2025-11-07 01:30:24
1. Those new service sector jobs.
2. Optimism is correlated with exceptional longevity.
3. “Kosmos has made 7 discoveries so far, which we are releasing today, in areas ranging from neuroscience to material science and clinical genetics, in collaboration with our academic beta testers. Three of these discoveries reproduced unpublished findings; four are net new, validated contributions to the scientific literature.” Link here.
4. The wisdom of Ross Douthat.
5. “Following large exogenous minimum wage increases, schedule unpredictability increases by 20% per week and schedules become even more responsive to weather shocks. This highlights how some of the welfare gains workers realize from a minimum wage may be offset by increased schedule unpredictability.” Link here to the paper.
6. Kevin Kelly’s essentials for independent travel in China.
7. New colossal statue for Alcatraz island? Recall Alex’s proposal.
8. Ross dialogue on feminization with Leah Libresco Sargent and Helen Andrews (NYT).
The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
2025-11-07 01:29:46
Legislation requiring cars and trucks, including electric vehicles, to have AM radios easily cleared a House committee Wednesday, although it could run into opposition going forward.
H.R. 979, the “AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act,” would require the Department of Transportation to enforce the mandate through a rulemaking. It passed the Energy and Commerce Committee by a 50-1 vote. Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) was the only “no.”
What’s next—mandating 8-track players in every car? Fax machines in every home? Floppy disks in every laptop? If Congress actually cared about emergency communication, it would strengthen cellular networks, not cling to obsolete technology. Congress is a den of old busybodies.
Hat tip: Nick Gillespie.
Addendum: If AM radio is so valuable for emergencies then the market will provide or you could, you know, put an AM radio in your glove box. No need for a mandate. We already have FM, broadcast TV, cable, satellite, cell, and Wireless Emergency Alerts; resilience can be met without specifying AM hardware.
The post Creative Stagnation appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
2025-11-06 20:16:08
Australia has so much rooftop solar power that some states are offering free electricity during peak hours:
TechCrunch: For years, Australians have been been installing solar panels at a rapid clip. Now that investment is paying off.
The Australian government announced this week that electricity customers in three states will get free electricity for up to three hours per day starting in July 2026.
Solar power has boomed in Australia in recent years. Rooftop solar installations cost about $840 (U.S.) per kilowatt of capacity before rebates, about a third of what U.S. households pay. As a result, more than one in three Australian homes have solar panels on their roof.
Why is rooftop solar adoption in the U.S. lagging behind Australia, Europe, and much of Asia? Australia has roughly as many rooftop installations as the entire United States, despite having less than a tenth of its population.
First, tariffs. U.S. tariffs on imported solar panels mean American buyers pay double to triple the global market rate.
Second, permits. The U.S. permitting process is slow, fragmented, and expensive. In Australia, no permit is required for a standard installation—you simply notify the distributor and have an accredited installer certify safety. In Australia, a rooftop solar panel is treated like an appliance; in the U.S., it’s treated like a mini power plant. Germany takes a similar approach to Australia, with national standards and an “as-of-right” presumption for rooftop solar that removes red tape.
By contrast, the U.S. system involves multiple layers of approval—building and electrical permits, several inspections, and a Permission-to-Operate from the local utility, which may not be eager to speed things up just to lose your business. Moreover, each of thousands of jurisdictions has different requirements, creating long delays and high costs.
High costs suppress adoption, limiting economies of scale and forcing installers to spend more on sales than installation. Yet Australia and Germany are not so different from the United States—they simply made solar easy. If the U.S. eliminated tariffs, standardized/nationalized rules, and accelerated approvals, rooftop solar would take off, costs would fall, and innovation would follow.
The benefits extend beyond cheaper power. Distributed rooftop generation makes the grid more resilient. Streamlining solar policy would thus cut energy costs, strengthen protection against disasters and disruptions, and speed the transition to a future with more abundant and cleaner power.
The post Here Comes the Sun—If We Let It: Cutting Tariffs and Red Tape for Rooftop Solar appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
2025-11-06 13:41:30
This paper establishes geopolitical relations as a first-order determinant of economic growth. We construct a novel event-based measure of bilateral geopolitical alignment by employing large language models with web search capabilities to analyze over 440,000 political events across 196 countries from 1960 to 2019. This comprehensive measure enables us to identify the precise timing and magnitude of geopolitical shifts. Exploiting within-country temporal variation, we find that a one-standard-deviation improvement in geopolitical relations increases GDP per capita by 10 percent over 15 years. These persistent effects operate through multiple reinforcing channels: enhanced political stability, increased investment, expanded trade, and productivity gains. Geopolitical factors account for GDP variations ranging from −35 to +30 percent across countries over our sample period, with developing nations exhibiting particularly severe penalties from international isolation.
That is from a recent paper by Tianyu Fan of Yale University, who is on the job market this year. Here is his job market paper on the job market incidence of AI, it actually has a new and significant idea. One of the most interesting profiles I have seen of any candidate this year, he also has a triply-authored piece in Econometrica 2023.
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2025-11-06 13:08:00
It focuses the listener’s attention on price rather than quantity. To many people it sounds better than “economic growth,” though often for the wrong reasons. I cover related points in my latest Free Press article:
Rather than suggesting beneficial economic reforms, the affordability mantra too often leads to “free lunch” thinking and political giveaways. It is a new form of economic populism—a more general rubric of which, after the volatility and disruptions of the Trump tariffs, I have had enough.
I am not opposed to “affordability” as an abstract concept. For instance, I find food prices shockingly high, even in so-so restaurants, and I wish the prices were lower. And if I were in charge of the economy, I would try to lower costs. But there are only so many ways to do that. One option would be to deregulate the energy sector, easing permitting for solar, wind, and nuclear power. Over a five- to 10-year time horizon, that would lead to cheaper energy and, indirectly, to modestly lower food prices. I would also repeal the Trump tariffs, which artificially inflate the cost of foreign goods. I might also refrain from minimum wage increases, which only cause the price of food to rise further.
But even in the best-case scenario, all of those actions would make food just a bit cheaper than it would be otherwise. I would hardly expect voters to hail my reign as a major triumph, or ask for more of the same. Instead, they might flock to the candidate who promises government-run grocery stores or price controls. Sound familiar?
I do not expect this problem to go away anytime soon, and now it is the Trump people too.
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2025-11-06 04:05:31
Thanks to a $100 million gift from Jeff Yass — the largest donation since UATX was founded in 2021 — we’re breaking the chains. His gift marks the launch of a $300 million campaign to build a university that sets students free.
Our bet: Create graduates so exceptional they’ll pay it forward when they succeed, financing the tuition of the next generation. When our students build important companies, defend our nation, advance scientific frontiers, build families, and create works that elicit awe, they’ll remember who made their excellence possible. And they’ll give back.
Here is the full announcement.
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