Krugman is, of course, right about this. BUT, note that universities can do a lot to revitalize declining and rural regions.
One thing I've been noticing about responses to today's column is that many people still don't get how strong the forces behind regional divergence are, and how hard to reverse 1/ https://t.co/Ft2aH1NcQt
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) November 20, 2018
More from Noah Smith
1/I'm thinking about the end of Apu in the context of the national debates on immigration and diversity.
2/Apu's presence in Springfield represented a basic reality of America in the late 20th and early 21st century: the presence of nonwhite immigrants.
3/As Tomas Jimenez writes in "The Other Side of Assimilation", for my generation, immigrants from India, China, Mexico, and many other countries aren't strange or foreign. On the contrary, they're a
4/But that America I grew up with is fundamentally ephemeral. The kids of immigrants don't retain their parents' culture. They merge into the local culture (and, as Jimenez documents, the local culture changes to reflect their influence).
5/Simpsons character don't change. But real people, and real communities, do. So a character who once represented the diversity that immigrants brought to American towns now represents a stereotype of Indian-Americans as "permanent foreigners".
\u2018The Simpsons\u2019 producer confirms Apu is being written out of show following controversy https://t.co/lKzFCe1wFa pic.twitter.com/s34IUDUtqs
— NME (@NME) October 26, 2018
2/Apu's presence in Springfield represented a basic reality of America in the late 20th and early 21st century: the presence of nonwhite immigrants.
3/As Tomas Jimenez writes in "The Other Side of Assimilation", for my generation, immigrants from India, China, Mexico, and many other countries aren't strange or foreign. On the contrary, they're a
4/But that America I grew up with is fundamentally ephemeral. The kids of immigrants don't retain their parents' culture. They merge into the local culture (and, as Jimenez documents, the local culture changes to reflect their influence).
5/Simpsons character don't change. But real people, and real communities, do. So a character who once represented the diversity that immigrants brought to American towns now represents a stereotype of Indian-Americans as "permanent foreigners".
This is so dumb and incorrect and wrong it's unbelievable.
Facts.
Facts!!
FACTS FACTS
Moar
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. is quickly approaching \u201ca moment of crisis\u201d because of the \u201crecord number of migrants\u201d spilling into the country https://t.co/QuiWPcXswA
— POLITICO (@politico) October 20, 2018
Facts.
Facts!!
FACTS FACTS
Moar
"Competitive wokeness", like "virtue signaling" and "preference falsification", seems to be something people on the right say in order to pretend that people on the left don't really believe what they claim to believe.
Basically we have a whole bunch of ways of saying "You can't possibly believe that!!". Which helps us avoid the terrifying fact that yes, people generally do believe it.
Of course, "believe" doesn't mean what it means in econ class. It means that people get a warm feeling from asserting something, even if they don't know what it means. "God is omnipotent", etc.
A lot of times we believe extreme things, simply because asserting those things all together in a group gives us a warm feeling of having an army on our side.
It's not competitive wokeness. It's COOPERATIVE wokeness.
"Virtue signaling" isn't fake or pretend. It's real.
"Virtue", when it comes right down to it, means membership on a team.
Sometimes, to prove you're on a team, it helps to say something people on the other team could never bring themselves to say.
"She now finds herself in the uppermost echelons of the culture industries, where woke liberalism is de rigueur and departures from it are stigmatized." @reihan on Taylor Swift's swing towards politics: https://t.co/cKW4LoY9IV
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) October 11, 2018
Basically we have a whole bunch of ways of saying "You can't possibly believe that!!". Which helps us avoid the terrifying fact that yes, people generally do believe it.
Of course, "believe" doesn't mean what it means in econ class. It means that people get a warm feeling from asserting something, even if they don't know what it means. "God is omnipotent", etc.
A lot of times we believe extreme things, simply because asserting those things all together in a group gives us a warm feeling of having an army on our side.
It's not competitive wokeness. It's COOPERATIVE wokeness.
"Virtue signaling" isn't fake or pretend. It's real.
"Virtue", when it comes right down to it, means membership on a team.
Sometimes, to prove you're on a team, it helps to say something people on the other team could never bring themselves to say.
1/Lots of tech companies and workers are making noises about leaving San Francisco, LA, NYC, and other "superstar" cities.
Some are predicting a shift to remote work and distributed companies.
Let's take a hard look at what that would actually
2/We're all familiar with the trend of tech companies and other knowledge industries (finance, biotech, etc.) piling into a few tech hubs, raising rents and house prices.
Now some think the advent of Zoom, Slack, etc. might reverse this trend.
https://t.co/nQVCJrKvrB
3/But escaping the superstar cities is going to be tough.
The forces keeping tech companies in places like SF are so strong that these regions have essentially become prisons for these companies.
4/In order to escape the prison of the superstar cities, tech companies and other knowledge industries will have to overcome the Four Jailers of Industrial Clustering:
1. In-person office productivity
2. Thick market effects
3. Knowledge spillovers
4. City life amenities
5/I'm actually pretty optimistic that companies can find ways to make remote work productive.
Studies show that working from home *some* of the time actually tends to raise
Some are predicting a shift to remote work and distributed companies.
Let's take a hard look at what that would actually
2/We're all familiar with the trend of tech companies and other knowledge industries (finance, biotech, etc.) piling into a few tech hubs, raising rents and house prices.
Now some think the advent of Zoom, Slack, etc. might reverse this trend.
https://t.co/nQVCJrKvrB
3/But escaping the superstar cities is going to be tough.
The forces keeping tech companies in places like SF are so strong that these regions have essentially become prisons for these companies.
4/In order to escape the prison of the superstar cities, tech companies and other knowledge industries will have to overcome the Four Jailers of Industrial Clustering:
1. In-person office productivity
2. Thick market effects
3. Knowledge spillovers
4. City life amenities
5/I'm actually pretty optimistic that companies can find ways to make remote work productive.
Studies show that working from home *some* of the time actually tends to raise
More from Society
This is a piece I've been thinking about for a long time. One of the most dominant policy ideas in Washington is that policy should, always and everywhere, move parents into paid labor. But what if that's wrong?
My reporting here convinced me that there's no large effect in either direction on labor force participation from child allowances. Canada has a bigger one than either Romney or Biden are considering, and more labor force participation among women.
But what if that wasn't true?
Forcing parents into low-wage, often exploitative, jobs by threatening them and their children with poverty may be counted as a success by some policymakers, but it’s a sign of a society that doesn’t value the most essential forms of labor.
The problem is in the very language we use. If I left my job as a New York Times columnist to care for my 2-year-old son, I’d be described as leaving the labor force. But as much as I adore him, there is no doubt I’d be working harder. I wouldn't have stopped working!
I tried to render conservative objections here fairly. I appreciate that @swinshi talked with me, and I'm sorry I couldn't include everything he said. I'll say I believe I used his strongest arguments, not more speculative ones, in the piece.
My reporting here convinced me that there's no large effect in either direction on labor force participation from child allowances. Canada has a bigger one than either Romney or Biden are considering, and more labor force participation among women.
But what if that wasn't true?
Forcing parents into low-wage, often exploitative, jobs by threatening them and their children with poverty may be counted as a success by some policymakers, but it’s a sign of a society that doesn’t value the most essential forms of labor.
The problem is in the very language we use. If I left my job as a New York Times columnist to care for my 2-year-old son, I’d be described as leaving the labor force. But as much as I adore him, there is no doubt I’d be working harder. I wouldn't have stopped working!
I tried to render conservative objections here fairly. I appreciate that @swinshi talked with me, and I'm sorry I couldn't include everything he said. I'll say I believe I used his strongest arguments, not more speculative ones, in the piece.
I appreciate his intellectual curiosity and effort. I have quibbles. But my big disappointment is there was no mention of unintended consequences, which we discussed and which are kind of THE core conservative concern on this issue.
— \U0001d682\U0001d68c\U0001d698\U0001d69d\U0001d69d \U0001d686\U0001d692\U0001d697\U0001d69c\U0001d691\U0001d692\U0001d699 (@swinshi) February 18, 2021
