Author: Kevin Drum

The headline CPI index in September clocked in 0.41% higher than the previous month, an annualized rate of 5.1%. This is a tick higher than it was in August, though still quite a bit lower than the peaks of earlier this year:

Core CPI, which excludes food and energy, came in at 3.0%. Compared to 12 months ago, the inflation rate for food rose to 4.5%.

As always, this is just one month of data and not something to be panicked over. Nonetheless, it clearly suggests a little more inflationary momentum than we had last month.

Here's another chart from the American Family Survey. This one is bonkers:

Take a look at the right-hand panel: it shows that in 2020 Democrats were happier than Republicans about the helpfulness of state and local government—which is no surprise since Democrats are generally more positive about government programs than Republicans. In 2021, everyone was even happier about state and local government, but the difference between partisans remained about the same.

Now take a look at the left-hand panel. When Donald Trump was president, Republicans were way more positive about the helpfulness of the federal government compared to Democrats. But in 2021, when Joe Biden was president, Republican views plummeted and Democratic views skyrocketed even though a neutral observer would say that very little had changed.

This is nuts. On a question of a fairly concrete nature, the partisan split went from net +28 to net -26. But only for the federal government. The partisan split for state and local governments, which didn't have Donald Trump or Joe Biden to influence things, barely budged.

But this doesn't mean that views of state government aren't partisan. Quite the contrary. States mostly have governments that reflect the populace: Republicans have Republican governments and Democrats have Democratic governments. So it makes sense that partisans on both sides would register satisfaction with how helpful their state government was.

More generally, this is a dramatic illustration of a general point: never take seriously an issue poll that just shows an overall number. When you break it down, you'll always find a huge partisan split, and that's what really matters. In today's America, partisanship rules everything.

The 2021 edition of the American Family Survey is out, and it has lots of data about the state of the American family. None of it struck me as super noteworthy, though, until I got to this:

Among all income groups, there was a sharp drop in families experiencing an economic crisis during both pandemic years. In other words, the gigantic aid bills worked.

Among other things, this is yet more evidence for why the end of the eviction moratorium doesn't seem to have been a big deal. Low-income families, who are the ones most vulnerable to eviction, have been better off over the past two years than they were pre-pandemic. This means they've mostly kept up with their rent and aren't in any more danger of being evicted than ever. This jibes with the latest Household Pulse Survey, which was released a few days ago:

There was a slight uptick in rent anxiety in the early September survey, but it was just a blip. In the late September survey, things ticked back down to normal.

This is a Bateleur eagle at the San Diego Zoo. According to the repository of all human knowledge, bateleur is French for either "street performer" or "tumbler," depending on which contributor you choose to believe. In any case, he looks mean. If you had face off against one of these guys in the octagon, you'd be toast.

Tomorrow is inflation day, but to keep us occupied until then we got new JOLTS data today for the month of August:

These numbers are peculiar: there were about half a million fewer jobs filled than in July (fewer hires + more quits) but that didn't cause job openings to increase. It caused them to decrease by about half a million.

Meanwhile, during the last 12 months quits have increased by 1.3 million. It sure doesn't look like people are worried about finding another job even though the number of hires is lower than it was a year ago.

The job market seems to make little sense these days. People are quitting their jobs in increasing numbers, which is normal during an economic recovery, but employers aren't hiring more people—which is very much not normal during a recovery. So what happened to all these people who quit their jobs? Why didn't employers try harder to keep them? And is the gap between job openings and hires really as huge as it seems?

The conventional theory at the moment is that workers are "holding back," living off their sweet government bennies while they look for better jobs. Increasingly, though, this doesn't make a lot of sense. I mean, sure, a lot of the jobs on offer are crappy—fast food, retail, delivery, etc.—but are there really millions of people who are convinced they can do better just because a year has passed? That strikes me as a surprisingly unrealistic view of things.

As for employers, a huge gap between job openings and hires should prompt them to offer sharply higher wages. Within traditional low-wage industries, there's evidence of this in leisure and hospitality, but not elsewhere:

Hum de hum. If it seems like I'm rambling, it's because I am. I truly don't know exactly what to make of all this. It's almost as if workers and employers are playing a game of chicken, waiting to see who caves in first.

So far, President Biden has taken a very Obama-ish no-drama attitude toward his big spending bill. This is probably smart. Things may look messy now, but he knows that once something gets passed everyone will soon forget the sausage-making that went into it.

Still, surely all the actors in this little drama—Manchin, Sinema, moderates, progressives, activists—understand that they all have a vested interest in the success of the Democratic Party. Like it or not, it's the only game in town, and the longer they keep fighting the more inept and feeble the party looks. There's plenty of time to overcome this, but not an infinite amount of time. And yet, no one seems much interested in getting something out the door now while the next debt ceiling crisis is still a couple of months away.

It's time to do a deal, folks. Obamacare expansion, childcare, family leave, and long-term care should be the top priorities. Those are programs that can be sold as middle-class benefits even though they help everyone, poor and middle class alike. And they're concrete programs, things that are easily understood and that help out with concrete problems that affect a huge chunk of the population.

They're also things that everyone can get behind. Unlike Obamacare, which Democrats largely ran away from in 2010, there's no one who needs to run away from any of these things. They're popular, and they deserve to be popular. If Democrats campaign on them, they'll be associated with the party forever, just like Social Security and Medicare.

You may remember me griping a while back that it was impossible to take a good picture of our new bridge unless I had a blimp or something. I still don't have a blimp, but I do have a drone, and it turns out to indeed be a perfect tool for bridge photography. So here you go. The top photo is the Gerald Desmond Bridge during the day. The middle photo is the same view at night. And the bonus bottom photo shows both the old and new bridges.

I may try this again next June, when the morning sun provides better light. Maybe.

Check this out:

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said he would step down following accusations of corruption less than two years after his re-election.

Mr. Kurz’s departure is the latest blow for conservatives in Western Europe, who have been struggling in recent years. Germany’s Christian Democratic Union lost a national election last month after leading the government for the past 16 years under Chancellor Angela Merkel. Conservatives are in the opposition from France to Spain and Portugal.

A couple of years ago democracy was on the run as right-wing parties around the world took power. Today they're all struggling to remain relevant. It's remarkable how times change, isn't it?

Is the Fed planning to taper support for the economy too soon? After all, Delta had a bigger effect than they had predicted, and the jobs market is still pretty sluggish. Maybe they should hold off?

Maybe. But much of this concern is based on slow employment growth and the "missing millions" of jobs. Anecdotally, though, workers say no one will hire them and employers say they can't find workers—and no one seems to know what's really going on here. Meanwhile, the headline unemployment rate is a very respectable 4.8%.

As for me, I keep coming back to simple stuff like this:

As you can see, consumer spending caught up to its old trendline in March and has been precisely where it should be ever since. You'd need a microscope to suss out any kind of weakness relative to trend.

As long as consumer spending keeps rising, it's hard for me to think there's anything badly wrong with the economy. But I could be wrong about this. Maybe spending is being propped up by households that are drawing down their savings, and it will collapse when savings are used up. And there's still the job market weirdness to figure out. And GDP still hasn't quite caught up to potential.

Still, it looks to me like our recovery is close to complete. Not totally, but pretty close.

There is a cat hidden in this picture. Can you find him?