Shows
Night-Light RadioThe Secrets of Antarctica with Brad Olsen Host Mark EddyTravel author BRAD OLSEN returns for another "Night-Light" interview. We'll be discussing his captivating new publication "The Secrets of Antarctica: The Untold History of the Ice Continent." The fantastic book examines ancient texts dating to Plato's era, the Piri Re'is Map, sordid 20th Century reports and Brad's own expedition there. Brad examines the Nazi occupation and Admirable Byrd being the commanding officer for Operation Highjump. Why was this an interrupted military exersize? Who manages and what is going on at the 45 research bases? Is the ice largely burying pyramids? Have crafts been found under the ice? Brad also introduces...
2026-02-2758 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia LXIII: Plato's WereWolf, & Other Trumpist TopicsBack after a year on hiatus! Noah Smith & Brad DeLong Record the Podcast They, at Least, Would Like to Listen to!; Aspirationally Bi-Weekly (Meaning Every Other Week); Aspirationally an hour...Sokrates: The people find some protector, whom they nurse into greatness… but then changes, as indicated in the old fable of the Temple of Zeus of the Wolf, of how he who tastes human flesh mixed up with the flesh of other sacrificial victims will turn into a wolf. Even so, the protector, once metaphorically tasting human blood, slaying some and exiling others, within or without the la...
2025-04-241h 00
Wall Street Wildlife Investing PodcastE53: Interview with Slouching Towards Utopia author, Bradford DeLong🌴 Thank you for supporting Wall Street Wildlife on https://www.patreon.com/wallstreetwildlife ! 💵 The few bucks you won’t miss will help us make the show even better.
📚 Bradford DeLong, Economic historian and author of Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century, joins us for a kick-ass conversation about the intersection of history, economics and investing.
We learned a tremendous amount from Professor DeLong’s book and his depth of historical and economic understanding.
Brad DeLong regularly shares his economic insights at https://braddelong.substack.com/
Segments:
00:00 Introduction to Tesla and Guest Speaker
00:43 Welco...
2024-11-131h 25
"Econ 102" with Noah Smith and Erik TorenbergPreparing for a Second China Shock and Bad Economists with Brad DeLongIn today’s episode, Noah Smith and Brad DeLong tackle pressing topics such as the potential for a 'China Shock 2', the effectiveness of missile defense systems, and the shifting role of economists since the Great Recession. They also explore the nuances of economic theory, policy implementation, and real-world outcomes, particularly in a fast-paced information age. --🔥 Apply to join over 400 Founders and Execs in the Turpentine Network: https://www.turpentinenetwork.co/--RECOMMENDED PODCAST:🎙️ This Won't Last - Eavesdrop on Keith Rabois, Kevin Ryan, Logan Bartlett, and Zach Weinb...
2024-09-131h 05
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia LXII: Noah Needs Nuance!Noah Smith & Brad DeLong Record the Podcast We, at Least, Would Like to Listen to!; Aspirationally Bi-Weekly (Meaning Every Other Week); Aspirationally an hour...Key Insights:* Brad DeLong says: You say economics and economists in decline—I see bad economists in decline.* Brad DeLong says: You see missile defense as remarkably effective—I see it as marginally effective, at best.* Brad DeLong says: You say China Shock II—I say China Shock I required the GWB administration as witting and unwitting co-conspirator.* Noah Smith says: These are self-refuting prophecies: my def...
2024-06-251h 04
On HumansThe Birth of Modern Prosperity, Part II: Laboratories of the New Era (with Brad DeLong)For millenia, patriarchy, population growth, and extractive elites made the world a bleak place for most humans. But there are good news, too: everything changed around 1870. And the changed happened due to the taming of the genius of people like Nikolai Tesla. So runs the argument my guest today, Brad DeLong. I will let him explain it to you. You can either listen to the episode here, or read some highlights and commentary at Onhumans.Substack.com/ANNOUNCEMENTI'm writing a book! It is about the history of humans, for...
2024-06-0435 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia LXI: DeLong Smackdown Watch: Snatching Back the Baton for Supply-Side Progressivism EditionNoah Smith & Brad DeLong Record the Podcast We, at Least, Would Like to Listen to!; Aspirationally Bi-Weekly (Meaning Every Other Week); Aspirationally an hour...Key Insights:* A number of years ago, Brad DeLong said that it was time to “pass the baton” to “The Left”. How’s that working out for us? #actually, he had said that we had passed the baton—that the absence since January 21, 2009 (or possibly January 21, 1993) of Republican negotiating partners meant that sensible centrism produced nothing—that Barack Obama had proposed John McCain’s climate policy, Mitt Romney’s health care policy, George H.W...
2024-05-221h 08
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia LX: DeLong Smackdown Watch: China EditionNoah Smith & Brad DeLong Record the Podcast We, at Least, Would Like to Listen to!; Aspirationally Bi-Weekly (Meaning Every Other Week); Aspirationally an hour...Key Insights:* Someone is wrong on the internet! Specifically Brad… He needs to shape up and scrub his brain… * Back in the 2000s, Brad argued that the U.S. should over the next few generations try to pass the baton of world leadership to a prosperous, democratic, liberal China…* Back in the 2000s, Noah thought that Brad was wrong—he looked at the Chinese Communist Party, and he thoug...
2024-05-1446 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia LIX: Mourning the Death of Vernor VingeNoah Smith & Brad DeLong Record the Podcast We, at Least, Would Like to Listen to!; Aspirationally Bi-Weekly (Meaning Every Other Week); Aspirationally an hour... Key Insights:* Vernor Vinge was one of the GOAT scifi authors—and he is also one of the most underrated…* That a squishy social-democratic leftie like Brad DeLong can derive so much insight and pleasure from the work of a hard-right libertarian like Vernor Vinge—for whom the New Deal Order is very close to being the Big Bad, and who sees FDR as a cousin of Sauron—creates great ho...
2024-05-081h 11
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia LVIII: Acemoglu & Johnson Should Have Written About Technologies as Labor-Complementing or Labor-SubstitutingIn which Noah Smith & Brad DeLong wish Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson had written a very different book than their "Power & Progress" is...Key Insights:* Acemoglu & Johnson should have written a very different book—one about how some technologies complement and others substitute for labor, and it is very important to maximize the first.* Neither Noah Smith nor Brad DeLong is at all comfortable with “power” as a category in economics other than as the ability to credibly threaten to commit violence or theft.* Acemoglu & Robinson’s Why Nations Fail is a truly gr...
2024-03-191h 08
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia LVII: The "Vibecession" Is Losing Its VibeProducer Confidence & Consumer Confidence (in the Economy), & Our Confidence (in Our Analyses): Noah Smith & Brad DeLong Record the Podcast We, at Least, Would Like to Listen to!; Aspirationally Bi-Weekly (Meaning Every Other Week); Aspirationally an hour...Key Insights:* The disjunction between all the economic data having been very good and very strong for the past year and tons of reports and commentary about how people “weren’t feeling it” is mostly the result of the fact that things work with lags.* There are other factors: partisan politics, and the insistence of Republicans that they m...
2024-02-0847 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia LVI: Economic Development: Oks & Williams, Rodrik & Stiglitz& a start-of-the-semester academic-email-addresses-only paid-subscription sale:Key Insights:* Young whippersnappers Oks and Williams are to be commended for being young, and whippersnapperish—but we disagree with them.* Contrary to what Brad thought, the fertility transition in Africa really has resumed.* The problem of how you provide mass employment for people is different than the problem of how you increase your economy’s productivity by building knowledge capital, infrastructure, and other forms of human capital. * It is important to keep those straight and distinguished in your mind.* Commodity exporting shou...
2024-01-201h 07
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia LV: The Forthcoming Successful Development of the Asia Circle, & DehyperglobalizationKey Insights:* Finally, at long last, over the next two generations the tide is likely to be flowing strongly toward near-universal global development...* The fear was that dehyperglobalization would rob poorer countries of their ability to develop the export comparative advantages to support the manufacturing engineering clusters they need for learning by doing, establishing a good educational system, and converging to global North standards of living...* This fear appears to have been very overblown...* Optimism about future income growth and globalization is warranted because India has more people in it than...
2023-12-0459 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia LIV: We Go Off Message with Special Guest Brian BeutlerThe SubStackLand community gains another valuable member. We welcome him to the NFL SubStackLand:Key Insights:* Bing-AI says “Brian Beutler” is pronounced “Bryan Bootler”—that is, rhymes with “lion shooter”, which shows how far political incorrectness has penetrated Silicon Valley…* Noah has figured out a solution to his problem of losing the screws to his microphone stand: duct tape…* This started with Brad poking Brian on his belief there was a golden age of comity, common purpose, and energy in the left-of-center political sphere back in 2005 to 2008—saying that this misconceived as all mourning for...
2023-10-1254 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia LIII: Rule #1: No Schmittposting!Liberals vs. leftists once again, with the principal conclusion being that trying to find and join your tribe by shouting online—Schmittian picking-an-enemy as the core of your identity—is no way to go through life, son. Nor is artfully screenshotting in order to make sure your readers do not see the sentence just below the ones you quote.In which we discuss the positions of “Brianna”, Matt”, and “Ezra”—who are SubTuring concepts in our minds with whom we have parasocial relationships, and are not real persons named Brianna Wu, Matt Yglesias, and Ezra Klein—on where the boundary...
2023-09-151h 10
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia LII: Growth, Development, China, the Solow Model, & the Future of South & Southeast AsiaKey Insights:* The Chinese Communist Party is very like an aristocracy—or maybe it isn’t…* If it is, it will in the long run have the same strong growth-retarding effects on the economy that aristocracies traditionally have…* Or maybe it won’t: China today is not Europe in the 1600s…* We probably will not be able to get Noah to read Franklin Ford: Robe & Sword: The Regrouping of the French Nobility After Louis XIV to dive more deeply into analogies & contrasts…* Southeast Asia’s future is very bright beca...
2023-09-0549 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia LI: Begun, Þe Attack on Biden Industrial Policy Has!Key Insights:* Critics: Cato-style libertarians, including AEI’s Michael Strain. The last die-hard classic Milton Friedman-style economic libertarians—and starting in 1975, Milton Friedman would say, every three years, that the Swedish social democratic model was going to collapse in the next three years.* Critics: Progressives—Biden is a tool of the neoliberals, and secretly Robert Rubin in disguise. People like David Dayen. They seem to be going through the motions—half-heartedly making their arguments to try to shift the Overton Window, but knowing deep down that Biden is about as good as they are going to get
2023-08-1652 min
Inflection PointHexapodia L: Why Is Such a Good Economy Seen as Bad?Key Insights:* Brad has a new microphone!* Noah has jet lag: he is just back from Japan.* Brad has jet lag: he is just back from Australia.* Perhaps inflation’s ebbing has not yet made its way into the minds of people when they answer pollsters.* We reject the hypothesis that it is because of lagging real incomes.* More difficult mortgage borrowing and positive interest payments on car loans are a thing, but really unlikely to be a big thing.* It seems likely that 2024 will be...
2023-08-1148 min
Economics ExploredHighlights of last 100 incl. Brad DeLong, Sir David Hendry, Leonora Risse, Andrew May - EP200In this special 200th episode of Economics Explored, host Gene Tunny is joined by Tim Hughes to discuss some of the highlights from the last 100 episodes. The episode features clips of Brad DeLong (UC Berkeley) describing how we’ve been slouching towards utopia since 1870, Sir David Hendry (Oxford) on the merits of small modular nuclear reactors, Leonora Risse (RMIT) on the benefits of diversity, and Super Forecaster Warren Hatch on what makes a good forecaster, among others. Please get in touch with any questions, comments and suggestions by emailing us at contact@economicsexplored.com or sending a voic...
2023-08-081h 09
The Vital CenterSlouching towards Utopia, with Brad DeLongFor most of our ten thousand years on the planet, the vast majority of humanity endured lives of dire poverty and extreme material deprivation. Most people spent most of their time worrying about securing the bare minimum of food and shelter. The Industrial Revolution began to change that dynamic. Still, the British economist and philosopher John Stuart Mill was correct to question in the early 1870s whether “all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being.” Soon after, however, the emergence of globalization, the industrial research laboratory, and the modern corporation made possible a rapi...
2023-08-031h 07
Inflection PointHexapodia XLIX: We Cannot Tell in Advance Which Technologies Are Labor-Augmenting & Which Are Labor-ReplacingKey Insights:* Brad’s microphone is dying, and a new one is on order.* However, 75% of the talking on this episode is Noah: he came loaded for bear.* Although Noah has not yet read Acemoglu & Johnson’s Power & Progress, he nevertheless has OPINIONS!* Friedrich von Hayek was right when he pointed out that we could not know the shape of future technologies* Particularly, we cannot know where, as new technologies develop, they will settle in the balance between tacit-local and formal-generalizable-centralizable knowledge with respect to what is needed to make...
2023-07-0745 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: “Hexapodia” is þe Key Insight! XLVIII: The "Late-Antiquity Pause"Key Insights:* Rome did fall. It did not merely “transform”.* Across Eurasia, from 150 to 800 or so there was a pronounced “Late-Antiquity Pause” in terms of technological progress and even the maintenance of large-scale social organization.* There was a proper “Dark Age” only in Britain, Germany, the Low Countries, and France—with Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia being edge cases.* There was no Dark Age at all in what had been the Roman East—what became what we call the Byzantine Empire and what called itself the βασιλεία Ῥωμαίων—Basileia Rhōmaiōn—but the Byzantine Empire was...
2023-06-221h 14On HumansSeason Highlights ~ Was Marx Right About History But Wrong About The Future? (with Brad DeLong)Season 2 is kicking off on the 17th of June! In the meanwhile, we have time for a couple of more highlights. This one is from episode 18 with economic historian Brad Delong, author of Slouching Towards Utopia.
2023-05-3113 min
The Jim Rutt ShowEP 182 Brad DeLong on An Economic History of the 20th CenturyJim talks with Brad DeLong about his book Slouching Toward Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century. They discuss how everything changed around 1870, the idea of a polycrisis, Friedrich von Hayek's affirmation of the market system, the calculation problem, Karl Polanyi's response, a quantitative index of technological knowledge, the pace of growth, the necessity of a grand narrative, Malthusianism, the lead-up to the Industrial Revolution, the invention of the industrial research lab, the Edison-Tesla fight, science as an institution, the transition away from force & fraud dominance, theories about the rise of global empires, communities of engineering practice, causes of Wor...
2023-03-291h 36
Talk CocktailDissecting the Silicon Valley Bank Debacle: A conversation with Dean Baker and Brad DeLong
It has been a momentous week for banks and markets. What some have dubbed an “extinction-level event” was, at its core, the failure of a couple of banks.
To help us put all of this into proper perspective, we are joined on this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast by two distinguished economists, J. Bradford DeLong and Dean Baker.
DeLong served as deputy undersecretary of the treasury in the Clinton administration and is currently a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the author of the substack Grasping Reality and the recently publis...
2023-03-2148 min
Pitchfork Economics with Nick HanauerSlouching towards economic utopia (with Brad DeLong)Between 1870 and 2010 an unprecedented explosion of material wealth transformed the globe, but that wave of prosperity failed to create a fully functioning and equal society. How did we manage to create an economic pie large enough for everyone to share, but then fumble dividing that pie up equally? Brad DeLong explores this question in his new book, Slouching Towards Utopia, which looks at the economic history of the twentieth century and why it matters today.J. Bradford DeLong is an economic historian and a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He wa...
2023-03-2142 min
On HumansHuman Condition in the Long 20th Century; Or How Economics Changed Everything ~ Brad DeLongMost histories of the 20th century focus on world wars and ideological conflicts. Others focus on the fall of European empires. Yet others focus on the slow but inevitable progress of social justice movements.Important themes.But according to Brad DeLong, the real story of “the long 20th century” (1870-2010) is an economic story. It is the story of how humanity, for the first time in its existence, was able to generate prosperity for the masses–so much so that it became technically possible to eradicate poverty altogether.DeLong is an economic historian and th...
2023-03-121h 19
Thinking Ahead with Carter PhippsBrad DeLong: Are We Slouching Toward Utopia?Too often, the questions that we ask about our own time-period reflect a limited understanding of history. For example, consider the question: why is there still poverty and inequality? It’s a worthy question, but an even better one might be: How did so many societies, against all odds and without historical precedent, escape poverty and become wealthy? How have we come so far in our attempt to escape the "nasty, short and brutish" existence of our ancestors? Instead of just focusing on what we are still doing wrong, maybe we should also put some attention on how we ma...
2023-03-011h 15
Conversations with TylerBrad DeLong on Intellectual and Technical ProgressBrad DeLong, professor of economics at UC Berkley, OG econ blogger, and Tyler's Harvard classmate, joins the show to discuss Slouching Towards Utopia, an economic history of the 20th century that's been nearly thirty years in the making. Tyler and Brad discuss what can really be gleaned from the fragmentary economics statistics of the late 19th century, the remarkable changes that occurred from 1870-1920, the astonishing flourishing of German universities in the 19th century, why investment banking allowed America and Germany to pull ahead of Britain economically, what enabled the Royal Society to become a force for...
2023-02-2247 min
How to Save a CountryBONUS: Who Really Ended the Cold War? (with Brad DeLong)In our last bonus episode before the launch of season 2, we bring you an unaired clip from a previous episode with economic historian Brad DeLong.
Felicia, Michael, and Brad discuss a point from Brad’s book, Slouching Towards Utopia, about whether neoliberalism persisted as long as it did because of the perception that it won the Cold War for the US. They also discuss the tension between domestic and international economics, particularly in relation to the Inflation Reduction Act, and what listeners can look forward to in season 2 of How to Save a Country.
Presented by...
2023-02-1610 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: “Hexapodia” is þe Key Insight! XLVII: “Polycrisis” Was Just the New Cold War All the Time!Key Insights:* The global trade network is immensely valuable…* Friendshoring is not deglobalization, but raher shift-globlization…* Brad was stupid in 2005 in thinking “passing the baton of hegemony” constructively and progressively was a possibility…* Countries have no gratitude, and only remember what is convenient…* William James sought for “the moral equivalent of war” to mobilize civilizational energies for good and progress; and a Cold War certainly counts…* As Zhou Enlai said on similar issues: “it is too soon to tell”…* We both hope that America and China will soon be frien...
2023-02-0656 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: “Hexapodia” is þe Key Insight! XLVI: Þe One Where We Talk About Everything, wiþ Special Guest Miles KimballKey Insights:* Yes, it is possible to talk about everything in an hour…* We are not very far apart on what the Fed is doing and should be doing—there is only a 100 basis-point disagreement…* Miles would be 100% right about the proper stance of monetary policy if he were in control of the Fed…* Miles is not in control of the Fed…* Thus Brad thinks that asymmetric risks strongly militate for pausing for six months, and then moving rapidly…* Smart people need to think much more about how to incre...
2023-01-101h 04
Inflection PointPODCAST: “Hexapodia” is þe Key Insight! XLV: Information Goods & þe Measurement of Economic Growth, wiþ Special Guest John QuigginKey Insights:* Information really wants to be free—if it is not free, if it is “charged for” by advertising, or otherwise, you will get into a world of hurt.* In the information age the capitalist mode of production has become a fetter on economic development and human flourishing: Friedrich Engels was right.* We need free public-funded Mastodon < >* No! We don’t!* We need John back in the future, to talk about: (a) the euthanasia of the rentier, what is misnamed “secular stagnation” and the coming of a capital-slack economy.* BitCo...
2022-12-2049 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XLIV: R&D & Industrial Resarch LabsPre-Note:Here in the U.S., at the leading edge of the world economy, measured producivity growth fell off a cliff in the late 1960s, recovreed somewhat in the 1980s, resumed what had been its “normal” pre-1970 pace in the 1990s with the dot-com boom—and then fell off a cliff again in the mid-2000s.Did the neoliberal swing toward “short-termism”, viewing corporations as cash-flow engines and nothing else—plus the great reduction in public R&D and infrastructure spending—play a role in this? Perhaps. Maybe even probably.Could and should we rebuild the...
2022-12-091h 08
Odd LotsBrad DeLong on the FTX Collapse and the South Sea BubbleWe're in the aftermath of an extraordinary bubble in cryptocurrencies and the collapse of FTX is a defining chapter of the industry's turmoil. But what does history tells us about the cycle of bubbles and busts? Which past manias are the most similar to what we've just seen? In this episode, we speak with Brad DeLong, an economic historian at the University of California at Berkeley, who is also the author of the new book, "Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century." He explains how the FTX saga shares shocking similarities with the story of the...
2022-12-0548 min
The Political ConversationEp. 13: What To Believe on Inflation and Recession, with Brad DelongSeveral camps have strong views on what the Federal Reserve should do next to control inflation. And on the federal budget, there always are arguments about whether the deficits are too large or needed to keep America working. Who do we believe?
Wally asked that of Brad DeLong, a heavy-duty macroeconomist at Berkeley and former Assistant Director of the Treasury who has just published Slouching Toward Utopia, a history of the economy from its takeoff around 1870 to our times.
https://www.thepoliticalconversation.org/
2022-11-221h 00
Inflection PointPODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XLIII: Crypto Fraud! EditionPre-Note:One thing we did not get into was the relationship between the claps of FTX and the associated fraud and “Effective Altruism”—Effective Altruism not so much as a philosophy, but rather as a doctrine preached by a life-coach.If you want to have the highest chance of becoming rich, you make your bets as if you had a logarithmic utility function: if the downside to a bet cuts your wealth in half, you will not accept the bet unless the upside more than doubles your wealth. Accepting bets more risky than those that satisf...
2022-11-1753 minHow to Save a CountryWhy Neoliberalism Is Finally on the Way Out (with Brad DeLong)Brad DeLong knows a thing or two about the US economy. As one of the world’s leading macroeconomists, a former Treasury Department deputy assistant secretary, and author of the new book Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century, Brad is an expert on both the history and theory of neoliberalism.
And he’s as surprised as anyone that it came to power so completely, and that it’s lasted this long.
“In my heart of hearts, I still cannot believe that the New Deal order collapsed as rapidly as it did in the 19...
2022-11-1739 minEconomics ExploredSlouching Towards Utopia w/ Brad DeLong - EP163Slouching Towards Utopia is the new book from Brad DeLong, Professor of Economics at University of California, Berkeley. Professor DeLong joins show host Gene Tunny to discuss the long twentieth century from 1870 to 2010. The conversation considers the three factors which came together to massively raise living standards post-1870, and how nonetheless we’ve struggled to achieve the Utopia that once appeared possible. The “neoliberal turn” beginning in the 1970s and 1980s is considered, and DeLong explains why he writes that “Hayek and his followers were not only Dr. Jekyll–side geniuses but also Mr. Hyde–side idiots.”You can buy Sl...
2022-10-281h 05
Noen har snakket sammenBrad DeLong om økonomisk vekst og hva det betyr for menneskehetenDen eksepsjonelle økonomiske veksten var det definerende trekket ved det 20. århundret, ifølge økonomiprofessor Brad DeLong ved UC Berkley, som nylig kom ut med boken Slouching towards Utopia. Vi snakker med Brad om det 20. århundrets økonomiske historie, om sosialdemokrati og nyliberalisme, om hva høy vekst gjør med et samfunn, og hva kan vi vente oss nå som veksten har bremset opp.
2022-10-2849 min
Look ForwardSlouching Toward Utopia – Brad DeLong and the Long Twentieth CenturyBrad DeLong, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley joins the Essential Podcast to discuss his ambitious and controversial new book "Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century".
2022-10-1438 min
The AI MetagameInverview with Brad DelongBrad Delong is an economic historian at UC-Berkeley. A former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration, he frequently writes about policy issues on Twitter as @delong, where he has over 80,000 followers, and on his popular blog Grasping Reality (https://braddelong.substack.com). He is the author of a new book, Slouching Towards Utopia, that has been widely lauded as the most important book in economic history in many years.
2022-10-071h 27
Inflection PointPODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XLII: "Slouching Towards Utopia"—Brad's New Book EditionKey Insights:* Since 1870, we humans have done amazingly astonishingly uniquely and unprecedentedly well at baking a sufficiently large economic pie.* But the problems of slicing and tasting the pie—of equitably distributing it, and then using our technological powers to live lives wisely and well—continue to flummox us. * The big reason we have been unable to build social institutions for equitably slicing and then properly tasting our now more-than-sufficiently-large economic pie is the sheer pace of economic transformation.* Since 1870 humanity's technological competence has doubled every generation* Hence Schumpeterian crea...
2022-09-201h 24
The CapitalistBrad DeLong on Slouching Towards UtopiaIn a world of relentless, high-velocity news, sometimes it pays to take a step back and look at the big picture. Our guest this week, the US economist Brad DeLong, does that with some aplomb in his new book 'Slouching Towards Utopia', a sweeping survey of economic development from the late 19th century to the present day, and an attempt to work out how we've ended up in this period of roiling economic crises.As well as making a big argument about the nature of economic life in the long 20th century that...
2022-09-1635 min
The New Liberal PodcastSlouching Towards Utopia ft. Brad DeLongThe world is so much richer than it was 150 years ago that past generations might look at society today and declare it a utopia. But how did we get here, and are we really living in utopia? Economist Brad DeLong joins the podcast to discuss his new book, Slouching Towards Utopia. We discuss the key factors that allowed economic growth to explode around 1870, why Brad builds a grand narrative around the 'long 20th century', and why economic growth is the most important lens for understanding human history in the last 150 years. Recommended reading: Slouching Towards Ut...
2022-09-071h 12
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and IdeasBrad DeLong on Why the 20th Century Fell Short of UtopiaPeople throughout history have imagined ideal societies of various sorts. As the twentieth century dawned, advances in manufacturing and communication arguably brought the idea of utopia within our practical reach, at least as far as economic necessities are concerned. But we failed to achieve it, to say the least. Brad DeLong's new book, Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century, investigates why. He compares the competing political and economic systems that dominated the "long 20th century" from 1870 to 2010, and how we managed to create such enormous wealth and still be left with such intractable problems.
2022-09-051h 24
Sean Carroll's Mindscape209 | Brad DeLong on Why the 20th Century Fell Short of UtopiaPeople throughout history have imagined ideal societies of various sorts. As the twentieth century dawned, advances in manufacturing and communication arguably brought the idea of utopia within our practical reach, at least as far as economic necessities are concerned. But we failed to achieve it, to say the least. Brad DeLong’s new book, Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century, investigates why. He compares the competing political and economic systems that dominated the “long 20th century” from 1870 to 2010, and how we managed to create such enormous wealth and still be left with such intractable problems.Support Mindsca...
2022-09-051h 24
Inflection PointPODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XLI: Inflation & Its VicissitudesKey Insights:* The only way to buy insurance against the fiscal theory of the price level’s becoming relevant for the inflation outlook is to keep Trump and Trumpists out of office* We have one political party that could well, someday, turn us inflation-wise into “Argentina”: the Republicans.* But thankfully we have only one such political party.* Democrats need to develop a policy framework for a time of inflation: capacity-building progressivism.* We do not yet know whether what the Fed has done is sufficient to return inflation to its 2%/year C...
2022-08-291h 00
Inflection PointPODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XL: Coming to America Immigration EditionKey Insights:* We should avoid the tendency to paint the past, nostalgically, as a golden age.* If we take the long view there is an overwhelming continuity in the immigrant experience.* The immigrant experience is a very positive story—both then and now.* There is great hope for positive change in our immigration system: comprehensive immigration reform is not a third rail in American politics.* Remember George Washington’s take on immigration: “The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respected Stranger, but the oppres...
2022-08-081h 13
Inflection PointPODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XXXIX: Bidenomics Industrial Policy Edition: CHIPS & IRAKey Insights:* Be pragmatic! Do what works! Reinforce success! Abandon failure!* CHIPS & IRA are only, at most, 1/4 of what we should be doing.* These are both very good things to do, as far as running a successful industrial policy is concerned.* Maybe there was something to Biden’s claims that he could lead congress after all.* Hexapodia!References:* Matt Alt: Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World * Stephen S. Cohen & J. Bradford DeLong (2016): Concrete Economics: The Hamiltonian Approach to Economic Policy (Cambridge: HB...
2022-07-2948 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XXXVIII: Crypto & "Web3"Key Insights:* The most recent round of Tech elephants, rhinoceroses, unicorns, and spiny lizards—Netflix, Shopify, etc.—are very unlikely to payoff for those investors who stay on the ride to the very end.* That said, they were very much worth doing even if they never make their shareholders any money. The growth of communities of engineering, entrepreneurial, and organizational practice is a huge benefit for innovation and growth—and the overwhelming bulk of that becomes non-rival public knowledge, that nobody can make scarce and hence charge people through the nose for.* Having your r...
2022-05-2541 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XXXVII: A Meta-Podcast on the Ezra Klein Show, Larry Summers Edition; or, The Inflation Outlook AgainKey Insights:* Not so much key insights, as key questions: (a) What are the teams? (b) 1920, 1948, 1951, 1974, or 1980? (c) Are there any true members of Team Transitory left? (d) Who is on Team The-Fed-Has-Got-This? (e) Who is on Team Hit-the-Economy-on-the-Head-with-a-Brick? (f) What inflation rate do we want to support economic reopening? (g) What inflation rate do we want to support the sectoral rebalancing—towards goods production, & towards the deliverator economy? (h) How would expected inflation get embedded in the labor market without strong unions and multi-year contracts? (i) How would expected inflation get embedded in the la...
2022-03-3051 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XXXVI: Four Lost Cities, by Annalee NewitzKey Insights:* There is a perspective from which “today” means “post-Ordovician”* Catul-Huyuk as 900 families living cheek-by-jowl, and after 1500 years… people leave…* Angkor’s uniquely vulnerable water reservoirs… and eventually… people leave…* Cahokia’s sophisticated organization of labor… but eventually… people leave…* Pompeii… well, we know why people flee all-of-a-sudden…* Cities are magical places, but not always, and not forever…* Cities suffer from abandonment when an overdetermined disaster hits a sclerotic system: you can deal with politics, you can deal with climate change by themselves, but…* Question: Will Detroit or Mia...
2022-03-161h 21
Inflection PointPODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XXXV: Putin's Surprise Attack on Ukraine, wiþ Special Guest Kamil GaleevWe Truly Did Not Have History Rhyming to the Spanish Civil War on Our 2022 Bingo Card!…Subscribe to get this in your email inbox. Become a paid subscriber if… I will not say that this ‘Stack will cease to exist without paying subscribers. I will say that the frequency of this ‘Stack depends on enough people being paying subscribers for me to feel under a sense of obligation to prioritize this, rather than something else. And I will say that the survival of our civilization may well depend on our reattaining a functional, rational public sphere—and that s...
2022-03-091h 08
Night-Light RadioBeyond Esoteric: Escaping Prison Planet with Brad OlsenNothing in this world works the way you think it does; there is always more to the story. Be aware that there is a war for your mind and your soul. Corporations have taken over governments in a new form of Fascism that now incorporates high technology and artificial intelligence. The survival of the human race may depend on breaking the Embargo of truth, and collectively developing an ÜberMind. But truth always resonates! Beyond Esoteric takes off the kids gloves, and exposes the control grid extending its tentacles across the planet. The word occult means nothing more than to s...
2022-02-151h 59
Inflection PointPODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight XXXIV!: Federal Reserve Nominee Lisa Cook, without Special Guest Lisa CookBecome a free subscriber to receive this ‘Stack in your email. Do note that this Grasping Reality newsletter is a reader-supported publication—I really would like to collect enough from it to hire an RA. So consider becoming a paid subscriber, please, if you find this project worthwhile and think it worth continuing:Thanks for reading this. And please share it far and wide, if you think it worth reading…Key Insights:* The Federal Reserve Act directly speaks of the importance of representation—that Governors come from different economic communit...
2022-02-0650 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight XXXIII: Inflation!Become a free subscriber to receive this ‘Stack in your email. Do note that this Grasping Reality newsletter is a reader-supported publication—I really would like to collect enough from it to hire an RA. So consider becoming a paid subscriber, please, if you find this project worthwhile and think it worth continuing:Thanks for reading this. And please share it far and wide, if you think it worth reading!Key Insights:* Macro Policy Guiding Principle: prioritize full employment—make Say’s Law true in practice even though it is false...
2022-01-1447 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight XXXII: Þe “Rule & Ruin” of America’s Republican Party, & Other TopicsKey Insights:* We may well face a generation of right-wing culture war-fueled minority rule in this country.* American Progressives have proven bad at making alliances with moderate conservatives—and at giving conservative voters reasons to vote for moderates.* Worry most about American national decline—which is happening anyway.* American exceptionalism and America as a “city upon a hill” for the world—that is gone. We are no longer a model to emulate, but a horrible warning of a society gone wrong.* The things that are real to progressives are fake: demo...
2021-12-1459 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXXI: History, Slavery, & National NarrativesKey Insights:* Nearly all successful political movements over the past 150 years have been strongly nationalistic* A successful cosmopolitanism must therefore be a nationalistic cosmopolitanism—one that says your country is great because it learns from and has important things to teach other nations.* We—somewhat surprisingly—find ourselves endorsing and agreeing with Matthew Desmond’s claim that an important root of some facets of American capitalism is found on the plantation.* We endorse Sandy Darity and Darrick Hamilton’s calls for reparations,* We enthusiastically and positively give a shout-out to the hig...
2021-11-291h 10
Inflection PointPODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXX: Faulty Torpedoes, WWII Submarines, Promotions, & Our Hideous Waste of Human PotentialKey Insights:* Matt Suandi—forced off of his India RCT development-economics project by the COVID plague—has taken the plague year to write a brilliant paper: Matthew Suandi: Promoting to Opportunity: Evidence and Implications from the U.S. Submarine Service * In the early stages of the Pacific War, whether a US submarine-launched torpedo exploded was a matter of luck.* If a submarine captain had an enlisted man marked out for promotion, those promotions happened much more often if the submarine returned from its cruise having succeeded in sinking ships.* Those promoted beca...
2021-11-1749 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXIX: Þe Swedish Central Bank Prize in Honor of Alfred Nobel PodcastKey Insights:* Paul Feyerabend was right—science is whatever scientists do: anything goes. But what healthy sciences that survive and flourish and good scientists do is put first and foremost discovering what actually is and making theories to understand reality. So Kuhn and Popper are also right.* Economics has not been much of a science. But this Card, Angrist, Imbens—and Krueger—Nobel Prize marks a very big possible improvement in this respect.* Keep at it! Keep doing your work no matter the brickbats, and you may, someday, look back and recognize that you ha...
2021-10-2044 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXVIII: Build Back Better!Key Insights:* Yes, Americans are now in a selfish defensive crouch, but just wait 8 years—if we get a high-pressure economy for those years…* We are finally getting back to normal politics, in which we slag each other because some claim we can afford to spend $3.5 and others that we can only afford to spend $1.5 trillion. And that is a very good sign…* Hexapodia!References:* Zach Carter: Why Are Moderates Trying to Blow Up Biden’s Centrist Economic Plan? * Jonathan Cohn: Why Manchin & Democratic Leaders Might Not Be Quite...
2021-10-0753 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXVII: EvergrandeKey Insights:* I do not understand how the Chinese economy works.* The Chinese economy is an odd combination of market and party in which the party has enormous reach and control, but somehow that has not triggered the “soft budget constraint” problems of the Soviet model.* Financial constraints are not real—a government that wants to can evade them in its management of the economy.* Real resource constraints are, however real: finance does not bind because it is true that what we can do, we can afford; but it is also true t...
2021-09-2239 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXVI: True, Neo-, and IlliberalismKey Insights:* Today’s meaning of “neoliberalism” is the result of the collision of two different applications of the term—to Margaret Thatcher, and to the Washington Monthly…* Intermediary institutions are very suspicious to liberalism, at least in its pure form…* Liberalism has a bias toward atomizing solutions to social problems…* YIMBY vs. NIMBY is the fundamental political debate in America today…* Sometimes the answer will be command-and-control, sometimes the answer will be deregulation…* Yuval Levin is good…* Detach liberalism from centrism or moderation…* Liberals are think...
2021-09-1854 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXV: AfghanistanKey Insights:* The Taliban should go to the World Bank and say: “For 42 years now, mechanized, airborne, and infantry armies and air and drone forces have been driving, walking, and flying over our country, killing us. that has done enormous amounts of damage. We are absolutely dirt poor. We will try as hard as we can: please give us money so that we can start call centers, start simple labor-intensive textile factories, and also beef up our handmade rug businesses so that we can export to pay for what we so desperately need. This is our only ch...
2021-08-2638 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXIV: Which Great Powers Held the Baton of the Future, When?“I have seen the future, and it works”. That was what Lincoln Steffens wrote in a letter to Maria Howe in 1919 with respect to Vladimir Lenin’s Soviet Union. Which societies are thought to “work”, and how does that influence the power and authority such societies have, and the global leadership they can exercise? Key Insights:* We need to have another podcast on emerging great-power competition in a time of increasing global authoritarianism* Great powers remain great powers not just through economic and military strength, but by projecting an image that they are the wave o...
2021-08-0747 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXIII: AntitrustKey Insights:* There are a great many reasons to fear that the rise of industrial and post-industrial economic concentration is doing serious harm to the market economy’s (limited) ability to function as an efficiency-promoting societal calculating mechanism.* None of these have yet been nailed down.* But the neo-Brandeisians will have their chance because of the striking misbehavior of the tech platforms, which have thought too much about how to glue their users’ eyeballs to the screen so they can be sold ads and too little about how to make users and others happ...
2021-07-2540 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: "Hexapodia" Is þe Key Insight XXII: Cuba!Key Insights!:* Hexapodia!* Drop the embargo now!* There is nothing that enables an authoritarian régime—or, indeed, pretty much any type of régime—hang together other than an implacable external enemy.* For the Cuban military-bureaucratic junta-oligarchy, that implacable external enemy consists of the Cuban exiles in Miami and their descendantsReferences:* Alexa van Sickle (2014): Viva la Revolución: Cuban Farmers Re-Gain Control Over Land: ‘As the state loosens its grip on food product… * Damian Cave: Raúl Castro Thanks U.S., but Reaffirms Communist Ru...
2021-07-1439 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: "Hexapodia" Is þe Key Insight XXI: Last Exit Off þe Highway to Serfdom?Key Insights: * “This time, for sure!…” Are the Democrats Bullwinkle Moose or Rocket J. Squirrel “that trick never works!” in hoping that they can get a high-investment high-productivity growth full-employment high-wage growth economy, and then the political life for true equality of opportunity will be doable?…* Milton Friedman is of powerful historical importance as one of the principal creators of our still-neoliberal world, but his ideas now—whether monetarism, or his assumption that all political organizations and policies everywhere and always are inescably rent-seeking grifters—are now of historical interests only…* There will be many future mis...
2021-07-0755 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: "Hexapodia" Is þe Key Insight XX: Five-Item Grab-Bag: Vaccination & Votes; NIMBYism & California Growth, Aversion to UI, Google’s Quality, & Wilhelmine Germany & Contemporary ChinaZach Carter, who was supposed to be our guest this week, has a cold. So we have a grab-bag: vaccination & votes, NIMBYism & California growth, aversion to continuing UI, Google’s quality as a search engine, & Wilhelmine Germany & Contemporary ChinaKey Insights:* Red states will see a lot of COVID-hurt this summer fall and winter for… reasons we still find incomprehensible…* NIMBYism has not killed California growth because monkey-smarts are becoming, relatively, less important as a factor of production…* The right response to those who advocate cutting off UI now is Ezra Klein’s...
2021-07-011h 03
Inflection PointPODCAST: "Hexapodia" Is þe Key Insight XIX: America Today: A Zero-Sum Society?Key Insights:* Hexapodia!* Periodically, America has had “the frontier has closed, now scarcity rules!” panics—& they have been bad, but so far they have all been false alarms.* The “new frontier” to alleviate scarcity in America is intensive growth, right here, but more: economic poldering.References:* John F. Kennedy (1960): “The New Frontier”: Liberal Party Nomination Acceptance Speech * William H. Kilpatrick & al. (1933): The Educational Frontier * Perry Miller (1956): Errand into the Wilderness * Mancur Olson (1982): The Rise & Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, & Social Rigidities * Rick Perls...
2021-06-1644 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: "Hexapodia" Is þe Key Insight XVIII: Þe Ecology of InnovationKey Insights:* There is a four-day creative-destruction festschrift for Philippe Aghion & Peter Howitt starting June 9: The Economics of Creative Destruction * When industrial policy in America has been successful, it has always had a profound political driving motive: maintaining independence, manifest destiny, Sputnik, and so on. The only such driver today—and it is urgent—is green energy to fight global warming…* The U.S. used to be excellent not just on the “novelty” prong of Breznitz’s prosperity-in-an-unforgiving-world quadent, but also on the “engineering design”, “second-generation innovation”, and “production-assembly” prongs as well. We threw that away in the e...
2021-06-0945 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: "Hexapodia" Is þe Key Insight XVII: What Will the Jobs of the Future Be Like?Key Insights:* Brad cannot, in fact, reliably and accurately multiply two-digit numbers in his head…* When people comment on twitter that we are a nerdy podcast, we respond by going nerdier..* If we get an relatively egalitarian income distribution, the care-centered service economy will give us at least as many interesting jobs to do in the future as we could possibly want—at least for “future” meaning “next two hundred years”…* Who controls the consumption spending decisions is key to answering the question of what the future of work will be like: it reall...
2021-06-0254 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia XVI: Zombie Economic IdeasKey Insights:* Josef Schumpeter’s “depressions are… forms of something which has to be done, namely, adjustment to previous economic change. Most of what would be effective in remedying a depression would be equally effective in preventing this adjustment…” is perhaps the most zombie of zombie economic ideas. * Schumpeter’s zombie leads to episodes of dorkish zombie economic derp like John Cochrane’s claim in November 2008 that we needed a recession because we were then—in November 2008—building too many houses and employing too many people in construction: * Another destructive zombie idea is the idea that the...
2021-05-2646 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia XV: No-B******t Democracy, Starring Henry FarrellKey Insights:* Henry: We need to be critical of other people in the public sphere, but we need to be critical in an extraordinarily humble way—to recognize that we, all of us, are incredibly biased as individuals. We see the moats in our brothers' eyes very well. We do not see the beams and our own. We have a duty to others to try to help them to remove the beams in a polite, quiet, sometimes insistent way... think very carefully about the ways in which we can genuinely be constructive in cr...
2021-05-191h 04
Inflection PointINTERVIEW: Inflation Concerns in þe US Following Secretary Treasury Janet Yellen's...Brad DeLong: INTERVIEW: Inflation Concerns in the US Following Secretary Treasury Janet: ‘Apple Podcasts: tbs eFM This Morning: 0514 IN FOCUS… Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe
2021-05-1411 min
Night-Light RadioVirtual Vacation to the Southeastern Colonies with Brad Sanders - host Mark EddyWilliam Bartram scholar BRAD SANDERS leads us on a tour of Bartram's explorations of the south eastern colonies. This tour preceded Lewis and Clark's journey to the Pacific northwest by about 30 years. Bartram met many of the colonial govenors and wrote about plants for medical purposes and the wildlife and was welcomed into Native tribes. He was one of the first explorers to publish on the Creeks, Cherokee, Seminoles, Yuchi and more. Brad's magnificent book "Guide to William Bartram's Travels" is full of maps and historic places to visit aside from where Bartram stayed. If you like the variety...
2021-05-121h 16
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia XIV: Þe Capital Gains TaxKey Insights:* Economic arguments against higher taxes that may have been somewhat plausible back in the days of 70% or so maximum individual and 40% or so maximum capital gains tax rates simply do not apply now. * Right-wing parties that don't think they can credibly make the argument that cosseting their core constituencies is necessary for rapid economic growth search for some non-economic cleavage in which the rich and the right-thinking poor, or the right-colored poor, can be on one side and the people who seek a fairer and more equal distribution of income and higher taxes...
2021-05-1234 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia XIII: "Mandated Interoperability": We Can't Make It Work, or Can We?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...
2021-05-0451 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia XII: Þe Cambridge Capital ControversyKey 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...
2021-04-2835 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia XI: China: Its Industrial Policy, & Its Striving for Deweaponized AutarchyKey Insights:Brad DeLong: “I have one key insight: everyone should subscribe to Foreign Affairs and read Dan Wang’s forthcoming piece…”Noah Smith: “There are no good models in history for what China is doing…”Dan Wang: “There are lots of questions about industrial policy that it is very difficult to answer…”And as always, the last key insight is: Hexapodia!References:Ian Cutress: TSMC: We have 50% of All EUV Installations, 60% Wafer Capacity Ian Cutress: Intel’s x86 Designs No Longer Limited to Intel on Intel: IP Blocks fo...
2021-04-2143 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia X: Global Warming…have to come from the arc of Asia facing the bullets, because the American century is over… It's possible to be increasingly optimistic about climate change and to recognize that we still have a huge way to go… If you want to see a coral reef other than with your VR goggles, start scuba diving now…Zeke Hausfather: Climate scientist working on temp records, climate and energy system models. Director of Climate and Energy at The Breakthrough Institute Global Warming:We are now at 1.2℃—2.15℉ above preindustrial, with temperature rising at 0.2℃—0.36℉ every decade, with a lot of momentum be...
2021-04-1455 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia IX: Banishing Extreme Poverty from þe World…as Leninist, Noah Smith as Burkean. We neoliberals and neoliberal-adjacents need to come up with five significant discrete policies to make the world economy work better to reduce not just extreme but regular poverty over the next generation, rather than rest on fictitious laurels…Max Roser: “Most people in the world live in poverty. 85% of the world live on less than $30 per day, two-thirds live on less than $10 per day, and every tenth person lives on less than $1.90 per day. In each of these statistics price differences between countries are taken into account to adjust for the purcha...
2021-04-0749 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia VIII: Þe China Syndrome!…from the rest of coastal East Asia when looked at in comparative context:Today Noah Smith & Brad DeLong talk about China, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, Wilhelmine Germany before WWI, & other topics. The key insights are: (1) we need to get Dan Wang on this podcast; (2) in the context of coastal East Asia after WWII, it does not look as though China has any special economic development sauce—it’s just so huge—(3) China’s land-policy slowdown of migration to the coast has made its economic development significantly slower, (4) Barry Eichengreen with his theories of middle-income growth slowdown looks very...
2021-03-3138 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia VII: Forecasting þe Economy, Now Þt Biden-Rescue Has Been EnactedIn the last resort, the the way the government budget constraint balances itself is through the fiscal theory of the price level: levying this inflation tax on holders of money balances, redistributing wealth away from those who have nominal assets to nominal debts, and imposing a large cognitive-load tax on doing your economic calculation arithmetic. That makes this a lousy tax to impose. Larry and Olivier think we are heading down the road toward a world in which, because Republicans will not allow taxes to be raised, this lousy inflation tax will be levied unless Democrats gird their loins...
2021-03-241h 00
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia VI: Þe Global South Begins to Converge to þe Global North!; Wiþ Noah Smith & Brad DeLongFor 200 years—from 1800 to 2000—first the Industrial Revolution Age and next the Modern Economic Growth Age rolled forward, bringing previously unimaginable wealth to the global north. And the global south fell further and further behind. Don’t get us wrong—life expectancy, nutrition standards, and material well-being in 2000 were all much higher in the global south in 2000 than in 1800. But the proportional gap vis-a-vis the global north had grown to staggering and awful proportions that were a scandal, a disgrace, and a crime. But since 2000 the worm may have turned: now it looks as though the global south—virtually the entire...
2021-03-1733 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia V: Freeing Us from þe Market; Wiþ Mike Konczal, Noah Smith & Brad DeLongMike Konczal: Freedom From the Market: America’s FIght to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand Konczal says that it is only today that “glib libertarians” purveying “fantasies” are trying to make us forget “that free programs and keeping things free from the market are as American as apple pie…” One of the best passages in the book is where he notes the connection between the Fight for $15 minimum wage campaign and human freedom: “Service sector workers demanding a $15 minimum wage and a union… have already won huge victories [with] ideas about how low-wage, precarious work is a...
2021-03-1034 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia IV: Checks for (Almost) Everyone! Wiþ Noah Smith & Brad DeLongThe classical British social insurance state took large chunks of human activity out of the marketplace and attempted to distribute them to each according to his or her need. The classical American social insurance state was targeted and grouchy, attempting to elicit proper behavior. Now we have a turn that we regard as very hopeful: recognizing that the problem of the poor is primarily the problem of too-little social power, that money brings social power, hence the solution is to get the money to the people...RSS URL: References:Twirlip of the Mists...
2021-03-0328 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia III: þe Minimum Wage, wiþ Arin Dube, Noah Smith, & Brad DeLong: Should We Be Fighting for $15?If moderate raises in the minimum wage do not cause unemployment, who can object to them—but why do they not cause higher unemployment, if they in fact do not?RSS URL: Reference:Arin Dube (2019): Impacts of Minimum Wages: Review of the International Evidence : Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe
2021-02-2448 min
The Brad and Taylor ShowChelsie DeLong From Laura DeLong RealtyWe sat down with Chelsie DeLong of Laura DeLong Realty. We talked about how she got her start in real estate, flipping houses, and so much more. Check it out!
2021-02-2227 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: Hexapodia II: Industrial Policy? Do We Need It?, wiþ Brad DeLong & Noah SmithIs there a mysterious Factor X that can speed growth, enhance opportunity, raise wages, & convince others that no, China does not have a superior system?RSS URL: Works Referenced:Twirlip of the Mists: Hexapodia as the Key Insight: ‘I haven't had a chance to see the famous video from Straumli Realm, except as an evocation. (My only gateway onto the Net is very expensive.) Is it true that humans have six legs? I wasn't sure from the evocation. If these humans have three pairs of legs, then I think there is an easy ex...
2021-02-1733 min
Inflection PointPODCAST: "Hexapodia" Is þe Key Insight I: "Relief, Support, Stimulus" or "Stimulus, Inflation, Catastrophe"?: þe Biden $1.9T Reconciliation Plan: Noah Smith & Brad DeLongNoah Smith & Brad DeLong now have a podcast:Works Referenced:Twirlip of the Mists: Hexapodia as the Key InsightVernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep Vernor Vinge: A Deepness in the SkyLarry Summers: The Biden Stimulus Is Admirably Ambitious. But It Brings Some Big Risks tooOlivier Blanchard: ‘Let me double down and go through some numbers…Paul Krugman: Nonstimulus Arithmetic: Why the American Rescue Plan has to be big Noah Smith: COVID Relief Isn't Stimulus, It's Social Insurance: It’s not about pri...
2021-02-1035 min
Educate + Engage PodcastBrad Delong - Message Prep Hacks & Tips - Youth Ministries Podcast #53Brad Delong, Student Pastor at Apostolic Pentecosatl Church in St. Louis, MO, shares insight about his process for preparing sermons for students. Be sure to share this episode with a fellow youth minister!
2020-11-0434 min
Out of the CrisisNoah Smith and Brad DeLong: the cost of the crisisWe are now seeing how damaging our weak response to the pandemic was in the US. Both on human lives and on the economy. But, how much would it actually have cost, if we had completely shuttered the economy for six weeks and paid everyone to stay at home? Would it be cheaper and more effective than the patchwork responses we are seeing now?These questions are not easy to answer, so I spoke to two economic experts Brad DeLong and Noah Smith. Brad and Noah don't agree on much, or really anything. However, they came together...
2020-08-311h 01
The Politics GuysBrad DeLong InterviewMike talks to UC Berkeley economist Brad DeLong. Professor DeLong, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration, blogs at 'Grasping Reality with All Tentacles' - one of the best economics blogs around. Topics they discuss include economic inequality, economic growth, why this is the best time ever to be poor (in the United States, at least), grifters and suckers, alien sinister forces, McDonalds, restaurant gift cards, how the best con artists are those who can con themselves, and lots more.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-politics-guys/donationsAdvertising In...
2017-03-2939 min
Macro Musings with David Beckworth17 - Brad DeLong on Hamiltonian Political Economy and American Economic HistoryJ. Bradford DeLong – professor of economics at UC-Berkeley, research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury during Bill Clinton's presidency – joins the show to discuss his new book, "Concrete Economics: The Hamilton Approach to Economic Growth and Policy." Brad's book, co-authored with Stephen Cohen, argues that rather than relying on abstract theory, Hamilton economics is based on facts that demonstrate how the American economy has benefited from pragmatic government policies throughout its history. David and Brad also discuss Brad's education at Harvard and how he is a "speed reader"! Davi...
2016-08-0146 min
Startup Geometry PodcastEP 004 Brad DeLong on Macro and the MeltdownBrad DeLong visits Startup Geometry today to talk about economic currents and current economics. He may or may not have confessed to being a hyperintelligent swarm of bees in human form, a historian in disguise as an economist, and/or a Keynesian. He reviews the effects and effectiveness of US economic policies including the 2009 Recovery Act; the Trans-Pacific Partnership; tax, education, infrastructure and other proposals. We discuss the entertainment revolution and the fall of middle class security, and what to do if someone has a bigger yacht than you.
If you enjoy the show & would like to...
2015-06-171h 00Startup Geometry PodcastEP 004 Brad DeLong on Macro and the MeltdownBrad DeLong visits Startup Geometry today to talk about economic currents and current economics. He may or may not have confessed to being a hyperintelligent swarm of bees in human form, a historian in disguise as an economist, and/or a Keynesian. He reviews the effects and effectiveness of US economic policies including the 2009 Recovery Act; the Trans-Pacific Partnership; tax, education, infrastructure and other proposals. We discuss the entertainment revolution and the fall of middle class security, and what to do if someone has a bigger yacht than you.
If you enjoy the show & would like to...
2015-06-171h 00