Top all-time · #2096
Brad DeLong
Personal blog · bradford-delong.comeconomicspolitics
Brad DeLong's personal blog at bradford-delong.com covers economics and politics. Since 2015, 38 different Hacker News readers have linked it 55 times, most often “How to Think Like an Economist (If, That Is, You Wish To)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Most-linked posts?
- How to Think Like an Economist (If, That Is, You Wish To)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-07-15
- A note on reading big, difficult books2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-01-08
- /2013/01/agatha-christie-i-never-thought-i-would-be-so-poor-as-to-not-have-live-in-staff-or-so-rich-as-to-have-a-car-and-driver.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-02-22
What Hacker News says?
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect" https://www.bradford-delong.com/2018/12/frank-wilhoit-the-tr...
Comment linking /2018/12/frank-wilhoit-the-travesty-of-liberalism.html
on “100 years of whatever this will be”Submitted Cost of iPhone X in 1957 as a story · 279 points
HN discussionThis reminds me of a great quote: "There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect"[1] 1. https://www.bradford-delong.com/2018/12/frank-wilhoit-the-tr...
Comment linking /2018/12/frank-wilhoit-the-travesty-of-liberalism.html
on “Ukraine calls on hacker underground to defend against Russia”Submitted A note on reading big, difficult books as a story · 146 points
HN discussionWhenever I hear appeals to "meritocracy", I'm reminded of this anecdote ( http://www.bradford-delong.com/2009/09/republicans-to-the-ma... ): I remember back in the late 1990s, when Ira Katznelson, an eminent political scientist at Columbia, came to deliver a guest lecture. Prof. Katznelson described a lunch he had with Irving Kristol during the first Bush administration. The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan…
Comment linking /2009/09/republicans-to-the-manor-born.html
on “Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub”Submitted Why Were Economists as a Group as Useless Over 2010-2014 as Over 1929-1935? as a story · 68 points
HN discussion> I had never heard of Heritage before I read the article I posted, Well I have and they're hacks and frankly they make you look bad by citing their one note analysis of QE. Brad Delong just this morning on Stephen Moore (coauthor of your citation): http://www.bradford-delong.com/2015/08/stephen-moore-is-a-he... Jonathan Chait on Moore: Guy Who Gets Paid to Say Obamacare Doesn’t Work Can’t Find a Single True Fact to…
Comment linking /2015/08/stephen-moore-is-a-headline-speaker-at-the-app-goldbug-grifter-conference-stephen-moore-also-tells-lots-of-lies-see-a-patte.html
on “China Sells U.S. Treasuries to Support Yuan”Submitted Is the Semi-Permanent “Gunpowder Empire” Historical Scenario Plausible? as a story · 44 points
HN discussionI think ideology plays a strong role in addition to interests. In my mind (from reading about this a lot) there are roughly four political factions at the elite level (there's probably more variation at the grassroots level). The most interesting is probably the Republican party establishment. I recently read books by two partisans on either side [1] (both prolific authors and MIT PhDs) and they were in almost total…
Comment linking /2019/03/passing-the-baton-the-interview.html
on “What is ‘elite overproduction’?”Submitted Roads to Xanadu as a story · 34 points
HN discussionThe page is compressing the three-step process[0] for overriding local prerogative into one step. Perhaps this is disingenuous but your implication that step 1 doesn't imply steps 2 and 3 are likewise disingenuous. At any rate, I'd urge everyone to take a look at Brad Delong's critique of the TPP[2], which focuses heavily on the dispute resolution process. Surely we can all agree that he knows a little more about in…
Comment linking /2016/01/the-grand-strategy-of-rising-superpower-management.html
on “Read the TPP”Submitted Liveblogging World War II: June 11, 1945: Atomic Bomb: The Franck Report as a story · 10 points
HN discussionActually, for the middle class (which was admittedly somewhat smaller than what we may think of as "middle class" now) domestic help was pretty normal before the 20th century. http://www.bradford-delong.com/2013/01/agatha-christie-i-nev... is somewhat telling; Agatha Kristie's Wikipedia entry says her family was "upper middle-class", but it's not that common for families like that to have live-in help nowadays. Exce…
Comment linking /2013/01/agatha-christie-i-never-thought-i-would-be-so-poor-as-to-not-have-live-in-staff-or-so-rich-as-to-have-a-car-and-driver.html
on “Amazon Key is a new service that lets couriers unlock your front door”Submitted Gaius Julius Caesar Pleads Against Norm-Breaking–Weekend Reading as a story · 4 points
HN discussion"Nearly eighty years ago, John Maynard Keynes did the math on economic growth and concluded that within a few generations—by the time his peers' great-grandchildren came of age in, say, the 2000's—the persistent economic problem of too-scarce resources and too-few goods would no longer bedevil a substantial portion of humanity. He was right—even in the midst of our current hard times, he is right." (2009) http://www…
Comment linking /2009/01/we-are-live-at-the-week-our-economic-appetite.html
on “The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people”Submitted John R. Boyd (1995): The Essence of Winning and Losing: as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIt's kind of funny to consider how long this debate has been going on and the self-driving cars excuse as merely the latest iteration of it: http://www.bradford-delong.com/2016/12/must-read-there-is-a-... To quote Tom Slee from the comment above: - Uber has a nice business as a status product (Uber Black Car ~ 2010) - Uber Black may not be profitable, but Uber will displace taxis and be hugely profitable because of…
Comment linking /2016/12/must-read-there-is-a-serious-debate-about-uber-floor-wax-or-desert-topping-excuse-me-uber-grift-or-technological.html
on “How Uber could end up as Silicon Valley's most spectacular crash”Submitted How to think like an economist as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI've seen it, and didn't find it very convincing. Graeber presents some interesting anecdotes regarding selected ancient social conventions, which may or may not be accurate[1], but—in my opinion—even taken at face value they don't really support his conclusions regarding the nature of debt. Perhaps the book would seem more compelling to someone who already shares the author's worldview. [1] https://www.bradford-del…
Comment linking /2014/12/2014-11-24-mo-ann-leckie-on-david-graebers-debt-the-first-5000-mistakes-handling-the-sumerian-evidence-smackdown.html
on “Life is fractal, but markets are square”Submitted How to Think Like an Economist (If, That Is, You Wish To) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionanother primer: https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/01/what-is-modern-monet...
Comment linking /2019/01/what-is-modern-monetary-theory.html
on “A Beginner’s Guide to MMT”Submitted Inclusive AI: Technology and Policy for a Diverse Urban Future as a story · 3 points
HN discussionDon’t read it. Save your brain for a book that isn’t riddled with so many errors Brad DeLong wrote ten articles on the errors in Chapter 11. https://www.econlib.org/archives/2012/07/hummel_on_graeb.htm... > I have read David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years thoroughly and despite Graeber’s readability, scholarship, and erudition, it is a very bad book. Its tone is much too polemical. More important, when it gets…
Comment linking /.services/blog/6a00e551f08003883400e551f080068834/search?filter.q=Graeber
on “Debt Collectors Are Transforming the Business of State Courts”Submitted Many Secular Stagnations as a story · 3 points
HN discussionYou won't find anything in any set of economic statistics that can offer the slightest justification for this statement: "The JavaScript ecosystem nowadays is responsible for the global revolution the same way steam engines were responsible for the first industrial revolution" That is ridiculous. Here is reality: 1.) Labor productivity has been in long-term decline, though computers did cause a temporary surge in th…
Comment linking /2017/07/monday-smackdown-republican-economists-burn-yet-more-of-their-reputations-department.html
on “JavaScript Fatigue: Realities of Our Industry”Submitted Monetary Policy Outlook: The United States (Fall 2017) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionChang seems to be conflating two visions of economics: one vision of economics that says how things are, and one vision that says how things should be. There's a lot of overlap, of course, but one is economic theory and one is political theory. In the former, there are well studied areas of economics where we have consensus for cause and effect[0][1][2][3]. To just point to areas of disagreement and say the whole fi…
Comment linking /2018/07/hoisted-from-the-2007-archives-the-incredulity-of-jared-bernstein-and-myself.html
on “Economics: The User's Guide by Ha-Joon Chang”Submitted How to Think Like an Economist as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI'd suggest the 1943 essay Political Aspects of Full Employment would help square the gap. http://www.bradford-delong.com/1943/07/michal-kalecki-politi...
Comment linking /1943/07/michal-kalecki-political-aspects-of-full-employment-policy-political-quarterly-1943.html
on “In Towns Already Hit by Factory Closings, a New Casualty: Retail Jobs”Submitted Kansas's Conversion into Brownbackistan, and Its Failure as a story · 2 points
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