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Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
@Noahpinion
Aug 14, 2019 • 16 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X
1/Today's @bopinion post is about getting rich.

The dream of getting rich is fundamental to the capitalist system. But in America, that dream is getting further out of reach.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
2/Wealth mobility has decreased. It's less likely for people outside the top echelon to make it into that rarefied percentile.

clevelandfed.org/en/newsroom-an…
3/What's the classic way to get rich?

Start a business.

But fewer people are starting businesses.
4/Big chains have been muscling out local businesses, closing off an essential route into the upper middle class.
nber.org/chapters/c0487

And high-growth startups are becoming rarer as well.
econweb.umd.edu/~haltiwan/EER_…

Big corporations are taking over.
economics.mit.edu/files/12979
5/How about investing in other people's businesses?

If you bet big on Google or Amazon stock, you'd have a lot of money now. But most people who play that game lose.

So stock investing is being taken over by institutions.
pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10…
6/How about real estate?

Middle-class Americans at least know how to play that game. But many were crushed in the crash.
bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
7/House-flipping is still around, at least...

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
8/But thanks to tighter lending standards and the entry of institutional investors into the housing market, even that is increasingly a game for those who already have money.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
9/The crisis was a turning point for the wealth distribution in America.
10/What about making money by working hard and getting a top job?

Increasingly, that requires a degree from a top school...or an advanced degree.

statchatva.org/2019/05/10/a-g…
11/Getting a plum job is still within reach if you're a genius with a PhD. But what about everyone else?

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
12/And remember, even getting through college is very dependent on how much money your parents have.
13/Normal Americans, without rich parents or sky-high IQs, want a path to riches.

Maybe that explains the enthusiasm for crypto. In crypto, outsiders, rebels, and normal shmoes can still get rich.

I gave an impromptu speech about that on this podcast:
pscp.tv/EuclidAndOaks/…
14/But even in crypto, the big companies are coming in and taking over.

coindesk.com/rising-institu…
15/The basic story here is that big organizations are coming in and dominating all of the paths by which Americans traditionally could get rich.

And when people can't get rich, they look for other avenues to status and meaning.

16/If big organizations are allowed to continue to shut out young ambitious Americans, don't be surprised if the next hot growth industry...is socialism.

(end)

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

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More from @Noahpinion

Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
May 6
1/This post didn't get a lot of attention, but I really enjoyed writing it (which is what really matters). So I figured I'd turn it into a thread!
2/Most of the discourse around China in Western media these days is about U.S.-China competition (e.g. this podcast by @DKThomp and @RushDoshi). But I thought I'd write about something a little more positive -- the idea that China is building The Future.

theringer.com/podcasts/plain…
3/Why are some people in the West looking to China for their visions of the future right now?

I see four basic reasons. Image
Read 29 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
Apr 27
1/I haven't written a thread of one of my posts for a long time, so I thought I'd do one today.

Today's post is about how MAGA isn't going to rebuild America.

noahpinion.blog/p/maga-doesnt-…
2/After Covid, there was a general sense that America needed to be REBUILT -- not just from the pandemic, but from the aftermath of the Great Recession, the Rust Belt, and decades of institutional decay.

noahpinion.blog/p/a-new-indust…
3/People argued about HOW to rebuild America. Naturally, progressives thought it would be more government-directed, while conservatives thought it would come from the private sector and from defense spending.

a16z.com/its-time-to-bu…
Read 20 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
Nov 25, 2024
This is a very subtle and interesting question. It seems clear that right-wing interest in personal health is a response to the terrible health of non-college Americans. And the rightists are trying to invent an alternative approach that resists the hegemony of academia.
The fact is, college-educated Americans tend to be hypocritical about health. They watch what they eat, get lots of exercise, and try to eat "organic", but they preach fat acceptance and a disability-based approach to poor health. Rightists don't know how to deal with that.
In fact, this is representative of a broader pattern. College-educated progressives get married and stay marriage, but denigrate the idea of marriage. They work hard but denigrate the idea of hard work. Their personal success is based on rampant, galloping hypocrisy.
Read 8 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
Oct 20, 2024
1/Here's something a lot of people I talk to don't understand about Japanese urbanism, and why Japanese cities are so special. Image
2/Japanese cities feel different than big, dense cities elsewhere -- NYC, London, and Paris, but also other Asian cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore.

There are many reasons for this, but today I'll focus on one: Zakkyo buildings. Image
3/When many people think of "mixed-use development", they think of stores on the first floor, apartments on the higher floors. This is sometimes called "shop-top housing" or "over-store apartments".

This is how most cities in the world do mixed-use development. Image
Read 33 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
Sep 1, 2024
This will be a running thread of observations from my trip to Poland!
Most European apartment buildings don't look any better than an American 5-over-1. But people like them more, because:

1. "Thing, Europe! 😃"

2. They have shops on the first floor and you can walk in and out on the street -- i.e. the neighborhood is walkable. Image
One thing you see a lot of here are Polish flags. There's so much red and white around here it feels like I'm back at Stanford!
Read 38 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
Jul 28, 2024
1/Here's something I've been wondering about recently: How did the U.S. miss the battery revolution?

With every other technological revolution, we anticipated it well in advance, and as a result we were the first -- or one of the first -- to take advantage of it.
2/The U.S. invented the computer, the internet, and modern AI. On all three of those, we were (or are) the leading nation. We talked ad infinitum about the benefits of those digital technologies long before they became a reality, allowing us to shape their eventual use.
3/We did the Human Genome Project. We invented mRNA vaccines. We did most of the research that drove down the costs of solar power. Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House more than 30 years before it became economical.
Read 24 tweets

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