billswiley

[Jesús Fernández-Villaverde @JesusFerna7026]

Last week I posted a new paper with Patrick Norrick: “Terra Incognita: The Economics of a Shrinking World.”

We chose the title deliberately. No society in history has experienced the fertility levels now seen in South Korea, China, Thailand, Colombia, Chile, and many other countries. Our knowledge of the causes (and of the economic consequences) remains far more limited than most public discussion acknowledges. Much of what we write is, at best, educated conjecture.

The paper also struggles against a space limit. We wrote 20,000 words, far from the 250,000 or so we would need to address some issues in more detail (if I had the time and resources to hide away for a year, I could do that, but not now). That means some ideas are only sketched.

Nonetheless, we emphasize several important points.

First, fertility has fallen very fast everywhere: rich and poor countries, east and west, north and south, conservative and liberal societies, religious and non-religious societies (with the exception of the Jewish population of Israel; fertility has also collapsed among the Muslim population within the pre-1967 borders), you name it. Even in sub-Saharan Africa we see fast and unprecedented drops in fertility (alas, from a high initial level).

Second, and this is really interesting, the fertility collapse has been concentrated in poor and lower-middle-income countries much more than in rich countries. By now, income per capita and fertility are positively correlated within OECD countries. We conjecture this will hold globally in a few decades.

Third, and related to the second point, the fertility collapse has been concentrated among poor and lower-middle-income women within countries. In countries such as the U.S., the rich and highly educated now have more children than the poor and less educated.

Fourth, we document why we do not understand the data from the U.N. World Population Prospects. See, for example, Tables A.1 and A.2.

Fifth, we explain why some proposed mechanisms struggle when confronted with the data.

A more subtle point is at work here. Many commentators do not seem to understand the difference between proximate causes and ultimate causes. Yes, births might have gone down because fewer women are in long-run relationships. That is the proximate cause. But you need to explain why fewer women are in long-run relationships (the ultimate cause), and saying that they spend more years in school, to take one example, does not get us very far. Why do they spend more years in school? Once you start down the whole chain of reasoning, things become much harder than they seem.

The paper can be found here:

https://t.co/VrCHr0lBPa

Comments always welcome!

[Lulu Cheng Meservey @lulumeservey]

The tech industry is always making content where the hero is tech, but humans only care about stories where the hero is human

Even the best scifi stories are centered around humans. Dune isn't about stillsuits, Star Wars isn't about droids

Right now, the hero people care about about isn't the chatbot that answers medical queries, but the desperate father takes research into his own hands to figure out his kid's illness. Many other examples

Trying to make tech the hero is forced, astro-turfed, self-congratulatory. The only heroes are human

[Long Now Foundation @longnow]

Star Axis is complete. Fifty years in the making, land artist Charles Ross has finished his monumental observatory on a mesa in New Mexico. A staircase, aligned with Earth's axis, climbs to a open lens that tracks Polaris and the 26,000-year cycle of Earth's gravitational wobble.

Read the beautiful feature in the NYT: https://t.co/vXco4bZcNB

[💥Susan Dyer Reynolds🗞️ @SusanDReynolds]

Great summary from @garryslist about corruption in District 10 — SFPUC “Friends with Community Benefits” scheme, YCD, Dwayne Jones, mentor to Shamann Walton, indicted on 59 counts of fraud, to Walton’s mentee and endorsed successor DJ Brookter. https://t.co/Q7O6xTlQoI

[Preston Cooper @PrestonCooper93]

Georgetown University recently crossed a sticker price of $100,000 per year--but nobody pays the sticker price, right?

Not quite. Less than half of Georgetown's students receive any financial aid. Across higher ed, lots of students pay the sticker price. My latest

[Julia R. Cartwright (Norgaard) @Econ_Goggles]

"Nobody pays the sticker price of college tuition" Tell that to the 64% of Georgetown undergrads who get zero financial aid at a school that now costs over $100,000 a year.

Analysis by @PrestonCooper93 found that at some of America's most expensive colleges (Tufts, NYU, UChicago), more than half of students pay full freight. In the priciest tier of schools, 42% of students got no aid at all.

This is what happens when government money floods into higher education. When Washington guarantees loans for virtually any amount a school charges, colleges have no reason to compete on price. So prices climb and now 16 schools charge six figures a year, WOAH!

If we want affordable college, the answer must include price transparency, accountability for schools, and restoring actual price competition.

#HigherEd #StudentLoans #TuitionCrisis #EducationPolicy

[John H. Boyer @johnhboyer]

anyway here’s the complete works of plato, greek and english side by side, every word parseable, free forever
https://t.co/m4JnhD3aGz

[jj smith @war24182236]

There use to be a time Market street was lined up with chess boards for people to participate in chest tournaments. Now, if you do this, you’ll get $120 ticket. But it’s OK for five people in a group to sit around with each other and pass Fentanyl Pipes and Foil to each other and nothing will happen. BRING CHESS BOARDS BACK!

[Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes]

Residents of the small San Joaquin Valley city of Avenal, California are furious

They voted in April to recall the majority of their city council, but the city council members are refusing to leave office

Over 75% of voters approved recalling all four officials. Kings County certified the results in May

Voters targeted Mayor Alvaro Preciado and Councilmembers Leticia Gamez, David Reynosa, and Pablo Hernandez. 4 of the 5 council seats

The city leaders who are refusing to leave are saying the recall was conducted unlawfully by Kings County Elections instead of the city itself and lacked proper city authorization

So they wanted to be able to give authorization for a vote to remove them…. Sure……

I looked into this and verified they should all be removed. Under California law, the recalled Avenal officials should be removed from office

California’s recall process is governed by the California Constitution (Article II, Sections 13-19) and the California Elections Code (Division 11, §§ 11000 et seq.).

Once a recall election is properly held and a majority votes “Yes” to recall an official, that official is removed from office upon certification of the results (Elections Code §11384)

The election was conducted by Kings County, the county elections official, which is standard procedure for local recalls when the city does not handle it itself. The county certified the results after verifying the process

[Garry's List @garryslist]

At UC Berkeley Law, 37.5% of students claim a disability.

Students don’t have to disclose this to employers, and accommodations come with no downside.

Those who don’t opt in are competing at a disadvantage on the exams that determine their futures.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

That water clarity is an engineering decision, and the math behind it is wilder than the video.

Roman aqueducts ran on gravity alone. No pumps, no pressure systems. Engineers carved channels with a gradient so shallow it borders on absurd. The Pont du Gard in southern France drops 2.5 centimeters over 275 meters. That's roughly the thickness of a coin over the length of three football fields. They surveyed that accuracy with plumb lines and wooden leveling instruments.

The clarity you're seeing is a direct product of flow velocity. Too steep and the water erodes the channel walls, picks up sediment, turns brown. Too flat and it stagnates. Roman engineers targeted a slope of about 20 centimeters per kilometer, which kept the water moving fast enough to stay fresh but slow enough to stay clear. Before the water reached the city, it passed through multi-chamber settling tanks where velocity dropped near zero. Suspended particles sank. Clean water flowed out the top into the next chamber. Repeat three or four times.

Pliny specified the minimum slope in writing. Vitruvius published the exact mortar ratio for hydraulic cement: one part lime to two parts volcanic ash for underwater work. The pozzolana from Pozzuoli reacted with water to form a calcium-aluminum-silicate compound that actually gets stronger the longer it sits submerged. Modern concrete degrades in water. Roman concrete bonds with it.

Scale the whole system and it gets harder to process. Eleven aqueducts fed Rome at its peak. Combined output: roughly 1 million cubic meters of water per day. That works out to about 250 gallons per person for a city of one million. Modern New York delivers about 125 gallons per person per day. Ancient Rome had access to double the per capita water supply of the largest city in the United States, running entirely on slope and stone.

The Trevi Fountain in Rome is still fed by one of them. Two thousand years, same source, same gravity, same water.

[Chris Stringer @ChrisStringer65]

Melting Mountain Ice Is Bringing Ancient Secrets to the Surface. Archaeologists Are Racing to Find the Artifacts Before They're Lost to Time https://t.co/BUa2A7h8XV via @smithsonianmag

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

This is a textbook example of everything that is wrong with globalist wildlife activists and I will use it in my classes going forward, thanks Ben! Ben is a British aristocrat, son of the daughter of the 8th Marquess of Londonderry whose father is a knighted financier and businessman from a prominent banking family, the Goldschmidts.

Look at the confidence and swagger he has in weighing in on Montana wildlife policy! Look at the outright contempt and scorn he has for everyday Montanans, ranching families, and our democratically elected leaders! Look at how he threatens and taunts us, saying that no matter what local Montana stakeholders want, it will always be people like him, NGOs bankrolled by global capital and foreign aristocrats, that will get to tell us what to do with our land! This embodies our core of the issue with American Prairie.

Contrary to what Ben and other lib panic accounts on here would have you think, Montana locals are not opposed to bison conservation. Montanans have been on the vanguard for some of the greatest bison conservation success stories in human history. Modern bison restoration in Montana has centered heavily on science-based management of the Yellowstone National Park herd, which is the largest continuously wild bison population in the United States. Montana agencies and researchers spent decades on the cutting edge of bison research, monitoring genetics, disease prevalence (brucellosis), population dynamics, and habitat conditions to rebuild and maintain a healthy herd while reducing risks to surrounding livestock. Montana spearheaded many of the most important collaborative research and management institutions for buffalo conservation, research, and restoration to public, tribal, and private land. But Ben wouldn't know or care about this because he's a British aristocrat! LOL!

Ben's post references an NGO called American Prairie, which has a bison herd on public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management in northeastern Montana (different from the well-known Yellowstone bison herd many people are familiar with from family trips to Yellowstone National Park). Under the BLM grazing system, permits are not typically auctioned at open-market rates. Instead, grazing privileges are tied to a “preference” system connected to ownership of nearby private land, often referred to as a “base property.”

American Prairie entered this system by purchasing deeded ranches adjacent to BLM allotments, thereby acquiring the associated grazing preferences. After obtaining these ranches, the organization requested that the BLM modify existing grazing permits to allow bison rather than cattle. Following an environmental review process, the BLM approved the inclusion of bison in 2022. As referenced in Ben's post, that approval was just revoked following pressure from Montana citizens, lawmakers, and ranching families.

Why do Montanans oppose American Prairie? The major issue is that American Prairie’s ability to acquire large ranch holdings is possible through substantial financial backing from wealthy out-of-state and international donors, including Swiss- and German-born billionaires and high-net-worth individuals from places such as New York City and San Francisco (usually tech guys' foundations). A multigenerational Montana ranching family, or a young seventh-generation rancher hasn't the faintest hope in competing for ranch properties that carry BLM grazing preferences. Once those deeded ranches are purchased, the associated federal grazing privileges generally transfer with them, boxing young Montanans out of the livelihood that generations of their forebears have practiced.

Montana’s ranching livelihoods and the culture of the cowboy is central to the state’s identity, economy, and history. It is what makes it unique and what brings millions of visitors to the state. If we are going to offshore and strip mine everything in this country to global capital, then be prepared to say goodbye to what makes the American West wild, open, and free.

[Chris Arnade 🐢🐱🚌 @Chris_arnade]

Some books reviewed from a McDonald's -- including Aristotle's politics, Shogun, Silence, and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

https://t.co/ZeTpLiIErD

[Heterodox Academy @HdxAcademy]

🔎See the full speech and other talks from the conference: https://t.co/va3m6UGCdN

[Patrick McKenzie @patio11]

This week in Bits about Money: https://t.co/3UShZETZg2

[billswiley @billswiley]

@the_book_land To Everlasting Oblivion - Marston
Something - Frost
On Poet-Ape - Jonson
Pale Fire - Nabokov
Jabberwocky - Carroll
Prospero's speech - Shakespeare
Prufrock - Eliot
Note to a Fantastic Story - Borges
Ozymandias - Shelley
Letter to Ben Jonson- Beaumont
To Fortune - Horace

[Neil Scott @MrNeilScott]

“Why not have the reader re-read a sentence now and then? It won't hurt him.”

Nabokov to his New Yorker editor.

[Cultura Inquieta @culturainquieta]

El clip colaborativo del rapero sueco Yung Lean y GENER8ION supera los límites de un simple videoclip musical y ya es un festín visual extraordinario. 🔥

La coreografía, a cargo del gran coreógrafo francés Damien Jalet. 💥

Hoy, 29 de abril, Día internacional de la danza.

[Steve Hilton @SteveHiltonx]

Imagine keeping every dollar you earn up to $100,000 with no state income tax. No tax on tips for servers, bartenders, and service workers.

I’m ending the unfair $800 minimum tax on small businesses—even in tough years with zero profit. Above $100k, a simple flat 7.5% rate—no complicated brackets, just straightforward and predictable.

This is about giving working Californians and entrepreneurs real breathing room so raises feel like raises, starting a business isn’t a trap, and getting ahead becomes possible again.

California has amazing people and potential—we just need a fair tax system that rewards work, supports small businesses, and makes our state affordable and full of opportunity once more.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
https://t.co/7D6PsmPQYf