At NPR Lauren Warmsley echoes what I’ve been saying about the layoffs in the technology sector:

More than 24,000 tech workers across 72 companies have been laid off this month, adding to a total of 120,000 tech jobs lost this year, according to layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts in the tech industry. It’s safe to say a reckoning is underway, even as each company is grappling with its own challenges. (See: Twitter.)

Many of the companies making public statements have cited at least one of two primary causes:

First, they hired a lot of employees during the pandemic, when people were extremely online. Now, the internet boom has faded, offline life has picked up, and those new employees seem too expensive.

Second, broader economic wobbles have made brands more reluctant to spend on digital ads–a source of revenue for many tech companies. High interest rates have put an end to the cheap-money era of venture capital.

It’s hard for me to imagine that these layoffs will not have an impact on salaries in technology and on people studying computer sciences at the college level. Nowadays people go to college for a job. Getting a starting job that pays decently in computer has just gotten harder.

Let’s assume that the Republicans assume narrow control of the House while Democrats hold the Senate. That seems like a pretty fair assumption at this point. What should happen next?

I share the view with those who think that Nancy Pelosi should not seek the House minority leader’s position while Mitch McConnell should not resume his role as Senate minority leader. That would constitute a long overdue “changing of the guard”. Contrary to popular opinion that wouldn’t mean that we’d seen the last of the Baby Boomers. Quite to the contrary it would probably mean that Baby Boomers would hold most Congressional leadership positions for the first time.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal did their own ruminating about the midterm elections:

The GOP did well in getting out its voters. In the two main election surveys, more Republicans than Democrats turned out to vote: 36% to 33% in the national media exit poll, and 49% to 43% in the AP VoteCast. Republicans could get a majority share of the final House vote without getting a House majority. So much for the GOP’s supposed gerrymandering edge.

What cost the GOP is that it lost voters who identify as independents, who now make up a quarter to more than 40% of the electorate, depending on the state. According to Gallup, in October this year 33% of voters nationwide identified as Republicans, 29% as Democrats and 35% as independents. Forty-eight percent of the self-identified independents said they lean Republican while 42% lean Democrat.

In a typical midterm, those voters should be inclined to swing against the party in power, especially given inflation and President Biden’s low job approval. This year they didn’t. According to the national media exit poll, of the 31% of voters who identify as independent, 49% voted Democrat and 47% Republican. In the AP VoteCast survey, independents favored Democrats by four points.

Those numbers are startling compared to the usual pattern for independents in midterms. According to CNN polling, in 2018 54% of independents voted Democrat and 42% voted Republican. (Democrats added 40 House seats.) In 2010, 56% of independents voted Republican and 37% voted Democrat for a Republican pickup of 63 House seats. In 2014, 54% voted Republican and 42% voted Democrat, adding an extra 13 Republican House seats.

The results are worse for Republicans in key races. In Arizona, 40% of voters in the Senate race identified as independent in an exit poll, and of those, 55% voted for Democrat Mark Kelly and 39% for Republican Blake Masters, who lost a winnable race.

In Pennsylvania, 24% of voters identified as independent and an amazing 58% of them voted for the left-wing Democrat John Fetterman compared to 38% for Mehmet Oz. Ditto in Georgia, where 24% of voters identified as independent and Democrat Raphael Warnock won 53% of them compared to 42% for Herschel Walker. In New Hampshire, 43% of voters call themselves independents and 54% of them voted for Democrat Maggie Hassan over Republican Donald Bolduc.

The message couldn’t be clearer. Independent voters in swing states may be unhappy with the direction of the country, but they didn’t trust the GOP enough to give them power. Abortion seems to have been one factor that cut against the GOP this year, and the pro-life party will have to adjust its policy and message for 2024.

which you may notice aligns pretty well with what I said yesterday.

I have no idea how all of this will work its way out. Here in Illinois not to mention in comments around the Internet the Republicans seem to be taking the view that if you don’t completely buy into what it is that you’re selling, screw you. You’re just not smart enough to vote Republican. That doesn’t seem like a good way to attract people to your standard but that’s not my call.

IMO programmatic parties are not a good fit for our first-past-the-post, winner-take-all system but that seems to be what we’re stuck with.

At The Hill Adonis Hoffman remarks on the layoffs in technology companies:

Today’s business headlines herald a harsh reality for Big Tech: tumult at Twitter; meltdown at Meta; atrophy at Alphabet; adjustments at Amazon. Layoffs, sliding stock and shrinking valuations are hallmarks of the moment.

Big Tech malaise is unfolding before our very eyes.

While the tech downturn was not unexpected, it is not altogether unwelcome.

Some might even consider it relief.

No one — not even investors — seems to be shedding tears for the tech sector.

After a decades-long bull run, now comes the decline, the disruption, the denouement. After all, irrational exuberance can only last so long.

I don’t know how pervasive the layoffs will be or whether they’re permanent. I’d like to draw attention to two issues.

First, the highly concentrated nature of employment in the technology sector will have substantial local effects. That will be particularly true in Seattle (Washington) and the San Francisco area (California). That will be particularly true in California due to the higher median wages in the tech sector and the state’s reliance on its graduated personal income tax.

Second and possibly more important is the sector’s reliance on H-1b via holders and the peculiar way those visas are issued. The companies laying off employees are more likely to employ H-1b holders than smaller companies are. Once laid off those employees have 60 days to find new employment and not just any employment will do. They’ve got to find jobs with companies that can sponsor them.

The electorate can be divided into three different groups: those who vote for a candidate, those who vote against a candidate, and those who don’t vote at all. That last group is sometimes referred to as “disaffected” or “disengaged”. I don’t think either of those is apt.

Solid turnout numbers aren’t available yet but some trends are already apparent. The turnout was higher where there were contested elections. Said another way the more “safe” seats, the lower the turnout. I don’t think that’s a sign of either rebelliousness or disinterest. I think it’s a sign of despair. Voting is futile. It may well be the case that fewer than 50% of registered voters bothered to show up. It was 55% in the last midterm election and that was a record-breaking turnout.

Many are writing about the 27% turnout among young voters as encouraging. Are they kidding? It suggests to me that 73% of young people think that voting is useless or, at the very least, unimportant. I don’t think we should be encouraged by that.

In my own home precinct turnout was around 80% of registered voters.

I also think that far more people vote against candidates than vote for them. Consequently, it seems to me a reasonable conclusion that there are enough people who fear or hate the Republicans that they greatly reduced the scale of the Republican victories. I don’t see many signs that Republicans are taking that message to heart. And all of that despite Democrats’ best efforts over the last two years. That doesn’t bode well for the Republicans in 2024.

Here in Illinois the Republican Party is effectively supine and has been for nearly 20 years. The only Republican candidates that win statewide offices are those who fund their own campaigns. That’s something else not generally recognized. Today a candidate requires institutional support. You’re either supported by the party organization, supported by a union (and nowadays “union” means public employees’ union), or you’re rich enough to fund your own campaign.

Candidates for Chicago mayor are lining up and they fit that model. There’s an incumbent, an establishment candidate, candidates from each public employees’ union, and one rich guy. Probably not a billionaire but rich.

There hasn’t been a Republican candidate for Chicago mayor in a decade, presumably because no candidate can get that institutional support and no billionaire wants to run.

I’ve seen a significant number of postmortems of the 2022 midterm elections, all very premature to my eye since the counting continues and we won’t know definitively what happened for a month.

One thing all of these analyses miss is that both of our political parties continue their transition to ideological uniformity. What used to be “catch-all” parties are now programmatic parties.

It’s not surprising that there are more independents than either Republicans or Democrats. If the trend continues, there may be more independents that Republicans and Democrats combined. When you consider that progressives in the Democratic Party and conservatives in the Republican Party make up about 20% of the electorate it’s a bit hard to stomach talks of how democratic either of them are.

Today there’s a lively exchange going on in the Google Group composed of members of my high school graduating class. About 10% of the class was in the military. One ascended to the rank of colonel in the Air Force. At least one of my high school classmates died in Vietnam.

I don’t have a great deal to say about the holiday. All of those who served during World War I are dead now and soon no one who even remembers the Great War will remain. Circumstances are very different now than they were when Armistice Day became Veteran’s Day. IMO the holiday should be retired.

At the COPS27 meeting, President Biden announced new EPA rules regulating methane emissions. From the Associated Press:

At the climate conference, Biden discussed a new supplemental rule that will crack down on methane emissions, expanding on a similar regulation his administration released last year. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that contributes significantly to global warming.

IMO there’s considerably more bang for the buck in reducing methane and nitrous oxide emissions than from reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If you believe in human-created climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions at all, those should be the focus.

As this EPA page makes clear although methane constitutes about 11% of U. S. greenhouse gas emissions, it’s a much more important contributor to climate change than carbon dioxide.

Most methane emissions are from losses during the production of oil, natural gas (and coal), especially pipeline leaks, and agriculture and that in turn is mostly from “enteric fermentation”, the digestive process of ruminants, particularly cows. There are ways of reducing both of those.

In the case of “enteric fermentation”, methane emissions can be reduced by what you feed cows and how you deal with manure. You don’t need to eliminate the raising of cattle entirely; even fairly minor reductions in methane emissions should be adequate.

I believe that one regular commenter here is something of an expert on this subject and I hope he chimes in.

I’m less enthusiastic about what’s referred to as “loss and damage” (payoffs to poorer countries) for two reasons. First, because it’s a license to steal and second, because it only considers one side of the ledger. I don’t believe that the United States is a net liability to the world. Indeed, quite the opposite but the notion of “loss and damage” payments certainly suggests that’s the case.

At any rate I look forward to the actual policy that emerges from this. I hope there are carrots as well as sticks.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed. Meta. Twitter. Salesforce. Microsoft. Oracle. Lyft. Opendoor. Stripe. All have announced major layoffs. Other major players like Amazon Web Services have announced hiring freezes. The layoffs add up to nearly 100,000. All in all quite a disturbance in the force.

I don’t know if it’s the end of an era but I suspect wages in IT won’t be rising in the near future.