Author Archives: PhilomenaRawson

Why Is the US Economy Sort of Sluggish?

by PhilomenaRawson Posted on October 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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A new paper from a trio of Fed researchers suggests that our recent sluggish growth is mostly a result of demographic changes and technological slowdown. The retired share of the population has increased, which means the working share of the population has decreased. Since workers are the ones who produce goods and services, it makes sense that GDP growth will slow down in an economy with fewer adults of working age. Ditto for an economy in which technological progress is slackening.

I’ve pointed out the same thing before in the case of Japan, and it makes sense. But how about in the US? The easiest way to see the rough shape of the river is to simply look at GDP per working-age adult. That eliminates most of the demographic issues. When you do this for the US, you get a trendline that still shows a decline in GDP growth: it’s down by about one percentage point since 1978.

You can also look at total factor productivity, which gives us an idea of the effect of technological change that’s independent of demographics. Over the past 60 years, it’s been pretty flat.

Both of these are volatile series, so take them with a grain of salt. That said, productivity hasn’t changed much, but GDP per working-age adult has steadily decreased anyway. This suggests that neither demographics nor technological progress really explains things. So what does?

NOTE: This bit of amateur economics was made possible by a grant from the Committee to Prevent Endless Blogging About Donald Trump. The author thanks them for their generosity.

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Why Is the US Economy Sort of Sluggish?

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Neo-Confederate Ally Chris McDaniel Moves One Step Closer to Winning Mississippi’s Senate Race

by PhilomenaRawson Posted on June 4, 2014

Mother Jones

For months, conservatives have thrown their money and might behind Mississippi state Senator Chris McDaniel in an effort to defeat longtime Sen. Thad Cochran in the state’s GOP Senate primary. Tea party activists swooned over McDaniel as the candidate who, in a year of failed challenges from the right, could succeed in knocking off a GOP incumbent. Mississippians went to the polls on Tuesday and gave McDaniel a slight edge over Cochran. A run-off is likely. With a fired-up base behind him, McDaniel is in a solid position to defeat the six-term senator.

As Mother Jones has reported, McDaniel is a southern conservative with a controversial track record. Last summer, he delivered the keynote address at an event hosted by a chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a neo-Confederate group that, as my colleague Tim Murphy wrote, “promotes the work of present-day secessionists and contends the wrong side won the ‘war of southern independence.'” McDaniel spoke at past Sons of Confederate Veterans-affiliated events, according to a spokesman for the group.

From 2004 to 2007, McDaniel hosted a syndicated Christian conservative radio program, Right Side Radio. Once, McDaniel weighed in on gun violence in America by blaming “hip-hop” culture. “The reason Canada is breaking out with brand new gun violence has nothing to do with the United States and guns,” he said in a promotional sampler for the radio show. “It has everything to do with a culture that is morally bankrupt. What kind of culture is that? It’s called hip-hop.” He went on:

Name a redeeming quality of hip-hop. I want to know anything about hip-hop that has been good for this country. And it’s not—before you get carried away—this has nothing to do with race. Because there are just as many hip-hopping white kids and Asian kids as there are hip-hopping black kids. It’s a problem of a culture that values prison more than college; a culture that values rap and destruction of community values more than it does poetry; a culture that can’t stand education. It’s that culture that can’t get control of itself.

McDaniel also used his radio show to defend the efficacy—despite reams of evidence saying otherwise—of torture as a way to gather intelligence.

In April, McDaniel raised eyebrows when he appeared on a different radio show, “Focal Point,” hosted by the Bryan Fischer, an top official at the rabidly anti-gay American Family Association. Here’s a brief rundown of Fischer’s penchant for bomb throwing:

In March, Fischer told his listeners that while he didn’t think President Obama is the antichrist, “the spirit of the Antichrist is at work” in the Oval Office. He has said that people turn to homosexuality (which he’d like criminalized) when the Devil takes over their brains. He once called for a Sea World Orca whale to be Biblically stoned after it killed its trainer. He said the secretarial job in his office is “reserved for a woman because of the unique things that God has built into women.” Even some Republicans have distanced themselves from Fischer—at the 2011 Values Voters Summit in Washington, DC, Mitt Romney condemned Fischer’s “poisonous language.”

Mark your calendars: A McDaniel-Cochran run-off would take place on June 24.

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Neo-Confederate Ally Chris McDaniel Moves One Step Closer to Winning Mississippi’s Senate Race

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Natural Gas Is Dirtier Than We Thought—But It’s Still Better Than Coal

by PhilomenaRawson Posted on February 13, 2014

Mother Jones

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For decades, the Environmental Protection Agency has underestimated US emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. That’s the argument of a new analysis appearing in the Feb. 14 issue of Science, which also finds that a big factor behind the lowball estimates is the EPA’s poor grasp of methane leaks from the natural gas industry.

The analysis, which examines more than 200 existing studies, is the first to take a broad view of scientific knowledge of methane emissions, and it has critical implications for the use of natural gas. Gas has been touted by its proponents as a cleaner alternative to traditional fossil fuels such as coal—President Obama hails it as a “bridge fuel” that will allow the country to transition to cleaner energy sources—since burning natural gas for energy emits far less carbon dioxide. But because methane, a main component of natural gas, is such a powerful greenhouse gas, the new evidence of narrows the gap between the climate change contributions of gas and coal.

“Our best guess is that methane emissions in this country are about 50 percent more than the EPA estimates,” says Adam Brandt, an assistant professor of energy resources engineering at Stanford University and the lead author of the analysis. Methane emissions could plausibly be anywhere between 25 to 75 percent more than what EPA measures have shown, Brandt adds. “That amounts to something like 7 to 21 million excess tons of methane every year.” Brandt and his co-authors, he says, did not have enough evidence to determine what proportion of total excess methane is released by the natural gas industry, as opposed to by other energy sectors, agriculture, or landfills.

But the study concludes that natural gas as a fuel source still contributes less to climate change than coal. “We don’t believe that the evidence suggests that burning coal is better,” Brandt says. “There’s just not support for that.” The reason is that while methane is the more damaging greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, which coal emits in huge quantities when burned, stays in the atmosphere for a much longer period of time. Coal is a “cleaner” fuel only in the near-term—a period of 20 years or so. Brandt says that over a period of 100 years, natural gas—leaks and all—would still be a less greenhouse gas-intensive source of energy than coal.

Still, Brandt cautions, natural gas is not a long-term energy solution for keeping climate change in check. “Uncontrolled use of gas over a century or more isn’t a good thing, from a climate change perspective,” Brandt says. “Most climate change scenarios suggest that this can’t be a solution for 100 years.”

The analysis also concludes that even under the most conservative estimates of methane leaks from the gas sector, keeping diesel-powered powered vehicles, such as buses, on the road contributes smaller amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than switching to gas-powered buses.

The researchers believe that only a small percentage of methane leaked by the gas sector is coming from the controversial hydraulic fracturing—or fracking—process itself. Rather, accidental leaks that occur as the industry moves and processes natural gas likely account for the biggest proportion of these emissions. One study cited by the analysis found that less than 1 percent of individual pieces of equipment at a single natural gas plant were responsible for nearly 60 percent of its leakage. Brandt says new technology that quickly identifies these “superemitters” is the best hope for reigning in the industry’s emissions.

As for why the EPA underestimates methane leaks in the gas industry, the analysis notes that the agency can only measure emission rates at wells and plants where the operators volunteered to allow the EPA on site. In one instance, the EPA asked 30 natural gas companies to allow them on site, but only six cooperated.

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Natural Gas Is Dirtier Than We Thought—But It’s Still Better Than Coal

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