15 Comments
User's avatar
Kathleen Weber's avatar

Keeping up with AI? READ THIS DEEP DIVE on the Pentagon's bullying of Anthropic. How successful will the government be in enslaving smart people and demanding their intellectual cooperation?

https://www.ifyoucankeepit.org/cp/189341250

Quy Ma's avatar

People don’t understand supply and demand when it comes to housing. Zoning, permitting, and land use defaults are doing the actual governing and they were set upstream of any market feedback. “Build more housing” wins on economics every time. It keeps losing to coordination systems that were designed to prevent exactly that.

Buzen's avatar

And some of the people who don’t understand this are Donald Trump, Elisabeth Warren and Michele Wu and most other big city mayors.

Antti Kuha's avatar

Krugman had literally yesterday a post about PPP adjusted growth trajectories, which do not overcount the impact of tech sector as much as using (real) GDP

No's avatar
1hEdited

Re: Alabama - Willing to be corrected here, but I am seeing Alabama as the state with the 6th lowest median income and the Canadian province with the lowest median income (New Brunswick) is higher than Alabama when converted to US dollars at current exchange rates. Even after taxes it appears to be about the same as Alabama - and those taxes buy healthcare? I am not sure income and tax figures are even a very good way to measure disposable income much less living standards. Like, factoring healthcare, home insurance, auto insurance, tuition and childcare… I am not sure that a typical Canadian family wouldnt have more disposable income than a corresponding American family? (i guess a high salaried American with no children in a low tax state and good employer-provided benefits in a state with low home insurance costs does “best”? But the music, art, and walkability in that location probably blows?) This is just from a quick series of software requests - but am I missing something?

Tom's avatar

I’m not going to challenge your data, but would you assume that childless, rich people live in places with bad music, bad art, and bad walkability? My sense is good food, music, and art tend to collocate with the affluent, the single people that buy them.

No's avatar

Ha! You are right. I just meant places with low homeowners insurance and car insurance rates (the places where post-tax income would be least burdened by fixed costs) would likely be boring - which I admit I associate with, like, New Hampshire. Did not actually check. Could have unjustifiably maligned such places, for sure.

Tom's avatar

I’m not going to challenge your data, but why would you assume that childless, rich people live in places with bad music, bad art, and bad walkability? My sense is good food, music, and art tend to collocate with the affluent people that buy them.

No's avatar
28mEdited

But, like, what are we talking about when we are talking about how “rich” people are? The article cites median income in a confusing aside in the paragraph starting “In terms of per capita GDP…”. And then focuses on lifestyle-oriented quotes/anecdata about Birmingham…. (The aside is confusing because it seems to slip from a comparison of Alabama’s per capita GDP to all of Canada in first sentence, and then seems to talk about national median income in the second (i.e., second sentence not about Alabama at all?))

Buzen's avatar
36mEdited

Median income is not comparable to per capita GDP, the first is only personal income to the median earner (or household, which makes a difference also ) the latter is production of all goods, divided by the number of people.

Lee's avatar

Yes Noah the United States is rich. We are that rich, unhappy, dysfunctional family living in our own triangle of sadness.

Jason S.'s avatar

I think Carney gets its with respect to Canada’s lagging economic growth and is searching for a majority government so he can make some harder decisions. Up until now he has only made the easy ones — like scrapping the consumer carbon tax/rebate, cutting temporary workers and foreign students, redirecting money into new policy vehicles and making small cuts to the public service. Nothing forceful on cutting regulations or tax reform or buying a more liberalized housing regime yet.

Buzen's avatar

Well, he did stop the official opposition to the west coast oil pipeline, which is a start at least.