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
This thread demonstrates that a lot of academic writing that *looks* like utter nonsense is merely scholars dressing up a useful but mundane point with a ton of unnecessary jargon.
My theory is that the jargon creates an artificial barrier to entry. https://t.co/MqLyyppdHl
If one must spend years marinating one's brain in jargon to be perceived as an expert on a topic, it protects the status and earning power of people who study relatively easy topics.
In econ, a similar thing is accomplished by what recent Nobel prize winner Paul Romer calls "mathiness": https://t.co/DBCRRc8Mir
But mathiness and jargon are not quite the same...
Jargon usually doesn't force you to change the substance of your central point.
Mathiness often does. By forcing you to write your model in a way that's mathematically tractable (easy to work with), mathiness often impoverishes your understanding of how the world really works.
has written about this problem:
Imagine for a moment the most obscurantist, jargon-filled, po-mo article the politically correct academy might produce. Pure SJW nonsense. Got it? Chances are you're imagining something like the infamous "Feminist Glaciology" article from a few years back.https://t.co/NRaWNREBvR pic.twitter.com/qtSFBYY80S
— Jeffrey Sachs (@JeffreyASachs) October 13, 2018
My theory is that the jargon creates an artificial barrier to entry. https://t.co/MqLyyppdHl
If one must spend years marinating one's brain in jargon to be perceived as an expert on a topic, it protects the status and earning power of people who study relatively easy topics.
In econ, a similar thing is accomplished by what recent Nobel prize winner Paul Romer calls "mathiness": https://t.co/DBCRRc8Mir
But mathiness and jargon are not quite the same...
Jargon usually doesn't force you to change the substance of your central point.
Mathiness often does. By forcing you to write your model in a way that's mathematically tractable (easy to work with), mathiness often impoverishes your understanding of how the world really works.
has written about this problem:
"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.
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.
(end)
This explains why immigration is now at the center of partisan conflict.
Why did California turn Blue?
— Sen. Eric Brakey (@SenatorBrakey) October 28, 2018
Why is Texas turning Blue?
The left has failed at selling socialism to the American people for decades. We have rejected it.
Their new strategy is mass importation of new voters to transform our political culture.
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.
(end)
More from Society
We finally have the U.S. Citizenship Act Bill Text! I'm going to go through some portions of the bill right now and highlight some of the major changes and improvements that it would make to our immigration system.
Thread:
First the Bill makes a series of promises changes to the way we talk about immigrants and immigration law.
Gone would be the term "alien" and in its place is "noncitizen."
Also gone would be the term "alienage," replaced with "noncitizenship."
Now we get to the "earned path to citizenship" for all undocumented immigrants present in the United States on January 1, 2021.
Under this bill, anyone who satisfies the eligibility criteria for a new "lawful prospective immigrant status" can come out of the shadows.
So, what are the eligibility criteria for becoming a "lawful prospective immigrant status"? Those are in a new INA 245G and include:
- Payment of the appropriate fees
- Continuous presence after January 1, 2021
- Not having certain criminal record (but there's a waiver)
After a person has been in "lawful prospective immigrant status" for at least 5 years, they can apply for a green card, so long as they still pass background checks and have paid back any taxes they are required to do so by law.
However! Some groups don't have to wait 5 years.
Thread:
The immigration bill text is out!
— Nicole Narea (@nicolenarea) February 18, 2021
Senate version: https://t.co/aJUmtVW6Ir
House version: https://t.co/JMKjQaDi04
Excuse me while I go at this with a highlighter.
First the Bill makes a series of promises changes to the way we talk about immigrants and immigration law.
Gone would be the term "alien" and in its place is "noncitizen."
Also gone would be the term "alienage," replaced with "noncitizenship."
Now we get to the "earned path to citizenship" for all undocumented immigrants present in the United States on January 1, 2021.
Under this bill, anyone who satisfies the eligibility criteria for a new "lawful prospective immigrant status" can come out of the shadows.
So, what are the eligibility criteria for becoming a "lawful prospective immigrant status"? Those are in a new INA 245G and include:
- Payment of the appropriate fees
- Continuous presence after January 1, 2021
- Not having certain criminal record (but there's a waiver)
After a person has been in "lawful prospective immigrant status" for at least 5 years, they can apply for a green card, so long as they still pass background checks and have paid back any taxes they are required to do so by law.
However! Some groups don't have to wait 5 years.
