There was also tremendous social cohesion. As a member of the Oklahoma Medical Reserve Corps, I worked as a full-time volunteer in the Tulsa Covid-19 POD, vaccinating 2,000 patients/day.
Half of the POD were Tulsa County Health Department workers, the other half retired nurses and physicians. Many, like myself, weren’t yet fully vaccinated, but masked and gloved-up.
Retired nurses, at their own time and expense, drove across the state to single-handedly operate Covid-19 PODs in remote, underserved counties. It was an amazing experience working with dedicated, talented professional who had a sense of mission.
Yet, the mainstream media gave very little coverage to extraordinary people -- of all types of religion, politics, sexual orientation, gender-identity -- who came together as strangers to provide care for anybody who came through the POD.
The light in the Dark Age of Covid-19, the best of the U.S., went underreported.
Noah Smith said: “ Those years . . .cemented a negative mood in the minds of the American people that will take a while to heal. But the healing is underway,"
Noah, I think you have finally hit the right note in evaluating the last few years. We are not passionless Homo economicus—we are people who have been through the mill.
Also, don't you think the 9% income gain by the bottom quartile means infinitely more to that group than the 2% income loss for the top quartile?
I'm curious what Noah's take is on one of the root causes of the current culture war ravaging American society, namely that Black and Hispanics continue to lag behind their Asian and white counterparts across a wide range of life outcomes. This is clearly one of the primary reasons why meritocracy has been slowly dismantled across this country over the past decade or so in the name of promoting racial equality.
I'm surprised that so few American pundits talk about the elephant in the room. Data suggests that by the 2040s, Black and Hispanic Americans will constitute a combined majority of the American population. Yet on educational metrics such as SAT or PISA scores, large racial disparities remain. When I looked into 2020 SAT math data reported by the Brookings Institution for instance, I was taken aback to learn that Asian Americans are slightly more likely to score above a 700 on the SAT math than Black Americans are to score above a 500. There's basically a 2 standard deviation difference in mean perform between the two groups, suggesting that only about 2% of Black students score as high as the average Asian student on the math portion of the SAT.
America's inability to resolve its enduring racial disparities has resulted in significant social strife and I would argue has contributed to this country moving in a decidedly anti-meritocratic direction. America thus far has been a country with a market dominant majority. Can the nation survive if these racial gaps persist and America becomes instead a country with a market dominant white and Asian minority? I don't claim to be an expert in these matters, but my reading of the horrors perpetuated against market dominant minorities around the world from the works of people like Thomas Sowell and Amy Chua give me significant pause that such a future state of America could remain a stable equilibrium.
Our neoliberal pundit class loves obsessing over China and complaining about its supposedly unethical and unfair practices, while adamantly insisting that the only way to defeat China in competition is by letting in even more elite Chinese immigrants. I've observed a curious phenomenon of American pundits bashing or complaining about various Asian countries while simultaneously advocating for elite immigration from those same countries. At least when the bashing isn't directed at China specifically, people like Noah have the good sense to refer to it as "punching down". Meanwhile the woes of the Black and Hispanic population in this country are totally ignored.
I'm actually not very optimistic that America can survive long term with a majority Black and Hispanic population where racial disparities remain as large as they've been. This doesn't strike me as a stable equilibrium. I'm also deeply skeptical that the solution is to basically pretend the problem doesn't exist while advocating for endless elite immigration from Asia. At some point that well is going to dry up, especially given the recent geopolitical tensions between the US and China.
In light of the woke and anti-meritocratic trends of the past decade, I find it to be a massive oversight that this particular issue isn't being discussed more. Far too many pundits focus on the glitzy and glamorous discussions of EVs and semiconductors and the geopolitical battle over the commanding heights of the 21st century, while ignoring the painfully obvious fact that a substantial minority and soon to be numerical majority of the population lags behind in the American race for educational and life achievement. That this structural deficiency wouldn't have a meaningful impact vis-a-vis our long term competition with China strikes me as pollyannish at best.
Crime isn't falling at all. Between de-policung, de-funding, non-prosecirion by Soros DAs, & massive retirements of officers, there is an epidemic of NON-REPORYED crime. Start with the knock out game, which victims don't waste their time. Real crime is at an all time high, greatly resembling the "crisis of law and order" in the 1850s. Jimmying crime states does no one any good.
Great news. I knew or suspected some ( crime) but the last- that younger generations were doing good was very surprising. Maybe no Civil War after all.
A word of caution: the FBI hasn't released the UCR for 2023 yet so any speculation about changes in crime rates from year to year is speculative. In addition that WSJ graphic suffers from selection bias--crime rates are highly variable from city to city and in some locations the rise in crime in 2023 was dramatic (Washington DC). Finally, so far as 2024 goes there is some evidence to suggest that places like Chicago are seeing a resurgence of violence so far (see Magic Wade's SS where she does some preliminary number crunching).
The question with changing crime rates is whether or not they will fall back to the 2019 pre-covid norm or whether we are just seeing normal fluctuation around a new normal that features more crime. I personally suspect that future historians will be able to draw a line between pre and post pandemic America and the latter will be characterized by metrics such as higher overdose deaths, higher numbers of homelessness, increasing urban blight, more traffic fatalities, calamitous truancy rates--and more murders.
I continue to believe there is something fishy about the "Gen Z is wealthier than previous generations" math. I'd like to see somebody try to actually control for differential inflation issues here, particularly around housing. To the extent that Gen Z is "wealthier" on paper because the house they scrimped to buy is worth a bigger amount of money, but then they have less capacity to either to spend money on anything that isn't the house, or to save up in other forms that can be spent for food and medicine in retirement -- that doesn't really seem like being wealthier. Sure, you could sell the house and live on that. But _where_ are you going to live on that, if every other house is just as expensive?
As Felix Salmon likes to say, you're born short one house. Inflated housing prices don't mean that owning a house makes you wealthier; it means it costs you more to cover your short.
On a different note from the debating of crime statistics, are the cross sectional GDP growth data adjusted for foreign born workers for the countries other than the US? Italy instituted a very attractive tax regime for high income immigrants post pandemic. While the number of immigrants may be small as a percentage of population relative to the US, it is likely they are 1-2 orders of magnitude on average higher income than the typical US immigrant. Would really appreciate your perspective on this.
I had to squint pretty hard to understand the immigration and crime charts. For example, Violent crime is not structurally falling and is still outrageously high relative to peer countries.
My sixth thing is that YIMBYs are gaining momentum and achieving victories.
“. . . there was massive social unrest. . .”
There was also tremendous social cohesion. As a member of the Oklahoma Medical Reserve Corps, I worked as a full-time volunteer in the Tulsa Covid-19 POD, vaccinating 2,000 patients/day.
Half of the POD were Tulsa County Health Department workers, the other half retired nurses and physicians. Many, like myself, weren’t yet fully vaccinated, but masked and gloved-up.
Retired nurses, at their own time and expense, drove across the state to single-handedly operate Covid-19 PODs in remote, underserved counties. It was an amazing experience working with dedicated, talented professional who had a sense of mission.
Yet, the mainstream media gave very little coverage to extraordinary people -- of all types of religion, politics, sexual orientation, gender-identity -- who came together as strangers to provide care for anybody who came through the POD.
The light in the Dark Age of Covid-19, the best of the U.S., went underreported.
And a sixth, the Noahpinion blog. It brings some measure of joy :)
Please make this a monthly or at least a quarterly piece. and expand it to include items outside of the U.S.
Noah Smith said: “ Those years . . .cemented a negative mood in the minds of the American people that will take a while to heal. But the healing is underway,"
Noah, I think you have finally hit the right note in evaluating the last few years. We are not passionless Homo economicus—we are people who have been through the mill.
Also, don't you think the 9% income gain by the bottom quartile means infinitely more to that group than the 2% income loss for the top quartile?
I'm curious what Noah's take is on one of the root causes of the current culture war ravaging American society, namely that Black and Hispanics continue to lag behind their Asian and white counterparts across a wide range of life outcomes. This is clearly one of the primary reasons why meritocracy has been slowly dismantled across this country over the past decade or so in the name of promoting racial equality.
I'm surprised that so few American pundits talk about the elephant in the room. Data suggests that by the 2040s, Black and Hispanic Americans will constitute a combined majority of the American population. Yet on educational metrics such as SAT or PISA scores, large racial disparities remain. When I looked into 2020 SAT math data reported by the Brookings Institution for instance, I was taken aback to learn that Asian Americans are slightly more likely to score above a 700 on the SAT math than Black Americans are to score above a 500. There's basically a 2 standard deviation difference in mean perform between the two groups, suggesting that only about 2% of Black students score as high as the average Asian student on the math portion of the SAT.
America's inability to resolve its enduring racial disparities has resulted in significant social strife and I would argue has contributed to this country moving in a decidedly anti-meritocratic direction. America thus far has been a country with a market dominant majority. Can the nation survive if these racial gaps persist and America becomes instead a country with a market dominant white and Asian minority? I don't claim to be an expert in these matters, but my reading of the horrors perpetuated against market dominant minorities around the world from the works of people like Thomas Sowell and Amy Chua give me significant pause that such a future state of America could remain a stable equilibrium.
Our neoliberal pundit class loves obsessing over China and complaining about its supposedly unethical and unfair practices, while adamantly insisting that the only way to defeat China in competition is by letting in even more elite Chinese immigrants. I've observed a curious phenomenon of American pundits bashing or complaining about various Asian countries while simultaneously advocating for elite immigration from those same countries. At least when the bashing isn't directed at China specifically, people like Noah have the good sense to refer to it as "punching down". Meanwhile the woes of the Black and Hispanic population in this country are totally ignored.
I'm actually not very optimistic that America can survive long term with a majority Black and Hispanic population where racial disparities remain as large as they've been. This doesn't strike me as a stable equilibrium. I'm also deeply skeptical that the solution is to basically pretend the problem doesn't exist while advocating for endless elite immigration from Asia. At some point that well is going to dry up, especially given the recent geopolitical tensions between the US and China.
In light of the woke and anti-meritocratic trends of the past decade, I find it to be a massive oversight that this particular issue isn't being discussed more. Far too many pundits focus on the glitzy and glamorous discussions of EVs and semiconductors and the geopolitical battle over the commanding heights of the 21st century, while ignoring the painfully obvious fact that a substantial minority and soon to be numerical majority of the population lags behind in the American race for educational and life achievement. That this structural deficiency wouldn't have a meaningful impact vis-a-vis our long term competition with China strikes me as pollyannish at best.
Crime isn't falling at all. Between de-policung, de-funding, non-prosecirion by Soros DAs, & massive retirements of officers, there is an epidemic of NON-REPORYED crime. Start with the knock out game, which victims don't waste their time. Real crime is at an all time high, greatly resembling the "crisis of law and order" in the 1850s. Jimmying crime states does no one any good.
This narrative needs much much more play
Great news. I knew or suspected some ( crime) but the last- that younger generations were doing good was very surprising. Maybe no Civil War after all.
A word of caution: the FBI hasn't released the UCR for 2023 yet so any speculation about changes in crime rates from year to year is speculative. In addition that WSJ graphic suffers from selection bias--crime rates are highly variable from city to city and in some locations the rise in crime in 2023 was dramatic (Washington DC). Finally, so far as 2024 goes there is some evidence to suggest that places like Chicago are seeing a resurgence of violence so far (see Magic Wade's SS where she does some preliminary number crunching).
The question with changing crime rates is whether or not they will fall back to the 2019 pre-covid norm or whether we are just seeing normal fluctuation around a new normal that features more crime. I personally suspect that future historians will be able to draw a line between pre and post pandemic America and the latter will be characterized by metrics such as higher overdose deaths, higher numbers of homelessness, increasing urban blight, more traffic fatalities, calamitous truancy rates--and more murders.
Pretty sure this is why younger generations feel a certain apathy towards their economic prospects. Regardless of their actual wealth increasing (and the additional things they can buy with it), it won’t buy them a house if this continues: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Median-house-price-to-median-household-income-annually-1984-to-2016-Source-Data_fig5_343914927
Regarding “Younger generations are doing better than their parents”:
Does the graph look a bit funny to you?
-The income plots seem to have a left shift. Income should start at 18 years (high school graduation), not 15 years.
-Surprising that there are not increasing income lags after 18 years for more recent generations, which would reflect increasing college attendance.
-For GenZ, the oldest are now 27 years old, which gives 9 years of income history, but the graph eyeballs at closer to 12 years income history.
Maybe minor issues, and the graph is basically correct.
I continue to believe there is something fishy about the "Gen Z is wealthier than previous generations" math. I'd like to see somebody try to actually control for differential inflation issues here, particularly around housing. To the extent that Gen Z is "wealthier" on paper because the house they scrimped to buy is worth a bigger amount of money, but then they have less capacity to either to spend money on anything that isn't the house, or to save up in other forms that can be spent for food and medicine in retirement -- that doesn't really seem like being wealthier. Sure, you could sell the house and live on that. But _where_ are you going to live on that, if every other house is just as expensive?
As Felix Salmon likes to say, you're born short one house. Inflated housing prices don't mean that owning a house makes you wealthier; it means it costs you more to cover your short.
On a different note from the debating of crime statistics, are the cross sectional GDP growth data adjusted for foreign born workers for the countries other than the US? Italy instituted a very attractive tax regime for high income immigrants post pandemic. While the number of immigrants may be small as a percentage of population relative to the US, it is likely they are 1-2 orders of magnitude on average higher income than the typical US immigrant. Would really appreciate your perspective on this.
I think wealth is a better financial gauge than income. And there, we are at peak inequality.
https://robertsdavidn.substack.com/p/an-open-message-to-the-top-01
I had to squint pretty hard to understand the immigration and crime charts. For example, Violent crime is not structurally falling and is still outrageously high relative to peer countries.