Back after a year on hiatus! Noah Smith & Brad DeLong Record the Podcast They, at Least, Would Like to Listen to!; Aspirationally Bi-Weekly (Meaning Every Other Week); Aspirationally an hour...

Sokrates: The people find some protector, whom they nurse into greatness… but then changes, as indicated in the old fable of the Temple of Zeus of the Wolf, of how he who tastes human flesh mixed up with the flesh of other sacrificial victims will turn into a wolf. Even so, the protector, once metaphorically tasting human blood, slaying some and exiling others, within or without the law, hinting at the cancellation of debts and the fair redistribution of lands, must then either perish or become a werewolf—that is, a tyrant…

Key Insights:

* We are back! After a year-long hiatus.

* Hexapodia is a metaphor: a small, strange insight (like alien shrubs riding on six-wheeled carts as involuntary agents of the Great Evil) can provide key insight into useful and valuable Truth.

* The Democratic Party is run by 27-year-old staffers, not geriatric figurehead politicians–this shapes messaging and internal dynamics.

* The American progressive movement did not possess enough assibayah to keep from fracturing over Gaza War, especially among younger Democratic staffers influenced by social media discourse.

* The left’s adoption of “indigeneity” rhetoric undermined its ability to be a coalition in the face of tensions generated by the Hamas-Israel terrorism campaigns.

* Trump’s election with more popular votes than Harris destroyed Democratic belief that they had a right to oppose root-and-branch.

* The belief that Democrats are the “natural majority” of the U.S. electorate is now false: nonvoters lean Trump, not so much Republican, and definitely not Democratic.

* Trump’s populism is not economic redistribution, but a claim to provide a redistribution of status and respect to those who feel culturally disrespected.

* The Supreme Court’s response to Trumpian overreach is likely to be very cautious—Barrett and Roberts are desperately eager to avoid any confrontation with Trump they might wind up losing, and Alito, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Thomas will go the extra mile—they are Republicans who are judges, not judges who are Republicans, except in some extremis that may not even exist.

* Trump’s administration pursues selective repression through the state, rather than stochastic terrorism.

* The economic consequence of the second Trump presidency look akin to another Brexit costing the U.S. ~10% of its prosperity, or more.

* Social media, especially Twitter a status warfare machine–amplifying trolls and extremists, suppressing nuance.

* People addicted to toxic media diets but lack the tools or education to curate better information environments.

* SubStack and newsletters may become part of a healthier information ecosystem, a partial antidote to the toxic amplification of the Shouting Class on social media.

* Human history is marked by information revolutions (e.g., printing press), each producing destructive upheaval before stabilization: destruction, that may or may not be creative.

* As in the 1930s, we are entering a period where institutions–not mobs–become the threat, even as social unrest diminishes.

* The dangers are real,and recognizing and adapting to new communication realities is key to preserving democracy.

* Plato’s Republic warned of democracy decaying into tyranny, especially when mob-like populism finds a strongman champion who then, having (metaphorically) fed on human flesh, becomes a (metaphorical) werewolf.

* Enlightenment values relied more than we knew on print-based gatekeeping and slow communication; digital communication bypasses these safeguards.

* The cycle of crisis and recovery is consistent through history: societies fall into holes they later dig out of, usually at great cost—or they don’t.

* &, as always, HEXAPODIA!

References:

* Brown, Chad P. 2025. “Trump's trade war timeline 2.0: An up-to-date guide”. PIIE. <https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economics/2025/trumps-trade-war-timeline-20-date-guide>.

* Center for Humane Technology. 2020. “The Social Dilemma”. <https://www.humanetech.com/the-social-dilemma>.

* Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, & John Jay. 1788. The Federalist Papers. <https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/full-text>.

* Nowinski, Wally. 2024. “Democrats benefit from low turnout now”. Noahpinion. July 20. <https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/dont-rock-the-vote>.

* Platon of the Athenai. -375 [1871]. Politeia. <https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1497>.

* Rorty, Richard. 1998. Achieving Our Country. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. <https://archive.org/details/achievingourcoun0000rort>

* Rothpletz, Peter. 2024. “Economics 101 tells us there’s no going back from Trumpism”. The Hill. September 24. <https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/4896391-trumpism-gop-future/>.

* Smith, Noah. 2021. “Wokeness as Respect Redistribution”. Noahpinion.<https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/wokeness-as-respect-redistribution>.

* Smith, Noah. 2016. “How to actually redistribute respect”. Noahpinion. March 23. <https://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2016/03/how-to-actually-redistribute-respect.html>.

* Smith, Noah. 2013. “Redistribute wealth? No, redistribute respect”. Noahpinion. December 27. <https://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/redistribute-wealth-no-redistribute.html>.

* SubStack. 2025. “Building a New Economic Engine for Culture”. <https://substack.com/about>.

&

* Vinge, Vernor. 1999. A Deepness in the Sky. New York: Tor Books. <https://www.amazon.com/Deepness-Sky-Zones-Thought/dp/0812536355>.

If reading this gets you Value Above Replacement, then become a free subscriber to this newsletter. And forward it! And if your VAR from this newsletter is in the three digits or more each year, please become a paid subscriber! I am trying to make you readers—and myself—smarter. Please tell me if I succeed, or how I fail…

Get full access to DeLong's Grasping Reality: Economy in the 2000s & Before at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Noah Smith & Brad DeLong Record the Podcast We, at Least, Would Like to Listen to!; Aspirationally Bi-Weekly (Meaning Every Other Week); Aspirationally an hour...

Key Insights:

* Brad DeLong says: You say economics and economists in decline—I see bad economists in decline.

* Brad DeLong says: You see missile defense as remarkably effective—I see it as marginally effective, at best.

* Brad DeLong says: You say China Shock II—I say China Shock I required the GWB administration as witting and unwitting co-conspirator.

* Noah Smith says: These are self-refuting prophecies: my defense of missile defense was to say that it can be remarkably effective in a few possible instances, but those plausible ones for the next two decades; my title “the decade of the second China shock” and my subhead “brace yourselves” were intended to spur action to keep there from being a second China shock.

* Noah Smith says: Economists advising badly had a lot of influence in 2008 and after, and still have a substantial amount today—so the total influence of economists has decreased since 2008, and this is not necessarily a bad thing.

* The only real way to get nuance is to write a whole book and then have people deeply engage with it, which requires that they be on a trans-oceanic flight with dodgy Wi-Fi, and be otherwise bored.

* The internet makes us less nuanced than we should be.

* &, as always, HEXAPODIA!

References:

* Smith, Noah. 2024. “Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense”. Noahpinion. April 15. <https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-so-many-of-us-were-wrong-about>.

* Smith, Noah. 2024. “Twilight of the economists?” Noahpinion. April 12. <https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/twilight-of-the-economists>.

* Smith, Noah. 2024. “The decade of the Second China Shock”. March 23. <https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-decade-of-the-second-china-shock>.

&

* Vinge, Vernor. 1999. A Deepness in the Sky. New York: Tor Books. <https://www.amazon.com/Deepness-Sky-Zones-Thought/dp/0812536355>.

Get full access to DeLong's Grasping Reality: Economy in the 2000s & Before at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Noah Smith & Brad DeLong Record the Podcast We, at Least, Would Like to Listen to!; Aspirationally Bi-Weekly (Meaning Every Other Week); Aspirationally an hour...

Key Insights:

* A number of years ago, Brad DeLong said that it was time to “pass the baton” to “The Left”. How’s that working out for us? #actually, he had said that we had passed the baton—that the absence since January 21, 2009 (or possibly January 21, 1993) of Republican negotiating partners meant that sensible centrism produced nothing—that Barack Obama had proposed John McCain’s climate policy, Mitt Romney’s health care policy, George H.W. Bush’s entitlement-and-budget policy, Ronald Reagan’s tax policy, and Gerald Ford’s foreign policy, and had gotten precisely zero Republican votes for any of those. Therefore the only choice we had was to pass the baton to the Left in the hopes that they could energize the base and the disaffected to win majorities, and then offer strong support where there policies were better than the status quo.

* But my major initial take was that the major task was to resurrect a sensible center-right, in which I wished the Niskanen Center good luck, but was not optimistic.

* But everyone heard “Brad DeLong says neoliberals should ‘bend the knee’” to THE LEFT…

* That is interesting…

* Should neoliberals bend the knee?

* How has the left been doing with its baton? Not well at all, for anyone who defines “THE LEFT” to consist of former Bernie staffers who regard Elizabeth Warren as a neoliberal sellout.

* It has, once again, never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

* But the conditions that required passing the baton to the left—High Mitch McConnellism, Republican unity saying “NO!” to everything by every Republican to make the Black president look like a weak failure—no longer hold.

* And the principal adversaries to good governance and a bright American future are reactionary theocrats, neofascist grifters, and true-believer right-neoliberals to the right and cost-disease socialists to the left.

* But in the middle, made up of ex-left-neoliberals and nearly all other right-thinking Americans, are we supply-side progressives.

* Instead, there is a governing coalition, in the Senate, composed of 70 senators, 50 Democrats and 20 Republicans, from Bernie Sanders through J.D. Vance—a supply-side progressive or supply-side Americanist coalition.

* It is therefore time to snatch the baton back, and give it to the supply-side progressivist policy-politics core, and then grab as many people to run alongside that core in the race as we possibly can.

* The Niskanen Center cannot be at the heart of the supply-side progressivist agenda because they are incrementalists and critics by nature.

* The principal business of “Leftist” activists over the past five years really has been and continues to be to try to grease the skids for the return of neofascism—just as the principal business of Ralph Nader and Naderites in 2000 was to grease the skids for upper-class tax cuts, catastrophic financial deregulation, and forever wars.

* &, as always, HEXAPODIA!

References:

* Beauchamp, Zack. 2019. "A Clinton-Era Centrist Democrat Explains Why It's Time to Give Democratic Socialists a Chance." Vox. March 4, 2019. <https://web.archive.org/web/20190304123456/https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/4/18246381/democrats-clinton-sanders-left-brad-delong>.

* Black, Bill. 2019. "Brad DeLong's Stunning Concession: Neoliberals Should Pass the Baton & Let the Left Lead." Naked Capitalism. March 5. <https://web.archive.org/web/20190305123456/https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/03/bill-black-analyzes-brad-delongs-stunning-concession-neoliberals-should-pass-baton-let-left-lead.html>.

* DeLong, J. Bradford. 2019. “David Walsh went to the Niskanen Center conference. He got hives…” Twitter. February 25. <https://twitter.com/delong/status/1100166150845939712>.

* DeLong, J. Bradford. 2019. "Carville & Hunt: Two Old White Guys Podcast." Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality. March 11. <https://web.archive.org/web/20190305123456/https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/03/carville-hunt-two-old-white-guys-podcast.html>.

* DeLong, J. Bradford. 2019. "I Said 'Pass the Baton' to Those Further Left Than I, Not 'Bend the Knee.'" Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality. March 27. <https://web.archive.org/web/20190305123456/https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/03/i-said-pass-the-baton-to-those-further-left-than-i-not-bend-the-knee.html>.

* Elmaazi, Mohamed. 2019. "Famous Neoliberal Economist Says Centrism Has Failed." The Canary. March 15, 2019. <https://web.archive.org/web/20190315123456/https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2019/03/15/famous-neoliberal-economist-says-centrism-has-failed/>.

* O’Reilly, Timothy. 2019. "This Interview with Brad DeLong is Very Compelling." LinkedIn. <https://www.linkedin.com/posts/timo3_this-interview-with-brad-delong-is-very-compelling-activity-6508399270297767936-86Hd/?trk=public_profile_like_view>.

* Douthat, Ross. 2019. "What’s Left of the Center-Left?" New York Times. March 5. <https://web.archive.org/web/20190305123456/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/opinion/democrats-liberals-socialists-cultural-left.html>.

* Drum, Kevin. 2019. "A Neoliberal Says It's Time for Neoliberals to Pack It In." Mother Jones. March 5. <https://web.archive.org/web/20190305123456/https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/03/a-neoliberal-says-its-time-for-neoliberals-to-pack-it-in/>.

* Hundt, Reed, Brad DeLong, & Joshua Cohen. 2019."Neoliberalism and Its Discontents." Commonwealth Club. March 5. <https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/podcast/neoliberalism-and-its-discontents>.

* Konczal, Mike. 2019. "The Failures of Neoliberalism Are Bigger Than Politics." Roosevelt Institute. March 5. <https://web.archive.org/web/20190305123456/https://rooseveltinstitute.org/2019/03/05/the-failures-of-neoliberalism-are-bigger-than-politics/>.

&

* Vinge, Vernor. 1999. A Deepness in the Sky. New York: Tor Books. <https://www.amazon.com/Deepness-Sky-Zones-Thought/dp/0812536355>.

Get full access to DeLong's Grasping Reality: Economy in the 2000s & Before at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Noah Smith & Brad DeLong Record the Podcast We, at Least, Would Like to Listen to!; Aspirationally Bi-Weekly (Meaning Every Other Week); Aspirationally an hour...

Key Insights:

* Someone is wrong on the internet! Specifically Brad… He needs to shape up and scrub his brain…

* Back in the 2000s, Brad argued that the U.S. should over the next few generations try to pass the baton of world leadership to a prosperous, democratic, liberal China…

* Back in the 2000s, Noah thought that Brad was wrong—he looked at the Chinese Communist Party, and he thought: communist parties do not do “coëxistence”…

* Noah understands people with a limitless authoritarian desire for power—people like Trump, Xi, Putin, and in the reverse Abe—and the systems that nurture and promote them…

* Why did Brad go wrong? Excessive reliance in the deep structures of his brain on the now 60-year-old Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World.

* Why did Brad go wrong? A failure to understand Lenin’s party of a new type as a bureaucratic-cultural organization…

* Suggestions for what Brad DeLong should earn during his forthcoming stint in the reëducation camp are welcome…

* &, as always, Hexapodia…

References:

* Bear, Greg. 1985. Blood Music. New York: Arbor House. <https://www.lwcurrey.com/pages/books/103667/greg-bear/blood-music>.

* Brown, Kerry. 2022. Xi: A Study in Power. London: Icon Books.<https://www.kerry-brown.co.uk/books/xi-a-study-in-power>.

* Cai, Xia. 2022. "The Weakness of Xi Jinping: How Hubris and Paranoia Threaten China’s Future." Foreign Affairs. September/October. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/xi-jinping-china-weakness-hubris-paranoia-threaten-future.

* DeLong, J. Bradford. 2019. "What to Do About China?" Project Syndicate, June 5. <https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-america-relations-trump-diplomatic-weakness-by-j-bradford-delong-2019-06>.

* DeLong, J. Bradford. 2019. "America’s Superpower Panic". Project Syndicate, August 14. <https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/america-china-superpower-rivalry-history-by-j-bradford-delong-2019-08>.

* DeLong, J. Bradford. 2023. "Theses on China, the US, Political-Economic Systems, Global Value Chains, & the Relationship". Grasping Reality. Accessed June 19. <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/theses-on-china-e-us-political-economic>.

* Lampton, David M. 2019. Following the Leader: Ruling China, from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping. Berkeley: University of California Press.ttps://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520303478/following-the-leader>.

* Moore, Barrington, Jr. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord & Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston: Beacon Press. <https://archive.org/details/socialoriginsofd0000unse_v4l0>.

* Pronin, Ivan, & Mikhail Stepichev. 1969. Leninist Standards of Party Life. Moscow: Progress Publishers. <https://archive.org/details/leninist-standardsof-party-life_202307>.

* Sandbu, Martin. 2022. “Brad DeLong: ‘The US is now an anti-globalisation outlier’”. Financial Times. November 23. <https://www.ft.com/content/791fe484-595f-44f9-86e7-55bdbbbd22e8>.

* Sasaki, Norihiko. 2023. "Functions and Significance of the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms and the Central Comprehensively Deepening Reforms Commission." Chinese Journal of Political Science 28 (3): 1-15. Accessed May 14, 2024. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24761028.2023.2185394.

* Shambaugh, David, ed. 2020. China and the World. New York: Oxford University Press. <https://academic.oup.com/book/32164>.

&

* Vinge, Vernor. 1999. A Deepness in the Sky. New York: Tor Books. <https://www.amazon.com/Deepness-Sky-Zones-Thought/dp/0812536355>.

Get full access to DeLong's Grasping Reality: Economy in the 2000s & Before at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Noah Smith & Brad DeLong Record the Podcast We, at Least, Would Like to Listen to!; Aspirationally Bi-Weekly (Meaning Every Other Week); Aspirationally an hour...

Key Insights:

* Vernor Vinge was one of the GOAT scifi authors—and he is also one of the most underrated…

* That a squishy social-democratic leftie like Brad DeLong can derive so much insight and pleasure from the work of a hard-right libertarian like Vernor Vinge—for whom the New Deal Order is very close to being the Big Bad, and who sees FDR as a cousin of Sauron—creates great hope that there is a deeper layer of thought to which we all can contribute. The fact that Brad DeLong and Vernor Vinge get excited in similar ways is a universal force around which we can unite, and add to them H.G. Wells and Jules Verne…

* The five things written by Vernor Vinge that Brad and Noah find most interesting are:

* “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era”,

* A Fire Upon the Deep,

* A Deepness in the Sky,

* “True Names”, &

* Rainbows End…

* We do not buy the Supermind Singularity: The world is not a game of chess in which the entity that can think 40 moves ahead will always easily trounce the entity that can only think 10 moves ahead, for time and chance happeneth to us all…

* We do not buy the Supermind Singularity: Almost all human intelligence is not in individual brains, but is in the network. We are very smart as an anthology intelligence. Whatever true A.I.s we create will be much smarter when they are tied into the network as useful and cooperative parts of it—rather than sinister gods out on their own plotting plots…

* We do not buy the Supermind Singularity: mind and technology amplification is as likely to be logistic as exponential or super-exponential…

* The ultimate innovation in a society of abundance is the ability to control human personality and desire—and now we are back to the Buddha, and to Zeno, Kleanthes, Khrisippus, and Marcus Aurelius…

* With the unfortunate asterisk that mind-hacking via messages and chemicals mean that such an ultimate innovation can be used for evil as well as good…

* Addiction effects from gambling are not, in fact, a good analogy for destructive effects of social media as a malevolent attention-hacker…

* Cyberspace is not what William Gibson and Neil Stephenson predicted.

But it rhymed. And mechanized warfare was not what H.G. Wells predicted.

But it rhymed. A lot of the stuff about AI that we see in science fiction will rhyme with whatever things are going to happen…

* The Blight of A Fire Upon the Deep is a not-unreasonable metaphor for social media as propaganda intensifier…

* We want the future of the Whole Earth Catalog and the early Wired, not of crypto grifts and ad-supported social media platforms…

* Vernor Vinge’s ideas will be remembered—if only as important pieces of a historical discussion about why the Superintelligence Singularity road was not (or was) taken—as long as the Thrones of the Valar endure…

* Noah Smith continues to spend too much time picking fights on Twitter…

* &, as always, Hexapodia…

References:

* DeLong, J. Bradford. 2022. Slouching Towards Utopia: The Economic History of the 20th Century. New York: Basic Books. <http://bit.ly/3pP3Krk>.

* Bursztyn, Leonardo, Benjamin Handel, Rafael Jiménez-Durán, & Christopher Roth. 2023. “When Product Markets Become Collective Traps: The Case of Social Media”. Becker-Friedman Institute. October 12. <https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/when-product-markets-become-collective-traps-the-case-of-social-media/>.

* Patel, Nilay, Alex Cranz, & David Pierce. 2024. “Rabbit, Humane, & the iPad”. Vergecast. May 3. <https://overcast.fm/+QN1ra_4w8>.

* MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1966. A Short History of Ethics: : A History of Moral Philosophy from the Homeric Age to the Twentieth Century. New York: Macmillan. <https://archive.org/details/shorthistoryofet00maci>.

* Ober, Josiah. 2008. Democracy & Knowledge: Innovation & Learning in Classical Athens. Princeton: Princeton University Press. <https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BD27WCMK>.

* Petpuls. 2024. “The World's First Dog Emotion Translator”. Accessed May 7, 2024. <https://www.petpuls.net/?lang=en>.

* Rao, Venkatesh. 2022. “Beyond Hyperanthropomorphism”. Ribbonfarm Studio. Auguts 21. <https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/beyond-hyperanthropomorphism>.

* Taintor, Joseph. 1990. The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. <https://www.amazon.com/dp/052138673X>.

* Vinge, Vernor. 1984. “True Names”. True Names & Other Dangers. New York: Bluejay Books. <https://archive.org/details/truenamesvingevernor>.

* Vinge, Vernor. 1992. A Fire Upon the Deep. New York: Tor Books. <https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Upon-Deep-Zones-Thought/dp/0812515285>.

* Vinge, Vernor. 1993. "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era". <https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19940022856>.

* Vinge, Vernor. 1999. A Deepness in the Sky. New York: Tor Books. <https://www.amazon.com/Deepness-Sky-Zones-Thought/dp/0812536355>.

* Vinge, Vernor. 2006. Rainbows End. New York: Tor Books. <https://www.amazon.com/Rainbows-End-Vernor-Vinge/dp/0812536363>.

* Williams, Walter Jon. 1992. Aristoi. New York: Tor Books. <https://www.lwcurrey.com/pages/books/91732/walter-jon-williams/aristoi>

* Wikipedia. “Vernor Vinge”. Accessed May 7, 2024. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge>.

Get full access to DeLong's Grasping Reality: Economy in the 2000s & Before at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

In which Noah Smith & Brad DeLong wish Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson had written a very different book than their "Power & Progress" is...

Key Insights:

* Acemoglu & Johnson should have written a very different book—one about how some technologies complement and others substitute for labor, and it is very important to maximize the first.

* Neither Noah Smith nor Brad DeLong is at all comfortable with “power” as a category in economics other than as the ability to credibly threaten to commit violence or theft.

* Acemoglu & Robinson’s Why Nations Fail is a truly great book. Power & Progress is not.

* We should not confuse James Robinson with Simon Johnson

* Billionaires running oligopolistic tech firms are not trustworthy stewards of the future of our economy.

* The IBM 701 Defense Calculator of 1953 is rather cool.

* The lurkers agree with Noah Smith in the DMs.

* The power loom caused technological unemployment because the rest of the value chain—cotton growing, spinning, and garment-making—was rigid, hence the elasticity of demand for the transformation thread → cloth was low.

* We need more examples of bad technologies than the cotton gin and the Roman Empire.

References:

* Acemoglu, Daron, & Simon Johnson. 2023. Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity. New York; Hachette Book Group. <https://archive.org/details/daron-acemoglu-simon-johnson-power-and-progress-our-thousand-year-struggle-over->

* Acemoglu, Daron, & James A. Robinson. 2012. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. New York: Crown Publishers. <https://archive.org/details/WhyNationsFailTheOriginsODaronAcemoglu>

* Besi. 2023. “Join us Tues. Oct. 10 at 4pm Pacific for a talk by

@MITSloan’s Simon Johnson…” Twitter. October 9. <https://twitter.com/BESI_Berkeley/status/1711541113738387874>.

* DeLong, J. Bradford. 2024. “What To Do About the Dependence of the Form Progress Takes on Power?: Quick Takes on Acemoglu & Johnson's "Power & Progress”. Grasping Reality. February 29.

* DeLong, J. Bradford; & Noah Smith. 2023. “We Cannot Tell in Advance Which Technologies Are Labor-Augmenting & Which Are Labor-Replacing”. Hexapodia. XLIX, July 7.

* Gruber, Jonathan, & Simon Johnson. 2019. Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream.

The book is available on the Internet Archive: <https://archive.org/details/e-20190429>.

* Johnson, Simon, & James Kwak. 2011. 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown. New York: Vintage Books. <https://archive.org/details/13bankers0000unse>.

* Smith, Noah. 2024. “Book Review: Power & Progress”. Noahpinion. February 21.

* Walton, Jo. 1998. “The Lurkers Support Me in Email”. May 16. <http://www.jowaltonbooks.com/poetry/whimsy/the-lurkers-support-me-in-email/>.

+, of course:

* Vinge, Vernor. 1992. A Fire Upon the Deep. New York: TOR. <https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving_0>.

Get full access to DeLong's Grasping Reality: Economy in the 2000s & Before at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Producer Confidence & Consumer Confidence (in the Economy), & Our Confidence (in Our Analyses): Noah Smith & Brad DeLong Record the Podcast We, at Least, Would Like to Listen to!; Aspirationally Bi-Weekly (Meaning Every Other Week); Aspirationally an hour...

Key Insights:

* The disjunction between all the economic data having been very good and very strong for the past year and tons of reports and commentary about how people “weren’t feeling it” is mostly the result of the fact that things work with lags.

* There are other factors: partisan politics, and the insistence of Republicans that they must not only vote but also at least say that they agree with their tribe.

* There are other factors: the old journalistic adage that “what bleeds, leads”, exponentiated by the effects of our current short attention-span clickbait culture.

* There are other factors: journalists, commentators, and the rest of the shouting class are depressed as their industries collapse around them, and somewhat of their situation leaks through.

* There are other factors: while people think they personally are doing well, they do remember stories of others not doing wellm and are concerned.

* But mostly it was just that things operate with lags: that was the major source of the “vibecession” gloom-and-doom which was at sharp variance with the actual economic dataflow.

* We are not the modelers: we are, rather, the agents in the model.

* The metanarrative is always harder than the narrative: trying to answer “why don’t people say they think the economy is good?” is very hard to answer in a non-stupid way, and most of us are much better off just saying: “hey, guys, the economy is really good!”

* It is good to be long reality—as long as you are not so leveraged that your position gets sold out from under you before the market marks itself to reality,.

* Lags gotta lag.

* And, finally, hexapodia!

References:

* Burn-Murdoch, John. 2023. “Should we believe Americans when they say the economy is bad?” Financial Times, December 1 <https://www.ft.com/content/9c7931aa-4973-475e-9841-d7ebd54b0f47>.

* Cummings, Ryan, & Neale Mahoney. 2023. “Asymmetric amplification and the consumer sentiment gap”. Briefing Book, November 13. >.

* El-Erian, Mohamed. 2024. “A warning shot over the last mile in the inflation battle’. Financial Times, January 15. <https://www.ft.com/content/497499b1-0e9f-4215-a536-ecd483ad42b9>.

* Faroohar, Rana. 2024. “Is Bidenomics dead on arrival? The time is ripe for the administration to rethink its messaging”. Financial Times, December 18. <https://www.ft.com/content/816ccbf7-d0d5-47be-9c8d-8a8a0cbd0afe>.

* Fedor, Lauren, & Colby Smith. 2023, “Will US voters believe they are better off with Biden? Under pressure after a string of damning polls, the US president is resting his hopes for re-election on his personal economic blueprint”. Financial Times, November 6. <https://www.ft.com/content/23687b6b-ac6f-46ab-a701-917a5ed64f4f>.

* Financial Times Editorial Board. 2024. “Why Biden gets little credit for a strong US economy: The president’s team needs to show more energy in addressing voters’ concerns”. Financial Times, January 11. <https://www.ft.com/content/a2373c26-87ea-4b77-944f-8a6b28c8675b>.

* Ghosh, Bobby. 2022. “Biden’s a Better Economic Manager Than You Think:

On more than a dozen measures of relative prosperity, he’s outperformed the last six of his seven predecessors. On reducing the budget deficit, he has no peers”. Bloomberg, November 8.

* Greenberg, Stanley. 2024. “The Political Perils of Democrats’ Rose-Colored Glasses: Paul Krugman’s (and many Democrats’) beliefs about the economy and crime miss the reality that Americans still experience”. American Prospect, February 5. <https://prospect.org/politics/2024-02-05-political-perils-democrats-rose-colored-glasses/>.

* Hsu, Joanne. 2024. “Surveys of Consumers: Final Results for January 2024”. February 2. <http://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/>.

* Krugman, Paul. 2024. “Is the Vibecession Finally Coming to an End?” New York Times, January 22. <https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/22/opinion/biden-trump-vibecession-economy.html>.

* Lowenkron, Hadriana. 2023. “Biden’s Approval Rating Hits New Low on Economic Worries, Poll Shows”. Bloomberg, December 18. <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-18/biden-approval-hits-new-low-on-economic-worries-poll-shows>,

* Millard, Blake. 2024. “Consumer confidence highest in 2 years, still below pre-pandemic levels”. Sandbox Daily, February 6. <http://thesandboxdaily.com/p/consumer-confidence-plus-apple-and>.

* Omeokwe, Amara, & Chip Cutter. 2024. “Job Gains Picked Up in December, Capping Year of Healthy Hiring”. Wall Street Journal, January 5. <https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/jobs-report-december-today-unemployment-economy-58801a70>.

* Rubin, Gabriel. 2024. “What Recession? Growth Ended Up Accelerating in 2023”. Wall Street Journal, January 25. <https://www.wsj.com/economy/gdp-us-economy-fourth-quarter-2023-9fc372f0>.

* Scanlon, Kyla. 2022. “The Vibecession: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy”. Kyla’s Newsletter, June 30. <http://kyla.substack.com/p/the-vibecession-the-self-fulfillin>.

* Sen, Conor. 2023. “Unhappy American Consumers Will Welcome a Slower Economy”. Bloomberg, November 29. <https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-11-29/unhappy-american-consumers-will-welcome-a-slower-economy>

* Scanlon, Kyla. 2023. “It’s More than Just Vibes”. Kyla’s Newsletter, December 7. <http://kyla.substack.com/p/its-more-than-just-vibes>.

* Torry, Harriet, & Anthony DeBarros. 2023. “Economists in WSJ Survey Still See Recession This Year Despite Easing Inflation”. Wall Street Journal, January 15. <https://www.wsj.com/articles/despite-easing-price-pressures-economists-in-wsj-survey-still-see-recession-this-year-11673723571>.

* Winkler, Matthew A. 2023. “The Truth About the Biden Economy: As the president launches his reelection campaign, his biggest challenge may be getting voters to ignore perception and focus on reality”. Bloomberg, April 25. <https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-04-25/biden-s-economy-deserves-more-appreciation-from-americans>.

* Wingrove, Josh. 2024. “Biden Refines Economic Pitch for 2024 in Bet Worst Is Behind Him”. Bloomberg, January 13. <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-13/biden-refines-economic-pitch-for-2024-in-bet-worst-is-behind-him>.

+, of course:

* Vinge, Vernor. 1992. A Fire Upon the Deep. New York: TOR. <https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving_0>.

Get full access to DeLong's Grasping Reality: Economy in the 2000s & Before at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

& a start-of-the-semester academic-email-addresses-only paid-subscription sale:

Key Insights:

* Young whippersnappers Oks and Williams are to be commended for being young, and whippersnapperish—but we disagree with them.

* Contrary to what Brad thought, the fertility transition in Africa really has resumed.

* The problem of how you provide mass employment for people is different than the problem of how you increase your economy’s productivity by building knowledge capital, infrastructure, and other forms of human capital.

* It is important to keep those straight and distinguished in your mind.

* Commodity exporting should be viewed as a distinct development strategy from industrialization, and indeed from everything else.

* Sometime during the plague, Brad DeLong really did turn into a grumpy old man yelling at clouds. It's time that he should own that.

* People should take another look at the pace of South and Southeast Asian economic development. It is a very different world than it was 25 years ago.

* Thus if you are basing your view on memories of or on books written based on memories of how things were 25 years ago, you are going to get it wrong. BIGTIME wrong.

* Only the Federal Reserve can get away with saying “it’s context dependent”. All the rest of us have to put forward Grand Narratives—false as they all are—if we want to actually be useful.

* Hexapodia

References:

* Bongaarts, John. 2020. "Trends in fertility and fertility preferences in sub-Saharan Africa: the roles of education and family planning programs." Genus 76: 32. <https://genus.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41118-020-00098-z>

* Kremer, Michael, Jack Willis, & Yang You. 2021. "Converging to Convergence." National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 29484, November 2021. <https://www.nber.org/papers/w29484>

* Oks, David, & Henry Williams. 2022. "The Long, Slow Death of Global Development." American Affairs 6:4 (November). <https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2022/11/the-long-slow-death-of-global-development/>.

* Patel, Dev, Justin Sandefur, & Arvind Subramanian. 2021. "The new era of unconditional convergence." Journal of Development Economics 152. <https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/deveco/v152y2021ics030438782100064x.html>.

* Perkins, Dwight. 2021. "Understanding political influences on Southeast Asia's development experience." Fulbright Review of Economics and Policy 1, no. 1: 4-20. <https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/FREP-03-2021-0021/full/html>.

* Rodrik, Dani, & Joseph E. Stiglitz. 2024. "A New Growth Strategy for Developing Nations." <https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/research-papers>.

* World Bank. 2023. "South Asia Development Update October 2023: Economic Outlook." <https://www.worldbank.org/en/region/sar/publication/south-asia-development-update>.

+, of course:

* Vinge, Vernor. 1992. A Fire Upon the Deep. New York: TOR. <https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving_0>.

Get full access to DeLong's Grasping Reality: Economy in the 2000s & Before at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Key Insights:

* Finally, at long last, over the next two generations the tide is likely to be flowing strongly toward near-universal global development...

* The fear was that dehyperglobalization would rob poorer countries of their ability to develop the export comparative advantages to support the manufacturing engineering clusters they need for learning by doing, establishing a good educational system, and converging to global North standards of living...

* This fear appears to have been very overblown...

* Optimism about future income growth and globalization is warranted because India has more people in it than Africa: the Asia Circle from Japan to Pakistan and down to Indonesia and up to Mongolia is and always has been half the human race. And South Asia and Southeast Asia are now in gear...

* As long as dealing with global warming does not absorb too many of the resources that could otherwise be devoted to income growth...

* This is true even though the great wave of increasing international trade intensity and integration that began in 1945 came to an end in 2008...

* Even so, since 2008 there has still been increasing global integration in the flow of ideas and the growing interdependence of value chains...

* A substantial part of the post-2008 reversal of globalization was partially due to China onshoring its supply chains—the pre-2008 situation in which China's manufacturing knowledge was vastly behind its manufacturing intensity was highly unstable...

* This, however, hinges sufficient state capacity—which is not just the ability to do infrastructure and reorganize your economy, but also have people's stuff not get stolen from them either by local thieves or by government functionaries...

* Distributional issues are another potential key blockage—the benefits of technological change flow to the global north, or to a small predatory internal élite, or the market economy's distribution goes spontaneously awry...

* But there is the question of how much distribution matters in a rich world where few are starving—matters for social power, yes, and for whatever happinesses flow from that, but does distribution matter otherwise?

* Countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America may be stubborn development problems for generations, however...

* That beside, the basic mission of industrialization to uplift the human world out of poverty is likely to be complete by 2050 if we are lucky, by 2100 if we are not...

* There is good reason to think that the next generation will be for the world better and more impressive than the last generation. And the last generation was, on a world scale, you know, better and more impressive than was the post-WWII Thirty Glorious Years in the North Atlantic...

* Future guests, possibly?: Dietz Vollrath, Arvind Subramanian, Charlie Stross...

* Hexapodia!

References:

* Fourastié, Jean. 1979. Les Trente Glorieuses, ou la révolution invisible de 1946 à 1975. Paris: Fayard. <https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TAVRU4Y>.

* Subramanian, Arvind, Martin Kessler, & Emanuele Properzi. 2023. "Trade Hyperglobalization is Dead. Long Live...?" Peterson Institute for International Economics Working Paper, No. 23-11. <https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/2023-11/wp23-11.pdf.>.

* Stross, Charles. 2005. Accelerando. New York: Ace Books. <https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/294259/accelerando-by-charles-stross/>

* Vollrath, Dietrich. 2020. Fully Grown: Why a Stagnant Economy Is a Sign of Success. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. <https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo44520849.html>.

+, of course:

* Vinge, Vernor. 1992. A Fire Upon the Deep. New York: TOR. <https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving_0>.

Get full access to DeLong's Grasping Reality: Economy in the 2000s & Before at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

The SubStackLand community gains another valuable member. We welcome him to the NFL SubStackLand:

Key Insights:

* Bing-AI says “Brian Beutler” is pronounced “Bryan Bootler”—that is, rhymes with “lion shooter”, which shows how far political incorrectness has penetrated Silicon Valley…

* Noah has figured out a solution to his problem of losing the screws to his microphone stand: duct tape…

* This started with Brad poking Brian on his belief there was a golden age of comity, common purpose, and energy in the left-of-center political sphere back in 2005 to 2008—saying that this misconceived as all mourning for a lost golden age is misconceived…

* Noah and Brad today welcome Brian to SubStackLand, he having just created a substack and done 16 substantive posts in two weeks, which is a trult amazing rate of production…

* Brian’s key insight is that since the start of 2019 Democrats have been amazingly, alarmingly, disappointingly timid in not aggressively going after every corner of TrumpWorld for its corruption, and doing so again and again and again…

* Brian is, in a sense, the quantum-mechanical antiparticle to some combination of Matt Yglesias and David Schor…

* Brian believes he coined the term “popularism”…

* Back in 2005-2008 nobody said that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were sabotaging their own party by encouraging Barack Obama to run in the primaries…

* Judging by results, the current strategy of the Democratic Establishment is doing rather well: a plus three standard-deviation outcome in the 2022 midterms, for example…

* That midterm result may be because, by our count no fewer than seven of the nine justices had assured senators that Roe v. Wade was “settled law”. And four of those seven then voted to overturn it in Dobbs…

* Biden really cares about safeguarding democracy, and his actions should all be viewed with that in mind…

* Hexapodia!

References:

* Brian Beutler: Off Message SubStack <https://offmessage.net/>

* Scattered Thoughts On Israel, Hamas, Gaza, And Related Matters: A possibly ill-advised post

* VIDEO: How Trump Normalization Really Works: Why the political media slept on Trump's call for Mark Milley's death and other baffling decisions

* Charts To A Gun Fight: How the Fighting Democrats of 2007 became the timid, focus-grouped party of today.

* Trump Reaches A Fateful Crossroads: We should welcome it, but acknowledge the peril

* Thursday Thread And AMA: Kind of a lot's happened since the last one

* "The Most Important Issue In Our Politics": A Q&A with John Harwood on his interview with Joe Biden about threats to democracy

* Five Thoughts On Karmic McCarthy: For now, we schadenfreude

* VIDEO: How Profit Motive Distorts The News: And why liberals and Democrats should talk about it

* The Era Of Hostage Taking And Small Ransoms: Republicans made Ukraine aid the price of avoiding a shutdown. Where does it end?

* The Democrats' Lost September: You guys awake?

* Breaking Down The GOP Debate: Reaction chats with Matthew Yglesias and Crooked Media's What A Day podcast

* Wednesday Debate Thread: Let's watch Republicans be weird and scary together!

* Baggage Check: Life disclosures, so readers can know me, and where I come from, a little better

* VIDEO: Why The News Struggles To Say Republicans Are Responsible For The Government Shutdown: And why the public is likely to catch on anyhow

* Biden Should Work The Media Refs On Impeachment: Everyone knows the impeachment is b.s., so he should say that

* Welcome to Off Message: Refuge from a world gone mad

* Thomas Babington Macaulay: Horatius at the Bridge <https://englishverse.com/poems/horatius>

* Plutarch: Life of Tiberius Gracchus <https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Tiberius_Gracchus*.html>

+, of course:

* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving_0/mode/1up>

Lost Past Golden Ages:

Thomas Babington Macaulay: Horatius at the Bridge: 

‘[Then] Romans in Rome’s quarrel Spared neither land nor gold, Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life, In the brave days of old.Then none was for a party; Then all were for the state;Then the great man helped the poor, And the poor man loved the great:Then lands were fairly portioned; Then spoils were fairly sold:The Romans were like brothers In the brave days of old.

Now Roman is to Roman More hateful than a foe,And the Tribunes beard the high, And the Fathers grind the low.As we wax hot in faction, In battle we wax cold:Wherefore men fight not as they fought In the brave days of old…

Plutarch: Life of Tiberius Gracchus: ‘Formerly the senate itself, out of goodwill, conceded many things to the people, and referred many things to them for deliberation; and the magistrates themselves, even when they had no need of the people, summoned them to assemblies, and communicated with them on public affairs, not wishing them to feel that they were excluded from anything or insulted. But after the people had made the authority of the tribunes too great, and through them had tasted arbitrary power, then indeed there was no longer any room for deference or concession on the part of the senate; but they were forced to fight for everything as for a prize...

Get full access to DeLong's Grasping Reality: Economy in the 2000s & Before at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe