Over at Bob Somerby's place he's pondering the question of whether half of all Americans read at less than a 6th grade level. Long story short, if you follow the links from a recent George Will column they lead you to a report that places everybody at one of three different reading levels. The report says that only 46% of adults can read at "Level 3," which a different report casually interprets as "the equivalent of a sixth-grade level."
But my interpretation is different. "Level 3" sounds to me like basic adult proficiency. I'd say that Level 2 is closer to 6th grade proficiency, and something like 70% of US adults can read above that level.¹
Since the NAEP is given to 4th, 8th, and 12th graders, it's easy to interpolate the average scores for 6th graders. That in turn makes it easy to figure out the grade-level reading scores for graduating 12th graders. This chart tells us that 90% of grads read above a 6th grade "basic" level and 75% read above a 6th grade "proficient" level.
Unless lots of adults lose a significant chunk of their reading skills later in life, this suggests that about 75% of Americans read above a 6th grade level. My interpretation of the other test pegged it at 70%. Put together, I'd go with 75% since I suspect the NAEP is the better and more easily interpreted test. But feel free to go with 70% if you're feeling pessimistic in this day and age—which no one could blame you for.
This is a patch of Dame's Rocket blowing in the wind and photographed with a long exposure time. It's my photographic attempt to emulate Monet and his lilies. And while it might not be as good, it sure took a lot less time to make.
The F.D.A. has now taken a final step that could put more accessible, and potentially less expensive, hearing aids in stores by the fall. People seeking out hearing aids will no longer have to be examined by a doctor first.
“As early as mid-October, Americans will be able to purchase more affordable hearing aids over the counter at pharmacies and stores across the country,” President Biden said in a statement.
....The new F.D.A. rule applies to adults ages 18 and older with mild to moderate hearing loss. People with this type of hearing loss may struggle to hear conversations on the phone or in crowded places, and find themselves consistently turning up the volume on their computers or televisions. They may have a hard time distinguishing between voices when multiple people speak at once, or right after each other, and strain to understand people wearing masks.
In my case, I'm not sure my hearing has deteriorated much over the past few years, but it's been a little sketchy for a while. Unfortunately, although modern hearing aids are supposed to be very good, they also cost a fortune: Around $1,500 for a low-end pair at Costco all the way up to $3,000 or more depending on what brand and features you want.
So I'll happily wait until October or even later to see what the market produces when it's unleashed to reach its full potential. Unfortunately, I see two ways for this potential to be unleashed:
The good. Reputable manufacturers produce high-quality products with an impressive range of features and charge only a few hundred dollars per pair.
The bad. Dodgy manufacturers, with no audiologists standing between them and their Parade/AARP/Fox News audience, produce lots of junk that's marketed with loud, misleading ads.
As always, I suppose the answer is that we'll have to take the good with the bad. The sad thing is that well off, well educated folks will mostly get the good, while poor, undereducated folks will mostly be the target for the bad.
American Airlines announced yesterday that it planned to buy 20 planes from Boom Supersonic, whose Overture supersonic plane—currently in development and not scheduled to carry passengers until 2029—is alleged to fly about twice as fast as today's commercial jets.
Boom has said Overture will be able to fly over 600 routes in half the time those flights currently take—such as Miami to London in under five hours, and Los Angeles to Honolulu in three hours—at fares comparable with current business-class prices.
Hmmm. You may or may not be aware of this, but a typical business-class seat costs about five times more than a coach seat. So that's a pretty expensive way to save a few hours.
Well, it looks pretty. But can it fly?
Among the vast vacationing middle class, this won't matter. They won't pay fares like this. Among the rich, it also doesn't matter. They'll pay the higher fare without blinking. Hell, they'll pay for a business-class Overture seat, and God only knows how much that will cost. The key, as always, is corporate executives and the upper tier of the middle class. They'll make up the bulk of the market, and it's unclear how much they'll be willing to pay for a squashed¹ but faster flight to Heathrow.
Based on the Concorde experience, which was mostly marketed to the jet set and eventually failed for lack of passengers, I have my doubts about this, especially since the Overture will almost certainly come onto the market late and with fewer features than promised. We'll see in 2029 I guess.
¹At least, I assume that a standard seat will be fairly squashed. This plane is likely to be right on the edge of being a moneymaker, and that means lots of seats and high prices.
Our nation's statistical agencies were busy today, so instead of writing half a dozen posts with half a dozen charts, how about if we just collect them all in one big post? Starting us off today is the Census Bureau with its advance retail sales report for July:
Normally I would chastise everyone reporting about this in nominal terms, since it's a classic example of a series that only makes sense if you adjust it for inflation. But it so happens that inflation last month was roughly zero—actually down slightly—so everyone gets a reprieve from my usual chewing out.
In nominal terms, retail sales were up 0.03% from June to July. In real terms they were up 0.05%. In other words, basically flat no matter how you measure it, but still well above the pre-pandemic trendline.
But that's not all from the busy nerds at the Census Bureau. They also have the latest figures for the inventory-to-sales ratio:
This is a ratio of $/$, so once again inflation doesn't matter. Huzzah! In any case, the IS ratio stayed flat at 1.3 in June, which is well below the pre-pandemic trendline. This means that despite some anecdotal reports of bulging warehouses, inventory levels remain historically low. Generally speaking, that's likely to produce higher inflation rather than lower.
Next up is the ever-busy Bureau of Labor Statistics. Today they have JOLTS data by state, which you can see here. Here's the national map for hiring rates:
Alaska and Wyoming have the strongest hiring rates right now. New York, Massachusetts, Washington DC, and Minnesota have the weakest.
Not to be outdone, the BLS also has two releases today. The second one is about the state of youth employment, and it shows total employment, the unemployment rate, etc. Here's the chart for the labor force participation rate over the past few summers:
Every racial group has seen its youth participation in the labor force decline since before the pandemic. The only exception is among Asian youths, who have increased their participation very strikingly from 44% to 49%.
The USDA is pleased to offer us the latest annual figures for production of feed grains. Here's the chart for price increases:
Corn is by far the biggest component of feed grain, and its price was up 31% last year and another 12% this year. In addition, total corn production was down 5% during the 2022/23 season.
That's bad, but on the bright side you will once again be spared a lecture on inflation adjustment because feed grain is itself an important input into the food inflation rate, so you need to see the raw nominal figures. The basic takeaway here is that for the past two years feed grain prices have skyrocketed, which is one of the reasons that food prices are going up so much (the other reasons are fertilizer prices and bad weather that affected the production of corn and sorghum).
Despite receiving billions of dollars in federal funds to help them maintain employment during the pandemic, airlines shed nearly 100,000 jobs over that period. In May they finally caught up to their pre-pandemic employment level, but they're still well below their pre-pandemic trendline. However, there's also this:
In terms of workers per million passengers, for the past year it's hovered around 6,400 compared to 5,800 before the pandemic. That's because even now, despite everything you hear about chaos in the airports, the monthly flow of passengers is still down 11% compared to the last month before the pandemic started.
But this only goes through May, so it doesn't tell us anything about summer travel. For that you'll have to wait a few months.
This is a midnight picture taken from Les Halles of the Palais Royale with the moon rising behind it. The camera is obviously on full telephoto.
I was out with the tripod that night, which led to an unfortunate incident. A pair of Italian teenagers saw that I was taking a picture of la luna and eventually got across to me that they'd like a picture of them taken with their cell phone. That was no problem, but a group of drunken (?) partiers crashed the scene before I could snap a picture. They were likely harmless, but after they had milled around for a while I became concerned that one of them was going to run off with my camera, which was behind me on the tripod. I hurriedly gave the phone back to the Italians, picked up the camera, and headed off.
The Italians were upset when they looked at the camera and realized there was no picture of them. I don't blame them. But I'd do it again.
It's worth noting first that the Post story clearly says it was multiple things that had hurt US credibility with its allies. With its allies. This is very different from the usual criticism that US "weakness" emboldens our enemies.
Nonetheless, the Post does mention the Afghanistan withdrawal as something that generally hurt America's reputation for sticking things out and being a reliable partner in war. And this is ridiculous. The United States spent 20 years in Afghanistan, the majority of them during a period in which it was obvious to everyone that we had little chance of winning or even doing any real good. This is the kind of thing that burnishes your reputation for sticking things out.
In fact, it shows that the US is practically a crackpot when it comes to never admitting defeat. 20 years! It's hard to imagine. If Biden's withdrawal showed anything, it was simply that there are occasional presidents who aren't completely insane over the idea of the US losing its mythical credibility by recognizing facts on the ground and ending a war. Bush couldn't do it, Obama couldn't do it, and Trump couldn't do it (he said he was going to do it, but we don't know if he would have held firm under pressure and actually left Afghanistan if he'd won a second term). But Biden finally did it.
The rest of the world doesn't believe in this alleged issue of credibility. They believe that the United States acts in its own self interest. We enter wars if we think they're in our interest. We leave wars if we think that's in our interest. And everyone knows we have the power to make our threats good if we feel like it. We hardly have to prove that more often than we already do.
The Census Bureau reported today that housing starts dropped 10% in July. But that's a misleading number all by itself. Here it is broken into single-family homes vs. apartment buildings with five or more units:
Apartment buildings have been on an upward trend for more than a year and are up 3% since the beginning of 2022.
But single-family homes are a disaster. They've been declining since the end of last year and are down 21% since the beginning of 2022. It's obvious that home builders don't believe the market will continue to maintain its current level of high prices.
Many retailers that had too little to offer during the early stages of the pandemic now have too much of everything....The resulting pileup of unsold goods forced many big national chains such as Walmart Inc. and Target Corp. to mark down merchandise this year, warning that profits would suffer. Luxury furniture retailer RH and grill maker Weber Inc. pulled their sales forecasts earlier this summer, saying demand had plunged for luxury furniture and outdoor grills. Mattress maker Sleep Number Corp. also began offering additional promotions this year after sales slowed.
After a year of demand outstripping supply, we now have widespread reports of supply outstripping demand. It's hard to see how core inflation can remain high under these conditions.
Here's our usual start-of-Tuesday post. Gasoline prices were down yet again last week from $4.04 to $3.94:
Adjusted for inflation, the price of gasoline is down 23% since its June peak. Hooray for President Biden!
Likewise, the price of oil was down a couple of bucks too. As of today, West Texas Intermediate is at $89 compared to its June peak of $122. That's a decline of 27%.
POSTSCRIPT: I plan to adopt the Trump/GOP policy for this chart. If gasoline prices start going up, I will no longer post it.
One of the most fascinating parts of Mar-a-Lago-gate, or whatever we're calling it, is why Trump left the White House with stacks of classified documents. I can think of lots of reasons, but none of them really make any sense:
Trump just took anything he wanted to have around, refusing to admit to himself that they weren't "his" documents. That's all there was to it.
He took the documents because he hoped to sell them to someone in some way.
He wanted them because they were potentially useful as material to be leaked to the press.
Everything was chaos in the final days of his administration and no one knew what boxes were being hauled out to the moving van. When the National Archives demanded much of it back, Trump grudgingly let them have some of it but dug in his heels at the rest because that's just what Trump does. He's a ten-year-old.
Trump kept stuff that he wanted to eventually share with kinda-sorta-allies (e.g., Israel), people he personally considered allies (Putin), and regular old allies (Great Britain).
That's off the top of my head, and maybe I'm forgetting something obvious. But none of it strikes me as plausible aside from the general argument from idiocy and childish obstinacy. Anyone have any other ideas that seem genuinely likely?
Since the NAEP is given to 4th, 8th, and 12th graders, it's easy to interpolate the average scores for 6th graders. That in turn makes it easy to figure out the grade-level reading scores for graduating 12th graders. This chart tells us that 90% of grads read above a 6th grade "basic" level and 75% read above a 6th grade "proficient" level.
