noahpinion.blog

France and the limits of liberalism

When protesters demand increased spending, bond markets respond by charging higher rates on French government borrowing. That increases interest costs for the government, which makes it harder to raise social spending — the exact opposite of what the protesters wanted.

noahpinion.blog

Slopulism is taking over America

Once people decide that technocrats, elites, experts, and gatekeepers aren't worth listening to, they become vulnerable to all sorts of policy scams. Slopulism that arises out of pure ignorance is very hard to correct, and social media — which elevates the dumbest and loudest at the expense of the most well-informed — probably makes it harder. But when slopulist ideas are being promoted by smart people with ulterior motives, it can be a lot harder to wake the populace up.

noahpinion.blog

America's political economy is pretty bleak right now

It's a validation of Matt Yglesias' "Secret Congress" theory — the idea that our legislators mostly just want to do what's good for the country, but are prevented from doing so by the partisan anger of their electorates. According to this theory, the way to get good laws passed is to have them remain low-profile, so they don't arouse the nation's compulsion to turn everything into a zero-sum politicized food fight.

noahpinion.blog

Book Review: "Power and Progress"

The historical examples it cites simply don't support a narrative of out-of-touch technologists inventing the wrong sorts of technologies and hurting workers in the process. The book embraces a highly questionable definition of 'power' in which persuasion in an open democratic society is painted as a threat.

noahpinion.blog

JD Vance's crusade against GDP is wrong and bad

The American right is simply tweaking these arguments to make them more appealing to their own base... So they want some way to neutralize this objection, so they can do things that will, in fact, make America poorer.

noahpinion.blog

The American age was the human age

The past has become more valuable than the future to many Americans; they cling desperately to the power to enforce stasis, preserving a facade of the country they grew up in at the expense of the very dynamism that made that country great.

noahpinion.blog

Insurers aren't the main villain of the U.S. health care system

Private insurers may be an unnecessary middleman, but the amount they extract from the system is not large compared to the amount that gets either appropriated or wasted by the people providing the care. So why do Americans — especially American progressives — focus so obsessively on health insurers instead of health providers? In a post two years ago, I hypothesized that it's because insurers are the part of the system we have direct contact with — the people who have to tell us "no" when we can't afford some treatment.

noahpinion.blog

I'm kind of over the whole "Anti-monopoly" movement

When he says that he holds corporate consolidation responsible for just about every problem, he means it. A list of social ills Lynn has attributed to monopolists includes not just the cost of goods and services but also: "The vast and growing inequality of wealth, political power, and control. The rise of the radical right. The surge in racism and homophobia. The attacks on reproductive choice and marr

ftav

Notes of high interest from a small, silly island

Gilt holders are often portrayed as the last line of defence for enforcing fiscal discipline and the sherpas along a political path of least drama. Their mob power is rarely more than theoretical.

profgalloway.com

The Epstein Tax

As wealth concentrates, billionaire political spending rises higher, securing policy outcomes that further concentrate wealth. The chaser is inflation, which transfers still more wealth from earners, whose purchasing power erodes, to owners, who are insulated.