Month: May 2021

This is Hopper at one of her favorite watering holes, the frontyard birdbath.

Hopper is rather particular about the water she drinks, and my latest theory is that she doesn't like drinking out of any vessel that Hilbert has defiled with his touch. The evidence on this score is a little shaky, partly because Hopper sometimes has no choice but to drink from a Hilbert dish. This makes rigorous data collection difficult.

On the other hand, when she is unhappy with her hydration choices she has started yowling loudly, which makes data collection easier. Life is kind of strange around here these days.

Consider the chart below, showing the price of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin:

As you may know, Dogecoin was created as a joke and rather plainly has no value. And yet, in the past year it has appreciated 22,624% and has an alleged market cap of $78 billion. How can that be? CNET asked its founder:

What problem did Dogecoin solve?

"I don't think it solves anything," he says. "If anything, it exists as an educational tool. It's a reminder that we can't take this stuff seriously.

"I hope people see Dogecoin and say, I'm not going to put all my money into this. Because right now there's a dog on a coin and it's worth half a billion dollars."

This is, obviously, a cautionary tale that suggests cryptocurrencies aren't actually worth anything. But it's really just a tiny part of a cautionary tale that encompasses the entire cryptocurrency space. It would be one thing if Bitcoin were unique and somehow had a good story to tell about its value. But even if that story were true, could it also be true that literally any old somebody can start up a new cryptocurrency and suddenly become a millionaire? Or hundreds of somebodies?

This is the tell, and it's hardly a subtle one. There is no rational economic system in which this can happen. Whatever problem cryptocurrencies allegedly solve, it was solved long ago. There is no conceivable way that hundreds more cryptocurrencies could be created literally out of nothing—no capital, no labor, no intellectual development, no raw materials—by anyone who felt like doing it. This could happen with a collectible item that suddenly gets hot, but not with any form of money.

The total value of all cryptocurrencies in existence is about $2 trillion. This is roughly the value of Denmark. That is, you could supposedly buy the entire country of Denmark by swapping it for all the cryptocurrency in existence. That's in theory. In practice you probably couldn't buy Pitcairn Island—though I suppose you could ask them. Just don't bother asking the Danes unless you want to get slapped upside the head with a delicious pork roast.

Here's an odd thing about today's jobs numbers. If you take a look at job openings vs. hires, you get a chart like this:

A job only counts as an official "job opening" if an employer is "actively recruiting" for the position. In normal times, and during recessions, there are plenty of workers to go around, which means there's little need for active recruiting. As a result, official job openings are low and there are fewer job openings than hires.

But if the economy is running hot, companies have lots of job openings they can't fill. This means they start actively recruiting and the job openings get counted. That's what you see in the shaded red area. Starting around 2015, the economy started hitting on all cylinders and there were more job openings than hires. In 2019 things started to slow down a bit, and then the pandemic hit and jobs disappeared.

Anyway, starting last September the difference between hires and job openings began to widen steadily until it hit nearly 2 million, which is where it was at its high point pre-pandemic. So that means the economy is doing well and employers are eager to hire more workers. Hooray?

Maybe, but now we view things differently. Back in 2017, the fact that companies wanted to hire more people than they could find was a good thing. It meant the labor market was tight and workers would get paid more. Today, it means . . . what?

• The labor market is tight because there are lots of people who are afraid to go back to work while COVID-19 is still loose.
• The labor market is tight because many women with children can't find childcare and are staying out of the labor force.
• The labor market is tight because workers are figuring they'll use up their unemployment benefits before they bother getting a job.
• The labor market is tight because employers are being stingy about pay and benefits. In April, average hourly earnings actually went down compared to a year ago.

All four of these are plausible reasons. In fact, all four of them could be true at the same time. We just don't know. But only if we get an answer will we have any idea whether the labor market is truly in good or bad shape.

The American economy gained 266,000 jobs last month. The unemployment rate increased slightly to 6.1 percent.

There's no way around it: this sucks. Service jobs increased by an anemic 234,000 while goods-producing jobs actually fell by 16,000. Aside from that, there was nothing special going on. The participation rate was up a little bit. The number of unemployed was up a little bit. About 330,000 people dropped out of the labor force, which is nothing special. Long-term unemployment was down. Unemployment for economic reasons was down substantially. The April report has the basic shape of something good, aside from the fact that it was so small.

It's hard to know what to make of this. Maybe it's just the calm before the storm, and May will be the first month when businesses really start to open up now that vaccination rates are high.

Alternatively, it's possible that continued unemployment benefits are keeping workers on the sidelines, figuring they might as well take another couple of months off while they can. Maybe someone ought to do a survey about that?

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through May 6. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

As we all know, the American right has become obsessed with "critical race theory" and the danger it presents if it's taught to schoolchildren. It seems likely that most conservatives don't really understand what CRT is, but I think it's pointless to carp about that. What's more important is to understand what they object to, regardless of what it's called, and then respond to that. So here's a brief summary of the main things that I think conservatives mean when they denounce "critical race theory":

• Race is a key part of identity in the United States.
• Our nation was built on the back of slavery.
• Systemic racism always has been, and still is, embedded in American society.
• White people are oppressors who continue to play a role in perpetuating racism.
• Black people suffer unequal treatment in a wide variety of ways, including school discipline, criminal justice, employment, housing, and so forth.
• White people should be aware of the privilege and benefits they enjoy solely due to their skin color.
• There are "Black ways of knowing," based on lived experience, that are different from science, logic, reason, and other white constructs, but just as valid.
• Students should be taught about racism and oppression from an early age.

I don't have great hopes of getting high-quality responses to this, especially since what I really want are conservative responses, but I want to throw this out anyway. Is it a reasonable summary of what conservatives are talking about when they say "critical race theory"? Is anything important left out?

Over at National Review, Isaac Schorr has apparently taken on the task of getting us all to take Caitlin Jenner seriously. It's a nice try, Isaac, but I decline to take the bait. Instead, I'll highlight only this:

With more than 160,000 homeless, California paces the nation, and it’s not particularly close. Worse, that number is on an upward trajectory.

I'm not quite sure what the point is here. That Jenner is bravely speaking truths about the homeless that no one else will take on? Believe me, you can't swing a dead cat in the state of California without hearing or reading half a dozen takes on homelessness, which we all know is caused by the state's general unwillingness to build new housing. There are no big secrets here.

But is it even true that California "paces the nation" in homelessness? Surprisingly, the answer is no. At the very least you need to take each state's population into account, and when you do that California comes in at #4:

This is nothing to be proud of, but it's not the highest in the nation. OK?

UPDATE: The original version of this chart was off by a factor of ten. Sorry about that. It's correct now.

Let's end up the week with a perfect little pink rose. It's a Cecil Bruner, one of the commonest varieties, but no less lovely for all of that.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has announced a plan to ban new fracking permits by 2024 and end all oil production by 2045. That all sounds good, but there's less here than meets the eye.

We had a brief fracking frenzy a few years ago over the newly discovered Monterey Shale Formation, but it eventually turned out to be a little less lucrative than everyone thought at first. It currently accounts for only about 2% of California's total oil production.

Still, it's good to put an end to it before it grows any larger. At the same time, it's just one piece of a California oil picture that looks like this:

At the current rate of extraction, California's oil reserves will be nearly entirely gone by 2045 no matter what Newsom does. Ditto for oil production:

Newsom's decision is welcome, but he's really not asking anyone to keep any oil in the ground. The plan is basically to allow all the oil to be extracted and then to ban further extraction when there's none left anyway. The bans are a good idea, but don't get the idea that they're game changers. They aren't.

The US death rate from COVID-19 has been stubbornly stuck at about 700 per day for the past few weeks, but our confirmed case count began to fall in absolute terms in mid-April. This should mean that our death rate will begin to drop soon. We'll see.

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through May 5. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.