Yves here. The fact that antidepressants loom so large in our collective discourse says that there is something wrong with society. That is not to say that a lot of people do not benefit from them. But even before how people are being treated, look at some raw figures from Statista: These results are significantly…
Today we present a guest post written by Matías Scaglione of the data science and economic consulting firm Motio Research. On August 7, 2025, Stephen Moore, Senior Visiting Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, presented monthly household income figures at the White House alongside President Trump (video; charts). Moore described the data as “never seen before,” claimed…
A report in the Financial Times indicates that Mexico is in the process of eliminating the checks and balances in its political system: But the bills passed in the past two weeks ultimately implement key elements of the former president’s agenda, including eliminating autonomous regulators and replacing them with ones under greater central government…
Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo appears to be counting on support from President Donald Trump in the New York mayoral election. Cuomo is doing this even as he also claims he is the candidate most capable of protecting New York City from the president. I argued in June that the NYC Mayoral race was…
Based on residential investment construction July release (starts 1.428 mn > 1.29 mn Bbg consensus; permits 1.354mn < 1.39mn Bbg consensus): Figure 1: Residential fixed investment (bold black), Survey of Professional Forecasters August median f’cast (light blue), GDPNow of 8/19 (dark blue square), all in bn.Ch.2017$, SAAR. Source: BEA 2025Q2 advance, Philadelphia Fed, Atlanta Fed,…
Counterfactuals are a necessary part of any scientific analysis: If X didn’t happen, then Y would have. But counterfactuals, by definition, can never be known. They never occurred, so we can never truly know if the counterfactual would have happened. For example, there was much debate in the Truman Administration and the US military during World…
A recent New York Times piece bemoaned the “credibility crisis” at the Trump Justice Department. As is typical of the Times, the article acted as though history began in 2016, took a break from 2021-2025, and restarted following the inauguration of Trump 2.0. While the Trump DOJ is a cruel joke—as we’ve covered—if the Times…
As promised by Donald Trump? “We’re going to have prices down- I think you’re going to see some pretty drastic price reductions.” Associated Press, Trump holds a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, YouTube (January 7, 2025). And here’s the data we have. Figure 1: CPI (blue), Everyday Price Index (tan), and CPI-limited service restaurants (green), all…
These tweets caught my eye: I suspect that it would be possible to create some sort of argument that the AI boom is hurting the job market, but at the risk of being unserious I don’t find this one to be particularly persuasive. Suppose I made the following argument: Interest rates would be lower if…
Armored knights vanished when gunpowder weapons made them ineffective, and cavalry vanished when motorized transport and tanks arrived on the battlefield. I believe infantry will likely be the next category of warriors to disappear. History shows that survival, cost-effectiveness, and competitive advantage dictate military force composition—not tradition. The lessons are clear: when a combat role…