I read the blurbs around most of the links at Instapundit. I don't read the ads, I skip some of Sarah Hoyt. I click through on a small percentage of the stories, maybe 10%. Less than at Maggies. But when I scroll over the links and see that it goes anywhere else on PJMedia I don't bother. I find that the rest of that team overinterprets the data, finding outrage where a decent explanation might be possible. They sometimes leave out key details that change the story. It's not good reporting, even if the commentary is sometimes good.
They seem to want to be outraged.
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I find Stephen Green pretty readable, and have enjoyed his debate drunkblogs. Ed Driscoll has some interesting views on pop culture. Austin Bay has some good military/defense stuff. A few too many of Tapscott's and Hoyt's links are self-promotion, and there are the odd one-trick ponies that I rarely click on.
The comments on most posts are usually good, if not quite as wicked funny as AoSHQ.
I have noticed the outrage meter inching up recently. Glenn can be a bit obtuse which leads people down rabbit holes if they only read the blurb. One post linking an article that highlighted geographic concentration of GDP generated the expected negative commentary though if you thought about it for a moment, GDP is just the measure of buying and selling activity so why wouldn't most of it occur where the most people are located?
True. I gave up on Instapundit a while back because of the time-sink aspect of the site. (I may have to give up on Maggie for the same reason. A shame, but life is short and its duties are not diminishing.) But I do like Belmont Club/Wretchard, even though he is generally doom-y.
I like Instapundit. Covers a lot of ground. Don't read but what interests me. I like Sarah Hoyt, too, even though she's supposed to be a Mormon male with "a great rack", so she's got "intersectionality" covered.
"GDP is just the measure of buying and selling activity so why wouldn't most of it occur where the most people are located?"
The way GDP is allocated across geographies is not clear, to me at least. If there are some oil wells in a sparsely-populated part of Texas, requiring very few employees but generating a lot of $$$, then where does their contribution to the GDP get recorded?...the place where the wells are, or the place whether the company that owns them is headquartered or incorporated? I *think* it's the former, but it looks like it would require some serious digging to get a definitive answer. And, of course, the media is totally incurious about what really lies behind the numbers that they cite.
David - I'm sure economists argue all day about the technical aspects of allocating GDP by geography, and some people on the thread argued that GDP <> 'the economy', but my googling indicated that about 2/3 of our GDP is considered consumer spending. Of that, about 2/3 of is spending on services, which is definitely going to occur where people congregate. I don't think a more precise allocation of geographically dispersed production would affect this analysis.
The article talked about the concentration of 1/3 of our economy being located in the 31 counties with about 1/4 of our population.
2/3 * 2/3 = 1/3 (to a rough approximation). Interesting how that worked out.
This is the article he linked.
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2019/12/a-third-of-americas-economy-is-concentrated-in-just-31-counties.html
I'll click a link to Strategypage. I'll read what's on the Instapage by Driscoll and Green. But the deeper links seem worse. Tapscott, Heriot, and other less-common posters I like well-enough in the small dose.
Christopher...GDP is defined in a top-down way as: Personal consumption expenditures plus business investment plus government spending plus (exports minus imports). Note that this is basically a consumption-based model, defined in terms of what is bought rather than what is produced and sold. But, since things must be produced (or imported) before they are consumed, it is also possible to do an industry-by-industry slice of GDP based on production...here's BEA's cut:
https://www.bea.gov/system/files/2019-10/gdpind219_2.pdf
So, with the consumption-driven approach, the GDP by region will follow the population and the wealth/income of the population, regardless of where the goods & services are actually produced. Not really meaningful, IMO, in terms of defining where the value in the economy really resides. To take the industry cut and allocate it geographically would yield a much more interesting view, but really hard to do with any precision.
AVI, could you give an example?
I enjoy instapundit. I usually hit it first in the day. I read about half the articles, rather fewer about the swamp.
https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/parents-shocked-at-alcohol-fueled-drag-queen-pre-show-ahead-of-star-wars-at-alamo-cinemas/
You have to red closely to find out when, exactly, it was shown and who was there. Most of the complaints are from people who were not there but hearing about it, decided it was a bad idea.
I have liked Reynolds since the beginning but his outrage pattern parallels my own and that doesn't help me. Wretchard, David Goldman and a few other established writers on PJM are good but most of the site is clickbait. I find increasingly that social media commentary about politics, products, and almost everything else is driven by advertising agendas and/or the shallowest sort of online research and isn't worth my dwindling time.
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