SF's Market Street debacle, the debate over real wages, why U.S. growth has gotten smoother, TikTok as a propaganda engine, and California homelessness
“ . . . if the U.S. can’t bring itself to force a sale of TikTok, we’ll have proven democracy incapable of defending itself against totalitarian states in the realm of information warfare.”
It is simply stunning, given the U.S. has the CIA, NSA and a dozen more federal intelligence agencies, that the alarm bells haven’t been loudly ringing about the threat presented by a hostile foreign power shaping public opinion of young people. Imagine if the algorithm started targeting young men with anti-military propaganda, which may well be happening given the dismal recruiting efforts of the U.S. military.
The study on TikTok revealed that the Chinese are taking steps to suppress certain kinds of news. I wonder how we would figure out whether they are trying to insert certain kinds of news.
FDR was implementing the policies of Keynes and other similar economists. Before Keynes, policy was dominated by neoclassical economics. Keynes had the view that demand, not supply, is the driving factor determining levels of employment. This provided FDR and his economists with a theoretical basis to argue that governments should intervene to alleviate severe unemployment.
I have read most of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. It's probably worth reading if you want to understand the underpinnings of modern economic theory. A lot of is dated, but the basic premises have held true and the most recent economic cycle have just reinforced them.
"But in fact, the Market Street closure is part of a larger debacle of urban politics and governance that has seen the city of San Francisco spend hundreds of millions of dollars to destroy its most important commercial area."
SF is and has been for years controlled and "governed" by progressives, who may be great at screaming RACISM but otherwise could not manage a hot dog stand, let alone run a city (except into the ground). So, just keep voting for them and then complain about what they deliver.
Comparing TikTok to "toaster ovens that hacked into their phones and secretly blocked links to certain news stories" just doesn't work. I would be 100% on your side if the TikTok app was shown to literally hack into the other social apps on your phone to suppress content sensitive to the CCP, but that's just not what's happening here as far as we know.
Forcing a sale or banning TikTok should not be part of a liberal democracy's defense toolkit. There are better options that are much more in line with our values. Sunlight is probably the best remedy here. Some effort (probably decentralized, probably from competitors) to equate TikTok with Russia Today or Xinhua is really all that is needed to mount a defense.
I remember in the 1970s taking the train in to San Francisco from the Peninsula, and then taking the bus to Market Street. My friends and I would wander around shopping all the weird little antique stores and boutiques and then getting ice cream and watching all the people. I don't have a point. I'm just reminiscing. It's what old people do.
I wasn't totally convinced by your discussion of TikTok since it doesn't seem like the threat to democracy is limited to attack by outside totalitarian states. If we can't do something about the demand side, then absent some drastic curtailing of the First Amendment, aren't we lost anyway, to the threats from inside? I confess I don't have any great suggestions for hardening the consumer side of the disinformation threat: our education system isn't in great shape, and arguably forces like Moms for Liberty mean we have our work cut out for us just keeping it from getting worse, much less making it better.
The attraction of CA weather (what attracted my parents from the east coast in 1949), combined with environmental laws and NIMBYs created a perfect storm for homelessness
How much is TikTok in particular relevant? I remember a few years ago talking to my nephew about some geography game he was playing on his phone. When I first talked to him about it, he was still struggling with identifying countries like Australia or Egypt, but when I talked a few months later he was getting them all, even islands like Mauritius and Kiribati. But I asked him something about Taiwan and he had never heard of it - I guess this app was designed to be legal in China.
Fixing TikTok won’t fix all these deeper and equally insidious issues elsewhere. A counterweight might be more useful than a ban.
I think there is at least a weak correlation between average high and average low temperatures as attractors/detractors to the homeless quantity by state. La and SF have much more livable outdoor weather than Florida, Texas and the midwest and northern states.
I think these states have net migration in for those who become homeless. If you end up homeless in Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin, or Louisiana, Alabama, NH, it seems a reasonable factor to consider the homeless will leave cold and high temperature extremes for more temperate climes.
I think the homelessness issue is also driven by Boise v. Martin, a 9th Circuit Court ruling, that along with some other related cases, made addressing homelessness in the 9th Circuit a real problem. California obviously has its own issues but Oregon, Washington, Hawaii and other 9th Circuit states are all still trying to figure out how to address homelessness in light of the ruling.
But the level of subsidized housing (per 1,000 people) in California is as high if not higher than of any neighboring state (excepting Oregon), and higher than that of a wide swath of farther central states. So a move to California is a good move for almost anyone in the western U.S.
And the growth in California's median household income (ranked about 5th in level in 2021) for the last ten years is amongst the highest of any state. (It ranked 11th ten years before.)
Isn't the vibecession a result of the fact that inflation hits everybody while getting a job or seeing your low-end job wages go up only benefits a small minority of people. During the transient inflation surge, people witth jobs (the vast majority of the workforce even in a recession) saw their real wages go down and the surge in prices was in things they bought frequently like food and gasoline, so it was in their faces on a regular basis. On the other hand, the formerly unemployed and low-wage workers who sarted getting a paycheck or saw their paycheck grow were a small minority of the workforce. IMO a transient episode of inflation is a price worth paying to get back to full employment and the benefits that brings to society (like less domestic stress and substance abuse), but I think most people don't take that into consideration when answering pollsters.
The discussion of wage growth with the two charts still doesn't really make sense to me. If Radia's chart includes people who went from unemployment to employment, which is what I'm getting from the description, then it seems to mix apples and oranges. The whole point of a wage growth analysis is to understand what happened to wages for a consistent set of jobs. Employment growth is a separate dynamic. As much as I like the story about the economy doing well and wages growing, let's not get so attached that we paper over the real reasons many people may be dissatisfied with their situations and with the economy overall.
Some of the wage falls were fake. Some people got reduced hours but were supplemented by COViD relief payments. Had a friend that had hours cut by 20% but was told he’d actually make more with the COViD payments and, with a wink, the firm still expected the same work to get done.
Noah - this is the best "five things" compilations that you have produced since I subscribed. We split our lives between Wydaho (Teton Valley) and Hawaii. Little to no homeless in Wydaho (way too cold in the winter, and public drug use is not tolerated, let alone encouraged. There are still are plenty of people struggling with housing, though, including some living in campers/trailers and no shortage of "couch surfers" amongst the younger adults, but they probably would not be counted as "homeless." The only thing stopping Hawaii from being even worse the California is they have to get on a plane to get there. Even still, Honolulu is nearly is bad as LA. We have several "camps" on Kauai island. The local county government can't do much about it, even if they wanted to.
“ . . . if the U.S. can’t bring itself to force a sale of TikTok, we’ll have proven democracy incapable of defending itself against totalitarian states in the realm of information warfare.”
It is simply stunning, given the U.S. has the CIA, NSA and a dozen more federal intelligence agencies, that the alarm bells haven’t been loudly ringing about the threat presented by a hostile foreign power shaping public opinion of young people. Imagine if the algorithm started targeting young men with anti-military propaganda, which may well be happening given the dismal recruiting efforts of the U.S. military.
TikTok is a grave threat.
The study on TikTok revealed that the Chinese are taking steps to suppress certain kinds of news. I wonder how we would figure out whether they are trying to insert certain kinds of news.
FDR was implementing the policies of Keynes and other similar economists. Before Keynes, policy was dominated by neoclassical economics. Keynes had the view that demand, not supply, is the driving factor determining levels of employment. This provided FDR and his economists with a theoretical basis to argue that governments should intervene to alleviate severe unemployment.
I have read most of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. It's probably worth reading if you want to understand the underpinnings of modern economic theory. A lot of is dated, but the basic premises have held true and the most recent economic cycle have just reinforced them.
"We are all Keynesians now" - Milton Friedman
"But in fact, the Market Street closure is part of a larger debacle of urban politics and governance that has seen the city of San Francisco spend hundreds of millions of dollars to destroy its most important commercial area."
SF is and has been for years controlled and "governed" by progressives, who may be great at screaming RACISM but otherwise could not manage a hot dog stand, let alone run a city (except into the ground). So, just keep voting for them and then complain about what they deliver.
Comparing TikTok to "toaster ovens that hacked into their phones and secretly blocked links to certain news stories" just doesn't work. I would be 100% on your side if the TikTok app was shown to literally hack into the other social apps on your phone to suppress content sensitive to the CCP, but that's just not what's happening here as far as we know.
Forcing a sale or banning TikTok should not be part of a liberal democracy's defense toolkit. There are better options that are much more in line with our values. Sunlight is probably the best remedy here. Some effort (probably decentralized, probably from competitors) to equate TikTok with Russia Today or Xinhua is really all that is needed to mount a defense.
I remember in the 1970s taking the train in to San Francisco from the Peninsula, and then taking the bus to Market Street. My friends and I would wander around shopping all the weird little antique stores and boutiques and then getting ice cream and watching all the people. I don't have a point. I'm just reminiscing. It's what old people do.
I wasn't totally convinced by your discussion of TikTok since it doesn't seem like the threat to democracy is limited to attack by outside totalitarian states. If we can't do something about the demand side, then absent some drastic curtailing of the First Amendment, aren't we lost anyway, to the threats from inside? I confess I don't have any great suggestions for hardening the consumer side of the disinformation threat: our education system isn't in great shape, and arguably forces like Moms for Liberty mean we have our work cut out for us just keeping it from getting worse, much less making it better.
The attraction of CA weather (what attracted my parents from the east coast in 1949), combined with environmental laws and NIMBYs created a perfect storm for homelessness
How much is TikTok in particular relevant? I remember a few years ago talking to my nephew about some geography game he was playing on his phone. When I first talked to him about it, he was still struggling with identifying countries like Australia or Egypt, but when I talked a few months later he was getting them all, even islands like Mauritius and Kiribati. But I asked him something about Taiwan and he had never heard of it - I guess this app was designed to be legal in China.
Fixing TikTok won’t fix all these deeper and equally insidious issues elsewhere. A counterweight might be more useful than a ban.
I think there is at least a weak correlation between average high and average low temperatures as attractors/detractors to the homeless quantity by state. La and SF have much more livable outdoor weather than Florida, Texas and the midwest and northern states.
I think these states have net migration in for those who become homeless. If you end up homeless in Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin, or Louisiana, Alabama, NH, it seems a reasonable factor to consider the homeless will leave cold and high temperature extremes for more temperate climes.
I think the homelessness issue is also driven by Boise v. Martin, a 9th Circuit Court ruling, that along with some other related cases, made addressing homelessness in the 9th Circuit a real problem. California obviously has its own issues but Oregon, Washington, Hawaii and other 9th Circuit states are all still trying to figure out how to address homelessness in light of the ruling.
But the level of subsidized housing (per 1,000 people) in California is as high if not higher than of any neighboring state (excepting Oregon), and higher than that of a wide swath of farther central states. So a move to California is a good move for almost anyone in the western U.S.
https://usafacts.org/articles/which-states-have-the-most-and-least-subsidized-housing/
California also ranks 7th in Public Welfare State Expenditures Per Capita, at almost double Texas' rate, for instance.
https://www.statsamerica.org/sip/rank_list.aspx?rank_label=censgovtre_exp_1_c&item_in=040
And the growth in California's median household income (ranked about 5th in level in 2021) for the last ten years is amongst the highest of any state. (It ranked 11th ten years before.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_income
Isn't the vibecession a result of the fact that inflation hits everybody while getting a job or seeing your low-end job wages go up only benefits a small minority of people. During the transient inflation surge, people witth jobs (the vast majority of the workforce even in a recession) saw their real wages go down and the surge in prices was in things they bought frequently like food and gasoline, so it was in their faces on a regular basis. On the other hand, the formerly unemployed and low-wage workers who sarted getting a paycheck or saw their paycheck grow were a small minority of the workforce. IMO a transient episode of inflation is a price worth paying to get back to full employment and the benefits that brings to society (like less domestic stress and substance abuse), but I think most people don't take that into consideration when answering pollsters.
The discussion of wage growth with the two charts still doesn't really make sense to me. If Radia's chart includes people who went from unemployment to employment, which is what I'm getting from the description, then it seems to mix apples and oranges. The whole point of a wage growth analysis is to understand what happened to wages for a consistent set of jobs. Employment growth is a separate dynamic. As much as I like the story about the economy doing well and wages growing, let's not get so attached that we paper over the real reasons many people may be dissatisfied with their situations and with the economy overall.
Some of the wage falls were fake. Some people got reduced hours but were supplemented by COViD relief payments. Had a friend that had hours cut by 20% but was told he’d actually make more with the COViD payments and, with a wink, the firm still expected the same work to get done.
Noah - this is the best "five things" compilations that you have produced since I subscribed. We split our lives between Wydaho (Teton Valley) and Hawaii. Little to no homeless in Wydaho (way too cold in the winter, and public drug use is not tolerated, let alone encouraged. There are still are plenty of people struggling with housing, though, including some living in campers/trailers and no shortage of "couch surfers" amongst the younger adults, but they probably would not be counted as "homeless." The only thing stopping Hawaii from being even worse the California is they have to get on a plane to get there. Even still, Honolulu is nearly is bad as LA. We have several "camps" on Kauai island. The local county government can't do much about it, even if they wanted to.