Things that went whizzing by that I want to remember... <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/briefly-noted-for-2021-05-05-we> Subscribe now First: Ian Leslie: Biden's Bet: ‘Biden... is... hinting at... “I think they’re going to write about this point in history… about whether or not democracy can function in the 21st century. Not a joke. Whether autocracy is the answe—these were my debates I’d have in the many times I met with Xi.”... Biden believes that technology and science are moving so fast that they pose an existential challenge to democracy itself. The consensus used to be that if China wanted to catch with the West it would have to democratise—become more free, and more diverse, with power less centralised. But Xi has doubled down on autocracy and centralisation, partly by deploying new technologies. China is still growing. For Biden, it’s up to America to show the rest of the world that democracy is still the best platform… LINK: <https://ianleslie.substack.com/p/bidens-bet> Share Very Briefly Noted: World Time Buddy: _Time Converter and World Clock: Conversion at a Glance <https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/> Rod van Meer: Understanding Quantum Computers<https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/intro-to-quantum-computing> W.E.B. Du Bois (1910): The Souls of White Folk <https://loa-shared.s3.amazonaws.com/static/pdf/Du_Bois_White_Folk.pdf> Ezra Klein: Interviews Chuck Schumer<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/podcasts/ezra-klein-podcast-chuck-schumer-transcript.html> Share Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality Paragraphs: Paul McLeary (2007): Is... Continue reading

The fact that core inflation is rising on the back of substantial GDP growth and declining unemployment should not come as a surprise. Those who are wringing their hands about economic "overheating" should remember that an absence of price increases would reflect an economy that is still struggling. <https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/us-inflation-shows-economy-is-reshuffling-and-recovering-by-j-bradford-delong-2021-05> BERKELEY – The financial and economic news in the United States lately has been dominated by concerns about inflation. “Runaway inflation is the biggest risk facing investors, Leuthold’s Jim Paulsen warns,” according to the cable news channel CNBC. As a potential hedge against inflation, “Bitcoin’s time to shine is fast approaching,” reportsFortune’s Robert Hackett. According to US News and World Report, “There is a lot of talk about inflation in 2021 as fears of high government spending creep in and the recent rebound in prices from pandemic-related levels has some investors worried that the trend will continue for some time.” Share And yet, one also reads that “US Treasury yields hold ground even as inflation picks up.” After growing at an annualized rate of 33.4% in the third quarter of 2020, 4.3% in the fourth quarter, and 6.4% in the first quarter of this year, the US economy is on track... Continue reading

With Cory Doctorow; Noah Smith & Brad DeLong's 30:00 < Weekly Podcast < 60:00 <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/podcast-hexapodia-xiii-mandated-interoperability> Listen in podcast app Subscribe now Share Key Insights: Cory Doctorow is AWESOME! It is depressing. We once, with the creation of the market economy, got interoperability right. But now the political economy blocks us from there being any obvious path to an equivalent lucky historical accident in our future. The problems in our society are not diametrically opposed: Addressing the problems of one thing doesn't necessarily create equal and opposite problems on the other side—but it does change the trade-offs, and so things become very complex and very difficult to solve. Always keep a trash bag in your car. Hexapodia! Share Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality References: Books: Cory Doctorow: How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism <https://www.google.com/books/edition/How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism/W20NzgEACAAJ> Cory Doctorow: Attack Surface <https://www.google.com/books/edition/Attack_Surface/rFfEDwAAQBAJ> Cory Doctorow: Walkaway <https://www.google.com/books/edition/Walkaway/MKMsDAAAQBAJ> Cory Doctorow: Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom <https://www.google.com/books/edition/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingdom/h8DvDwAAQBA> Cory Doctorow: Little Brother <https://www.google.com/books/edition/Little_Brother/r1zne2mZDW8C> William Flesch:Comeuppance: Costly Signaling, Altruistic Punishment, and Other Biological Components of Fiction<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Comeuppance/JSRWPYp1nNUC> Daniel L. Rubinfeld: A Retrospective on U.S. v. Microsoft: Why Does It Resonate Today? <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0003603X20950227> Louis Galambos & Peter Temin: The Fall of the Bell System: A Study in Prices & Politics <https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Fall_of_the_Bell_System/CXNPVjdxfAEC>... Continue reading

Things that went whizzing by that I want to remember... Subscribe now First: Zeynep Tufekci: Sunday Open Thread for Subscribers: ‘The one big part of the tragedy here is that we had most of the science we needed really early on…. There was more to learn, for sure, but the basics were there. There have been very few scientific surprises… outside of how vaccinable this (luckily!) turned out to be (we didn’t know partly because we didn’t really try for the others exactly because we didn’t care). But sociologically, I am shaken. I knew about all of this, because I teach and study it. The group-think, the institutional resistance and inertia, the cognitive biases, the social dynamics… I know about them all! But I’ve been truly surprised most is how much stronger than I thought these dynamics were, even in a crisis. Perhaps because of the crisis. I’ve learned a lot about viruses last year, but I did not really need that much beyond an introductory textbook to write the policy oriented pieces I’ve published. I think we need to update our social science textbooks and assumptions, though. The dynamics that have dominated our world aren’t novel in the sense... Continue reading

This, I thought, was an interview that turned out very well... The Best Books on the Classical Economists recommended by Brad DeLong They were an eclectic bunch, including, among others, a stock market speculator, a moral philosopher, a cleric, a lawyer and a journalist. From the late-18th to the mid-19th century, they provided the first systematic explanations of how economies work, where they fail and how they might be made to work better. Here, Brad DeLong, a professor of economics at UC Berkeley, introduces the classical economists, and suggests books to read to learn more about them and what they were trying to achieve. Interview by Benedict King The Passions and the Interests by Albert Hirschman The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L Heilbroner The Classical Economists Revisited by D. P. O'Brien Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the Enlightenment by Emma Rothschild Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life by Jonathan Sperber Share Before we get into the books, could you just set the scene by telling us who the classical economists were, individually speaking. There was Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, and Jean-Baptiste Say in France. Are there other obvious ones that you would include in that list? I would... Continue reading

My testimony before Sen. Sherrod Brown's subcommittee... Earlier today Eric Rauchway @rauchway wrote that people should take a look at my 2009-03-31 testimony that Sen Sherrod Brown (D-OH) invited me to give: Eric Rauchway @rauchway or see @delong 's Congressional testimony of 2009 Lessons from the New Dealbooks.google.com April 27th 2020 2 Retweets72 Likes He is right: my 2009-03-31 testimony is damned good! LESSONS FROM THE NEW DEAL: HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC POLICY OF THE COMMITTEE ON BANKING, HOUSING, AND URBAN AFFAIRS :: UNITED STATES SENATE :: ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS :: FIRST SESSION ON: WHAT LESSONS CAN CONGRESS LEARN FROM THE NEW DEAL THAT CAN HELP DRIVE OUR ECONOMY TODAY? MARCH 31, 2009 Printed for the use of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs (Available at: <http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate/senate05sh.html>) U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 53–161 PDF WASHINGTON : 2009… Share WRITTEN PREPARED STATEMENT OF J. BRADFORD DELONG PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY MARCH 31, 2009 Chairman Brown, Senator DeMint, other Members of the Committee: It is always an honor to be invited here to participate in a small part in our self-rule via representative government here in the oldest and strongest and most successful large... Continue reading

Things that went whizzing by that I want to remember... First: Free speech advocates who care about the functioning of their community have never thought it appropriate for the free-speech principle to empower chaos monkeys who seek to destroy their society and replace it with something with speech that would be less free: John Milton: Areopagitica: ‘Yet if all cannot be of one mind—as who looks they should be?—this doubtless is more wholesome, more prudent, and more Christian, that many be tolerated, rather than all compelled. I mean not tolerated popery, and open superstition, which, as it extirpates all religions and civil supremacies, so itself should be extirpate, provided first that all charitable and compassionate means be used to win and regain the weak and the misled: that also which is impious or evil absolutely either against faith or manners no law can possibly permit, that intends not to unlaw itself: but those neighbouring differences, or rather indifferences, are what I speak of, whether in some point of doctrine or of discipline, which, though they may be many, yet need not interrupt THE UNITY OF SPIRIT, if we could but find among us THE BOND OF PEACE… LINK: <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/608/608-h/608-h.htm> Share... Continue reading

Things that went whizzing by that I want to remember... John Scalzi: ’I’m a dude with the usual amount of bullshit on his karma; I try to imagine the better version of me, and then cosplay that in public until hopefully it sticks. Or to quote Vonnegut: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be”… John Scalzi @scalzi I'm a dude with the usual amount of bullshit on his karma; I try to imagine the better version of me, and then cosplay that in public until hopefully it sticks. Or to quote Vonnegut: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." Jeffrey Skarski @JeffreySkarski @scalzi You seem like a really nice guy, and you write really good books. January 29th 2021 64 Retweets599 Likes Share Very Briefly Noted: Wikipedia: Emanuel Derman <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Derman> PIIE: Jacob Funk Kirkegaard <https://www.piie.com/experts/senior-research-staff/jacob-funk-kirkegaard> Eyepatch Wolf: Buying a PC with Dell: My Journey Into Hell Eyepatch Wolf @EyePatchWolf Buying a PC with Dell: My Journey Into Hell April 14th 2021 1,543 Retweets6,507 Likes Travis Gettys: Trump-loving lawyer Lin Wood Bizarrely Claims He Roamed White House—& Found Ex-President... Continue reading

By Noah Smith & Brad DeLong: Joan Robinson to Bob Solow: "I would not be unkind if you would not be pig-headed..." Listen in podcast app Subscribe now Key Insights: Getting the rate of profit—the sums that are charged businesses for renting machines and renting space, and for access to the generalized social power to deploy resources that is finance—right is a very, very important thing to do. Why? Because the market economy is a complicated institutional calculating machine for determining how to promote societal wellbeing. It cannot do its job if it cannot see the the constraints imposed on us by nature and current technology. And having the market get the profit rate right is a very important part of that. To say “it’s all ideology” or “it’s all power” or “it’s all distribution” and go the full Sraffa production-of-commodities-by-means-of-commodities is to miss a truly powerful, relevant, and important insight. That’s the strongest statement of what the Cambridge, Massachusetts-MIT side was really getting at—or ought to have been getting at, although they phrased it badly and inaccurately. If we attempt to use toy mathematical models applied to macro aggregates to say anything quantitative about whether business owners are getting... Continue reading

FIRST: Robert P Baird: The Invention of Whiteness: The Long History of a Dangerous Idea: ‘By the time The Bell Curve appeared, Du Bois’s assertion that racial categories were not biologically grounded was widely accepted. In the years since, the scientific evidence for that understanding has only become more overwhelming. A 2017 study examined the DNA of nearly 6,000 people from around the world and found that while that while some genetic differences among humans can be traced to various ancestral lineages—for example, eastern African, southern European or circumpolar—none of those lineages correspond to traditional ideas about race…. During the second half of the 20th century a number of historians demonstrated that… Du Bois… was correct that it was only in the modern period that people started to think of themselves as belonging to something called the white race.… LINK: <https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/20/the-invention-of-whiteness-long-history-dangerous-idea?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other> Share Very Briefly Noted: Wikipedia: Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_Xiaoping%27s_southern_tour> Wikipedia: Great Helmsman <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Helmsman> CMP: A Brief History of the Helmsmen<https://chinamediaproject.org/2020/11/02/a-brief-history-of-the-helmsman/> Wikipedia: Wei Jingsheng <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wei_Jingsheng> Zhao Ziyang: Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang<https://books.google.com/books?id=_3WTqOaAOWkC> Wikipedia: Miracle on the Han River<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_on_the_Han_River#1948%E2%80%931960:_The_First_Republic_and_Korean_War> Global Demographics: China’s Labour Force is, and is not, Growing: ‘The total employed labour force... Continue reading

MacFarquhar's final prediction turned out to be true: "Communism in China... end[ed] not with a bang but a whimper" Subscribe now Roderick MacFarquhar (1992–12–17): Deng’s Last Campaign: ‘China had its own form of grueling political campaign this year, which ended when the Fourteenth Congress of the Communist Party (CCP) took place in October. There, too, the issue was “change” and the main concern the economy. But in China the economy has been in good shape: it was the aged incumbent who wanted ever more change to keep it that way, and he won. Of course, Deng Xiaoping is a very peculiar sort of “incumbent.” The “patriarch,” as some Hong Kong papers like to call him, no longer has any formal post. At eighty-eight, he reportedly spends much of his time amusing his grandchildren and playing bridge with his cronies, leaving the daily conduct of affairs to the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Jiang Zemin, the premier, Li Peng, and their colleagues in the Politburo standing committee (PSC). It is only on major matters of national policy, such as voting in the UN on the use of force against Saddam Hussein, that the PSC consults Deng and does what... Continue reading

Trevon D Logan: ’This is actually a deep point DeLong is making: we have not recognized the single largest market failure in the economy. And we rarely talk about it as a market failure at all. The answer: that’s how they wanted it when they sold it to you! Anyone who has seriously thought about equilibrium theory knows that the lack of attention to endowments is pretty shameful. DeLong extends that here to thinking of the weights we apply and why it should encourage, not discourage, redistribution. But we never quite get there… Ben Boehlert: ’I’m consistently shocked in my undergrad Econ classes how inequality of opportunity almost never comes up. In a world where everyone is perfectly rational, it seems like pretty big deal!… Brad DeLong: I remember back in the… spring of 1981, I think it was. I asked my professor, William Thomson, visiting from Rochester, roughly this: The utilitarian social welfare function is Ωu = U(1) + U(2) + U(3)… The competitive market economy maximizes a market social welfare function Ωm = ω(1)U(1) + ω(2)U(2) + ω(3)U(3)…, where the ω(i)s are Negishi weights that are increasing functions of your lifetime wealth W(i)—indeed, if lifetime utility is log... Continue reading

Things that went whizzing by that I want to remember... Subscribe now FIRST: It is elementary geopolitics that if you think you are a rising power, you soft-pedal it. You take every opportunity to defuse conflict and to diminish potential flashpoints. Time is, after all on your side. The most that you do is point out the incompetence and failures of the declining powers, and suggest that those are very likely to continue. Thus you do not have to risk conflict in order to increase your influence. Influence flows to you from others who take note of the rising sun and adapt to it. But China seems to be behaving differently—as though assertions of national strength and power are essential moves in some domestic-policy stabilization task? Bill Bishop: Xi’s New World Order for the New Era: ‘That increasingly seems to be Xi Jinping’s goal, couched amidst calls to “to safeguard the UN-centered international system, preserve the international order underpinned by international law”. Xi’s speech… at the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2021…. Xi and his CCP clearly see massive opportunities from the carnage of the pandemic and the multiple strategic disasters of US domestic and foreign policy to change... Continue reading

LECTURE: Seven Sects of Macroeconomic Error: Wrong Models of the Great Recession <https://www.icloud.com/pages/0zwSkfmRDPILOSmiq0_91g5nw> <https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/seven-sects-of-macroeconomic-error-2011-03-14.pdf> <https://www.bradford-delong.com/2021/04/seven.html> 2011-03-14 Continue reading

<https://www.icloud.com/keynote/07BWpG9_RQeOtbw70JvbJQ3KQ> <https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/econ-210a-background-2021-05-05.pptx> <https://www.bradford-delong.com/2021/04/the-great-depression-background-slides-econ-210aintroduction-to-economic-history-spring-2021.html> 2021-04-29 Continue reading

PODCAST: Crimson Connections: Shleifer & DeLong <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/crimson-connections-shleifer-and> 2021-04-22 Th READING: John Stuart Mill: Of the Stationary State <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/reading-john-stuart-mill-of-the-stationary> 2021-04-22 Th BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2021-04-22 Th <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/briefly-noted-for-2021-04-19-mo> 2021-04-22 Th Background: Macro Inequality: On the Shape & Meaning of the Income Distribution Econ 210a :: Introduction to Economic History :: For April 28. <https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/econ-210a-2021-04-22-background.pptx <https://www.icloud.com/keynote/0616ZvSr8nEGd0pSpq53lvgoA> 2021-04-22 PODCAST: Hexapodia XI: China: Its Industrial Policy, & Its Striving for Deweaponized Autarchy <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/podcast-hexapodia-xi-china-its-industrial> 2021-04-21 Econ 135: Zoom: Review… <https://www.icloud.com/keynote/0cb0_2rURsaHJknmrnFrFOcZg#econ-135-zoom-review> <https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0lh08h5dRocbWsTaqntyt8JSA> <https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/econ-135-zoom-review.pptx> 2021-04-20 Budgeting & Macro Policy: 2021 Update <https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/budgeting-%26-macro-policy-TICKLER.pptx><https://www.icloud.com/keynote/0cyNGY5Ekcze_Vf392iDInwCA> 2021-04-20 Touring The Continents: Lectures: Africa, Asia South of Siberia, & Middle East Econ 135 :: History of Economic Growth 5.[6–8].3.<https://www.icloud.com/keynote/07G4SQVjHYedJdHfnFundVJ4w> <https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/econ-135-5.%5B6-8%5D.3-lectures-africa-asia-me.pptx><https://www.bradford-delong.com/2021/04/touring-the-continents-lectures-africa-asia-south-of-siberia-middle-east-econ-135-history-of-economi.html> 2021–04–19 Mo Touring The Continents: Lectures: Africa, Asia South of Siberia, & Middle East Econ 135 :: History of Economic Growth 5.[6–8].3.<https://www.icloud.com/keynote/07G4SQVjHYedJdHfnFundVJ4w> <https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/econ-135-5.%5B6-8%5D.3-lectures-africa-asia-me.pptx><https://www.bradford-delong.com/2021/04/touring-the-continents-lectures-africa-asia-south-of-siberia-middle-east-econ-135-history-of-economi.html> 2021–04–19 Mo BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2021-04-18 Su <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/briefly-noted-for-2021-04-18-su> 2021-04-18 Su READING: Carl von Clausewitz: "On War": Friction <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/carl-von-clausewitz-on-war-friction> 2021-04-18 Su READING: Eisenhower: “Their Number Is Negligible & They Are Stupid…” <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/reading> 2021-04-17 Sa I Do Not See "Overheating" This Year… <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/i-do-not-see-overheating-this-year> 2021-04-15 Th Continue reading

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BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2021-04-18 Su <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/briefly-noted-for-2021-04-18-su> 2021-04-18 Su READING: Carl von Clausewitz: "On War": Friction <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/carl-von-clausewitz-on-war-friction> 2021-04-18 Su READING: Eisenhower: “Their Number Is Negligible & They Are Stupid…” <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/reading> 2021-04-17 Sa WORÞY READS: For 2021-04-16 Fr <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/wory-reads-for-2021-04-16> 2021-04-16 Fr BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2021-04-15 Th <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/briefly-noted-for-2021-04-15-th> 2021-04-15 Th I Do Not See "Overheating" This Year… <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/i-do-not-see-overheating-this-year> 2021-04-15 Th PODCAST: Hexapodia X: Global Warming <https://braddelong.substack.com/publish/post/35135269> 2021-04-14 We BRIEFLY NOTED: for 2021-04-13 Tu <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/first-in-person-office-hours-since> 2021-04-13 Ti In-Person Office Hours: for 2021-04-13 Tu <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/first-in-person-office-hours-since> 2021-04-13 Tu BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2021-04-12 Mo <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/briefly-noted-for-2021-04-12-mo> 2021-04-12 Mo Our Economists' Letter on þe Need for Public Investment <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/our-economists-letter-on-the-need> 2021-04-12 Continue reading

---- ### East Asian Miracles: Intro Video #### Econ 135 :: History of Economic Growth: 5.5.1. 2021-04-11 Continue reading

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* **HOISTED FROM THE ARCHIVES: Barry J. Eichengreen & J. Bradford DeLong** (2013): _Introduction to Kindleberger: The World in Depression_ <> 2021-04-05 Mo * **BRIEFLY NOTED:** _For 2021-04-03 Sa_: ‘Things that went whizzing by that I want to remember… LINK: <> 2021-04-03 Sa * **READING:** _Seneca vs. Posidonius on Wheþer Technology Is Philosophy - Grasping Reality Newsletter, by Brad DeLong_: ‘Posidonius for, Seneca against; it is a pity that the monks erased all the surviving manuscripts of Posidonius: he sounds like somebody it would have been good to get to know, virtually—an urban Greek polymath would almost surely have been better company than a Roman aristocrat… LINK: <> 2021-04-03 Sa * **READING:** _Lucius Annaeus Seneca Minor (64): Moral Letters to Lucilius 90: On þe Part Played by Philosophy in þe Progress of Man_: ‘Technological advance the business of the lowest grade of slaves; desire for technological advance the result of making your body your master rather than your servant; and other topics… LINK: <> 2021-04-03 Su * **READING:** _From Peter S. Beagle: Þe Folk of þe Air_: ‘The literary character Emperor Kankan Musa of Mali… LINK: <> 2021-04-02 Fr * **BRIEFLY NOTED:** _For 2021-04-01 Th_: ‘Things that went briefly whizzing... Continue reading

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**What Is the Rate of Ideas Growth? & Why Is It What It Is?** :: Background Lecture :: Econ 210a :: Introduction to Economic History :: 2021-04-07 <> <> 2021-04-01 Continue reading