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Noah Smith @Noahpinion
, 10 tweets, 2 min read Read on Twitter
Say you're a physicist and people just nod. Say you're an economist and people ask your opinions about everything and anything.
Economists are top presidential policy advisers. With a few exceptions like Steve Chu, physicists rarely are.

Economists write books about dating, and food, and a ton of other random stuff, and people buy the books and believe the advice!
Economists are assumed to know about business, about how to invest your money, about world affairs, about politics, about random social phenomena... Physicists are assumed to know about arcane stuff that normal people don't understand...
The physics academic job market is terrible. The economics academic job market is still going strong.
Economists land lucrative consulting gigs. It's relatively easy for an economist to become a public intellectual. Academic econ salaries are much higher than academic physics salaries.
"But physicists' theories are able to match experimental data perfectly, while economists' theories almost never do!"

Heh. Think a moment, and you'll realize that this is actually a plus for economics relative to physics. Who wants to have to always make theories that *work*??
"But physicists' theories are elegant and beautiful!"

Heh. Economists make plenty of elegant beautiful theories. They almost never match the data. They don't have to! They get published, they even get Nobel prizes!

Excuse me, Bank of Sweden prizes in memorial of Alfred Nobel...
Yes, physicists are generally assumed to be smarter than economists.

Now ask who people would rather date. 😃
I love physics. Physics is amazing.

But as a career choice, economics is kind of a cheat code...

⬆️⬆️⬇️⬇️⬅️➡️⬅️➡️⏩BA

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Important caveat: This thread is all about PhDs. I still think physics is a better undergrad major...
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One thing I think would help reduce elite Millennial burnout/disappointment/rage is for people to stop thinking that their job should save the world.

"Save the world" and "make the world a better place" are probably just things employers tell you to get you to work for cheap.
Maybe your job will give you meaning and purpose and a sense of doing good for the world.

Or maybe it'll just make you some money so you can raise some kids, have some pet rabbits, and be active in your local community.

There's more than one way to get meaning in life.
Also, people glorify saving the world when it probably just gives you PTSD.

We like watching Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and whatever, but we wouldn't want to actually fight Darth Vader or slog through Mordor. That would cause major burnout!
Read 3 tweets
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1/Since Trump's demand for his Wall is in the headlines, I thought it would be a good time for a thread about a history book I just read:

"Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America", by Daniel Tichenor (2002)

amazon.com/Dividing-Lines…
2/The book starts out with a chapter or two of dense, unnecessary political science jargon, saying that - essentially - U.S. immigration policy tends to move very slowly, because powerful politicians and officials resist the tide of public opinion.
3/But most of the book is an extremely readable, eye-opening history of U.S. immigration policy, from the founding through the 1990s.

It shows how the immigration debates we're now having have been with us, in some form or another, for a very long time.
Read 27 tweets
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Thread about why very high tax rates on very rich people don't raise much revenue (or reduce inequality much, even within the top tier).

Our system has a million loopholes. Closing them is more important than raising top rates.
That's not to say there's a trade-off between raising the top rate and closing loopholes! They are complements, not substitutes.

But if you just raise the top rate without closing loopholes, you'll likely be disappointed.
The fact is, raising effective taxes on the very rich will require a comprehensive sustained push on a large number of policy fronts. There is not going to be one silver bullet.
Read 6 tweets

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People ask me how I managed to overcome failure or how I "made it" or at what point did I know I was going to be a success. I always give a canned answer because frankly, I don't want to type so much. But I have gotten this question a lot so let me tell you guys a bit about me.
I was born in the 80s, in Zaria. We lived in Gusau, Zamfara State. My Dad was a very successful business man, imported goods from the UK, until Buhari happened in 1984. Within years, his business shut down, inflation shot up, the currency's value eroded, market prices were fixed
and people were imprisoned for speaking out (sound familiar? Oops Buhari is President now. Leopard and dark spots)

Growing up, I didnt know we lacked anything. Until around 1989. I was moved from my school to a cheaper school, Ideal Primary School, then to yet another cheaper...
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The simplest way of learning is Asking questions...
Whoever ask seek knowledge, hence, asking is tantamount to knowing.

Good evening, welcome to yet another beautiful sunny day on our broadcast #Audacious, we are glad to have you join us.
Today is our 109th episode on #Audacious and we appreciate you for always finding time to join us here.

Perhaps you don't know, Audacious is a teaching platform where we seek to teach, train and impact everyone on anything pertaining to life and godliness.
We come on Live on this platform every Sunday at 4pm WAT, endeavor to always be a part of our discuss.

Today, the title of our broadcast is ASK.
Simply put;
A - Always
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#Ask
#Audacious
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People driven to brink of sanity& beyond- desperate, scrabbling, willing to do ANYTHING for ideology? Few. Of those, many are clinically insane. However, people driven to brink; willing to do ANYTHING to avoid death/prison? Common. Self-preservation=ordinary pathetic human motive
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People ask me a lot about how we celebrated holiday in prison. Needless to say, it’s not very festive. But here’s a thread about jailhouse holiday cooking and small miracles behind bars.
Thanksgiving was not the worst holiday in prison, but in retrospect it was maybe the saddest. Though in some sense, it must have been better than the years before it.
Like, the year that my housemate had to spend the day in hiding because he’d urinated on a fellow drug dealer’s cocaine then gotten chased down the street w/a baseball bat was certainly not ideal.
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People ask my why I work so hard. Motivation is key.

My wife and I lived with rats in the walls and ceiling, with fleas in our bed biting us at night. We went a week with no food except bagels the local gas station threw away.

When you’ve been that poor, you WANT to work hard.
I once went 10 days without food and 3 days without water because I couldn’t afford the treatment for an infected abscess in my throat. The pus would have poisoned me if it had burst and I’d swallowed it. I lost 20 pounds in that time and looked like a scarecrow.
We lived in low-income housing where people waited for us to go to work so they could try to kick in our door. Other men would see me leave and stand at the door telling my wife to open it for them. I had to go tell their families I’d kill them if they didn’t stop. They stopped.
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I’m starting a thread to document things I find in the FISA warrants that were just released. These will be in the form of observations I make as I work my way through it. First of all, the 412 pages includes all four warrants and the associated documentation.
Secondly, the first thing that stands out to me is that the FBI perjured themselves in the application for the warrant. Why do I say this? Because it includes this.
“(U)(S) Carter W.Page
jknowingly engage in
b3-l
b7A-l
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