2024-07-20: We Have Deplaned. Does It Matter?
Also: Zillow irony that is sort of charming
Putting the Circular Firing Squad in the Circular File
One of the things about doing this getting crowded out by other responsibilities is that events regularly get way, way ahead of what I intend to write. Someone along the line, I was going to write something about how I still think Biden is underrated as a president. Macroeconomically, he’s done a phenomenal job and the aggregate of his other actions has been largely positive.
I am in the minority, but I am not that far from Claudia Sahm (c.f. The Labor Market Is Strong, We are landing this plane, softly, Sometimes, the impossible is possible. Ask the US economy.) and, if anything, am more sanguine about the Biden economy. I actually think the plane has landed, it’s reached the gate, and all the passengers have gotten off. No, inflation is not 2%, but if that’s what you are requiring, I think you’ve lost the plot. Courtesy of the BLS (and summarized at USInflationCalculator.com), here are the 21st century inflation numbers:
Do the 2024 numbers actually appear to be separated from historical norms? It’s the numbers after the Global Financial Crisis that are more atypical.
The COVID-era helicopter money was very successful at providing a level of economic stability, but there was always going to be inflation on the back of it, particularly when you add in that COVID created expanded care needs, disability, and even death for a nontrivial part of the labor market, cutting supply. The US has brought inflation down more than the international average and done so with strong GDP numbers, avoiding the recession that’s been predicted by many for literally years.
I get that mine is the minority opinion and that we are probably still in a Vibecession to some extent. A lot of that is just political valence. If you look at the perception of the economy by party affiliation, there is just a massive difference—and, we should note, the Democratic numbers are much more stable than the Republican numbers, which suggests a certain amount of perspective on the political left that just doesn’t exist on the right in meaningful numbers. We are also still coming out of a plague that it is entirely reasonable to think has created greater uncertainty. John Sides wrote about this back in February.
You don’t have to explain to me that the macroeconomy and personal economic stories are not always aligned. If you need or happen to know someone who needs some combination of an insights professional, an analyst, a team leader, and a project manager—or just someone who is reasonably bright—do let me know. But I don’t confuse my own specific experience with that of everyone in the economy and I think, given the circumstances, the Biden administration has done well.
The Biden honeymoon ended when American troops left Afghanistan and that’s still a head scratcher to me. Most of the American public has wanted to leave the country for quite a while and it was the Trump administration that actually negotiated the agreement under which the US left. For a while, the airlift went much better than I would have expected; the Taliban didn’t show a lot of restraint in reestablishing control, but there wasn’t a pathway to anything other than Taliban control or a continued, very unpopular occupation. I will concede that the ISIL attack made things much worse, but getting the US out of Afghanistan needed to happen and that can had been kicked for at least a decade. I do have real reservations about the people who helped the Western nations try to establish peace being left; they should all be here now. But there was no political will for that in a party that was virulently anti-immigrant and Biden would have had to burn perhaps more political capital than he even had to make that happen. I would have preferred the nation do more of the right thing, but at least the country’s regional interests were better served than under Bush, Obama, and Trump. As far as abandoning regional allies, ask the Kurds about Trump.
If I had assembled that argument (and the 10 other ones I have along the same lines), it might have been a little more interesting, but events have really outstripped it at this point. About those I have little to say right now, except that my sense was always that the performance Biden gave at the debate was always in play (and, as delusional as I apparently am, I thought he was better than Trump in the second half, anyhow, even setting aside Trump being a lying, racist narcissist) and was surprised at the response. Tactically, I think circling the wagons a little and moving on was the best path. Having Biden step aside for Harris was the second-best path. Assembling the circular firing squad we still have going is the least-best path. It’s self-inflicted and at least part of the reason that Trump keeps rolling 20s. But I’m an institutionalist who has has a dispiriting decade or so. I also know the future is what we make of it and so I’ve also become a little impatient with the tack of just being resigned to the state of the world.
In Brief
Jay Jaffe wrote a wonderful appreciation of Orlando Cepeda back on the 3rd.
Brad DeLong wrote a long review of Dan Davies’ The Unaccountability Machine, which is fairly high on the To Read list for me, but will probably take as long to get to for me as did DeLong’s Slouching Toward Utopia.
Freddie deBoer: Clutching a Severely Depressed Person's Body Against Yours in Bed to Keep Them From Killing Themselves. FdB annoys me more than I like him these days, but every once in a while he writes something kind of profound. This is one of those.
Jake Kring-Schreifels/The Ringer: Go Balls Deep: The Oral History of ‘Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story’. Yes, the movie is dumb.
This Is Not Cool: California Grid Breezes Through Heat Wave due to Renewables, Batteries. We shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves, but California really is doing some work in improving its energy grid. It’s something I’ve specifically noticed; we had a bunch of brownouts a decade or so ago and I haven’t experienced any of that in the last few years.
Arash Abizadeh/The Guardian: Academic journals are a lucrative scam – and we’re determined to change that. Here’s hoping they succeed.
Katharine Hayhoe/Time: In the Face of Climate Change, We Must Act So That We Can Feel Hopeful—Not the Other Way Around. More in the “the future is what we make it” camp.
Mike Drucker/TheGamer: I’m Personally Going To Force Game Companies To Put In All That Stuff You Hate. Funny, but don’t read the comments.
Texas A&M has been running a clinical trial that shows a lot of promise for dealing with kidney disease in cats. Which, if you have a cat, there is a decent chance you know is a common and severe problem.
This Zillow listing of a house in Hamilton Township, NJ is kind of amazing. Although I would also argue that, on its own merits, it is actually well done.
As someone who used to spend a lot of quality time in Rockridge (yes, particularly the BART station), this is a lot of density for the area. It’s also a good place to add that density, in my opinion.
Kieran Healy: Apple's First Post-Taboola Event.
So long (for now) and thanks for all the fish!