BRIEFLY NOTED 2023-09-04 Tu
Is reduced discrimination in America likely only if we deemphasize þe politics of race?; 40 years ago next week: Pinochet’s bloody destruction of democracy in Chile; living in a high-debt world...
Is reduced discrimination in America likely only if we deemphasize þe politics of race?; 40 years ago next week: Pinochet’s bloody destruction of democracy in Chile; living in a high-debt world; very briefly noted; information content of Twitter approaching zero, optimism about behavioral economics, state origins, & economic job growth & Federal Reserve jawboning…
MUST-READ: Is It True Þt When an Issue in American Politics Gets :, þe Good Guys Are More Likely to Lose?:
I find this deeply disturbing. I wish I could be confident that it was wrong:
Matt Yglesias: Post-Presidency Obama: ‘King’s point here, and I think Rustin’s point more directly, was made most pointedly of all by Obama in his unpublished draft where he complains “those blacks who most fervently insist on the pervasiveness of white racism have adopted a strategy that depends on white guilt for its effectiveness.” I think that’s a little bit of an unfair dig by Obama… but… I think [it] is correct… that… tak[ing] racism seriously as a political force in American politics… suggests a strategy of not dwelling on racial issues….
Contemporarily… progressive circles… [think] most white people are extremely kind-hearted, so if you guilt-trip them with facts about slavery or redlining or the Tulsa massacre, they’re going to open their wallets and embrace reparations. Obama, as a practicing politician, mostly took the advice of Obama the analyst and tried to avoid racial conflict as a topic. Not coincidentally, during Obama’s presidency, his political opponents were obsessed with race. Rush Limbaugh would talk about how the Affordable Care Act was a form of reparations. But Obama studiously tried to avoid talking about the ACA as closing the racial health insurance gap, which is I think exactly what Derrick Bell or Jeremiah Wright or Bayard Rustin or King himself would have advised him to do. What’s annoyed me a bit about post-presidential Obama is that I wish he’d be a little more forceful in putting out the ideas of Obama-the-analyst in order to create more space for Kamala Harris and Hakeem Jeffries to act more like Obama-the-politician…
But I cannot be confident that it is wrong, can I?
If you believe that an important thing is to block the racist counter-mobilization against policies that promote equitable growth—that such policies have national majorities unless things are racialized—then it would seem smart for center and left-wing politicians to try to talk about racial inequalities as little as possible, while center and left-wing teachers loudly and repeatedly bang the drum on America’s racist past (and present! I mean, Elon Musk now wants to conduct a poll on whether he should ban the ADL from Twitter) and on how much of present inequality is due to racist history.
People do need to hear a lot about how America was almost completely a white man’s (and, before that, a WASP man’s) place, and still substantially is.
But it just might be that hearing that from politicians is counterproductive.
Hence Matt’s complaint about post-political Barack Obama. To point out that white guilt is, in America today a weak motivating factor for forming poolitical coalitions has implications not just for what politicians should do but for what non-politicians should say, doesn’t it?
ONE IMAGE: September 11, 1973: Santiago, Chile:
40 years ago next week: Pinochet’s bloody destruction of democracy in Chile:
ONE AUDIO: Barry Eichengreen, Tracy Alloway, & Joe Weisenthal on Our High Government-Debt Future:
<https://overcast.fm/+4_lRuAGNE>
University of California at Berkeley economist Barry Eichengreen presented a paper on ballooning government debt at this year’s Jackson Hole Economic Symposium. On this bonus content episode of the Odd Lots podcast, Joe and Tracy speak with Eichengreen about his research, why it's of importance to central bankers, and what history says about the prospects for fiscal consolidation.
Very Briefly Noted:
Economics: Preston Mui: Misled by the Phillips Curve: How Inflation Predictions Went Wrong: ‘They relied heavily on the vacancy rate… used a rigid Phillips curve framework… whereas in reality the tradeoffs… are … better thought of in terms of the speed of labor market recovery rather than the outright level. They thought wage-price spirals were a serious inflationary threat…. Finally, insufficient attention was paid to the disinflationary effects of normalizing supply chains…
Tim Duy: ‘The Fed came out of the July FOMC meeting thinking that… the stage was set for Jackson Hole to be a victory lap where Fed speakers could fully make the transition to talking about how long rates would need to stay high…. We still think strong growth prompts the Fed to hike…. But that meeting is still two months away and… growth data has been in conflict with the inflation numbers…
Robin Wigglesworth: The ‘Problem of Twelve’—redux: ‘A problem to be solved or only a dilemma to be managed?…
China: Noah Smith: Decoupling isn't phoney: ‘The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself, and it's mostly not Biden's doing…. When The Economist says that decoupling is “phoney” and “China’s dominance [of supply chains] is undiminished”, it means that although China is exporting fewer finished goods to the U.S., it’s exporting the same amount of value added. Startlingly, however, The Economist provides no actual data to support this claim…
Cognition: Timothy Burke: The Read: A Presentation on Reading in College…
Casey Newton: Why note-taking apps don't make us smarter: ‘They're designed for storage, not sparking insights. Can AI change that?… “The goal is not to take notes—the goal is to think effectively,” Matuschak writes. “Better questions are “what practices can help me reliably develop insights over time?” [and] “how can I shepherd my attention effectively?”…
Neofascism: Paul Krugman: The Paranoid Style in American Plutocrats: ‘Peter Hotez… a frequent target of anti-vaxxer harassment, expressed some puzzlement… noted that many of those taunting him were also “big time into bitcoin or cryptocurrency” and declared that “I can’t quite connect the dots”…. The link between climate [denial] and vaccine denial is clear…. To value the scientific consensus, in other words, you have to have some respect for the whole enterprise of research…. Where does cryptocurrency come in?… Jack Dorsey’s 2021 declaration that “hyperinflation will change everything. It’s happening.”… Thanks to the tech boom, there are probably more wealthy cranks than there used to be, and they’re wealthier than ever, too…
Culture: Chang Jian: Failing the Imperial Examination: ‘No, things are fine in my village,/But I’m staying here in Qin./It’s the shame of living in a golden age/And still failing to get in./Better to stop in Chang’an/And revise for another spring,/I worry the birds will hoot at me/I fear the flowers’ grin…
NOTES & My SubStack:
Optimists think that in a decade we will have a real, useful model of economy-relevant human cognition rather than just an overlapping and contradictory set of insights about heuristics and biases. I really hope this comes to pass:
Quite possibly. But also perhaps not. Still, very interesting:
Information content of Twitter approaching zero watch:
Post-presidency Obama:
On racism and guilt -- one thing is very clear to me: you cannot build a long term relationship between groups of people based on guilt, especially over things that they did not do as individuals. It may work in the short run but eventually you will get a push back and people will say "Hell no". Regret on the other hand is different. Regret is an emotion that can be shared. And of course there is the issue of slavery. But one must consider that nearly every person alive today is the descendant of slaves, serfs, and peasants stuck in some system of enforced labor and living on the verge of starvation.
Mui: right
Duy wrong