From the LA Times:

California’s health insurance exchange said Wednesday it has ordered insurers to add a surcharge to certain policies next year because the Trump administration has yet to commit to paying a key set of consumer subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. The decision to impose a 12.4% surcharge on silver-level health plans in 2018 means the total premium increase for those policies will average nearly 25%, according to Covered California.

Thanks to Trump, Californians will see a big premium increase. But that’s probably not all. Here’s a view of Obamacare from New Hampshire:

I expect to hear from a bunch of folks saying that this is what happens when you pass a highly partisan bill that depends on a good-faith effort by the president to execute it. And sure: in a technical sense that’s true. But have we ever seen anything like this? Could anyone have reasonably foreseen it? We’ve had presidents in the past who let programs languish. We’ve had attempts by Congress to change or cut back on programs. But have we ever had a president who deliberately set out to immiserate millions of people as a means of getting his way?

And by the way: even if Trump succeeds in destroying Obamacare, it’s still the law of the land. Insurers will still be required to insure anyone who asks for coverage, regardless of pre-existing conditions. That’s untenable, and the only response from the insurance industry will be to eliminate individual insurance coverage completely. Somebody on Capitol Hill better cotton to this pretty quick and—somehow—get Trump to lay off. If the Republican Party literally ends up eliminating the entire individual health insurance market, there aren’t words in the dictionary for how big a loss they’ll suffer in 2020.

This photo was taken in St. James’s Park. I watched for about 20 minutes as this guy stood stone-faced the entire time while he was feeding the gulls. His expression never changed.

The gulls don’t change either. It’s hard to tell in person, but in a photo you can see that they look wide-eyed and delighted to get their treat. It’s kind of cute. Also, they have amazing control of their beaks, plucking tiny bits of food while in flight, but never touching the guy’s fingers.

Alex Tabarrok pointed today to a paper that caught my eye. In it, the authors offer an explanation for why interracial marriages, which had been increasing at a steady rate for decades, suddenly accelerated in the mid-90s. Their answer: the rise of online dating played a big role.

The reasons for this are a little complicated, and you can read the paper if you’re interested. However, here’s the basic chart that motivates the analysis. It shows the percentage of interracial marriages among newlyweds:

This is interesting, and I don’t really have any special reason to doubt the online-dating hypothesis. But there’s an odd thing: the trendline accelerates first in the mid-90s, and then accelerates again around 2007. (The red line is my eyeball trendline.) So does that mean online dating also accelerated in 2007? It turns out the answer is no:

At the very moment that online dating plateaued among hetero couples, the growth rate of interracial marriages took a big jump, from 0.35 percent per year to 0.58 percent per year. This doesn’t fit the online-dating model.

So either it’s wrong or it’s incomplete. If it’s incomplete, it means something happened around 2007 in addition to online dating that caused a big jump in the number of interracial marriages. What do you suppose it could be? An Obama effect? A Facebook effect? Something else?

I stayed home today nursing a cold. I mean that literally: the cold medicine I’m using is called Day & Night Nurse. However, Marian went out to do some shopping and whatnot and brought this home to cheer me up:

No tea with the queen. Sad.

Sigh. I suppose I have to post this report from NBC News. Apparently our commander-in-chief was upset to learn that America’s nuclear force is smaller than it was in the 60s:

Trump indicated he wanted a bigger stockpile, not the bottom position on that downward-sloping curve….Officials briefly explained the legal and practical impediments to a nuclear buildup and how the current military posture is stronger than it was at the height of the build-up. In interviews, they told NBC News that no such expansion is planned.

The July 20 meeting was described as a lengthy and sometimes tense review of worldwide U.S. forces and operations. It was soon after the meeting broke up that officials who remained behind heard Tillerson say that Trump is a “moron.”

….[Trump’s] comments raised questions about his familiarity with the nuclear posture and other issues, officials said.

How dangerous is it to have a president with no clue about how the military works? He doesn’t know what the nuclear triad is. He doesn’t realize that we’ve been negotiating down nuclear stockpiles for decades. He casually threatens nuclear war against North Korea. He thinks the army should have “surrounded” Iraq’s oil. He kept turning down the Pentagon’s ISIS plans because he couldn’t stand the thought of doing pretty much the same thing as Barack Obama.

Tillerson actually called Trump a “fucking moron.” This is a case where I think truncating the quote produces a real loss of fidelity to the truth.

I got some legitimate pushback on my post yesterday about housing prices. After all, what counts isn’t so much the price of the house, but the monthly mortgage payments. So if interest rates have been declining, maybe that makes up for the increase in housing prices?

With a couple of caveats, that’s pretty much true:

Roughly speaking, in 1975 the average house cost about $120,000 (in 2017 dollars) and mortgage rates were running around 9 percent. This produces a monthly payment of about $1,000.

In 2017 the average house costs about $200,000 and mortgage rates are running around 4 percent. This produces a monthly payment of about $1,000. So millennials aren’t really any worse off than their parents.

But here are the caveats. First, inflation was running a lot higher in the past. The chart above shows the initial monthly payment, and it really is about the same as it was in 1975. However, back in the day you could go ahead and squeeze your lifestyle for a while, knowing that inflation would steadily erode the monthly payment. Within a few years, it was likely that your payment would be the equivalent of $500 per month.

You can’t do that now. Inflation is so low—and likely to stay low—that your payments won’t erode much at all. That $1,000 nut is going to stay close to $1,000 for the entire life of the loan. Here’s how this works out for a $1,000 monthly payment:

Second, down payments don’t depend on interest rates. If housing prices have nearly doubled, then so have down payments. Young adults today have to scrounge up nearly twice as much ready cash for a down payment as their parents did.

I don’t really know the best way to account for this. Obviously things vary from place to place, but generally speaking: (a) millennials need nearly twice the down payment their parents did, and (b) they can’t count on their loan payment quickly becoming a much smaller share of their income. That doesn’t show up in a simple number for the initial monthly payment, but it’s still very real. No matter how you slice it, it’s just plain harder to afford a house today than it was in 1975.

Paul Kitagaki Jr. /The Sacramento Bee via AP

While Kevin’s on vacation, we’ve invited other Mother Jones writers to contribute posts.

I’m waiting about 10 miles from the nearest fire front with bags packed, my cat carrier ready, and my cat locked inside with me.

My property is strewn with ash and chunks of stuff that’s been snowing down, off and on, for the last two days. The sky is a sickly orange color and the air is thick with noxious smoke a lot nastier than wood fire. I’ve packed up trash bags full of extra blankets and pillows to take to the nearest evacuation center, where I’ve heard that people are sleeping on the floors by night and are bored stiff by day. I wish I could play a musical instrument well enough to entertain them for a spell.

Right now it’s afternoon in Sonoma County. That means the winds are picking up and the wildfires with them. I’m listening in on the Northern California Major Incident (Disaster Event) scanner traffic, which is getting increasingly chaotic.

Old fires are kicking up. New fires are sprouting. Requests for air support—drops of water or fire retardant from fixed wing or helicopter—are multiplying. More wind means more energy for the fires and with that comes more smoke. Air crews are beginning to report visibility to poor to navigate. Some airstrips are closing. There are increasingly plaintive requests from crews on the ground asking for air support as fires crest ridges and threaten to erase their backbreaking work of the past 24-plus hours—or worse.

Cal Fire is chasing seven major fires in Sonoma, Napa, Lake, and Mendocino Counties, totaling 83,000 acres—and growing. A report of a brand new fire is coming in from Lake County and another from Napa County just south of Calistoga. There are reports of new vegetation fires in Kenwood and Santa Rosa threatening structures. The Santa Rosa Police Department has announced that the Nunns Fire is rapidly approaching Oakmont—a retirement community for seniors—in Santa Rosa. It remains under mandatory evacuation. The 25,000-acre Atlas Fire in Napa has jumped Atlas Peak Road—an important line firefighters were hoping to hold.  As of this morning, there was still no containment on any of the fires. Crews are simply scrambling to save lives and structures.

Tomorrow’s weather bodes ill. Northerly winds are forecast to reach 30 mph or more over the North Bay ridges from 5pm Wednesday through 5pm Thursday. This is the kind of weather that drove the Tubbs Fire twelve miles across the rugged terrain between Calistoga, in Napa Valley, and Santa Rosa, in Sonoma County, at lightning speed in the early hours of Monday morning. Nobody wants to know how these fires are going to act in the next few days.

Here’s a panoramic photo of Trafalgar Square, looking south toward Parliament and Westminster Abbey. If you squint, you can see Big Ben right behind Nelson’s column.

As you can see, we’ve been blessed with amazingly good weather our entire trip. Even when it’s rained, it’s been light and brief. Temps in London are in the low 60s, which is a little chilly for Marian but perfect for me.

Standard & Poor’s released the Case-Shiller Housing Index for August today, so that seemed like a good excuse to follow up Monday’s post about the feeble growth of millennial income. Here is income growth for 25-34-year-olds vs. housing prices since 1975:

The income of young adult families has gone up about 18 percent since 1975. Housing has gone up about 65 percent. So if you remember buying a house in the 70s, and how tough it was to make the payments, multiply that by two-thirds to see what young adults have to put up with today.

And if you’re thinking that mortgage rates are lower today than they were in the 70s, think again:

Real interest rates are lower than they were in the 80s, and a couple of points lower than they were in the 90s. But that’s it. Buying a first home just sucks these days unless you’re lucky enough to be in the top 20 percent or so.

Alex Edelman via ZUMA

Sen. Bob Corker says that pretty much every Republican in Congress knows that Donald Trump is a liar and a buffoon:

I don’t know why the president tweets out things that are not true. You know he does it. Everyone knows he does it….The vast majority of our caucus understands what we’re dealing with here. There will be some — if you write that, I’m sure there will be some that say, ‘no, no, no I don’t believe that,’ but of course they understand the volatility that we are dealing with and the tremendous amount of work that it takes from people around him to keep him in the middle of the road. No question.

They know. They all know. But most of them aren’t even willing to acknowledge it, let alone do something about it.

And if World War III does break out because Trump doesn’t know the difference between berating a contestant on The Apprentice and berating an insecure young man with dozens of nuclear weapons at his disposal? I don’t know. I suppose they’ll just blame it on Obama ruining America’s standing in the world. That’s always worked before.