Author: philg

Death of Spirit: a low-cost airline without the low costs (government should break up airport monopolies?)

by philg

Spirit is dead. I flew Spirit a few times and especially enjoyed their “Big Front Seat”. One flight out of FLL, I think, was delayed for hours due to a delay of the incoming plane on a perfect-weather day. Why can’t we have competition among airlines as they do in Europe and a wide range of low-cost carriers? First, Spirit was low cost to consumers, but it didn’t have low costs. Labor is the largest cost for an airline and Spirit’s union labor costs were similar to what the biggest airlines pay (ChatGPT):

ChatGPT on total cost for low-cost Ryanair vs. originally-low-cost JetBlue:

ChatGPT claims, incredibly, that Europe has more secondary airports:

I don’t think that this is correct, since the U.S. has tons of general aviation airports with long runways. Maybe the answer is that U.S. airports are monopolized, e.g., Massport owns both Logan Airport and Hanscom Field, the most obvious competitor for airline service to Boston. Massport isn’t going to undercut its own fees. A single port authority in NY/NJ owns LGA, JFK, EWR (Newark), TEB (the Teterboro airport for the Gulfstream crowd), and SWF (Stewart, too far from NYC unless a high-speed rail were built). There is more competition in Greater Los Angeles and the air carrier airports are owned by different agencies (LAX, LGB, BUR, SNA, and ONT are owned by their respective cities/counties).

Grok:

[in Europe] Many airports are privatized or compete aggressively for traffic, offering incentives to new carriers. US major airports have higher fees, complex slot controls (often grandfathered to legacies), and fewer viable low-cost alternatives near population centers. This raises barriers for new entrants or ultra-low-cost models

All publicly owned U.S. airports are paid for with federal tax dollars, e.g., from taxes on airline tickets, taxes on charters, and taxes on general aviation fuel (the one time that billionaires pay tax, according to Elizabeth Warren?). The Feds can’t seem to break up the airline oligopoly using antitrust laws and, in fact, may have contributed to our high-fare immiseration by blocking a JetBlue-Spirit merger (NYT: “JetBlue Airways and Spirit Airlines announced on Monday that they would not seek to overturn a court ruling that blocked their planned $3.8 billion merger. The decision is a big win for the Biden administration, which has sough to limit corporate consolidation.”; for the record, my first thought regarding the merger was that it shouldn’t be allowed because U.S. airlines were already far too concentrated). Maybe a good starting point would be to break up airport ownership. The five above-mentioned NY/NJ airports would have to be owned by separate competing government entities. Massport couldn’t own both Logan and Hanscom. Palm Beach County couldn’t own PBI/DJT and North County (F45; approved for a runway extension in 2024, but because the U.S. is incapable of working at Chinese speeds, construction isn’t even dreamed of before 2027). Miami-Dade County couldn’t own five airports (“Why do I own five airports? Because I couldn’t afford six.”).

Maybe robot 50-seater airliners would disrupt the market and enable some new carriers to thrive between city pairs in which a secondary airport isn’t owned by the same public agency that owns the main airport. But until “Big Airport” monopolies are broken up, it seems as though incumbent carriers could block most competition merely via a cozy relationship with each of the big airport authorities.

Meanwhile, let’s see how idiotic my investing advice has been. Back in 2010 I wrote “Unions and Airlines”, in which the take-away for investors is not to buy airline stocks because the unions will harvest any additional profits rather than the benefits flowing to investors.

Grok:

Airline stocks have significantly underperformed the S&P 500 since 2010 (roughly early 2010 through early May 2026, or ~16+ years). The S&P 500 (tracked via SPY total return, including dividends) delivered approximately +536% cumulative return, or roughly 12.0% annualized CAGR. In contrast, a broad airline index like the NYSE Arca Global Airline Index (^XAL) rose only about 70% on a price basis (from ~35.7 to ~60.5), equating to roughly 3.3% annualized price-only CAGR—and even adding typical dividends, the sector lagged dramatically behind the S&P 500’s total return (which compounded to roughly 7.8x your money). … Over a more recent ~10-year window (roughly 2015–2025), most major airline stocks delivered minimal gains or outright losses, while the broader market soared.

ChatGPT:

Since 2010, airline stocks have generally underperformed the S&P 500, despite some spectacular rebounds in individual years. … A cleaner “airlines as a sector” benchmark is JETS, the U.S. Global Jets ETF, but it only started in April 2015, so it cannot measure the full 2010 period. Its sponsor reports a 10-year annualized market-value return of only about 0.25% and a since-inception annualized return of about 0.38% as of March 31, 2026. That is dramatically worse than the S&P 500 over the same broad period. … If you cherry-picked Delta or United in 2010, you did pretty well, but still roughly trailed the S&P 500. If you bought airlines broadly, or bought Southwest, American, JetBlue, or JETS, you massively underperformed.

The investment story is consistent with the industry economics: airlines can have good earnings cycles, but shareholders have repeatedly been hit by fuel spikes, recessions, labor cost resets, aircraft shortages, fare wars, bankruptcies, pandemic shocks, and the need to constantly reinvest capital. As businesses, airlines can be necessary and sometimes profitable; as long-term compounders, they have mostly been inferior to owning the broad U.S. equity market.

Note “labor cost resets”!

Let’s close with a shout-out to Spirit for apparently having no serious accidents during its decades of operation, though one pilot may have died from toxic fumes, a known vulnerability with the Airbus. According to Wokipedia:

November 11, 2024 – Spirit Airlines Flight 951, an Airbus A320neo (registered as N966NK), was hit by multiple bullets on final approach into Port-au-Prince, Haiti after a flight from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. A flight attendant was grazed by a bullet and the flight diverted to Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic.

(This reminds us that (1) Haiti is a wonderful place and that only racism can explain Donald Trump’s negative attitude toward the nation, and (2) no migrant from Haiti can be sent back to Haiti due to the extreme risk of being killed.)

The last ACARS message:

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Wall Street Journal: Americans can’t afford to live in America because house maintenance costs too much

by philg

Happy National Home Improvement Month for readers who, like me, have been dumb enough to buy rather than rent. Also, Happy National DIY Day.

Previously, on this blog:

This month in the Wall Street Journal, “The Typical U.S. Home Is 44 Years Old—And Needs Tons of Work”:

More recent new construction hasn’t replaced America’s graying housing stock, meaning the age of the median home is a record 44 years, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

The cost of home maintenance, even after accounting for broader inflation, has jumped. Structural repair costs grew by about 14.1% in real terms between 2022 and 2024, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Plumbing jumped by 23.6%. The increase reflects the rising cost of individual parts and labor, and the larger size of necessary repairs.

This is on top of the rising costs of home insurance, property taxes and homeowners association dues, which are making it prohibitive for many to simply own a home, not to mention buy one.

The newspaper says “it [is] prohibitive for many to simply own a home, not to mention buy one” and at the same time tells us that the U.S. should have increased immigration, i.e., more demand for a relatively fixed supply of houses.

Our shabby/old house by Palm Beach County standards is 23 years old and that puts us in the top 25 percent of home youth:

Getting close to my 4% number:

Financial advisers traditionally suggested setting aside 1% of a home’s value annually for upkeep, but many now argue that isn’t enough. While 1% may cover routine upkeep, 2% to 3% provides a more realistic cushion for expected maintenance, home-improvement projects and unexpected repairs, particularly for older homes, said Angie Hicks, co-founder of home-services company Angi.

The Americans who were most eager to lock themselves into their homes during coronapanic will now bear a heavy burden:

Forty-nine percent of all improvement spending is now for necessary replacements like HVAC that owners can’t delay, said Rachel Drew, director of Harvard’s Remodeling Futures Program. The financial burden is particularly heavy in regions like the Northeast, where homes tend to be older.

Speaking of old, the article highlights the inability of folks in the Northeast to adapt to changed circumstances:

Mindy and Joseph Mevorah own an 88-year-old colonial [“more than 3,500-square-foot”] in Sands Point, a New York City suburb with plenty of old homes that is often considered an inspiration for “The Great Gatsby.” The house is due for a new coat of paint, a task they know to approach with caution. … “A new brick next to an old brick would look terrible,” said Joseph, 66. … The Mevorahs have stayed in their home for 29 years … They have a pool that could be a draw for future grandchildren. … When replacing their copper gutters a few years ago, they considered switching to aluminum, which would have been cheaper, but ultimately stuck with copper to preserve the home’s integrity. After all, they expect to be there for many years to come.

A 66-year-old in Florida whose kids were grown wouldn’t stay in a 3,500-square-foot wreck of a house. The Floridian would recognize that different kinds of real estate are suitable for different phases of life and likely move to a condo or small new house.

Circling back to the immigration theme… how can end-of-career financially comfortable Americans who struggle to afford house maintenance imagine that the U.S. can afford to house tens of millions of additional welfare-dependent low-skill immigrants?

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Asian hate in Kansas

by philg

Happy Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month to those who celebrate…

“Over 100,000 Pounds of Invasive Fish Pulled from One River to Help Restore Native Ecosystem” (Journal of Popular Studies, January 27, 2026)

Kansas wildlife officials have removed more than 100,000 pounds of invasive Asian carp from the Kansas River over the past four years … They are known for growing quickly, consuming massive amounts of food and crowding out native species that rely on the same resources.

#Science: Immigrant animals make us worse off by “growing quickly, consuming massive amounts of food and crowding out native species that rely on the same resources” while immigrant humans make us better off (don’t breed, consume food, or crowd out natives from resources such as health care).

Sad to say, but it seems that the haters in Kansas hate Asians almost as much as the Harvard admissions office (deemed racists by the U.S. Supreme Court, a rare distinction!).

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Brown University, Class of 2031 Tour

by philg

In which the father of a high school junior in the Boston suburbs visits Brown University. His posts from our group chat:

  • Brown tour. A few prospective students wearing masks. Not Asian.
  • A few students who are cosplaying as lesbian.
  • A few girls with Muslim hijabs.
  • It looks like the bridge of Star Trek.

He shared a photo of the acceptance rate by gender ID (not clear if this is discrimination unless we also know the SAT scores):

They’re shown the essay prompt that enables applicants to tell the admissions Mandarins their race:

Somehow they ended up in a chapel and there was a copy of African American Heritage Hymnal for each person.

  • Almost no males here. It’s all short lesbians.
  • Plus some East Asians and Indian
  • Trans
  • Student tour guide is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy according to Joe Biden.
  • didn’t show us inside dorms. Didn’t show us any dining areas. Didn’t show us any classrooms, labs, or facilities. Didn’t show any sports or workout areas.
  • Three of the students giving the tours said one of their deciding factors was that Brown gave them free tuition.

The tourists were subjected to a Land Acknowledgement from a greedy nonprofit that refuses to give the land back and pay rent:

My friend and his child decided not to take the Slavery and Legacy Walking Tour.

He had been wondering “What research are seniors doing related to menstruation?” Answered:

A poster from @brownriseup:

A still frame from one of his videos:

Happy End of College Admissions Month to those who celebrate!

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Genius doctors who actually do get paid 20X the fair price for procedures

by philg

Loyal readers may recall my previous posts on the subject of how health care providers in the U.S. are able to bill 10-15X the fair price to patients, accept the fair price from insurers, and chase after the uninsured for the absurd price. The latest: $1559 of lab work for $103. See also Recent health care scams.

The New York Times took a rare break from its “Bad Things about Donald Trump” coverage to write about some doctors who manage to collect at absurd multiples of the fair price, but from the insurance companies. “A $440,000 Breast Reduction: How Doctors Cashed In on a Consumer Protection Law” (NYT, April 22, 2026):

Dr. Norman Rowe, a plastic surgeon with offices in New York and Florida, advertises on his website that breast reduction surgery usually costs between $15,000 and $25,000.

But these days, his practice sometimes earns $440,000 for the procedure.

Dr. Rowe has taken full advantage of a new arbitration system, part of a major consumer protection law Congress passed in 2020 with bipartisan majorities. The No Surprises Act was designed to eliminate surprise medical bills, for patients who showed up in the emergency room and were treated by a doctor who didn’t take their insurance.

It bars those out-of-network doctors from billing patients directly. Instead, they can plead their case to a government-approved arbitrator. If they win, the patient’s insurer has to pay their desired amount.

By all accounts, the law is successfully protecting patients against bills from doctors they never chose. But it has also generated an expensive unanticipated consequence: Doctors have flooded the arbitration system with millions of claims. Most are winning, often collecting fees hundreds of times higher than what they could negotiate with insurers directly or what they could have earned from patients before the law passed.

When the law passed, government officials estimated that about 17,000 cases would go to arbitration a year. Instead, doctors brought 1.2 million such cases in the first half of last year, and won around 88 percent of them.

The arbitrators are doing well too. The fees they earn for deciding cases, which range from $425 to $1,150 per case, have added up. They earned $885 million from 2022 to 2024.

The chart shows that doctors get smarter every year:

How does it function in practice?

In arbitration, doctors and insurers each propose a price for the care, along with arguments for why it is appropriate. An arbitrator must pick one of the two numbers, and there is no opportunity to appeal the decision.

A neurosurgery practice outside of Philadelphia went to arbitration after the health plan Highmark offered its standard payment of $2,660 for a diagnostic procedure to measure blood flow to the brain. An arbitrator awarded it $333,000 instead.

(Let’s say that the “diagnostic procedure” is done with an MRI machine, which I think is the most expensive machine used in medicine. So the single procedure, which takes less than one hour, paid 100% of the cost of a refurbished machine or about one third of the cost of a new machine.)

Some practices are using the law to obtain high payments for routine medical care, including gynecologists who have won fees 600 times higher than usual rates for placing intrauterine contraceptive devices, or I.U.D.s.

Health policy experts have been surprised to see such lopsided results that favor doctors. Some argue that because the arbitrators are paid per case, they may have an incentive to render decisions that keep doctors coming back.

Just like Family Court! Divorce litigation that keeps everyone busy and highly paid is rare in jurisdictions where divorce litigation isn’t lucrative.

The first doctor profiled seems to have a lot of fun:

Dr. Rowe has practiced for decades on New York City’s Park Avenue and in New Jersey. Last winter, he opened an office in Palm Beach, a few miles from President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Just before the inauguration, he told The New York Post the office had been overrun with clients who wanted to look good when they “have face time with the leader of the free world.”

Dr. Rowe did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Times.

On social media, he flaunts a lavish lifestyle. An Instagram post in February detailing his 60th birthday party featured a performance from the rapper 50 Cent and a custom-cake recreation of his 1950s vintage Porsche.

Sometimes the best paperwork is no paperwork:

Before the No Surprises Act, Dr. Rowe’s practice was out of network with EmblemHealth, but he accepted fees $30,000 or lower for hundreds of breast reduction surgeries, the lawsuit claims.

In 2024, the lawsuit says, he started routinely performing surgeries on EmblemHealth patients in hospitals that accepted the insurer’s in-network payments, though he still did not.

Under the No Surprises Act, doctors in such situations can provide patients with a waiver that warns of additional costs. If patients sign that form, the doctor has permission to bill them directly.

Dr. Rowe does not hand out that waiver. That allows him to take his payment disputes to arbitration.

He and his practice have filed more than 6,000 arbitration claims, according to an analysis of public filings from the Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms. He has won more than 85 percent of his cases.

What do our esteemed politicians have to say about this massive siphoning of GDP?

“My focus is on ensuring everyone can get the care they need without worrying about the cost,” said Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, who helped craft the bill.

What’s incredible to me is that the U.S. economy survives our health care system!

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How were race-based congressional districts supposed to work in our open-borders age?

by philg

The Supreme Court recently ruled against a race-based congressional district in Louisiana. It was developed under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) in order to give Black voters a chance to elect a candidate of their choice. 1965 was the same year that we opened our borders via Hart-Celler. I’m curious to know how the laws were ever supposed to work together. It seems that the VRA envisioned a majority-minority split between just two groups: white and Black. After Hart-Celler, though, a state could easily have the following:

  • a white minority (under 50%)
  • an Asian-American minority (we’re informed that all varieties of Asians, including Indians and Samoans, can be lumped together under AANHPI, Asian American and Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islander) that wants to elect a fellow Asian-American, such as the noble Ted Lieu (proof that not everyone from Taiwan believes in a government that spends only 18% of GDP, including state/local)
  • a Black minority that wants to elect someone like Kamala Harris
  • a Hispanic minority that wants to elect someone Hispanic
  • an Arab minority that wants to elect a fellow Muslim Arab (BBC: “This month, the Midwestern city of 28,000 has reached a milestone. Hamtramck has elected an all-Muslim City Council and a Muslim mayor, becoming the first in the US to have a Muslim-American government. Once faced with discrimination, Muslim residents have become integral to this multicultural city, and now make up more than half its population.”)

If the VRA isn’t specifically limited to one racial group, which it doesn’t seem to be, who decides which of the above minorities will get its own district and which will see its votes diluted and its dreams denied?

Loosely related, in the Department of Diversity is Our Strength:

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Is it bad that Florida is no longer affordable for the middle class?

by philg

Recent Wall Street Journal article, “Florida’s Population Boom Fizzles as High Costs Drive Away Middle Class”:

Florida’s migration patterns are changing dramatically. Residents in their prime working years are heading to other states, often citing affordability concerns. At the same time, the stream of people arriving from other states is shrinking.

Meanwhile, an influx of wealthy people from other states—turbocharged during the pandemic—has helped drive up home prices. Inflation in parts of Florida outpaced the national average over the past decade and home-insurance rates soared.

These side-by-side trends could spell trouble for a state whose economy relies on continued population growth and real-estate development.

“The affordability picture has changed in Florida almost more than anywhere else in the country,” said Eric Finnigan, vice president of demographics research at John Burns Research & Consulting.

First, note the assumption that underlies almost all American politics: infinite growth should be the goal. (Never mind that growth without limit in an organism, and without regard to available resources, is known as “cancer”.)

Second, the WSJ implicitly assumes that a place that is affordable is better than a place that is unaffordable for median-income residents.

Third, the WSJ lumps all of “Florida” together. Florida is about the same size as all of New England. The WSJ wouldn’t lump together Boston and western Maskachusetts, much less Bridgeport, Connecticut and Houlton, Maine. (It’s still possible to get a brand-new single-family house in central Florida for less than $300,000, though the same can’t be said for coastal Florida; the house will be about 1500 square feet, which is the size of the house I grew up in (family of five) and with the added advantage that Floridians don’t need as much indoor space.) The most convenient housing for a SpaceX or Blue Origin engineer is in Titusville, where a decent (not new) house can be purchased for $300,000 (relocation guide).

Fourth, the WSJ assumes that the market is full of stupid people who bid up the prices of houses in places that aren’t desirable. Single-family home prices are $10.15 million in Palm Beach and $212,000 in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, where Ayman Ghazali mostly peacefully lived. From this we can infer that living among Iraqi and Lebanese immigrants in Dearborn Heights is better than living among Manhattan immigrants in Palm Beach (perhaps not an unreasonable inference!).

Maybe in a country with a shared language and culture it would make sense to try to find an inexpensive place to live. However, in a country that is jammed with low-skill migrants from all of the world’s most violent and dysfunctional societies (our asylum-based immigration system ensures that someone from Switzerland or Japan goes to the back of the line), isn’t it actually an advantage from a typical native-born perspective that a place is out of reach for the median present-day American? Google AI: “Newport Beach has lower racial diversity and worse racial disparity across various indicators compared to the average for California cities.” Given the stratospheric real estate prices, it seems that a lot of people are willing to pay for low racial diversity and “worse racial disparity”. As of 2021, the town was supposedly 85 percent white (source):

The Dallas metro area is more affordable than most parts of the US with jobs, which has enabled a mostly-immigrant community of 130,000 Muslims to set up more than 60 mosques and lay out EPIC City, “a master-planned Islamic community-centered residential development project”. Non-Muslim Americans who don’t want to hear the muezzin calling five times per day might prefer to spend more on a house that is in an area that is “unaffordable” to immigrants from Syria, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Somalia.

We could take this to an extreme. Aspen, Colorado is absurdly unaffordable for the median worker. My friend doesn’t like Aspen (see An actual skier goes to Aspen to ski), but apparently a lot of people do like it. Would we say that Dearborn Heights, Michigan is a better place to live than Aspen? That Aspen is bad because the population isn’t growing 3% per year like Gaza’s or Somalia’s? (Maybe Gaza and the West Bank are the ultimate examples of affordability. US and EU taxpayers pay for all of the basics, e.g., shelter, food, health care, education, etc. Nobody needs to work. Hamas-ruled Gaza is a model society by Ivy League standards, but wouldn’t the typical American rather be in St. Barts, Aspen, or Nantucket (all of which rank near the bottom for affordability on a median income)?) We could also consider a massive public housing project in Chicago or New York City. They’re “affordable” by definition since no tenant is charged more than 30% of his/her/zir/their income (often 30% of $0 since the tenants aren’t stupid!). Would a typical American prefer to live in the 6000-person Queensbridge Houses (“well known for its contributions to hip hop and rap music”; “a problem with drug dealers and drug users”) or in Atherton, California (population 7,000; home to Larry Ellison before he spent $450 million to escape to Florida)?

In short, given the continued flood of low-skill migrants (70 million since 1976) maybe “affordability” shouldn’t be the goal for any city or state that seeks to maintain a pleasant environment.

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Fifth anniversary of our first family trip to Jupiter, Florida

by philg

Flash back to April 2021, Meet next week in Jupiter, Florida?:

We’re escaping to the Florida Free State for the Maskachusetts school vacation week (April 18-25). A journey of 1,000+ miles is the best way for the kids to get a “mask break” (under what would be the “law” if it had been passed by the legislature instead of merely ordered by the governor, walking outside one’s yard, even at midnight in a low-density exurb, is illegal without a mask).

The post cited an NBC article on the continuation of the #Science-driver outdoor mask order in Massachusetts and referenced Relocation to Florida for a family with school-age children (explains the rationale for Jupiter).

We stopped in Savannah, Georgia on our way to Jupiter. They were still under an outdoor mask order:

The kids learned about fishing from unmasked folks at Juno Beach Pier (Florida):

Having left the wet cold masked Boston spring, we encounter a crowd of unmasked people in shorts eating dinner outdoors in downtown Abacoa:

While folks in Massachusetts continue social distancing, a crowd gathers at the bow:

On the return trip, we stopped in Asheville, North Carolina, where they were solidly in masks-required territory more than a year after coronapanic began:

Biltmore tour group:

Back home to Hanscom Field, one part of the Boston area that I miss. Inequality in white:

Also in masketology, this photo is supposedly from 2020, but where was it taken? Google Image Search finds some examples of it from 2020 so it wasn’t done with AI and the date is correct, but does anyone recognize the city?

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New York Times searching for a motive

by philg

Like OJ searching for the real killer, the New York Times is trying to figure out what could have motivated a patriot to try to kill a person whom the New York Times characterized as literal Hitler. The front page right now:

In case you too are searching for a motive, the New York Post published “Cole Allen’s full anti-Trump manifesto”:

And I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.

(Well, to be completely honest, I was no longer willing a long time ago, but this is the first real opportunity I’ve had to do something about it.)

I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary (on the basis that most people chose to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor, and are thus complicit) but I really hope it doesn’t come to that.

Objection 1: As a Christian, you should turn the other cheek.

Rebuttal: Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I’m not the person raped in a detention camp. I’m not the fisherman executed without trial. I’m not a schoolkid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration.

Turning the other cheek when someone else is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.

Objection 4: As a half-black, half-white person, you shouldn’t be the one doing this.

Rebuttal: I don’t see anyone else picking up the slack

Related:

From the above, a New York Times reminder that the righteous might want to eliminate a “danger”:

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New York Times: Family disintegration leads to military disintegration

by philg

The New York Times’s latest explanation for why we can’t win wars… “You Can’t Defend a Nation When Soldiers Don’t Have Child Care”:

After the draft ended in 1973, the composition of the armed services began to change. More women, people of color and lower-income Americans joined up. A steady paycheck became “the principal rationale to induce persons to join the all-volunteer force,” according to testimony given before a 1978 Senate subcommittee hearing on the Army. One unanticipated consequence was the growing number of families with young children living on Army bases. “At times of alert,” Representative Robin Beard, a Tennessee Republican who had written a report on the Army, told the subcommittee, “the battalion headquarters and company headquarters would be filled with children.” Soldiers with children had “no place to take” them.

The child care problem wasn’t limited to emergencies. As costs rose relative to incomes, more military spouses had to enter the work force, and child care gaps became constant.

From 1985 to 2022, the number of active-duty single parents in the military increased 67 percent…

We supposedly have a fertility collapse among native-born Americans in the aggregate, but a baby boom for unmarried (“single parents”) members of the military. Maybe this is because women who are deployed are highly likely to become pregnant? “Active duty servicewomen have high rates of unintended pregnancy” says this 2013 paper, which cites “difficulties faced by deployed women”:

I’m still waiting for our lavishly funded military to disable Iran’s oil production and electric power generation so that the country can’t rebuild and restart its weapons factories. Maybe the military is waiting for me to go to the nearest base and take care of a toddler?

Loosely related, a U.S. senator from Connecticut roots for the Islamic Republic of Iran:

He/she/ze/they previously said that the war was “illegal” (which means that anyone in the U.S. military can refuse orders to participate?) and said our military effort was “destined to end in failure” (due to lack of child care?):

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