Jerry
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"Threats to the dollar" are just scare stories
“You Can See Everything” and the nature of liars
A conversation with Claude
A DeFi crash course for normies: Crypto markets since 2017
A failed economic theory of everything
A few cultural thoughts
A few thoughts on depression
A moment of clarity
A Nobel for New Keynesian macro, at last!
A Nobel for the story of women in the workforce
A preview of the next four years?
A sovereign crypto fund is a new way to pay out regime cronies
A three-state solution is the only viable future for Israel and the Palestinians
A Time of Troubles
Abe Shinzo: A retrospective
Actually, Japan has changed a lot
After Trump, the deluge
Against "polycrisis"
AI and jobs, again
AI has the worst sales pitch I've ever seen
AI keeps stubbornly refusing to take our jobs
AI vs. the railroads
AI's big messaging pivot
All futurism is Afrofuturism
All non-drone militaries are obsolete
All the arguments for Trump's tariffs are wrong and bad
America doesn't really have a working class
America is not fixing its college financing system
America is ruled by gangsters now
America must embrace the Electric Age, or fall behind
America needs liberal nationalism back
America's future could hinge on whether AI slightly disappoints
Americans are still not worried enough about the risk of world war
An Age of Austerity is probably on the way
Antitrust vs. ESG
Are we in the foothills of World War 3?
Are we watching the U.S. go bankrupt?
Are Westerners turning back into medieval peasants?
Are you finally ready to admit it's the phones?
Are you tired of the Trump era yet?
Argentina's macroeconomic situation is even worse up close
At least five interesting things to start your week (#18, xlnt)
Bad education is a terrible way to fight inequality
Barack Obama was a successful President
Barack Obama was a successful President
Battery-powered appliances!
Biden is right that we need to raise taxes
Biden should run on a message of abundance
Biden's legacy: a summary
Book Review: "Blank Space"
Book Review: "Breakneck"
Book Review: "Doughnut Economics"
Book Review: "Power and Progress"
Book review: "Slouching Toward Utopia"
Book review: "Status and Culture", by W. David Marx
Book Review: "The End of the World is Just the Beginning"
Book reviews: "Ametora" and "Pure Invention"
California's "billionaire tax" is the wrong approach
Can anything knock China off its mountain?
Can we make America feel more affordable?
China goes all-in on Russia's war effort
China has a fateful choice to make
China is flailing
China is killing the fish
China is quietly looking weaker
China is winning the other tech race
China must stop its coal industry
China's demographics will be fine through mid-century
China's industrial policy has mostly been a flop
China's pivot is a bit of a mess
Climate optimism of the will
Conceiving the 2000s
Contemplating a world of linear growth
Corporations aren't the reason your rent is too high
Could development economics be more useful?
Dating advice for men
Degrowth would make Europeans into "Europoors"
Disinflation begins
Do billionaires earn their money?
Do we stand at the precipice of radical change?
Does anyone know why we're still doing tariffs?
Does anything I write matter anymore?
Does the notion of a "Global South" still make any sense?
Don't be a decel
Don't be a doomer
Don't be a doomer
Don't worry about de-dollarization
Economists should be worried about birth rates
Eric Topol interview
Eurocope
Europe has to stand against Russia
Europe is under siege
Europe's resistance to AC is driving it insane
Everything you think you know about homelessness is wrong
Feeling cautiously optimistic about American democracy
First Republic falls. Is the banking crisis restarting?
Five books to understand U.S. unrest
Fixing Japan's broken corporate culture
Four eras of San Francisco tech culture
Four reasons why GDP is a useful number
France and the limits of liberalism
Free-market economics is working surprisingly well
GameStopulism
Get the Middle East out of my politics!
Give us all the refugees, dammit!
Globalization did not hollow out the American middle class
Go read some Vernor Vinge: R.I.P. to my favorite science fiction author
Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic
Happy fun Cold War 2 update
Here...comes...INDIA!!!
Here’s how we’re all going to die
Hey tech folks: Vivek Ramaswamy is not the one
Hispanics as the new Irish
Hispanics or Coups
How are Milton Friedman's ideas holding up?
How are the Big Sanctions hurting Russia so far?
How Brazil built a world-beating aircraft manufacturer
How Clubhouse might still win
How college towns can survive and thrive over the next 20 years
How I would regulate AI
How Japan has changed in the last 20 years
How Latin America started to beat inequality
How much can you really learn about a country from visiting it?
How much does aging really hurt a country?
How much more software do we really need?
How not to be fooled by viral charts, Part 2
How the Democrats can fight back against MAGA
How the old system of the world shaped American society
How to be an opinion writer
How to fix Twitter
How to sell Georgism to the middle class
How to write a successful Substack
How VCs can avoid being tricked by obvious frauds
How we can beat China
How we will fight climate change
Humanity is going to shrink
I don't get the high-speed rail thing (yet)
I have never been working class
I have written a book!
I love AI. Why doesn't everyone?
I owe the libertarians an apology: It turns out there are worse monsters than the market.
I think India can do it
I told you this would end badly
I want the Japanese future back!
I'm kind of over the whole "Anti-monopoly" movement
If AI is a weapon, why don't we regulate it like one?
If you think Americans are mad now, just wait a few months
In defense of science fiction
In which I review almost every episode of Black Mirror (plot spoilers)
Inequality might be going down now
Inflation is real; now it's up to the Fed
Inflation Is Up, But the Inflation Truthers Are Still Wrong
Insurance companies aren't the main villain of the U.S. health system (doesn’t smell right)
Insurers aren't the main villain of the U.S. health care system
International financial anarchy
Interview: Hal Brands, international relations professor and author
Interview: Kevin Kelly, editor, author, and futurist
Interview: Leah Boustan, economist
Interview: Liam Kofi Bright
Interview: Me!
Interview: Ramez Naam, futurist, author, and investor (xlnt)
Interview: Vitalik Buterin, creator of Ethereum
Iran is Trump's Katrina
Is China inventing big important things?
Is economics an excuse for inaction?
Is immigration raising rents in America? (grrrr)
Is U.S. industrial policy learning from its mistakes?
Is Web3 culture similar to Amway culture?
It's not Cancel Culture, it's Cancel Technology
It's OK not to be fat
It's time for Europe to stand up
JD Vance's crusade against GDP is wrong and bad
Jewish Americans are feeling unsettled
Let's evaluate the whole Republican party platform!
Liberalism is resilient
Liberalism needs a new philosophy of immigration (2026)
LLMs are not going to destroy the human race
Macroeconomic update: Soft landing in progress?
Macroeconomics is still in its infancy
MAGA doesn't build anything
MAGA's attack on science is even worse than it looks
Malaysia: Truly Asia
Maybe the Rapture is already here
Maybe you should have bought an electric car
Much of what you've heard about Carter and Reagan is wrong (xlnt)
My cyberpunk city, my cyberpunk world
My sci-fi novel recommendations
National Conservatism has no coherent, workable plan for America
Network State, or a Network of States?
NFTs will (probably) be back
No, you are not on Indigenous land
Noam Chomsky and the end of "America bad"
Nobody knows how many jobs will "be automated"
Nutty macroeconomic theories will ruin your country's economy
On the wisdom of the historians
Only fools think Elon is incompetent
Our age of kings
Our climate change debates are out of date
Pakistan is in big trouble
Pass the damn infrastructure bill, dammit
People are realizing that degrowth is bad (xlnt)
Plentiful, high-paying jobs in the age of AI (2024)
Plentiful, high-paying jobs in the age of AI (2026)
Popular econ books: What to read, what not to read
Professionalize the police
Rabbit = Good Friend
Repost: Distributed service-sector productivity
Repost: The Darkness
Salarymen, specialists, and small businesses
Science fiction novels for economists
Secretary jobs in the age of AI
Seven reasons America is headed for a more conservative decade
Shops make a city great
Should we "pace" AI self-improvement?
Skilled immigration is a national security priority
Solar is happening. Nuclear is (mostly) not.
Some ideas for science fiction in the 2020s
Stock buybacks don't really matter
Stop pretending you know what AI does to the economy
Stop screeching about immigration, and get smart about it
Stop spending money on smaller classes
Substack complaints miss the mark
Superintelligence is already here, today (2026)
Ten things that are going right in America
The "$140,000 poverty line" is very silly
The 8% interest rate scenario is still in play
The American socialist worldview is just totally broken
The American suburbs are better than you think
The authoritarian takeover attempt is here
The Biden Boom
The big sanctions: A quick explainer
The Big Tariffs are here
The Big Tech layoffs are a turning point
The Bluesky-ization of the American left
The car will triumph, again
The case of the angry history postdoc
The chaos has arrived
The Citrini post is just a scary bedtime story
The Dark Forest hypothesis is absurd
The dawn of the posthuman age
The death of Market Street
The decade of the Second China Shock
The Democrats have their own MAGA now
The dream of bringing back Bell Labs
The Econ Nobel we were all waiting for
The economic consequences of a war with Iran
The economic consequences of the Iran war
The economics of "Rich Men North of Richmond"
The educated professional class is out of touch with America
The Elite Overproduction Hypothesis
The end of an era for China's economy
The end of the age of heroes
The end of the system of the world
The Fall of the Nerds
The future isn't what it used to be
The Great World War 2 Afterparty is over
The Inflation Reduction Act: Bidenomics 2.0
The Inflation Reduction Act: Some initial thoughts
The internet breaks
The Japan that Abe Shinzo made
The long economic war against Russia: A plan
The macro arsonists
The Metaverse and (near-)infinite economic growth
The moderately easy problem of consciousness
The New 1970s
The next phase of globalization is going to be awesome
The NYT article on MMT is really bad
The only thing worse than sweatshops is no sweatshops
The Poland/Malaysia model
The positive case for Joe Biden
The poverty of anti-tech thought
The problem(s) with utilitarianism
The promise of cultivated meat (guest post)
The pundit's dilemma
The rejection of Bidenomics
The Roaring 20s are back on track
The second Trump presidency is a world-historic failure
The Super-Scary Theory of the 21st Century (repost from 2020)
The Tamerlane Principle (repost)
The traditional auto industry is doomed
The triumph of electromagnetism over thermodynamics (EV > ICE)
The Two Paper Rule (for entering a new domain)
The U.S. education system gets decent value for money: Debunking a common myth
The Ukraine War and the price of bread
The Ukraine war is ultimately about Poland
The War Economy: Sizing up the New Axis
The way we treat pigs is a sin
The Weeb Economy
The wreck of Bidenomics
The YIMBYs are starting to win a few
There isn't always a "long arc" of morality
There's not that much wealth in the world
This is called "capital flight"
This is not a good way to fight racism in America
This year's econ critics make a few good points
Thoughts on Sinofuturism
Thoughts on techno-optimism
Time to think about a second Trump term
Tokyo is the new Paris
Toward a Shallower Future
Towards the abolition of animal farming
Trade deficits do not make a country poorer
Trump starts to break things
Trump's economy is already in trouble
Trump's executive orders: Five big takeaways
Tucker Carlson and the Age of Bad Feelings
Turkey, you were doing so well! (repost)
Turning the page on the Second Tech Boom
U.S. pundits: Please stop trying to concede on Ukraine's behalf
Underrated sci-fi and fantasy books
Understanding America's New Right
Updated thoughts on AI risk
Vibes vs. data
Video interview: Greg Sargent on the threat of election subversion
Video interview: Rob Lee, Russian defense policy specialist
Was the American Rescue Plan a mistake?
Was there really a "neoliberal turn"?
We asked too much of the American university
Weebs!
Welcome to the UFO wars
Western democracies are actually pretty good at war
What defines Japan's national identity?
What happens if the world pulls its money out of America?
What I think DOGE is really up to
What if a few AI companies end up with all the money and power?
What if AI succeeds but OpenAI fails?
What if Xi Jinping isn't that competent? (repost)
What if Xi Jinping just isn't that competent?
What is the Right's economic plan?
What will more intelligence actually do for us?
Where does a liberal go from here?
Where does libertarianism go from here?
Where’s the “intelligence explosion”? (Naam guest post)
Who was the worst monster of the 20th century?
Who were the most important individuals of the 2000s and the 2010s?
Who will actually profit from the AI boom?
Why America betrayed Europe
Why can't economists predict financial crises?
Why did the U.S. miss the battery revolution?
Why do econ journalists keep making this basic mistake?
Why do education, health care, and child care cost so much in America?
Why do people get paid to invest their money?
Why does ChatGPT constantly lie?
Why does everyone still hate the Democrats?
Why don't Americans trust each other anymore? Or do they?
Why Donald Trump won in 2024
Why Europe should resist the Second China Shock
Why Everyone Loves Japan
Why has American pop culture stagnated?
Why I didn't sign the "We Must Act Now" statement (yet)
Why I left Bloomberg
Why I'm (cautiously) optimistic about Elon buying Twitter
Why is China producing so many export goods, anyway?
Why Japanese cities are such nice places to live
Why Paul Ehrlich got everything wrong
Why rabbits?
Why Sri Lanka is having an economic crisis
Why tariffs haven't raised inflation much (yet)
Why the midterms make me optimistic for America
Why the U.S. should fight Cold War 2
Why was there a run on Silicon Valley Bank?
Why you won’t get a flying car (book review)
Will AI take away the coding jobs?
Will China, Inc. be zombified?
Will this be the Chinese Century?
Wokeness as prairie fire
Worst-case scenarios and endgames for the Trump economy
Xi Jinping is the main thing holding China back
Yes, experts will lie to you sometimes
Yes, it's OK to be mad about crime in San Francisco (2023)
Yes, sanctions on Russia are working
Yes, your house is wealth
You are no longer the smartest type of thing on Earth
You're not going to like what comes after Pax Americana (xlnt)
Your future job will be to keep AI on task
Your memecoin is your slush fund
Zero-sum economics keeps failing
Zines!