Kevin Drum

There are times when I feel like I no longer understand anything. Take money, for example. No one really understands money, so I've never felt too bad about not understanding it myself. Still, at least I had a rough idea of why one thing might be money and another thing wasn't. Sadly, I'm not even sure of that, anymore. Here is the Wall Street Journal today on China's shiny new digital currency:

It might seem money is already virtual, as credit cards and payment apps such as Apple Pay in the U.S. and WeChat in China eliminate the need for bills or coins. But those are just ways to move money electronically. China is turning legal tender itself into computer code.

Huh. China isn't merely moving money digitally, it's turning money itself into digits. I have no idea what that means. Then there's this:

China’s version of a digital currency is controlled by its central bank, which will issue the new electronic money. It is expected to give China’s government vast new tools to monitor both its economy and its people. By design, the digital yuan will negate one of bitcoin’s major draws: anonymity for the user.

So . . . it's not a blockchain currency or anything like that. It's just stuff issued by China's central bank.

But doesn't China's central bank already issue money? Yes, and of course it issues much of it digitally, that being how the world works these days. We could refer to this as digitally issued yuan. The new currency, by contrast, is digital yuan.

So what's the selling point? Here's one possibility:

Digitization wouldn’t by itself make the yuan a rival for the dollar in bank-to-bank wire transfers, analysts and economists say. But in its new incarnation, the yuan, also known as the renminbi, could gain traction on the margins of the international financial system.

It would provide options for people in poor countries to transfer money internationally. Even limited international usage could soften the bite of U.S. sanctions, which increasingly are used against Chinese companies or individuals.

Go ahead and call me cynical, but I don't think China cares even slightly about the ability of people in poor countries to transfer money. In fact, as far I can tell, the real reason behind the e-yuan is that China feels that its citizens are just too damn free. The new currency, since it's purely digital, can be tracked perfectly. The government will know about every penny you spend, and just as e-books are merely "licenses," rather than actual books, the new yuan is programmable. "Beijing has tested expiration dates to encourage users to spend it quickly, for times when the economy needs a jump start."

Uh huh. And check out this non-sequitur: "Beijing is also positioning the digital yuan for international use and designing it to be untethered to the global financial system." That would be a helluva trick, wouldn't it? International but not tied to anything actually international. It makes no more sense to me than it did for the old soft currencies in the communist bloc countries.

Long story short, I don't see anything new here. What I see is a recognition by China that it wants more control over its citizens and it's too late to get that with the current incarnation of the yuan. The horse has already left that particular barn. It's better to start completely over with a currency that keeps everyone on a tight leash.

But that only works if the e-yuan doesn't become an international currency. So perhaps this means that China is planning to have two currencies going forward: the yuan for international use and the e-yuan for domestic use.

WARNING: No one else seems to be interpreting the e-yuan this way. This probably means I don't understand what's going on. But then again, maybe no one else does either.

I've written before about the impact of education on racism. There's considerable evidence that many—but not all—systemic effects of racism are really effects of systemically poor education. Black students, on average, graduate from high school reading at about a 9th grade level, and this hamstrings them throughout the rest of their lives.

Here's another example from a recent study:

We all know that COVID-19 mortality is higher in Black communities than in white communities. But this study, which examines 400,000 death certificates and stratifies them by education, presents a different picture. Race continues to have an impact, but once you account for education it turns out that mortality rates are pretty similar among both Black and white people.¹

More generally, the authors conclude that education has a huge impact on COVID-19 mortality rates, as the chart above makes clear. Roughly speaking, high school grads die at a rate 3x higher than college grads, and this is true for every racial group.

This is purely an observational study. It presents the data but doesn't attempt to ascertain why low education levels are so deadly. There are some obvious possibilities—poor access to health care, crowded neighborhoods, inability to work from home, etc.—but concrete answers will have to wait for further research.

¹The study also includes other racial groups. Compared to white people, mortality rates are higher for Native Americans and lower for both Hispanics and Asian Americans.

The daily vaccination rate hit 4 million for a couple of days this weekend, and even Easter Sunday was over 3 million. This is terrific progress.

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through April 4. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through April 3. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most important chart in all of national politics. Read it carefully. Absorb it. Only then can you begin your journey toward lasting insight.

Conservatives are outraged by the uniformly negative response to Georgia's new voting law. There are, they say, some good things about the law too.

Fair enough. So I went through and tallied up the major good and bad aspects of the law. The bad things are taken from liberal complaints. The good things are taken directly from what conservatives say. Here's the summary:

The most serious problems with the bill are the three bolded red items at the top. As near as I can tell, conservatives don't even bother to say anything about those aside from a pro forma complaint that Fulton County (home of Atlanta) is totally incompetent and deserves to be taken over anyway.

The others are mostly defended as legitimate ways to increase the security of voting, though without any real attempt to demonstrate that there have been any security problems in the first place.

On the good side of things, it's nice to have an extra Saturday of voting and to make an attempt to do something about long voting lines. Codifying early voting hours is an entirely different thing, however: it probably has no effect on urban centers, which already have longer hours, but it does keep polls open longer in rural areas. I assume we all know that rural areas are generally more heavily Republican, don't we?

Long story short, conservatives protest way too much. Even restricting myself to major provisions of the bill, the score is 11-2 in favor of items that make it harder to vote—especially for Democrats. For the most part, I have a feeling that Georgia Republicans will fail in their attempt to suppress the Democratic vote, partly because they've chosen to target things like absentee ballots, which don't really seem to favor Democrats in the first place, and partly because the other provisions won't have more than a small effect. Nevertheless, the intent to restrict voting is plain as day, and there are only a couple of token provisions that expand voting rights. It's disgraceful, and Republicans have no call to complain that major corporations in Georgia, who don't want to be viewed as accessories to partisan voter suppression that impacts Black voters more than white voters, are publicly complaining about it. What else could they expect?

POSTSCRIPT: I've deliberately omitted lots of minor provisions in the bill. However, if I've missed any major provisions on either side let me know and I'll add them.

UPDATE: I've been convinced that the ban on allowing provisional ballots if you show up at the wrong precinct is probably a fairly major problem. It's been added to the table.

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through April 2. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

My M-protein level has become so steady it's almost eerie:

But stable means my multiple myeloma is being held at bay, so I have no complaints. (Aside from the Evil Dex, of course.)

Lots of writers these days are moving to Substack, where they can charge subscription fees for their keen insights. But who else offers you a monthly look at their brave fight against cancer in EZ chart form? That's what I call giving the people what they want. How come everyone doesn't do this?

Catherine Rampell provides us with this chart today showing job losses during the pandemic:

Back in December, men and women with children had both lost jobs at about the same rate—and it was a lower rate than men and women without kids. In January, women with kids ticked downward and they haven't made up any ground since then.

There are two possible lessons here. Lesson #1 is that although it took a while to show up, women with kids really have borne the brunt of the recession. Lesson #2 is that there's a lot of noise in the trendlines and you shouldn't draw any firm conclusions from just a few months of data. My personal guess is that in the end, it will turn out that women with children really did lose jobs at a higher rate than others, but the difference is likely to be smallish. It will probably be six months before we know for sure.