Its not partisan rhetoric to say that $1 of spending cuts to poor people is a much bigger drag on growth than the possible offsetting support from $1 of tax cuts for rich people even though the budget remains flat. It's just macro mechanics.
Thursday: Trump officials fire hundreds at the National Nuclear Security Administration
Friday: moved to hire them back
“Sources told CNN the officials did not seem to know this agency oversees America’s nuclear weapons.”
www.cnn.com/2025/02/14/c...
I’ve learned a lot about business from Odd Lots but this is the first time Joe has fully shifted my view of the world. I used to think the disconnect between my kid was they’d have an internet chip in their brain, but now I think it’s going to be this.
Pretty remarkable emigration stats coming out of Hungary.
Bob Rubin: I recommend that outsiders arriving in DC recognize how much they don’t know about government & how different it can be from business. The best way to make successful transition to public sector is to do so with humility. The alternative is to have humility thrust upon you. In wsj.com
Sometimes charts remind me of being required to learn Japanese as a kid growing up in Detroit in order to prepare for the shifting world order.
A line graph illustrates the share of the population in Bangladesh with access to basic electricity from 1991 to 2021. Basic electricity means it can provide lighting, and charge a phone or power a radio for at least four hours per day. Annotations on the graph explain: "In 1991, only 14% of the Bangladeshi population had basic access to electricity" and "In 2021, 99% of people had electricity access."
In the last 30 years, almost everybody in Bangladesh gained access to basic electricity
Douthat: I can imagine a remarkable new plan for making the federal government in various ways much more efficient. I can totally imagine that. I am skeptical that such a plan would, in the end make a big dent in the federal government’s costs. Let’s say you have tons of dead wood in a particular federal agency. Well, you’re going to get rid of that dead wood. But in fact, you’re going to need to hire better people to replace those people. And you’re going to need to pay those people appropriately and so on. And all of this is in the shadow of Social Security, Medicare and a range of federal commitments. There is no magical argument on social media that will suddenly make cutting those commitments popular. But this is, of course, the traditional, institutional, cynical Washington view. Andreessen: I was going to say, but this is the traditional, institutional, cynical Washington view. And the way that reads to a normal person is absolute contempt for the taxpayer. Absolute contempt for the taxpayer by saying, “We can sit here in Washington, and we can ladle out $50 billion here and $100 billion there, and when we’re challenged on it, the answer is, ‘Eh, it’s a rounding error.’” Right? Douthat: No, no. The answer when we’re challenged on it is: The actual spending that the federal government does is either big-ticket things that the average taxpayer supports or smaller things like funding for students with disabilities across public school districts or something that if the average taxpayer doesn’t support it, at least a very vocal and influential constituency supports it.
Andressen's argument is that if people really understood govt programs like Social Security - the way that tech billionaires who don't understand govt do - they would not support them. And the billionaires will use social media to make the public understand these programs the way they do.
The price level for UK housing was 44% above OECD average in 2022
We mutter a lot about housing in the UK. BUT IT'S 44% MORE EXPENSIVE THAN THE OECD AVERAGE.
www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...
I think often about this experiment at Harvard showing active learning upped test scores by 33%... but students thought they were learning more from non-active lectures
The problem: being challenged is the key to learning BUT we hate challenges, they are hard & make you realize how little you know.
This tweet is exactly what you would expect to see in a world where AI capabilities are growing fast: last year’s very hard math tests built by experts to challenge AI are already getting solved, we need much harder tests.
Feels like the background news story in the first scene of a scifi drama.
This is why most people in the UK travel within the UK.
TBF I was 15 when 9/11 happened so this checks out
Fascinating and exciting for investors and for human society.. this is by @cjhandmer.bsky.social
“Solar is in the process of shearing off the base of the entire global industrial stack – energy..”
caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2024/05/22/t...
