DeLong's Grasping Reality: Economy in the 2000s & Before | Brad DeLong | Substack

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snobby about excel

AI and the end user effect

Published on Dan Davies - "Back of Mind" • 15 hrs ago

CROSSPOST: IAN McKELLEN: William Shakespeare (& Other Playwrights) on Thomas More on Immigrants

On “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”. Immigration, Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Thomas More, ICE, Minneapolis, Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, & Senator…

Feb 6 • Brad DeLong

WEEK 2: The Practice & Scope of Economic History: Graduate Economic History :: Spring 2026 :: Econ 210a

75,000 years to go from 10,000 foragers to 200 million farmers to 10 billion post-industrialists. But from -5000 to 1500 life for the overwhelming…

Feb 5 • Brad DeLong

A Brief Note on the Near-Absence of Pre-1500 "Economic Growth"

& some of my musings on how to teach it. The long agrarian-age Malthusian night of the trap, of the ensorcellment: thugs, patriarchs, …

Feb 4 • Brad DeLong

HOISTED FROM THE ARCHIVES: Yes: Pre-Modern Economies Were Meaningfully "Malthusian" (Which Does Not Mean Incomes Were Stable)

Putting this here so I can find it easily. Originally 2023-03-07. Contra Rafael Guthman; or, what a Malthusian economy looks like. Rafael is doing…

Feb 4 • Brad DeLong

Featured

Time for a "Land Acknowledgement"!

The SubStack Attempt to Avoid the ClickBait-Rage Trap Is Failing: The argument against the idea that SubStack needed to develop a social-media…

Dec 4, 2025 • Brad DeLong

A $140,000/Year Poverty Line? I: Stewarding & Utilizing Resources

Four factors making even rich people live poorly and hence feel poor in our immensely rich modern economy: a sense of precarity, a lack of centeredness…

Dec 4, 2025 • Brad DeLong

Using GPT LLM MAMLMs as Your Rabbit—Your Pacer

GPT LLM MAMLMs are not oracles, subordinates, or colleagues. They are emulations of TISs—Typical Internet S***posters. If you are at all a good writer…

Nov 22, 2025

Tuesday Economic Growth Blogging: The Pre‑Modern Treadmill Was Real on Necessities, Not on Technology, or Luxuries, or Culture, or Means of…

Greg Clark’s “Farewell to Alms” still tempts with one big, clean story: pre‑modern humanity stuck on a Malthusian treadmill until cultural-bio selection…

Nov 20, 2025 • Brad DeLong

The False Calm Before Steam: The Index H, Malthus, & the Long Slog, for Growth Was Very Real Before It Became Visible in Average Living…

The cliché says nothing happened before 1800. The data say capability rose steadily—only population swallowed the dividends. Replace vibes with an…

Nov 11, 2025 • Brad DeLong

DeLong's Grasping Reality: Economy in the 2000s & Before

One of the best ways to learn to make sense of money, work, communication, production, distribution, and more. Betting that in the course of human things the future must resemble even if it does not reflect the past, people being much the same over time.

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