FiveThirtyEight has a discussion on whether Trump is losing strength.
Although I'd like to see him run in 2024 because I think he'd be beatable (a poll today shows him being beaten by Biden by 10 points), I don't think Dems will be that lucky.
Why: he's not developing any platform of ideas, or particularly responding to change. What seems to get him going is his grievances over 2020 which is starting to get old. If it feels dated now, think what it will feel like in 2 more years.
This post at Econofact notes the drop in immigration, and relates it to our current economy:
Due to increased restrictions on immigration and travel, which began with the COVID-19 pandemic in the early months of 2020, the net inflow of immigrants into the United States has essentially halted for almost 2 years. By the end of 2021 there were about 2 million fewer working-age immigrants living in the United States than there would have been if the pre-2020 immigration trend had continued unchanged. Of these lost immigrants, about one million would have been college educated. The data on labor shortages across industries suggest that this dramatic drop in foreign labor supply growth is likely a contributor to the current job shortages and could slow down employment recovery and growth as the economy picks up speed.
There seems to be a lot of things moving to subscriptions--free broadcast service is losing out to them. That's true in the blogging universe as well as the entertainment world.
Seems to me that's going to have the effect of widening the gap between classes--those of us who can afford to will subscribe, those who can't will lose out.
I blogged a couple days ago about the website to request 4 free covid tests per household. Vox has a piece related to it concerning "administrative burden"--which is bad.
Using that term made me think: shouldn't there have been an OMB clearance number attached to the website for the necessary approval under the Paperwork Reduction Act? After all it's getting information from 10 or more people?
I think my question points to the fact that Congress should revise and update the Act.
Nice line from a New Yorker article on AI fighters:
“There’s a saying in the military,” Peter Hancock, a psychology professor at the University of Central Florida who studies the effect of trust on technology adoption, told me. “Trust is gained in teaspoons and lost in buckets.”
The fighter pilot has to trust the AI software flying the plane.
I think the dynamic might apply in other areas. Perhaps in society and government--lots of evidence that trust in various institutions and organizations has declined over the years. Or trust in President Biden has declined in the first year--one big reason is the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Though perhaps it's more a question of what we pay attention to: bad events get more attention than good.
This Politico opinion piece is enthusiastic about the government site for requesting covid tests. I'd be a bit more reserved--it's fast, simple, and works, but the underlying policy it's implementing is simple. Good IT design works if the policy is good.
If we say that perfection equals uniformity, then the universe was imperfect from the beginning. See this Chris Blattman post:
https://chrisblattman.com/2022/01/20/let-there-be-light/
Having lived through the inflation of the 1970s and 80s, I've been more skeptical of the promises last year that any inflation would be only temporary.
While unions are less important now than then, and they were often blamed for inflation, we also have more things indexed for inflation now (like Social Security).
But my own theory about inflation is this:
Before the pandemic the economy was operating smoothly following its usual routines. Because of the pandemic lots of routines were disrupted. Whenever there's change or disruption, the resulting friction gets handled by grease, grease known as money. Don't have enough workers, give bonuses and hike salaries. Don't trust going to restaurants, rely on delivery and increase the tips. Etc. Etc.
That means to me the inflation won't be temporary but will last until we establish new routines, which will take a while.
The White House's site for ordering covid tests is up, a day before promised.
Given the problems with the Obamacare website, I'm glad to see it seems, so far, to be going okay (the requirements were simpler by a lot, but the media likely won't focus on it--just success or failure).
