Mike's Politics and Economics Blog

The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally sounded like a really bad idea from the start.  Covid has been politicized and bad info abounds.  But a recent study (it even made Fox News) claims that 266,000 cases of Covid are attributable to the event.  The authors of the study claim the rally can be linked to 20% of the cases in the US.  Just google Sturgis Covid and you'll see links to all the articles. I don't think this study passes the "smell test"! Fox News loves to play up stories that appeal to the right.  This one appeals to the left.  My guess is that the story is so attention getting to anyone, that Fox ran it and continues to run it since it is an attention getter. Why don't I like this study?  First, I must admit I didn't go deep into the weeds trying to understand the details of the analysis.  But I don't think I need to due to the study's overall methodology. Here are my concerns with the study in no particular order. 1)  The study inherently a...

Donald Trump raves about the strong economy he created - so lets look at how it performed under his presidency compared with Obama's.  To be fair, data for 2020 isn't included since even the first quarter's performance was impacted by the pandemic.  So lets use data for 2014 thru 2019.  That's the last three year's of Obama's presidency and the first three of Trumps (ok, a few weeks in 2016 were Obama's, but that should be close enough). The data we'll look at is non-seasonally adjusted GDP for a given quarter compared with the same quarter the previous year.  For more info on this measure and why I like it, scroll to the bottom of this post and read "Data Technical Details". So here is the chart: For each president's 3 years, there are ups and downs.  But their average performance was pretty similar!  So any boasting of one having done better than the other appears unfounded. But - and here is a big but, under Trump during this period, the...

Welcome to my first post on this blog.  The goal is to create a shareable information and graphic resource to guide voters in the upcoming election.   The hope is that a body of easy-to-follow graphics and information will be presented, and everyone is encouraged to share the presented materials!  So feel free to grab the images and use them to bolster you're individual conversations or share on any site you like.  Note that much of the information I'll discuss is nothing "new", but rather I'm trying to develop graphics and presentation materials that ease the understanding of these points. For today, lets explode a myth. Myth  - The economy, including the job market, has been better under Trump than Obama. Reality - Average monthly job growth was lower during Trump's first 38 months in office compared with Obama's last 38 month in office!  What is this data?  For each month of the analysis, total non-farm employment is compared with the same mont...