Month: September 2023

August CPI numbers were released this morning, and both the core and headline rates spiked considerably:

The spike in the headline rate was expected due to rising gasoline prices, but the spike in the core rate is harder to explain. Air fares were up a lot, but there were no big increases elsewhere. The so-called "supercore" rate, which excludes food, energy, and shelter, remained subdued at 2.4%.

On a year-over-year basis, headline inflation was up 3.7% and core inflation was up 4.3%.

I don't quite remember what got me started on this, but a couple of hours ago I ran into a report about stress from the American Psychological Association. It reported that stress was simply overwhelming these days:

A quarter of all Americans report feeling so stressed on most days that "they can barely function." Among those under 35, half of all men and 62% of all women say they are "completely overwhelmed" by stress most of the time.

Shazam! Can this really be true? Is it just some COVID thing? Unfortunately, the APA doesn't make it easy to figure out because they vary their focus with every annual report. One year it's all about caregivers; the next it's about race; a couple of years later it's about social media. The only common finding is that the poor slobs who are the focus of each report are practically oozing with stress. But there's no way to track the basic "overwhelmed" question over time because the question hasn't even been asked most of the time.

However, there is one thing the APA tracks consistently: the average reported stress level on a scale of 1-10. Even this isn't easy to find, but it can be found. Here it is from 2007 (when the APA survey began) through 2022:

Average stress declined considerably between 2007 and 2011 for some reason, and since then has been almost completely flat.

So.......I dunno. We're less stressed than we were 15 years ago, and average stress didn't change even slightly during the COVID pandemic. Nonetheless, half the country under age 44 claims to be overwhelmed by stress almost all the time. That doesn't really seem to make sense. Nor does it gibe with long-term polls showing that only 10-15% of every age group report that they're unhappy. Surely if you're "overwhelmed" with stress you'd be unhappy? Or do most people have a different sense of what "overwhelmed" means than I do?

Color me confused. For now, I think I'm going to assume the APA is basically just an industry group with a vested interest in high levels of stress. This is why they promote a variety of shocking headlines but practically hide the simple indicator showing that overall stress is moderate and remains that way year in and year out.

OMG OMG OMG:

On Wednesday, Apple revealed that its newest product line, the iPhone 15, will drop the company’s proprietary Lightning port in favor of European-mandated USB-C ports. The company’s newest iPhones feature a charging plug that is slightly bigger and rounder than its predecessor but capable of delivering a faster charge.

Is there any other company in the world that would get front page treatment for switching its charging port to USB-C? The Apple reality distortion field remains alive and well.

Rep. Scott Perry, chair of the Freedom Caucus and one of the primary players in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, took questions today about the House impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. He got red faced when a reporter had the gall to ask what "actual evidence" Republicans had, as opposed to mere allegations:

"If you can't see that! If you are that blind!" -- Rep. Scott Perry gets very mad at a reporter who asks him what actual evidence Republicans have against Biden (he never cites evidence!) pic.twitter.com/pqlI7PXcgR

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 12, 2023

Perry managed to stammer out three (3) items:

1. "The homes that the Bidens own can't be afforded on a congressional or Senate salary."
2. "It's not normal for family members to receive millions of dollars from overseas interests."
3. "We have the vice president on record saying that the prosecutor was fired."

This is a joke, right? Let's roll the tape:

1. In 1974, Biden bought a home in Greenville for $185,000. Monthly payments on that were maybe a little high for a Senate salary of $44,000, but well within normal. In 1996 he sold the house for $1.2 million and used the money to buy a smaller house in Greenville that was, at the time, easily affordable on a Senate salary of $133,000. Then, a few years ago, using money from speaking fees, he bought a vacation home in Rehoboth Beach for $2.7 million.
   .
   That's it. Biden currently owns two homes, one that was easily affordable on a Senate salary and a second that was paid for out of post-vice-presidential largesse. There's nothing here.
2. "Family members" have indeed received a lot of money doing lobbying for overseas interests. You can decide for yourself what you think of this, but none of the money went to Joe Biden. Again, there's nothing here.
3. Joe Biden did indeed brag that he had forced Ukraine to fire its prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, in 2016. At the time, however, Shokin was not investigating Burisma or any other business related to Hunter Biden. Quite the contrary: Shokin was widely known—both in Europe and the US—to be corrupt and it was Obama administration policy that he should be fired as a condition of aid to Ukraine. There's nothing here.

None of this is even in dispute. We know what houses Biden owns. We know that Biden's son and brother represented foreign interests but none of their earnings went to Biden. And we know perfectly well why Shokin was fired.

This is the best they've got. If it's a joke, it's a sick one.

The Census Bureau released poverty figures for 2022 today:

The official poverty rate is based solely on family income. It declined continuously during the 2014-19 economic expansion, and since then has been about flat. The current official poverty rate is 11.5%, slightly down from last year.

The Supplemental Poverty Rate is a better measure that accounts for ordinary market income plus government payments. Those come in the form of taxes (negative income) and safety net benefits (positive income). During the pandemic, government benefits were high and this caused the SPM to go down. Then the government bennies ended abruptly in 2022 and the SPM went back up to its old level from before the pandemic. This represents an increase of 60% from last year. Child poverty was up 140% from last year.

The official poverty rate is now 10% above its level before the pandemic. The SPM is 6% higher.

This is no ordinary blackbird. This is a French blackbird. Round up 23 more of them and you can make a pie.

I suppose this is hardly unexpected, but even so:

Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday directed top congressional Republicans to open an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, blowing past G.O.P. divisions as he worked to appease far-right lawmakers who have threatened to oust him amid a pitched fight over spending.

Mr. McCarthy said he would task three committees — Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means — with carrying out the inquiry into the president and his family as Republicans hunt for evidence of financial wrongdoing or corruption.

I love that final phrase: "as Republicans hunt for evidence." Needless to say, the reason they're hunting is that they don't actually have any right now. Nonetheless, the lunatics must be assuaged, so we have an impeachment inquiry even though there is no evidence of any wrongdoing.

Once again, note that word: evidence. This does not include suspicions or innuendo or "come on you know he must have......." Nor does it include testimony of bad behavior by Hunter Biden or other members of the Biden clan. Evidence includes: eyewitness testimony of corruption by Joe Biden entered under oath. It includes documents. Recorded conversations. Video. Email and text messages to and from the president. Bank account records. Tax returns. Indications of Biden living beyond his means.

There is none of that. I will award a cookie to the first person who produces any of the above. But my cookies are safe. There isn't any.

The Washington Post says that counties with the highest level of legal opioid use from 2006-2013 (i.e., oxycontin) now have the highest level of fentanyl overdoses:

According to the Post, "The data confirms what’s long been known about the arc of the nation’s addiction crisis: Users first got hooked by pain pills saturating the nation, then turned to cheaper and more readily available street drugs."

I get exasperated at the mindless repetition of "correlation is not causation" from people with no real reason to say it, but in this case I really do doubt the causation that runs from oxy to fentanyl. All this chart shows is that counties with low drug use in 2006 also had low drug use in 2019. Conversely, counties with high drug use in 2006 also had high drug use in 2019. It was just a different drug. But one of the best known findings in illicit drug research is that drug use is faddish. Over the past few decades we've seen waves of crack, followed by marijuana, followed by meth, followed by oxy, and finally followed by fentanyl and heroin.

It's possible that oxy led to fentanyl, but there are also good reasons for the fentanyl crisis to have started around 2014 that are based on chemistry and supply chains and have nothing to do with the oxy crackdown.

I'm not sure what data you'd need to figure out causation here. In the meantime, I'd be a little cautious about accepting the just-so story that says oxy users all switched to fentanyl because they could no longer get their pills.

"Employer costs for employee compensation" is yet another estimate of worker pay from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It's based on a quarterly survey of 35,000 observations from 8,500 establishments. For some reason, federal workers aren't included. Here are results through the second quarter of 2023, adjusted for inflation:

In addition to wages, total comp includes health insurance, retirement, vacation pay, employer costs for Social Security and Medicare, and overtime.

Either way—total comp or just wages—the average worker earns less today than in the final quarter before the pandemic started.

Comparing Q2 to Q1 of this year, wages were down at an annual rate of 1.6% while total comp was down 2.7%. This is a sign that the recent uptick in wages may be leveling off.

Here's a chart of PCE core inflation since 2021:

The dashed red line is three months after the American Rescue Plan was passed. This is the absolute earliest it could have affected inflation, and by then the inflation rate had already spiked from 2% to 7%. It's really not plausible that ARP could have caused this.

But did it cause the brief rebound in inflation later in the year? It's possible. But it's more likely that the bulk of the inflationary pressure came from product shortages, as you can see from the very close association between inflation and supply chain pressure. Mike Konczal confirms this in an analysis here. Spending from the various stimulus plans probably had an effect, but not a big one.