LT #12 - Top Links - April 2023

Cold war 2.0, bank collapses, layoffs and labor market shocks, big medicine, education skepticism, and the energy transition in cars, nuclear, solar, wind, and coal - and why it's far from enough.

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Assorted Links

The EduSkeptic’s Guidebook 1.0 - Freddie DeBoer, author of The Cult of Smart, breaks down his writings about education and why efforts to close the achievement gap will be fruitless.

The criminal justice system doesn’t do enough to make us safe - Charles Fain Lehman guest posts on Slow Boring making the case for more funding for criminal data tracking, hiring police officers, and offering more professional development.

Bernie Sanders in the Guardian: We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage

Adam Tooze published two excellent top links for Chartbooks:

• US labor market shocks, neutrality in the financial forcefield, the coal explosion, and Capitalism & Schizophrenia

• Black unemployment, global layoffs & foreign military bases in Africa

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Corruption in the Supreme Court

Lawmakers call for investigation and ethics reforms in response to ProPublica report on Clarence Thomas

The Clarence Thomas scandal is about more than corruption - Corey Robin in Politico

Money “is a kind of poetry,” wrote Wallace Stevens. Thomas agrees. More than an aid to speech or speech in the metaphorical sense, money is speech…

If money is speech that secures outsized influence and access for the wealthiest citizens, maybe the problem is not the presence of money in politics but the distribution of money in the economy.

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Cold War 2.0

Noah Smith argues convincingly that Europe is not ready to be a 3rd superpower due to lagging behind in military spending with the US, Russia, and China, as well as, lacking the organization coordination and capacity to flex its power - comparing it to the Ming Dynasty - and goes on to discuss why we should still take China seriously:

2023 is when the empires strike back

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The Evolving American Economy

Unpaywalled: Two posts about de-dollarization - Noah Smith explains why the dollar is here to stay - not to be replaced by the Yuan, Euro, gold, nor bitcoin - and also why it may be a good thing for the US if global finance shifts away a bit from the dollar.

How Obamacare Created Big Medicine

The death of First Republic - Another bank run, another bank failure. The effects of rate hikes on deposit flows and the business of banking.

A historic labor market recovery - filled with both good and bad news.

Vacant Housing Lowest In Census History

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The Global Energy Transition

Did the energy crisis accelerate the energy transition? - Joseph Politano looks at how the covid-19 crisis drove down some use of oil - in favor of wind, solar, and coal - but mostly things are changing slowly.

Carbon Note 2: The "Western" energy transitions - narcissism of small differences.

How long does it take to build a nuclear reactor? Hannah Ritchie in Sustainability by the Numbers unpacks the one of the most critical factors in mitigating climate change - looking at current and historical data for the US and other countries...

…and follows it with this banger: Europe and China are moving quickly on electric cars; the rest of the world is lagging behind

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And finally… the podcast of the month:

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