Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

1. Guy bar-Oz et al.: Ancient Trash Mounds Unravel Urban Collapse a Century Before he End of Byzantine Hegemony in the Southern Levant | PNAS: "The Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA) was recently identified... proposed as a major cause for pandemic and extensive societal upheavals in the sixth–seventh centuries.... Archaeological evidence for the magnitude of societal response to this event is sparse.... This study uses ancient trash mounds... to establish the terminal date of organized trash collection and high-level municipal functioning on a city-wide scale...

2. John Harwood: @JohnJHarwood: "Trump/GOP promised lasting 3+% growth from self-financing tax-cuts. Mainstream economists predicted brief deficit-fueled growth burst. The record so far: 2018 Q2 4.2%, 2018 Q3 3.4%, 2018 Q4 2.6%, deficit way up. Fed forecasts: 2019 2.3%, 2020 2.0%, 2021 1.8%...

3. David Leonhardt: Trump’s Trade Grade: "It’s a neat microcosm of President Trump’s economic policy: He picks a yardstick to measure the American economy—the trade deficit—that’s mostly meaningless. He spends years criticizing it as too high and promising to reduce it. And under his administration, it surges.... 'He set out to fix a non-problem (a trade deficit) and created real ones including international conflict, higher consumer prices and gross inefficiency in our economy', the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin writes...

4. Nobody ever showed me credible numbers stating that New York's proposed subsidies to Amazon were a good deal for the people of New York, let alone for the country as a whole. That makes me strongly suspect that credible numbers cannot be calculated. Unless a recession hits at the right (or rather wrong) moment, the people who would have worked in New York at Amazon HQ2 will work elsewhere, and the state economy as a whole is likely to be healthier: Nathan Jensen: Economic Development Public Policy Lessons Abound in New York’s Amazon HQ2 Debacle: "Most of these incentives are bad public policy. Virginia’s HQ2 bid was more public focused. It includes future payments based on a formula involving new, high-paying jobs as well as and other public subsidies, but it also includes a promise of infrastructure and education investments that would serve not only Amazon but also the entire community. The subsidies continue to face opposition. New York’s bid, in contrast, was designed primarily to put more money into the pockets of Amazon...

5. Brilliant from my freshman roommate Robert Waldmann: Robert Waldmann: The Transformation of Left Neoliberalism: "The correct assertion that bureaucrats are too dumb to centrally plan also implies that they are too dumb to design efficient and incentive compatible mechanisms. The correct (and more important) argument that public servants can’t be trusted to be purely public spirited... applies in order of increasing force...

6. Nick Bunker: Puzzling Over U.S. Wage Growth: "The unemployment rate is below its Great Recession levels, but wage growth hasn’t picked up in recent years. The prime employment rate may be a better predictor of wage growth than unemployment rates. The state of U.S. wage growth these days is puzzling. The unemployment rate is below where it was before the Great Recession back in 2007, but nominal wage growth is below its level that year and hasn’t picked up in recent years (according to some data series). For economists and analysts who believe that a tighter labor market should lead to higher wages, this disconnect is confusing...

7. Homer: What We Owe Exiles: "We live at a great distance from others amid the much-sounding sea,/Far way, and no other mortals visit us./But this man who has wandered here, who is so ill-starred,/It is right to care for him now. For all are from Zeus,/The strangers and the beggars, and our gift is small but dear to them./Come, handmaidens, give the stranger food and drink;/Bathe him in the river, where there is shelter from the wind...

8. Regular Gem: @Choplogik: "We write 'Millenials Are Killing The [X] Industry' because when you write 'Unsustainable Profit-Driven Systems Are Crumbling Around A Wage-Suppressed Global Populace Serving Roughly 2000 Aging Billionaires' people get too depressed to click through & watch our hair cream ads...

9. The thing to note about both Cain and Moore is that they are for: (i) the gold standard, (ii) sound money, (iii) market rather than artificially-low interest rates, (iv) quantitative easing, and (v) low interest rate Federal Reserve policy. There is no there there: Sam Fleming: Donald Trump Calls for U-turn by Federal Reserve to Stimulate Economy: "US president says rate cuts and quantitative easing would allow ‘rocket ship’ growth.... Mr Trump’s decision to propose Herman Cain... to be a governor of the Fed’s powerful board... also... nominate Stephen Moore.... It remains to be seen how the two prospective nominees will fare if they face Senate confirmation.... Mr Gapen said: 'In our view, the experience of each candidate does not seem to be the main reason the Trump administration is considering their nominations. The administration has been openly critical of recent Fed interest rate increases and would prefer lower interest rates and a more accommodative monetary policy stance. Both Cain and Moore have altered their views on appropriate policy in this direction'...

10. Umair Haque: Why the Anglo World is Collapsing: "How the Dunces of Modern History Ended Up Being Us: You and me. The Anglos. I think that we have to confront a difficult truth. One that’s especially difficult for me, as an Anglo, an English-speaker, and maybe for you, too. Our societies are not looking like they are going to make it. Take a hard look at America and Britain. Do these seem like sane, enlightened, thinking societies to you anymore? Or just places where the most aggressively ignorant, cruel, and abusive rise to the top—cheered on by people who wish they were the most aggressively ignorant, cruel, and abusive?...

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