Vaccinated Democratic Counties Are Leading the Economic Recovery – “The 520 counties Biden won account for fully 71% of U.S. gross domestic product, while the 2,564 that Trump carried produced just 29%. In other words, America’s economic engine is bluer than ever.”
–@michaelharriot
political…
–Trump and other Republicans are effectively killing their base
–All maps of America look the same
- What Redistricting Looks Like In Every State – “An updating tracker of proposed congressional maps — and whether they might benefit Democrats or Republicans in the 2022 midterms and beyond.”
- Which States Won — And Lost — Seats In The 2020 Census? – “Republicans will control the redrawing of 187 congressional districts (43 percent) — or 2.5 times as many as Democrats (who will redraw 75 districts, or 17 percent). There are also 167 districts (38 percent) where neither party will enjoy exclusive control over redistricting (either because of independent commissions or split partisan control). And, of course, there are six districts (1 percent) that won’t need to be drawn at all (because they are at-large districts that cover their entire state).”[1]
- Where America Lost And Gained Population Could Help Democrats In Redistricting – “Overall, the average county that voted for Biden boosted its population by 3.4 percent between 2010 and 2020, while the average Trump county grew by just 0.2 percent. Strikingly, 370 out of the 538 Biden counties (69 percent) gained population, while 1,468 out of the 2,574 Trump counties (57 percent) lost residents… the population trends from the 2020 census are not enough to cancel out any gerrymandering efforts. Rather, the census numbers are merely a silver lining for Democrats. They still remain at a serious disadvantage in the 2021 redistricting cycle simply because Republicans will control the redrawing of more congressional districts.”
economy…
–Development Theory[2]
- Why the World is Going Insane – “Inequality is the prime mover of today’s problems. Inequality within countries has skyrocketed globally. As inequality jumps, social distance grows. Rich and poor share little in common, and so a society begins to corrode from within — it loses trust.”[3]
- Nothing will fundamentally change – “Chinese policymakers are reassuring rich people that their push for greater equality will in large part be through voluntary charity encouraged with tax incentives, not government handouts.”[4]
- China’s cyberspace watchdog, the CAC, just published a long (and unprecedented) set of draft regulations for recommendation algorithms – “As far as I’m concerned, this policy marks the moment that China’s tech regulation is not simply keeping pace with data regulations in the EU, but has gone beyond them.”
- Have property rights gotten complicated? – “Today, every time you use your smart phone you probably are encountering a situation in which property rights are unclear. Who owns your email archive? Your location data? Is an app that you ‘own’ something you can sell of give away at will? Think about all this. Clear, straightforward property rights are probably a necessary condition for a libertarian utopia of minimal government and maximum voluntary exchange. 21st century society requires a lot more governance…”[5]
- Civil vs. Common Law Systems – “It’s a big omission in transit costs analyses not to consider the role of common law systems (which are famously disputatious, property-protective, and costly) in infrastructure costs. The high-cost pole (NZ, HK, SG, UK, US) is common law while the low-cost (ES, FI, PT) is civil.”
- Why does it cost so much to build things in America? – “This is why the US can’t have nice things.”
- It’s a shame – “Economies of agglomeration could have made California more populous, prosperous, and politically powerful at the national level–but California is mostly wasting those by refusing to build more housing and increase density.”[6]
- Microcities – “Copenhagen’s Nordhavn neighborhood is the future of urban planning.”
- Disutility and Stigma – “Any system of subsidy that requires people to be identified as poor and that is seen as a special benefaction for those who cannot fend for themselves would tend to have some effects on their self-respect as well as on the respect accorded them by others. These features do, of course, have their incentive effects as well, but quite aside from those indirect consequences, there are also direct costs and losses involved in feeling–and being–stigmatized. Since this kind of issue is often taken to be of rather marginal interest (a matter, allegedly, of fine detail), I would take the liberty of referring to John Rawls’s argument that self-respect is ‘perhaps the most important primary good’ on which a theory of justice as fairness has to concentrate (see Rawls 1971, pp. 440-46, where he discusses how institutional arrangements and public policies can influence ‘the social bases of self-respect’).”[7]
- Economics can be progressive sometimes – “‘The dismal science’ was coined as an insult by a pro-slavery racist, infuriated at economists such as JS Mill for their insistence that if capitalists wanted work, they should pay people in exchange for labour.”
–@NickCho