The Daily Chart
March 24, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Has anything harmed the conditions and prospects of black America more than the white liberal reaction to George Floyd’s death in 2020? Take in the breaks in the trend lines for homicide and vehicle deaths by race in the aftermath of that awful incident in the chart below. The “Floyd Effect” is the “Ferguson Effect” (as Heather Mac Donald labeled it) on steroids.
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March 23, 2023 — Steven Hayward
With a gargantuan national debt whose runaway growth shows no signs of abating, and a systemic budget deficit, it is worth keeping in mind that defense spending is not the driver of either the deficit or the growing debt. Here’s the last 100 years of federal spending by major category. Notice that we’re not far from the moment when interest on the national debt will come to exceed defense spending.
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March 22, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, looks to be trying to go from Meta to Meh, with the announcement of an additional 10,000 layoffs, and the cancellation of 5,000 current job openings. This, on top of 11,000 layoffs last fall that Mark Zuckerberg said would be the extent of it. Maybe this has some reason to do with reducing Meta’s headcount: Between these layoffs and the precipitous decline of venture capital
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March 21, 2023 — Steven Hayward
It’s by now an iron law than leftist campus fads eventually come to define Democratic Party mainstream opinion. As we know, anti-Semitism is sharply on the rise in the U.S., following more than 20 years of campus agitation to legitimize anti-Semitism. Gallup has a shocking new poll out showing that for the first time, Democrats are more positive to Palestinians than to Israel. The TV version: Chaser—Jonathan Tobin in the
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March 20, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Strap in for another roller-coaster week on Mr. Powell’s Wild Ride, as we wonder whether our banking system is in a crisis. It does appear from this chart, however, that Silicon Valley Bank was an outlier for having such a high proportion of deposits above the FDIC insurance limit (that the Biden Administration has effectively blown up). And this chart is possibly misleading—while SVB was the 15th largest bank in
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March 17, 2023 — Steven Hayward
And now for something completely different: • Where to go if you want to find fellow beer drinkers (start with Montana, obviously): • Who to ask for if you are Elmer Fudd and you are duck hunting in Europe: • A handy data set of favorite local rock artists to fit in at the local pubs:
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March 16, 2023 — Steven Hayward
With Anthony Fauci still insisting that COVID-19 came from a bat, no wonder the public doesn’t trust our public health establishment. The folks at Health Affairs conducted a survey last year that is behind a paywall, but the chart below shows that, as the summary of the report says, “Although trust in public health agencies was not especially high, few respondents indicated that they had no trust. Lower trust was
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March 15, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Looks like the bank panic is back ON today, with news that Credit Suisse is looking shaky. Yesterday bank stocks enjoyed a nice rebound from Monday’s swoon as everyone calmed down about the possibility of a contagion, but then there was this: US Banks Have Over $620 Billion in Unrealized Losses According to FDIC According to FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg, US banks have over $620 billion in unrealized losses. Moreover,
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March 14, 2023 — Steven Hayward
The labor market continues to be a puzzle, as the Federal Reserve is likely counting on a cooling labor market as a sign that inflation is going to abate. But the labor market is not cooperating. Job openings continue to rise: And while layoffs are mounting (especially in tech), there hasn’t yet been a surge in unemployment filings: One interesting detail—older workers are returning to the job market, to a
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March 13, 2023 — Steven Hayward
It’s early yet, and polls at this point really aren’t worth very much. At this point in 2007, Rudy Giuliani was the GOP front-runner in the polls; at this point in 2015, Jeb Bush and Scott Walker were the front-runners in the polls. That said, the 2024 contest looks like a two-man race between Trump and DeSantis. Right now Trump has surged back into a strong lead. However, by one
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March 10, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Democrats in various states are determined to roll back “right-to-work” laws (in other words, laws that prohibit mandatory union membership) as a sop to organized labor, but if you want to slow job growth, repealing right-to-work is one sure way to do it, as this chart displays. Just what blue states need.
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March 9, 2023 — Steven Hayward
The Biden Administration is proving out at the most regulation-happy administration in modern history. The Financial Times reports this week: America leads on innovation, and Europe on regulation, or so the conventional wisdom goes. But recently, the US seems to have taken the lead in the latter. . . From our friends at the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University, it is clear the Biden Administration is determined to
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March 8, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Today is apparently International Women’s Day, though how do we know this since we don’t know what a woman is any more? In any case, here’s some News You Can Use: This chart from the incomparable Zach Goldberg ratifies with data what any sentient modern male knows from bad experience: The supplementary hypothesis is that there is an inverse correlation between attractiveness and reports of sexual harassment.
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March 7, 2023 — Steven Hayward
As we keep pointing out here and elsewhere, intermittent sources of energy, especially wind and solar power, are an expensive grid-destabilizing disaster in the making for the simple reason that such sources are . . . intermittent. How hard is this to grasp? Apparently very hard for sun-worshipping, wind-breaking environmentalists. Most readers will be familiar with the meme from The Princess Bride about “I don’t think that word means what
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March 6, 2023 — Steven Hayward
There was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth a couple years back over a New York Times article that bemoaned the fact that women were experiencing a “toxic environment” in economics departments on campus: A pathbreaking new study of online conversations among economists describes and quantifies a workplace culture that appears to amount to outright hostility toward women in parts of the economics profession. . . The underrepresentation
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March 3, 2023 — Steven Hayward
One of the major questions about China is whether it is going to grow old before it finishes growing rich (or before it can swallow up Taiwan). The Financial Post reports today that that in the aftermath of the Wuhan Flu (since we can now go back to calling it that), China’s workforce has shrunk by 41 million over the last three years, which is equivalent to the entire workforce
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March 2, 2023 — Steven Hayward
It is often said that America has too many lawyers, but if true wouldn’t this really indicate that we have too many laws? I think it was either Cicero or Marx (Groucho) who said “The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the republic.” Thus it is striking to see in the chart below, from the American Bar Association, that the growth of lawyers in the U.S. accelerates starting around
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