Political Calculations
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14 February 2025
Conway's Game of Life Heart Designs

Mathematician John Conway loved playing games. He also loved using math to invent games, the best known of which is his Game of Life. Not the Hasbro board game, but rather a game based on simple mathematical rules that simulates the life and death of simple organisms.

Since its Valentine's Day, we thought we'd take inspiration from Conway's Game of Life by playing the game in a way that he might have done. We drew the outline of a heart on the Game of Life grid, much like the one on the left hand side of our featured image, and let the game play out to see what patterns might emerge from that starting design. We next drew another heart, the same size as the first one, but this time, filling in the inside of the heart.

But before we clicked the button to "start reproducing", we wondered how that simple difference might change the outcome of the game. Would the filled-in heart produce similar patterns to the simple outline of a heart? Would it "live" longer, or rather, would it go through more generations than the outlined heart before it might either stagnate (reach a pattern that doesn't significantly change) or die out (disappear altogether)?

We're not going to tell you the outcome, because it's easier to find out for yourself. Draw your own heart in the grid below by clicking the squares to make it, then click the "start reproducing" button to bring it to life. Then try again with a variation of your first heart design. If you're accessing this article on a site that republishes our RSS news feed, please click through to our site to access a working version.

Click on table cells to toggle the cells as alive or dead.

Click the Start Reproducing button to Start and Stop

We will say we were surprised by the symmetry in the patterns that emerged from our initial hearts. If you play the game again, you might try making your heart design a little different. Would the outcomes change if you made it bigger or smaller? What would happen if you only filled in half of the heart? Would that live longer or shorter than your previous longest-lasting initial heart design? What would change if you made that design asymmetric? Is it possible to tweak your heart design to make its descendant patterns stay alive forever?

We don't know the answers to any of those questions. Yet. The best way to find out is to play. Have fun and a happy Valentine's Day!

Previously on Political Calculations




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13 February 2025
Jungliangcheng Power Plant in Tianjin, Chinaby Shubert Cienciaon Flickr https://flickr.com/photos/20119750@N00/5070115067

The pace at which carbon dioxide is being emitted into the Earth's atmosphere is continuing to set new record highs.

China, by far and away, the world's largest source of carbon dioxide emissions, helped cinch the new record. A new analysis by Carbon Brief indicates "the tail end of China’s rebound from zero-Covid in January and February, combined with abnormally high growth in energy demand, stopped CO2 emissions falling in 2024 overall," despite China's surge in green energy production during the year.

Carbon Brief estimates China's overall CO₂ emissions "grew by an estimated 0.8% year-on-year". That growth may may sound small, but since China's emissions are so large, even a small percentage increase in its CO₂ output carries substantial impact. Carbon Brief also recently confirmed that China's emissions have caused more global warming than the 27 countries that make up the European Union. Not that that's any kind of surprise.

In the last two decades, much of the increases in the rate at which carbon dioxide accumulates in the Earth's atmosphere can be traced to Chinese government's various efforts to stimulate China's economy. The following chart highlights that contribution from January 2000 through January 2025:

Trailing Twelve Month Average Year-Over-Year Change in Parts per Million of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, January 1960 - January 2025

China's ending of its repressive zero-Covid lockdown policy at the end of 2022 constitutes the beginning of its latest stimulus. Combined with China's government's ongoing efforts to continue its stimulus effort to offset recessionary forces acting within the Chinese economy, the result is the record high rate of CO₂ accumulation in the modern era, which now extends back over sixty-five years. The next chart illustrates that history:

Trailing Twelve Month Average Year-Over-Year Change in Parts per Million of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, January 2000 - January 2025

What defines the modern era is the collection of data on the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's air. Those measurements began at the remote Mauna Loa Observatory in March 1958. Since our long-term chart tracks the year-over-year change in atmospheric CO₂ we could have set its initial month at March 1959, but we opted for January 1960 instead to align it with the beginning of a calendar year.

In any case, the following references provide links to the Mauna Loa Observatory's full dataset of its atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements.

References

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Earth System Research Laboratory. Mauna Loa Observatory CO2 Data. [Online Data]. Updated 5 February 2024.

Image credit: Jungliangcheng Power Plant in Tianjin, China by Shubert Ciencia on Flickr. Creative Commons CC by-SA 2.0 Attribution 2.0 Generic Deed.

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12 February 2025
Port Of Los Angeles by Linnaea Mallete on PublicDomainPictures.net - https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=493140&picture=port-of-los-angeles

December 2024 saw imports to the United States surge. The increase in foreign goods coming into the U.S. during the month was driven by two main factors:

  • A potential strike at U.S. east coast ports as the deal the Biden-Harris administration worked out with labor unions to end a three-day strike in early October 2024 was only for three months. The prospect of the deal expiring again in January 2025 without a labor agreement put firms trying to bring foreign goods into the U.S. in the position of trying to beat the clock ahead of another disruptive strike. The same thing happened in the months preceding the October strike.
  • A similar dynamic applied to west coast ports, as firms seeking to bring Chinese-produced goods into the U.S. tried to front-run potential tariffs threatened by President-elect Donald Trump and the doubling of real tariffs on semiconductors imposed by the Biden-Harris administration that were set to go into effect in 2025. The same thing happened during the summer of 2024, thanks largely to firms trying to beat the clock on new trade restrictions imposed by the Biden-Harris administration.

Focusing on trade between the U.S. and China, the following chart shows a year-over-year increase from December 2023 to December 2024:

Combined Value of U.S. Exports to China and U.S. Imports from China, January 2017 - December 2024

We anticipate January 2025's trade levels will be elevated as Chinese firms typically boost their shipments ahead of the country's week-long Spring Festival holiday, which falls in early February this year. We'll also note that January saw surprisingly few sustained trade actions by the incoming Trump administration, most of which involved very short-lived tariffs. That is changing with tariffs being announced on steel and aluminum in February, so we'll need to develop a new counterfactual to measure their impact.

We'll also be taking a last look at the anti-free trade legacy of the Biden-Harris administration, which has been more negative than President Trump's trade actions during his first term.

References

U.S. Census Bureau. U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services (FT900). U.S. Trade in Goods with China, Not Seasonally Adjusted, Nominal Figures, Total Census Basis. [Online database]. Accessed 5 February 2025.

Image credit: Port Of Los Angeles by Linnaea Mallete on PublicDomainPictures.net. Creative Commons Creative Commons - CC0 Public Domain.

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11 February 2025
A picture of a sign that says 'NOT HIRING UNDER AGE 18' Image generated by Microsoft Copilot Designer

What demographic group had the worst employment experience in the U.S. job market during 2024?

The answer to that question is younger teens, Age 16 and 17. From January 2024 to January 2025, younger teens saw their numbers among those counted as employed drop by 300,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1,989,000. Over this period, the percentage of working teens dropped from 24.5% to 20.6%, as jobs held by about one out of eight younger teens disappeared.

The 2024 decline is part of a longer-running trend. The share of working teens Age 16-17 peaked at 25.6% of this demographic group's population in December 2022, with 2,357,000 counted as having jobs. The total reduction in the seasonally-adjusted number of employed 16-and-17-year-old Americans is 368,000, or about 15.6%.

The following chart chart presents the seasonally-adjusted employment data for teens Age 16-19 from January 2016 through January 2025, showing the number employed and the employment-to-population ratio, which also breaks out the data for younger teens Age 16-17 and older teens Age 18-19.

U.S. Teen Employment and Teen Employment-to-Population Ratio, January 2016 - January 2025

From January 2024 to January 2025, the seasonally-adjusted overall number of working teens, Age 16-19 rose from 5,710,000 to 5,712,000. That 2,000 net gain was offset as older teens, Age 18-19, saw their numbers among the employed increase by a seasonally adjusted 294,000.

The numbers don't add up because each of these data series is subjected to its own seasonal adjustment. If you want data that does, you'll need to tap the non-seasonally adjusted data series for each of these demographic groups.

That said, the decline in jobs for teens Age 16-17 and the increase in jobs for teens Age 18-19 suggests a lot of working teens "aged" from the younger demographic into the older demographic during 2024, while the number of jobs held by this demographic expanded.

But that doesn't explain why the younger teens who either aged into or remained within the Age 16-17 demographic now have so many fewer jobs. Why are U.S. employers not hiring younger teens in the numbers they were in 2022 and 2023?

References

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Labor Force Statistics (Current Population Survey - CPS). [Online Database]. Accessed: 7 February 2025.

Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "A picture of a sign that says 'NOT HIRING UNDER AGE 18'".

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10 February 2025
An editorial cartoon featuring a Wall Street bull who's shocked that a good jobs report means fewer rate cuts. Image generated with Microsoft Copilot Designer.

The S&P 500 (Index: SPX) was very little changed from the previous week's close in the first week of February 2025. The index ended the trading week less than a quarter percentage point at 6,025.99 on Friday, 7 February 2025.

The biggest market-moving news came on that day, as a better-than-expected jobs report altered the expectation of Wall Street bulls that there will be at least two rate cuts in 2025.

Following the release of the January 2025 jobs report, the CME Group's FedWatch Tool moved the expected timing of the Fed's next change Federal Funds Rate to 30 July (2025-Q3), when a quarter point reduction is anticipated. More significantly, the tool now anticipates that will be the only rate cut during 2025.

The latest update of the alternative futures chart shows the effect of this change in expectations was to shift the forward-looking focus of investors from 2025-Q4 inward toward the nearer term investment horizon of 2025-Q2. We think investors are focusing on this quarter for its potential to see an earlier rate cut.

Alternative Futures - S&P 500 - 2025Q1 - Standard Model (m=+1.5 from 9 March 2023) - Snapshot on 7 Feb 2025

Here's a recap of the week's market-moving headlines, in which political noise involving tariffs was outweighed for effect by the change in expectations for the timing and number of interest rate cuts in 2025:

Monday, 3 February 2025
Tuesday, 4 February 2025
Wednesday, 5 February 2025
Thursday, 6 February 2025
Friday, 7 February 2025

The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tool's projection of what real GDP growth will be in the 2025-Q1 held steady at +2.9%, the same as last week's forecast.

Image credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon featuring a Wall Street bull who's shocked that a good jobs report means fewer rate cuts". We modified the to add the headline and to remove an excessive number of fingers. Unlike last week's editorial cartoon, which we left completely alone despite all its glorious AI-generated weirdness because it fit so well with our discussion!...

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