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Post #1316: The universal state budget surplus of FY 2021 and the economic boom of FY 2022.

 

In Post #G21-058, I stumbled across an interesting finding.  More-or-less every U.S. state had a large (often record) budget surplus for FY 2021.  As far as I can tell, this has gotten exactly zero notice in the popular press.

Reading a few reports of these surpluses, it seems like various sources of state tax receipts started to pick up around April 2021 and just haven’t quit since.  And nobody is quite exactly sure why, although the obvious suspect is all the spending power that the Federal government injected into the economy over the past 18 months.

Now here’s the weird thing, and the main conclusion that I’ve drawn so far:  We seem to be in a genuine economic boom.  I keep looking for signs that revenue growth will be petering out, now that we’re reaching the end of the pandemic.  But there’s no sign of that in sight.

At some level, it shouldn’t be a surprise.  The Federal government has just gotten through two years of the largest peacetime economic stimulus in U.S. history.  A good chunk of that was simply saved, presumably to be spent later.

And now, with all that free money burning holes in many pockets, the result is just standard Keynesian economics.  There’s a whole lot of new economic activity, with a side-order of inflation.

But you’ll have to judge for yourself.  As I say, this started out as a study of state budgets, and rapidly turned into an analysis of just how rapidly the U.S. economy seems to be heating up.

U.S. Treasury Revenues are clearly up.

Let me start with the most stable source of timely national information on economic activity that I know of:  The Monthly U.S. Treasury Statement.  If somebody’s making money from it, it’s a good bet that Uncle Sam is taxing it.  So, putting aside the big lump of revenue that arrives at tax time, Federal receipts provide a pretty good estimate of the pace of economic activity.

Source:  My plot, of data taken directly from the U.S. Monthly Treasury Statement.

No matter which perspective you take — two decades, or five years — we have clearly entered a period of rapid growth in U.S. Treasury receipts.

Flash GDP estimates are running to double-digit growth.

These get a little murkier, as they are no longer hard data, but are estimates from somebody’s economic model, fed by current data.  For this, I’m relying on the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s GDPNow estimate.

“The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the fourth quarter of 2021 is 8.5 percent ”

They also note that their model is well above the “blue chip consensus forecast” of real GDP.

Virginia’s general fund revenue numbers are running 10 to 15 percent above the same period last year.

Source:  Virginia monthly revenue letter, September 2021.

And, from what I can tell by casually checking a few other states, this is not unusual.  Seems like a lot of states have seen broadly-based revenue growth continuing well into FY 2022.

Whether or not state tax receipts will continue to grow is the question of the moment.

The fact that started me on this analysis — the large number of states with record FY 2021 budget surplus — has not gone unnoticed in the academic press.  Of the articles that have focused on this, the Pew Charitable Trust managed to hit the nail on the head.

Awash in Cash, State Lawmakers Ask How Long the Boom Will Last, dated July 26, 2021, by Sophie Quinton. 

By now, more-or-less everyone involved in state finance has noted the jump in revenues in FY 2021.

But here are two conclusions, based on that article, that I find remarkable.

  1. Nobody has any idea how long these higher revenues will last.
  2. A far as I can tell, other than direct federal payments to states for COVID relief, nobody has any firm idea of what caused the jump in revenues, including tax revenues.

Here’s a quote that pretty much sums it up:

“The growth trajectory—it’s higher than we expected,” said Adams of Idaho’s Division of Financial Management. “I don’t anticipate that it will continue at this pace. I don’t think anyone does, frankly.”

Kate Watkins, who leads the team that prepares revenue forecasts for the Colorado legislature, said she expects Colorado’s revenue growth to flatten out.

“In many cases,” she said, “we’re still waiting on data to validate what the story is moving forward, whether or not this is really kind of a blip or if it really is a sustainable growth trajectory.”

As I read it, the reason there’s no “smoking gun” is that revenue growth is quite broad-based.  Not only is income tax withholding up, so is sales tax, so are corporate tax payments, and so on.

Basically, we seem to be in the middle of an economic boom.  One that doesn’t seem to have gotten much attention.  But one for which the Federal and State tax data, and the flash GDP estimates, suggest is pretty substantial.

Amidst all the negative press regarding the President, I sure haven’t heard much about the U.S. being in the middle of rapid GDP growth.  The only sign of that has been the steadily falling unemployment rate.

But, as far as I can tell, that appears to be true.  I started out assuming that we were in the middle of some temporary bubble in state finances caused by direct Federal pandemic relief.  But now, that appears to be wrong.  For whatever reason — making up for lost time in the pandemic, spending all that free pandemic money, or who knows why — we’re suddenly in the middle of economic good times.

 

Post #1313: Nuts, peppers, and storing up for winter. Part 1: Nuts.

 

With the onset of cold weather, I’m now waiting to see what this year’s crop of nuts is going to look like.  I am of course referring to events of two days ago, here in Virginia.  I’m hoping that our newly elected leadership will be in the mold of traditional (that is, rational) Virginia Republicans.  But ever since the last Republican administration here, which I will describe briefly below, that assumption of rationality has been questionable.

Anyway, this started off as a post on gardening, but quickly morphed into a post on politics.

Let me start with the interesting fact that you probably haven’t realized, first.  And then get into it.

Continue reading Post #1313: Nuts, peppers, and storing up for winter. Part 1: Nuts.

Post #1265: Missing cute young white women with unusual names.

 

This post has no relation to anything else on this website.  I’m just conveying something my wife noticed years ago, that still appears to be one of the iron rules of news coverage.  I think it says something about how the news functions in modern America.

In order to attract national press coverage, it’s not enough that a person go missing.  People go missing all the time.

Not enough that the person be a woman.  (Or female minor).  Plenty of women and girls go missing.

It’s not even enough that the missing person is an attractive young white woman (or cute little kid).  Which, you will eventually notice, characterizes every one that dominates national news.

Before you hop on my case, let me note that she is far from the only person to have picked up on this.  Nationally-recognized media experts have said (almost) the same thing, as in this recent New York Times article.  And similar commentary elsewhere.  I believe the coined phrase is Missing White Woman Syndrome.

But this is as far as mainstream media critics will take it.  Plenty of serious people have characterized this repeating phenomenon as MCYWW (missing cute young white women) stories.  Or equivalent.

But, in fact, few recognize the final requirement, which is that the MCYWW must have an unusual name.  It’s never Anne Smith, Mary Murphy, Liz Russo, Emma Garcia, and so on.  It has to be something weird enough to be “sticky”, or the story doesn’t get any traction.

And so, the reality of it is not that these are MCYWW stories.  They are MCYWWWWN ( … with weird names) stories.  Without the unusual name, it might get local coverage, but it never snowballs enough to get national coverage.

This isn’t to make light of the death of the person who most recently was in the national news.  It’s to highlight that there’s a strong element of “National Enquirer” in U.S. national news now.  I have no need to know about this poor woman who was apparently murdered by her boyfriend.  And neither do you.  But this story — told over and over — is just sticky enough, once you add a memorable name, that it manages to make national news.

I am completely unable to prove this, looking retrospectively.  We all know the name of the current MCYWWWWN, but that that name rapidly fades from memory.  Without that, I’m unable to separate the last few such national sensations from those who received merely local news coverage.

But looking forward, be on the lookout.  When the next MCYWW story hits, look for the WWN part.  I’ll bet you it’s there.  As a result, you’re seeing that story only because of some fundamental aspect of what Americans do and don’t recall when they read the news.  Without the unusual name, the story just doesn’t stick, and it never gets national press coverage.

Post #1199: This one simple hack eliminates 99% of disinformation!

I have a simple, humble request to make of our mainstream media:  If you must have comments on your stories, please randomize the order in which comments are shown.  Or, if not, do anything other than show the first-written comments first.

I was looking at a perfectly reasonable story about the current COVID-19 outbreak in Florida today, on what turned out to be the ABC News website.

And immediately following the story, in the comments section, were four pieces of what was clearly professionally-written disinformation.  Clearly working from a common pool of talking points.  Tightly written so as to hit as many hot-button issues as possible.  Obviously designed to deflect attention from the current situation in Florida, and by inference, the Republican governor of Florida.

I can only assume that whatever organization that is responsible for those comments has bots that look for newly-published on-topic articles.  They then strive to be first in line with comments.

And as a result, everyone who reads the actual news article and bothers to look at the comments is also reading that disinformation.  Lies and misdirection clearly aimed at nullifying the actual news coverage.

And so, ABC News ended up lending its entire new apparatus the forces of disinformation.  For free. 

This is really stupid, and needs to be stopped.  We have enough problems without allowing the purveyors of nonsense to piggyback on legitimate news sources.  For free.

At the minimum, if comments were shown in some random order, that would prevent organizations from hawking news articles and placing their previously-composed disinformation pieces first in the comments section.  Such a policy would not only dull the high impact of that disinformation currently has, it would reduce the incentives to publish those professionally-written comments in the first place.

Anyway, I’m just pointing this out.  My observation is that a policy of showing comments in the order written is just asking for your platform to be used by the aggressively for-profit disinformation industry.

Even if you can’t get rid of them entirely, you can certainly structure your website so as not to encourage them.  And to make it more expensive for them to keep their taking points in front of your viewer’s eyes.

In in that context, the last thing you want to do is let whoever gets first crack at the comments to get the most prominent spot in the comments.  And yet, that’s what ABC News appears to be doing.  You’re letting the enemies of information use your resources, for free.  And no matter how you slice it, that’s just plain stupid.

Post #1024: I just got my first smart phone, and I’m beginning to understand what’s wrong with America.

Sometimes there is value in being an outsider.

I’ve just gotten my first smart phone.  I guess I’m only a decade and a half late to the party.

But as a result of my tardiness, I am now deeply weirded out by things that I assume all Americans now simply take for granted. Continue reading Post #1024: I just got my first smart phone, and I’m beginning to understand what’s wrong with America.

Post #1023: Next N95 mask purchase

Currently, I’m wearing the Kimberly-Clark N95 duckbill, on sale at Amazon for $52 for a bag of 50.  This was my choice for an N95 mask purchase, for several reasons:

  • Solid evidence that these are genuine (read the Amazon comments).
  • Reputable US manufacturer (Kimberly-Clark)
  • Reputable seller (Amazon), available from other reputable vendors.
  • Industrial mask not suitable for hospital use (NIOSH-certified but not FDA-certified)
  • Cheap, at $1/mask.

When you add all that up, what that mostly means is that there’s not a lot of profit in trying to counterfeit these.  Continue reading Post #1023: Next N95 mask purchase

Post #891: Cardboard, again

This is an intermediate step in the production of a D-I-Y aid for wheelchair users.  The background can be found in Post #886 and Post #887.

The question is, just how hard is it to make a lightweight cardboard object capable of supporting a person’s weight? I know that it can be done, in theory.  But sometimes you just have to see it to believe it.

The answer is, it’s not hard at all, to make a cardboard structure that will stand up to the weight of an adult.  Hence, the brief piece of performance art below that I call “fat man stepping on a cardboard box”.

 

What you see above is an example of the “structural grid plus envelope” method for creating corrugated cardboard structures (Post #887).  Except I didn’t even bother to create a grid. I just tossed in a bunch of strips, cut to height, and folded into “V”s.

If that works, as sloppy as that is, it’s going to be a piece of cake to make a set of steps capable of supporting a seated adult.

In fact, the challenge here wasn’t even in supporting the weight.  The biggest challenge was getting those strips cut to a uniform width, so that the weight would be evenly distributed.  But even with all the sloppiness, it’s obviously no big deal to construct something out of cardboard that will support the weight of an adult.

 

Post #785: It’s time for the Ultimate Jeopardy Power Players Tournament.

Source:  New York Times.

We had to put up with the President bragging about passing his mental exam (“the duck says quack, the cow says _____”).  Now the Republicans are attacking the mental state of what’s-his-name, the Democratic Presidential candidate.  Pretty much every arm of the Republican propaganda apparatus today features a story on the mental decline of that old white guy running for President.

I say, it’s time to put up or shut up.  We need a person of unassailable stature to settle this once and for all.  We need the ultimate Jeopardy Power Players tournament: Presidential Jeopardy.

Alex Trebec, the host of Jeopardy, more-or-less single-handedly revived that show some years after the Art-Fleming-era Jeopardy went off the air.  And, to someone who has watched both, Trebec’s version of it is a substantial improvement over the Fleming era show. Not just for the production values, but for the rules governing the basic operation of the game.

We’ve had many variants on standard Jeopardy, including, most notably, Celebrity Jeopardy and Power Players Week.  So it’s not like the idea of Jeopardy tournament for Washington insiders is new.  I’m just suggesting they kick it up a notch.

If Mr. Trebec has one more show left in him, I say, let’s skip all the meaningless braggadocio and disinformation.  Let’s make it real.  What say we get an objective assessment of just how slow both of our Presidential candidates are.  On live TV.  For the entire world to watch.  One last round of Power Players Jeopardy.

Let’s make it a true daily double.

I’m going to miss Trebec-era Jeopardy.

Post #618: Blue skies, a followup

White Clouds in Blue Sky ca. 1996

My wife found the definitive article in the Washington Post.  I’m not crazy, the air is significantly cleaner now, thanks to lockdown.

That article also has links to research suggesting that long-term exposure to “PM2.5”-type air pollution (fine particulates) explains much of the variation in coronavirus death rates across the country.

As I noted in an earlier post, Italian research points vaguely in that same direction.  Wuhan had notoriously bad air pollution, as did the hardest-hit region of Italy (the Po Valley).  And air quality in New York is not so good.  And, to be honest, that doesn’t bode well for DC.

So the sky really is better-looking these days.  And if the Italian analysis is right, the reduction in particulates helps slow the spread of disease.  But our long-term exposure to particulates likely increases the mortality rate among those who fall ill.