When he came out with his nine principles in his "Common Sense Democrat Manifesto" I joked that he had rummaged through Irving Kristol's papers and copied an unpublished draft of a "Common Sense Neoconservative Manifesto" from 45 years ago.
He can’t be a conservative because his most well-known idea - that we need one billion Americans, from wherever, anyone at all as long as they can achieve the now simple feat of global travel, particularly with Soros etc. $ - is also the currently most radical idea going.
The more absurd because he is essentially saying that we need them in order to dump money on them. He’s now somewhat contrarily deciding the money is better dumped on them in one locale rather than another, but the dumping isn’t in question, and cannot be.
There can be logic to wanting certain people to have more kids - though this is explicitly *not* where he is trying to get his one billion - but producing people so others can work and dump money on them is surely a weak argument for overcrowding and resource strain and further loss of any and all niches for animals other than human.
And of course it’s common to many of these internet pundits. Tyler Cowen is exactly the same except that he doesn’t want the water to boil so quickly so as people notice what’s happening, humans being, uh, insufficiently humanist or something.
"Basic habits of hard work, diligence, and thrift don’t necessarily pay off in an environment where everybody is so poor that hardly anyone can hire you or pay for anything you make."
Basic habits of hard work, diligence, and thrift are exactly the things needed to build a society that isn't one where everybody is so poor. Little Matty still doesn't really get it and never will.
Not to mention his follow up idea of throwing money at them wouldn’t help much anyway: what would they even buy if no one has businesses making things?
There was a very recent new experiment on transfers to prevent homelessness that was making the rounds on Twitter because it found more favorable results than the Denver Basic Income Project Kelsey Piper covered in her review. A major difference was that the study doesn’t actually target the homeless directly, but low income families with children (so they reduce likelihood of experiencing homelessness for any stretch of time within four years, not recovering from already being in a homeless state). And as a commenter on my thread below points out, it is effectively much closer to means testing than UBI.
“By contrast, the domestic poor are…often people who, for one reason or another, are struggling to get their lives together in a very wealthy country.“
They aren’t struggling nearly enough and that’s probably why they will always be “struggling” to get their lives together for themselves and their offspring.
Like clockwork, the SNAP debit cards refill monthly and I’ve never seen anyone struggling to spend their benefits at the local Walmart or Sam’s Club. Why put in any effort when free stuff arrives magically via a plastic card and all that’s required is to remember a 4 digit PIN code?
And this is why a UBI policy in advanced countries is a bad idea, unless we reach the point where machines can carry out almost all labor as well or better than humans.
Direct cash payments to the very poor aren't very efficient due to the leaky bucket problem. But because everyone is getting a check, including tens of millions of households which don't really need it, taxes need to be raised significantly. A $15k UBI to all adults in the US would cost approximately $4 trillion annually. That would create significant deadweight loss.
Unpaid student loan amounts & numbers are both important objective measures indicating that there are too many students, at the current prices.
How do you know if too many? They can’t/ don’t repay their loans seems like the single most relevant metric.
Govt loans should be replaced with college loans, that the colleges decide if the student’s repayment probability is worth the cost of educating that student at that college. We’d rapidly see cuts in enrollment and likely also reduced admin folk (parasites? Free-riders?).
It would be good to have more colleges go bankrupt, then have that state buy/ take over, and create a Med School or Nursing School. Grads of those programs are paying back their loans.
Companies should be allowed to administer IQ Tests but also have more 3 month or 12 month trial periods.
<<graduate schools continue to churn out more PhDs (almost 60,000 in 2022) than the growth of undergraduate enrollment justifies. So, artificial student demand must be stimulated. Kling says “colleges adapt by offering dumbed-down courses and grade inflation.”>> Seems oversimplified. And I've heard PhDs are not rarely useful - and even actually used - for doing other things than teaching students.
I’d bet less than 50% need their PhD knowledge to do the work they’re doing after 5 years, tho the Signaling from getting the PhD is often how they were chosen to be hired.
The Perseverance part of Conscientiousness is a highly desirable trait employers look for.
- If indeed 50% "need" their PhD knowledge, that sounds like we might be top calibrated in the # of PhDs we produce; matching cannot ever be perfect and having the PhD knowledge when you need it can be hugely valuable (and as bonus some - yes not nearly all - PhDs indeed support useful research projects).
- But anyway, that's a totally different discussion from the OP's point which I call out as lacking logical stringency.*
[*At least if my reading corresponds to what the author meant with it: we'd purposely inflate grades to get more undergrads to then justify the # of PhDs, maybe because the PhDs must teach or sth). If instead OP meant the more-than-prop growth of PhDs relative to undergrads shows we'd have to be artificially grade-inflating PhD class grades to get the # of PhDs that would of course also be totally inconclusive logics given it's not true that always everyone who could, say gradewise, would have wanted to do a PhD.]
Regarding the statistical agencies, it might be worth considering the Trump Administration’s America’s Talent Strategy proposal. (https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/osec/osec20250812 ). The proposal includes the following statement:
“Reorganizing Federal Statistical Agencies The Administration will work with Congress to consolidate federal statistical agencies and reorganize the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the Census Bureau within the Department of Commerce. This proposal aims to leverage data collection and analysis synergies, increase cost-effectiveness, improve data quality, and reduce respondent burden. The reorganization can shape how the federal government provides labor market information and measures program performance and make the federal government more efficient by housing data organizations in one place.”
The 2026 Budget for the Department of Labor builds on this by stating that BLS is going to focus on Principal Federal Economic Indicators:
“In FY 2026, the Administration proposes to reorganize the BLS, Census Bureau, and Bureau of Economic Analysis at the Department of Commerce under the policy direction of the Under Secretary for Economic Affairs. This will leverage data collection and analysis synergies, increase cost-effectiveness, improve data quality, and reduce respondent burden. Additionally, within the funding level, to achieve cost savings beyond those enabled by the reorganization proposal, and prioritize the most mission critical activities necessary for the production of the core data series, BLS will focus efforts on producing data from statistical programs that are Principal Federal Economic Indicators (PFEIs), required by statute, or in use in current law, which will include consideration of more significant targeted changes to or eliminations of survey programs. “
Scrolling through BLS press releases from the past several years, it appears that there may indeed be work being done that is not of the utmost urgency to the BLS mission. For example:
Of course, this is not the first time a president has proposed reorganizing and streamlining the 13 major federal statistical agencies (and the 70 something that spend at least a half million dollars a year on generating statistics). The Clinton Administration’s National Partnership for Reinventing Government had a similar proposal and a bill was introduced in 1998 to create a “Federal Commission on Statistical Policy.” I get the impression that, like the NPRG’s proposal to elimine the US Office of Personnel Management, not much came of it, but I could be wrong. One suspects that just as every committee in Congress has its own pet health programs and would see the country default on its obligations before it would give one up, so too, there is unlikely to be a committee willing to let another committee take a slice of its pie.
"Largely unnoticed federal figures show that public and private higher education institutions have added 41,446 degree or certification programs since 2012"....from WaPo
It's not about education. It's about growing the business.
> If they were thrifty and diligent, they wouldn’t be poor in the first place.
Tyler Cowen is right. Matt Yglesias should be a conservative.
When he came out with his nine principles in his "Common Sense Democrat Manifesto" I joked that he had rummaged through Irving Kristol's papers and copied an unpublished draft of a "Common Sense Neoconservative Manifesto" from 45 years ago.
Reminds me of an old Ronald Reagan joke
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DLnjl1GonOP/?igsh=aGZwa3EwZDRyNDFs
That's perfect.
He can’t be a conservative because his most well-known idea - that we need one billion Americans, from wherever, anyone at all as long as they can achieve the now simple feat of global travel, particularly with Soros etc. $ - is also the currently most radical idea going.
The more absurd because he is essentially saying that we need them in order to dump money on them. He’s now somewhat contrarily deciding the money is better dumped on them in one locale rather than another, but the dumping isn’t in question, and cannot be.
There can be logic to wanting certain people to have more kids - though this is explicitly *not* where he is trying to get his one billion - but producing people so others can work and dump money on them is surely a weak argument for overcrowding and resource strain and further loss of any and all niches for animals other than human.
Is that book famous? My perception was that it was largely ignored
All books are ignored now but it’s his mighty theme from which all his putatively humanist, utopian ideas flow.
And of course it’s common to many of these internet pundits. Tyler Cowen is exactly the same except that he doesn’t want the water to boil so quickly so as people notice what’s happening, humans being, uh, insufficiently humanist or something.
Yglesias wrote:
"Basic habits of hard work, diligence, and thrift don’t necessarily pay off in an environment where everybody is so poor that hardly anyone can hire you or pay for anything you make."
Basic habits of hard work, diligence, and thrift are exactly the things needed to build a society that isn't one where everybody is so poor. Little Matty still doesn't really get it and never will.
Not to mention his follow up idea of throwing money at them wouldn’t help much anyway: what would they even buy if no one has businesses making things?
Right. It doesn't happen overnight.
There was a very recent new experiment on transfers to prevent homelessness that was making the rounds on Twitter because it found more favorable results than the Denver Basic Income Project Kelsey Piper covered in her review. A major difference was that the study doesn’t actually target the homeless directly, but low income families with children (so they reduce likelihood of experiencing homelessness for any stretch of time within four years, not recovering from already being in a homeless state). And as a commenter on my thread below points out, it is effectively much closer to means testing than UBI.
https://substack.com/@ageofinfovores/note/c-148274861?r=1lmgqf&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
“By contrast, the domestic poor are…often people who, for one reason or another, are struggling to get their lives together in a very wealthy country.“
They aren’t struggling nearly enough and that’s probably why they will always be “struggling” to get their lives together for themselves and their offspring.
Like clockwork, the SNAP debit cards refill monthly and I’ve never seen anyone struggling to spend their benefits at the local Walmart or Sam’s Club. Why put in any effort when free stuff arrives magically via a plastic card and all that’s required is to remember a 4 digit PIN code?
And this is why a UBI policy in advanced countries is a bad idea, unless we reach the point where machines can carry out almost all labor as well or better than humans.
Direct cash payments to the very poor aren't very efficient due to the leaky bucket problem. But because everyone is getting a check, including tens of millions of households which don't really need it, taxes need to be raised significantly. A $15k UBI to all adults in the US would cost approximately $4 trillion annually. That would create significant deadweight loss.
Unpaid student loan amounts & numbers are both important objective measures indicating that there are too many students, at the current prices.
How do you know if too many? They can’t/ don’t repay their loans seems like the single most relevant metric.
Govt loans should be replaced with college loans, that the colleges decide if the student’s repayment probability is worth the cost of educating that student at that college. We’d rapidly see cuts in enrollment and likely also reduced admin folk (parasites? Free-riders?).
It would be good to have more colleges go bankrupt, then have that state buy/ take over, and create a Med School or Nursing School. Grads of those programs are paying back their loans.
Companies should be allowed to administer IQ Tests but also have more 3 month or 12 month trial periods.
<<graduate schools continue to churn out more PhDs (almost 60,000 in 2022) than the growth of undergraduate enrollment justifies. So, artificial student demand must be stimulated. Kling says “colleges adapt by offering dumbed-down courses and grade inflation.”>> Seems oversimplified. And I've heard PhDs are not rarely useful - and even actually used - for doing other things than teaching students.
I’d bet less than 50% need their PhD knowledge to do the work they’re doing after 5 years, tho the Signaling from getting the PhD is often how they were chosen to be hired.
The Perseverance part of Conscientiousness is a highly desirable trait employers look for.
- If indeed 50% "need" their PhD knowledge, that sounds like we might be top calibrated in the # of PhDs we produce; matching cannot ever be perfect and having the PhD knowledge when you need it can be hugely valuable (and as bonus some - yes not nearly all - PhDs indeed support useful research projects).
- But anyway, that's a totally different discussion from the OP's point which I call out as lacking logical stringency.*
[*At least if my reading corresponds to what the author meant with it: we'd purposely inflate grades to get more undergrads to then justify the # of PhDs, maybe because the PhDs must teach or sth). If instead OP meant the more-than-prop growth of PhDs relative to undergrads shows we'd have to be artificially grade-inflating PhD class grades to get the # of PhDs that would of course also be totally inconclusive logics given it's not true that always everyone who could, say gradewise, would have wanted to do a PhD.]
Regarding the statistical agencies, it might be worth considering the Trump Administration’s America’s Talent Strategy proposal. (https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/osec/osec20250812 ). The proposal includes the following statement:
“Reorganizing Federal Statistical Agencies The Administration will work with Congress to consolidate federal statistical agencies and reorganize the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the Census Bureau within the Department of Commerce. This proposal aims to leverage data collection and analysis synergies, increase cost-effectiveness, improve data quality, and reduce respondent burden. The reorganization can shape how the federal government provides labor market information and measures program performance and make the federal government more efficient by housing data organizations in one place.”
The 2026 Budget for the Department of Labor builds on this by stating that BLS is going to focus on Principal Federal Economic Indicators:
“In FY 2026, the Administration proposes to reorganize the BLS, Census Bureau, and Bureau of Economic Analysis at the Department of Commerce under the policy direction of the Under Secretary for Economic Affairs. This will leverage data collection and analysis synergies, increase cost-effectiveness, improve data quality, and reduce respondent burden. Additionally, within the funding level, to achieve cost savings beyond those enabled by the reorganization proposal, and prioritize the most mission critical activities necessary for the production of the core data series, BLS will focus efforts on producing data from statistical programs that are Principal Federal Economic Indicators (PFEIs), required by statute, or in use in current law, which will include consideration of more significant targeted changes to or eliminations of survey programs. “
Scrolling through BLS press releases from the past several years, it appears that there may indeed be work being done that is not of the utmost urgency to the BLS mission. For example:
https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2024/article/disability-and-social-insurance-program-participation-in-nonstandard-work.htm
https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2024/article/two-hours-to-the-office-two-minutes-to-the-kitchen-table-trends-in-local-public-transportation-expenditures-from-2018-to-2021.htm
https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2023/article/the-impact-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-on-workers-with-a-criminal-history.htm
Would redirecting resources to statutorily mandated subject matters carry dire consequences?
An initial reaction from a member of the statistics community was not overtly hostile to the proposal:
https://community.amstat.org/communities/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?GroupId=2653&MessageKey=d4b38bf2-f733-49b6-bf99-36feab82d3b2&CommunityKey=6b2d607a-e31f-4f19-8357-020a8631b999&tab=digestviewer&hlmlt=VT#bmd4b38bf2-f733-49b6-bf99-36feab82d3b2
Of course, this is not the first time a president has proposed reorganizing and streamlining the 13 major federal statistical agencies (and the 70 something that spend at least a half million dollars a year on generating statistics). The Clinton Administration’s National Partnership for Reinventing Government had a similar proposal and a bill was introduced in 1998 to create a “Federal Commission on Statistical Policy.” I get the impression that, like the NPRG’s proposal to elimine the US Office of Personnel Management, not much came of it, but I could be wrong. One suspects that just as every committee in Congress has its own pet health programs and would see the country default on its obligations before it would give one up, so too, there is unlikely to be a committee willing to let another committee take a slice of its pie.
"Largely unnoticed federal figures show that public and private higher education institutions have added 41,446 degree or certification programs since 2012"....from WaPo
It's not about education. It's about growing the business.