Checking inflation predictions from November 2024

by philg

Today we had a CPI update from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Back in November 2024, I predicted the that official number would be 3 percent. (Keep in mind that official CPI does not include the cost of buying and paying ongoing costs for a house, the largest expense for the typical American family.) My reasoning for a persistently high number is that we have “leftover inflation” from union deals struck during raging Bidenflation, from businesses finally adjusting their prices to reflect the new reality, etc. Essentially the wage-price spiral.

Let’s see how I did!

The NYT today says official CPI is at 2.7 percent and 2.9 “core”.

Democrat-sponsored NPR says that my theory is garbage and all of the inflation was created by a single Republican:

Related:

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Is offshore wind the electrical equivalent of California’s high-speed rail project?

by philg

One of Trump’s many crimes, according to Democrats, is pouring cold water (so to speak) on their dream of offshore windmills. A Facebook friend in Maskachusetts recently highlighted “Why Undermining Offshore Wind Is a Threat to U.S. National Security”:

Oddly, that directive conflicts with one signed on January 20th, 2025, triggering the withdrawal of offshore wind lease areas and retroactive review of already-approved projects. This initial memorandum threatens not only a once-rapidly developing U.S. power source, but also undermines America’s energy independence and, by extension, our national security.

She pointed out “the industry that took over 20 years to build up in the US is being destroyed in months” (offshore wind is such a great idea commercially that almost nothing was done during the 12 years of Democrat rule within the past 20 years?).

From my conversations with people who invest in renewable energy projects around the world, the main limitation for wind in the US is the lack of modern DC transmission lines. Each state gets to regulate power transmission and the typical regulator is hostile to cheap out-of-state power, unlike in China where they ship power up to 1,900 miles with a single line that can power 50 million houses. The New York Times pointed this out in 2024:

In the United States, the best places for wind tend to be in the blustery Midwest and Great Plains. But many areas are now crowded with turbines and existing electric grids are clogged, making it difficult to add more projects. Energy companies want to expand the grid’s capacity to transport even more wind power to population centers, but getting permits for transmission lines and building them has become a brutal slog that can take more than a decade.

The righteous Trump-haters at New Yorker offered a similar explanation in 2024:

The transmission line Sprouse was talking about is the Grain Belt Express, a planned eight-hundred-mile-long power line that will connect wind farms in southwestern Kansas to more densely populated areas farther East. The Grain Belt Express is designed to carry five thousand megawatts of electricity, enough to power approximately 3.2 million homes. The project has been in the works since 2010. It was taken over by Invenergy, a Chicago-based energy company, in 2020. After years of lawsuits and legislative wrangling, regulators in Missouri granted it final approval in October, 2023. If all goes as planned, construction will start in early 2025 and be completed in 2028. One of the biggest obstacles that the United States faces in its fight against climate change is getting renewable energy to the places that need the most electricity. Many of the best locations for wind and solar farms are, by their very nature, remote. And moving that energy elsewhere requires navigating a byzantine permitting process for transmission lines

Based on a 2011 New York Times article, “Lack of Transmission Lines Is Restricting Wind Power”, the U.S. has made no progress on this front for 15 years.

When I pointed out that offshore wind couldn’t make economic sense without dollars extracted directly from taxpayers during construction and indirectly from peasants during operation, the Maskachusetts Democrat responded with “MA locked in a 20-yr contract with Vineyard Wind for 9 cents/ kWh” as though that were a favorable rate for wholesale electricity. I quickly found that right now, in the middle of peak summer demand, the wholesale rate in New England is about 4 cents per kWh ($40 per megawatt-hour):

Solar, of course, is now down to about 1.3 cents per kWh in sunny places and never more than about 2.2 cents in the U.S. (NREL). See also a real-world 2024 project in Saudi Arabia at 1.3 cents per kWh. As of 2024, the NREL nerds said that onshore wind was just barely competitive with current wholesale electricity rates (4.2 cents/kWh) and offshore was 3-4.5X the cost:

How come Europeans can do offshore wind, then? The Europeans are able to do everything with water at a much lower cost than Americans can. They don’t have the Jones Act that requires everything to be done with U.S.-built, American-crewed ships and, therefore, don’t have to pay 5X the world market price for an oceangoing vessel. A law firm that specializes in these “mine out the taxpayer” projects says “A typical offshore wind farm may require as many as 25 types of vessels–to lay cable, transfer crew, address surveying, lift components, monitor the environment, install, maintain and service turbines–many of which will require construction of new Jones Act-compliant vessels”.

A male (sort of) Massachusetts Democrat responded to the above data with “You are such a fool.”

The magical thinking that what is currently inefficient will some day become efficient reminds me of the enthusiasts for California’s high-speed rail project, but we also see it among those who promote nuclear power plants. As far as I know, no nuclear plant built in the past 50 years has made a profit. The most recent plant (in Georgia) was 7 years late and $17 billion over budget (the final cost should be about $35 billion). Yet the nuclear power enthusiast will posit a hypothetical world in which Americans are capable of building a nuclear power plant on time and within budget. In that fantasy world, the cost of nuclear power becomes competitive with solar+storage, wind, or natural gas.

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Logically consistent Democrats

by philg

From Trump Assassination Attempt #1, one year ago: Why do the non-Deplorables deplore the Trump shooting?

I’m still baffled by the Democrats who say that Donald Trump is Hitler 2.0 and yet won’t wish him dead. But at least some are logical.

For example, here’s a 2/28/2025 Facebook post from a Democrat (my late mother’s cousin) who previously explicitly compared Trump to Hitler and who makes the logical inference:

Comments from her friends:

  • …but then we’ve got Vance, who is no better.
  • Today is not soon enough
  • Echoes from a house in PA!
  • I keep hoping for an aortic aneurism.

Another post from the same Facebooker:

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T-Mobile ends race discrimination, but not because it was wrong

by philg

“T-Mobile disconnects from DEI under pressure from Trump administration” (USA Today):

T-Mobile is scrapping its diversity, equity and inclusion programs under pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration as it looks for regulators to green-light two major acquisitions.

In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission dated July 8, the wireless carrier said it would discontinue DEI policies “not just in name, but in substance.”

“We recognize that the legal and policy landscape surrounding DEI under federal law has changed,” T-Mobile wrote.

Here’s the correct analysis, I think:

“In yet another cynical bid to win FCC regulatory approval, T-Mobile is making a mockery of its professed commitment to eliminating discrimination, promoting fairness and amplifying underrepresented voices,” FCC commissioner Anna Gomez, a Democrat, wrote on X. “History will not be kind to this cowardly corporate capitulation.”

How is it possible for a company to abandon one of its sacred principles without at least pretending to have changed its mind, e.g., saying “What we did in the past was wrong”? It’s okay to say “We thought we could make more money by adopting a completely new moral system”?

In a similar vein… “Trump administration releases $175 million in federal funding to Penn after transgender athletes agreement” (CNN):

The funding release comes after the school reached an agreement with the federal government to block transgender athletes from female sports teams and erase the records set by swimmer Lia Thomas.

The university previously said “Lia Thomas is a woman”. If the Feds had threatened to take away $1 the school presumably would have continued to say “Lia Thomas is a woman”. There was some amount of money, however, at which Lia Thomas’s gender ID changed. But what was that amount of money? Would Penn have been willing to say “Lia Thomas is not a woman” for $1 million? $5 million?

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Air India 171 fuel cutoff switches

by philg

It looks as though someone pulled out and then threw the fuel cutoff switches for both engines of the Boeing 787 that was operating as Air India 171. Airways offers a timeline.

The Air Current has a clear and annotated picture of the switches:

It is tough to understand how this could have been a mistake. After being pulled out to release the lock the switches had to be moved down/back to the cutoff position. During climb out, on the other hand, the appropriate levers are generally being moved up (gear and flap levers, for example).

Some interesting items from the Air Currents article:

Time to let SuperGrok 4.0 do all of the flying?

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The largest youth generation ever and human population collapse

by philg

The head of the UN points out that there are more young humans on Planet Earth than at any time in history.

At the same time, we are informed by the followers of Science that everyone must do his/her/zir/their share to avert population collapse, e.g., “Population Growth Isn’t a Progressive Issue. It Should Be” (New York Times, last year):

When populations decline, the average age of people in the population increases. This has several harmful consequences. Eventually, there are not enough young people to care for older people and to economically support them through contributions to social programs; to fuel economic growth, technological innovation and cultural progress; and to fund government services. … Fertility rates in the United States are below the level necessary for population replacement, and they are declining almost everywhere else. Contrary to the alarmism you sometimes hear about exponential population growth, experts say that the number of humans on Earth will peak before the end of this century and fall afterward.

It might seem that humans are inflicting so much harm through climate change that everyone and everything on Earth would be better off with fewer inhabitants. But climate change will remain a problem even if we allow the population to decline. We have to change our patterns of consumption and reduce carbon dioxide emissions — no matter how big or small our population.

There are some great ideas in the above. First, “experts” can predict how many children humans will choose to have in the year 2100. Second, humans cause climate change, but the scale of the damage is unrelated to the number of humans.

Pew offers some projections/guesses and calls them “facts”. “5 facts about how the world’s population is expected to change by 2100”:

  • don’t worry if you’re not getting enough phone calls about solar panels, home improvement, final expense insurance, Medicare benefits, etc.: “India is expected to continue growing until it peaks at 1.7 billion people in 2061.”
  • “Five countries are expected to contribute more than 60% of the world’s population growth by 2100: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Tanzania.”
  • don’t worry if you’re concerned that the “affordable housing crisis” in the U.S. will subside: “the U.S. population is expected to grow slowly and steadily to 421 million by 2100.”

The last projection/guess confuses me. U.S. immigration levels are determined by presidential whim, not by any law. As demonstrated by Joe Biden and Donald Trump, a president can open or close the border. If Americans elect Democrats we could have at least 2.5 million new neighbors per year from 2029 through 2100, which would work out to a boost in population of 177 million (and perhaps quite a few more if asylum and welfare eligibility are expanded).

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Valetnomics in Sun Valley

by philg

I spent a few days in Sun Valley, Idaho (for work, believe it or not!) last month and asked the valets working a National Ballet of Canada event what was the conventional/expected tip. “Ten or twenty,” was the response.

(I expected to see Justin Trudeau in blackface among the corps de ballet, but was disappointed.)

Readers: How much are you giving to valets? ChatGPT: “$2 to $5 when your car is returned; $2–$3 is common for average service; $4–$5 is appropriate for prompt, courteous, or extra-helpful service.”

Note the 1948 Buick Roadmaster in the photo below.

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Turn golf courses in pro-immigration states into housing?

by philg

The U.S. population has been booming due to immigration (Pew):

Most of the migrants are low-skill and, therefore, don’t earn enough to fund the construction of an apartment, even if the land were made available for free (see City rebuilding costs from the Halifax explosion and a calculation that even two median earners in Maskachusetts don’t earn enough).

The “housing affordability crisis”, therefore, gets worse every year (Brookings) and it seems to be reasonably well correlated with immigration:

How about this idea: use eminent domain to take golf courses and turn them into housing. A typical golf course is reasonably close to jobs and about 170 acres in size. I previously calculated that Vatican City, about 109 acres in size, could hold 50,000 migrants if developed like a Chinese apartment complex (any migrant-loving pope, therefore, could take in 50,000 migrants if he chose to follow the advice that he gives to other nations). So each golf course certainly could house 50,000 people in high rises.

Golf courses tend to be enjoyed by the elite so this kind of taking would have the salutary effect of reducing inequality.

A reasonable objection to this plan is that not every American agrees on continued population expansion via low-skill immigration. To keep it fair, therefore, the plan would be implemented only in those states where a majority of voters selected the pro-immigration presidential candidate. Inequality-decrying elites in California, Maskachusetts, and New York, for example, would give up their golf courses in order to ensure affordable housing for migrants (with some spillover into the market for all housing) and continued enrichment by migrants (since migrants wouldn’t feel any pressure to move away).

Maybe Palo Alto, California, Stanford University, and Governor Gavin Newsom could cooperate on the first golf course->housing complex transformation starting with the Stanford Golf Course.

Related:

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Testing Grok 4

by philg

Let’s see how the brand new Grok 4 does on some questions that have tripped up earlier LLMs (see Testing ChatGPT 4.5). Note that Grok 4 is not for the impatient. Answers come back after 1-5 minutes of cogitation. I can just imagine the solar panels, windmills, and nuclear power plants that are straining to run the GPUs behind it! Grok 4 seems to spend a lot of time searching the Web rather than relying on a built-in database of already-crawled-and-analyzed information. This might be what makes it slow, but it also might make the answers much better when there is any question involving recent events.

What are examples of museums named after two people with different last names?

Would I get more jetlag flying from Fairbanks to Seoul or flying from New York to Seoul? (answer took more than one minute)

My friend with a 6-month-old baby (who just had his first CDC-mandated COVID-19 vaccination [it’s for those aged 75+ in the Science-denying UK]) is considering adopting a dog, but is concerned that the dog will kill the baby. He really likes pit bulls. Should he get a pit bull or a golden retriever? (Answer is incredibly long-winded, but excerpts below.)

Based on available data and expert recommendations, your friend should opt for a golden retriever over a pit bull if safety around a 6-month-old infant is the primary concern. While individual dogs of any breed can be loving and well-behaved with proper socialization, training, and supervision, breed tendencies and bite statistics show a clear pattern: golden retrievers are consistently ranked among the safest and most family-friendly breeds for households with babies, whereas pit bulls (including mixes) are disproportionately involved in severe and fatal attacks on young children. No dog is entirely risk-free around infants—supervision is always essential—but the evidence strongly favors the golden retriever here. … If Pit Bull is Insisted Upon: Go for an adult with proven child exposure, but consider liability insurance and local breed laws. Still, data suggests it’s not ideal.

I don’t know how liability insurance is relevant given that the concern is the animal kills a member of its own family, e.g., as in this incident from July 2, 2025. (Journal of Popular Studies)

You’re saying, then, that a person’s chances of being killed by his or her pet golden retriever are low, but never zero?

Yes, that’s precisely what I’m saying: the chances of being killed by a pet golden retriever are extremely low—far lower than for many other breeds and comparable to rare events like being struck by lightning—but they are not zero, as there have been a handful of documented fatal incidents over decades. … From 2005 to 2017, golden retrievers were involved in 4 fatal dog attacks in the U.S., accounting for just 0.9% of the 433 total fatalities during that period. For comparison, pit bulls were linked to 284 deaths (65.6%), and rottweilers to 45 (10.4%).

Did four of Mindy the Crippler’s cousins actually kill people? Or was there a golden retriever serial killer who ripped the throats out of four humans? That would contradict what we’re told by the New York Times. Immigrants and children of immigrants don’t commit crimes. Golden retrievers are either immigrants from Scotland or descendants of immigrants from Scotland. Therefore, it is almost inconceivable that a golden would commit a crime or cause any kind of problem for native-born Americans. The cited source doesn’t necessarily relate to purebred canines.

Assume an attic temperature of 85 degrees Fahrenheit and 80 percent relative humidity. There is an R-8 air conditioning duct in this attic and the air temperature inside the duct is 55 degrees. Will the duct sweat from condensation?

After literally 5 minutes of cogitation (one plus: Grok 4 shows it work with continuous updates about what it is doing, searching, trying, etc.):

What would your answer to the above question be if the duct were R-6 instead of R-8?

After another 5 minutes and 13 seconds:

ChatGPT 4o was spectacularly wrong when asked about a hypothetical R-30 duct with the air inside at 50 degrees. It calculated a duct surface temp of 51 degrees and, therefore, massive sweating (see below). Grok 4 get its right even with a someone confusing prompt. It immediately figured out that the “the air inside the duct is still at 50 degrees” is actually a change to the hypothetical conditions. It takes 3.5 minutes to answer.

What if we increase the duct insulation to R-30? What would the outside temperature of the duct be? (the air inside the duct is still at 50 degrees)

The outside temperature of the duct would be approximately 83°F. …

Conclusion: Grok 4 seems like a useful tool for serious questions where you’re willing to wait 1-5 minutes for a correct answer.

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How much tax revenue can California get from NVIDIA shareholders alone?

by philg

NVIDIA is now worth $4 trillion. Is it reasonable to assume that $1.5 trillion of that is unrealized capital gains for people who live in California (investors, employees, etc.; Jensen Huang alone owns 3.5 percent of the company)? If so, that’s 1.5e12*13.3% = $200 billion in potential capital gains tax to be collected by California. California’s entire annual state budget is only about $322 billion. So, if the above assumptions are correct, collecting taxes from California residents who own NVIDIA could pay for at least 6 months of whatever government programs Gavin Newsom and friends can dream up and, therefore, NVIDIA will do more to make progressive Democrats look good than any company in history.

(Of course, a handful of people might move away from California before selling their appreciated shares, but that shouldn’t have a huge effect on the aggregate potential for taxation.)

How about for the Feds? Including the Obamacare NITT rake of 3.8 percent, there is a potential harvest of 23.8 percent for the federal government of however much isn’t owned by foreigners (18 percent of the overall market). If substantially all of the $4 trillion is unrealized capital gains that could be about $780 billion for the federal government, enough to pay off a princely 2% of U.S. debt (just need another 50 NVIDIAs and we can have the entire National Debt squared away).

CNBC:

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