Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Over at Equitable Growth:

Noah Schachtman wins the internet today:

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog

• Cato Institute Economic Growth Conference: Panel I: The Pace of Recent Economic Growth - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
• Blog You Should Read: Daniel Little: Understanding Society: Daily Focus - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
• Cato Institute Conference: The Future of U.S. Economic Growth: Panel II - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
• Afternoon Must-Read: Mark Thoma on Salim Furth's 'What’s Causing the Increase in Long-Term Unemployment?' - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
• Morning Must-Read: David Beckworth: Are We Mismeasuring Productivity Growth? - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
• Morning Must-Read: Jonathan Chait: 4 New Studies: Obamacare Working Incredibly Well - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
• Morning Must-Read: Ezra Klein (2007): No Exit Revisited - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
• Morning Must-Read: Duncan Black: So Long, and Thanks For All The S- Washington Center for Equitable Growth
• Morning-Must-Read: Ezra Klein: Even the Liberal New Republic Needs to Change - Washington Center for Equitable Growth
• Nick Bunker: The rise and fall of financial deleveraging - Washington Center for Equitable Growth

Plus:

• Things to Read on the Morning of December 5, 2014 - Washington Center for Equitable Growth

Must- and Shall-Reads:

• Richard Sutch: The Liquidity Trap, the Great Depression, and Unconventional Policy: Reading Keynes at the Zero Lower Bound
• Laurence Ball, Brad DeLong, and Larry Summers: Fiscal Policy and Full Employment
• John G. Fernald: Productivity and Potential Output Before, During, and After the Great Recession
• George Selgin: A 1920-21 Recovery Myth
• Mark Thoma: Economist's View: 'What’s Causing the Increase in Long-Term Unemployment?'
• Jonathan Chait: 4 New Studies: Obamacare Working Incredibly Well
• David Beckworth: Are We Mismeasuring Productivity Growth?
• Mark Thoma: Economist's View: 'Entrepreneurship, Down-Side Risks, and Social Insurance'
• Ezra Klein (2007): No Exit Revisited
• Duncan Black: So Long, And Thanks For All The Shit
• Ezra Klein: Even the liberal New Republic needs to change

And Over Here:

Ezra Klein: Even the liberal New Republic needs to change: "The eulogy that needs to be written isn't for The New Republic...

...It's for the role once played by Washington's small fleet of ambitious policy magazines. The internet is now thick with outlets that pride themselves on covering... policymaking apparatus. Vox... The New Republic... Wonkblog, the Upshot, Mother Jones, Storyline, FiveThirtyEight, and Politico, to name just a few. And that doesn't even include the individual bloggers who are must-reads... Kevin Drum, and Tyler Cowen, and Brad DeLong, and Paul Krugman, and Ross Douthat, and Ramesh Ponnuru, and Jonathan Chait, and Scott Sumner, and Megan McArdle, and Jonathan Bernstein, and, again, the list goes on. This sprawling conversation over Washington policymaking used to be centered in a handful of elite-focused policy magazines, of which The New Republic was perhaps the best known and most ambitious....

The policy magazines had two dimensions. The first was what they covered--which was, for the most part, politics through the lens of policy.... The second was the angle and tone.... The New Republic oscillated from editor to editor, but tended towards a hawkish, contrarian neoliberalism (hence the 'Even the liberal New Republic' meme).... To the wonk in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, these magazines were the thrumming center of the policy conversation in Washington.... But they're no longer the center....

A deeper tension in digital journalism: the pressure for convergence is strong. We feel it at Vox, and sometimes give into it. It's easy to see which stories are resonating with readers. It's obvious that John Oliver videos do big numbers. And that's fine. Right now, almost all successful digital publications are partially built on internet best practices and partially built on that publication's particular obsessions, ideas, and attitude. Digital publications need to be smart about their mix....

But what made the New Republic and its peer policy magazines so great was how restlessly, relentlessly idiosyncratic they were--that's how they drove new ideologies and new ideas to the fore. They were worse at covering policy than their digital successors, but probably better at thinking.... I'm less pessimistic about TNR's future than many... and, as someone who really loathed a number of TNR's previous eras (see the Bell Curve, or No Exit, or A Fighting Faith, for examples)... a bit less nostalgic for its past. But something is being lost in the transition from policy magazines to policy web sites...

Ezra Klein (2007): No Exit Revisited: "Andrew Sullivan tries to answer my post from yesterday...

...on No Exit, the [Betsy McCaughey] article he published attacking the Clinton health plan. He says that 'I don't think it's fair to expose the internal editing of a piece but there was a struggle and it's fair to say I didn't win every skirmish,' which is interesting, and he says that 'I was aware of the piece's flaws but nonetheless was comfortable running it as a provocation to debate.' What he doesn't say is that he believes the piece accurately described the Clinton health care plan. Which is what's at issue. There were reasons to criticize the delivery structure the Clintons sought to implement, but No Exit simply lied...

Gordonskene: December 5, 1944 - A Day In The Life Of Wars:

The news on this day in December in 1944 was all about Allied Advances. On the Western Front, General Patton's 3rd Army established a bridgehead at The Saar River. The 1st Army was advancing on the German frontier. The British 8th Army was busy advancing in Italy and capturing several towns along the way. Estimates the Germans had over 1/2 million troops poised for a counter-attack somewhere, but as of yet not known where. In the Pacific, the Philippines Invasion was plodding along. This morning's news report from the Pacific talked about mail delivery to the troops and the difficulties that entailed - but the mail was still getting through.

In Greece, rioting continued with a Civil War threatening. The British Army was trying to keep peace by keeping the warring parties away from each other, but that was looking easier said than done. And there was a shakeup and shuffling of positions and desks at the State Department.

All in all, a world deeply engrossed in the process of war, as reported on the NBC World News Roundup for the morning of December 5, 1944.

By my count, they ought to be embarrassed by all five of these now.

And the probability is 99% that whoever is running the Cato Institute in a decade will then be embarrassed by all of them (save possibly the weird constitutional law poster, where dead-enders will still be dead-ending).

• We did need to jump-start the economy back in 2009--even more than we did.
• ObamaCare is turning out to do a remarkably large amount to improve the competitive functioning of the private health-insurance and health care-delivery markets.
• The global warming poster is simply embarrassing.
• And the looming debt crisis? How does it loom?

Wingnuts gotta nut, I know. But some recognition that their past policy judgments were simply wrong--is that too much to expect?

Over at Equitable Growth: Cato Institute: The Future of U.S. Economic Growth: Panel 1: Forecasting the Long-Term Growth Outlook

• Dale Jorgenson, Harvard University
• John Fernald, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
• Martin Baily, Brookings Institution

If David Beckworth is here, I want him to ask his question--itself triggered by an observation from Noah Smith at Stonybrook. If he isn't here, or is shy...

Sitting next to Bo Cutter (Roosevelt) and Bob Strom (Kauffman) in the Friedrich A. von Hayek Auditorium at the Cato Institute at 1000 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington DC.

No Hayek quotes written on the walls...

Wireless Password: GiveMeLiberty: That makes me want to google, and I find that Patrick Henry is supposed to have purchased 78 slaves over the course of his lifetime...

I find myself sitting in the Emery E. Allain seat: Emery Allain (1922-2006):

Trades By Insiders - Morning Call: November 24, 1986: Great Northern Nekoosa Corp. - Emery E. Allain, vice president, exercised an option for 3,919 shares between $39.94 and $35.31 per share from Oct. 28 to Oct. 29. Allain now holds directly 4,119 shares.

J & J Mid-South Corp.(merged 12/31/87) in Atlanta, GA - Bizapedia Profile: J & J Mid-South Corp.(merged 12/31/87) is a Georgia Domestic Profit Corporation filed on June 21, 1968. The company's filing status is listed as Merged and its File Number is J215572.... Filing Date: June 21, 1968. Company Age: 46 Years, 6 Months.... EMERY E ALLAIN, Chief Executive Officer, 75 Prospect St Box 9309, Stamford, CT 06904

Manhattanville College: THE ALLAIN COLLECTION: For over twenty five years Mr. Emery E. Allain was a frequent visitor to the Manhattanville College Library. A collector of books Mr. Allain contributed over thirty thousand books to the Library’s biography collection. On September 16th the Library held a reception in honor of Mr. Allain and his generous contributions to the Library. An exhibit featuring a few of the presidential biographies, family pictures, and memorabilia was on display. In attendance were Mrs, Patricia Allain, Mr. Allain’s widow, John Allain, his son, family, friends, and the Library staff. Stories were shared about Mr. Allain’s generosity, business acumen, and life-long interest in books.

Over at Equitable Growth:

Panel 2: The Future of Innovation: Stagnation, Singularity, or Something in Between?:

• Erik Brynjolfsson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Robert Gordon, Northwestern University
• Stephen Oliner, American Enterprise Institute

A Question: For us economists, intensive economic growth is the rate in percent per year at which the real cost of obtaining the currently-produced bundle of marketed goods and services decline. what I am hearing from Erik is that, in his view, that is missing much if not most of the action: that what we really ought to be doing is measuring the rate at which the real cost of staying on the same utility surface is declining. And that these two are very different right now.

Albert Smith: Mosquito Nightmare 30,000 Feet Above Aachen :: World War II Today:

The 4th of December 1944 — 1900 hours — target: Karlsruhe. On the left, slightly higher than my head and facing forward, the pilot peers into the black night. I flick the switch on the nozzle of my oxygen mask, and he turns his head in my direction. A nasal, humid sound: ‘Alter course to one-six-four degrees. We’ll be over Aachen in two minutes.’ The intercom crackles back: ‘OK.’

[…]

Suddenly there is a jolt, and I glance sharply to the left. Out of the window beyond Johnny’s head I see, for an instant, the grotesque black belly of an aircraft sliding by. Nothing happens for a moment, the drone persists — the course holds. Then with a sickening lurch, the plane cartwheels through the sky.

Mark Thoma: Economist's View: 'What’s Causing the Increase in Long-Term Unemployment?': "Salim Furth, who 'is senior policy analyst...

...in macroeconomics at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis':

What’s Causing the Increase in Long-Term Unemployment?: Some economic indicators, including the short-term unemployment rate, have recovered to levels associated with ‘normal times.’ But long-term unemployment remains high.... Many economists, myself included, expected that the expiration of long-term unemployment benefits at the end of 2013 would sharply lower the long-term unemployment rate. Instead, the rate has continued its slow, steady decline.... Economists have not yet found convincing explanations.... The problem is worth studying.

They will have to find another social insurance program to blame... instead of, say, lack of demand (a policy failure) combined with the stigma attached to the long-term unemployed."

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog

• Is the Fed "Pretending"?(Not) The Honest Broker for the Week of November 28, 2014
• A Question for William Gale: The Fiscal Outlook
• Nicholas Bagley: Am I Unreasonable?
• Bob Litan: Two Relatively Painless Ways to Boost Growth
• Gillian Tett: In Parched Bond Markets, Sparks Are Dangerous
• Alan S. Blinder: What’s the Matter with Economics?
• Joe Romm: 2014 Headed Toward Hottest Year On Record-Here's Why That's Remarkable
• Bridget Ansel: The behavioral barriers to paying off debt
• Nick Bunker: Pulling up the “job ladder”

Plus:

• Things to Read on the Afternoon of December 3, 2014

Must- and Shall-Reads:

• @dsquareddigest: "@katie_martin_FX 'the key risk is that all these spreadsheets were put together by a summer intern and I haven't checked them'"
• William Dudley: The 2015 Economic Outlook and the Implications for Monetary Policy
• John Maynard Keynes: The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Chapter 3 | Library of Economics and Liberty
• Mark Thoma: Why the Next Recession Will Be Different
• Paul N. van de Water: Six Ways Health Reform Helps the Middle Class
• Joe Romm: 2014 Headed Toward Hottest Year On Record--Here's Why That's Remarkable | ThinkProgress
• Alan Blinder: What’s the Matter with Economics?
• Gillian Tett: In Parched Bond Markets, Sparks Are Dangerous
• Bob Litan: Two Relatively Painless Ways to Boost GrowthNicholas Bagley: Am I unreasonable?
• Daniel Kuehn: A critique of Powell, Woods, and Murphy on the 1920–1921 depression
• Coppola Comment: Structural Destruction Laurence Ball and Sandeep Mazumder: A Phillips Curve with Anchored Expectations and Short-Term Unemployment

And Over Here:

Virtual Office Hours:

Question: "Given how low global interest rates are, it seems hard to believe that returns on investment over the next 8 to 10 years can be good. So, isn’t some of the recent increase in wealth effectively ‘stealing from the future’ as capitalization values responded to the low rates of return available from sovereign bonds?"

Yes.

This is, I think, the crucial flaw in the current “Fed raises inequality!” literature...

It is also at the root of the most powerful critique of Piketty, which is, I think, Matt Rognlie’s:

1. Piketty describes a world in which the ratio of wealth-held-by-the-rich to total annual national income rises.
2. But most of our wealth today—our capital—is in the form of productive investments that boost productivity and complement labor.
3. So as the wealth-held-by-the-rich to total annual national income ratio W/Y rises, the rate of profit r falls.
4. And r falls by more proportionally than W/Y rises.
5. So not only does Piketty-world see a higher level of production per worker, it sees a smaller share of that production paid to owners of capital.
6. This is what Keynes saw as a possibility: the “euthanasia of the rentier”—even though the wealthy are fabulously rich relative to the middle class, their incomes are smaller relative to the middle class than we have seen in the past.
7. All this hinges on wealth being held in the form of productive investments that must then be deployed by producers, rather than in the form of rent-seeking property that gives the rich the power to extract from the producers

264 words

Over at Equitable Growth: Ted Rivelle is clearly saying things that make sense to him. But I don't think what he says makes sense to the world, and it certainly does not make sense to me:

Washington arrives at the banks of the Delaware: This Day in History:

In a letter dated December 3, 1776, General George Washington writes to Congress from his headquarters in Trenton, New Jersey, to report that he had transported much of the Continental Army's stores and baggage across the Delaware River to Pennsylvania. In his letter Washington wrote:

Immediately on my arrival here, I ordered the removal of all the military and other stores and baggage over the Delaware, a great quantity are already got over, and as soon as the boats come up from Philadelphia, we shall load them, by which means I hope to have every thing secured this night and tomorrow if we are not disturbed.

The other contributions to Brink Lindsey's Cato Institute Online Economic Growth Forum have all been things I can engage--things that make me think, that are individual economists' honest and good-faith attempts to say where the fruit is to be picked in terms of boosting America's economic growth.

Then comes Douglas Holtz-Eakin.

And, I must say, it seems to me that it really is time for some sort of disciplinary boundary-patrol police action/intervention here...

Holtz-Eakin's piece seems to me to be, in the context of the other--remarkably good--pieces that Brink Lindsey has commissioned, a very strange intrusion from some alternative non-technocratic discursive universe--a veritable Colour out of Space:

That same nameless intrusion which Ammi had come to recognise and dread... the shaft of phosphorescence from the well was getting brighter and brighter, bringing to the minds of the huddled men a sense of doom and abnormality which far outraced any image their conscious minds could form...

Ahem:

Over at Equitable Growth:

Nicholas Bagley: Am I unreasonable?: "To prevail, it’s not enough for the King challengers...

...to show that it’s possible to read the ACA to eliminate tax credits from states that refused to set up their own exchanges. They must also demonstrate that the ACA does so unambiguously—and that the IRS’s contrary interpretation is therefore unreasonable. Under Chevron, if the ACA could be read in a couple of different ways, the courts owe deference to the IRS’s authoritative decision about how best to read it.

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog

• Thinking About Austerity in Britain
• The Cato Institute's Brink Lindsey Is Running an Economic Growth Conference This WeekZeynep Tufkeci: How TED (Really) Works
• Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato and Owen Zidar: Who Benefits from State Corporate Tax Cuts? A Local Labor Markets Approach with Heterogeneous Firms
• Chris Rock: It's Not Black People Who Have Progressed. It's White People
• Hiroshi Nakaso: The Potential Impact of Large-Scale Monetary Accommodation
• Paul Krugman: Dean Baker on Robert Samuelson's Famous Fake Prediction Failures
• Nick Bunker: Thanksgiving Weekend Reading

Plus:

• Things to Read on the Morning of December 2, 2014

Must- and Shall-Reads:

• Marcus Wohlson: Amazon Reveals the Robots at the Heart of Its Epic Cyber Monday Operation
• David Cay Johnston: Real World Contradicts Right-Wing Tax Theories
• Anton Howe: Anton's Econ History Reading List
• Ken Rogoff: Dornbusch's Overshooting Model After 25 Years0.
• Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato and Owen Zidar: Who Benefits from State Corporate Tax Cuts? A Local Labor Markets Approach with Heterogeneous Firms
• Chris Rock: It's Not Black People Who Have Progressed. It's White People
• Hiroshi Nakaso: The Potential Impact of Large-Scale Monetary Accommodation
• Paul Krugman: Famous Fake Prediction Failures
• Nick Bunker: Thanksgiving weekend reading
• Tim Duy: Yes, I Am Optimistic
• Zeynep Tufekci: How TED (Really) Works: How One Hairdresser Behind the Scenes, and Émile Durkheim, Says More About TED than All the Viral Videos

And Over Here:

Christian Lorentzen: Dad & Jr: Bushes Jr & Sr: " It’s been five years and ten months....

...I confess to a bit of nostalgia for the nihilism that came with being governed by George W. Bush. For all the continuities, Obama arouses more earnest responses: apologetics, disappointment, head-shaking, Occupy, Edward Snowden. Bush’s arrogance has turned out to be that of a man destined to spend his golden years painting portraits of Putin, Merkel and Berlusconi like a dime-store Warhol working on commission for a UN theme bar. Retirement has now yielded a second book under his name.

Reviewers have welcomed 41: A Portrait of My Father like they miss father and son. ​Or maybe it’s ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’:

Karl Liebknecht: The Future Belongs to the People (Reichstag Meeting, December 2, 1914, and Liebknecht's Document Explaining Why He Voted "No"):

AT the second War Session of the Reichstag, Dec. 2, 1914, Karl Liebknecht not only voted against the War Budget – the only member of the Reichstag so to vote – but also handed in an explanation of his vote, which the President of the Reichstag refused to allow to be read, nor was it printed in the Parliamentary report. The President banned it on the pretext that it would entail calls to order. The document was sent to the German Press, but not one paper published it.

The full text of the protest was received by way of Switzerland. It runs as follows:

Over at Equitable Growth: Simon Wren-Lewis: Destroying the State is No Accident: "Why do I think [that Osborne's] sharp reduction in the size of the state in the UK is no accident?...

There is no sound macroeconomic case for a rapid reduction in the share of debt to GDP at a time when interest rates are still at or near their lower bound and there are risks to the recovery. So, if the macroeconomic argument for deficit reduction is unsound, there has to be another motive.... [And] why on earth has Ed Balls come to accept the austerity case?... Just think if Clement Attlee’s government at the end of the second world war had decided that the first priority was to reduce the debts built up during the war.... READ MOAR

Over at Equitable Growth: RE: The Future of U.S. Economic Growth & Reviving Economic Growth: A Cato Online Forum

Some questions for the authors of the contributions that struck me as the most interesting...

Two Questions for Scott Sumner: First Question: Why has nominal GDP targeting not already swept the economics community? It really ought to have. Second Question: I believe in nominal GDP targeting--especially if coupled with some version of "social credit" at or near the zero lower bound. But a look back at the history of ideas about a proper "neutral" monetary policy--Newton’s fixed price of gold, Hayek’s fixed nominal GDP level, Fisher’s fixed price-level commodity basket, Friedman’s stable M2 growth rate, the NAIRU targeting of the 1970s, Bernanke’s inflation-targeting—leads immediately to the conclusion that anybody who claims to have uncovered the Philosopher’s Stone here is a madman. How can you reassure me that I (and you) are not mad?

20th-Century http://www.typepad.com/account/files?path=%2F-jbd%2F20th_Century

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It is just not credible for me to highlight a comment that starts "this is an unusually excellent post" as a DeLong Smackdown, is it? Alas, because it is one, a good one...

Paul Krugman appears to be suffering a crisis of confidence with respect to the value of the economics Academic "meritocracy" he surveys from his position at its peak:

Paul Krugman: Notes on the Floating Crap Game (Economics Inside Baseball): "Reading Fourcade et al....

...may explain one of the things that has puzzled me in the disputes over macro policy--namely, the seemingly unquenchable certainty among some of the freshwater guys that Keynesians are stupid. Again and again...freshwater macroeconomists declare that New [and old] Keynesians... don’t get some basic point... accounting identities [among others: Fama, Cochrane]... Ricardian equivalence [among others: Lucas, Cochrane, Lin, Prescott, Zingales, Boldrin]... the Euler condition [this seems to be Cochrane alone] (plus)... the Fisher equation [among others: Kocherlakota (but years ago), Williamson, Cochrane, Schmidt-Grohe, Uribe, Cowen, Andolfatto].

Chris Rock: It's Not Black People Who Have Progressed. It's White People: "When we talk about race relations...

...it's all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they're not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.... To say Obama is progress is saying that he's the first black person that is qualified to be president. That's not black progress. That's white progress. There've been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. If you saw Tina Turner and Ike having a lovely breakfast over there, would you say their relationship's improved?... A smart person would go, 'Oh, he stopped punching her in the face.'... Ike and Tina Turner’s relationship has nothing to do with Tina Turner. Nothing. It just doesn't.

The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let's hope America keeps producing nicer white people...

Hiroshi Nakaso: The Potential Impact of Large-Scale Monetary Accommodation: "The Bank of Japan introduced the QQE...

...to achieve the price stability target of 2 percent at the earliest possible time, with a time horizon of about two years... to dispel a view that... prices would not rise... to raise inflation expectations through a strong and clear commitment to achieve the price stability target of 2 percent, and at the same time to exert downward pressure across the entire yield curve through massive purchases of government bonds.

As a result, real interest rates will decline, thereby stimulating such private demand components as business fixed investment, private consumption, and housing investment. The upward pressure on prices will grow stronger as demand increases and the output gap narrows accordingly. Rises in actual inflation rates will be translated into higher expected rates of inflation and thus lower real interest rates. This will reinforce the virtuous cycle as the economy is provided with additional stimulus. Since its inception, the QQE has been producing the intended effects....

In recent months, however... the decline in demand following the consumption tax hike has been somewhat protracted... crude oil prices have declined substantially... slowing the CPI inflation rates... down to 1.0 percent in September.... The temporary weakness in demand associated with the consumption tax hike has already started to wane. Meanwhile, the decline in crude oil prices will have positive effects on economic activity and push up prices over the longer-run. Nevertheless... we decided to take preemptive actions to expand the QQE at the Monetary Policy Meeting held on October 31....

I would like to address a frequently cited remark that unconventional monetary stimulus could destabilize financial markets and the economy at large by encouraging 'search for yield' activities.... A rise in asset prices and a decline in volatility are intended effects of the QQE.... [But] we should be mindful of the risk that 'search for yield' activities enter into a self-fulfilling cycle.... If a rise in asset prices creates overly bullish expectations among non-financial entities such as the corporate and household sectors, it could trigger excessive risk-taking behavior in these sectors as well. Thus far, we have not observed signs of self-fulfilling, overheated price movements...

Paul Krugman: Famous Fake Prediction Failures: "Dean Baker is annoyed, and rightly so, at claims like this from Robert Samuelson...

...that Keynesians failed to predict the slow recovery. Dean and I were both tearing our hair out in early 2009, warning that the Obama stimulus was too small and too short-lived.... Samuelson is taking the fact that this business cycle didn’t look like previous cycles as evidence that we don’t understand macroeconomics, so we shouldn’t even try to help the economy. But I was predicting a protracted jobless recovery long before the recession was official, and explained carefully why.

But then I also fairly often get comments along the lines of ‘If you’re so smart, how come you didn’t see the housing bubble’, when I not only did see it (although Dean saw it much earlier), but got a lot of flak for daring to raise questions about the Bush Boom. Well, I guess you can’t expect people to be aware of what I was saying, seeing as how I only write for an obscure publication nobody has heard of.

Nick Bunker: Thanksgiving weekend reading - Washington Center for Equitable Growth: "Secular stagnation: Greg Ip argues that the growing tide of elderly...

...in wealthy countries explains a lot of secular stagnation [the economist]. The Economist also created a series of accompanying graphics [the economist]. Shane Ferro looks at the troubling demographic situation in Japan [business insider]. Hidden wealth of nations: Matthew Klein looks at London School of Economics professor Gabriel Zucman’s research on the offshoring of wealth and profits [ft alphaville part 1, part 2]. The roots of upward mobility: Richard Reeves looks at research that finds a link between inequality of non-cognitive skills and intergenerational mobility [brookings]. Derek Thompson poses a dilemma for Millennials: move to a city with affordable housing or a city with a good track record of upward mobility [the atlantic]. More work and less play than expected: Dylan Matthews tries to figure out why we don’t have 3-hours workdays as Keynes predicted [vox]. Timothy Taylor considers two approaches to encouraging work: tax incentives and social support [conversable economist]"

Free exchange: No country for young people | The Economist | "Secular stagnation" in graphics: Doom and gloom | The Economist | How a Limo Ride With Paul Krugman Changed the Course of Abenomics - Bloomberg | The costs of offshore tax avoidance, part 1 | FT Alphaville | The costs of offshore tax avoidance, part 2 | FT Alphaville | The “Great Gatsby Curve” for Character Skills and Mobility | Brookings Institution | Why It's So Hard for Millennials to Find a Place to Live and Work - The Atlantic | Why 3-hour workdays haven't happened yet - Vox | CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST: Encouraging Work: Tax Incentives or Social Support?

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog

• Over at the Cato Institute: Waving a Magic Wand for Economic Growth
• Lawrence Summers on ‘House of Debt’
• Paul Krugman: The German Inflation Undershoot: The European Outlier
• Peter Hart: NYT Columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin's Faulty Attack on Elizabeth Warren's 'Rage'
• Nicholas Bagley: Three Words and the Future of the Affordable Care Act
• Ed Luce: Hillary Clinton’s rickety bridge to the White House

Plus:

• Things to Read on the Morning of December 1, 2014

Must- and Shall-Reads:

• Nicholas Lemann: When G.M. Was Google
• Ed Luce: Hillary Clinton’s rickety bridge to the White House
• Nicholas Bagley: Three Words and the Future of the Affordable Care Act
• Paul Krugman: The German Inflation Undershoot: The European Outlier
• Peter Hart: NYT Columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin's Faulty Attack on Elizabeth Warren's 'Rage'

And Over Here: