The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its statewide employment data today, which allows us to look once again at unemployment rates in states that stopped paying expanded UI benefits in June. Did this get people back to work faster? Did unemployment go down more in states that stopped the expanded benefits?
Last month the evidence suggested that stopping UI benefits early had no effect. Here's the latest data using unemployment figures from May through August:
States that ended benefits early: -2.3 percentage points
States that continued benefits: -3.4 percentage points
Once again, there's no effect. In fact, states that stopped UI benefits early performed worse than states that continued benefits.
For what it's worth, if you look at the percent difference instead of the percentage point difference, both sets of states saw the same decline in unemployment, about 5.1%.
There is some evidence from other studies that job seekers were more likely to find a job in states that stopped UI benefits early, but there's still no evidence that either employment levels or unemployment rates responded. Overall, it's hard to see that stopping UI benefits early had much effect at all on the labor market.
This is a lovely picture of the Huntington Beach pier at sunset, a photographic favorite. I found this image¹ a couple of days ago when I was looking for a picture I had taken last November of the "Stop the Steal" nutbags rallying in Huntington Beach. I didn't remember taking any pictures of the pier, but of course I did. If you're at the pier when the sun is going down, it's almost impossible to resist.
¹Two images, actually, stitched together in Photoshop.
Five years ago Australia cut a deal with France to supply them with $66 billion worth of diesel-powered submarines. Today, they suddenly announced that they were pulling out of the deal and would instead be working with the US and UK on a program to supply them with nuclear-propulsion subs. The French are not happy about this:
The world is a jungle. France has just been reminded this bitter truth by the way the US and the UK have stabbed her in the back in Australia. C’est la vie.
All the reporting I've seen says that it was Australia that initiated talks with the US and Britain, so if anyone stabbed France in the back it would seem to be Australia. But I guess it's easier to blame countries you don't like that much in the first place.
The US has never shared its nuclear propulsion tech with anyone aside from the UK, so this agreement basically puts Australia on the top of the heap of US allies. Naturally this irked the French, who put out an official statement:
The American choice to exclude a European ally and partner such as France from a structuring partnership with Australia, at a time when we are facing unprecedented challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, whether in terms of our values or in terms of respect for multilateralism based on the rule of law, shows a lack of coherence that France can only note and regret.
I'm sure more will be leaked shortly about what was behind this specific deal, but generally speaking it's little more than a dramatic illustration of something that's been obvious for a long time: Australia is simply a more reliable ally than anyone in continental Europe. And that's become more and more true over time as Europe's interests steadily diverge from ours.
This is not a judgment about whose foreign policy is better or more farsighted. It's just acknowledging a fact. Europe is reluctant to challenge China because they're more economically dependent on them than we are. They're friendlier toward Russia because Russia is right next door. Most of them (though not France) are unwilling to meet their NATO funding obligations. Beyond that, there always seems to be endless squabbling over trade and security issues of all kinds and sizes. France, needless to say, is one of the worst squabblers.
It's entirely understandable that Europe chafes at the idea that they should accept junior status and let the US call the shots. At the same time, they can hardly blame the US for wanting allies who have a similar view of the world. Australia does, and increasingly Europe doesn't.
This is hardly a sign of some kind of huge breakdown in US-European relations. It's not. It's just one more straw on the camel's back. At some point, though, Europe needs to make up its mind. Do they want to do what they continually threaten to do, namely build a genuinely formidable pan-European military force? Or do they want to continue along the fractured, militarily useless path they're on? If the former, they can call their own shots. If the latter, they have to accept that the US is going to provide the lead whether they like it or not.
So far they haven't decided. But they can't put it off forever.
This is apropos of nothing in particular. It just happened to come up in conversation the other day:
The US suicide rate has been increasing since 2000, and it's a worrisome trend. On the other hand, suicide is still less common than it was during the entire first half of the 20th century.
So is suicide "higher than normal"? It depends on whether normal is the first or second half of the 20th century, and that's impossible to say. On the other hand, we can say that the US trend is quite different from that of our peer countries:
In 1990 the US suicide rate was middle of the pack. Today it's at the top and still rising. Why?
I don't know who this dude is. We were out and about on some errand or another and Marian was driving while I randomly snapped pictures out my window. I caught this guy waiting for the pedestrian signal to change and decided he had sort of an interesting look to him. So now he's our lunchtime photo.
In their new book, Bob Woodward and Robert Costa report that Gen. Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was worried that Donald Trump might do something deranged after losing the 2020 election. So he did two things.
First, he called the head of China's military to assure him that the US was stable and had no plans to start a war. Second, he convened his senior officers and told them to let him know if they received orders to launch nuclear weapons. This came after a phone call with Nancy Pelosi following the January 6 insurrection in which they both agreed that Trump's mental capacity had deteriorated and he was going crazy.
The big question here is whether Milley's actions violated the US tradition of civilian control of the military. Was he seizing control from Trump, the legally elected commander-in-chief?
On the calls to China, I don't see it. It's routine for people in Milley's position to speak privately with their counterparts in other countries, and all Milley did was try to reassure Li Zuocheng that he had no need to worry about a surprise attack. That doesn't strike me as being outside his lane, especially taking into account that Trump really was acting so erratically that even his own staff was deeply worried about him. Reassuring both allies and adversaries is part of the territory under circumstances like this.
The call with Pelosi and the order to his senior officers is a different thing entirely. The former could easily be construed as a conspiracy to oppose the president, and the latter could just as easily be construed as direct interference in the president's legal authority over nuclear weapons.
At the same time, what do you do if you honestly think the president is acting so bizarrely that he can't be trusted? Just sit around and stew about it? There are, unfortunately, things that simply aren't black and white.
My tentative sense is that (a) Milley did the right thing, but (b) he needed to resign afterward. That's a heavy price, but if the situation is that serious you need to demonstrate clearly that it's a price you're willing to pay. A personal sacrifice sends the message that you take civilian control of the military seriously even if you felt you had to interfere with it temporarily under extraordinary circumstances.
For what it's worth, I'd recommend that everyone hold off on hot takes about "What the California recall means for ________ ." The recall was the work of idiot Trumpistas, and it failed because California is a very blue state and Republicans had no credible candidates to oppose Gavin Newsom. It has no lessons for normal elections in swing states.
That won't stop anyone, I suppose. But you have been warned.
After 16 years of Republican governors, California has elected three Democrats in the past 20 years. Republicans have tried to recall two of the three.
It's time for this nonsense to end, and given the current state of the Republican Party there's no guarantee that even tonight's epic drubbing will convince them to stop. At this point, we don't need to reform the recall process, we need to eliminate it entirely. It serves no purpose that can't be accomplished by other means.
The Wall Street Journal has gotten hold of a trove of internal Facebook documents and is publishing a series of stories about what it's found. Today the focus is on Instagram, and specifically on the impact Instagram has on teen girls:
For the past three years, Facebook has been conducting studies into how its photo-sharing app affects its millions of young users. Repeatedly, the company’s researchers found that Instagram is harmful for a sizable percentage of them, most notably teenage girls.
“We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” said one slide from 2019, summarizing research about teen girls who experience the issues.
....“Social comparison is worse on Instagram,” states Facebook’s deep dive into teen girl body-image issues in 2020, noting that TikTok, a short-video app, is grounded in performance, while users on Snapchat, a rival photo and video-sharing app, are sheltered by jokey filters that “keep the focus on the face.” In contrast, Instagram focuses heavily on the body and lifestyle.
At first I found this all pretty plausible, and I suppose I still do. Still, girls are exposed to unrealistic body expectations starting with Barbie dolls in early childhood and extending later to TV, magazines, the internet, videogames, and more. They are practically surrounded by it, and I started to wonder if trading some hours of, say, TV for a few hours on Instagram really made a big difference.
I don't know if there's any way to answer this, but the Journal article did suggest that Instagram's impact on body issues was producing an increase in eating disorders. I could at least check that, and here's what I found:
This is all people with eating disorders, not just teen girls, and it only goes through 2017. Still, Instagram has been a Facebook property since 2012, and if it's had more than a trivial impact on eating disorders you'd expect that it might show up in the overall data. But obviously it doesn't. The share of the population with eating disorders has dropped steadily over the past decade, exactly the period when Instagram use was rising.
In the end this probably doesn't tell us anything firm, but it seemed worth throwing out there. In any research of this kind, the proper question to ask is "compared to what?" Instagram might well have a negative effect on teenage girls, but to know if it's truly dangerous you have to ask "compared to what?" That is, what would teenage girls be doing if they weren't on Instagram, and would it be better or worse? That question doesn't seem to have been addressed.
Last week I told you I had three wildflowers I had never been able to identify. So why not let you guys take a crack at all of them? Here is mystery picture #2, a medium-size violet flower with dark violet stripes.
UPDATE: Probably a common mallow.
April 20, 2019 — Laguna Coast Wilderness Park, Orange County, California
