I guess then I’m wondering “if dems will probably lose anyway does it really matter if they lose more because of inflation?” Which I suppose if it leads to Republican supermajorities then it would be significantly worse than the “populist” blowout in 2010 and 2014 by the Tea Party and others taking hundreds of seats in local, state, and federal elections.
It also seems like even though it’s often ideal to introduce changes gradually, they kind of have to cram through a bunch of short-term spending or else nothing gets done or things that get planned have a high chance of repeal. The Affordable Care Act only held on by a single vote, for example, and became more popular over time as people saw the benefits like better protecting friends and family with preexisting conditions.
I would consider sustainability to include climate change as well as other problems like overfishing. We are currently on track for 2.7C of heating which is still pretty terrible especially for many island peoples, though very unlikely to reach worse extinction level scenarios people were more concerned about a few years ago. And the latest 2022 IPCC report is calling for “immediate and steep reductions in emissions across all sectors to limit warming to 1.5C” which don’t seem to be happening or close to happening. Maybe we’ll keep getting lucky with renewable and other innovations outpacing expectations but we’re already seeing irreversible damage.
Sure, I agree we should also be putting a lot more resources into pandemic prevention/biorisk, AI Safety, and peacebuilding as well. Though if I understand correctly, climate change does exacerbate all of them by releasing new pathogens and increasing the habitat of tropical diseases, creating food and water shortages that can lead to and inflame conflicts, and reducing resources to put toward causes like AI Safety by reducing GDP (the post you linked is good but it doesn’t seem to really address second order effects much. Maybe the evidence for their seriousness does not appear strong yet to them?)
That’s an interesting paper but I’m not sure it provides strong evidence of social spending inevitably reducing innovation. I would have to look into it more but it seems like their conclusion isn’t exactlysettled.
if dems will probably lose anyway does it really matter if they lose more because of inflation?
Good question. R. supermajority would be bad indeed. Also if you model this as Dems definitely losing, then it’s indeed bad, but the Dems do have a chance to win, and so you can also model this as inflation decreases the likelihood that Dems will stay in power—then every lost seat counts.
though it’s often ideal to introduce changes gradually, they kind of have to cram through a bunch of short-term spending or else nothing gets done
I get that, but the stimulus was too much all at once and should have been spread out even more. Also, if you lose elections based on this it might not be the optimal strategy.
climate change does exacerbate all of them by releasing new pathogens and increasing the habitat of tropical diseases, creating food and water shortages that can lead to and inflame conflicts, and reducing resources to put toward causes like AI Safety by reducing GDP (the post you linked is good but it doesn’t seem to really address second order effects much. Maybe the evidence for their seriousness does not appear strong yet to them?)
I’m a bit skeptical of the ‘Climate change will affect everything, thus, including conflict and biorisk’ and so working on climate change is the best way to reduce biorisk (Compare broad vs. narrow interventions).
And the latest 2022 IPCC report is calling for “immediate and steep reductions in emissions across all sectors to limit warming to 1.5C” which don’t seem to be happening or close to happening.
I generally agree with you, and the IPCC needs to say this, but it’s not a law of nature that we need reduce emission this year or next in order to stay under 1.5C, it’s just makes it more likely, there are different trade-offs. You’re right that there’s ‘irreversible damage’ but it’s not very large currently as a percentage of global GDP, and certainly much lower than the damage due to underinvestment in biosecurity.
That’s an interesting paper but I’m not sure it provides strong evidence of social spending inevitably reducing innovation. I would have to look into it more but it seems like their conclusion isn’t exactlysettled.
Not everyone agrees with this Acemoglu paper, but I find it quite plausible… Scandinavia is also mostly small rich countries, with Norway having lots of oil, and there’s this statistical bias where smaller countries / schools / whatever naturally have higher variance in terms of outcomes just by chance, whereas bigger countries regress to the mean.
For that reason, I think it’s better to compare US vs. France or Germany, which seem to not nearly innovate as much as the US, and I think this is to a large degree due to the economic structure.
I think if Dems had done more spending to keep stuff like keep the Expanded Child Tax Credit going and maintained their huge advantage among parents/recipients then maybe they would have a chance, but their 12-point lead among this group evaporated as soon as they allowed the monthly support to expire.
When you say spread out, what exactly do you mean? Do you mean something akin to four stimulus checks of $350 every three months instead of one check for $1400? Or that they should have been smaller—say $700 - even if more people would have lost their homes? Or both smaller and spread out?
Oh, I didn’t mean to suggest that stopping climate change is the best way to reduce biorisk; I meant that the value of stopping climate change is even higher because it alsocontributes to additional cause areas. And I just don’t see anything stopping us from strongly funding pandemic prevention/biorisk reduction and minimizing damage from climate change by aiming for 1.5C or less heating.
That post reminds me of some research suggesting that narrow piecemeal reforms tended to be more successful in US State Ballot Initiatives that people directly vote on, compared to more comprehensive Ballot Initiatives. Thus multiple narrow initiatives over the years could add up to more change over time than fewer big ones, though there are still challenges because sometimes it’s very difficult to change things one part at a time.
Hmm I just think of growing research on how poverty wipes out the potential of people much of the time and it seems like a pretty serious problem for innovation. Even if one ignored the moral side, it’s a drain on IQ and fosters scarcity mindsets with poorer decisions.
I really like this policy and also the earned income tax credit, and we can talk about different policies like the stimulus checks as well, which I don’t necessarily oppose. I also agree that they can help during elections. However, the point I’m making is not about what to spend on, nor the overall size of spending over time, but about timing… spending too much at once- be it on right wing issue (military, corporate tax cuts) or left wing (welfare, education, health) … I don’t have strong opinions on what the US should spend more on… maybe they should spend more (or less) on the military and more (cf. left) or less on health (cf. Robin Hanson) and/or education (cf. Bryan Caplan).
As Obama’s former advisor Furman says: The first $1T of stimulus led to a great recovery, but the last $0.5T of stimulus caused a lot of inflation but only few jobs. In other words, the marginal cost-effectiveness of looser policy was bad and the stimulus should have been smaller—maybe $1 trillion instead of 2.
I don’t have strong opinions on the exact implementation of spreading things out more, I was arguing that this should probably be done using econometric models that take into account the current macroenvironment, and not just based the discussion ‘on casual observation rather than econometrics’ i.e. ‘We need to spend more on health, climate, etc. $X.0T is a nice round number’.
Hey thanks for your response.
I guess then I’m wondering “if dems will probably lose anyway does it really matter if they lose more because of inflation?” Which I suppose if it leads to Republican supermajorities then it would be significantly worse than the “populist” blowout in 2010 and 2014 by the Tea Party and others taking hundreds of seats in local, state, and federal elections.
It also seems like even though it’s often ideal to introduce changes gradually, they kind of have to cram through a bunch of short-term spending or else nothing gets done or things that get planned have a high chance of repeal. The Affordable Care Act only held on by a single vote, for example, and became more popular over time as people saw the benefits like better protecting friends and family with preexisting conditions.
I would consider sustainability to include climate change as well as other problems like overfishing. We are currently on track for 2.7C of heating which is still pretty terrible especially for many island peoples, though very unlikely to reach worse extinction level scenarios people were more concerned about a few years ago. And the latest 2022 IPCC report is calling for “immediate and steep reductions in emissions across all sectors to limit warming to 1.5C” which don’t seem to be happening or close to happening. Maybe we’ll keep getting lucky with renewable and other innovations outpacing expectations but we’re already seeing irreversible damage.
Sure, I agree we should also be putting a lot more resources into pandemic prevention/biorisk, AI Safety, and peacebuilding as well. Though if I understand correctly, climate change does exacerbate all of them by releasing new pathogens and increasing the habitat of tropical diseases, creating food and water shortages that can lead to and inflame conflicts, and reducing resources to put toward causes like AI Safety by reducing GDP (the post you linked is good but it doesn’t seem to really address second order effects much. Maybe the evidence for their seriousness does not appear strong yet to them?)
That’s an interesting paper but I’m not sure it provides strong evidence of social spending inevitably reducing innovation. I would have to look into it more but it seems like their conclusion isn’t exactly settled.
Good question. R. supermajority would be bad indeed. Also if you model this as Dems definitely losing, then it’s indeed bad, but the Dems do have a chance to win, and so you can also model this as inflation decreases the likelihood that Dems will stay in power—then every lost seat counts.
I get that, but the stimulus was too much all at once and should have been spread out even more. Also, if you lose elections based on this it might not be the optimal strategy.
I’m a bit skeptical of the ‘Climate change will affect everything, thus, including conflict and biorisk’ and so working on climate change is the best way to reduce biorisk (Compare broad vs. narrow interventions).
I generally agree with you, and the IPCC needs to say this, but it’s not a law of nature that we need reduce emission this year or next in order to stay under 1.5C, it’s just makes it more likely, there are different trade-offs. You’re right that there’s ‘irreversible damage’ but it’s not very large currently as a percentage of global GDP, and certainly much lower than the damage due to underinvestment in biosecurity.
Not everyone agrees with this Acemoglu paper, but I find it quite plausible… Scandinavia is also mostly small rich countries, with Norway having lots of oil, and there’s this statistical bias where smaller countries / schools / whatever naturally have higher variance in terms of outcomes just by chance, whereas bigger countries regress to the mean.
For that reason, I think it’s better to compare US vs. France or Germany, which seem to not nearly innovate as much as the US, and I think this is to a large degree due to the economic structure.
I think if Dems had done more spending to keep stuff like keep the Expanded Child Tax Credit going and maintained their huge advantage among parents/recipients then maybe they would have a chance, but their 12-point lead among this group evaporated as soon as they allowed the monthly support to expire.
When you say spread out, what exactly do you mean? Do you mean something akin to four stimulus checks of $350 every three months instead of one check for $1400? Or that they should have been smaller—say $700 - even if more people would have lost their homes? Or both smaller and spread out?
Oh, I didn’t mean to suggest that stopping climate change is the best way to reduce biorisk; I meant that the value of stopping climate change is even higher because it also contributes to additional cause areas. And I just don’t see anything stopping us from strongly funding pandemic prevention/biorisk reduction and minimizing damage from climate change by aiming for 1.5C or less heating.
That post reminds me of some research suggesting that narrow piecemeal reforms tended to be more successful in US State Ballot Initiatives that people directly vote on, compared to more comprehensive Ballot Initiatives. Thus multiple narrow initiatives over the years could add up to more change over time than fewer big ones, though there are still challenges because sometimes it’s very difficult to change things one part at a time.
Hmm I just think of growing research on how poverty wipes out the potential of people much of the time and it seems like a pretty serious problem for innovation. Even if one ignored the moral side, it’s a drain on IQ and fosters scarcity mindsets with poorer decisions.
I really like this policy and also the earned income tax credit, and we can talk about different policies like the stimulus checks as well, which I don’t necessarily oppose. I also agree that they can help during elections. However, the point I’m making is not about what to spend on, nor the overall size of spending over time, but about timing… spending too much at once- be it on right wing issue (military, corporate tax cuts) or left wing (welfare, education, health) … I don’t have strong opinions on what the US should spend more on… maybe they should spend more (or less) on the military and more (cf. left) or less on health (cf. Robin Hanson) and/or education (cf. Bryan Caplan).
As Obama’s former advisor Furman says: The first $1T of stimulus led to a great recovery, but the last $0.5T of stimulus caused a lot of inflation but only few jobs. In other words, the marginal cost-effectiveness of looser policy was bad and the stimulus should have been smaller—maybe $1 trillion instead of 2.
I don’t have strong opinions on the exact implementation of spreading things out more, I was arguing that this should probably be done using econometric models that take into account the current macroenvironment, and not just based the discussion ‘on casual observation rather than econometrics’ i.e. ‘We need to spend more on health, climate, etc. $X.0T is a nice round number’.