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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
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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