2026-02-04 19:59:36
The administration continues to add expenses for the country and insist tariff revenues will cover the cost. The Cato Institute has been keeping track, and the Washington Post has a unit chart that shows how the claims sum to impossible.
Each square represents one billion dollars of estimated tariff revenue. Squares are filled with each expense and total cost quickly escapes the bounds of available funds.
Tags: Cato Institute, revenue, tariff, Washington Post
2026-02-04 18:14:42
One year into these tariffs, Ana Swanson for the New York Times has the charts. On prices:
Unsurprisingly, tariffs pushed up the prices of imported goods last year. Economic tracking shows that prices began climbing particularly after Mr. Trump announced sweeping global tariffs in April, reversing a trend of falling prices in previous months.
The price effects from tariffs have, however, been somewhat smaller than many originally anticipated, partly because companies have been hesitant to raise prices for fear of losing customers.
That’s… good? I wonder how long businesses and investors will be able to tolerate decreased margins.
Tags: cost, New York Times, tariff
2026-02-04 03:33:27
Ben Casselman reporting for the New York Times:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics will not release monthly jobs numbers on Friday as scheduled because of the partial government shutdown, said Emily Liddel, an associate commissioner for the bureau. The report, one of the most closely watched economic indicators each month, would have provided data on job growth, unemployment and wages in January, as well as annual revisions to employment estimates from 2024 and 2025.
The report “will be rescheduled upon the resumption of government funding,” Ms. Liddel said. A report on job openings and turnover in December, scheduled for release on Tuesday, will also be delayed.
Pfft. We just run on vibes now anyways.
Tags: delay, government, New York Times, shutdown
2026-02-04 03:27:56
The next version of Firefox will have controls to turn off AI features.
AI is changing the web, and people want very different things from it. We’ve heard from many who want nothing to do with AI. We’ve also heard from others who want AI tools that are genuinely useful. Listening to our community, alongside our ongoing commitment to offer choice, led us to build AI controls.
Starting with Firefox 148, which rolls out on Feb. 24, you’ll find a new AI controls section within the desktop browser settings. It provides a single place to block current and future generative AI features in Firefox. You can also review and manage individual AI features if you choose to use them. This lets you use Firefox without AI while we continue to build AI features for those who want them.
I originally thought they meant you could turn off AI on websites, but it’s just AI features in Firefox. The way we’re headed, it seems like one day a browser to shut out AI features across the full browsing experience would be useful. Baby steps, I guess.
2026-02-03 19:15:09
In January, the scale for U.S. healthcare subsidies changed, which reintroduced a cliff. If your household makes even a dollar more past the cutoff, you get zero subsidies. For NYT’s the Upshot, Irena Hwang, Josh Katz, and Margot Sanger-Katz take you through an area chart of the changes and how we got to where we are now.
This is geometrically a simple stacked area chart with two categories for government and individual share. Income is on the x-axis and the amount of government subsides is on the y-axis.
But the financial cliff metaphor and the changes as you scroll highlight what happened in January when subsidies were cut. This seems like it would’ve been a useful chart during the government shutdown a few months ago.
Tags: government, healthcare, insurance, Upshot
2026-02-03 03:55:22
Under the supposed premise of saving money, the administration proposes that US postal workers assume the role of Census workers to count people at home. Hansi Lo Wang reports for NPR:
“I think that looking to the Postal Service as a replacement for the Census Bureau and census takers is an effort to find a silver bullet that just doesn’t exist,” Lowenthal says. “The cost savings that Secretary Lutnick believes might be there for the taking simply are based on wildly inaccurate numbers and assumptions.”
For example, the 2020 census cost $13.7 billion, about a third of the $40 billion Lutnick cited in the interview as the cost he claimed the federal government could save.
In 2011, the GAO concluded that using mail carriers to interview households for the census “would not be cost-effective.” The watchdog agency’s report pointed to higher average wage rates for mail carriers compared to those for temporary census workers, as well as the large number of hours needed to follow up with households that don’t respond to the census on their own.
Hey, if the USPS thing doesn’t work out, we could just make all the food delivery services count how many chicken wings people are ordering and extrapolate for the whole country. We’ll call it the chicken wing index. If you include your household in the decennial, you get a coupon for one free chicken wing family meal. Done.
Tags: Census Bureau, collection, counting, NPR, USPS
