Favorites June 9th 2022: Inflation Expectations and Italian Rail

May 2020

Daniel W. Drezner @dandrezner

This is fascinating, since: a) by all accounts inflation is already starting to taper off; and b) putting off purchases is the *last* thing you want to do in an inflationary environment. https://t.co/j6CYEQXf5M

Heather Long @byHeatherLong

New WaPo/Schar School of Policy polls finds two-thirds of Americans expect inflation to get worse in the coming year. Americans are starting to alter behavior: -cut back on spending / eat out -put off purchases -use less electricity -drive less https://t.co/pNax2D4GWD https://t.co/cHMlfRqqMT

Americans are so unfamiliar with the concept of inflation that we hear it, think 'bad', and do what we do in the bad thing we understand, a recession. The good news is that these actions probably won't drive accelerating inflation.

Hayden Clarkin @the_transit_guy

If the Empire State Building had to adhere to Cupertino, CA's parking requirements, the surface parking lot would cover 12 city blocks or 2.541 million square feet!

Are you telling me that the empire state building *doesn't* have 12 blocks worth of underground parking?

Laurie Garrett @Laurie_Garrett

My Russian is dreadful but it sounds like #Putin is saying he will "take back" all parts of #Europe that Peter the Great conquered, including #Sweden & #Baltics . Can somebody make an English translation transcript of this, please? Wow.

Tadeusz Giczan 🇺🇦 @TadeuszGiczan

Wow, Putin basically just stopped pretending: "During the war with Sweden, Peter the Great didn't conquer anything, he took back what had always belonged to us, even though all of Europe recognised it as Sweden's. It seems now it's our turn to get our lands back [smiling]". https://t.co/vgk60hT5ea

Definitely a good moment to be joining Nato, am I right?

David Dowdy @davidwdowdy

Remarkable divergence between COVID transmission & severity in last 6 months. Test positivity (yellow) similar to Jan 2021. Daily deaths (red) approaching all-time low. Ratio of (deaths):(% positive) fell 3-fold from Jan 2020 to Jan 2022. And 4-fold from Jan 2022 to now.

This is good, although US covid deaths are still 2x car crash deaths, so there's a way to go still.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

It’s hard to convince people of this because it runs so contrary to stereotype but Italy is a well-governed country when it comes to rail country — delivering best cost-effectiveness than Germany or Singapore. transitcosts.com/city/italy/

The part about them lowering the cost of construction over time is really cool. The specific strategies mentioned seem very doable.