Pet peeve: casinos don’t pay taxes to a particular fund, it’s all collected as a general tax. Politicians just say it goes somewhere special to trick the public into accepting it.

If you want to be an economist and actually be able to influence the development of a country, China is the place to be. It’s obvious to any economist that the economic gains from high speed rail outweigh the cost and theres plenty of research to back this up. High speed rail alleviates poverty, helps worker mobility, reduces inter-city traffic congestion over aircraft for short and medium range travel, and the list goes on. It’s not like this knowledge is inaccessible to the west, the papers already exist and we’re even training the economists who then return to China and actually apply it.

So a private company has a contract to manage public libraries and they cut staff and pensions to reduce labor costs. I really doubt any pension programs are going to survive much longer and it’s a shame the governments would rather fire everyone and transfer control to private entities than stop offering pensions.

The year is 2079 and you’re installing uber but every username below 45 characters is taken. A bitcoin whale died earlier that day and nobody had his key. 20% of the supply of bitcoins evaporated instantly which caused rapid deflation. Anyone that had any debt is now shoulder for life, including yourself. You finally create an account to use your web3 distributed app of uber to go across town in the metaverse to see your mom since maybe she can give you just the smallest amount of reassurance that everything will be okay. You have enough money for the trip but the transaction fee is currently more than you make in a year. You sob as your surgically implanted VR headset fills with tears.

He tries to make the argument that China’s growth is unsustainable, like they’ve been saying for the past 25 years.

There is no direct link between interest rates and wages, which is the only lever he can pull. In the 2008 recession, we saw a drop in wages when interest rates went up, which is probably what hes going off of. But there is something called the lucas critique which says that you can’t predict the effects of a change in economic policy based on past conditions so it’s anyones guess what will actually happen. He does want to make us poorer though to curb demand for labor.

These programs are backed by economists so hard they criticize them for not spending enough. You know it’s bad when economists say you should spend more.

Gas is an inelastic good since people consume about the same amount of gas regardless the price. But long term, people will move closer to their work, buy more fuel efficient vehicles, or use shared transportation. This transition is brutal to the poor. I wish the government provided relocation assistance but they’d probably be accused of genociding our car dependent cities.

Ireland unification is next, around 2024, around the time of the Bell Riots.

Americans believe that if a burglar gets injured in your house then they can sue you so you should make sure they are dead. The police would sometimes discreetly advise people to plant a knife on them if they didn’t have one.