Regarding item 1: in the past, you’ve noted the advantages conferred upon armies by doing actual fighting. Eg, the Russian army majorly sucked in the earlier stages of the Ukraine invasion, but they now have much more fighting experience and this has levelled up their abilities. While the US is spending money on countless ongoing operations around the world that could no doubt be diverted to rebuilding its industrial base, is there not a sense in which these operations are keeping at least some elements of the military match-fit for future, more serious fights?
Agreed. The experience that the US, Britain, France, and Jordan gained in shooting down those 300 Iranian missiles was doubtless priceless. However, if they had to do it 10 more times, it would be a strain on anti-missile stockpiles.
If it's a short war, our experience and our excellent weapons win. We definitely can't win a long war with China. Maybe we will have to threaten them with nukes.
Moreover, the next war isn't going to be won with missiles alone, not even in the opening volleys.
The opening shots fired will be computer viruses, not bullets or missiles. And they could either be a wash, or definitively win the conflict for either side before the first missile flies.
The REAL question is whether that "pivot to cyber" during the Obama and Trump admins was mostly just generals trying to justify their jobs with fake initiatives, or we actually built up decent cyber capabilities.
And sadly, we won't know until it's too late. Neither side will willingly admit that they are either deficient OR have anything up their sleeve -- the strategic ambiguity is just too critical to the element of surprise.
The US cyber offense and defense capabilities are kept pretty secret, but I would not underestimate them. The stuxnet attack (orchestrated by US and perhaps Israel as well) was probably the most sophisticated cyber attack ever perpetrated. I don't doubt that the next "big one" will include damaging cyber attacks, but I don't presume the US would be only on the defensive or that our capabilities are lackluster.
I don't either; my main point was just that in the opening hours of any hot war, both sides are going to want to pre-emptively cripple each other's militaries and/or distract civilian command.
And as you say, both sides have also already been keeping the full extent of their cyber arsenals top secret.
Which means that we mere mortals simply won't know "whose [cyber] fu is stronger" until the war itself actually happens.
So, cheers!
For the record, I *hope* it's our side, and I think the stuxnet attacks indicated we have significant *offensive* capabilities, but our defense worries me. For instance, are ANY of our satellites compromised? Communications? Did the Chinese ever get any of the REAL goodies on whatever dirty tricks we think we're hiding in the F-35's EW suite when they hacked the plane's design plans way back when?
And even if our military is relatively insulated and well-air-gapped, what about civilian infrastructure? If all of a sudden half the dams in the country open their sluices full-blast while the other half clam up, is that going to distract the President too much from a response? Maybe even make him think twice?
It's a tough thing to game out because so many different things could go wrong with cyber. Pearl Harbor was an abject strategic and intelligence failure, but it was also limited to just the one (mega-critical!) naval base. The entire country is exposed to cyber now, and the only deterring principle is that THEIR entire country is exposed to OUR cyber.
One last bit of speculation: I guess this DOES pose an interesting dichotomy. To wit, we've seen drones turn Ukraine into a WWI-style trench war by empowering defenses against tanks (which were the WWI innovation to defeat trenches). Drones are, as of now, a primarily defensive technology, due to their limited range. But cyber is a more offensive technology -- difficult to defend, covers any modern digital system. Just interesting to think about.
There is no way the US, Israel, or any other power is going to sit back and shoot 300 missiles/drones out of the sky on ten separate occasions. At a certain point (maybe the second or third attack?) you'd begin offensive operations against the source of the attacks. Israel I think is quite notable for their willingness to sit behind air defense and not just lay waste to Gaza in response to never-ending missile attacks, but no other country faces the same diplomatic constraints as Israel.
This whole dialogue makes me think about the rhetoric around Russia-Ukraine "escalation". We make a lot of demands, of ourselves and of Ukraine, around the need to not provoke Russia to escalate. Too much fear of the Russian weapons. Well, we have some of our own weapons and people should be made to be afraid of what we "might do".
> the lesson is that diversity is often slightly positive, but doesn’t make a huge difference
Doesn't seem so. The abstract you quote conflates several unrelated things: "demographic, job-related and cognitive diversity".
Corporate DEI initiative do not demand and often don't even allow cognitive or job-related diversity. Corporate diversity always means more black women and fewer white men. The word has no other meaning and it's deceptive of the study authors to pretend it does. From their discussion section: "what we found broadly supports the contention that diverse cognitive resources have value, while contrasting social identities are less beneficial". They go on to state that ethnic diversity had no impact on team performance.
So if we ask the most biased people in the world to summarize their own beliefs, even they can't really find that diversity as practiced in the real world has benefits. Amusingly their data also appears to say that higher education doesn't work (educational level is one of the kinds of diversity that has no impact on team performance), which is a bit embarrassing.
I doubt they can properly measure any of this. A lot of positions created by diversity programmes are deliberately low skill, non-essential jobs for which success is subjective. How do you judge the impact on team performance of useless people who do nothing? You can't honestly say it's zero, because the resources used for such people could have been used to hire competent contributors instead.
I think for those of us who have actually experienced corporate DEI directly, we don't need hundreds of low quality studies on the topic. We already know the truth: what they call diversity initiatives are purely ideological race/gender pogroms which enforce total cognitive conformity whilst rapidly destroying team performance, morale and they can even wreck entire companies. The idea there's no impact is crazy for those of us with real world experience of it.
I agree that this can't be properly measured. Value of diversity is not a uniform prospect.
For example, when I was the editor of a newspaper I had a young Latina reporter who didn't go to great schools, etc. But she found great stories because she had friends, family, etc that were living real life experiences. She'd write about illegal gambling, struggles in immigrant communities, black market taxis and government struggles cracking down on them. Her personal experience was invaluable as a reporter.
Her diversity value was life experience, not based on her ethnicity. I could have hired a black or Asian reporter with similar life experience that could have done just as good of a job. I think specified diversity of opinion / life experience that makes sense for the work environment is how you find productivity in diversity.
RE: non-competes. I manage a decent-sized team of researchers and developers at a quantitative trading firm. They all have non-competes. I have been pretty unhappy with the push for a non-compete ban. My team runs a trading algorithm that has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue in recent years. We've worked really hard to develop our algo and the revenue potential would be dramatically diminished if the insights from our R&D found their way to a competitor.
When I hire someone new, there is always a big risk that they will come in and soak up our knowledge and then promote themselves to competitors as being able to replicate or reproduce our trade. So we put a non-compete clause in the employment contract. My staff earn total annual compensation ranging from a few hundred thousand to a few million dollars, depending on the individual.
Claims about the broad economic impact of a ban seem speculative to me. We have some large differences in the enforceability of non-competes in state laws, but state economies are all distinct in many different ways and so I just don't accept that this is a question we can really answer all that accurately. The classic problem of the absent counterfactual.
My concern has always been about simple justice. We explain clearly to people twhen we offers jobs that they will have these non-compete restrictions. I generally add that, team-wide, these restrictions are not just to protect the firm from the new hires. They also enable the employees to profit from their own contributions, which could otherwise be stolen by their colleagues. My staff are paid very well and are very well educated and savvy about the job market. Virtually everyone uses a professional recruiter to assist with any job change and the recruiters are very well-informed about non-compete practices in the industry. No one has been coerced or deceived into accepting the terms of the contract, and all have plenty of opportunities in tech, academia, etc. where they could avoid signing a non-compete if that was there prerogative. We have sensitive secrets to protect and the non-compete is a fair and transparent agreement around the terms of our sharing these secrets.
Tyler Cowen is right that, if I am not able to include a non-compete in the contract, then I would have to restrict junior hires from seeing a lot of our code, research reports, etc.
On the other hand, as I've come to understand the details of the new rules, I'm not actually that concerned. It turns out that what we have is not really considered a "non-compete" under the new rules. We pay our staff their normal salary (although not bonus) during the period they are expected to sit out. It's basically a very long "notice period", but we tell them to go home and take away their access to our data and systems. Apparently, it's only the unpaid non-competes that will soon be banned.
Sadly, most of the mainstream media discussion and even a lot of the discussion in wonkier substacks and blogs (like Noah's and Tyler's) have kind of glossed over these crucial details. If the firm has truly valuable secrets to protect, then they can simply utilize a long, paid notice period to stop that employee from jumping immediately to a competitor.
If the secret is worth less than the compensation during the sit-out period, then it's probably not really that important, economically, to protect it. This seems like a pretty reasonable standard and eliminates the silly non-competes on hairdressers while leaving them functionally in place for well-paid knowledge workers that have agreed to take a paid vacation in between jobs.
The "non-compete ban", as formulated, is actually somewhat narrow and it's structure addresses straightforwardly the issue of sensitive and valuable secrets.
I can think of one edge case here. Namely, if a company has sensitive secrets that they still need to share with all or most staff in order to operate their business. It might be uneconomic to pay *everyone* to sit out, even though those secrets are extremely valuable to the firm. I suspect this situation is somewhat rare though. The more people know a secret the less of a secret it is and few firms really believe they can get hundreds of thousands of lowly paid people to keep their secrets. More often, only highly paid personnel, incentivized to stay due to their high comp, are shown the secret sauce.
And if your employees were to go to competitors, together you'd eliminate whatever inefficiency you were trading on to start with. But you'd profit less yourselves.
This is the socially optimal outcome and I approve! Trading firms' profits should go down. This is right and good.
Around half of trading firm profits find their way to the treasury through income taxes, corporate taxes, etc. Why do you say that "trading firm's profits *should* go down"?
Your "socially optimal outcome" is more like the "socialists's fantasy outcome". Take away the incentives for doing a useful thing (price discovery), but go on presuming people will keep doing the useful thing, to the same extent, without the incentive.
What seems right and good to me is that people should be subject to whatever terms they freely agreed to when they signed their contract.
I mean the supply of traders is bounded but think about all the great things those thinking hours could have achieved instead. What exactly is the production of trading? Better prices sure. Do we need this size to achieve that level of market efficiency?
Move your operation to a regulated bank (or become a bank). Financial services are exempt from the FTC’s ruling!
Also not clear to me the distinction Kahn has made (if any) between non-compete (working for a competitor) and preservation of confidential information which also can be legally protected through other means.
An NDA isn’t necessarily a non-compete, neither is an agreement that anything you help create at firm “x” belongs to firm “x”. I haven’t read her fine print.
I once signed a particularly egregious non-compete knowing I could prove that I had already developed enough specific knowledge prior to joining the firm that the contribution to the corpus from the new firm was likely to be miniscule and separable. I was senior at that point, so they hired me for the knowledge I already had.
Much tougher for junior to mid-level employees (who also might not have the resources to fight a lawsuit, which is why you want your next employer to defend you, and for your actions to be defensible).
If an employee leaves for a competitor, how are we supposed to enforce the confidentiality agreement? It's rarely possible for us to "prove" that our secrets were utilized. If we wanted to get a judge to enjoin the competitor, we would be required to disclose the very secrets we are concerned about. How else could the judge decide whether to enjoin?
Yep. I guess all you can do is require notice and contact information of new employer and send the new employer the CA and some will act ethically and some will not. An when you get really cold like me who remembers what piece on information in my brain came from where
What about people living with student debt for decades? What about the humanitarian relief? Ignore the polls for a moment.
It seems what Biden has been able to forgive has been a subset of debtors — most recently of public servants, for example, upholding a law passed twenty years ago.
One way to do alternative school financing instead of loans is to put more and more of the campus's labor needs in students.
Work during your education, leave debt free.
Like transit systems. There are college towns, like Davis, CA; and Champaign and Urbana, IL; where the city's transit system is operated by the university and college students are the bus drivers. UC San Diego has an on-campus circulator bus system with a few routes going in town. What's interesting is that UCSD's starting wage for a driver is a tad higher than for a professional full-time driver for the San Diego MTS! This is a case where a student can earn a market wage as a driver, but work part time around the class schedule, and instead of working for a pension, part of the wage is held back to pay off tuition and fees.
Of course, the military does this. Or the government should fund things like AmeriCorps and Job Corps to get labor in exchange for tuition funding.
Yes - make college “free”. Make everything “free”. No debt (as far as the students know- they’ll figure out the truth later when paying taxes to cover Federal interest expense), and continued expansion of tuition costs and bloated university staff. Who do university employees vote for again? Is “debt relief” (debt transfer, actually) really for the students?
Also, please read this article. There are people who have paid more than the amount they originally owed in interest, and still owe money after decades. This seems predatory and unnecessary.
Or maybe there are savings to be had through innovation or cutting waste? You mention “administration.” My sense is that administrative bloat occurs throughout all levels of education and government.
When the 2008 crash happened, teachers were given pink slips, because LAUSD was out of money, but admin weren’t, because admin were the ones giving the pink slips out.
This is anecdotal, though. I don’t know the facts or what could be cut effectively.
Noah has written compellingly about inefficiency in military procurement and the cost of building infrastructure mired in red tape.
I know from jury duty how inefficient and backwards our legal system is. (Three years to start a trial for insurrection that was recorded by thousands of people!)
Could these systems be streamlined with technology and legal reform and achieve savings that way?
Your point about China spending off-the-books on its military reminds me of how the Nazis set up a shell company (Metallurgische Forschunggesellschaft, or "Mefo" for short) to conceal their rearmament spending from the outside world.
Yes, there is an argument (or several) that banning of non-competes should be done via legislation rather than getting mixed up in an election year stunt designed to win professional votes for Biden (as Kahn knows this will be stayed by the courts and eventually thrown out).
I hate non-competes, but I’d hate being ruled by the whims of a partisan hack and bully like Kahn even more.
I am comfortable with the idea that Federal power is limited and a President and the regulatory state are checked by Congress, separation of powers, and legal precedent. That’s the way the system is designed.
The recent trend (decades long) for an administration to ignore laws it doesn’t like and take lawless actions (spending hundreds of billions in student loan handouts) are not good. Has any thought been given by either side as to what the country will eventually look like as this continues?
To my knowledge, the reason SCOTUS (or a lower court) is likely to toss out this rule is that, enforceability of non-competes has always been a matter of state law. It's not a question of workers versus firms, it's a question of states versus the federal government. Many states already have various forms of non-compete bans. It does not seem likely that the congress intended to take away state's right to set their own rules in this area when they long-ago authorized the formation of the FTC. The FTC is legislating, plain and simple, and you are right to decry that.
I think something like 45 states still allow non-competes. I’d like to see more of them outlaw them via the legislative process before the Feds take up the cause, to be sure.
States may not have completely free rein on the issue though, given legal precedents involving the FTC.
Even if the courts were to ignore states rights and rule of law, the FTC’s ruling would impact something like 35 percent of all employees (based on a Korn Ferry guy I heard on Bloomberg yesterday- no idea if that is accurate).
Whether such a ban is efficient is particular to the economy of the state. In NY, where a hugely disproportionate share of income (and tax revenue) comes from high finance, banning noncompetes would induce firms to move a lot of staff to other states or other countries. I already employ people in several countries and would likely focus on overseas hiring if I was hit with some kind of NC ban.
That's a shame because I would like to employ Americans, but I can't just give away the shop.
The people who argue against defense spending don’t actually know that China spends as much as the US. The average person has been told their whole lives the US spends way more.
Best to identify the people you mean in the future…
I’m all for defense spending and I still don’t know if China spends more than the US. That is a claim that I haven’t yet looked into thoroughly and is actually irrelevant - US spending should be based on what it takes to protect the country and allies and defeat enemies, not based on the idea of spending $1 more than our enemies.
Saw somewhere that the pier the US is allegedly building in Gaza (another election stunt) is estimated to cost $320 million. That’s called piling on. 😊. The Chinese could probably do it in a few weeks for 1/10th the cost.
I agree with the take on non compete clauses. I had to sign a non compete agreement in Australia even though I was an unpaid intern. Mobility of labour and capital in an economy increases long run economic growth. As liberal capitalists we should be pro market but not necessarily pro business.
However I do think non compete have a role to play to increase investment in worker skills. How about we only legalise non competes in exchange for employee stock compensation? This would stop firms from arbitrarily imposing non competes but only reserving them for the most important employees. Plus employees are given a stake in the long term health of the company and probably won't be fired during an economic downturn.
That sucks! I'm generally a defender of non-competes, but with the caveat that the non-compete period must be *paid*. In your case, you were not even paid before the non-compete period!
I hope this internship at least ended up being a worthwhile stepping stone for you, to a job that pays.
I think non-compete clauses to prevent spread of IP are a sort of negative externality. They benefit the contracting firms and harm other firms. Together all would be better off w/o them.
Training is somewhat different. NC's may take the place of a lower wage during a training period.
This would be true if all firms were producing the same amount of useful invention. In reality, legalizing IP theft will benefit the poaching firms at the expense of the firms investing in developing innovative technologies. The net effect would be a large reduction in these types of investments.
Moreover, if we make "ideas" free then the massive firms with the advantages in scaling their products will win every battle. No opportunity for a newcomer to beat an incumbent through innovative ideas.
In many cases, yes. Confidentiality agreements are basically impossible to enforce. How do you "prove" that another company is doing a thing without already having access to that company's private data?
Companies are certainly free to try other methods. There is no mandate on firms to impose non-competes. The question is whether they should be banned or not.
I broadly agree. I'm just saying that some mechanism for long relationships between employers and employees may be beneficial. That's why I made the ESOP exemption.
This is an interesting comment. The information Noah has been presenting about China is very compelling.
The idea, for example, that when an authoritarian tells you what they’re going to do, you should believe them. There are numerous precedents for this, and China’s current support for Russia’s war in Ukraine is alarming.
And the accounting for military expenditures seems agnostic to intent and consistent with the differences we see between Chinese construction/manufacturing and that of the US. They get more done faster, with less money — like their high speed rail system. It may have engineering faults that will become apparent in twenty years. It may go places no one needs it. And workers may have gotten injured and tossed aside without compensation. And the same amount of money would accomplish much less in the US.
That said, I think George W Bush and his cronies should be in prison for the invasion of Iraq. So I’d like to know what role the AEI played in their actions and how you see that influencing Noah’s perception here.
I saw a post on X from Noah this past week indicating he does not think the invasion of Iraq was justified or wise. Did the AEI scrub their positions on that war, too?
Well, it was brave of Noah to come out against the invasion of Iraq 21 years after the fact. In my own substack blog, "Literature R Us", I recently responded to another of Noah's "fear China" posts, with links back to an earlier version of "Literature R Us" where I spent decades railing against the "military intellectual complex" inside the Beltway that is always finding wars for other people to fight. If you want bettered informed commentary on foreign affairs, try Daniel Larison's "Eunomia" blog, also on substack.
That's a pretty nasty, unsubstantiated remark. Just because Noah stated his position this week doesn't mean he didn't also state it twenty years ago. It's illogical and bad netiquette.
Instead of promoting yourself as if we're automatically going to think you have anything to contribute to this issue, you should provide some facts to support your perspective and then offer links to your post, suggesting there's more where that came from.
On #1, while one must always be vigilant, I just wonder how much of the Chinese spending is actually "real".. given the corruption. Also, it is really easy to spend money to build theoretical capability, but it is much harder to build "real" capability...tested against reality.
As regards student debt cancellation you may wish to look at the impact on the change in the Bankruptcy Code many years ago at the behest of the lenders that prevents the discharge of student loans in personal bankruptcy. This laid the foundation for tuition inflation as the lenders basically had no risk. We have created a generation of student debt slaves. This is not healthy. When I went to a top college tuition was around $4,000 a year and half was covered by a NYSE Regents scholarship. It cost my kids over $40,000 a year and now some schools hitting $80,000. This is not a function of general inflation
So cancelation is very expensive and may not meet the test of Pareto Optimality but I borrowed my way through business school and I remember the two books of monthly payments that I had to pay every month for 36-48 months. I was fortunate to have a good job on Wall Street but promised that my kids would not have such a burden.
The Bankruptcy Code should be changed back. This will lead to less lending which is both good and bad. The bad is that many kids will not have the funds to pay for overpriced tuitions. The good news is that many predatory for profits will stop preying on students and this will put a deflationary force on tuitions which are stupid high.
Human Capital is built on education. Ask Gary Becker. Affordable education is a requirement
I completely agree about bankruptcy. That said, I am completely opposed to loan forgiveness. It is unfair to forgive debts for individuals who, on average, are much more likely to be well-off. It is regressive and a clear give a way to a "special" group.
It is also unfair to those (like my daughter) who chose to attend a community college to keep her debt down. She is now working and paying taxes, which would be used to forgive the debt for peers who often chose to attend more expensive schools and have a "college experience."
That is really what you pay for. Living at home and going to CC for a couple years and then living at home and attending a local college can be done for $25k- $30k. You can also do something like get an RN and then work while getting a BSN. Or become a cop with a two-year degree (or less) and get college reimbursement to finish up (I used this method to help pay for my master's degree and have a friend using it for his Ph.D). Or join the military and get all your college paid for and some money to live off.
Just because students want to live on campus and have access to sports facilities etc. and are willing to take-out long-term loans, does not mean that others should pay for it. Especially given the return on investment for college. There are lots of ways to do college for a very low cost, if you are willing to forgo the party experience.
Finally, we probably have too many people attending college already and need more people to opt for CC/job training type programs. Forgiving college debt would just reinforce the idea that students can borrow money for having four year (or often 5 or 6 year) fun experience. This would just create a larger incentive for universities to spend money on non-academic benefits, while creating a new need for more debt forgiveness in the future.
Lastly, it is the kind of thing that is particularly corrosive to the Dems chance of winning elections. This kind of giveaway just reinforces all the bad perceptions about the Democratic Party.
So yes, we should definitely not trap people by preventing them from bankruptcy. Give folks who have made poor choices about college debt the same opportunities we give others to get out of debt.
I agree with most of what you say. Forgiveness creates moral hazard in decision making and discriminates amongst people who made different choices. But behaviorally if you give money away people take it. Or many do. So I think many kids are in fact victims of a system. Relieve could be means tested. It could have floors ie debt reduction not elimination. Or allow the debt to be discharged in BK which is where I started. It is a big decision and you carry it on your record for the rest of your life. But debt is debt and student debt should not be special in BK.
* Advertised tuition is not the same as the average price paid for college. Sadly, this is a typical low-information claim.
* Changing the bankruptcy code will not induce the federal government to lend any less. The government doesn't turn down student loan applications based on the risk of them not being repaid. The changes you are promoting would quite obviously induce the government to lend out more, receive back less, and lead to even more cost inflation.
* More than 90% of all student loan debt is held by the federal government.
“Typical low information claim “ is arrogant and hostile. You don’t know me. You don’t know what I know. Go check it out. There was an overhaul of the Bankruptcy Code in 1976 which included a change to section 523 (a)(8) making student loans non dischargeable unless hardship which if hard to get approved. If you go bankrupt and have $40,000 of cc debt that you incurred shopping at Neiman Marcus it gets wiped out. After the change $40,000 of student loans no. You are clearly the more virtuous person and deserve is disparate outcome. It may be held or guaranteed by the federal government but it is not originated or underwritten by them. But by banks who sell to the government or agencies. If a lender has a choice of making two loans. One dischargeable in BK and one not. They will make more of the latter. So take your low information rudeness and stick it
You're correct on Point No. 2. I muted/unfollowed a bunch of people on social media who post incessantly about Israel/Palestine. I'm exhausted by political yelling right now.
Inflation: Inflation or not, any time is good time not to engage in spending that does not have NPV > 0. The relevance of the PCE number to fiscal policy is zero. The relevance, if any, is to Fed policy.
"so activists have actually done a good job by pushing older progressive elites to focus on the problem."
IFF there were "focus." Focus to me implies cost effectiveness, doing more of low cost ways of reducing CO2 emissions and less of high cost ways. Even putting aside that people are not yet ready to accept a tax on net CO2 emissions (but isn't that at least _partly_ the fault of environmentalists for not advocating it?) wasn't the IRA just an "everything bagel?" Does subsidizing demand for EV make any sense at this stage? Is there any good reason to subsidize _investment in_ producing zero CO@ emitting energy or CO2 removing, or energy storing technologies instead of the zero CO2 energy instead of the zero CO2 energy produced, the CO2 removed, or the energy stored? Does this not just translate into more outlay on the same amount of net CO2 going into the atmosphere? Outlays that could go into investment in military infrastructure with NPV > 0?
Regarding item 1: in the past, you’ve noted the advantages conferred upon armies by doing actual fighting. Eg, the Russian army majorly sucked in the earlier stages of the Ukraine invasion, but they now have much more fighting experience and this has levelled up their abilities. While the US is spending money on countless ongoing operations around the world that could no doubt be diverted to rebuilding its industrial base, is there not a sense in which these operations are keeping at least some elements of the military match-fit for future, more serious fights?
Thanks Noah, love your blog and your podcasts!
Thanks!!
That's a very expensive method of training for very different kinds of tasks than we'd be fighting in a war...
Fair!
Agreed. The experience that the US, Britain, France, and Jordan gained in shooting down those 300 Iranian missiles was doubtless priceless. However, if they had to do it 10 more times, it would be a strain on anti-missile stockpiles.
Ya. China will just manufacture 3000 missiles. No matter what experience we have, it'll be kinda moot against such industrial power.
If it's a short war, our experience and our excellent weapons win. We definitely can't win a long war with China. Maybe we will have to threaten them with nukes.
Moreover, the next war isn't going to be won with missiles alone, not even in the opening volleys.
The opening shots fired will be computer viruses, not bullets or missiles. And they could either be a wash, or definitively win the conflict for either side before the first missile flies.
The REAL question is whether that "pivot to cyber" during the Obama and Trump admins was mostly just generals trying to justify their jobs with fake initiatives, or we actually built up decent cyber capabilities.
And sadly, we won't know until it's too late. Neither side will willingly admit that they are either deficient OR have anything up their sleeve -- the strategic ambiguity is just too critical to the element of surprise.
The US cyber offense and defense capabilities are kept pretty secret, but I would not underestimate them. The stuxnet attack (orchestrated by US and perhaps Israel as well) was probably the most sophisticated cyber attack ever perpetrated. I don't doubt that the next "big one" will include damaging cyber attacks, but I don't presume the US would be only on the defensive or that our capabilities are lackluster.
I don't either; my main point was just that in the opening hours of any hot war, both sides are going to want to pre-emptively cripple each other's militaries and/or distract civilian command.
And as you say, both sides have also already been keeping the full extent of their cyber arsenals top secret.
Which means that we mere mortals simply won't know "whose [cyber] fu is stronger" until the war itself actually happens.
So, cheers!
For the record, I *hope* it's our side, and I think the stuxnet attacks indicated we have significant *offensive* capabilities, but our defense worries me. For instance, are ANY of our satellites compromised? Communications? Did the Chinese ever get any of the REAL goodies on whatever dirty tricks we think we're hiding in the F-35's EW suite when they hacked the plane's design plans way back when?
And even if our military is relatively insulated and well-air-gapped, what about civilian infrastructure? If all of a sudden half the dams in the country open their sluices full-blast while the other half clam up, is that going to distract the President too much from a response? Maybe even make him think twice?
It's a tough thing to game out because so many different things could go wrong with cyber. Pearl Harbor was an abject strategic and intelligence failure, but it was also limited to just the one (mega-critical!) naval base. The entire country is exposed to cyber now, and the only deterring principle is that THEIR entire country is exposed to OUR cyber.
One last bit of speculation: I guess this DOES pose an interesting dichotomy. To wit, we've seen drones turn Ukraine into a WWI-style trench war by empowering defenses against tanks (which were the WWI innovation to defeat trenches). Drones are, as of now, a primarily defensive technology, due to their limited range. But cyber is a more offensive technology -- difficult to defend, covers any modern digital system. Just interesting to think about.
china likely can already destroy the entire logistics and energy networks of the united states.
the downside of being an open/free society versus not. many chinese nationals have been able to work on critical usa infrastructure over the decades.
Ok doomer.
This seems a bit short-sighted to me.
There is no way the US, Israel, or any other power is going to sit back and shoot 300 missiles/drones out of the sky on ten separate occasions. At a certain point (maybe the second or third attack?) you'd begin offensive operations against the source of the attacks. Israel I think is quite notable for their willingness to sit behind air defense and not just lay waste to Gaza in response to never-ending missile attacks, but no other country faces the same diplomatic constraints as Israel.
This whole dialogue makes me think about the rhetoric around Russia-Ukraine "escalation". We make a lot of demands, of ourselves and of Ukraine, around the need to not provoke Russia to escalate. Too much fear of the Russian weapons. Well, we have some of our own weapons and people should be made to be afraid of what we "might do".
> the lesson is that diversity is often slightly positive, but doesn’t make a huge difference
Doesn't seem so. The abstract you quote conflates several unrelated things: "demographic, job-related and cognitive diversity".
Corporate DEI initiative do not demand and often don't even allow cognitive or job-related diversity. Corporate diversity always means more black women and fewer white men. The word has no other meaning and it's deceptive of the study authors to pretend it does. From their discussion section: "what we found broadly supports the contention that diverse cognitive resources have value, while contrasting social identities are less beneficial". They go on to state that ethnic diversity had no impact on team performance.
So if we ask the most biased people in the world to summarize their own beliefs, even they can't really find that diversity as practiced in the real world has benefits. Amusingly their data also appears to say that higher education doesn't work (educational level is one of the kinds of diversity that has no impact on team performance), which is a bit embarrassing.
I doubt they can properly measure any of this. A lot of positions created by diversity programmes are deliberately low skill, non-essential jobs for which success is subjective. How do you judge the impact on team performance of useless people who do nothing? You can't honestly say it's zero, because the resources used for such people could have been used to hire competent contributors instead.
I think for those of us who have actually experienced corporate DEI directly, we don't need hundreds of low quality studies on the topic. We already know the truth: what they call diversity initiatives are purely ideological race/gender pogroms which enforce total cognitive conformity whilst rapidly destroying team performance, morale and they can even wreck entire companies. The idea there's no impact is crazy for those of us with real world experience of it.
This reply treats DEI as a political issue rather than a cost benefit issue.
It is a political issue. And complying with the political demands are a cost-benefit issue.
I agree that this can't be properly measured. Value of diversity is not a uniform prospect.
For example, when I was the editor of a newspaper I had a young Latina reporter who didn't go to great schools, etc. But she found great stories because she had friends, family, etc that were living real life experiences. She'd write about illegal gambling, struggles in immigrant communities, black market taxis and government struggles cracking down on them. Her personal experience was invaluable as a reporter.
Her diversity value was life experience, not based on her ethnicity. I could have hired a black or Asian reporter with similar life experience that could have done just as good of a job. I think specified diversity of opinion / life experience that makes sense for the work environment is how you find productivity in diversity.
what this guy says.
RE: non-competes. I manage a decent-sized team of researchers and developers at a quantitative trading firm. They all have non-competes. I have been pretty unhappy with the push for a non-compete ban. My team runs a trading algorithm that has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue in recent years. We've worked really hard to develop our algo and the revenue potential would be dramatically diminished if the insights from our R&D found their way to a competitor.
When I hire someone new, there is always a big risk that they will come in and soak up our knowledge and then promote themselves to competitors as being able to replicate or reproduce our trade. So we put a non-compete clause in the employment contract. My staff earn total annual compensation ranging from a few hundred thousand to a few million dollars, depending on the individual.
Claims about the broad economic impact of a ban seem speculative to me. We have some large differences in the enforceability of non-competes in state laws, but state economies are all distinct in many different ways and so I just don't accept that this is a question we can really answer all that accurately. The classic problem of the absent counterfactual.
My concern has always been about simple justice. We explain clearly to people twhen we offers jobs that they will have these non-compete restrictions. I generally add that, team-wide, these restrictions are not just to protect the firm from the new hires. They also enable the employees to profit from their own contributions, which could otherwise be stolen by their colleagues. My staff are paid very well and are very well educated and savvy about the job market. Virtually everyone uses a professional recruiter to assist with any job change and the recruiters are very well-informed about non-compete practices in the industry. No one has been coerced or deceived into accepting the terms of the contract, and all have plenty of opportunities in tech, academia, etc. where they could avoid signing a non-compete if that was there prerogative. We have sensitive secrets to protect and the non-compete is a fair and transparent agreement around the terms of our sharing these secrets.
Tyler Cowen is right that, if I am not able to include a non-compete in the contract, then I would have to restrict junior hires from seeing a lot of our code, research reports, etc.
On the other hand, as I've come to understand the details of the new rules, I'm not actually that concerned. It turns out that what we have is not really considered a "non-compete" under the new rules. We pay our staff their normal salary (although not bonus) during the period they are expected to sit out. It's basically a very long "notice period", but we tell them to go home and take away their access to our data and systems. Apparently, it's only the unpaid non-competes that will soon be banned.
Sadly, most of the mainstream media discussion and even a lot of the discussion in wonkier substacks and blogs (like Noah's and Tyler's) have kind of glossed over these crucial details. If the firm has truly valuable secrets to protect, then they can simply utilize a long, paid notice period to stop that employee from jumping immediately to a competitor.
If the secret is worth less than the compensation during the sit-out period, then it's probably not really that important, economically, to protect it. This seems like a pretty reasonable standard and eliminates the silly non-competes on hairdressers while leaving them functionally in place for well-paid knowledge workers that have agreed to take a paid vacation in between jobs.
The "non-compete ban", as formulated, is actually somewhat narrow and it's structure addresses straightforwardly the issue of sensitive and valuable secrets.
I can think of one edge case here. Namely, if a company has sensitive secrets that they still need to share with all or most staff in order to operate their business. It might be uneconomic to pay *everyone* to sit out, even though those secrets are extremely valuable to the firm. I suspect this situation is somewhat rare though. The more people know a secret the less of a secret it is and few firms really believe they can get hundreds of thousands of lowly paid people to keep their secrets. More often, only highly paid personnel, incentivized to stay due to their high comp, are shown the secret sauce.
And if your employees were to go to competitors, together you'd eliminate whatever inefficiency you were trading on to start with. But you'd profit less yourselves.
This is the socially optimal outcome and I approve! Trading firms' profits should go down. This is right and good.
Around half of trading firm profits find their way to the treasury through income taxes, corporate taxes, etc. Why do you say that "trading firm's profits *should* go down"?
Your "socially optimal outcome" is more like the "socialists's fantasy outcome". Take away the incentives for doing a useful thing (price discovery), but go on presuming people will keep doing the useful thing, to the same extent, without the incentive.
What seems right and good to me is that people should be subject to whatever terms they freely agreed to when they signed their contract.
Socially optimal outcome because those brilliant traders could be developing something useful rather than engaging in a zero sum game.
If trading was truly zero sum, which it isn't, then market forces are anyways adequate to regulate the supply of traders.
I mean the supply of traders is bounded but think about all the great things those thinking hours could have achieved instead. What exactly is the production of trading? Better prices sure. Do we need this size to achieve that level of market efficiency?
Move your operation to a regulated bank (or become a bank). Financial services are exempt from the FTC’s ruling!
Also not clear to me the distinction Kahn has made (if any) between non-compete (working for a competitor) and preservation of confidential information which also can be legally protected through other means.
An NDA isn’t necessarily a non-compete, neither is an agreement that anything you help create at firm “x” belongs to firm “x”. I haven’t read her fine print.
I once signed a particularly egregious non-compete knowing I could prove that I had already developed enough specific knowledge prior to joining the firm that the contribution to the corpus from the new firm was likely to be miniscule and separable. I was senior at that point, so they hired me for the knowledge I already had.
Much tougher for junior to mid-level employees (who also might not have the resources to fight a lawsuit, which is why you want your next employer to defend you, and for your actions to be defensible).
Always nice to hear intelligent and informed responses. I would hope you also use confidentiality agreements
We do, but they really are of limited usefulness.
If an employee leaves for a competitor, how are we supposed to enforce the confidentiality agreement? It's rarely possible for us to "prove" that our secrets were utilized. If we wanted to get a judge to enjoin the competitor, we would be required to disclose the very secrets we are concerned about. How else could the judge decide whether to enjoin?
Yep. I guess all you can do is require notice and contact information of new employer and send the new employer the CA and some will act ethically and some will not. An when you get really cold like me who remembers what piece on information in my brain came from where
"I guess all you can do is require notice and contact information of new employer"
No, you cannot do that. You can ask nicely, but that's it.
What about people living with student debt for decades? What about the humanitarian relief? Ignore the polls for a moment.
It seems what Biden has been able to forgive has been a subset of debtors — most recently of public servants, for example, upholding a law passed twenty years ago.
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/21/1239931447/biden-student-loan-public-service-debt-forgiveness
If the loan industry or schools are predatory and bloated, is there some way to prevent this debt in the first place?
One way to do alternative school financing instead of loans is to put more and more of the campus's labor needs in students.
Work during your education, leave debt free.
Like transit systems. There are college towns, like Davis, CA; and Champaign and Urbana, IL; where the city's transit system is operated by the university and college students are the bus drivers. UC San Diego has an on-campus circulator bus system with a few routes going in town. What's interesting is that UCSD's starting wage for a driver is a tad higher than for a professional full-time driver for the San Diego MTS! This is a case where a student can earn a market wage as a driver, but work part time around the class schedule, and instead of working for a pension, part of the wage is held back to pay off tuition and fees.
Of course, the military does this. Or the government should fund things like AmeriCorps and Job Corps to get labor in exchange for tuition funding.
Yes - make college “free”. Make everything “free”. No debt (as far as the students know- they’ll figure out the truth later when paying taxes to cover Federal interest expense), and continued expansion of tuition costs and bloated university staff. Who do university employees vote for again? Is “debt relief” (debt transfer, actually) really for the students?
Also, please read this article. There are people who have paid more than the amount they originally owed in interest, and still owe money after decades. This seems predatory and unnecessary.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/02/19/student-loan-repayment-debt-cycle/
Or maybe there are savings to be had through innovation or cutting waste? You mention “administration.” My sense is that administrative bloat occurs throughout all levels of education and government.
When the 2008 crash happened, teachers were given pink slips, because LAUSD was out of money, but admin weren’t, because admin were the ones giving the pink slips out.
This is anecdotal, though. I don’t know the facts or what could be cut effectively.
Noah has written compellingly about inefficiency in military procurement and the cost of building infrastructure mired in red tape.
I know from jury duty how inefficient and backwards our legal system is. (Three years to start a trial for insurrection that was recorded by thousands of people!)
Could these systems be streamlined with technology and legal reform and achieve savings that way?
Your point about China spending off-the-books on its military reminds me of how the Nazis set up a shell company (Metallurgische Forschunggesellschaft, or "Mefo" for short) to conceal their rearmament spending from the outside world.
Yes, there is an argument (or several) that banning of non-competes should be done via legislation rather than getting mixed up in an election year stunt designed to win professional votes for Biden (as Kahn knows this will be stayed by the courts and eventually thrown out).
I hate non-competes, but I’d hate being ruled by the whims of a partisan hack and bully like Kahn even more.
I am comfortable with the idea that Federal power is limited and a President and the regulatory state are checked by Congress, separation of powers, and legal precedent. That’s the way the system is designed.
The recent trend (decades long) for an administration to ignore laws it doesn’t like and take lawless actions (spending hundreds of billions in student loan handouts) are not good. Has any thought been given by either side as to what the country will eventually look like as this continues?
Strong comment.
To my knowledge, the reason SCOTUS (or a lower court) is likely to toss out this rule is that, enforceability of non-competes has always been a matter of state law. It's not a question of workers versus firms, it's a question of states versus the federal government. Many states already have various forms of non-compete bans. It does not seem likely that the congress intended to take away state's right to set their own rules in this area when they long-ago authorized the formation of the FTC. The FTC is legislating, plain and simple, and you are right to decry that.
I think something like 45 states still allow non-competes. I’d like to see more of them outlaw them via the legislative process before the Feds take up the cause, to be sure.
States may not have completely free rein on the issue though, given legal precedents involving the FTC.
Even if the courts were to ignore states rights and rule of law, the FTC’s ruling would impact something like 35 percent of all employees (based on a Korn Ferry guy I heard on Bloomberg yesterday- no idea if that is accurate).
Whether such a ban is efficient is particular to the economy of the state. In NY, where a hugely disproportionate share of income (and tax revenue) comes from high finance, banning noncompetes would induce firms to move a lot of staff to other states or other countries. I already employ people in several countries and would likely focus on overseas hiring if I was hit with some kind of NC ban.
That's a shame because I would like to employ Americans, but I can't just give away the shop.
Obviously, espionage and outright theft are also risks, not just employee departures, and some other countries ban non-competes.
The people who argue against defense spending don’t actually know that China spends as much as the US. The average person has been told their whole lives the US spends way more.
Best to identify the people you mean in the future…
I’m all for defense spending and I still don’t know if China spends more than the US. That is a claim that I haven’t yet looked into thoroughly and is actually irrelevant - US spending should be based on what it takes to protect the country and allies and defeat enemies, not based on the idea of spending $1 more than our enemies.
Saw somewhere that the pier the US is allegedly building in Gaza (another election stunt) is estimated to cost $320 million. That’s called piling on. 😊. The Chinese could probably do it in a few weeks for 1/10th the cost.
Ah yes and we can get Hamas to build out subway tunnels on the cheap in NY.
They seem quite good at at! Of course, the new lines would have to named after “martyrs”.
There probably would be martyrs given they wouldn’t care about injuries or deaths during construction (hence the cost savings).
China would incur the same toll, but the tunnels would all be named after Xi.
The Xi train- I like it!
I agree with the take on non compete clauses. I had to sign a non compete agreement in Australia even though I was an unpaid intern. Mobility of labour and capital in an economy increases long run economic growth. As liberal capitalists we should be pro market but not necessarily pro business.
However I do think non compete have a role to play to increase investment in worker skills. How about we only legalise non competes in exchange for employee stock compensation? This would stop firms from arbitrarily imposing non competes but only reserving them for the most important employees. Plus employees are given a stake in the long term health of the company and probably won't be fired during an economic downturn.
That sucks! I'm generally a defender of non-competes, but with the caveat that the non-compete period must be *paid*. In your case, you were not even paid before the non-compete period!
I hope this internship at least ended up being a worthwhile stepping stone for you, to a job that pays.
Nah. I left within a week because the I realised I wasn't going to get anything out of the job
Good for you!
I think non-compete clauses to prevent spread of IP are a sort of negative externality. They benefit the contracting firms and harm other firms. Together all would be better off w/o them.
Training is somewhat different. NC's may take the place of a lower wage during a training period.
This would be true if all firms were producing the same amount of useful invention. In reality, legalizing IP theft will benefit the poaching firms at the expense of the firms investing in developing innovative technologies. The net effect would be a large reduction in these types of investments.
Moreover, if we make "ideas" free then the massive firms with the advantages in scaling their products will win every battle. No opportunity for a newcomer to beat an incumbent through innovative ideas.
But are non-compete agreements the way to deal with that?
In many cases, yes. Confidentiality agreements are basically impossible to enforce. How do you "prove" that another company is doing a thing without already having access to that company's private data?
Companies are certainly free to try other methods. There is no mandate on firms to impose non-competes. The question is whether they should be banned or not.
I broadly agree. I'm just saying that some mechanism for long relationships between employers and employees may be beneficial. That's why I made the ESOP exemption.
The American Enterprise Institute brought us the war in Iraq. Now Noah thinks we ought to listen to their lies about China as well. Sad!
This is an interesting comment. The information Noah has been presenting about China is very compelling.
The idea, for example, that when an authoritarian tells you what they’re going to do, you should believe them. There are numerous precedents for this, and China’s current support for Russia’s war in Ukraine is alarming.
And the accounting for military expenditures seems agnostic to intent and consistent with the differences we see between Chinese construction/manufacturing and that of the US. They get more done faster, with less money — like their high speed rail system. It may have engineering faults that will become apparent in twenty years. It may go places no one needs it. And workers may have gotten injured and tossed aside without compensation. And the same amount of money would accomplish much less in the US.
That said, I think George W Bush and his cronies should be in prison for the invasion of Iraq. So I’d like to know what role the AEI played in their actions and how you see that influencing Noah’s perception here.
I saw a post on X from Noah this past week indicating he does not think the invasion of Iraq was justified or wise. Did the AEI scrub their positions on that war, too?
Well, it was brave of Noah to come out against the invasion of Iraq 21 years after the fact. In my own substack blog, "Literature R Us", I recently responded to another of Noah's "fear China" posts, with links back to an earlier version of "Literature R Us" where I spent decades railing against the "military intellectual complex" inside the Beltway that is always finding wars for other people to fight. If you want bettered informed commentary on foreign affairs, try Daniel Larison's "Eunomia" blog, also on substack.
That's a pretty nasty, unsubstantiated remark. Just because Noah stated his position this week doesn't mean he didn't also state it twenty years ago. It's illogical and bad netiquette.
Instead of promoting yourself as if we're automatically going to think you have anything to contribute to this issue, you should provide some facts to support your perspective and then offer links to your post, suggesting there's more where that came from.
On #1, while one must always be vigilant, I just wonder how much of the Chinese spending is actually "real".. given the corruption. Also, it is really easy to spend money to build theoretical capability, but it is much harder to build "real" capability...tested against reality.
As regards student debt cancellation you may wish to look at the impact on the change in the Bankruptcy Code many years ago at the behest of the lenders that prevents the discharge of student loans in personal bankruptcy. This laid the foundation for tuition inflation as the lenders basically had no risk. We have created a generation of student debt slaves. This is not healthy. When I went to a top college tuition was around $4,000 a year and half was covered by a NYSE Regents scholarship. It cost my kids over $40,000 a year and now some schools hitting $80,000. This is not a function of general inflation
So cancelation is very expensive and may not meet the test of Pareto Optimality but I borrowed my way through business school and I remember the two books of monthly payments that I had to pay every month for 36-48 months. I was fortunate to have a good job on Wall Street but promised that my kids would not have such a burden.
The Bankruptcy Code should be changed back. This will lead to less lending which is both good and bad. The bad is that many kids will not have the funds to pay for overpriced tuitions. The good news is that many predatory for profits will stop preying on students and this will put a deflationary force on tuitions which are stupid high.
Human Capital is built on education. Ask Gary Becker. Affordable education is a requirement
I completely agree about bankruptcy. That said, I am completely opposed to loan forgiveness. It is unfair to forgive debts for individuals who, on average, are much more likely to be well-off. It is regressive and a clear give a way to a "special" group.
It is also unfair to those (like my daughter) who chose to attend a community college to keep her debt down. She is now working and paying taxes, which would be used to forgive the debt for peers who often chose to attend more expensive schools and have a "college experience."
That is really what you pay for. Living at home and going to CC for a couple years and then living at home and attending a local college can be done for $25k- $30k. You can also do something like get an RN and then work while getting a BSN. Or become a cop with a two-year degree (or less) and get college reimbursement to finish up (I used this method to help pay for my master's degree and have a friend using it for his Ph.D). Or join the military and get all your college paid for and some money to live off.
Just because students want to live on campus and have access to sports facilities etc. and are willing to take-out long-term loans, does not mean that others should pay for it. Especially given the return on investment for college. There are lots of ways to do college for a very low cost, if you are willing to forgo the party experience.
Finally, we probably have too many people attending college already and need more people to opt for CC/job training type programs. Forgiving college debt would just reinforce the idea that students can borrow money for having four year (or often 5 or 6 year) fun experience. This would just create a larger incentive for universities to spend money on non-academic benefits, while creating a new need for more debt forgiveness in the future.
Lastly, it is the kind of thing that is particularly corrosive to the Dems chance of winning elections. This kind of giveaway just reinforces all the bad perceptions about the Democratic Party.
So yes, we should definitely not trap people by preventing them from bankruptcy. Give folks who have made poor choices about college debt the same opportunities we give others to get out of debt.
I agree with most of what you say. Forgiveness creates moral hazard in decision making and discriminates amongst people who made different choices. But behaviorally if you give money away people take it. Or many do. So I think many kids are in fact victims of a system. Relieve could be means tested. It could have floors ie debt reduction not elimination. Or allow the debt to be discharged in BK which is where I started. It is a big decision and you carry it on your record for the rest of your life. But debt is debt and student debt should not be special in BK.
* Advertised tuition is not the same as the average price paid for college. Sadly, this is a typical low-information claim.
* Changing the bankruptcy code will not induce the federal government to lend any less. The government doesn't turn down student loan applications based on the risk of them not being repaid. The changes you are promoting would quite obviously induce the government to lend out more, receive back less, and lead to even more cost inflation.
* More than 90% of all student loan debt is held by the federal government.
“Typical low information claim “ is arrogant and hostile. You don’t know me. You don’t know what I know. Go check it out. There was an overhaul of the Bankruptcy Code in 1976 which included a change to section 523 (a)(8) making student loans non dischargeable unless hardship which if hard to get approved. If you go bankrupt and have $40,000 of cc debt that you incurred shopping at Neiman Marcus it gets wiped out. After the change $40,000 of student loans no. You are clearly the more virtuous person and deserve is disparate outcome. It may be held or guaranteed by the federal government but it is not originated or underwritten by them. But by banks who sell to the government or agencies. If a lender has a choice of making two loans. One dischargeable in BK and one not. They will make more of the latter. So take your low information rudeness and stick it
If it's guaranteed by the federal government then why does dischargeability in BK matter?
Regarding 2. The activist kids are just part of the New 1970s
It is odd to see "Corruption" on the list, and for it to be rated so highly.
It's not a common topic anecdotally. Any ideas about its prominence?
You're correct on Point No. 2. I muted/unfollowed a bunch of people on social media who post incessantly about Israel/Palestine. I'm exhausted by political yelling right now.
Inflation: Inflation or not, any time is good time not to engage in spending that does not have NPV > 0. The relevance of the PCE number to fiscal policy is zero. The relevance, if any, is to Fed policy.
"so activists have actually done a good job by pushing older progressive elites to focus on the problem."
IFF there were "focus." Focus to me implies cost effectiveness, doing more of low cost ways of reducing CO2 emissions and less of high cost ways. Even putting aside that people are not yet ready to accept a tax on net CO2 emissions (but isn't that at least _partly_ the fault of environmentalists for not advocating it?) wasn't the IRA just an "everything bagel?" Does subsidizing demand for EV make any sense at this stage? Is there any good reason to subsidize _investment in_ producing zero CO@ emitting energy or CO2 removing, or energy storing technologies instead of the zero CO2 energy instead of the zero CO2 energy produced, the CO2 removed, or the energy stored? Does this not just translate into more outlay on the same amount of net CO2 going into the atmosphere? Outlays that could go into investment in military infrastructure with NPV > 0?
Great roundup, thanks!