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Noah Smith @Noahpinion
, 7 tweets, 4 min read Read on Twitter
1/If you want to understand what happened to America from 2000 through 2015, here is a reading list.

Start with these two books.

1. "The New Geography of Jobs"
amazon.com/New-Geography-…

2. "Diversity Explosion"
amazon.com/Diversity-Expl…
2/After that, read the following:

3. "The China Shock"
ddorn.net/papers/Autor-D…

4. "The Big Sort"
amazon.com/Big-Sort-Clust…

5. "Coming Apart"
amazon.com/Coming-Apart-S…

6. "Brown is the New White"
amazon.com/Brown-New-Whit…

7. "We Were Eight Years in Power"
amazon.com/We-Were-Eight-…
3/Then, move on to the following:

8. "Income and Wealth Inequality"
eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/SaezCEP2…

9. "The Complacent Class"
amazon.com/Complacent-Cla…

10. "The Second Machine Age"
amazon.com/Second-Machine…

11. "The Rise and Fall of American Growth"
amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Amer…
4/Then give these a try:

12. "Nickled and Dimed"
amazon.com/Nickel-Dimed-N…

13. "Evicted"
amazon.com/Evicted-Povert…

14. "The New Urban Crisis"
amazon.com/New-Urban-Cris…

15. "Concrete Economics"
amazon.com/Concrete-Econo…
5/Read everything on this list.

But this list does mostly omit some very key trends:
1. The decline of Christianity
2. The health, success, and values of the new diverse educated elite
3. The social effects of the shift to 2-income families
4. A healthier populace
6/There are also key groups of Americans whose experience is mostly not covered by this list, particularly LGBT folks and Asian-Americans. I definitely need to read books summing up the experiences of these groups over the last 2 decades.
7/But if you read the list above, I believe you will grasp the essentials of the economic, demographic, and cultural changes that America has been through since the turn of the century. (end)
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A visual illustration of the "crisis" at our southwestern border
Source: pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018… (Border Patrol data)
Note that border apprehensions are down >80% DESPITE massively increased border enforcement, e.g. the Secure Fence Act of 2006. So the true number of people TRYING to get across the border is probably down by even more than 80 percent.
Read 3 tweets
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LEFTIES: We're proposing this big idea to shift the Overton Window

ME: Actually, this is a pretty mainstream, center-left idea

LEFTIES: Shut up you neoliberal scum

ME: Wait, I thought you said you wanted to shift the Ov--

LEFTIES: HOW DARE YOU SAY OUR BIG IDEA IS CENTRIST
ME: Capitalism helped bring billions out of poverty

CENTRISTS: RIGHT ON!!

ME: Now we just need to raise taxes on the rich

CENTRISTS: Well, OK, provided we --

ME: And expropriate landlords to give poor people houses

CENTRISTS: Now wait just a --

ME: Bolivia is doing great
RIGHTISTS: Restrict immigration to raise wages

ME: Immigration doesn't lower wages

RIGHTISTS: But ILLEGAL immigration --

ME: It's been in reverse since 2007

RIGHTISTS: But diversity lowers trust

ME: The evidence doesn't actually show that

RIGHTISTS: Western Civiliz --

ME:
Read 3 tweets
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Hey, everybody! Today's post is about MMT, and about government budget deficits, and about what happens if you keep running infinite budget deficits.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
A theory called MMT (a new name, but not a new idea) is rapidly gaining currency (heh) among some segments of the left, especially the DSA. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has spoken highly of it.

businessinsider.com/alexandria-oca…
MMT's central idea is that the government has no budget constraint. And, therefore, that you don't need taxes to pay for government spending.
Read 22 tweets

Related threads

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1/Assume I figured this completely out. It's like a crypto Rosetta Stone.
github.com/ufasoft/coin/b…
2/ and this IX ABC
github.com/ixcoin123/elec…
3/ this beertokens, iXcoin, Litecoin, and ABE
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1\n #Amazon has done much more for building and deploying #IoT devices in a secure and robust manner than any other ecosystem organization. Their focus? Help build and deploy more connected devices. If you are building connected devices, this summary report is for you:
2\n Both their arms #Alexa and #AWS offer solutions at both the ends: the device (h/w and s/w dev kits) and the cloud. So how does it help you, the device maker? Let's find out. Every tweet below is an Amazon solution. Let's start with Alexa first.
3\n Control via #Alexa 1: If you've built a cloud connected device, use the Alexa SmartHome Skill to link it to Alexa. Then users can asks Alexa to ctrl your device, which goes to Alexa cloud, then to your skill, then your cloud and finally to your device. developer.amazon.com/docs/smarthome…
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1/ I’m very passionate about #books. Every opportunity I get I try to buy some more books for my #antilibrary. However, over the last year, I have changed how I read books. I’d like to share the short story and process in the following thread:
2/ Story: I felt like I was stagnating. I read a lot but I didn’t think I read well. I’d forget almost all of what I read besides a few key points in a fairly short period of time. Being in fields that require consistent learning, I felt I needed to change my approach.
3/ I also researched retainment of learning and found the Ebbinghaus Curve otherwise known as the Forgetting Curve: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgettin…
Read 22 tweets
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Here are a few books to take advantage of for the rest of the year. In no particular order as recommended by one of my greatest influences in flesh (Seth Godin). The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker #TeamWorkManifesto amazon.com/Art-Gathering-…
The second is The ARTIST’s Journey by Steve Pressfield #EssentialCompass amazon.com/Artists-Journe…
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I've reached stage 2 of the #wiredarchive project. I've now read the entire back catalogue, and am circling back to read individual topical throughlines.

The throughlines get pretty long, but I'll post highlight-real versions to the hashtag so ppl can follow along.
First up: the bitcoin throughline!

Here's a reading list:
(1) Early 90s precursor: @StevenLevy on e-money in 1994 wired.com/1994/12/emoney/
(2) Bitcoin origin story, 2011: wired.com/2011/11/mf_bit…
(3) Development of supporting infrastructure, 2014: wired.com/2014/03/what-i…
(cont'd)
(4) Dark Web/Silk Road, 2015: wired.com/2015/05/silk-r…
(5) Blockchain, a love story/a horror story, 2018: wired.com/story/tezos-bl…

Those five articles do a nice job of telling the bitcoin story as it has looked over the years.
(3/x)
Read 10 tweets

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