@mikejrob.bsky.social
An economist who studies agriculture, climate change, energy, and sometimes other environmental and resource issues. Blog: https://grainsgigawatts.substack.com
Soak in the entitlement, the elitism, the open embrace of eugenics. They're so special, aren't they?
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/w...
While this is only correlative evidence here – ownership is not randomly assigned, has strong geographic patterns and is overwhelmingly dominated by IOUs – I see no reason why we ought to default toward a preference for IOUs. Quite the opposite.
And maybe cooperatives deserve a closer look.
High residential rates square with a known IOU profit strategy: attracting price-sensitive large industrial customers via artificially low prices. By shifting the cost burden to residents, utilities expand their rate base and juice profits.
01.02.2026 22:03 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0What's most striking are the especially high rates for residential customers of IOUs. The other surprise is that cooperatives tend to have the lowest prices in all sectors.
It's surprising b/c cooperative tend to be small and rural, lack economies of scale, and have more line loss
This graph comes from EIA data form 826M. It has only reported utility ownership since 2014, but I backdated this using Utility IDs where possible and otherwise inferring ownership by utility name or explicit internet searches where ambiguous. It took some work.
01.02.2026 22:03 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
I had no strong prior about this when I dove into energy as a mid-career academic -- all three seem like imperfect solutions. But I've come to perceive a tacit but powerful preference among elite energy economists for IOUs.
Is that preference warranted? Here's some correlative evidence:
What's the best ownership structure for network monopolies like utilities? (a🧵)
The three most, prevalent:
(1) investor owned utilities,regulated by state public utility commissions;
(2) municipalities; and
(3) cooperatives, customer owned and regulated with a lighter touch.
An excellent chart with a depressing message.
H/T @hannahritchie.bsky.social
substackcdn.com/image/fetch/...
Oof. The Fed doesn’t control the federal deficit. At all.
Always striking how even very smart, influential people get basic things about science and economics wrong.
The Obscure Power Sector Dictionary
Capacity market: a way to protect the fossil fuel industry from competition while transferring data center electricity costs to residential and smaller commercial customers.
Energy only market: a fair, efficient, often vilified alternative to capacity markets
Let's all agree to use Calibri font for all documents next three years.
12.12.2025 17:26 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Proposition:
The quality of research papers is inversely related to the frequency of acronyms.
"The clearest sign that we are not actually in a bubble is the fact that everyone is talking about a bubble.”
I heard this a lot during the .com & real estate bubbles, too.
And the profit model in a highly competitive environment?
🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/t...
A *lot* of folks in our communities say they feel like the air is better. Some people reply saying that their feeling is psychosomatic, but I’m not sure that’s the case.
09.12.2025 05:39 — 👍 253 🔁 25 💬 5 📌 0Anyone know why this Excess CAPE is so different from mine? For example, it says 1.65% today while mine is 0.59%.
The CAPE is ~40 today and 10-year real rate is 1.91%.
1/40 - 0.0191 =0.0059
🤷
en.macromicro.me/charts/27100...
Here's my reconstruction of the "Excess CAPE yield". It looks low in historical context. Meanwhile, the Shiller CAPE P/E--a better predictor of future returns--is its highest ever except for the peak of the .com bubble.
It doesn't help that POTUS is a corrupt communist extracting rents f/NVIDIA.
The WSJ doth try too hard to explain why this isn't a bubble.
Yes, AI may change society and economy a lot.
But it also looks *very* competitive. And likely more competitive in the future. So, hard to see how profits could be that large. Moreover, experts gains will likely be modest going forward.
The best Thanksgiving cartoon I’ve ever seen. (Even if that wasn’t the intent)
27.11.2025 06:54 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0📢 Just accepted in #JAERE 📢 is now posted at @aereorg.bsky.social!
📍 Follow @aereorg.bsky.social to stay updated on all things REEP and JAERE.
#EconSky 📈📉
Scary stuff. But interesting to take stock of how our institutions, including SCOTUS, have failed to live up to founding principles in the past. We corrected course then; hopefully we will this time, too. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/o...
26.11.2025 16:58 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0"We're pro-affordability, but we're going to raise tariffs on you. We're pro-affordability, but we're going to undermine the Fed, which is going to potentially cause inflation. We're pro-affordability, but... we're going to rip the American health insurance system up."
25.11.2025 20:31 — 👍 488 🔁 163 💬 16 📌 5
Total population living in extreme poverty by world region, 1990 to 2040 Extreme poverty is defined as living below the International Poverty Line of $3 per day. This data is adjusted for inflation and differences in living costs between countries. Projections are from the World Bank. From 2026–2030 they are based on growth forecasts from the World Bank and IMF. From 2031, they are based on observed 2015–2024 growth rates. Data source: Lakner et al. (2024) (updated using World Bank PIP in September 2025) – Learn more about this data Note: This data is expressed in international-$ at 2021 prices. It relates to income (measured after taxes and benefits) or to consumption, per capita. OurWorldinData.org/poverty | CC BY https://ourworldindata.org/end-progress-extreme-poverty
"The end of progress against extreme poverty?"
We have to work so that current trends are not good predictors of the future.
Thanks: @maxroser.bsky.social @ourworldindata.org
ourworldindata.org/end-progress...
'DOGE’s biggest “achievement” was shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development. And the dismantling of USAID has left a legacy of death. According to one recent study, closing the agency “has already caused the deaths of six hundred thousand people, two-thirds of them children.” '
25.11.2025 20:34 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
Global solar growth is up 64% in the first half of 2025 compared with 2024. Seems like we're at peak emissions in the electricity sector, with new solar+wind > demand growth.
Trumpies will slow it a little in the US, but that hardly matters globally.
ember-energy.org/latest-updat...
Two largest causes of death in the US are heart disease and cancer, but the media focuses on homicide and terrorism.
Actual causes of death in the US and media coverage of same.
And then we wonder why people have such a skewed understanding of the world.
@ourworldindata.org is a treasure. Thanks, @hannahritchie.bsky.social and colleagues.
ourworldindata.org/does-the-new...
Our (formerly) best media selling out to the oligarchs--The NYT and Washington Post among them.
The NYT is to media what Harvard is to academia. When they cave, the whole world should worry.
paulkrugman.substack.com/p/talking-wi...
Wow:
"The turnout rate of voters age 18 to 29 rose to 41.3 percent this year from 11.1 percent in the 2021 election for mayor. The share of total turnout composed of 18-to-29-year-olds grew to 16.6 percent from 8.9 percent four years ago"
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/11/o...
Great Freakonomics episode on how the 1910 Flexner Report reshaped U.S. medical training — and its lasting influence.
🎧 freakonomics.com/podcast/the-...
Also: new NBER paper by Karen Clay et al. on this history → www.nber.org/papers/w33937
Does this history contribute to today's doctor shortage?
