Mastodawn

Who is in charge of the House right now? Like who has the authority to order changes like this? Don't Republicans need to formally elect a speaker before they can make other changes? https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/03/speaker-house-vote-mccarthy-new-congress/#link-K6DKUOJLZJBZPL2SHU3FC3NYJA

The new Senate also gaveled into session Tuesday but with far less drama than in the House, where it could take multiple ballots to elect a speaker.

The Washington Post

What Can Central Banks Do In an Era of Supply Constraints?

Apricitas Economics

BLS statistics show that toy prices have been falling for decades. Hence the state of my living room right now.

My wife used the latest technology for my Christmas present.

ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location using their IP addresses, as first reported by Forbes in October.

Forbes

This makes me wonder if there are strong enough network effects/economies of scale in ride hailing to make it a natural monopoly. If nothing else Uber can spread the cost of app development across many more drivers than Lyft. https://www.fullstackeconomics.com/p/i-drove-for-lyft-for-a-week-and-learned

Lyft charged one of my passengers $59. I got $16.52.

Full Stack Economics

Computers are supposed to make processes cheaper and more efficient, but Lyft has done the opposite to taxi dispatching, in a big way. It's honestly baffling. https://www.fullstackeconomics.com/p/i-drove-for-lyft-for-a-week-and-learned

Lyft charged one of my passengers $59. I got $16.52.

Full Stack Economics

The DC council member leading the fight for internet voting just admitted that her bill wasn’t ready for prime time. And that she’s not going to try again next year. Better late than never. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/20/russian-expatriate-investors-are-under-investigation/

Authorities are looking into whether they covertly helped Russia develop new technologies.

The Washington Post

I'm sure this is partly because Canada and Mexico started requiring Americans to have passports, but it's also because Americans are traveling a lot more than they used to. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w13977/w13977.pdf

The share of Americans with a passport rose from 4 percent in 1990 to 42 percent in 2017. An amazing example of rising living standards over the last 30 years. https://www.statista.com/statistics/804430/us-citzens-owning-a-passport/

The statistic shows the share of citizens from the United States who own a valid passport from 1989 to 2017.

Statista