The Daily Chart
March 13, 2024 — Steven Hayward
So Haiti is back in the news. As I mentioned yesterday, I thought the Clinton Foundation had fixed the place! Or Colin Powell in the 1990s. Or something. How soon until Biden sends in American troops? Or lets 500,000 Haitians come to America? Anyway, Haiti is in the state of nature right now, with gangs and mobs rampaging. And yet, as a smart left-leaning friend of mine (I do have
»
March 12, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Our pal Mark Perry reminds is that today, March 12, is “Equal Pay Day” that falsely assumes how far into 2024 the typical woman has to work to earn what her alleged male counterpart earned in 2023. Funny how feminists never consider something like “Equal Job Safety” or “Job Risk” day (Mark proposes “Occupational Fatality Day”), because the data looks like this and the “gap” would take years, not months,
»
March 11, 2024 — Steven Hayward
As mentioned here before, Democrats used to be fairly robust in their opposition to open borders and unchecked illegal immigration, as recently as the Clinton years. But then someone got the bright idea that since immigration had helped to flip California from a red state in presidential elections to a blue state across the board, imagine how much power Democrats could grasp if the California story was repeated across the
»
March 8, 2024 — Steven Hayward
I am sure many readers have noticed how bike lanes are taking over American urban roadways, especially downtowns, often killing a lane for cars, and reducing streetside parking. And I almost never see anyone biking in the lanes. How did this come about? Has there been a massive populist campaign for bike lanes? Has “we need more bike lanes everywhere” been popping up in public opinion polls of top issues
»
March 7, 2024 — Steven Hayward
As you may have heard, San Francisco voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed initiative measures to make policing easier and require drug testing for welfare. The horrors! Too bad they didn’t put reparations in the ballot, as I have a hunch how the vote would have turned out. In any case, even progressives, naturally slow learners, are finally figuring it out. And I know everyone has seen San Francisco’s famous “poop
»
March 6, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The term “deaths of despair” has caught on in recent years, brought out into the mainstream from academic and specialized literature such as Anne Case and Angus Deaton’s Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. And the problem of drug overdose deaths was already becoming an issue on the campaign trail as far back as the Obama years. And yet the problem has only gotten worse:
»
March 5, 2024 — Steven Hayward
One of the central totems of the modern left and its women’s auxiliary (the feminist movement) is the alleged “wage gap” between men and women. You know the cliche—women only earn 80 cents for every dollar a man earns. This cliche has been exploded countless times, but it refuses to die because it retains endless utility for grievance-junkies who run the Democratic Party. You know the Biden White House will
»
March 4, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Churchill remarked that “For a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.” A similar thing can be said, apparently, for green energy—you can’t subsidize or tax-break yourself to a truly profitable business.
»
March 1, 2024 — Steven Hayward
One fine sunny Sunday several years ago found me in Helsinki, Finland, where I spotted a rock bacd setting up in a square by a park, and I decided to linger for some free live music. Who knows—I could be catching the next Abba, or Eurovision Song Contest contestant. Well, it wasn’t any of those. What it was is kinda hard to describe. Best I could do at the time
»
February 29, 2024 — Steven Hayward
As we have noted repeatedly here, people are voting with the feet and moving from high crime/high tax blue states to low tax/low crime red states in increasing numbers. Alongside tax rates as a factor in higher economic growth in red states is that red states are more likely to be right-to-work states than blue states. This is not universally true; heavily unionized Michigan was a right-to-work for a decade,
»
February 28, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Yesterday we noted Trump’s rising strength among certain voting groups. How about by profession instead of ethnicity, gender, and the other usual things? Like professions perhaps? Everyone likes to say the political divide in America is between red states and blue states. But it looks like the division is more white versus blue when it comes to who is supporting Trump’s campaign—that is, white collar professionals against blue collar workers.
»
February 27, 2024 — Steven Hayward
My pal Henry Olsen explains in his recent Telegraph column that Trump is underperforming his polls in recent contests, and appears to be stuck between a very solid floor and a rigid ceiling. Perhaps, but the Telegraph included this graphic, taken from recent Pew polls, that suggests a different picture: To be fair, a generic Republican ought to be polling about 60 percent of the white vote, and that’s just
»
February 26, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Right now the unaffordability of housing has become a national issue, and not just one for the two coasts. The fundamental reason for this is the spread of coastal-style over-regulation of housing to the interior states of “flyover country,” which had for decades mostly resisted the over-regulation of housing. Rising interest rates have something to do with this too. In any case, maybe another housing crash is in the works?
»
February 23, 2024 — Steven Hayward
According to the polls, the Tory Party over in Britain s heading for a wipeout at the hands of the Labour Party later this year, thereby squandering Boris Johnson’s record Tory landslide of 2019. Has there ever been a greater example of political malpractice in recent decades? There are lots of reasons for this dreadful scene (starting with Johnson’s own terrible handling of COVID and other unforced errors) which can
»
February 22, 2024 — Steven Hayward
A sequel of sorts to yesterday’s chart on global meat consumption: There has been a lot of media coverage of the fact that fast-food meals are suddenly expensive, yet somehow the media never mention or explore the possible linkage to higher minimum wage laws even though fast-food chains in California have said openly that the state’s coming $20 minimum wage will force them to raise prices further. It ought to
»
February 21, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The chart below is dense and you may need to enlarge it, but the key takeaways are that the U.S. only ranks fifth in the world in total meat consumption. And this only comes from our high ratings in two categories: beef and chicken. I am rather amazed we aren’t in the top ten for pork, since bacon is a crucial American staple. C’mon America! Step up! Chaser—or more a
»
February 20, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The headlines tell us that job growth is robust, showing that “Bidenomics” works, even if Biden’s brain doesn’t. We have mentioned here before that a disproportionate amount of job growth appears to be in government, and here’s another look at it from our friends at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity: It should be mentioned that given the government’s role in funding (and distorting) the entire health care marketplace, some of
»
