The thing with Canada...there has been a massive influx of people into it. Greater immigration then ever, 1 million new Canadians over the past two years, a 2.5% increase to the population from immigration alone. That's a good thing.
But that's a lot of people added to the denominator whose contribution to the economy is probably still low. Does that skew the stats? Would we expect GDP per capita to fall with such an influx even if there's nothing to panic about? Is there a lag?
Of course, our disastrous housing policies might mean that these people never get to become a productive part of the economy like my parents did, but that's a whole other issue and would not be in the stats yet.
I'm not opposed to Americans having "no opinion" when pollsters ask them how they feel about Poland or Vietnam. In most cases that's the appropriate response given how much they know about those countries.
After dumb ass Trump said NATO is more important to the Europeans than America, it is nice to see regular Americans are still smarter than that asshole.
In a world where powerful enemies want to overturn the world’s rules based order that America leads it is nice to have friends. China Russia, Iran Brazil and likely a dozen more want to end the dominance of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. That would be a be a very bad for our interest rates when our debt costs are choking up. China is a bully with it Belt and Road initiative...with its trade. It has Europe scared to death it may block their goods which are a major source of income. The flip side of course is Europe buys a lot of goods from China. Russia is still a gas station with nuclear weapons. The problem is Putin just loves causing divisions and ultimately would love to control Europe. China wants to extend its hegemony harming our position as world leader. Pax Americana is a threat.
Of course the biggest problems America faces are from within. Trump and his nationalist, nativist, isolationist idiots that dote on every thumbless utterance of foreign policy have no interest in defending the rules base world order or Pax Americana. This absurd vision makes America weaker, inviting more wars. It is hard to reconcile such stupidity.
I have issue with the "who is the biggest enemy" question. It's rather obvious that the US has more than one "enemy" but only one must be chosen. For myself as an example I would choose China as the Number 1 enemy but Russia, Iran, North Korea and Justin Bieber would also make my list. I have a hunch that many of those polled would also concur.
Re Canada, the denominator effect is probably very significant - the Liberal government has presided over the largest expansion of immigration flows since the Gilded Age, to levels which in the American context would be akin to like 8-10 million ppl arriving annually over the past few years. Separately, Canada has very serious problems with business investment, R&D and oligopolistic concentration. Some have argued the surge of new permanent residents, temporary workers and international students (who are allowed to work) has helped disincentivize businesses from investing and encouraged them to avail themselves of cheap labour. Finally, in addition to Noah's comments re the oil and manufacturing sectors, Canada arguably has seen one of the largest real estate bubbles in history with massive capital misallocation to this unproductive sector on the part of its oligopolistic banks (who have over the past decade reduced their relative business lending), with the corresponding highly indebted households - the risk of a balance sheet style recession for Canadian consumers is very very high. Not a great situation!
You seem superhumanly knowledgable on such a wide variety of topics - can you do a short explainer essay on how you manage to stay on top of everything? Maybe a "day in the life of Noah's media consumption" story or a list of recommendations for knowledge resources like you did for science fiction.
Does being an economist give you a mental framework to synthesize general purpose info about the world into an understandable way or are you just like a 190 IQ weirdo who only feels comfortable around research papers and rabbits?
Use of acronyms. Not all readers are economists. Not all of us know automatically what DARPA, ATBR, GINI, HCR, or PPP$ mean. You explained MMRP, thanks. Could you do that for other acronyms that are not quite so widely used as: R&D, LNG, NATO, GDP or CPI?
What metric do you apply to conclude that America is a medium sized country?
The average population of countries is around 40 000 000, making the USA a large country. The media is roughly 9 million..
So, I find it hard to accept that the US is a medium size country when it is number 3 out of 200.
Is there a way to objectively say that the US is a medium sized country? Or should I consider it more of a thought provoking statement on how truly big India and China are?
I’m in Tokyo now staying on the 49th floor of a hotel in midtown and we had an earthquake and I’m impressed by the fact that before I felt it, my Apple Watch alerted me before I felt the building shake by way of the excellent NERV app which gives early warning. The Bluetooth speaker in the hotel also alerted me before the tremor and also indicated that the severity was low enough not to be of concern (in both Japanese and English). The sensor network is also used to stop the Shinkansen when the shaking is strong enough. Why doesn’t California have a similar system?Infrastructure in Japan, at least in urban areas is much better, maybe they consider public safety more in terms of natural disasters than mean tweets that may “undermine democracy”.
On the other hand there was an article about the president of an import company who was detained and questioned daily for hours without a lawyer for 330 days on suspicion of importing industrial dryers that could possibly be used in biological weapons, but without any proof. The police dropped charges (one of the 1% of cases in which they do, and the prosecutor said they would do the same thing again if a similar case came up. Sadly, the suspect was also not given medical treatment in jail and died of stomach cancer.
So have fun in Japan, Noah, and be sure to check out the new Azubadai Hills complex which just opened and has an amazing market, but be very careful not to get arrested.
On DARPA (I worked there as a fellow for three months last year):
There's a lot of people who have tried to copy the DARPA model, and they've largely not succeeded. Deriving the essence of the DARPA model is a huge undertaking. (Ben Reinhardt has a good attempt here: https://benjaminreinhardt.com/wddw) To me, mostly it comes down to a mix of
A) Hand-selected individuals with vision and drive, supplied with resources and political top-cover;
B) A constant commitment to "wild and crazy," with an acceptance that 90% of the projects are not going to succeed.
The Japanese ATBR program might goose corporate R&D a bit and let them take on a few incremental improvements on the margin that would otherwise be economically infeasible, but I wouldn't expect any breakthrough discoveries a la DARPA.
One thing I immediately noticed that's wrong about the Canada part of the article is the idea that both Canada and the US are running major deficits to provide stimulus. Canadian Federal deficit is 1.4% of GDP, which is pretty typical, the kind an advanced economy can usually run indefinitely without issue.
The American Federal deficit in the same year was 6.3%. The US is still doing heavy stimulus post-pandemic.
Falling fertility rates cut dependency ratios for several decades contributing greatly to economic takeoff. To get workers/capita add dependency ratio to 100. Divide 100/that total. Clearly if labor is a factor of production, demographic transitions provide a huge boost to production/capita.
Ages < 15 plus >64 per 100 working-age population.
I am quite worried about the US reaction to China. While it is reasonable, indeed optimal not to be dependent on China for strategic inputs, the Way that the US is going about reducing that dependence, by subsidizing domestic production of stuff is doubly problematic. Maximining security of inputs would mean domestic production AND imports from non-China interdictable places. A) Domestic only production will be more costly (more growth inhibiting) and less secure. B) Domestic only productions open itself to “everything bagel” syndrome, to seek not only secure supplies but “good jobs,” workers benefits, promotion of small business, etc. And I think the benign toleration of this in the name of “industrial policy” is part of the problem.
We need to use the geo-political rivalry with China to refocus on promoting rapid growth in the US: low deficits, high high-skilled immigration, investment in R&D, not protectionism and isolationism.
Work-from-home broke the back of the already brittle Canadian economy. Fracking caused an economic decline, and Canada has a long history of weak reinvestment rates, but it was work-from-home. This generalized Vancouver and Toronto’s housing crises as people suddenly started to demand more space.
The thing with Canada...there has been a massive influx of people into it. Greater immigration then ever, 1 million new Canadians over the past two years, a 2.5% increase to the population from immigration alone. That's a good thing.
But that's a lot of people added to the denominator whose contribution to the economy is probably still low. Does that skew the stats? Would we expect GDP per capita to fall with such an influx even if there's nothing to panic about? Is there a lag?
Of course, our disastrous housing policies might mean that these people never get to become a productive part of the economy like my parents did, but that's a whole other issue and would not be in the stats yet.
I'm not opposed to Americans having "no opinion" when pollsters ask them how they feel about Poland or Vietnam. In most cases that's the appropriate response given how much they know about those countries.
After dumb ass Trump said NATO is more important to the Europeans than America, it is nice to see regular Americans are still smarter than that asshole.
In a world where powerful enemies want to overturn the world’s rules based order that America leads it is nice to have friends. China Russia, Iran Brazil and likely a dozen more want to end the dominance of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. That would be a be a very bad for our interest rates when our debt costs are choking up. China is a bully with it Belt and Road initiative...with its trade. It has Europe scared to death it may block their goods which are a major source of income. The flip side of course is Europe buys a lot of goods from China. Russia is still a gas station with nuclear weapons. The problem is Putin just loves causing divisions and ultimately would love to control Europe. China wants to extend its hegemony harming our position as world leader. Pax Americana is a threat.
Of course the biggest problems America faces are from within. Trump and his nationalist, nativist, isolationist idiots that dote on every thumbless utterance of foreign policy have no interest in defending the rules base world order or Pax Americana. This absurd vision makes America weaker, inviting more wars. It is hard to reconcile such stupidity.
I have issue with the "who is the biggest enemy" question. It's rather obvious that the US has more than one "enemy" but only one must be chosen. For myself as an example I would choose China as the Number 1 enemy but Russia, Iran, North Korea and Justin Bieber would also make my list. I have a hunch that many of those polled would also concur.
Re Canada, the denominator effect is probably very significant - the Liberal government has presided over the largest expansion of immigration flows since the Gilded Age, to levels which in the American context would be akin to like 8-10 million ppl arriving annually over the past few years. Separately, Canada has very serious problems with business investment, R&D and oligopolistic concentration. Some have argued the surge of new permanent residents, temporary workers and international students (who are allowed to work) has helped disincentivize businesses from investing and encouraged them to avail themselves of cheap labour. Finally, in addition to Noah's comments re the oil and manufacturing sectors, Canada arguably has seen one of the largest real estate bubbles in history with massive capital misallocation to this unproductive sector on the part of its oligopolistic banks (who have over the past decade reduced their relative business lending), with the corresponding highly indebted households - the risk of a balance sheet style recession for Canadian consumers is very very high. Not a great situation!
I'd like for Noah to undertake a "deep-dive" on the Canadian economy.
Noah,
You seem superhumanly knowledgable on such a wide variety of topics - can you do a short explainer essay on how you manage to stay on top of everything? Maybe a "day in the life of Noah's media consumption" story or a list of recommendations for knowledge resources like you did for science fiction.
Does being an economist give you a mental framework to synthesize general purpose info about the world into an understandable way or are you just like a 190 IQ weirdo who only feels comfortable around research papers and rabbits?
Use of acronyms. Not all readers are economists. Not all of us know automatically what DARPA, ATBR, GINI, HCR, or PPP$ mean. You explained MMRP, thanks. Could you do that for other acronyms that are not quite so widely used as: R&D, LNG, NATO, GDP or CPI?
What metric do you apply to conclude that America is a medium sized country?
The average population of countries is around 40 000 000, making the USA a large country. The media is roughly 9 million..
So, I find it hard to accept that the US is a medium size country when it is number 3 out of 200.
Is there a way to objectively say that the US is a medium sized country? Or should I consider it more of a thought provoking statement on how truly big India and China are?
I’m in Tokyo now staying on the 49th floor of a hotel in midtown and we had an earthquake and I’m impressed by the fact that before I felt it, my Apple Watch alerted me before I felt the building shake by way of the excellent NERV app which gives early warning. The Bluetooth speaker in the hotel also alerted me before the tremor and also indicated that the severity was low enough not to be of concern (in both Japanese and English). The sensor network is also used to stop the Shinkansen when the shaking is strong enough. Why doesn’t California have a similar system?Infrastructure in Japan, at least in urban areas is much better, maybe they consider public safety more in terms of natural disasters than mean tweets that may “undermine democracy”.
On the other hand there was an article about the president of an import company who was detained and questioned daily for hours without a lawyer for 330 days on suspicion of importing industrial dryers that could possibly be used in biological weapons, but without any proof. The police dropped charges (one of the 1% of cases in which they do, and the prosecutor said they would do the same thing again if a similar case came up. Sadly, the suspect was also not given medical treatment in jail and died of stomach cancer.
So have fun in Japan, Noah, and be sure to check out the new Azubadai Hills complex which just opened and has an amazing market, but be very careful not to get arrested.
On DARPA (I worked there as a fellow for three months last year):
There's a lot of people who have tried to copy the DARPA model, and they've largely not succeeded. Deriving the essence of the DARPA model is a huge undertaking. (Ben Reinhardt has a good attempt here: https://benjaminreinhardt.com/wddw) To me, mostly it comes down to a mix of
A) Hand-selected individuals with vision and drive, supplied with resources and political top-cover;
B) A constant commitment to "wild and crazy," with an acceptance that 90% of the projects are not going to succeed.
The Japanese ATBR program might goose corporate R&D a bit and let them take on a few incremental improvements on the margin that would otherwise be economically infeasible, but I wouldn't expect any breakthrough discoveries a la DARPA.
DARPA funds *quite* a bit of research with commercial performers, in some sectors.
One thing I immediately noticed that's wrong about the Canada part of the article is the idea that both Canada and the US are running major deficits to provide stimulus. Canadian Federal deficit is 1.4% of GDP, which is pretty typical, the kind an advanced economy can usually run indefinitely without issue.
The American Federal deficit in the same year was 6.3%. The US is still doing heavy stimulus post-pandemic.
Falling fertility rates cut dependency ratios for several decades contributing greatly to economic takeoff. To get workers/capita add dependency ratio to 100. Divide 100/that total. Clearly if labor is a factor of production, demographic transitions provide a huge boost to production/capita.
Ages < 15 plus >64 per 100 working-age population.
Country Name 19601980 20002020 2022
Nigeria 80 89 87 87 85
Japan 55 48 47 71 71
Germany 48 52 47 56 57
China 80 68 46 44 45
Korea, Rep. 83 61 39 39 41
World 75 71 60 55 55
United States 67 51 51 53 54
India 78 77 65 49 47
India TFR 5.9 4.8 3.4 2.1
I am quite worried about the US reaction to China. While it is reasonable, indeed optimal not to be dependent on China for strategic inputs, the Way that the US is going about reducing that dependence, by subsidizing domestic production of stuff is doubly problematic. Maximining security of inputs would mean domestic production AND imports from non-China interdictable places. A) Domestic only production will be more costly (more growth inhibiting) and less secure. B) Domestic only productions open itself to “everything bagel” syndrome, to seek not only secure supplies but “good jobs,” workers benefits, promotion of small business, etc. And I think the benign toleration of this in the name of “industrial policy” is part of the problem.
We need to use the geo-political rivalry with China to refocus on promoting rapid growth in the US: low deficits, high high-skilled immigration, investment in R&D, not protectionism and isolationism.
Work-from-home broke the back of the already brittle Canadian economy. Fracking caused an economic decline, and Canada has a long history of weak reinvestment rates, but it was work-from-home. This generalized Vancouver and Toronto’s housing crises as people suddenly started to demand more space.