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?
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.
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?
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.
But, like, what are we talking about when we are talking about how “rich” people are? Noah’s remarks cite 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?))
My anecdotal experience has been that as soon as one crosses the border into Canada everything seems nicer. I have only been to Quebec and Vancouver though. This experience may be colored by how sad-making upstate NY and the northern reaches of Vermont and NH and Maine are? The rest, just looking at the numbers noted above - which, again, not the result of very careful scrutiny and could be misleading!
But, like, have you been to the middle of Pennsylvania or anywhere between Houston and…the Atlantic Ocean? It is pretty grim unless you like collecting snapshots of locations with competing dollar stores next to each other…
The wealthier parts of Canada tend to be along the US border, and some poor areas of the US are found along the Canadian border. The result is there are many places where the Canadian side of the border will be wealthier. Also Canada produces more public goods, and is a higher trust society, so even small-town Canada tends to look nicer.
Rural life in Canada benefits from more social supports, and a high proportion of work is seasonal, making it poorer than most US rural areas. Remote Canada is home to 3% of Canadians, and has virtually no private economy at all. There is no comparison with the US.
As BronxZooCobra notes, the vehicles are smaller in Canada (at least in some provinces). That's partly cultural, but mostly because fuel is more expensive in Canada. Fuel is transported further and subject to higher fuel and carbon taxes than the US.
My impression is the complete opposite - as soon as you cross the border the cars are all much smaller and shittier. The houses are smaller and more worn. All because the people are just a lot poorer.
I'm assuming you flew to Vancouver? Quebec is definitely a lot worse off than Vermont. Which makes sense as incomes in Vermont are almost 2x those in VT.
I visited Quebec City and Montreal. I stayed in the urban core but unless there's a Latin America style gap between the fancy tourist zones and the places where non rich people actually live, they both seem pretty nice. The Montreal Metro is so nice and clean. The only part of the city that looked a little run down didn't feel at all unsafe which you can't say in the US.
The urban core is doing part of the work as is low income being reflective in America of some level of dysfunction. The median accountant in the US makes $85k and the median accountant in Canada makes 64CAD or $46k US. $46k is barely above minimum wage in CA. But to visit a neighborhood of Canadian accountants things will be smaller and cheaper but you won't have the issues you might encounter in a neighborhood of minimum wage workers in America.
Not sure what to say. I cannot claim more than a small sample size of relevant experiences - probably less than 40 days in Canada and have only driven extensively around one province. It seemed real nice… I am sure it has sad areas too… But I was really just querying what data should be considered and what would make for an interesting comparison? Because the article calls Alabama the poorest state and cites both per capita gdp and median income, and looking only at the latter caused me to wonder how should really think about what it means to be “rich” in this context…
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.
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.
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.
To measure this, they calculated gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. In simple terms, it’s the size of the Canadian economy in a given year divided by the population. The same was done for Alabama. After adjusting for foreign exchange and some cost differences in both countries, the average for Canada’s 10 provinces was estimated at US$55,000 in 2022, the same as Alabama. Shortly after, the IMF found Canada had actually fallen behind the southern state. (Canada has since edged ever-so-slightly higher than Alabama; the numbers are volatile from year to year.)
The numbers themselves can be quibbled with and calculated using different approaches and assumptions but the rhetorical angle is a good one I think. We Canadians have imo been too complacent about economic growth. Even now most Canadians just want everything to stay the same (or go back to before the Trump tariffs). Not much support for pro-housing policy, smart deregulation or tax reform.
Yeah, but Noah’s article also cites median income. And so what I am exploring is conclusions to draw from that with respect to the question (a straw man, as originally framed) of what constitutes being “rich”…
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
While the Yuppie Fish Tank theory surely holds in most cases, there are exceptions. I live in an expensive, beautiful resort town in the Mountain West. New luxury condos built here just attract more retirees/second home owners from out of state. This raises service demands and brings in more workers who can't be housed given high costs of construction.
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.
That's another issue on which he may prefer to have a majority for to push across the line.
Personally I'm torn on that one. That is some beautiful nature up on the northern BC coast that I would hate to see destroyed by a major dilbit spill (that no one really knows how to clean up). Torn but not necessary against given the situation with the US.
I know “America is really actually rich” section deals with the US and Canada but you’ve written about it with the EU as well many times.
I recently saw a Krugman takedown of someone making a similar point by using GDP per Capita at PPP which makes the gap between the US and EU very small. I’d be very curious your thoughts on this/his argument which I assume you’ve seen.
I often find a difference between these two and like to see them in a debate - for me Noah is the bystander - the guy I would not have on my side in a fight but Krugman - morally he have your back . So I doubt you will get an answer.
Be careful when using Europe as an indicator of how AI will impact job roles and employment. I believe you were one of many that pointed out the “European” employment laws are stifling innovation and growth, causing companies to treat hiring as a “last resort”.
AI is not causing job loss in Europe because it is too costly layoff employees.
The good news is that existing employee productivity has increased. I would hope that management will apply this increased productivity to doing “innovative & risky” projects (sort of like a Startup within a company) that the existing labor laws discourage.
So fewer new employees will be hired, but European companies didn’t hire much anyway. So it is probably a wash.
AI could be the tool that allows European companies to become competitive with US companies, BUT…, the EU will work hard to fuck that up.
The more AI-focused content the better IMO. There is too little analysis that goes beyond the sensational to dig into plausible paths forward as AI capabilities increase more-or-less exponentially. The emerging theme among center-left commentators that takes seriously various forms of public ownership / sovereign wealth investment to capture the benefits of AI growth and using that wealth to ameliorate some of the potentially massive disruptions is a welcome trend and deserves even deeper thought -- how much? how soon? who ultimately controls the investment and to what extent is ownership leverage exerted to shape AI policies and applications? Do we need an "AI Fed" to manage this - answerable to Federal elected officials but independent and insulated enough to avoid the corruption and self-dealing and mismanagement of Trump and the MAGA-morons, as well counter-productive far-left demands?
Also: I find it kind of sad when lifestyle articles land on food scenes as the last straw to grasp to point to quality of culture in some out of the way place. “It’s not all Panera Bread and Cheesecake Factories anymore! We have heard of bottarga, we have seasonal ingredients!” just seems like the lowest possible bar to jump. And the American belly the easiest possible thing to satisfy…
I think there’s a potential missing aspect to gentrification. I remember residents complaining about gentrification because the change in businesses to accommodate wealthier people, so that things like food prices went up and things got fancier.
Would be interested to know if this actually happened, or whether that’s blame for inflation being pegged against new people entering the neighbourhood.
I dont mind the AI stuff but I do find the other stuff interesting- like economics in the developing world, and the comparisons of America to Europe/Asia are fun. I also miss your regular urbanism thoughts as well as your reports on solar/battery technology, and other emerging technologies. While I understand the hype and potential about AI, Id like a but more on your thoughts on E Bikes and Waymos and Congestion Pricing and the economic developments of Central America and why Ann Arbor is so much lovelier than Columbus, O-heck-no.
Yes Noah the United States is rich. We are that rich, unhappy, dysfunctional family living in our own triangle of sadness.
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
Great read. Thanks for sharing.
Well, Trump is getting rid of Anthropic for feds. OpenAI may jump in, so the killbots will be ChatGPT enabled.
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.
And some of the people who don’t understand this are Donald Trump, Elisabeth Warren and Michele Wu and most other big city mayors.
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?
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.
But, like, what are we talking about when we are talking about how “rich” people are? Noah’s remarks cite 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?))
Have you ever been to Canada? It's very obvious the standard of living is a lot lower.
My anecdotal experience has been that as soon as one crosses the border into Canada everything seems nicer. I have only been to Quebec and Vancouver though. This experience may be colored by how sad-making upstate NY and the northern reaches of Vermont and NH and Maine are? The rest, just looking at the numbers noted above - which, again, not the result of very careful scrutiny and could be misleading!
But, like, have you been to the middle of Pennsylvania or anywhere between Houston and…the Atlantic Ocean? It is pretty grim unless you like collecting snapshots of locations with competing dollar stores next to each other…
The wealthier parts of Canada tend to be along the US border, and some poor areas of the US are found along the Canadian border. The result is there are many places where the Canadian side of the border will be wealthier. Also Canada produces more public goods, and is a higher trust society, so even small-town Canada tends to look nicer.
Rural life in Canada benefits from more social supports, and a high proportion of work is seasonal, making it poorer than most US rural areas. Remote Canada is home to 3% of Canadians, and has virtually no private economy at all. There is no comparison with the US.
As BronxZooCobra notes, the vehicles are smaller in Canada (at least in some provinces). That's partly cultural, but mostly because fuel is more expensive in Canada. Fuel is transported further and subject to higher fuel and carbon taxes than the US.
My impression is the complete opposite - as soon as you cross the border the cars are all much smaller and shittier. The houses are smaller and more worn. All because the people are just a lot poorer.
I'm assuming you flew to Vancouver? Quebec is definitely a lot worse off than Vermont. Which makes sense as incomes in Vermont are almost 2x those in VT.
I visited Quebec City and Montreal. I stayed in the urban core but unless there's a Latin America style gap between the fancy tourist zones and the places where non rich people actually live, they both seem pretty nice. The Montreal Metro is so nice and clean. The only part of the city that looked a little run down didn't feel at all unsafe which you can't say in the US.
The urban core is doing part of the work as is low income being reflective in America of some level of dysfunction. The median accountant in the US makes $85k and the median accountant in Canada makes 64CAD or $46k US. $46k is barely above minimum wage in CA. But to visit a neighborhood of Canadian accountants things will be smaller and cheaper but you won't have the issues you might encounter in a neighborhood of minimum wage workers in America.
Your last sentence makes no sense. I assume you meant Quebec to be the last word.
Not sure what to say. I cannot claim more than a small sample size of relevant experiences - probably less than 40 days in Canada and have only driven extensively around one province. It seemed real nice… I am sure it has sad areas too… But I was really just querying what data should be considered and what would make for an interesting comparison? Because the article calls Alabama the poorest state and cites both per capita gdp and median income, and looking only at the latter caused me to wonder how should really think about what it means to be “rich” in this context…
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.
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.
:)
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.
Here's the quote from the Globe:
To measure this, they calculated gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. In simple terms, it’s the size of the Canadian economy in a given year divided by the population. The same was done for Alabama. After adjusting for foreign exchange and some cost differences in both countries, the average for Canada’s 10 provinces was estimated at US$55,000 in 2022, the same as Alabama. Shortly after, the IMF found Canada had actually fallen behind the southern state. (Canada has since edged ever-so-slightly higher than Alabama; the numbers are volatile from year to year.)
The numbers themselves can be quibbled with and calculated using different approaches and assumptions but the rhetorical angle is a good one I think. We Canadians have imo been too complacent about economic growth. Even now most Canadians just want everything to stay the same (or go back to before the Trump tariffs). Not much support for pro-housing policy, smart deregulation or tax reform.
Yeah, but Noah’s article also cites median income. And so what I am exploring is conclusions to draw from that with respect to the question (a straw man, as originally framed) of what constitutes being “rich”…
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
While the Yuppie Fish Tank theory surely holds in most cases, there are exceptions. I live in an expensive, beautiful resort town in the Mountain West. New luxury condos built here just attract more retirees/second home owners from out of state. This raises service demands and brings in more workers who can't be housed given high costs of construction.
Yeah I think these policies work much better when implemented over a wide region rather than in single cities and towns.
So Borjas is another example of the old maxim that if you torture the data enough, it will confess to anything?
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.
Well, he did stop the official opposition to the west coast oil pipeline, which is a start at least.
That's another issue on which he may prefer to have a majority for to push across the line.
Personally I'm torn on that one. That is some beautiful nature up on the northern BC coast that I would hate to see destroyed by a major dilbit spill (that no one really knows how to clean up). Torn but not necessary against given the situation with the US.
I know “America is really actually rich” section deals with the US and Canada but you’ve written about it with the EU as well many times.
I recently saw a Krugman takedown of someone making a similar point by using GDP per Capita at PPP which makes the gap between the US and EU very small. I’d be very curious your thoughts on this/his argument which I assume you’ve seen.
I often find a difference between these two and like to see them in a debate - for me Noah is the bystander - the guy I would not have on my side in a fight but Krugman - morally he have your back . So I doubt you will get an answer.
Be careful when using Europe as an indicator of how AI will impact job roles and employment. I believe you were one of many that pointed out the “European” employment laws are stifling innovation and growth, causing companies to treat hiring as a “last resort”.
AI is not causing job loss in Europe because it is too costly layoff employees.
The good news is that existing employee productivity has increased. I would hope that management will apply this increased productivity to doing “innovative & risky” projects (sort of like a Startup within a company) that the existing labor laws discourage.
So fewer new employees will be hired, but European companies didn’t hire much anyway. So it is probably a wash.
AI could be the tool that allows European companies to become competitive with US companies, BUT…, the EU will work hard to fuck that up.
The more AI-focused content the better IMO. There is too little analysis that goes beyond the sensational to dig into plausible paths forward as AI capabilities increase more-or-less exponentially. The emerging theme among center-left commentators that takes seriously various forms of public ownership / sovereign wealth investment to capture the benefits of AI growth and using that wealth to ameliorate some of the potentially massive disruptions is a welcome trend and deserves even deeper thought -- how much? how soon? who ultimately controls the investment and to what extent is ownership leverage exerted to shape AI policies and applications? Do we need an "AI Fed" to manage this - answerable to Federal elected officials but independent and insulated enough to avoid the corruption and self-dealing and mismanagement of Trump and the MAGA-morons, as well counter-productive far-left demands?
If I don't see a Noah review of "How Africa works" soon I will have to assume something is wrong...
Also: I find it kind of sad when lifestyle articles land on food scenes as the last straw to grasp to point to quality of culture in some out of the way place. “It’s not all Panera Bread and Cheesecake Factories anymore! We have heard of bottarga, we have seasonal ingredients!” just seems like the lowest possible bar to jump. And the American belly the easiest possible thing to satisfy…
Have u seen this?
https://x.com/aakashgupta/status/2027246737568813476?s=46&t=nsWrtjLiWGn4XICVdBlnNw
Things are changing so fast …
I think there’s a potential missing aspect to gentrification. I remember residents complaining about gentrification because the change in businesses to accommodate wealthier people, so that things like food prices went up and things got fancier.
Would be interested to know if this actually happened, or whether that’s blame for inflation being pegged against new people entering the neighbourhood.
I dont mind the AI stuff but I do find the other stuff interesting- like economics in the developing world, and the comparisons of America to Europe/Asia are fun. I also miss your regular urbanism thoughts as well as your reports on solar/battery technology, and other emerging technologies. While I understand the hype and potential about AI, Id like a but more on your thoughts on E Bikes and Waymos and Congestion Pricing and the economic developments of Central America and why Ann Arbor is so much lovelier than Columbus, O-heck-no.