Noah Webster would be proud

McLovin out here catching strays

It’s a bit silly to regulate water usage by datacenters specifically when they aren’t even close to one of the largest industrial water consumers, much less compared to ag.

Most relatable thing he’s ever done tbh

Follow-Up: Mortgages by Credit Score In yesterday’s post, I mapped Fannie Mae’s credit data to the national data to try to get a broad sense of current lending conditions relative to past decades.

There is another underreported cause of this lack of starter homes: in 2008, the government made policy changes that cut mortgages to people with <740 credit scores compared to historical averages:

kevinerdmann.substack.com/p/follow-up-...

There’s also been some weird normalization of antisocial behavior. For example, people refusing to follow instructions from flight attendants on airplanes. This is WAY up post-COVID for no obvious reason.

The Black Death is no longer a useful heuristic as we have built an economy that uses taxes on productive workers to fund the social safety net for the rest of society. This didn’t exist in the Middle Ages.

If and only if the “old people” agree to reduce their entitlements (Social Security and Medicare in the US). Otherwise, the excess earnings of the younger workers are consumed by taxes to cover expenses for retiree benefits.

See: Japan’s Lost Decade

West Side Story

Many such cases!

According to BLS statistics - YES! It’s a very strange situation right now

My personal opinion is there must be some correlation with social media and the bubbles we surround ourselves with, but I don’t have any strong evidence to support this.

Do you have evidence for this? In 2024, voters gave the fascist advocacy party a government trifecta. Is anti-capitalism sentiment higher now than it was in 1999 leading to the Battle of Seattle WTO protests?

Sure. Why are people saying this now but didn’t say the same thing in previous times when things were also bad? What changed?

Agreed. So maybe people “think the job market is bad” but it’s certainly nothing like the 10% unemployment rate of Oct ‘09. In other words - there were 3X as many people looking for work and yet people are saying now “things are worse” which is CRAZY

This is 100% correct and quite literally the charter of the Federal Reserve.

Biden was in a catch-22

Maybe “people think there’s a poor labor market and slow wage growth” because reality is that median real wages are at an all time high (or at least they were pre-Iran war) and unemployment is near historic lows. This is NOTHING like 09-10 where sentiment was still higher.

I think the match abandonment will never happen because there is too much $$$ in TV rights, sponsors, etc.

My proposal is when the ref hears the chant, it’s a yellow to the captain. 2nd chant? 2nd yellow and you’re down to 10. Repeat as necessary and give the fans the 90 minutes they deserve

I’m not in favor of suspending the match. I’m in favor of an automatic yellow card to the captain. Do it again, 2nd yellow and you’re down to 10. Repeat as needed.

Please read just the abstract of the paper you have linked and what former Chairman Bernanke believes is the cause of the persistent inflation (in 2023).

I’m sorry, this isn’t a productive conversation. I wish you a good evening and the very best moving forward.

www.brookings.edu/wp-content/u...

You are back to advocating for Peronist Argentina.

No, I am making sure we have the facts straight. The government never said “we know prices have skyrocketed so here’s a check”. The checks were issued to address temporary unemployment, not high prices, as prices had not risen at that time.

Ending the stimulus checks is one of the factors that lowered inflation (but did not end it) according to the overwhelming majority of economists

Poorer voters flocked to Trump — and other data points from the election FT analysis of this week’s election results paint a dire picture for the Democrats

2024 was the first time a Republican won the majority of votes from voters in the bottom third of incomes since the 60s:

www.ft.com/content/6de6...

The stimulus came before the price increases (April 2020 were the first checks)

Sure it does! But since unlimited stimulus that goes on forever causes hyperinflation (aforementioned Peronist Argentina) and cutting off stimulus causes anxiety and GOP voting, that leaves us with “no stimulus” and thus, no path to progressive policies

Raising taxes on only the wealthy will have little impact on inflation for things like groceries or consumer goods. No matter what, cash stimulus of any measurable amount will cause inflation in those goods.

If the Fed raised rates faster, it would have undermined the progressive policy of the Biden administration to maintain full employment

Many of our best minds have been working on this for decades. The stimulus checks were one of the primary causes of the price anxiety.

What caused the high inflation during the COVID-19 period? : Monthly Labor Review : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

There is not really economic consensus on this and a fair amount of analysis that points to the progressive economic policy being behind the “persistent inflation” thru the Biden tenure with “supply shocks” driving the early inflation in 20-21: www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/202...