2026-03-28 15:04:59
That does not mean it is good! From Jeffrey M. Stonecash:
Congress is portrayed as compliant with President Donald J. Trump’s agenda because he is intimidating its members. This neglects an alternative explanation that focuses on the increased congruence of presidential and congressional electoral bases. Trump is the beneficiary of a geographical realignment that took decades and has created a high degree of overlap of the two bases. This analysis tracks that process from 1952 to 2024. It has produced a situation in which policy concerns overlap and encourage congressional compliance.
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2026-03-28 12:51:14
Dean ball has some thoughts and hesitations:
Here are some questions I wish “Pause” and “Stop” advocates would address:
1. Assuming we achieve the desired policy goal through a bilateral US/China agreement, what would be the specific metric or objective we would say needs to be satisfied in advance? Who decides whether we have satisfied them? What if one one party believes we have satisfied them but the other does not?
2. If the goal is achieved through a bilateral US/China agreement, would we need capital controls to ensure that U.S. investors cannot fund semiconductor fabs, data centers, or AI research labs in countries other than the U.S. and China?
3. Would we need to revoke the passports of U.S.-based AI researchers and semiconductor engineers to prevent them leaving America to join AI-related ventures elsewhere? How else would the U.S. and China keep researchers within their borders?
4. How should we grapple with the fact that (2) and (3) are common features of autocratic regimes?
5. Do the above questions mean that this really should be a global agreement, signed by all countries on Earth, or at least those with the theoretical ability to host large-scale data centers (probably Vanuatu doesn’t need to be on board)?
The post A bilateral AI pause? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
2026-03-27 23:44:31
He is one of the world’s leading art critics, all of his books are excellent, and he has a new and very good work coming out titled Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found. He also has a well-known book on Caravaggio, on Michelangelo, and I am especially fond of his book on British art.
Here is his Wikipedia page. Here is his home page. So what should I ask him?
The post What should I ask Andrew Graham-Dixon? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
2026-03-27 19:18:11
There is a growing movement to eliminate the wage cap on Social Security taxes while capping benefits. The argument, often from the center-right, is that Social Security is insolvent and that “tough” choices are needed to save it. But this moves the system in exactly the wrong direction.
One of the better features of Social Security is that it has never been purely redistributive. It has also functioned, in part, as a forced-savings program. The Social Security Administration itself emphasizes that benefits depend on earnings history: earn more, retire with more. Why do some people receive large Social Security checks? Because they paid a lot more into the system.
Eliminating the wage cap while capping benefits weakens, and in the limit destroys, that connection. It turns Social Security away from forced saving and toward retirement welfare financed by a broader tax on earnings. That is a bad idea.
The problem is not just that this creates another welfare program. It also worsens marginal incentives. A tax that buys you a claim on future benefits is not the same as a pure tax. Suppose 10 percent of your salary goes into a 401(k). That reduces current consumption, but it is not simply money lost to the state. You receive an asset in return. It is closer to a purchase than to a tax–a reason to work more not a reason to work less.
Social Security is not a personal retirement account, but it does contain that logic. There is a connection between taxes paid and benefits received. To the extent that workers understand that connection, the payroll tax is less distortionary than an ordinary tax of the same size. Part of what workers pay is offset by the expectation of future benefits.
Gut that connection, however, and the tax becomes more distortionary even if total taxes paid and total benefits received stay the same. The averages can remain unchanged while the marginal incentives deteriorate. Once additional taxes no longer generate additional benefits, the system looks much more like a straight tax on work.
A much better reform would move in the opposite direction: strengthen the link between contributions and benefits. Make Social Security more like what many people already think it is—an individual account that accumulates benefits over time. The stronger that link, the lower the effective tax wedge.
This would also improve the politics of the system. A welfare program invites zero-sum conflict: my benefit comes at your expense. A claim-based system is less divisive. It ties benefits more clearly to contributions and makes rising prosperity good for everyone. In that kind of system, we can all become richer—including low-wage immigrants—without treating retirement policy as a fight over who gets to pick whose pocket.
Addendum: James Buchanan first made these points here. John Cochrane gets the economics right, of course.
The post Social Security Should Be a Forced Savings Program Not a Welfare Program appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
2026-03-27 19:17:09
Marginal Garfield generates an original Garfield cartoon every day based on posts from Marginal Revolution! Here is the first strip. You can guess the post. Is there now any reason to come to MR? What a world.
You can also check out Rationalist Garfield which pulls from Less Wrong.
We thank Tim Hwang.
The post Marginal Garfield appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
2026-03-27 15:10:03
To The Marginal Revolution: Rise and Decline, and the Pending AI Revolution, here is the very close of the book:
There is however a slightly scarier version of this story yet. Maybe our intuitions about the world, including the economic world, were never so strong in the first place. Maybe we put so much value on “intuitive” results, in 20th century microeconomics, as a kind of cope and also security blanket, to make up for this deficiency. But our intuitions, even assuming them to be largely correct, always were just a small corner of understanding, swimming in a larger froth of epistemic chaos. And now the illusion has been stripped bare, and the true complexities of economic reasoning are being revealed.
As Arnold Kling would say, “Have a nice day.”
Can I say again “Have a nice day”?
The post Henry Oliver calls it a Swiftian ending appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.