Month: June 2023

This is quite the cobweb, non? I took the picture at the Javel metro stop, right along the Seine, on our first night in Paris last year.

Ruby Cramer has a long profile of Florida first lady Casey DeSantis in the Washington Post today, and the main takeaway is that "Ron and Casey" are a unit—a very private, very intimidating unit. It's worth a read.

But I was amused by this bit of gratuitous shade thrown on Ron:

In 2011, [Casey] was in the back of small Republican gatherings, handing out copies of the book her husband had paid to publish, “Dreams From Our Founding Fathers,” a treatise on constitutional conservatism that mocked Barack Obama’s bestselling memoir.

There was really no need to mention either of these things. But what the hell, amirite? Ron's a schmuck. He deserves whatever he gets.

Here are some new poll results from Gallup:

Even Democrats are down. What explains this? Is it just the effect of unending propaganda from the MAGAnauts spilling over to everyone? Or is it yet more evidence that Americans have suddenly shifted right on cultural issues?

This chart comes from a report released a couple of days ago by Policy Impact, a think tank dedicated to standardized analysis of public policy. It shows how much it costs to perform an IRS audit:

Up through the middle class, the cost of an audit is the same as the amount brought in. Net revenue is zero.

Above that, revenue is higher than cost by a few thousand dollars per audit. It adds up, but it's still no great shakes.

Finally, when you get above the top 0.1%—those with incomes of $3-4 million—you're talking real money. The cost of an audit is about $15,000 while the revenue it brings in is $95,000.

This is why Democrats want to increase funding for the IRS. It's mainly targeted at boosting the number of audits on the very rich,¹ and that's where the money is. Audits of multi-millionaires cost a little more, but on average they bring in about $80,000 per audit.

¹It's also aimed at backfilling positions lost over the past decade and increasing the number of telephone support workers.

Over at Politico, Rich Lowry has joined the throng of Republicans saying that President Biden should pardon Donald Trump. It has a chance of "sapping some of the poison out of the system," he says.

That poison, Lowry says, is largely due to conservative anger over unpunished Democratic wrongdoing in the cases of Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden—not to mention the "big guy" himself, Joe Biden. Also this:

There is some significant plurality of the country that simply isn’t going to accept the legitimacy of the charges....Those doubts are based on more than the typical partisan suspicions of the other side. The Trump prosecution comes against the backdrop of the years-long Russia investigation by the FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller that cast a pall over Trump’s campaign and early presidency and that was based on gossamer thin, politically motivated information.

I'm not sure why, but this one bugs me more than the others, so allow me to remind Republicans of how the Mueller investigation came about:

• It was authorized by Rod Rosenstein, a Republican Trump appointee at the Department of Justice.
• Rosenstein did this a week after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey for being too tough on the Russia investigation.
• Comey's firing prompted bipartisan support for an independent investigation.
• When the investigation was announced with Mueller as its head, Mueller was "effusively praised" by Democrats and Republicans alike. Even Republican attack dog Jason Chaffetz was on board: "Mueller is a great selection. Impeccable credentials. Should be widely accepted."

This was in no sense a boondoggle foisted on the American people by Democrats. It was authorized by a Republican and widely supported by Republicans who viewed Mueller as a serious, by-the-book guy. This did nothing to keep Republicans from turning on him with all the venom and poison imaginable, but that's no reason to send its history down the memory hole.

Everyone wants to be let in! Of course, five minutes later they'll be demanding to be let out. This is annoying enough that I usually just leave the door open, but lately they've been dragging lizards into the house. So now I keep the door closed, which lets me check them out before they come in.

The BLS released its estimate of total worker compensation for Q1 today. This includes both wages and benefits. Here's where pay is highest and lowest:

The nationwide average for private industry workers is $41 per hour. It's significantly higher for public workers ($58), union workers ($54), and big companies ($59).

Adjusted for inflation, total compensation for private industry workers increased at an annualized rate of 1.8% from Q4 of 2022.

This is just a coincidence, but let's pick on Matt Yglesias again today. The topic is how best to calculate CEO pay.

There are two basic methods. The bulk of most CEO pay is in stock options, and you can value stock options as either granted or realized. The former is an estimate of their value at the time they were awarded. The latter is based on how much they were actually worth when the CEO cashed them in. Here's what CEO pay looks like using both methods:

This chart is reverse engineered from an EPI report on CEO compensation. EPI generally thinks that realized pay is a better reflection of reality, but Matt strenuously disagrees:

I wondered why a think tank would use a finding from a more dubious methodology....I think the answer is this: While the [granted] method of measuring CEO pay does show a huge increase since 1978, it shows no increase at all since 2000.

Or, rather, it shows a huge crash in the 2000–2009 period from which CEO pay has only partially recovered over the past decade.

I don't think this is right for several reasons. First, far from being "dubious methodology," realized pay has recently become the more common method of measuring CEO compensation and is now required by the SEC. EPI is hardly pushing a fringe theory here.

Second, CEO pay based on granted options is merely an estimate of pay in the future. Realized pay is what it turned out to be. Surely that's a better—or at least reasonable—measure of actual compensation?

Third, I wouldn't call 2000-2009 a "crash." Rather, I'd call 1997-2000 a spike. This might sound like mere semantics, but there's a difference between a true crash and a reversion to the mean from a very short boom that was never sustainable in the first place. This is why I included the trendline in the chart: ups and downs aside, realized CEO pay has been steadily increasing for decades.

So, no, I don't think EPI chose to focus on realized pay because it didn't want to admit that CEO pay has been fairly flat for the past ten years. If they wanted to do that they'd just show the numbers for realized pay and not even discuss other options. Rather, it's just the more accurate measure. CEO pay really has doubled since 2009, and the better question to ask is not "Oh really?" It's "Why?"

No, this is not from Texas. It's a lovely yellow rose from our backyard. I suppose it has a formal name, but I don't know what it is.

A few days ago the New York Times ran a piece about how doctors were using ChatGPT in their work. Many of them, it turns out, aren't using it to help with diagnoses. They're using it to help them talk to patients better. One of them is Dr. Michael Pignone at the University of Texas at Austin:

He explained the issue in doctor-speak: “We were running a project on improving treatments for alcohol use disorder. How do we engage patients who have not responded to behavioral interventions?”

He asked his team to write a script for how to talk to these patients compassionately. “A week later, no one had done it,” he said....So Dr. Pignone tried ChatGPT, which replied instantly with all the talking points the doctors wanted.

....The ultimate result, which ChatGPT produced when asked to rewrite it at a fifth-grade reading level, began with a reassuring introduction:

If you think you drink too much alcohol, you’re not alone. Many people have this problem, but there are medicines that can help you feel better and have a healthier, happier life.

That was followed by a simple explanation of the pros and cons of treatment options. The team started using the script this month.

This won't come as a surprise if you remember a post from a few weeks ago about a study of ChatGPT's ability to communicate with patients. People were presented with several scenarios and shown both a doctor's explanation and ChatGPT's explanation. By a wide margin, even doctors agreed that ChatGPT was better.

ChatGPT is also handy for routine scutwork like writing appeals to insurance companies, which it can do in seconds. As one doctor put it, “You’d be crazy not to give it a try and learn more about what it can do.”