Inflection Point

Key Insights: * Economic arguments against higher taxes that may have been somewhat plausible back in the days of 70% or so maximum individual and 40% or so maximum capital gains tax rates simply do not apply now. * Right-wing parties that don't think they can credibly make the argument that cosseting their core constituencies is necessary for rapid economic growth search for some non-economic cle...

Key Insights: * Cory Doctorow is AWESOME! * It is depressing. We once, with the creation of the market economy, got interoperability right. But now the political economy blocks us from there being any obvious path to an equivalent lucky historical accident in our future. * The problems in our society are not diametrically opposed: Addressing the problems of one thing doesn't necessarily create equ...

Key Insights : * Getting the rate of profit—the sums that are charged businesses for renting machines and renting space, and for access to the generalized social power to deploy resources that is finance—right is a very, very important thing to do. Why? Because the market economy is a complicated institutional calculating machine for determining how to promote societal wellbeing. It cannot do its...

Key Insights: Brad DeLong: “I have one key insight: everyone should subscribe to Foreign Affairs and read Dan Wang’s forthcoming piece…” Noah Smith: “There are no good models in history for what China is doing…” Dan Wang: “There are lots of questions about industrial policy that it is very difficult to answer…” And as always, the last key insight is: Hexapodia! References: Ian Cutress : TSMC: We h...

…have to come from the arc of Asia facing the bullets, because the American century is over… It's possible to be increasingly optimistic about climate change and to recognize that we still have a huge way to go… If you want to see a coral reef other than with your VR goggles, start scuba diving now… Zeke Hausfather: Climate scientist working on temp records, climate and energy system models. Direc...

…as Leninist, Noah Smith as Burkean. We neoliberals and neoliberal-adjacents need to come up with five significant discrete policies to make the world economy work better to reduce not just extreme but regular poverty over the next generation, rather than rest on fictitious laurels… Max Roser : “Most people in the world live in poverty. 85% of the world live on less than $30 per day, two-thirds li...

…from the rest of coastal East Asia when looked at in comparative context: Today Noah Smith & Brad DeLong talk about China, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, Wilhelmine Germany before WWI, & other topics. The key insights are: (1) we need to get Dan Wang on this podcast; (2) in the context of coastal East Asia after WWII, it does not look as though China has any special economic...

In the last resort, the the way the government budget constraint balances itself is through the fiscal theory of the price level: levying this inflation tax on holders of money balances, redistributing wealth away from those who have nominal assets to nominal debts, and imposing a large cognitive-load tax on doing your economic calculation arithmetic. That makes this a lousy tax to impose. Larry a...

For 200 years—from 1800 to 2000—first the Industrial Revolution Age and next the Modern Economic Growth Age rolled forward, bringing previously unimaginable wealth to the global north. And the global south fell further and further behind. Don’t get us wrong—life expectancy, nutrition standards, and material well-being in 2000 were all much higher in the global south in 2000 than in 1800. But the p...

Mike Konczal: Freedom From the Market: America’s FIght to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand < https://books.google.com/books?id=0aDLDwAAQBAJ > Konczal says that it is only today that “glib libertarians” purveying “fantasies” are trying to make us forget “that free programs and keeping things free from the market are as American as apple pie…” One of the best passages in the book...

The classical British social insurance state took large chunks of human activity out of the marketplace and attempted to distribute them to each according to his or her need. The classical American social insurance state was targeted and grouchy, attempting to elicit proper behavior. Now we have a turn that we regard as very hopeful: recognizing that the problem of the poor is primarily the proble...

If moderate raises in the minimum wage do not cause unemployment, who can object to them—but why do they not cause higher unemployment, if they in fact do not? RSS URL: < https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/47874.rss > Reference: Arin Dube (2019): Impacts of Minimum Wages: Review of the International Evidence < https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment...

Is there a mysterious Factor X that can speed growth, enhance opportunity, raise wages, & convince others that no, China does not have a superior system? RSS URL: < https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/47874.rss > Works Referenced: Twirlip of the Mists: Hexapodia as the Key Insight : ‘I haven't had a chance to see the famous video from Straumli Realm, except as an evocation. (My only gateway onto...

Noah Smith & Brad DeLong now have a podcast: Works Referenced: Twirlip of the Mists:  Hexapodia as the Key Insight < http://web.hexapodia.org/ > Vernor Vinge :  A Fire Upon the Deep   < https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Upon-Deep-Zones-Thought-ebook/dp/B000FBJAGO > Vernor Vinge :  A Deepness in the Sky < https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002H8ORKM > Larry Summers :  The Biden Stimulus Is Admirably Ambi...