I’m putting this up because I keep seeing people wonder why Europe is “doing so badly.” Or why “we aren’t doing as well as Britain.” Generally speaking, the answer is that countries that approved the vaccine earlier, and therefore started their vaccination program earlier, have vaccinated more people. That’s all there is to it.
The exception, obviously, is Israel, which has completed a whole lot of vaccinations even though they only started ten days ago. Apparently they’re doing something right, though I don’t know for sure what it is (news accounts have plenty of theories). In any case, there’s always somebody at the top, and right now it’s way too early to say how the US compares to the rest of the world. My guess is that, as with everything else COVID-related, we’ll end up a little below average, but not at the bottom of the pack.
The New York Times reports today that the $15 minimum wage, once a “fringe idea,” is now becoming mainstream. The article attributes this to pressure from labor activists, and that certainly has some truth to it. But I suspect that good ol’ inflation is the bigger culprit:
Back when the $15 minimum wage started to make waves, the median wage for all workers was about . . . $15. This means that a $15 minimum wage represented 98 percent of the median national hourly wage. At no point in history has the minimum wage been anywhere near that high.
Today, however, $15 per hour represents about 73 percent of the median national wage. That’s still high by historical standards, but not unheard of. And if you phase it in, as most plans do, it will represent something like 60-70 percent of the median national wage by the time it comes into full effect.
These numbers vary depending on location (wages are higher in cities than in rural areas) and by how you calculate median hourly wages. But the basic story remains the same: over the past decade $15 per hour has been devalued to a number that’s much more acceptable to employers. That’s the underlying tailwind that’s helped labor activists along.
The cats all decided to roam around the roof yesterday, and Hopper chose this spot outside our bedroom window to roll over and scratch her cheek on the lovely, rough, stone roof tiles. She’s such a happy cat.
This is it: the absolutely last, utterly final fundraising pitch for 2020. If you haven’t pitched in yet, this is your chance. Just click here.
Now then, here’s a collection of facts and trends that don’t have anything in particular to do with 2020. They’re just things that aren’t broadly known but probably deserve more attention than they get. It’s the most Kevinish way to ring out the year, don’t you think? In no special order, here they are.
1. The Bible Belt Ain’t What It Used to Be
The share of people calling themselves fundamentalist has declined substantially since the mid-80s. But in the South, the beating heart of fundamentalism, it’s plummeted:
Some of this decline is due to a big drop in the number of Black churchgoers who consider themselves fundamentalists, but it’s mostly driven by whites and it represents a decline of well over a third in 30 years. This is one of the reasons that conservative churches consider themselves under siege and it’s one of the reasons they embraced Donald Trump as a savior. They felt desperate after three decades of steady membership losses—as well as dispiriting losses on social issues—and were willing to cling to any lifeboat that offered to help. As you can see, however, Trump does not appear to have turned things around for them.
2. Government Spending Has Been Flat For Nearly 50 Years
Government spending rose rapidly in the ’60s and early ’70s, but it’s been dead flat since 1975:
Government spending goes up and down over the economic cycle, but the trendline has been flat. Total government spending—state + local + federal—was 34 percent of GDP at the start of 1975 and it was 34 percent of GDP at the end of 2019.
3. The Federal Judiciary Is About the Same As It’s Always Been
The Supreme Court gets all the attention, but the vast majority of judicial decisions that make a difference in our lives either start or end in circuit courts. Here’s what that looks like:
It’s true that Donald Trump has appointed a lot of circuit court judges, but many of them simply replaced other conservative judges. The upshot of all this is that far from being unusually dominated by Republicans, the circuit courts today are less Republican than the 40-year average of 54 percent.
4. Spending on the Poor Has Increased a Lot
This chart is based on data from the Congressional Budget Office for total federal social welfare spending. If you figure that the target of social welfare spending is the poorest quintile of adult Americans, it’s easy to extrapolate total spending per poor person. Here it is, broken into two pieces so you can see Medicaid separately.
(Spending data for 1972-2012 comes from the CBO here. Data for 2012-2017 is extrapolated from here. Population data is from the Census Bureau here and here.)
Since 1980, overall spending on the poor increased 451 percent through 2017. Of that, Medicaid spending increased 933 percent and other social welfare spending increased 257 percent. This is all adjusted for inflation. And all this spending worked! Here’s another CBO chart showing just how the poorest quintile has done.
Since 1980, market income of the poor has increased only 39 percent, a measly 1 percent per year. But when you acccount for the increase in social welfare benefits, their total income has gone up 87 percent. That’s 2.4 percent per year. That’s nearly as much growth as the richest quintile (which saw an increase of 113 percent, or 3 percent per year).
Needless to say, you can argue that we spend all this money poorly, and you can argue that we should spend more. But it’s still a fact that we spend a lot of money on the poor. The real losers in all this are the middle classes, which have seen an income increase of only 52 percent after accounting for social welfare benefits. It’s no wonder a lot of them are pissed off these days.
5. Medical Costs Are No Longer Skyrocketing
Here is the rate of medical inflation since 1960:
(Data is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I used a 5-year rolling average solely to make the chart easier to read. It doesn’t change the results more than a hair.)
Skyrocketing health care costs are not a historical certainty. In fact, medical inflation in the US has generally been fairly modest over the past 60 years with the exception of a single decade from 1985-1995. Today, the rolling average is about 1.3 percentage points above the overall inflation rate.
This is not just playing around with numbers, either. It shows up in the growth rate of health care premiums paid by employers. Adjusted for inflation, employers in 2020 paid about 1.9 percent more per employee than they did in 2019. This growth rate has been steady for the past 15 years.
6. Police Shootings of Unarmed Suspects Are Way Down
The number of fatal shootings by police has been extremely stable for the past five years, always within a range of 950 to 1,000. However, the number of fatal shootings of unarmed suspects has plummeted:
It remains true that Black and Hispanic suspects are shot at far higher rates than white suspects given their share of the population. However, overall fatal shootings of unarmed suspects have declined by nearly 60 percent, from 94 in 2015 to 39 in 2020. Fatal shootings of unarmed Black suspects have declined by nearly 70 percent, from 38 to 12.
7. Mortgage Payments Haven’t Increased Over the Past 40 Years
The median price of a house has gone up since 1980, but mortgage interest rates have gone down. The result is that after a steep rise in the ’70s, monthly mortgage payments plummeted by a third during the ’80s and have been steady ever since.
(Data for home prices comes from the Census Bureau. Data for mortgage rates comes from Freddie Mac. Converted into monthly payments by the author.)
This is a national average. In hot markets, which change from year to year, average mortgage payments have increased, and in other areas they’ve decreased. Overall, though, nothing much has happened.
8. The Kids Are (Barely) Alright
The NAEP long-term assessment is a test specifically designed to stay the same from year to year. As such, it’s one of the best measures we have of student achievement over the past few decades. In reading, scores have been dead flat since 1990. In math, however, scores have shot up by the equivalent of two grade levels for all ethnic groups:
The latest long-term assessment was conducted this year, but results won’t be reported until 2021. Perhaps we’ll find that reading scores have finally improved. In any case, one thing is clear: there’s really no excuse for repeating the stale canard that kids today are less educated than they were a generation or two ago. They are doing as well as their parents in reading and far better in math.
9. The Marriage Rate Is Not Historically Low
We all know that the marriage rate has been declining for decades. But did you know that it increased for the entire first half of the 20th century?
Taken in broad context, two conclusions are possible. The first, and most common, is that the traditional family has imploded since the 1960s. The second, however, is that it’s the period from 1920-1960 that’s the anomaly and we’ve now returned to our historical average. Take your pick.
10. Time Spent in Prison Has Been Increasing
We’re all aware that the number of prisoners in the US has skyrocketed over the past few decades, but you might not be aware that average time served has also skyrocketed:
(Data from 1988-2012 is from Pew Research. Data from 1980-1987 is extrapolated from sentencing data provided by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Crime rate data is also from the BJS.)
Even as the violent crime rate has plummeted, dropping by nearly half since 1990, the average amount of time served in federal prisons has doubled—and the same is true of state prisons. The United States imprisons people at a rate about 7x higher than peer countries in Europe, and imprisons them for about twice as long. This is despite the fact that ultra-long prison sentences do little to deter crime.
If we really wanted to make a dent in the carceral state, the best and easiest way would probably be to simply cut every prison sentence in half.
I have posted 212 lunchtime photos this year, and that’s tiring work. So how about showing your appreciation for all this lunchtime beauty by making a contribution to Mother Jones? It’s really easy: just click here.
Here are my ten favorite photos of 2020, in no particular order.
1. Collette rose
2. Disney Hall
3. Horseshoe Bend
4. Surfer at Huntington Beach
5. Monument Valley
6. Segerstrom Hall at 3 am
7. Great Blue Turaco
8. Flamingo
9. Starry sky on I40 east of Kingman, Arizona
10. Slot Canyon X
11. Bonus: Neowise comet
This is not a favorite photo per se, but it is a photo of a comet, the first I’ve ever seen.
It is a sign of the times that Lou Dobbs, Sebastian Gorka and several other obvious lunatics didn’t make my list. Putting the list in some kind of order was difficult too. I think #1 is obvious, but after that it’s practically a random assignment. If you disagree with any of my rankings, no problem!
Keep in mind that this is not a list of people I dislike. I dislike Mitch McConnell, but he’s obviously not a lunatic. This is a list of lunatics.
Kristi Noem. The nakedly ambitious governor of South Dakota, facing a skyrocketing outbreak of COVID-19, refused to even encourage residents to wear masks and socially distance. Does this count as lunacy these days in the Republican Party? I’m not sure, but I think Noem deserves a spot on the list regardless.
Mark Levin. Conservative radio talkers are all kind of nuts, but Levin regularly distinguishes himself as a genuine lunatic. In 2020, he was the first out of the gate to demand that Republican state legislatures ignore the vote and install their own slate of electors to the Electoral College. It’s all been downhill since then.
Scott Atlas. Atlas is a professor of neuroradiology who wormed his way into the White House and went on a rampage of false information about COVID-19. Masks don’t help. Children don’t transmit the virus. Testing is a con “perpetrated on the world.” Herd immunity is the best approach. The people of Michigan should “rise up” against the states’ coronavirus restrictions. He’s so bad that even the normally diplomatic Dr. Fauci admitted, “I have real problems with that guy.”
Jair Bolsonaro. I wanted to include more non-Americans, but the only ones I could come up with just didn’t hold a candle to America’s lunatics. An obvious exception is Brazil’s president, who recently ranted that the Pfizer vaccine might turn people into alligators. This was after he had called the pandemic a “fantasy” and told his followers that “We have to stop being a country of sissies.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene, now a Republican congresswoman, is a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theories. Enough said.
Mike Flynn. The evidence suggests that Flynn started going crazy around 2014 or so, for unknown reasons. By 2020 he was publicly asking Donald Trump to declare martial law and have the military rerun the presidential election so that it “reflects the true will of the people.” He is currently hawking QAnon merchandise.
Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani has been an endless font of lunacy as Donald Trump’s “personal lawyer.” Most recently he’s put together a team of the worst attorneys in history to file an endless series of baseless lawsuits questioning the results of the 2020 election. He’s lost every one of them.
Sidney Powell. When even Rudy Giuliani thinks you’re crazy, it’s a safe bet you’ve gone seriously off the deep end.
Donald Trump. The pandemic will magically go away! Hydroxychloroquine will save us all! Can we inject bleach into people? We don’t need no stinking masks! The election was stolen, I tell you, stolen!
And for all you non-lunatics out there, how about making a contribution to Mother Jones? If you already have, that’s great. If not, let’s get cracking. Just click here.
NOTE: This post has been edited to remove mention of Tara Reade, whose claims have been cast into doubt by independent reporting, but are of a different nature than the others in this list.
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Now, let’s see if I can come up with ten predictions.
We will recover pretty nicely from the pandemic. Personal savings are high and stimulus spending has been generous.
Things will mostly return to normal when the country opens back up. A few little things will get a boost, but humans are fundamentally social animals and will remain so. We will very quickly return to nearly all of our old habits.
Mitch McConnell will do his best to block every single thing Joe Biden tries to do. (I know, this is kind of a gimme.)
Within a few months of January 20, Donald Trump will be forgotten like a bad nightmare. Virtually everybody has an incentive to ignore him, especially after the wholly deranged behavior of his final two months.
Self-driving cars will not hit the mainstream. But they’ll come very, very close. Probably 2022 will be their breakout year.
As usual, the world will continue to do nowhere near enough to make a dent in climate change.
Congress will reschedule marijuana and it will be effectively legalized. This is not a prediction I have high confidence in, but public support for legalization has passed the two-thirds threshold that often means a subject finally has enough public support to move Congress to action. Legalization even has very close to majority support among Republican voters.
I’ve already predicted that the 2020s will be the decade of CRISPR, and this year additionally saw advances in protein folding, cheap genome sequencing, and unbelievably fast development of mRNA vaccines. I don’t know what will happen in 2021, but I suspect that something fairly spectacular may emerge from the biological sciences.
It’s the last day of 2020. Hooray! Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out!
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