Todd Buchholz

Former White House economic adviser, hedge fund guru, author of THE PRICE OF PROSPERITY, and NEW IDEAS FROM DEAD ECONOMISTS

[Todd Buchholz @EconTodd]

Coase faced a murderer’s row of Chicago economists ready to bury his idea.
At Aaron Director’s house (Milton Friedman’s brother-in-law), over cocktails they fired shots at him. Friedman, Stigler leading the charge.
By dessert? They’d all flipped. 21-0.
That night birthed the Coase Theorem.

[Todd Buchholz @EconTodd]

@Rainmaker1973 Don't forget the rollicking Matt Damon/Jude Law version in Ripley
https://t.co/pbM9miUXBT

[Project Syndicate @ProSyn]

.@EconTodd urges Kevin Warsh to remind Congress that monetary policy is not a fire extinguisher to battle their arson. https://t.co/IQyAG4Zi8V

[Spring-Nuts @SpringNuts_]

Bruce's beautiful eulogy for @CliveDavis today in NYC. Funny story about Blinded By The Light and how Clive was videoing himself reciting the lyrics as if it was a " Jersey Poem". Well done as always @springsteen . #springsteen #RIPCliveDavis

[Todd Buchholz @EconTodd]

Society scorns “boisterous boys” and “toxic masculinity”… until we need them to storm the beaches.
Then it’s “thanks for your service."
Listen to Roger Moore recite Kipling’s “Tommy.” At 2:17 he goes full Churchill. Timeless
https://t.co/C0cKZcIgvI

[Todd Buchholz @EconTodd]

@dwarkesh_sp We need new tools to help kids learn math. Check out Math Arrow
https://t.co/PGaCSsK12A

[Maxwell Tabarrok @MTabarrok]

Half the land area of Boston, a quarter of NYC, and 15% of San Francisco were raised from the sea before 1970.

Since then, land values have grown by 30x but land reclamation has ground to a halt.

This failure follows the spread environmental law around the world rather than any geographic, technological, or economic constraint.

Thus, our lack of land reclamation and the severe land constraints in our most important cities are self-imposed and avoidable. We should make more land!
https://t.co/J9zghvLkz2

Land reclamation was common practice in American cities in the 19th and 20th centuries. Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Charleston, San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia, Norfolk, DC, Oakland, and LA all had major land reclamation projects that extended residential living space or infrastructure or both.

The Bay Area alone reclaimed an area of land equivalent to ten Manhattans between 1850 and 1957, at an inflation-adjusted cost of $330,000 per acre. Today, an acre of single-family-zoned land in San Francisco County averages $24 million. Even if the cost of land reclamation grew faster than inflation, despite technological leaps in dredging and construction technology, there should be plenty of room for profitable arbitrage.

And yet, land reclamation is extinct in the Bay Area as well as in every other American city. This isn’t because we ran out of good spots to reclaim: Two thirds of the San Francisco Bay is shallower than Boston’s Back Bay was when it was reclaimed in the 1860s. Nor is it because of better transportation: We’ve used up all of the easy suburban expansions enabled by the train and the automobile so prices are rising even in outlying suburbs.

Instead, land reclamation’s death is due to environmental law. Evidence for this claim shows up in the coincident timing of land reclamation’s demise across dozens of cities in the US and in the environmental compliance process of the few reclamation projects still inching along today, but the best evidence is found internationally.

No country has more experience or more reason to reclaim land than the Netherlands. The Dutch built 5% of their country out of the sea over the first half of the 20th century and by 1975 they had another artificial lake in the Zuiderzee ready to drain at the flip of a switch, which would have made tens of thousands of acres of land just east of Amsterdam. But a 1969 environmental review law, similar to NEPA in the US, stopped the project before it was finished and the site is now a protected bird sanctuary. Their one major reclamation since, the Maasvlakte 2 extension of the port of Rotterdam, took 11 years and 6,000 pages of environmental review before construction began.

Inversely, countries without these laws, like China, Singapore, and Japan have continued major land reclamation projects into the 21st century. China has reclaimed over 5,000 square kilometers since 2000, including a city of half a million outside Shanghai and Singapore has grown by a quarter since 1975.

Every major American city has a land shortage. But we have more than enough shallow water, dredging capacity, and market incentive to make more land, just like we did 150 years ago. The only obstacle is our own choice to make making land illegal. The benefits of more land in our most productive cities are large enough to justify the effort of reforming the laws that currently prevent it. Let’s make more land!

[Todd Buchholz @EconTodd]

Great speaking with @TaiwanBizToday in Taipei.
Xi is watching Hormuz.
‘Hormuz Today, Taiwan Tomorrow’ — must-read on why we can’t afford hesitation in the Strait.
https://t.co/fW9AGDWs9G

[John Cleese @JohnCleese]

Eureka!! Hope you all are enjoying the World Cup

[Todd Buchholz @EconTodd]

King’s College London & The Times: ‘Bubblegum fixes blood pressure!’
Based on rigorous trial of…14 volunteers chewing Hubba Bubba.
Peer review? More like peer pressure from 14 bubblegum enthusiasts. Or looksmaxxers training their jawlines.. @cremieuxrecueil #clavicular

[Todd Buchholz @EconTodd]

@RingPhantomx Frazier's left hook hit Ali w 400lbs of force! (mass x acceleration). Yet Ali bounced up. Masters of the ring.

[Todd Buchholz @EconTodd]

The Fed's statement is so short it might be a haiku. Here's my @CNBC appearance on Warsh vs Trump
https://t.co/40F3DtYNvq

[Todd Buchholz @EconTodd]

@TheEXECUTlONER_ From the windows you often see dolphins. A bargain vs SeaWorld a few miles away.

[Todd Buchholz @EconTodd]

39 years ago today, Reagan defied his own State Dept and demanded ‘Mr. Gorbachev, Tear down this wall!'
Soon after, the Wall came tumbling down, millions freed.
Glad we have a Secretary of State @SecRubio with a spine. @CesarConda @MikeNeedham
https://t.co/QiFq7Kkhnr

[Todd Buchholz @EconTodd]

@curiouswavefn Wow -- a reference to Schrödinger that skips the cat. Weyl was strong in relativity but failed branding.

[Todd Buchholz @EconTodd]

Fastest mid-distance runner alive? A 17-year-old Texas kid named Cooper Lutkenhaus.
By the time you finish saying ‘Lutkenhaus’—he’s already lapped the field and collecting gold.
Today he smoked the Olympic champ