The Daily Chart
February 27, 2023 — Steven Hayward
One of my must-reads every Saturday morning is the weekly “Thoughts from the Frontline” email from economist John Mauldin. (If you want to get on his distribution list—it’s free—chick here.) He’s solid as a gold dollar, writes in plain English, and always has some quantitative data to back up what’s on his mind. On his mind this week is the national debt and chronic deficit spending, which are out of
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February 24, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Want to know what a “baby bust” looks like? It looks like this in the United States, with a sharp divide between the Baby Boomers and what came after. The Atlanta Fed comments: An aging population is a big reason for the worker shortage that’s helped fuel inflation over the past 18 months. Analysis by Atlanta Fed senior policy adviser John Robertson shows that the working age population has hardly
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February 22, 2023 — Steven Hayward
That Republicans have a much deeper bench of top candidates for the White House than Democrats goes without saying, but in fact it already appears that the 2024 GOP nomination contest has already settled into a two-person race. This chart is more than a week out of date, but the comparison with the 2016 cycle, when the Republican field didn’t have clear front-runners before Trump entered the race in the
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February 21, 2023 — Steven Hayward
As you may know, the irrepressible Nicole Hannah-Jones, impresario of the egregiously wrong 1619 Project, has a documentary version now rolling out on Hulu. No, I’m not watching it either, but Phil Magness, who lives rent-free in NHJ’s head, is watching, and has a great piece in today’s Wall Street Journal on how many of the racist measures NHJ complains about were things government—not capitalism or markets—imposed on blacks (though
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February 17, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Advances in genetic engineering may perhaps enable us to bring back to life a large number of extinct species, such as the woolly mammoth. Is this a good idea? Should we bring back t-rex? Maybe the Jurassic Park films were actually documentaries? Nature magazine did a survey, which found a majority isn’t keen on the idea. Now back to UFOs.
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February 16, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Recently the Washington Post openly declared that they no longer feel the need even to pretend at being objective, so we might actually get some honest left-wing coverage from them henceforth. Don’t think the American people haven’t noticed how much the mainstream media stinks, as this Axios chart shows: I believe those numbers are below used-car salesmen.
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February 15, 2023 — Steven Hayward
One thing that is really not coming back fully after COVID is mass transit use: Among the reasons for this, in addition to the work-from-home transition under way, is suggested in this data set about “security events” (that’s “crime” in plain English), courtesy of our friends at John’s Center of the American Experiment: I’m sure Transportation Supremo Pete Buttigieg is right on it.
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February 14, 2023 — Steven Hayward
It is generally understood that economic sanctions are seldom very effective in stopping aggression or deterring bad behavior. Decades of sanctions haven’t slowed down Iran or North Korea, and our sanctions on Russia seem not to be delivering the crippling blow we were promised. But the foreign policy experts and planners love them anyway. Bloomberg reports today: Russia Did Most Oil Drilling in Decade Even as Sanctions Hit Russian companies
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February 13, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya asks: Now that nearly 70% of the world population has received a covid vaccine dose and a larger fraction has recovered from covid infection, covid vaccine demand has collapsed. Public health authoritarianism in pursuit of this achievement threatens to collapse the demand for non-covid vaccines as well. Chaser—Even the CDC’s latest figures make clear that children were at very low risk:
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February 10, 2023 — Steven Hayward
With the Super Bowl hard upon us this weekend, where should you throw down your bet? Looks like New Jersey is where the action is. Interesting that California, our most populous state, doesn’t crack the top five.
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February 9, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Among the many potential recession indicators you can look at, such as the inverted yield curve or the Index of Leading Economic Indicators, one that should always be consulted is consumer debt delinquency. After falling during COVID because of lockdowns and endless stimulus payments, the trend in recent months doesn’t look good.
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February 8, 2023 — Steven Hayward
For all of the incessant talk of renewable energy revolutions, and the new massive Biden subsidies to try to make it happen, guess which country leads the world in fossil fuel investment: On the other hand, it might not be enough, at least in the oil sector on the global scale. Oil held in inventory has been drifting steadily down: U.S. natural gas reserves, by the way, keep increasing. Thank
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February 7, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Here’s the best evidence that Florida is not simply attracting retirees or people fleeing high taxes in New York. Rather, it has a more dynamic economy overall. One reading of this chart is that while Florida was on track to overtake New York in jobs before the pandemic (say by 2028 or so), the differences in how the two states responded to the pandemic reduced the time to close that
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February 6, 2023 — Steven Hayward
All you need to know about how mindlessly stupid the fanatical green energy crusade is can be seen in this chart:
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February 3, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Cars have gotten much much safer for the last 50 years or longer: On the other hand, pedestrian fatality rates, after dropping for decades, suddenly reversed course about 15 years ago: What could have caused this sharp reversal? Here’s one theory:
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February 2, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Yesterday the University of Wisconsin released the results of a student survey on campus free expression issues taken on all of its campuses, and many of the results demonstrate that the censoriousness to typical of campuses today is driven largely by students who classify themselves as “very liberal.” Here are a few of the charts displaying this problem most vividly: College administrators could end cancel culture in a stroke if
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February 1, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Matthew Arnold’s most famous verse from “Dover Beach” laments the ebbing of Christian faith in Europe: The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Here’s a snapshot
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