Key Insights: Brad cannot, in fact, reliably and accurately multiply two-digit numbers in his head… When people comment on twitter that we are a nerdy podcast, we respond by going nerdier... If we get an relatively egalitarian income... 1/
...distribution, the care-centered service economy will give us at least as many interesting jobs to do in the future as we could possibly want—at least for “future” meaning “next two hundred years”… Who controls the consumption spending decisions is key to answering the... 3/
...question of what the future of work will be like: it really matters whether it is a few rich people, a broad base of humanity, or the robots… The market economy is very efficient at crowdsourcing solutions to and then organizing the implementation of the problems that... 4/
...it sets itself. But the major problem the market economy sets itself is how to maximize the amount of necessities, conveniences, and luxuries delivered to the people who control valuable property rights who think they need stuff.
Hexapodia!... References... 5/
PROJECT SYNDICATE: Xi's Historic Mistake: My June column, on the vital importance for China of a separate government controlling the island of Taiwan. China is not a country but rather a civilization, and so centralization is extremely... 1/
...…inappropriate for the long haul. Where would China be now if its armies had rolled into Hong Kong and Taiwan in 1949, and if those territories, too, had been subject to the tender mercies of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution? China today would then be... 2/
...desperately poor, and desperately weak:
J. Bradford DeLong: Xi’s Historic Mistake: If China historically had pursued the path that its current paramount leader, Xi Jinping, seems to want to take, it would not be a rising economic superpower. History shows that it is... 3/
braddelong.substack.com/p/briefly-note… First: Coming up on Wednesday: Adam Gurri: ’Today Matthew Downhour writes about Henry George’s Protection or Free Trade, a new edition of which is being released soon and an event with DeLong and others will be held next week to discuss it… 1/
... LINK: <https://twitter. com/adamgurri/status/1397902403488333825> <https://t. co/wV7XBmvSyA> Plus: Paul Krugman: Friedman tried to save free-market economics from itself, admitting that the economy wasn’t self-correcting but arguing that a rule that didn’t sound... 2/
... Keynesian would let conservative avoid thinking about that…. But ultimately free-market Keynesian, even disguised with a monetarist mask, wasn’t sustainable <
That is not quite what it looked to me at the time.
As I saw it then, and I think I was right, there were Republicans... 1/
who believed that the Democratic Party's policies were harming Negroes by coddling them (A), Republicans who believed that the Democratic Party's policies were harming the world by coddling Communists (B), and Republicans who believed that the Democrtatic Party's policies... 2/
were harming economic growth by too-high taxes on the rich (C). There were even a few Republicans who believed all 3.
But most Republicans who believed in (C) did not believe in A&B—saw them as boob bait for the bubbas. & most Americans who believed in (B) did not believe... 3/
Jeet Heer has been writing about Wilmoore Kendall: That reminds me of this from 2005. Whatever else he thought, Harry Jaffa was an American at his core...
HOISTED FROM THE ARCHIVES: Harry Jaffa, Willmoore Kendall, the Crisis of the House Divided... 1/
...& the Party of Abraham Lincoln: ‘“Most conservative books are pseudo-books: ghostwritten pastiches whose primary purpose seems to be the photo of the ”author“ on the cover. What a tumble! From The Conservative Mind to Savage Nation; from Clifton White to Dick Morris... 2/
...from Willmoore Kendall and Harry Jaffa to Sean Hannity and Mark Fuhrman—all in little more than a generation’s time. Whatever this is, it isn’t progress…”—Andy Ferguson, Weekly Standard. Let me enthusiastically agree with Andy Ferguson’s high praise of the very... 3/
A decade or so ago I had a line about how there were three big potential storm clouds on the horizon–clouds that would probably dissipate, but that we should all fear. They were the (then distant, and now thankfully still distant) possibilities... 1/
...of: (1) Weimar Russia (ex-superpower that thought it had been snookered by the west at the end of a struggle), (2) National Hinduist India (casting Muslims in the historical role traditionally reserved for the Jews), and (3) Wilhelmine China–a rising economic... 2/
... uperpower, ruled by a class that had lost its social role, and that contemplated busying giddy minds with foreign quarrels as a way to distract popular attention from internal problems and debates.
Let me highlight this. Why? Because Martin Wolf has also been... 3/
* Josef Schumpeter’s “depressions are… forms of... 2/
...something which has to be done, namely, adjustment to previous economic change. Most of what would be effective in remedying a depression would be equally effective in preventing this adjustment…” is perhaps the most zombie of zombie economic ideas.