Favorites April 23rd 2022: Freight, Fertility and Affordability

Toronto, 2018

Henry Byers @WHByers

The coming volume drop in ocean container volumes (TEUs) leaving China for US ports is staggering. Our Ocean TEU Volume Index in SONAR now has a 14-day forward look at volumes, and it looks ugly. By early May 2022, we could see the lowest levels we’ve seen since May of 2020.

Mentioning it again, something very strange is happening with freight in China.

David Wallace-Wells @dwallacewells

“In high-income countries, the income-fertility relationship has flattened and in some cases reversed, and the cross-country relationship between women’s labor force participation and fertility is now positive.”

marginalrevolution.comNew developments in the economics of fertility - Marginal REVOLUTIONThe economics of fertility has entered a new era because these stylized facts no longer universally hold. In high-income countries, the income-fertility relationship has flattened and in some cases reversed, and the cross-country relationship between women’s labor force participation and fertility i…

From Cowen's commentary: "The marketization of childcare is likely an important cause of this shift."

Catherine Rampell @crampell

Amazing. Gov. Greg Abbott's "enhanced" truck inspections turned up zero drugs or migrants, but cost Texas consumers and businesses an estimated $4.2 billion. Delays resulted in $240 million in spoiled produce alone.

lmtonline.comGov. Greg Abbott truck inspections turned up zero drugs, migrants but cost Texas $4.2 billionThe costly policy, which some estimate cost hundreds of billions of dollars over the...

In case you missed it, Texas held up tons of freight at the southern border, and as any informed observer could have guessed, we now see that it accomplished nothing.

More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS

BREAKING: Starbucks workers in Leesburg, VA just won their in-store union election, 23-1. @SBWorkersUnited is on a tear through Virginia, with seven stores unionized this week. The “so-called workers” have won the two most recent elections by a combined 53-3.

The scale of starbucks is so large, I sorta assume they open new locations faster than stores are unionizing. On the other hand, there's nothing really stopping the pace of these from speeding up.

Erik Brynjolfsson @erikbryn

The massive reduction in air pollution is one of America’s underrated successes over the past few decades. It was strongly resisted by a lot of people, and there’s still more work to be done, but we should be proud of what has been accomplished.

Science Is Strategic @scienceisstrat1

California’s air quality used to be terrible, with huge health costs for people in cities like LA. But the situation has improved dramatically in the last several decades, showing that smart government action can improve lives @Schwarzenegger @dwallacewells @erikbryn @ramez https://t.co/sL9r4u43aQ

Amazing progress, but the more we learn about the dangers of air pollution, the clearer it is that there's room for improvement.

urbanmountain @urbanmountainv

new post: where ought the city build housing (in an idealized world)

jisaacstone.comWhere should we build housing in Mountain View?Mountain View needs to build housing.

I thought this was really cool, although it's a bit of a bummer that to combine things you have to just pick coefficients that seem reasonable. This article I read recently on assessing land values talks about how you might choose the coefficients in a less arbitrary way.