Favorites September 20th 2021

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

"His arm has grown long indeed," said Gimli, "if he can draw snow down from the north to trouble us here three hundred leagues away." "His arm has grown long," said Gandalf.

Sarah McLaughlin @sarahemclaugh

This is chilling. A Chinese student studying in Canada shared just three posts on Twitter — using a fake name and location — critical of Xi Jinping and government corruption. He had two followers. And then the police started contacting him and his family. https://t.co/gs32JeIg3H https://t.co/l1CTZ1fR2o

Yikes

NPR @NPR

NEW: Pfizer says early results of its trials show that its COVID vaccine is safe and effective for children ages 5 to 11.

n.prCOVID Vaccine For Kids Ages 5 To 11 Is Safe And Effective, Pfizer SaysPfizer and BioNTech say that early trial results show their vaccine established a strong antibody response against the coronavirus. FDA review is still needed.

Hurry up and approve it!

Luke Savage @LukewSavage

Wow, this sucks. If only there were a simple and obvious solution, in which the party that controls the House, Senate, and Presidency could simply overrule this unelected person absolutely no one has ever heard of.

Chuck Schumer @SenSchumer

We are deeply disappointed in this decision but the fight to provide lawful status for immigrants in budget reconciliation continues. We will continue fighting to pursue the best path forward to grant them the ability to obtain lawful status. My statement: https://t.co/5VZjx0D6JT

It would be nice if reporting blamed Manchin more directly, as he's the critical vote. As Ezra Klein wrote recently, the way the senate is being run isn't centrist or moderate it's just dumb, and "no one ever intended for it to work this way".

Will Jordan @williamjordann

Bizarrely, the parts of Biden's agenda that are most popular seem to be most at risk right now. Here's recent polling from the @NavigatorSurvey. Among top 5 most popular policies: - Medicare drug price negotiation (86%! support) - Cracking down on tax cheats (77% support)

Worse, it's not popularist either! They're dropping the things with popular support.

Plan Maestro @PlanMaestro

🤔

This is an excerpt of a new book regarding Elon Musk and Peter Theil, the repliesare excellent.

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

New minimum wage paper looks like support for monopsony theory. Small changes do nothing, large changes have a small effect.

nber.orgThe Heterogeneous Effects of Large and Small Minimum Wage Changes: Evidence over the Short and Medium Run Using a Pre-Analysis PlanFounded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.

The theory here being that minimum wages don't reduce employment because firms who pay the minimum wage have monopsony power in the market for labor.

Alec Stapp @AlecStapp

Taiwan's best defense against China has nothing to do with its military. It's the credible threat of sabotaging TSMC fabs and evacuating TSMC engineers in the event of an invasion. (by @danwwang)

If you're interested, this in-depth analysis of the subject is also good

Christopher Mims @mims

the pandemic so completely obliterated traffic jams that the amount of fuel Americans wasted in them was cut in half in a single year -- A savings of 1.7 *billion* gallons of fuel energy.gov/eere/vehicles/…

Wow! I really wonder how much telecommuting will keep this number down in the next few years. And yet we're having more car accidents? Wild.

Niagra Falls, 2019