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12 Oct, 6 tweets, 2 min read
Lecture Rehearsals: 3.4. World War II, by @delong braddelong.substack.com/p/lecture-rehe…

67:00 total…

3.4.1. Lecture—World War II: Overview: Structures, tides—but also the flaps of butterfly wings and chaos make history. World War II is very much a case of the last of these. Our world... 1/
...today would be very different had World War II not happened as it did. (07:51) Slides: <github.com/braddelong/pub…>

3.4.2. Lecture—World War II Origins: It is astonishing that after World War I anybody wanted to do "world war" again. Yet the Nazi and Imperial Japanese... 2/
... governments were willing to launch wars. And the allies—Poland, Britain, France, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Greece, Yugoslavia, the USSR, and the USA were willing to fight to oppose them. (26:38). 3.4.3. Lecture—Blitzkrieg: World War I was profoundly shaped... 3/
...by the tactical and operational power of the Nazi—German—Prussian army. (11:45). 3.4.4. Lecture—Strategy & Logistics: Strategic, grand strategic, and logistical deficits—overwhelming—doomed the axis powers to defeat in World War II. Truth be told, even the best strategy... 4/
...would almost surely not have saved them. The logistical deficit coupled with the grand-strategic deficit was too great. Grand strategy—their war aims, and their choice of enemies—was dictated by the character of the axis regimes. And the logistical deficits were long... 5/
... baked in the cake. (14:09). 3.4.5. Lecture—World War II's End: The butcher’s bill. And some what-ifs. (06:37) 6/END

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More from @delong

Brad DeLong 🖖 💉 Profile picture
10 Oct
@dandrezner washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/1…

Very nicely done...

I confess that I have had a hard time taking Yale's Grand Strategy program seriously since I found, in the intro to Gaddis's _On Grand Strategy_, that among the "practitioners" of grand strategy he boasts of bringing... 1/
...into the program are... Peggy Noonan, and David Brooks.

As I had always understood it, tactics was "how do you win on the battlefield?"; operations was "how do you get your people to the battlefield?"; strategy was "how do you choose the right battlefield?"; & grand... 2.
...strategy was "step back: our goal is that the mayor of Strassburg speak German. Should this be our goal? And if it is, what is the best way to make that happen?".

Thus it would not have occurred to me to think that Henry Kissinger was a guy who had much to say about... 3/
Read 4 tweets
Brad DeLong 🖖 💉 Profile picture
10 Oct
BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2021-10-10 Su, by @delong braddelong.substack.com/p/briefly-note…

First: One Video: Barry Eichengreen: In Defense of Public Debt: ‘Recent years have seen shifts in views of public debt. In the 1980s and 1990s, growing debt was a massive fear, leading people to... 1/
...believe that government spending and debt were out of control. The Global Financial Crisis led to a “wobble” in beliefs, but they were dismissed as no more than a temporary deviation. Covid–19 led governments around the world to run unprecedented deficits, which begs... 2/
...the questions: are these changes in attitudes justified, and will they last? It is clearly justified, given the extraordinary circumstances…. With the Covid–19 crisis, a war-like response was necessary…. However, the change in attitudes may pre-date the pandemic... 3/
Read 14 tweets
Brad DeLong 🖖 💉 Profile picture
4 Oct
braddelong.substack.com/p/project-synd…

PROJECT SYNDICATE: The Strange Death of Conservative America
Everybody should read Geoffrey Kabaservice's 2012 book, Rule & Ruin!

American conservatives once sought to ride the waves of markets and innovation toward ever-greater wealth and... 1/
... prosperity, but now they cower in fear. And, as the trajectory of today’s Republican Party shows, that makes them a threat to democracy.

BERKELEY – If you are concerned about the well-being of the United States and interested in what the country could do to help itself... 2/
..., stop what you are doing and read historian Geoffrey Kabaservice’s superb 2012 book, Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party<global.oup.com/academic/produ…>. To understand why, allow me a brief... 3/
Read 22 tweets
Brad DeLong 🖖 💉 Profile picture
27 Sep
Worþy Reads: For 2021-09-24 Fr: Worthy Reads from Equitable Growth:

1) It is very difficult to take over a running organization and then to strike the right note in one’s initial communications—neither anodyne platitudes, nor too great a shock to the organization, nor... 1/
...submerging one’s own agenda. I think incoming Equitable Growth President Michelle Holder managed this very well: Michelle Holder <equitablegrowth.org/equitable-grow…>... 2/
...2) Back in the real old days, large family sizes meant that the economies-of-scale in child care were captured for the most part within the family, and certainly within the extended family. In our time of nuclear families and low fertility a great deal of this... 3/
Read 28 tweets
Brad DeLong 🖖 💉 Profile picture
24 Sep
BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2021-09-23 Th, by @delong braddelong.substack.com/p/briefly-note…

First: Structural change is much more likely to be win-win and much more likely to take place rapidly when it takes place in a time of short supply as opposed to a time of short demand... 1/
...Harry Dempsey & Dave Lee: Robots Replace Humans as Labour Shortages Bite: ’The monotony of some jobs makes recruiting and retaining workers harder <ft.com/content/34b831…>... /2
...ONE AUDIO: Tracy Alloway & Joe Wiesenthal: Understanding Evergrande, the Chinese Real Estate Conglomerate <podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/odd…>... 3/
Read 11 tweets
Brad DeLong 🖖 💉 Profile picture
22 Sep
PODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXVII: Evergrande, by @delong braddelong.substack.com/p/podcast-hexa…

Key Insights:

1. I do not understand how the Chinese economy works.
The Chinese economy is an odd combination of market and party in which the party has enormous reach and... 1/
...control, but somehow that has not triggered the “soft budget constraint” problems of the Soviet model.

2. Financial constraints are not real—a government that wants to can evade them in its management of the economy.

3. Real resource constraints are, however real... 2/
...finance does not bind because it is true that what we can do, we can afford; but it is also true that what we cannot do, we cannot afford.

4. You can hide for a while from real resource constraints by bubble-overvaluing the low-value infrastructure and real-estate... 3/
Read 10 tweets

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