Archives for 2024

The Minneapolis Federal Reserve has a paper on inflation where the author gathers stats by race and location, among other indicators.  Starting with race:

In a recent interview, New York Fed economist Rajashri Chakrabarti told me the transportation component of the basket was a significant factor that drove inflation for Hispanic households more than 1.5 percentage points above average. As vehicle and gas prices normalized, housing inflation became the more important factor, with a disproportionate effect on Asian households. But by mid-2023, the differences by race were again small.

The New York Fed also deflates each group’s weekly earnings by its respective inflation rate. This shows that after all the fluctuations in recent years, earnings adjusted for inflation have taken a slight step backward from pre-pandemic across the board (Figure 6). And there has been little change in the relative inequality across the groups.

Here’s one on rural vs urban:

The author notes that rural residents drive 76% more than urban residents, which might contribute to that jump.

Inflation by Race and LocationPost + Comments (58)

I don’t post about international affairs much — that’s Adam’s thing and the only politics I know anything about is in North America.  But, as is our ritual over the holidays, I watched the nightly news with my old man last night, and this story is just pure horror:

One of northern Gaza’s last functioning hospitals, Kamal Adwan in Beit Lahia, is “suffering from a stifling siege,” Gaza’s Health Ministry said Friday after Israeli forces stormed inside and “forcibly” removed health workers, patients and family members, as military vehicles surrounded the hospital.

“The operating and surgical departments, laboratory, maintenance, and emergency units have been completely burned, and the fire is now spreading to the buildings,” the ministry’s statement said.

This is from NBC News and it ran in last night’s prime-time newscast.  One of the most gut-wrenching parts of the video was watching the hospital administrator, who had been interviewed multiple times by NBC (they said) being dragged out and labeled as a Hamas collaborator.  He looked just broken.

Again, I’m not an expert in the Gaza conflict, but I am a human being with two eyes and two ears, and this whole fucking episode has been nothing but poison for our side, who we like to think are the “good guys”.  The regular reports of Biden being big mad at Bibi Netanyahu, while doing essentially nothing about Bibi’s obvious prolongation of this conflict to stave off the reckoning for his corruption, was at least a factor in our loss this cycle, and certainly promoted the narrative of Biden being old and out of touch.

It doesn’t fucking matter that Trump will be worse, which he certainly will be.  From the perspective of consequences for innocents in Gaza, how much worse can it get than burning down one of the last functioning hospitals, which is happening prior to Trump taking office?

It does matter that Hamas killed 1,200 in October, 2023.  Does that justify burning down a hospital in December, 2024, and if it does, why?   Does it justify killing 45,000 Palestinians, as well as hundreds of journalists and aid workers?

The moral ugliness of financing the army that burns down hospitals and murders civilians was a factor in the election, and we need to get this one right next time.  I don’t know, exactly, what “right” is, but I know what it isn’t. I saw it on TV last night.

PoisonousPost + Comments (156)

I’m going to start with some words of wisdom from Frank Luntz:

You say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and then again and again and again and again, and about the time that you’re absolutely sick of saying it is about the time that your target audience has heard it for the first time.

Or, perhaps the immortal words of the White Stripes are more to your liking: “Well, I’ve said it once before, and it bears repeating.”

Trump makes a lot of noise.  That noise is designed to distract from some embarrassing truths about the guy:

•  He lies to his base all the time.  He lied about immigration — he likes visa programs for him and his rich friends.  He lied about bringing down the price of groceries — now he says it would be “very hard” which means it won’t happen.
• Trump has lost the juice:  he’s old and weak.  He lets Elon Musk call the shots while he’s out golfing at Mar-a-Lago.  No wonder everyone is calling Elon “President Musk.”
• Trump’s brain is shot.  He thinks the short-term visas he gets so he can underpay his immigrant cleaners at Mar-a-Lago are the same as the long-term ones they give to tech workers in Silicon Valley, probably because President Musk told him so.

Is this simplistic?  God, I hope so, and if it isn’t, we need to dumb it down further.  Whenever some reporter shoves a microphone in front of a Democrat and asks about Trump’s latest stupid remarks, calling them “stupid” and pointing out that they’re either a lie, a sign of weakness, or a sign of him losing the plot is, as far as I’m concerned, the way to go.

He’s a Doddering Old Liar – Repeat ItPost + Comments (68)