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Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
@Noahpinion
Sep 23, 2020 • 13 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
1/For a chance of pace, today's @bopinion post is optimistic!

It's about the robust growth in middle-class incomes from 2014 through 2019.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
2/On the eve of COVID, median U.S. household incomes, adjusted for inflation, were substantially higher than they had ever been before.

By many measures, this income growth was even better than the late 90s. Image
3/Remember, one way people in the 90s grew their incomes was by putting in more hours. That was far less true in the 10s.

So the 10s income growth wasn't just bigger -- it was better. Image
4/And poverty fell substantially.

epi.org/blog/racial-di… Image
5/Total growth in real median household income between 2014 and 2019, by race:

White: 9.91%
Black: 7.75%
Hispanic: 22.77%
Asian: 21.29% Image
6/And these gains are helping to push up intergenerational mobility.

7/Why was the 2010s expansion so good for American incomes, especially compared to the crappy "Bush boom" of the 00s, in which middle-class incomes actually fell? Image
8/One reason: The 2010s expansion went on much longer.

It takes a while for growth to start flowing to the middle class and poor. Frequent recessions interrupt that process.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
9/A second reason: In the 2000s, Chinese competition held down U.S. wages and employment. By the 2010s, the China Shock was over.

nbloom.people.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/… Image
10/So the 2010s were a golden(ish) age for American middle-class incomes.

Now, it's important to note that middle-class WEALTH was still somewhat depressed from the housing crash. If people felt like the economy wasn't as good as the 90s, this is probably one reason why.
11/But in any case, the robust income growth from 2014-2019 teaches us at least two lessons.

First: KEEP EXPANSIONS GOING AS LONG AS POSSIBLE. The longer a boom, the more it helps the middle-class and poor.
12/And second: The U.S. economic system still has the power to generate middle-class prosperity, if it's not tripped up by recessions or other big shocks.

Arguments that the U.S. economic system is fundamentally broken go too far.
13/Anyway, COVID brought this era of growth to an end, and political unrest may demolish it further. So we still might be screwed.

But there's more underlying strength in America than people realize.

(end)

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

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More from @Noahpinion

Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
Oct 20
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
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
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
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
Jun 10
Russia's empire is a nested hierarchy. At the center is Moscow. Under them are mid-tier Russian cities and rural areas, then subject peoples like the Buryats, Sakha, and these African folks.

The closer you are to the center, the less fighting you do, and the more money you get. Image
In fact, the circles of Russian hierarchy don't stop at Moscow. There are privileged subgroups of Muscovites, then more privileged groups inside that circle, all the way up to the Tsar himself.

The principle still holds: Closer to the center = less fighting, more money.
The advantage of this organizational structure is that the more power you have, the less likely you are to ever suffer negative consequences from adverse shocks or bad decisions. All the losses from failed wars, bad economic decisions, etc. get taken by the less powerful.
Read 16 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
Jun 3
In fact, it's not law even now. This executive order is (sadly) AGAINST the law and will probably be struck down, because our asylum law says we can't discriminate against asylum claimants for crossing the border illegally. That law needs to be changed by Congress.
The problem is that the U.S. is a party to the 1967 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, which says that your asylum system can't discriminate against people for being in the country illegally. We wrote our domestic law to comply with that treaty.
The non-discrimination provision is obviously stupid, so what we need to do is flout the 1967 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, and simply amend our domestic law to say "You can't claim asylum if you crossed illegally". But this would require an act of Congress.
Read 5 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
May 7
I'm incredibly bored of talking about the Palestine protests, but here are some results from the recent Generation Lab survey.

Key fact #1: College students just don't care about the Palestine issue that much.

axios.com/2024/05/07/pol…
Image
About 8% of students have participated in the protests on one side or the other. That's a substantial number, but less than the 21% who joined BLM protests in May/June 2020 (and the latter were pretty much all on one side of the issue).

collegepulse.com/blog/8-in-10-c…
Image
Only about 1/8 of students blame Biden for the conflict. 34% blame Hamas, and 31% blame either Israel in general or Netanyahu specifically. Image
Read 6 tweets

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