive any cuts, while other government agencies would have their ...continue reading "House lunatics want to cut everyone’s budget 8% for one month"