BC ECONOMY
Saved by @Mollyycolllinss

1/OK, let's take a little break from Coup Twitter, and think about an economic issue:

How can we build up the wealth of the middle class?

 2/The typical American has surprisingly little wealth compared to the typical resident of many other developed countries.

This is a fact that is not widely known or appreciated.
3/Now, some people argue that stuff like Social Security or social insurance programs should be included in wealth. But I chose to focus on private wealth because I think having assets you can sell whenever you want is important to people.

https://t.co/rcRHSHkTMd
4/For many decades after World War 2, middle-class wealth in America was on a smooth upward trajectory.

Then the housing crash came, and all that changed. Suddenly the rich were still doing well but everyone else was seeing the end of their American Dream.
5/Why the divergence?

Because the American middle class has its wealth in houses -- specifically, in the houses they live in.

It's the rich who own stocks.
6/OK so how do we fix this? How do we get middle-class wealth *back*?

Well, the option we've apparently chosen so far is just to tell people "Suck it up. Start at the bottom, and save it all back."

Seems a bit inadequate, no?
7/Now, we can give people more income -- for example, with UBI -- to help them save faster. I'm certainly not averse to that. But it's going to take a while, and it's politically tough, and it depends on people saving what we give them...
8/We can also have the government save money on people's behalf, with a Social Wealth Fund. But while it's a cool idea, I don't think it would feel like "real wealth" to lots of people, any more than Social Security does. It's more like UBI, really.
9/So that basically leaves: Housing. The way the American middle class traditionally gets its wealth.

Can we still use housing to generate broad middle-class wealth? Should we?
10/Well, the answer to the question of "can we" is "yes". The returns on housing are typically very good, when you include rental yield.

As long as people and companies keep moving to cities, the value of urban location (i.e. land) will appreciate.
11/But SHOULD we distribute that wealth via home values?

Doing so presents some obvious problems. It invites NIMBYism -- homeowners leveraging local government to push up the prices of their homes, even at the expense of the economy.
12/Owner-occupied housing is also an illiquid asset that's hard to diversify.
13/But there are advantages to building wealth through homeownership as well.

For one thing, most people SUCK at stock investing, but most people kinda-sorta understand homeownership.
14/Also, having a mortgage nudges people to save more each month, nudges them to invest in a riskier but higher-return asset class, and allows them to take on leverage -- all of which have their downsides, but which allow middle-class wealth to keep pace with the rich.
15/Finally, it's just...what the American middle class is used to.

It's hard to completely revamp our wealth-building system. We may simply be locked in.
16/But then the next question is: How can we change our housing system so that every generation can build wealth, instead of one generation (cough, Boomers, cough) getting all the wealth and then pulling up the ladder behind them?
17/Well, there's the YIMBY answer: Just make cities allow more private housing development, and more housing wealth will be created, and increased supply will push prices down, allowing young people to buy in.
18/A second idea is down-payment assistance -- having the federal government give first-time homebuyers and low-income homebuyers some money to help them buy a home.
19/The problem is, you have to do both YIMBYism AND down-payment assistance at the same time, so you don't just end up pumping up prices and handing taxpayer money to existing homeowners.

That's a tricky trick to pull off!
20/So I had another idea -- a Modified Singapore System, in which the government actually builds new housing and then sells it at discounted rates to first-time and low-income homebuyers.

https://t.co/2GwiFm7rib
21/This idea has plenty of challenges, of course. And some drawbacks too. But if we want to get wealth into the hands of the American masses fast, and if we're going to do it through housing, this is an idea worth considering.

(end)

https://t.co/Ask8xPgBrg
Oh, and if you like stuff like this, remember to sign up for my Substack's free email list!

https://t.co/FGppA1M8W6
Anyway, now back to your regularly scheduled coup attempt fallout...

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Noah Smith
Noah Smith
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When Republicans started to believe in racial bloc voting - when they stopped believing that nonwhite people could ever be persuaded to vote Republican - they started to see immigration as an invasion.

This explains why immigration is now at the center of partisan conflict.


Of course, the belief in ethnic bloc voting becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When a slight Dem tilt among Hispanics and Asians caused the GOP to turn against them, Hispanics and Asians shifted more toward the Dems. Etc. etc. A self-reinforcing cycle.

Bush's 2006 amnesty attempt, and the 2013 intra-GOP fight over immigration reform, were two moments when the GOP could have turned back to the approach of Reagan, and courted Hispanics and Asians.

But they decided against this, and...here we are.

What will disrupt this bad equilibrium, and save American politics from being an eternal race war?

Either:
A) More white voters will grow disgusted with the GOP approach and defect, or
B) The GOP will find some non-immigration-related issues to attract more Hispanics and Asians.

As long as both parties see elections in terms of racial bloc voting - where the only way to win is to increase turnout among your own racial blocs or suppress turnout by the other party's racial blocs - American politics will not improve, and the country will decline.

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Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
Confession: I haven't the slightest interest in my genetic ancestry or where my ancestors came from or what they did.

I mean, my dad's family came from Lithuania. They changed their name from Kuznets in 1905. At some point they were blacksmiths. My mom's family came from Halychyna in Ukraine. I have no idea what they did. That's about all I know.

Oh, I do know that pretty much all of my extended family who stayed in Europe got wiped out by the Nazis.

I like to think that my ancestors were nothing and nobody. Random boring peasants with no special talents or wealth.

Except for Genghis Khan, of course. But he's everyone's ancestor.

The best thing about this approach is that I don't have anything to live up to. ;-)

(end)
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Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
Time for panel #3: Big Tech and regulation!

I will be live-tweeting again, and you can also watch video at either the Twitter or Facebook links below!


Kaissar: Every industry gets regulated when it gets big. The question is what kind of regulation Big Tech will get,and whether the companies will be proactive in shaping it.

Kaissar: More profitable companies have higher returns. Why? Maybe it's a risk factor, because more profit = higher risk of getting regulated.

Bershidskyis showing a diagram of GDPR complaince pop-ups. What a massive ill-conceived bureaucratic mess.

Ritholtz: It's 2018 and we're still talking about Facebook privacy settings?! If you're still giving your personal data to Facebook, you just don't care about privacy!
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Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
1/OK, I should really write another thread about university-centric regional development, because I think people often make some (very understandable) mistakes when thinking about this issue.

2/The biggest myth, I think, is that universities help regions by educating locals as undergraduates.

Skeptics of universities say: "But most of the people who graduate end up leaving."

3/In fact, most of what a university does for a regional economy is NOT about educating local kids.

Educating local kids is good for the nation, but doesn't help a region much.

The way a university helps a region is through

4/Undergraduates usually leave town after graduation.

But university RESEARCH pulls in OTHER smart people from other regions, and they stay there.

Here's a paper showing that this is the main way universities increase a region's human capital:

5/Research also pulls in business investment.

Companies want to partner with university labs, so they can commercialize the technologies the labs produce. So they invest in the labs, and sometimes they even put their offices in the town.
SOCIETY
Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
To be honest, I think this is just the effect of Twitter.

If you're on Twitter all the time - as every political commentator now is - it's easy to think that whiny, big-talking Twitter slacktivists are "the Dems".

But what's happening out there on the ground?


This is another reason I think Twitter is so bad for society.

It convinces intellectuals and commentators that practically everyone who's on their side is an extremist.

Which makes them tolerate extremism out of a (false) feeling of necessity.

If you stay on Twitter too much (which we all do now), you start to think that the typical left-of-center person is some British wanker who quote-tweets "Imagine thinking this" to anyone who doesn't like the idea of "ending capitalism".

But he is not typical.

A majority of Americans are not on Twitter.

But *every* journalist, commentator, and intellectual *has* to be on Twitter.

So every journalist, commentator, and intellectual comes face to face with big-talking slacktivist faux-extremists day in and day out.

It's a problem!!

Online bubbles full of shouty faux-extremists are, in general, fine.

The difference is that every journalist, commentator, and intellectual is essentially forced to exist in THIS bubble, because their jobs require it.

Twitter is a dystopian technology.

(end)
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Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham
@paulgp
My friend @itsafronomics wanted to know the breakdown of student debt by income, so I pulled data from the SCF.

Student debt is more concentrated amongst high earners, but disproportionately amongst Black borrowers. The plot below plots the average within Income Quartiles.
1/n


But those are the averages. What's the share that's above 10k? (This is the Biden current cutoff for debt forgiveness, so a useful benchmark).

For comparison, 20% of white Americans have student debt, and 31% of Black Americans.


Let's contrast that with say, above 20k. I was surprised at how high the share remains.


When we get to 50k of student debt, or more, we see it's only about 5% of the US, and around 8% of Black Americans. Strikingly, it's a huge share of high income Black Americans (this is a known fact in the education literature, I believe).


So what does this look like put together? Overall, we see a higher share of Americans with debt above 10k, and 20k. We would cover a decent amount with 10k, but miss Black Americans especially.
ECONOMY
Brian Wesbury
Brian Wesbury
@wesbury
Inflation Is Coming!

Some say: Inflation didn’t rise after 2008-2015 Fed QE, so it won’t rise this time. Here are the problems with that argument.

1) From 2008-2015 regulators hammered the banks, so while the Fed’s balance sheet expanded, M2 did not accelerate.

2) In 2020, we used the banks to push out money, the opposite of the first round of QE. PPP loans were financed through banks and unemployment checks were direct-deposited.
3) The M2 measure of money is up more than 25% in the past 12 months.

4) That alone, 25%+ M2 growth, is enough, but we are compounding the problems.
5) Regulating fossil fuel production drives energy prices up.
6) Ag, industrial & transportation are energy intensive, and many claim they are bad for the environment. Result: higher prices.

7) Federal government borrowing and deficit spending encourages more Fed money printing, and artificially lifts demand.
8) Higher tax rates, rising minimum wage, and big government crowd out the private sector; reducing supply.
9) Demand up; Supply down! Inflation is coming.
ECONOMY
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Tinashe M
Tinashe M
@baba_nyenyedzi
1/ 2017 vs 2020 Economics

Whatever the many reasons for the coup. The aftermath has been an economic disaster. This is instructive, since Mugabe was a monumental failure in Economics.

I wish to stick to economic facts &figures. I restrict myself exclusively to GOZ & RBZ stats

2/
To be fair to Mnangagwa, as President he is fed a lot of misinformation & politically convenient gibberish by those closest to him & security clusters bent on personal enrichment than national well being.

I say this, because some of the issues are too simple to understand.

3/
Mnangagwa can never commit harakiri ( Japanese suicide by cutting one’s belly) if facts & figures were honestly presented to him. Yet we saw Mugabe commit harakiri. He died a sad death while his lieutenants are now in power. Where the lieutenants honest to Mugabe...

4/
Chinamasa was Mugabe’s finance Minister. Was he frank & honest? If so why would he benefit from Mugabe’s ouster? The same is true of Mugabe’s bureaucracy. Most benefitted from the coup. So we ask if they were honest with him during his reign?

ED suffers the same problem

5/
On Wallstreet, CEO’s are not protected from their critics & independent research. Often they rely entirely on this research & seek it out in developing their strategy.

Once, Patterson Timba kicked out an analyst from his investor briefing. Forgetting strategy is in critique
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Faith
Faith
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Took the 6 yo old out for some local lock down exercise on his bike. Park too busy to cycle through, so we did a loop on local roads because that's the only other option without driving somewhere. Here's how it went (a thread) @CycleSheffield @CyclewalkSCR @DameSarahStorey

The 6yo doesnt cycle in a complete straight line yet so one of us cycles abreast of him just in case. Lots of drivers waited patiently for a long time before overtaking slowly and safely. Thank you for this. Sudden accelerating engines make the 6yo less likely to stay straight.

Some drivers, sadly not an insignificant number, decided they needed to get past more quickly and more slowly than was safe. Where were they all going to and why the need to be so impatient? It's not like there is anything to get to quickly at the moment.

Drivers coming the other way were generally the biggest threat. The roads were double parked with people using the park (worst I have have ever seen) resulting in narrow road space. Drivers did not slow down to adjust to this or to us cycling alongside the 6yo.

One driver overtaking a parked car had to encroach on to our side of the road. Instead of waiting he pushed out and shook his head at us. Did he think we shouldn't be on the road with a small child or did he just think he had priority? Either way he was wrong.
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Marjorie Taylor Greene \U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8
Marjorie Taylor Greene...
@mtgreenee
I’m focused on building an American free market economy protecting free speech.

Allowing the businesses with the highest creativity & best end user experience to compete.

Driving prices low, quality and service high, and putting American’s first.

Made in America!

Cont’d..
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Try not only to have a higher IQ but also to have higher EQ and SQ.
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UNTOLD STORY OF QUEEN BHAVASHANKARI OF BENGAL - A 🧵u must read

Know the role of Naga Sadhus

PART-1

One of the most underrated empires to ever grace India is the kingdom of Bhurshut from central Bengal.

1/


A medieval powerhouse this kingdom stood firm against the Pathan invasion from Orissa twice, and with each time devastating the enemy forces.

Along with this, we also have to note that this was the time when the empire was under the reign of a widowed queen named Bhavashankari.

She wasn’t even born in a royal family and yet she achieved what most of the kings couldn’t do

This begs the question, why does no one remember this great kingdom?

3/

Bhurshut empire thrived from 15th century till late 18th century as an independent kingdom while acting as tributary state with full autonomy.

4/

What’s even more puzzling is that no one knows about the great queen Bhavanshakari who thrashed the Pathans single handedly without the aid of their allies.

5/
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