Kevin Drum

Here is Look #1:

On a national level, there's nothing to see. Housing is historically plentiful. Here's Look #2:

This is new building activity, and nationally it once again looks OK. But building has nearly ground to a halt in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, New York City, Baltimore, and Washington DC.

There are two possible solutions to this. First, we can force big cities to approve a lot more housing that they don't want. Second, we can wait for people to migrate toward places they don't want to go. Bottom line: Someone's going to end up unhappy, and the only question is who.

Here's another Milky Way picture. It's not a great one, taken at the tail end of the season and requiring a lot of processing to get rid of some weird coloring. But lots of stars!

I'll be trying again with my new camera, but not for another six months or so. For the time being the Milky Way is below the horizon at night, taking a well-deserved rest until summer.

In 2022 Republicans won 50.6% of the total vote for the House of Representatives.

With most of the votes counted in 2024, Republicans have won 50.7% of the vote.

I dunno. This is perhaps not really a huge mandate for change for the Republican Party?

Elon Musk has successfully focused the discourse on the size of the federal workforce, and now there are bad numbers floating around on all sides. Conservatives like to show partial numbers that are hugely inflated by growth at the Department of Homeland Security. Liberals show numbers that include only salaried workers.

The real number covers the entire government and includes contract workers, who make up a huge portion of the federal workforce. And since the workforce obviously goes up as population grows, you have to adjust for that.

So here it is, based on figures from Paul Light, who is probably the best source of reliable figures we have.

Here's my latest PSA result:

Hum de hum. Anything under 4 is fine, but today's result is up from the last one. I don't like that. I've got a visit with the prostate doc next week, and I'll ask if this is anything to be concerned about.

Here's something esoteric that I didn't know:

Even as overall productivity has risen 34% (since 1987), capital productivity has declined 15%. And it's not just the US:

Capital productivity has plummeted across all rich countries. In the food and construction sectors it's down more than 50%. In other sectors it's down 30%, and only in IT is it up.

Why? Remember the investment drought we talked about frequently during the financial panic? Another term for that is capital glut, and we still have it. There's so damn much capital sloshing around the world that it's become super abundant compared to labor—and since abundant inputs are inherently the least productive, capital productivity has suffered. Lenders are eager to lend and even mediocre projects get funded, driving down the overall average.

Does this matter? There's the rub: I don't know. But no one seems to be very concerned about it, so. . .

Yesterday Trump chose former MTV "Real World" host and current Fox host Sean Duffy to be his Transportation Secretary. Today it's this:

Not counting himself, this makes three TV hosts in Trump's cabinet (Hegseth, Duffy, Oz) plus a bevy of other folks with proven chops on Fox. At least Trump is consistent about what he wants.

This is crazy:

Roughly speaking, families in the "upper income" third earn $150,000 or more. And yet 59% of Republicans who make this much say they're working class. A third of Democrats do too.

Where does this come from? I could sort of understand it if these were people who were raised working class and still view themselves that way no matter how much they make. But I've seen the mobility numbers. Most of these high-income folks were raised in high-income families, and the vast majority were raised in at least middle-class families.

What do Republicans think working class means? Anyone who wishes they made more money? Anyone who resents people richer than they are? Anyone who's appalled at how much it costs to fill up their Land Rover?

What the hell is going on here?

A street scene in Santa Ana. Or a sidewalk scene, anyway.

Two internet cables in the Baltic Sea have been cut, and one current guess is that it was done by a Chinese vessel at the behest of Russia. But why cut an obscure cable between Sweden and Lithuania? Rod Thornton, an expert at King's College London, explains:

“It’s cutting a cable that isn’t going to offend too many countries. They could have gone to the Atlantic and cut a cable there between the US and the UK, or between Europe and the US, which could have major, major consequences, so this is a kind of warning shot,” Thornton said.

OK. Second question: why did China get involved, if indeed they did? Answer: Possibly because they wanted the practice for a future war with Taiwan.

Maybe. Of course, the last time something happened in the Baltic we blamed Russia and it turned out to be a Ukrainian op. So don't make up your mind too quickly on this.