A common right-wing grievance is that undocumented (“illegal”) immigrants are taking all the jobs. In particular, that they’re stealing jobs from native-born Americans. What’s the evidence?

If it were true that immigrants were stealing jobs from native born Americans, then if you plotted labor force participation by native- and foreign-born over time, they would have a reciprocal relationship. As non-native participation rose, native participation would fall. Over at jabberwocking.com, Kevin Drum posts the graph, and it shows that both native and non-native participation move in tandem. I don’t see any evidence for job stealing there.One problem with the job-stealing hypothesis is that it is based on the lump-of-labor fallacy. In this model,

Donald Trump and JD Vance are campaigning on xenophobia. There’s no evidence that immigrants are any sort of threat to America, and the data show that immigrants commit crimes at *lower* rates than American citizens. Sadly, though, fear of the other seems to work in America:“Jeffrey Balogh, a resident of Erie, said at that event that he feels strongly about Trump’s proposals on immigration. He shared that he felt uncomfortable recently when he went to rent chairs from a business and five men who spoke a foreign language were standing outside waiting for a bus.“Not one spoke a lick of English,” he said. “You see a whole different environment.”Actually, Jeffrey doesn’t know whether these men do or don’t speak English. He only knows he didn’t hear it

I had an email exchange a couple days ago with Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo about polls (which he’s written a lot about recently) and the election betting market (which he had never mentioned). Yesterday, he used our exchange as a jumping off point to explain why he doesn’t believe the betting market is reliable and certainly no improvement over polling. The money grafs:“First of all, as I said, bets are largely made on the basis of polls. But let’s go a bit beyond that. In theory at least in equity markets you have armies of industry analysts studying industries and providing insights into the future challenges and profitability of businesses. Same in commodities, currencies, bonds, etc. Investors make investments on the basis of this

The old model of a single doc running a practice is disappearing in America. Between the overhead and the reduced compensation, this model of health care delivery looks increasingly anachronistic.When I started as an assistant professor at a medical school in 1987, there was a lot of money sloshing around. Patients and their insurance companies would pay a premium to be seen by docs in an academic health care practice. Managed care put an end to that, and the medical school from which I recently retired is struggling to stay in the black after many years of deficits.At the other end of the food chain are private practice docs. As America ages, more and more of their patients are on Medicare (as am I). And the government is proposing to slash Medicare

I’ve posted here before about herd immunity. Prior to inoculation/vaccination, herd immunity was the result of enough people dying or surviving that the transmission of the disease (plague, smallpox, etc) was arrested in that population until the next generation of uninfected people grew up, whereupon the substrate for another round of death appeared.But let’s be clear: the survivors weren’t necessarily healthy. Many polio survivors spent the rest of their lives in an iron lung. Others had a permanent limp or other neurological disability (see, e.g., Joni Mitchell).With COVID, many survivors report neurological impairments like loss of taste, brain fog, anxiety or depression, as well as respiratory issues. Recent imaging studies of the brains of early

While I was raised Roman Catholic, I had already rejected the RCC teaching on abortion by the time I started high school. That teaching was not grounded in the Bible, nor was it grounded in biological science.Most human conceptuses never make it to term, making God the greatest abortionist of all time. And mammalian stem cells have the potential to develop into a complete animal in every case where it’s been tested, so destroying a “potential” human life extends to the removal of human organs and amputations.But if you want to believe that human cellular life is sacred from the moment of conception, that’s on you. Just don’t try to impose your beliefs on others, particularly in cases of life-or-death medical decisions.“When Anna Nusslock showed up at

Vaccines are an unalloyed triumph of public health. That Donald Trump is attacking vaccines—any vaccines—is obscene.“ . . . on at least 17 occasions this year, Trump has promised to cut funding to schools that mandate vaccines. Campaign spokespeople have previously said that pledge would apply only to schools with COVID mandates. But speeches reviewed by KFF Health News included no such distinction — raising the possibility Trump would also target vaccination rules for common, potentially lethal childhood diseases like polio and measles.“The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment on this article.Trump has presided over a landslide shift in his party’s views on vaccines, reflected this campaign season in false claims by Republican

Last year, mRNA vaccines won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. This morning found RNA once again the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. By the time I finished college, RNA was familiar to me as a family of biopolymers that together specified the manufacture of proteins in cells. Ribosomal RNA made up the platform and enzyme that performed the assembly of amino acids into proteins. Transfer RNAs were the small adapter molecules that brought each amino acid to the assembly plant. Messenger RNAs were the blueprint used to specify the order in which chains of amino acids were assembled into proteins. Importantly, the messenger RNAs in different cells dictated the properties of each cell, analogous to the combination of apps

From Prof. Timothy Snyder’s substack “Thinking about…” Shared with permission:“Think about the politicians Trump idolizes, Vladimir Putin in Russia and Viktor Orbán in Hungary. The first undid a democracy through fake emergencies, the second through persistent constitutional abuse. It is not hard to see why Trump likes them. “Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs. Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time. And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly

High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is everywhere—salad dressings, catsup, carbonated beverages. Fructose is sweeter, per unit mass, than cane sugar (sucrose), and apparently keeps better, so is a favored sweetener by the food industry. Unlike glucose, fructose in converted to free fatty acid in the liver and thus can contribute to hyperlipidemia, diabetes and heart disease.I’ve avoided high fructose corn syrup mostly because ever since I stopped eating desserts, my taste for sweet flavor has become more acute and I favor savory foods over sweet foods. But is my aversion to HFCS-containing foods also healthier?“. . . is HFCS more of a health risk than other sweeteners? Many of the sources that demonize HFCS list alternative sweeteners — cane sugar, honey,

I was married by the time I started graduate school. I suspect that being in a committed relationship, and in particular with someone who was also a grad student, kept me centered during the stressful times.

Perhaps these were different times, but a recent study shows that today’s PhD students are struggling with mental health issues:

“The researchers compared the rate at which PhD students, people with master’s degrees and a sample of the general population accessed mental-health services. Before starting a PhD, students and people with master’s degrees used these services at similar rates. But use of psychiatric medicines, such as antidepressants and sedatives, increased among PhD students year-on-year during their studies. This peaked in

The recurring bleat of vaccine denialists is that COVID should be addressed through “herd immunity.” Well, OK, a vaccinated population has herd immunity, but that’s not what they mean. They mean herd immunity in the sense of the Black Plague—the people who didn’t die were immune.Apart from all the deaths caused by COVID infections in unvaccinated people, there’s the issue of long COVID. While its etiology is poorly understood, its reality is certain. Vaccination not only keeps you out of the ED and the morgue, it also reduces your chances of long COVID.For victims of long COVID, there isn’t a cure, but there may be some relief:“In September 2021, Systrom was among the first clinicians in the nation to demonstrate a measurable change in the physiology

I just finished reading “The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq” by Steve Coll. By the onset of the US invasion and military occupation, I was convinced that (a) Iraq had no WMDs or active WMD programs, and (b) there was no collusion between Saddam and al Qaeda.

The idea that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were allies was facially absurd. Bin Laden was a religious zealot and Hussein was a secular dictator. They were enemies, not allies. And after years of searching, there was not an atom of evidence for Iraqi WMDs or WMD programs after the year 2000. Yet to the Clinton and Bush administrations, absence of evidence simply proved Saddam was hiding them.Coll confirms this, of course, and

The existential threat to humanity in this century is climate change. It is estimated that upwards of half a billion people will be displaced by flooding, fires and desertification due to global warming.

But such frightening predictions are based on climate modeling. How reliable are these models? It turns out, remarkably reliable:“Climate change doubters have a favorite target: climate models. They claim that computer simulations conducted decades ago didn’t accurately predict current warming, so the public should be wary of the predictive power of newer models. Now, the most sweeping evaluation of these older models—some half a century old—shows most of them were indeed accurate.”*snip*“The researchers compared annual average surface

The widespread use of diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (DTaP) vaccines, which protect against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis had driven whooping cough (pertussis) to the brink of extinction in the US.“The DTaP vaccine has been a cornerstone of childhood vaccination programs for decades, significantly reducing the incidence of diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis. Pertussis, in particular, is a highly contagious bacterial infection that can cause severe, life-threatening complications in young children, especially infants who are too young to be fully vaccinated. Before widespread vaccination, whooping cough epidemics were a regular occurrence, with thousands of deaths reported each year.

“Today, the vaccine is highly effective, with

Kevin Drum has a post up about the present and future of EV charging stalls in the US. As of 2023, the number was 184,000, with public charging stalls outnumbering Tesla stalls 6:1. Is that a lot or a little?

Well, lots of people say that they’re holding off buying EVs because of the range, which is still less than most ICE cars. One way to mitigate that concern is to have more charging stalls than gas station nozzles*. So how many gasoline fuel nozzles are there? According to xMap, there are ca. 196,600 retail gas station locations in the US. If you assume each station has on average eight fuel nozzles, that’s ca. 1,570,000 gas fueling ports**. So there are probably about an order of magnitude *more* ICE fueling nozzles than there are EV

You may have read about “blue zones,” certain communities that have an unusually large number of centenarians: Loma Linda in California, Okinawa in Japan, Sardinia in Italy, Nicoya in Costa Rica, and Ikaria in Greece. Since we can’t all move there, the next best thing would be to discover the key to longevity in these places.“The overall populations within these blue zones, as well as those individuals who appear to be living into extreme old age, have been analyzed for their life patterns, social connections, biomarkers, genomic variations and so on. All of these studies are searching for the same answer: what are the secrets to long life?‘But Newman believes the answer has less to do with any particular lifestyle factor, and rather more to do with

I recently retired after working for the same employer for 37 years. My dad also worked ca. 35 years for his employer before retiring, as did my father-in-law. My sister worked for her employer for 40 years. Two of my sisters-in-law worked for their only employer for about that long. My daughter, on the other hand, is on her 4th employer since finishing law school ten years ago.

Most folks switch jobs several times during their working years. Kevin Drum brings some data on US job tenure over at Jabberwocking.com. He notes that job tenure (median years at current job) has declined in the 35-44 age group since 1984, although the magnitude of decline doesn’t seem that impressive (from 5.2 to 4.6 years).He also breaks out the data by age group. My

Lewis Strauss, former chair of the AEC, coined the phrase “too cheap to meter” referring to the potential for nuclear power. It was a phrase I grew up hearing in Oak Ridge TN, but it never came to be, there or anywhere else.Now, the Wall Street Journal claims that day has arrived, not because of nuclear, but because of wind and solar:“The changes sweeping Europe’s electricity markets, which were accelerated by the energy crisis brought on by the war in Ukraine, show what could happen in the U.S. in a few years when renewable capacity reaches a similar scale. In 2023, 44% of EU electricity was generated by renewables, compared with 21% in the U.S.“In some U.S. markets—sunny California, the wind-swept Great Plains, and Texas—zero and negative prices are

Big Pharma has become a familiar whipping boy in the debate over healthcare costs. CAR-T therapies to treat certain cancers, for example, can cost between half a million and a million dollars for a single treatment course. What’s the prospect of a cancer cure worth to you?GLP-1 receptor agonists like semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Zepbound) are transforming the lives of obese patients. For most people, these drugs will have to be taken continuously for the rest of their lives at a cost of ca. $16,000/year. Given the number of obese Americans, this represents a huge burden for insurers, both private and Medicare.But thinking about the benefits simply from the standpoint of obesity treatment elides the economic benefits of

As I posted yesterday, Medicare Advantage, which now covers more than half of the Medicare-eligible population, is a rip-off for taxpayers and for policy holders. Apparently, this is finally sinking in for hospitals and health systems across the country:“In 2023, Becker’s began reporting on hospitals and health systems nationwide that dropped some or all of their Medicare Advantage contracts.“Data on this topic is limited. In January, the Healthcare Financial Management Association released a survey of 135 health system CFOs, which found that 16% of systems are planning to stop accepting one or more MA plans in the next two years. Another 45% said they are considering the same but have not made a final decision. The report also found that 62% of CFOs

It should come as no surprise to regular AB readers that the US for-profit healthcare system is a disaster for everyone except the executives and stock-holders. Here’s yet another confirmation:“A report out Thursday shows that the United States’ for-profit healthcare system still ranks dead last among peer nations on key metrics, including access to care and health outcomes such as life expectancy at birth.

“The new analysis from the Commonwealth Fund is the latest indictment of a corporate-dominated system that leaves tens of millions of people uninsured or underinsured and unable to afford life-saving medications without rationing doses or going into debt.“Despite spending a lot on healthcare, the United States is not meeting one of the

Endless online vitriol has been spilt promoting the idea that the COVID-19 pandemic was somehow either (a) an engineered pathogen or (b) a virus that escaped from a research facility. While those allegations served the interests of the Trump Administration, the actual, you know, scientific data supporting them was non-existant.Now, years later, the sorts of experiments that could have weighed in support of natural origins of the pandemic, the parsimonious conclusion, have been done:“After an in-depth analysis of the genetic material from hundreds of swabs taken from the walls, floors, machines and drains inside the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China — a site that’s been described as an epicenter of early spread of Covid-19 — scientists

Endless online vitriol has been spilt promoting the idea that the COVID-19 pandemic was somehow either (a) an engineered pathogen or (b) a virus that escaped from a research facility. While those allegations served the interests of the Trump Administration, the actual, you know, scientific data supporting them was non-existant.Now, years later, the sorts of experiments that could have weighed in support of natural origins of the pandemic, the parsimonious conclusion, have been done:“After an in-depth analysis of the genetic material from hundreds of swabs taken from the walls, floors, machines and drains inside the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China — a site that’s been described as an epicenter of early spread of Covid-19 — scientists

Kevin Drum has a short piece on the recent surge in auto insurance rates. He doesn’t offer any explanation in his post, but the comment thread has suggestions:• a combination of increase in bad driving and lack of enforcement;• fender benders are much more costly since all the self-driving gear as well as lane alerts, back up and blind spot cameras, etc., are in the bumpers, windshields and side view mirrors;• the increased number of EVs on the road, which some commenters assert are more expensive to repair;• increased damage due to climate change (fires, floods).Commenters note that insurance rates have also surged in Canada and Germany, so it’s apparently not just a US thing.Discuss.Explaining the surge in auto insurance rates

Kevin Drum has a short piece on the recent surge in auto insurance rates. He doesn’t offer any explanation in his post, but the comment thread has suggestions:• a combination of increase in bad driving and lack of enforcement;• fender benders are much more costly since all the self-driving gear as well as lane alerts, back up and blind spot cameras, etc., are in the bumpers, windshields and side view mirrors;• the increased number of EVs on the road, which some commenters assert are more expensive to repair;• increased damage due to climate change (fires, floods).Commenters note that insurance rates have also surged in Canada and Germany, so it’s apparently not just a US thing.Discuss.Explaining the surge in auto insurance rates

From everything I’ve read, Medicare Advantage is just as scam. By the time my Lovely And Talented Wife® retired and shifted to Medicare two years ago, she took the regular Medicare. This July when I retired, I followed suit. Turns out, a growing number of hospitals and health systems nationwide have dropped some or all of their Medicare Advantage contracts.“Data on this topic is limited. In January, the Healthcare Financial Management Association released a survey of 135 health system CFOs, which found that 16% of systems are planning to stop accepting one or more MA plans in the next two years. Another 45% said they are considering the same but have not made a final decision. The report also found that 62% of CFOs believe collecting from MA is

About 15 years ago, we replaced our electric stove and range, which was breaking, with a gas stove and range. I prefer cooking on gas. In addition to the oven and cooktop, we had a gas furnace, water heater and clothes dryer. To be fair, >80% of the electricity in Missouri at the time was generated with coal.The problem with natural gas is that it is ca. 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, and there’s a lot of methane leakage in the lines that transport gas to its consumption points. But that’s not all:“In addition to those leaks, there’s a new worry, too: an increase in methane emissions from certain natural sources, especially tropical wetlands in the Congo, the Amazon, and Southeast Asia, likely the result of warmer, wetter

Farming is a risky business. Always has been. A federal program to keep farmers in business during droughts seems like a good idea to me. Sadly, it’s also a target for fraud:“On a normal day, the promising storms produced snow or rain that would fall onto a system of official weather stations at airstrips or town halls, into heated “tipping buckets.” When the teeter-totter buckets filled with a thimbleful of water, the seesaw tilted, dropping one miniature metal bucket downward to close an electrical circuit. “One “tick” of the bucket, and a signal went out to National Weather Service sensors around the world that the parched High Plains had recorded one hundredth of an inch of welcome water. “What bewildered the trackers is that on many of these

I just finished reading “America for Americans: A history of xenophobia in the United States” by Erika Lee. It is an unsparing analysis of the way xenophobia is woven into the fabric of American law and culture.When you read “America for Americans,” does it conjure an image of native Americans asserting their rights to the lands that were over-run by western Europeans? Of course not. The people who use that expression are overwhelmingly whites of western European descent. The folks who were here before them don’t count. Likewise, the slogan “America for Americans” wasn’t intended to include the involuntary immigrants from Africa, whose residence here antedates the ancestors of many American xenophobes today.

That’s just the beginning.For all the