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Noah Smith 🐇
@Noahpinion
, 4 tweets, 1 min read Read on Twitter
An essay by @DKThomp on the culture of work among elite Americans.

Are educated, high-earning Americans expecting too much meaning and fulfillment from their careers?

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Every time I meet a top data scientist or engineer who engages in extremist shitposting from a pseudonymous Twitter account, I wonder whether they're really just pissed that their glamorous tech job turned out to be "figuring out ways to sell more ads"...
Here's a post I wrote about the misuse of top talent in America: bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
Anyway the real way to get meaning in your life is to get some bunnies. There, I said it.
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Noah Smith 🐇
@Noahpinion
Interesting thread. But it's important to convert to purchasing power parity, since most of this is just exchange rate movements.

Iraq GDP per capita in 2002: ~$12,000

In 2017: ~$15,600

That's about a 30% gain in 15 years.

For the U.S., the gain over that period was 57%.
Now, those figures aren't inflation-adjusted.

If we look at inflation-adjusted growth from 2002-2017, Iraq actually grew by about 43% total.

That's about a 2.4% annualized real per capita growth rate.
In other words, the idea that Iraq is much richer now than before the U.S. invasion, or has grown at a rapid pace in the last few years, is just not true.

There has been modest progress. I'd expect as much just from the lifting of U.S. sanctions!
Read 4 tweets
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Noah Smith 🐇
@Noahpinion
86% of Republicans say that accepting people of diverse racial and religious backgrounds is an important part of being "truly American".

(source: prri.org/research/ameri…)
Americans tend to think that workplaces, the military, and universities are unifying institutions, while the media is a divisive institution.
(subject to the expected partisan differences, of course.)
Read 7 tweets
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Noah Smith 🐇
@Noahpinion
1/OK so here's a thought I had about superstar cities and crappy politics.

Short version: Superstar cities lull people into believing that nothing could ever hurt the economy.
2/I had this thought because of Amazon. In the end, it doesn't matter if NYC boots Amazon, because NYC is a superstar city. Companies will still want to come to NYC, and there will still be plenty of jobs.

3/NYC has this magic invincibility because it's a superstar city.

Thanks to the awesome power of KNOWLEDGE-INDUSTRY CLUSTERING EFFECTS, NYC can relax. Its prosperity is basically assured.

csmonitor.com/Business/2018/…
Read 10 tweets

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Derek Thompson
@DKThomp
I wrote a long essay about what I call the American religion of work.

In short: In a period of declining religiosity, more Americans turn to work for the things they once sought from traditional religions—community, meaning, and transcendence.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
1/ Seeking meaning from what you do all day is natural, even reasonable.

But there’s a problem: Our desks are not designed to be our altars. The jobs provided by a modern capitalist economy are not fit to shoulder the burdens of quasi-spiritual expectations of work.
2/ Happiness is, the cliche goes, expectations minus reality.

Expectations of jobs and careers—raised by self-help books, graduation speeches, parents, and even media—have soared for many to a level of unreality.

So, when did this start?
Read 8 tweets
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Hassan Hassan
@hxhassan
Interesting two-page article in ISIS’s weekly al-Naba on Mohammed bin Salman’s religious policies in Saudi Arabia. The conclusion especially.. 1/2
ISIS says MBS knows that he’ll benefit from some chaos as the West will come to his help if there is any extremist move there, so it warns its followers not to fall into the trap: “don’t be the fodder of a battle not yours. The [nature of] our fight is clear.” 2/
ISIS is essentially advising its cells in Saudi Arabia not to make uncalculated moves there and instead “to learn the lessons of their brethren in Syria, Iraq and other wilayat of the Islamic State.”
Read 17 tweets
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Karol 🌿
@karolcummins
While many Americans are concerned that the Trump campaign may have colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election, Trump’s outright convergence of interests with Putin’s Russia may well prove far more damaging for U.S. interests in the long run. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
📌Convergence can be defined as distinct groups doing the same things for different reasons, or as a unity of interests evolving from separate starting points. Both Putin and Trump seek to inject chaos into the U.S. political system.
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
They support an assault on U.S. foreign-policy elites, encourage fringe and radical groups, and envision a United States untethered from traditional allies. They also share a willingness to utilize informal and semi-legal means to achieve their goals.
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Read 16 tweets
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Amanda Marcotte
@AmandaMarcotte
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… It really is remarkable that the president spouts Putin’s propaganda, and everyone shrugs because it’s not news that he’s Putin’s puppet.

Sure, there’s still work that needs to be done *proving* it, but that Putin owns him is not controversial anymore.
If you want to know what life under a puppet government is like, I suppose that’s it: The official line is the president is a democratic leader, but everyone just knows that he’s actually being controlled by a foreign power.
Also worth pausing to note that the same people who made 1984’s Red Dawn a big hit would now greet a Russian invasion by waving Russian flags and cheering their new leader Putin, with Trump at his side, in the streets.
Read 5 tweets
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Oren Cass
@oren_cass
1/ I was starting to think that poorly conceived criticism of The Once and Future Worker's argument about economic policy was a reflection of my own personal failings, so it gives me some comfort to see @marcorubio receiving similar treatment today. thefederalist.com/2018/12/18/sor…
2/ Rubio published an essay @TheAtlantic, describing the economic challenges faced by working-class Americans and arguing that "neither a singular focus on economic growth nor a reliance on more government is going to solve the challenges of our time." theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
3/ This upset @davidharsanyi, who doesn't like Rubio publishing in The Atlantic. He asks whether "Rubio expects HIS children to toil at an entry-level job on a factory floor," as if only people who think factory jobs are the BEST jobs should care whether they are GOOD jobs.
Read 11 tweets

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