Kevin Drum

American conservatives are contemptuous of solar and wind power but love nuclear power. They have no particular opinion, as near as I can tell, about tidal or geothermal power.

Why?

Republicans, it seems, are dead set on forcing another debt ceiling crisis later this year. Kevin McCarthy might or might not want this, but the lunatic faction of the GOP bullied him into promising a showdown in order to win their votes for Speaker. So we can expect yet another tedious game of chicken sometime this summer, when government spending breaches the ceiling.

So what's the best solution? I confess that I'm partial to doing nothing. No negotiations, no hostage taking, nothing. When we hit the ceiling, the government stops writing checks and all hell breaks loose. This would be a disaster—I don't think there's any question about that—but at some point we have to put a stop to this idiocy. After watching an implosion of this magnitude, no one would ever try it again.

But this is only in my dreams. I don't really want to destroy the country's finances. I'm afraid I'm too much of a patriot for that.

So what's the best real-life solution? The most popular answer on Twitter is the trillion dollar platinum coin. On the off chance you haven't heard of this, it turns out there's a quirk in the law that allows the Treasury to mint platinum coins in any denomination and use them as legal tender. So Janet Yellen mints a trillion-dollar coin or three, couriers them over to the Federal Reserve, and deposits them in the government account. Crisis averted!

I've never been a fan of this for two reasons. First, it's stupid. Second, the Fed has to accept the coin and I don't think they would. You can argue all day long that they have to accept it, but I think they'd do their own legal analysis and then decline to play the game.

What, then, is the real, non-dreamland answer? My preference is for the easiest possible solution: Just ignore the debt ceiling and keep writing checks. That's it. Get an OLC opinion stating that (a) the spending in question has already been legally appropriated, and (b) the Constitution says the debt of the United States "shall not be questioned." Then tell Republicans to pound sand. The government will continue operating unless they go to court and get a judge to order the Treasury shut down.

Would they call this bluff? Going to court would shine a klieg light on the Republican Party's willingness to stop grandma's Social Security check from being issued. They might think twice about that. And if they went ahead anyway, would a court have the balls to order the printing presses shut down? Would they instead toss the case for lack of standing and breathe a sigh of relief? Or rule on the merits in favor of the government?

I can't say for sure, but I don't think Republicans could win in court, and this would kill the debt ceiling once and for all. It's a low-risk option that's worth a try.

Tyler Cowen points me today to a new study that investigates whether the gender wage gap is affected by family leave laws. The basic strategy is to look at the gender gap by state and compare wages before and after family leave acts were passed. That's a sensible approach.

Long story short, the authors conclude that family leave laws do indeed affect the wage gap. Here's their chart for the gender wage gap on a national basis. To avoid racial confoundments, they compare white women to white men.

The vertical red line shows the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act under Bill Clinton. Sure enough, women were quickly closing the gap until then, but after that their progress slowed down dramatically. This is a little weird, though, because I've never seen a chart like this. Here's the same thing using ordinary old wage income available from the BLS and the Census Bureau:

The BLS counts only full-time workers while the Census counts everyone, which is why the numbers are different. However, they both show similar progress toward closing the wage gap and they both show that progress staying about the same until the Great Recession in 2009. Nothing at all happens in 1993.

But let's assume the study authors did their arithmetic more carefully than me and something really did happen to the wage gap in 1993. They acknowledge that it's difficult to blame FMLA alone for this, since both welfare reform and an EITC increase were passed around the same time. However, after using up the entire Greek alphabet they conclude that it was indeed FMLA at work. In fact, FMLA accounts for virtually the entire effect.

I'm already a little skeptical for two reasons. First, the authors use a tremendous amount of modeling to get their results. Second, it's too perfect: FMLA passed and almost instantly progress on the wage gap slowed down substantially. That's a little hard to believe.

But let's continue anyway. Just exactly what was FMLA responsible for?

In the decade prior to the passage of the family-leave policy, wages for white men are stable. After the passage of a family-leave policy, wages for white men grow steadily to levels that are more than $1 per hour higher.

By contrast, [] prior to the implementation of a leave policy, white women’s wages are increasing steadily to a level that is nearly $1 per hour higher than one decade prior. After the policy, white women’s wages continue to grow at nearly the same annualized rate compared to before the policy.

In short: The growth of women's wages were unaffected but the growth of men's wages accelerated.

I just don't know about this. Aside from my other issues, I can't think of a mechanism for this. Why would men's wages suddenly accelerate after passage of a family leave act?

The authors don't try to address this, which is fine. If they don't know, they don't know. Still, you'd really like to have some idea of how this could work, especially when the results are so head scratching. After all, most European countries have better family leave policies than us and they have lower gender wage gaps:

Maybe I'm missing something here, but if I am I don't know what it is. For the time being, put me down as agnostic about this.

Jesus Christ:

I'm not sure there's been a less silenced group in all of history than modern conservatives. They have their own TV network. They have the entire AM radio dial. They have social media networks for their own private use. They have churches, CEOs, and think tanks at their beck and call. They own the Supreme Court. They have magazines, newspapers, and email chains. They are the loudest and whiniest political movement of my lifetime.

Silenced? I would jump for joy if they'd agree to shut up just for a single day. If there really is a conspiracy to silence them, it is the most bumbling goddamn conspiracy in all of human history.

This is a gorgeous great blue heron that I photographed during my vacation in Virginia. But this was the one that got away. As I approached it for the first time, it flew away before I could get my camera ready—and it was absolutely magnificent in flight. The best I've ever seen. So I moved along and tried a second time, but no dice. Then a third time, but no luck that time either. It flew away too soon and in the direction opposite me, so I never got a good shot.

What a shame.

WARNING! As you probably know, a few classified documents were found last year in Joe Biden's old office while it was being cleaned out. The National Archives was immediately informed and the documents were all turned over. For some reason, though, the story only broke yesterday.

Lots of Democrats are now in a panic over the possibility that the media will "bothsides" this, pretending that Biden's minor document mistake is equivalent to the hundreds of classified documents that Donald Trump stole and then refused to return until they were uncovered via search warrant and he was forced to turn them over.

DON'T PANIC! It's only been a day. So far the Biden story has merely been reported, as it ought to be, and as I write this it's already nothing more than a tiny blurb far below the fold in every major newspaper. By tomorrow it will probably be gone.

Why do I think this? (1) Every article I've read goes to great lengths to acknowledge that the Trump and Biden affairs have almost nothing in common. (2) There's no reason to think that any further documents will be found, which would have provided the drip-drip-drip that stories like this need to stay alive. (3) It's big news on CNN and Fox, but only because cable news is voracious for this kind of stuff. They'll both move on before long. (4) Even Republicans probably won't bother too much with it. It's not much of a story, and anyway, they've got bigger fish to fry (Hunter Biden's laptop, the Chinese lab origin of COVID-19, anti-Trump corruption in the FBI, the invasion of America by illegal immigrants, etc.).

NO WORRIES, MATE! Unless someone uncovers something truly damning—which is unlikely in the extreme—this story will die very soon. In the meantime, the best thing we can all do is ignore it.

Hey, lookie here:

California needs a warrior in the Senate—to stand up to special interests, fight the dangerous imbalance in our economy, and hold so-called leaders like Mitch McConnell accountable for rigging our democracy.

Today, I'm proud to announce my candidacy for the U.S. Senate in 2024. pic.twitter.com/X1CSE8T12B

— Katie Porter (@katieporteroc) January 10, 2023

If she wins, she'll be the first Democrat ever elected to the Senate from Orange County.

Just for the lulz, here are inflation expectations over the next 30 years as estimated by the Cleveland Fed:

Everything is fine. There is absolutely nothing worrisome in any of this.

FWIW, I think near-term inflation will be lower than this. Rates are already pretty low right now and are going to get lower as the official series catches up to housing prices. Underlying pressures are also going to continue easing, and then, in a few months, we're going to run into the buzzsaw of last year's interest rate hikes. I wouldn't be surprised if CPI is hovering around 1% during the second half of 2023.

There's no point in keeping this survey open any longer, and I'm afraid it's bad news for my letter writer this morning: "nothingburger" turns out to be a huge fan favorite, corralling more than 80% of the vote. That's almost as good as Putin.

I get letters:

It’s flabbergasting to me that such a thoughtful thinker and talented writer would use this imbecilic expression “nothingburger.”

Thanks! Thoughtful and talented are great things to be.

But what about nothingburger? Is it imbecilic? Or is it a great slang term? I think there's no way to resolve this except by polling the masses. Pick your poison.