#  @GuthmannR Rafael R. Guthmann Rafael R. Guthmann posts on X about countries, china, gdp, brazil the most. They currently have [-----] followers and [----] posts still getting attention that total [-----] engagements in the last [--] hours. ### Engagements: [-----] [#](/creator/twitter::1108601275497758720/interactions)  - [--] Week [------] +690,117% - [--] Month [------] -90% - [--] Months [---------] +5.30% - [--] Year [---------] +609% ### Mentions: [--] [#](/creator/twitter::1108601275497758720/posts_active)  - [--] Months [---] +35% - [--] Year [---] +38% ### Followers: [-----] [#](/creator/twitter::1108601275497758720/followers)  - [--] Week [-----] +0.41% - [--] Month [-----] no change - [--] Months [-----] +38% - [--] Year [-----] +154% ### CreatorRank: [-------] [#](/creator/twitter::1108601275497758720/influencer_rank)  ### Social Influence **Social category influence** [countries](/list/countries) [finance](/list/finance) [travel destinations](/list/travel-destinations) [currencies](/list/currencies) [stocks](/list/stocks) [technology brands](/list/technology-brands) [automotive brands](/list/automotive-brands) [celebrities](/list/celebrities) [musicians](/list/musicians) [social networks](/list/social-networks) **Social topic influence** [countries](/topic/countries), [china](/topic/china), [gdp](/topic/gdp), [brazil](/topic/brazil), [$4732t](/topic/$4732t), [japan](/topic/japan), [germany](/topic/germany), [russia](/topic/russia), [in the](/topic/in-the), [india](/topic/india) **Top assets mentioned** [Frontier (FRONT)](/topic/frontier) [Tesla, Inc. (TSLA)](/topic/tesla) ### Top Social Posts Top posts by engagements in the last [--] hours "1. Klaus Kinski (Aguirre the Wrath of God) [--]. Setsuko Hara (Late Spring) [--]. Gloria Swanson (Sunset Boulevard) Name the three best acting performance name (movie): [--]. Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln) [--]. Gary Oldman (The Darkest Hour) [--]. Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game) I guess you can gather I love history movies. Name the three best acting performance name (movie): [--]. Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln) [--]. Gary Oldman (The Darkest Hour) [--]. Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game) I guess you can gather I love history movies" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1445843988389445634) 2021-10-06T20:10Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@WhitesPhD In all countries turnout is lower in the poorest parts" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1574148673134596096) 2022-09-25T21:27Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@WhitesPhD Maybe high inflation will force central banks to raise rates. This will cause a recession in the short run but in the long run higher interest rates mean fewer zombie firms and thus TFP growth. Allowing Europe to get out of its Japanese-style stagnation" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1592951977251831808) 2022-11-16T18:45Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "According to this [----] map Russia used to have [--] times the population of Brazil. Today it's [---] times" [X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1678832786763837460) 2023-07-11T18:25Z [----] followers, 15.7K engagements "@BretDevereaux @ForeignPolicy I think that most people living inside Spartan sphere of power were the perioikoi. Which were citizens of city-states subordinate to Sparta. For example in a modern analogy citizens of other NATO countries are the perioikoi to Americans. How was the helot population estimated" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1682982376207527937) 2023-07-23T05:15Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@JorgeRamosMerc1 @phl43 There is a distinction between wars involving great powers and "total wars." Perhaps one could define that a country is in a state of "total war" iff the country is at war with at least 20% of it's adult male population in the armed forces" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1694187934147072079) 2023-08-23T03:20Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@NGrossman81 @gabriel_mathy @onesarahjones The richest backed Hillary [--] to [--]. Also there are other signs of elite status academic elites who teach at Harvard for example. Power has multiple dimensiones: economic political and ideological. Overall it's pretty clear Trump is not supported by the elites" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1695113903443779594) 2023-08-25T16:40Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "I remember that a Spanish chef spoke in an interview regarding French cuisine in that they are unique in the world for having developed "fine dining" cuisine. This explains why the French cuisine has a reputation for being the best in the world. My theory is that they developed fine dining because France had the largest and richest royalty/aristocracy in Europe for many centuries. So over these centuries this royalty developed a specialized cuisine that was differentiated from commoner's food. Ultimately this created the concept of French fine dining that was consolidated by the late 19th" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1696167812572569968) 2023-08-28T14:28Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@_Jason_Dean_ Republican Roman soldiers had property requirements not strictly land requirements to be classified as able to provide their own equipment. As inequality in property holdings increased the proportion of the citizen population that could pay for their own equipment decreased" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1696586695624261743) 2023-08-29T18:12Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@_Jason_Dean_ So the government shifted from a system of citizen soldiers who provided their own equipment to a system of professional soldiers paid by the state but now the politicians who directly controlled the armies had the power to take over the state which lead to the imperial regime" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1696587150043537509) 2023-08-29T18:14Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@FilipeCampante Depends on your preferences. Some people like teaching as well so they prefer that than a higher paying job in industry. Others have very strong preference for climbing up the academic hierarchy" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1696612454199923121) 2023-08-29T19:55Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@robinhanson It's possible to greatly raise fertility by reducing spending: Cut programs that incentivize low fertility such as pension systems. As I said before such programs creates an enormous artificial externality across the population" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1699254443940700272) 2023-09-06T02:53Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@cremieuxrecueil They fell a lot in recent years: Murders in Brazil fall to lowest in [--] years - The Brazilian Report Only [-----] murders now💪 https://brazilian.report/liveblog/2022/02/22/murders-lowest-14-years/amp/ https://brazilian.report/liveblog/2022/02/22/murders-lowest-14-years/amp/" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1699263685770821875) 2023-09-06T03:30Z [----] followers, 10.5K engagements "@dandolfa @J2dubyas @WhiteHouseCEA It's an unique historical event though. Another unique historical event was the massive fall in unemployment following mass conscription for WW2. Did the president at the time claimed his administration then had helped to create "x million jobs"" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1699616044397035839) 2023-09-07T02:50Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@arpitrage They were similar to Classical Rome in the sense of being regarded as "world empires" or "civilization states": states that completely dominated their own worlds to the point where lands outside their dominion were regarded as not being relevant parts of the civilized world" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1700998731691327624) 2023-09-10T22:24Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@ATabarrok It is well documented that since the Ptolemies a large merchant fleet sailed from Egypt across the Indian Ocean every year to India to get spices and other high-value goods. That was how roman soldiers in Hadrian's wall consumed Indian spices" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1703184818442260555) 2023-09-16T23:11Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Considering that: (1) The labor share of net national product at factor prices tends to be around 70-75%. (2) The difference in returns between bonds and stocks and that wages are almost as safe as bonds. Then I conclude that the risk adjusted labor share is ca. 85-90%" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1703853819573006420) 2023-09-18T19:29Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@thephilippics You are comparing wartime to peacetime shell production and modern artillery shells are 3-4 times heavier than WW1 shells. Also Russia produced much fewer shells than Germany about [--] million shells during the whole first world war compared to [---] million for Germany" [X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1703921073543082489) 2023-09-18T23:56Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@arpitrage @thephilippics The vast majority of German losses in WW1 were against the combined French British American armed forces mostly in the Western front. The combined French+British Empire+American shell production was nearly twice Germany's at [---] million and [--] times Russian output" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1703932839987683693) 2023-09-19T00:43Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@arpitrage @thephilippics Considering Russia lost to Germany (Treaty of Brest-Litovsk) and then Germany lost to France+UK+US (Treaty of Versailles) I guess so:" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1703935181785018568) 2023-09-19T00:52Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Over the 20th century Brazil became a self suficient industrial country. The result of a very stupid development strategy called "import substitution industrialization." The basic idea was taken from Nietzsche who said that "what does not kill you makes you stronger." So in import substitution industrialization the idea is that if your society can survive isolated from the global economy then it will make such society more developed to make it so. Over the last few decades Brazil finally started to abandon this suicidal policy and began to open up and integrate into the world. So it started" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1704870363761414184) 2023-09-21T14:49Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "The buildings below were built in: Italy France Greece Lebanon. The "international style" of antiquity was the classical style. Still awaiting for traditionalists to complain about it" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1707835840666202456) 2023-09-29T19:12Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@cafreiman US government spending relative to Ukraine's aid is actually close to the ratio of the Earth's and the Moon's mass:" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1707914650904338908) 2023-09-30T00:25Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@StefanFSchubert @robinhanson Certainly Alexander the Great happened at the time he happened for a reason: European armies only reached India again over [----] years later" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1712218829458215197) 2023-10-11T21:29Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@S_Surprenant @PhilWMagness Well in some of the books by him published in the US it's stated in backcover that he was the most eminent liberal of the 20th century. BTW unlike libertarians he also was not against a robust social safety net:" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1717945983982608659) 2023-10-27T16:46Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@phl43 Well in reality international relations are anarchical as there is no State ruling other states and thus military power is central. Consider the USSR and its vassal states: killed ca. [---] million people no "international law police" showed up and put their leaders in jail" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1719772505685061790) 2023-11-01T17:44Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@lefineder Shows the insanity this policy: fixing the same nominal wage rates across the whole ancient Roman world as if labor market conditions in a prosperous polis like Ephesus were the same as in rural Roman Britain. Imagine fixing the same nominal wages in Germany and Albania today" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1720569438548660637) 2023-11-03T22:31Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@StefanFSchubert @chribreuer @JgaltTweets I have noticed that the best performing case in a field tends to be an extreme outlier. It's statistically expected. Messi in football for example:" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1725149921479668043) 2023-11-16T13:52Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@VincentGeloso As the world's population starts to decrease making the trend for long-run growth much slower or even negative will society adapt and learn to live peacefully in an environment with negative growth" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1725287535364960276) 2023-11-16T22:59Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@ErikVoorhees @DavidSacks Technically no because dictator is a title that only existed in the Roman Republic and refers to emergency powers granted to one citizen in times of emergency. Xi Jinping technically is the king of China" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1725316451832152267) 2023-11-17T00:54Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@IvanWerning That controversy was just an application of the Sonnenschein conjecture into capital markets: economies can have several equilibrium prices which includes the rate of interest. So leftist economists got inspired at capitalists bcse it meant their interest income could vary" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1726252499160711671) 2023-11-19T14:54Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "But Milei is very risky what if his radical policies damage the Argentinian economy The Argentinian economy:" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1726455367448826060) 2023-11-20T04:20Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@lugaricano I have computed these GDP per hour worked figures for developed world and it's fairly obvious that except for South Korea since [----] the relative levels of productivity have been in stationary equilibrium:" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1726599987856110006) 2023-11-20T13:54Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@krishnanrohit Mainly because games are more niche. There is no such thing as the "Taylor Swift" of games that all young females are playing" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1728096046423642201) 2023-11-24T16:59Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@LaurentFranckx There is a book that ranked all those classical composers based on number of words reference works of classical music talked about them. Beethoven and Mozart were tied first Bach was third followed by Wagner" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1728408921260347409) 2023-11-25T13:42Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@RobinBrooksIIF The reality is that Russia is a big industrialized country of [---] million with massive natural resources. Sanctions on such country specially without cooperation of other major economies like China India Brazil etc will not have first order effects on aggregate output" [X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1728479783225287043) 2023-11-25T18:24Z [----] followers, 22.2K engagements "@gunsnrosesgirl3 The lack of technological advances: expectations for technology [--] years in the future were very high in [----] (for example from the movies of the time). Perhaps because of the radical technological advances from [----] to [----]. They imagined cities in would look like this:" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1728609232923058585) 2023-11-26T02:58Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@benbawan @arpitrage The natural tendency for economies is for productivity convergence to the technological frontier which is around the US's productivity levels. It is weird when the inverse does happen" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1728887756653474109) 2023-11-26T21:25Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@emollick Considering that modern economic growth in both France and Britain began just after Napoleon while the growth of France and Britain over the decades up to [----] was almost identically slow one might conclude Napoleon British industrial revolution" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1728898159223734502) 2023-11-26T22:06Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@StefanFSchubert @RuxandraTeslo The history books I read recently don't talk about war for more than a fraction of it's pages. With the exception of a biography of Alexander which being about history's most successful military commander talks about war about 30% of the time" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1728901276887580711) 2023-11-26T22:19Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@bryan_caplan Thats incorrect. The number of Fortune [---] companies per capita is about the same in US Germany Japan France and UK. It's a popular myth the US is more individualistic but there is not objective way to evaluate that. In reality everybody everywhere is individualistic" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1729584372242616622) 2023-11-28T19:33Z [----] followers, 38.8K engagements "Growing up in Brazil I had experienced many more European brands than American. Natural since Brazil trades more with the EU. Big business international brands for cars beer food grocery stores fashion etc until the rise of China tended to be mainly European in Brazil. So I never had the impression US has a particularly high number of big companies. While I noticed living in the US that there is a much higher preponderance of local brands than in Brazil. This might cause this impression that the US has a particularly high number of big companies. However it's true that for tech companies the" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1729676658712379893) 2023-11-29T01:40Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@PhilWMagness It's very stupid to reduce meat consumption bcse of climate change. The money you save on meat can be used to buy more gas for example which increases emissions on the net. The solution is to focus on low carbon energy sources" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1729720256204079491) 2023-11-29T04:33Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@simongerman600 @paragkhanna @229Biodiversity Cropland is not exogenous. It can be increased if there is demand for it (as happened in Brazil)" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1729956587895226838) 2023-11-29T20:12Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "Brazil under Lula is an ally of Venezuela's dictatorship. Lula is unlikely to break his alliance with Maduro to attack Venezuela's army. Instead I find it's perfectly possible that if the US intervenes that Lula will support Venezuela with money ammunition and weapons like NATO is supporting Ukraine" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1729994206632951892) 2023-11-29T22:42Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@JosephPolitano @phl43 This surge of semiconductor manufacturing in US likely means the market is predicting the loss of Taiwan" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1730714000411816190) 2023-12-01T22:22Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@StavrosTsipas I had calculated a few years ago that the oil price for cost parity with EVs would be around 11-12 dollars a barrel considering the costs of solar/wind/hydro/coal power" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1730760484331159799) 2023-12-02T01:27Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@whstancil Median household income collapsed between [----] and [----] that explains the bad personal experiences:" [X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1730795169195213211) 2023-12-02T03:44Z [----] followers, 18.5K engagements "@robinhanson A problem is that they falsely equate "states" with "societies." If we look at European history there were only [--] major cycles of civilization flourishing and then collapse: the Bronze Age Classical antiquity and Modernity. But many more states rose and fell" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1731048315767210394) 2023-12-02T20:30Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@scottlincicome It is better to have a tonnage graph launched into low earth orbit instead of a "number of objects." The Saturn V used for the Apollo program could launch [---] tons into orbit which counts as [--] object launch but had the mass of hundreds of those Starlink satellites" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1731053315717267853) 2023-12-02T20:50Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@Noahpinion @bdfernaldpa In an environment with 1% per capita GDP growth like the US over the past quarter century it's perfectly possible that some groups perceive themselves to be more affluent a few decades ago. Specially because half of GDP growth is quality improvements and not quantity growth" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1731086253494247584) 2023-12-02T23:01Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@wwwojtekk @BrianCAlbrecht @PhilWMagness Indeed. In Brazil our national accounts imply a much higher mean consumption per household than estimated mean household income" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1731760992302817791) 2023-12-04T19:42Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@MarcGoldwein This is Venezuela's Taiwan apparently. It's also a fact that Venezuela has been claiming this territory for over a century" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1732394942985581010) 2023-12-06T13:41Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@lymanstoneky The graph of house size is in linear scale so it overestimates more recent growth and houses improved in quality as well. I suspect there was first an increase in the quality of housing and then they got bigger as this was the process that happened in US over last [---] years:" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1732507750108696591) 2023-12-06T21:10Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@Noahpinion The Saudis are going to have big problems over the next couple of decades. Low oil prices now are likely a reflection of rational expectations regarding falling oil demand:" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1732514570890047865) 2023-12-06T21:37Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@lymanstoneky Well these population densities are estimated for intervals of 150-200 years (for example a point refers to the population over the 480-320 BC period) and the graph I made is interpolated from a few points. We do not have high-resolution estimates of population growth rates" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1732520029705343040) 2023-12-06T21:58Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@StefanFSchubert French real wages decreased since [----] based on their consumer price index and nominal wages as productivity tends to increase. This means real costs of labor are lower now so people hire more:" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1732872276893122717) 2023-12-07T21:18Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@JimMansfieldYWG @simongerman600 Archeological surveys suggests the following relative city sizes (Greece was far less concentrated on Athens although it was already the largest city of the region in antiquity and one of the top 3-4 largest cities in the world at the time):" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1734974491057324184) 2023-12-13T16:32Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@IvanWerning It depends on wheter agents believe that the fiscal adjustment policy is credible and sustainable. If they believe it then it might even have a big boom. While Brazil did fiscal adjustment in the mid-90s after hyperinflation there was was a boom" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1735147123354509426) 2023-12-14T03:58Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@StefanFSchubert I think that people in developed countries like the US tend to be more conformist. As it's a natural feature of developed societies that individuals adjust their behavior more according to collective expectations. In underdeveloped societies individuals are more alienated" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1735326434304934269) 2023-12-14T15:50Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@JonSteinsson They waited too long to raise interest rates as a result the US managed to have inflation higher than Brazil for the first time in the history of both countries time series" [X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1736028239649272207) 2023-12-16T14:19Z [--] followers, [---] engagements "@AnthonyLeeZhang I hold a combination of mutual funds and ETFs. However Brazilian ETFs are less diversified and have higher management rates than in Anglo America so they are comparatively less attractive vis mutual funds" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1737163174158159997) 2023-12-19T17:29Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@jletanaka @mnolangray They had residential zoning" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1737967256481440058) 2023-12-21T22:44Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@arpitrage India and China do not appear to experience recessions. While China's national accounts are rather suspect India's only year of negative growth over the past [--] years was the Covid lockdown:" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1738384674206961899) 2023-12-23T02:22Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@lymanstoneky @BretDevereaux I think the evidence for low fertility is stronger regarding Hellenistic Greece than Roman Italy. But despite the evidence historians in general don't believe the ancients could have had a low fertility regime because they believe thats an exclusive feature of modernity" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1738562672923226477) 2023-12-23T14:10Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@MrRBourne It's obvious that the post-pandemic inflation was because they increased money supply during the pandemic to attempt to offset the decline in velocity of circulation following the lockdowns. But when pandemic was over the extra money entered in circulation and prices went up" [X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1738971624429281779) 2023-12-24T17:15Z [--] followers, [---] engagements "@culturaltutor Reminding me of my Civilization games "wow" lists those [--] are among the most aesthetically memorable existing buildings to my mind nearly half of them are in Rome: St. Peter Basilica Parthenon/Acropolis Pantheon Colosseum Hagia Sophia Forbidden City Great Wall of China" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1740470435962384671) 2023-12-28T20:31Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@Uptheleft Jesus' hebrews tribe were as much as a barbarian as the Northern celtic tribes who had been recently "pacified" by Rome. In Greco-Roman culture anything that was not Greek/Latin was categorized as barbarian" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1740810556628455597) 2023-12-29T19:02Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@Jackbmeyer The fraction of economists who played civilization is certainly very high" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1741142938464203028) 2023-12-30T17:03Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "It is true that until very recently urbanization rates never exceeded 50% across large areas (counting only the population living in cities over [----] inhabitants if we count all the population living in towns over [----] as the current US census does then it is likely that the urbanization rate already exceeded 50% across the Late Classical Greek world). However if we use the % living in towns over [----] definition of the rate of urbanization then a society with an urbanization rate of let's say 30% (which was the average urbanization rate across Europe and Anglo-America in 1900) has a radically" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1741163224567853547) 2023-12-30T18:23Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "High-level intellectual activity did collapse across Western Eurasia with the "transformation" of the Graeco-Roman world into the medieval world. This graph is a plot of the number of entries in two encyclopedias for attested figures from the fields of "natural sciences" and "philosophy" whose lifetimes can be reliably dated. The number of attested scientists decreases 98% from 1st century AD to the 8th century and attested philosophers decreases 95% from 1st century AD to the 7th century. Note that as more recent records tend to have higher survivability these figures are actually biased" [X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1741216526760374312) 2023-12-30T21:55Z [----] followers, 58.7K engagements "@BretDevereaux Theologians make up the majority of "philosophers" in the graph since the 4th century" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1741369588783161612) 2023-12-31T08:03Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@chrysoboullon They are. Many great ancient scientists worked in Alexandria Egypt" [X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1741454267007795263) 2023-12-31T13:40Z [--] followers, [---] engagements "@krishnanrohit @GarettJones Based on the deep roots theory of past accomplishment plus current divergence vis prediction 90% of BlackRock should have been invested in Greece Lybia Iraq Syria Turkey Tunisia and Egypt" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1742324449775386788) 2024-01-02T23:18Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@phl43 @lymanstoneky Not sure it is unusual in any way. Over 2-3 years nominal GDPs in countries with or without exchange rate controls fluctuate a lot. In real variables this is China relative to the US according to [--] indicators 1997-2022:" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1742959284659392685) 2024-01-04T17:20Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@phl43 @lymanstoneky Even with a fixed exchange rate in a frictionless economy the price level would adjust instead of the exchange rate and you would get the exact same fluctuations in nominal GDP" [X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1742961633310228907) 2024-01-04T17:30Z [--] followers, [--] engagements "@phl43 @fhotsvhfsab @RichardHanania China is obviously growing faster than the US in recent years not as fast as it used too for obvious reasons. Current devaluation of its nominal GDP is due to currency devaluation which is pretty obvious:" [X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1743052720720777483) 2024-01-04T23:32Z [--] followers, [---] engagements "@fhotsvhfsab @phl43 Of course there is no guarantee of high growth. That always applies (many Subsaharan African countries are stagnant). However the poorer you are the higher the potential for growth. China cannot grow as fast like it used to because it is not as poor now as [--] years ago" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1743055156051427609) 2024-01-04T23:41Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@phl43 @fhotsvhfsab @RichardHanania The strong dollar is because they raised interest rates to lower inflation which attracted international capital into buying US bonds. Nothing to do with Russia's "failure" to conquer whole of Ukraine. Which we know now was never their objective" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1743058766310822082) 2024-01-04T23:56Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@besttrousers It's pretty simple to explain this stagnation as a composition of effects: 1) Skill biased technological change shifted mean away from the median. 2) CPI overestimates inflation compared to the GDP (or PCE) deflator. 3) Rise of unpaid compensation like health insurance" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1745098494795292905) 2024-01-10T15:01Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "The two regions that historically produced the greatest philosophical output were Ancient Greece and [--] - 19th century Germany: perhaps a high level of political decentralization allows for people to talk about radical ideas. guys will literally live like this and see no issue https://t.co/WgdJSzJSxu guys will literally live like this and see no issue https://t.co/WgdJSzJSxu" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1745860870897320197) 2024-01-12T17:30Z [----] followers, 15.6K engagements "@timurkuran A difference from that time is that after two world wars today we are aware of the gigantic costs that modern technology imposes on even conventional great power war. Making it less attractive for great powers to risk going to war" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1747356550669189430) 2024-01-16T20:34Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@Valen10Francois Even Greece was the demographic giant of Europe for a while in antiquity: it had about 5-6 million people at a time when the whole continent had ca. [--] million. Then Italy became the "demographic giant. So France's tenure as the demographic giant was going to end eventually" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1747612955544359022) 2024-01-17T13:32Z [----] followers, 11.3K engagements "@buildhomez Many counter examples: Camboriu in Brazil Benidorm in Spain Santiago in Chile Tokyo in Japan" [X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1747678993074004439) 2024-01-17T17:55Z [----] followers, 42.5K engagements "Relative to ancient states America is much more similar to Athens than Rome. Even the global system of international relations during Athens' heyday was much more similar to the present system than during Rome's time (when there wasn't a system of international relations Rome just ordered and the rest of the ancient world obeyed). There were [--] great powers at the time of Athens' heyday like there are today and they have many similarities with modern times. Persia (China): big and populous land power. Athens (America): rich and culturally influential naval power. Formally allied with many" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1748417112341655877) 2024-01-19T18:48Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@dandolfa Should increase interest rates to 2% to reach 2% target obviously" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1748460081811771767) 2024-01-19T21:39Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@Noahpinion Japanese civilization is very distinct from rest of Asia. This is obvious from history of the region. The idea that Japan is similar to the rest of East Asia is a recent invention" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1748530421673934932) 2024-01-20T02:18Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@lymanstoneky I have the general impression that civilizations undergo big cycles of rise and then collapse/decline. We know Europe had [--] the Middle East probably had about [--] or [--]. China also had some cyclical pattern but it was perhaps a bit more stable/stagnant being politically unified" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1749495617645080610) 2024-01-22T18:13Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@itaisher Well thats not uncommon: in Brazil the president is above the law. In the sense he or she can only be judged by the supreme court (of which 3/4 were nominated by him or his close allies and they usually take about a decade to judge things). Might not be healthy for democracy" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1750176324524576916) 2024-01-24T15:18Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@StefanFSchubert Also it's adjusted with the PCEPI which is biased vis CPI in favor of recent cohorts compared to earlier cohorts" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1750212002545365362) 2024-01-24T17:40Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@dandolfa It's funny that sticky price models are called "Keynesian" today when the business cycle theory of Keynes' rival at the time Hayek was actually based on the notion of sticky prices driving the business cycle" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1751801727420870718) 2024-01-29T02:57Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@phl43 @sc_cath There was an inverted yield curve just after the pandemic as well and recession in the US didn't happen. BTW India's only recession in the last 35-40 years or so was the pandemic. So having recessions might not be an universal phenomena" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1752111422752915654) 2024-01-29T23:28Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@PaulSkallas The fact is that America is not richer than rich countries in Europe like Germany and Netherlands. GDP per hour worked (the best measure of economic performance) is about the same across Germany France US Sweden Netherlands Austria. It's lower in the UK Spain and Canada" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1752154174660174074) 2024-01-30T02:18Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@robinhanson I suspect there will not be a global population decline. World population is projected by UN to peak in about [----] and by that point I think enough countries would have solved the low fertility problem" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1752166821061403134) 2024-01-30T03:08Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@AlexNowrasteh No. The labor market was strong in 2017-2018 with a very low unemployment rate. The extremely high illegal immigration the US is experiencing now is a policy choice of the Biden administration. Because they didn't think they could pass a pro-immigration reform through Congress" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1752709236180570582) 2024-01-31T15:03Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@phl43 The argument for immigration for natives of countries that receive immigrants is that moving labor from developing to developed countries increases the production of innovation and the scope for division of labor which increases the speed of technological progress globally" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1752795612020355415) 2024-01-31T20:46Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@phl43 The problem with this argument is that receiving immigrants produces a positive externality: if a small country like Denmark receives a few percentage points of its population in immigrants that will not affect the global economy significantly but can create high local costs" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1752796156873068930) 2024-01-31T20:49Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@ElbridgeColby India is developing fast so the US needs to hold the line for about a decade as India will likely become a peer counterweight to China by 2035" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1752864137720328627) 2024-02-01T01:19Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@dandolfa I believe that since 1980s the US doesn't have classical business cycles anymore. Thats because those were driven by monetary fluctuations as documented by Friedman and Schwartz. But as the monetary policy stabilized the money supply recessions now occur for other reasons" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1753049195856949480) 2024-02-01T13:34Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@phl43 Iran's real GDP is actually estimated at [---] trillion. About half of France or Britain's. The nominal figure for Iran which is comparable to Denmark's is due to the fact Iranian economy is highly sanctioned and isolated so it's not correctly "priced" nominally" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1753056807788896681) 2024-02-01T14:04Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@phl43 It's perfectly possible that a China+Russia+Iran geopolitical block might become militarily dominant at a global level and thus could "marginalize" US and Europe in global geopolitics" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1753058047377711566) 2024-02-01T14:09Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@J2dubyas @GabeEcon If you hate US geopolitical power you love the current administration which is delusional and acting in a way to maximally erode the US's international influence" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1753854473858892284) 2024-02-03T18:54Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@AlecStapp In Brazil it takes ca. [--] years to become a medical doctor: [--] years of college plus [--] years studying for the college entrance exams" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1754229124904660995) 2024-02-04T19:43Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@StefanFSchubert @whyvert In the US it's more common for poor people to eat lots of frozen food while the upper middle class spends time cooking high-quality meals. Spending time making healthy food is like going to the gym" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1754242806313300267) 2024-02-04T20:37Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "When I was a grad student I had the idea of actually testing the US's CPI by comparing prices over a decadal period. The result was that the mean change in prices of a basket of a dozen goods matched the CPI almost perfectly. Some prices went up more but others less. The government claims inflation is just 3%. But everywhere you look it seems to be 10% to 20%. Who is correct The government or your eyes when you are shopping 🔊 . 🤨 https://t.co/NlChFp3seG The government claims inflation is just 3%. But everywhere you look it seems to be 10% to 20%. Who is correct The government or your eyes" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1754272952135139731) 2024-02-04T22:37Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@RuxandraTeslo @mattyglesias @JonHaidt This correlation with social media thingie in regards to declining mental health and increased political polarization is happening mostly in the US. Cross-country evidence shows it's not true globally and therefore it's not a technology-driven phenomenon" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1754278549261812097) 2024-02-04T22:59Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@phl43 Per capita GDP in PPP is highly relevant much more than any aggregate GDP-related statistic. As it is a good measure of the level of development of a country. While population is the measure of a country's size" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1754516522196685044) 2024-02-05T14:45Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Thats just the rest of the world industrializing. In [----] US was so dominant in the world's economy bcse only North America Western Europe and Japan were developed. As India China Russia and other regions have been developing US's relative weight is gradually converging to it's relative demographic size in the world. Relative U.S. economic standing in the world has declined since we adopted liberal hegemony as our foreign policy after the Cold War. That's not necessarily causal of course. But it's suggestive. Relative U.S. economic standing in the world has declined since we adopted liberal" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1754531553550499924) 2024-02-05T15:44Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Also I wouldn't use the label "liberal hegemony" to describe US foreign policy during Washington's unipolar moment following the fall of the USSR. Where in Locke Hume Hayek or Rawls's writings is it stated that half a million Iraquis civilians had to die for liberalism States are organizations based on organized violence and the US's behavior is no different from other States in human history. Without any peer power to contain Washington during its unipolar moment Washinton could invade any country they wanted at will. Sure they use a rhetoric of "spreading democracy" but that was obviously" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1754562333030924759) 2024-02-05T17:47Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Having several great powers provides a public good because each power contains the other minimizing their destructive tendencies. The example of the USSR makes it clear: the US provided a great service to the world by containing it. Especially because the USSR was a particularly destructive great power since it was spreading its religion of Marxism which was especially hostile to modern institutions. However when the USSR fell the other side of the coin was revealed: without the USSR who was supposed to contain the destructive tendencies of Washington now The lack of any peer great powers to" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1754581690037465186) 2024-02-05T19:04Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@ElbridgeColby Taiwan has 1.6% of the population of China. What was the last time a country defeated a full scale invasion from another country with a population over [--] times greater Perhaps at Marathon in [---] BC" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1754608667033211278) 2024-02-05T20:51Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "Depends on what one defines as "American culture." A lot of what people claim is American culture is actually broadly Western culture. For example burgers are originally German food and pizza is originally Italian food. Most of what we understand as rock music has been developed by Europeans in particular British bands like The Beatles Pink Floyd Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. Hollywood movies often used as an example of American cultural power are made by multinational crews. Nolan is British for example while the highly influential designs in Alien were made by Swiss and French artists." [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1754928260058673177) 2024-02-06T18:01Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@StefanFSchubert Although if one picks only the most purely American elements of Western culture: blues jazz rap and country music then the influence of these cultural products is smaller than of pizza or Hollywood but it is still substantial even in Asian countries like Japan and Korea" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1754937394627764286) 2024-02-06T18:37Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@robinhanson The old world particularly the Middle East is still older. Agriculture was practiced in Turkey and Syria [-----] years ago and this proto-city site in Turkey is [----] years old; Jericho in Palestine has been continuously inhabited for over [-----] years" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1755003705085075519) 2024-02-06T23:01Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@StefanFSchubert @robinhanson Not quite. Mankind left Africa recently and only reached South America nearly at the same time as agriculture was being invented in the Middle East. Writing was invented when humans reached Greenland as shown in this map:" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1755005861183778823) 2024-02-06T23:09Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "I wouldn't see this as evidence of "American cultural power" but as evidence of a broad tendency for cultural globalization. This is evident in that the Great Awokening happened simultaneously across many newspapers in the Western world from countries like Spain Canada UK Germany etc: After [----] all these newspapers as well as US newspapers like NYT started adopting "woke" terms at the same time and at the same rates. For another example Lionel Messi is more famous internationally than Trump (I did some research about that BTW) but I wouldn't argue this proves Argentina has a lot of "cultural" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1755362131753439654) 2024-02-07T22:45Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@ElbridgeColby As I said before the problem of Europe is that it's divided into many small countries: individual countries lack the size to have the potential to make a large difference and hence lack the incentive to act. But in Asia India will likely act as a counterbalance for China" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1755610128802607202) 2024-02-08T15:10Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@phl43 He talked about: 1) His historical theory that Ukrainians are Russians. 2) Projected NATO expansion into Ukraine. It's the combination of the two that caused the war: Putin tolerates NATO expansion in "non-Russian" countries like Finland" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1756001932332666963) 2024-02-09T17:07Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "The distinction is artificial. Frontlines do not move much when the forces are relatively equal in strength and cannot easily force the adversary to retreat or if the stronger force chooses to not execute a strategic offensive. Germany defeated the Allies in [--] days in [----] because when they attacked they basically found out their [---] divisions were so strong a force that they could easily force back the Allies across the front. In 1914-1918 the opposing forces were in a tense equilibrium. Strong enough to defend but not strong enough to force the enemy to move back. In Ukraine now I think" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1756037784194727943) 2024-02-09T19:30Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@ElbridgeColby @ELuttwak Taiwan spends little because it's a little island near China that cannot really defend itself in case of invasion. It is like Luxembourg in WW2. How much Luxembourg spent on the military wouldn't make much difference regarding their deterrence to a German invasion" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1756048228884045834) 2024-02-09T20:11Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@addermonk And it's not so cheap: the [---] billion of combined aid for Ukraine in [--] and [--] allowed Ukraine to inflict [-----] Russian fatalities: [--] million in aid for each fatality. As the rate of fatalities for Russians is lower now the next aid package would pay [--] or [--] times that "price."" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1756366027519078536) 2024-02-10T17:14Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "Also strategically speaking the US's status as a superpower does not benefit from the continuation of this war. That's because the more aid sent the longer the war goes on and the more dead Ukrainians and Russians as a result without any strategic gain for Ukraine (as demonstrated by the failure of last year's strategic offensive). Russia's forces in Ukraine are only getting stronger every month the war goes on. Russia will gain territory for each additional day of war. If the US sends unrestricted aid to Ukraine this war will be over either if their government decides to surrender or when" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1756422943234490435) 2024-02-10T21:00Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@ben_golub I think they planned to use the invasion to scare Ukraine into accepting Instambul peace terms. Which they initially did. However they discovered these terms where not time consistent: Ukraine cannot self commit to terms if they turn unfavorable ex-post" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1756472921554313350) 2024-02-11T00:19Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "This video shows why in WW2 Soviet casualties were so much higher than the US and the UK: the USSR lost about [--] times the number of soldiers killed as the US or the UK lost in the war mostly because of the difference in the scale of fighting. The USSR had about 5-7 million soldiers engaging the Germans for [--] years and suffered [--] million operational casualties (soldiers killed wounded and missing in battle). They suffered a monthly rate of casualties of 8% for soldiers at the front. US+UK forces of [--] to [--] million engaged the Germans for about [--] months on the Western Front suffering 800000" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1756792178796351604) 2024-02-11T21:27Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@_alice_evans In Imperial China these official positions paid enormous amounts of money. So they are celebrating because they don't need to work for the private sector since the taxpayers' money is going to support them. Not because they were not materialistic" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1756847120428966187) 2024-02-12T01:06Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Relative to other developing economies Brazil has been a relative "growth disaster" over the past [--] years: GDP per capita ratio 1960-2021 (1990 international dollars) South Korea ---- [----] China ----------- [----] Indonesia ------- [---] Turkey ----------- [---] Thailand -------- [---] Egypt ------------ [---] Japan ----------- [---] India ------------ [---] Russia ---------- [---] Brazil ----------- [---] Mexico --------- [---] US -------------- [---] The main reason for this relative stagnation is the political system plus high inequality: Importante lembrar que Brasil nao teve muito crescimento desde [----] e" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1757058744641355953) 2024-02-12T15:07Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "It appears to be the case that autocratic regimes like Russia and China can replicate the economic institutions of liberal democracies. However they appear to need to exist in a world where there are liberal democracies that first develop these institutions. Oh now I see why Tabarrok posted that Cold War picture. The contrast between the two illustrates Russia's convergence to the West since the 1980s this convergence ocurred both in terms institutions and living standards. Today it's easier to do business in Russia than in many Oh now I see why Tabarrok posted that Cold War picture. The" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1758202051509604513) 2024-02-15T18:50Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@mtracey Mcdonald's outside the US tend to be better than inside. Thats true in general from Brazil to Japan" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1758555117559615927) 2024-02-16T18:13Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@Uptheleft I remember that AirCanada lost my luggage for two days. So I might have to agree with you" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1758851325582803443) 2024-02-17T13:50Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@robinhanson @a3voices US males Japan pay a fee for it's military bases: While the US doesn't have any military base in Mexico" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1758909275043225967) 2024-02-17T17:40Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@timurkuran The problem with a world government is that we already tried that and it doesn't work over the long run: as the collapse of the classical civilization under Roman rule attests. Civilizations need political decentralization to flourish" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1759594051358101956) 2024-02-19T15:01Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Ancient Greek culture didn't suffer from a "cult of ignorance:" Athenian philosophy lectures were described as a popular entertainment that attracted tourists in contemporary accounts (Heraclides Criticus ca. [---] BC). In particular Theophrastus' lectures were said to attract crowds of [----] at a time when Athens has only a few tens of thousands of adult male citizens (Green 1992). The Romans were a bit brutish compared to the Greeks however a natural consequence of their lower level of development. They still lacked an explicit "anti-nerd" culture that associated intellectual giftedness with" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1760398290338689288) 2024-02-21T20:17Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "Ancient Greek culture didn't suffer from a "cult of ignorance:" Athenian philosophy lectures were described as a popular entertainment that attracted tourists in contemporary accounts (Heraclides Criticus ca. [---] BC). In particular Theophrastus' lectures were said to attract crowds of [----] at a time when Athens had only [--] to [--] thousands of adult male citizens (Green 1992). The Romans were a bit brutish compared to the Greeks however a natural consequence of their lower level of development. They still lacked an explicit "anti-nerd" culture that associated intellectual giftedness with" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1760398947959341315) 2024-02-21T20:19Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@ElbridgeColby He is right in the sense that the modern world came from developments in Western Europe. However this obviously does not morally justifies military hegemony of countries of Western European background" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1761003588061376871) 2024-02-23T12:22Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "While Maddison-type national account datasets suggests that the gap in development between the West and the rest of the world peaked around [----] life expectacy data shows that their convergence to the West's standards has been happening since the early to mid 20th century" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1761475302448898161) 2024-02-24T19:36Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@Austen His company should aim to get a car among the fastest according to this multi dimensional measure: No Tesla vehicle is currently among the [--] fastest production cars. In fact the fastest Tesla is less than 2% faster than a Golf GTI" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1762907623186207025) 2024-02-28T18:28Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "We are 9th in Gini index. Surprisingly Hong Kong is above us. South Africa is a the world's leader. Undefeated world champions at income inequality Undefeated world champions at income inequality" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1763938443611038111) 2024-03-02T14:44Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@phl43 Yet Israel is part of the West the only such country in the Middle East. It's not a non-western country like Bhutan or Turkmenistan" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1763966106979438637) 2024-03-02T16:34Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@greece_heritage Yes but the spread of ancient hellenic culture was closely related to the founding of polis which continued in the Hellenistic period with the founding of hundreds of polis across North Africa and Western Asia" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1764089808509349979) 2024-03-03T00:46Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@andrei_mntn @RuxandraTeslo @BenjaminiteMD Peaceful does not mean a lack of any kind of interference. See the numerous examples of US interference even on it's allies" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1764322532205711756) 2024-03-03T16:10Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@andrei_mntn @BenjaminiteMD @RuxandraTeslo [--]. Unconditional surrender is a type of peace terms. [--]. It increasingly looks like that Russia will be going to force Ukraine into unconditional surrender if they are not going to accept any peace terms as it looks like Russia is not going to stop attacking" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1764434838981873821) 2024-03-03T23:37Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@StefanFSchubert @Redistrict @itaisher We have to compare apples with apples: polls with polls. Trump was -7.2% on national polls RCP average just before election in [----] and now is +2.3%. Overall this suggests this election will be a very easy victory for Trump" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1764650432087908757) 2024-03-04T13:53Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@DellAnnaLuca The overall relationship was not clear so these factors probably cancelled each other to varying degrees across countries" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1764704651763437871) 2024-03-04T17:29Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@ElbridgeColby @VOANews @Eunjung_VOA It's simple: US is a country of [---] million China+Russia are [----] million with clearly superior industrial resources. Given it's resources the US cannot overpower both at the same time (unlike [--] years ago) so it needs a smarter strategy to live with these rival powers" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1765407893220708838) 2024-03-06T16:03Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@patrissimo @ESYudkowsky I can make a 3rd argument: the degree of technological complexity required to make AI is so high that it is beyond the current scale of our modern civilization. AI might be feasible in an imagined future civilization with populations of hundreds of billions/trillions of people" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1765808231513813132) 2024-03-07T18:34Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@eyeslasho The big strategic blunder was the US's policy to expand NATO at all costs. This lead to war which revealed Western military weakness: that combined NATO countries can make only 1/7 as many artillery shells as Russia and that Western equipment is not really superior" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1765810662847008999) 2024-03-07T18:44Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "In Vietnam the US lost the war but there was no uncertainty that US casualties were much lower than North Vietnam's. That was because US was much larger and more developed so it was able to deploy much more firepower inflicting heavier casualties. Similarly there is no uncertainty that Ukraine is suffering much heavier casualties than Russia. It's true that the Russians suffered heavier casualties when they deployed large numbers of convicts as low quality infantry in late 2022-early [----] than now. But overall I don't think those tens of thousands of convicts were numerous enough to greatly" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1765833339045335469) 2024-03-07T20:14Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@tracewoodgrains @RuxandraTeslo @CoriolisI The US actions in WW2 basically prevented Stalin from occupying the whole of continental Europe: salvaging France Benelux and West Germany was a success. The US couldn't have prevented Stalin from expanding his sphere of influence in Eastern Europe" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1766458223043739877) 2024-03-09T13:37Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "With something magical called statistics: The US has [---] million citizens China has [----] million. Since [----] million is much larger than [---] million China has much more demographic resources. China's output of steel concrete motor vehicles chemicals electricity and industrial machinery is between [--] to [--] times the US's for each of these categories. Thus Chinese industrial resources are also much larger than the US's" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1766528503766286735) 2024-03-09T18:16Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@besttrousers Not quite I think that the anomalously high unemployment rate was also likely due to some other policies:" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1766539407920664916) 2024-03-09T18:59Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@diomavro That's not true. Indian per capita GDP increased by about 400% since the 1990s so in India extreme poverty is now almost eradicated:" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1766540882080141325) 2024-03-09T19:05Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@diomavro Extreme poverty in many other large countries has decreased a lot in the last decades like in Egypt Brazil Bangladesh Vietnam Thailand Indonesia etc" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1766541129078415559) 2024-03-09T19:06Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@robinhanson Here are Brazilian exports to the "global north" (i.e. US EU Japan) and "global south"; in [----] the "global north" was clearly dominant accounting for 2/3 of Brazil's exports. Things changed quite a bit since" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1766589017825464522) 2024-03-09T22:16Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@somatichealer01 @heimbergecon Actually these two graphs cannot be consistent. It is not like Europeans began working a lot more hours than Americans so per-hour productivity fell behind per-worker productivity. Most of this divergence is likely due to error or methodological differences" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1766857442137137412) 2024-03-10T16:03Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@CalvinMccarter @simongerman600 The decline was basically a slow collapse of social/economic institutions. Only when this general slow collapse reached a level deep enough that the institution of the emperor itself became unstable" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1766969675466866874) 2024-03-10T23:29Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@CalvinMccarter @simongerman600 The decline in the silver content of coins illustrates a civilization whose long decline was already occuring for [---] years before it manifested itself into an instability of imperial rule:" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1766971559795712039) 2024-03-10T23:37Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "Yes because our world has a very important difference from the Greco-Roman world. Our world is multipolar with two hundred countries and several major powers while the ancient Greco-Roman world was unipolar with Rome as the central power that had subjected over 80% of the population of both Europe and the Middle East and roughly 99% of the writers of all surviving literature from Europe and the Middle East. This meant a homogeneous civilization that lacked robustness against negative shocks such as a low fertility problem. But the Late Classical and Hellenistic Greek world that is antiquity" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1767259448114819254) 2024-03-11T18:41Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@prchovanec Well it's likely Trump will be elected. If Vivek is vice-president then looks like US policy would be officially "Taiwan you will be officially on your own after date X"" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1768716859019251871) 2024-03-15T19:12Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@OptimoPrincipi It looked like Athens: a Greek city with an acropolis dominating the skyline" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1769822569803268221) 2024-03-18T20:25Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "I do agree that culture matters but not in the sense that it explains hegemony. For example Athens was perhaps the most culturally influential/powerful state that has ever existed. Yet militarily it was defeated so many times and reduced to nothing by the late Hellenistic period while its culture became the standard culture of the ancient (western) world. Cultural influence alone does not translate into hegemony. But culture certainly matters a lot. I do expect countries with more similar cultures to go to war more frequently than countries with very dissimilar cultures" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1769897641083650203) 2024-03-19T01:24Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@lymanstoneky In Greece the population growth from 8th to the 4th century BC was of about an order of magnitude faster than in both Europe and China over the last [---] years. But that was a very special case (it was as exceptional as our modern civilization)" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1770455190577000776) 2024-03-20T14:19Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "The Persians didn't exist in classical antiquity after Alexander the Great incorporated this empire into his dominions. However I think you might be referring to the Parthians a set of central asian tribes that dominated what is modern Iran and parts of Iraq during the time of the Late Republic and Early Empire. Militarily the Germanic tribes were a bigger issue for Rome than the Parthians. This is shown in the deployment of legions: in the 1st-2nd century roughly 18-20 legions were deployed near Germanic tribes and only 7-8 legions near the Parthian territory. Tacitus himself states the" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1770637845251711168) 2024-03-21T02:25Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@GhostCoase @primalpoly With globalization the number of great powers drastically reduced as former "local" powers like Portugal and Japan became small next to the superpowers. By the late 20th century the US and USSR were much bigger than other countries leaving the world with only two great powers" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1771285448524025992) 2024-03-22T21:18Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@GhostCoase @primalpoly Taiwan without US is helpless next to China its 1.6% of China's population compare to Ukraine's 30% of Russia's population. The thing is Chinese industrial superiority over the US is already very large but the US's thousands of nukes essentially level the strategic field" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1771286753346785541) 2024-03-22T21:24Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@EconBerger Not really. Very few non-EU and US tourists go to Britain. Besides Italy and France Greece Spain and Germany are certainly more popular tourist destinations for Brazilians than Britain. Likely Turkey as well" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1772825871159636104) 2024-03-27T03:19Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@PossebomVitor Importante notar que as estimativas do Maddison ja eram de um crecimento menor para esses [--] anos do que as estimativas do IBGE" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1774798308713578645) 2024-04-01T13:57Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@phl43 Lula currently has 47% approval rating and it's expected he will have difficulty running again. But Brazil is moving towards US in recent years: new electoral laws were passed in Brazil to reduce the number of parties in congress. From a peak of [--] parties to only [--] now:" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1774874424887411101) 2024-04-01T19:00Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@policytensor Wages in terms of silver are the 17th century equivalent to nominal dollars and obviously countries with nominal dollar wages [--] times lower tend to be also poorer in real terms. Pomeranz arguments are not rigorous. I wrote about these issues in my blog: https://rafaelrguthmann.substack.com/p/the-great-convergence https://rafaelrguthmann.substack.com/p/the-great-convergence" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1775173830215979104) 2024-04-02T14:49Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@jdcmedlock @besttrousers Why would the Great Recession be basically equivalent to a pandemic" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1775225427994230899) 2024-04-02T18:14Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@bryan_caplan @NoahCarl90 By this "lack of immigration" metric Argentina is also much greater success story than countries like the US and Australia" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1775231480622453185) 2024-04-02T18:39Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@whyvert When talking about world history people like Ian Morris re-defined "the West" to include the Middle East. This basically includes all the contacts Europeans had with non-Europeans before modern times" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1776373988295319715) 2024-04-05T22:18Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@whyvert David Wilkinson uses the term "central civilization" instead of "Western" to include both Europe and the Middle East as one civilization. He categorizes "Western" as one historical phase of this central civilization:" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1776375429999231044) 2024-04-05T22:24Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@whyvert The concept of central civilization makes sense conceptualizing civilizations as systems of international relations. By this definition today this central civilization is the world's only surviving civilization: Chinese Indian Aztec systems were assimilated into the system" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1776377158836895875) 2024-04-05T22:31Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@whyvert That implies in a different definition of civilization besides a system of international relations. Europe and the Middle East are often said to have been different civilizations because of their different religions for example" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1776378697223712933) 2024-04-05T22:37Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@StefanFSchubert @KAErdmann Looks like it increased about 20% since [----]. That is relative stagnation compared to the growth from [----] to [----]. Also if we deflate GDP by the CPI (like with wages) instead of the BEA deflator then much of this growth disappears. Industrial production actually decreased:" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1776692063515332951) 2024-04-06T19:22Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@StefanFSchubert @KAErdmann It is true that if you add net imports of manufactured goods to get an index of "industrial consumption" then per capita "industrial consumption" has performed better since [----] but even considering the massive increase in imports this index had negative growth over 2000-2022" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1776695954726338890) 2024-04-06T19:38Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@BrazilBrian ".2022 was extraordinary crisis of democracy.therefore they say Moraes had to fight fire with fire " Thats classic dictatorship playbook. Brazil has severe issues with the supreme court that damage free political dialogue and make it's policial system less democratic" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1777057744815530048) 2024-04-07T19:35Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@BrazilBrian Since no society existing today is 100% democratic (Switzerland might be the closest to being 100% democratic) the question wheter Brazil is "on the brink of dictatorship" or not is subjective. Its very clear that a judiciary that criminalizes policial speech is antidemocratic" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1777058428503953918) 2024-04-07T19:38Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@BrazilBrian Since no society existing today is 100% democratic (Switzerland might be the closest to being 100% democratic) the question wheter Brazil is "on the brink of dictatorship" or not is subjective. But its clear that a judiciary that criminalizes political speech is antidemocratic" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1777058803021750632) 2024-04-07T19:40Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@Undercoverhist An economist really made it if they have post-UFC fight citations" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1779593521743253819) 2024-04-14T19:32Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@phl43 To maintain its huge sphere of influence the US needs to maintain deterrence and spread its assets throughout it. Major war with Iran would force the US to focus its assets on Iran. Thus most of its sphere would become a vacuum and so countries would reorient mostly to China" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1779625459916894270) 2024-04-14T21:39Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@arpitrage The ad of Xiaomi car plant makes it appear pretty amazing in terms of automation: https://youtu.be/kYkgXkoEBzgsi=XZssDWQVoAMxrI1n https://youtu.be/kYkgXkoEBzgsi=XZssDWQVoAMxrI1n" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1779722564287299922) 2024-04-15T04:04Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@nilocobau Data with regards to housing space per person shows the gap between US and Europe is not remotely as large as his claim. In countries like Italy and Germany housing space per capita is 2/3 of US's" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1779869407075774836) 2024-04-15T13:48Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "That patent pie from [----] is basically a demographic map of the developed world in [----]. Therefore gains from increasing institutional quality are the greatest when applied to the most populous countries because they house the greatest potential to produce innovation. "As Jones writes 'The entire world stands to gain when the biggest countries with the best institutions innovate. That means the entire world has a stake in the governance the institutional quality of the worlds seven most innovative nations:'" https://t.co/GWtK0ficFJ "As Jones writes 'The entire world stands to gain when the" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1779896232103571819) 2024-04-15T15:35Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "The fact that the [--] biggest innovators in [----] were rather small compared to [--] most populous countries illustrates the potential for growth in the technological frontier from the development of the global south:" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1779897959276040656) 2024-04-15T15:41Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@mmjukic I wouldn't call the 20-30% gap in GDP per capita of US from typical-EU countries as being "far wealthier." That term I would use for something like the Pakistan-US gap" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1779901982565670917) 2024-04-15T15:57Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@EvanSandsmark @mmjukic Thing is that the US dollar is very strong right now. A dollar was much cheaper 11-12 years ago: a dollar cost [--] yen in [----] now it costs [---] yen and the US had much more inflation than Japan since 2012" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1779905869288722643) 2024-04-15T16:13Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "The average size of houses in square feet: UK - [---] Japan - [----] Germany/France - [----] US - [----] Saudi Arabia - [----] Ancient Greece - ca. 2800-4000 (in the 4th century BC) Yep Saudis have the biggest houses in the world today. But the average household size is ca. [---]. I added labels. https://t.co/n0GdIiLMMG I added labels. https://t.co/n0GdIiLMMG" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1779948765631189390) 2024-04-15T19:03Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Mises' popularity in South America is perhaps due to the region's embrace of European-style social democratic policies with large welfare states. Which in developing countries without lot of potential for tax revenues means fiscal insolvency and economic crisis. Naturally the inhabitants of the region are now paying more attention to free-market thinkers. But why Mises and not other famous free-market "activist economists" like Hayek or Friedman Friedman and Hayek are actually just more famous in English-speaking countries because both had their careers in those countries. But Mises was" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1780317256519491838) 2024-04-16T19:28Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@itaisher Most people are well aware that belief and truth are different things" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1780592812100141145) 2024-04-17T13:43Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "As the world's capital markets became integrated the return on capital is higher in the "global south" where capital originating in the "global north" flows into increasing growth. But Piketty has to feel mad about it because this capital earn returns the 😱. Bottom line: rich countries pretend to be in favour of fair & open markets devlopment for all etc. but in practice the way financial markets are organized & regulated leads to an enormous income transfer from global South to global North year after year & growing over time Bottom line: rich countries pretend to be in favour of fair &" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1781083843077812442) 2024-04-18T22:14Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@Empty_America @mmjukic Brazil has more habitable land than the US if you define as "habitable" lands where you don't need heating or AC to survive year round. While with modern heating and AC technology then whole of Russia is habitable" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1781390993402499256) 2024-04-19T18:34Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@ernietedeschi It's likely that is just measurement error. Productivity growth across advanced economies is determined by the technological frontier which is determined by technology which is globally available (except for countries that are very isolated like North Korea)" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1781726338266583300) 2024-04-20T16:47Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@phl43 @BergAslak The main argument for the US's support in the war is that it provides deterrence for any future wars: the US is saying that it will provide full and reliable support for the duration of any conflict where Russia or China tries to impose their will onto smaller countries" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1781765933012336768) 2024-04-20T19:24Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@BrunaFrascolla Rothbard se classificava como esquerda e dizia que Marxistas e socialistas em geral eram centro porque usam metodos conservadores (ditadura/autocracia e coercao estatal) para atingir objetivos progressistas. Jah Rothbard se considerava progressista em objetivos e metodos" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1782056895118803030) 2024-04-21T14:40Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@pfnery Dira que [--] milhoes de aposentados para [--] milhoes de trabalhadores formais (que inclu funcionario pblico) meio tenso. Deveria ter uns 3-4 trabalhadores formais no setor privado para cada aposentado ou funcionario pblico" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1782271905677836372) 2024-04-22T04:55Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@JoelPinheiro85 Existe uma diferenca entre cortar impostos e aumentar beneficios em ano eleitoral (algo que nao la muito tico mas perfectamente legal) e censurar fatos inconvenientes para um candidato:" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1782490043564650890) 2024-04-22T19:21Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@MindlessSelfIn @ElbridgeColby 1930s Germany was a developed country at the frontier of science and technology. But about half of the size of the US in terms of population. China today is still a developing country (close to being developed but not yet) but it is four times the size of the US population" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1782890473792696650) 2024-04-23T21:53Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@ElbridgeColby It appears that the current US strategy besides cosmetic actions like tik-tok ban and listing it as an "adversary country" is to not oppose China at all. They are focused on containing Russia maybe bcse its much weaker power and so they evaluated it as one they could take on" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1783514992676933917) 2024-04-25T15:14Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@heimbergecon To be fair OECD said Greek GDP per capita was 37% of US in [----] today it's around 45-50%" [X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1783543242815951298) 2024-04-25T17:07Z [----] followers, [----] engagements Limited data mode. Full metrics available with subscription: lunarcrush.com/pricing
@GuthmannR Rafael R. Guthmann
Rafael R. Guthmann posts on X about countries, china, gdp, brazil the most. They currently have [-----] followers and [----] posts still getting attention that total [-----] engagements in the last [--] hours.
Engagements: [-----] #
- [--] Week [------] +690,117%
- [--] Month [------] -90%
- [--] Months [---------] +5.30%
- [--] Year [---------] +609%
Mentions: [--] #
- [--] Months [---] +35%
- [--] Year [---] +38%
Followers: [-----] #
- [--] Week [-----] +0.41%
- [--] Month [-----] no change
- [--] Months [-----] +38%
- [--] Year [-----] +154%
CreatorRank: [-------] #
Social Influence
Social category influence countries finance travel destinations currencies stocks technology brands automotive brands celebrities musicians social networks
Social topic influence countries, china, gdp, brazil, $4732t, japan, germany, russia, in the, india
Top assets mentioned Frontier (FRONT) Tesla, Inc. (TSLA)
Top Social Posts
Top posts by engagements in the last [--] hours
"1. Klaus Kinski (Aguirre the Wrath of God) [--]. Setsuko Hara (Late Spring) [--]. Gloria Swanson (Sunset Boulevard) Name the three best acting performance name (movie): [--]. Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln) [--]. Gary Oldman (The Darkest Hour) [--]. Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game) I guess you can gather I love history movies. Name the three best acting performance name (movie): [--]. Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln) [--]. Gary Oldman (The Darkest Hour) [--]. Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game) I guess you can gather I love history movies"
X Link 2021-10-06T20:10Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@WhitesPhD In all countries turnout is lower in the poorest parts"
X Link 2022-09-25T21:27Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@WhitesPhD Maybe high inflation will force central banks to raise rates. This will cause a recession in the short run but in the long run higher interest rates mean fewer zombie firms and thus TFP growth. Allowing Europe to get out of its Japanese-style stagnation"
X Link 2022-11-16T18:45Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"According to this [----] map Russia used to have [--] times the population of Brazil. Today it's [---] times"
X Link 2023-07-11T18:25Z [----] followers, 15.7K engagements
"@BretDevereaux @ForeignPolicy I think that most people living inside Spartan sphere of power were the perioikoi. Which were citizens of city-states subordinate to Sparta. For example in a modern analogy citizens of other NATO countries are the perioikoi to Americans. How was the helot population estimated"
X Link 2023-07-23T05:15Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@JorgeRamosMerc1 @phl43 There is a distinction between wars involving great powers and "total wars." Perhaps one could define that a country is in a state of "total war" iff the country is at war with at least 20% of it's adult male population in the armed forces"
X Link 2023-08-23T03:20Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@NGrossman81 @gabriel_mathy @onesarahjones The richest backed Hillary [--] to [--]. Also there are other signs of elite status academic elites who teach at Harvard for example. Power has multiple dimensiones: economic political and ideological. Overall it's pretty clear Trump is not supported by the elites"
X Link 2023-08-25T16:40Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"I remember that a Spanish chef spoke in an interview regarding French cuisine in that they are unique in the world for having developed "fine dining" cuisine. This explains why the French cuisine has a reputation for being the best in the world. My theory is that they developed fine dining because France had the largest and richest royalty/aristocracy in Europe for many centuries. So over these centuries this royalty developed a specialized cuisine that was differentiated from commoner's food. Ultimately this created the concept of French fine dining that was consolidated by the late 19th"
X Link 2023-08-28T14:28Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@Jason_Dean Republican Roman soldiers had property requirements not strictly land requirements to be classified as able to provide their own equipment. As inequality in property holdings increased the proportion of the citizen population that could pay for their own equipment decreased"
X Link 2023-08-29T18:12Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@Jason_Dean So the government shifted from a system of citizen soldiers who provided their own equipment to a system of professional soldiers paid by the state but now the politicians who directly controlled the armies had the power to take over the state which lead to the imperial regime"
X Link 2023-08-29T18:14Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@FilipeCampante Depends on your preferences. Some people like teaching as well so they prefer that than a higher paying job in industry. Others have very strong preference for climbing up the academic hierarchy"
X Link 2023-08-29T19:55Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@robinhanson It's possible to greatly raise fertility by reducing spending: Cut programs that incentivize low fertility such as pension systems. As I said before such programs creates an enormous artificial externality across the population"
X Link 2023-09-06T02:53Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@cremieuxrecueil They fell a lot in recent years: Murders in Brazil fall to lowest in [--] years - The Brazilian Report Only [-----] murders now💪 https://brazilian.report/liveblog/2022/02/22/murders-lowest-14-years/amp/ https://brazilian.report/liveblog/2022/02/22/murders-lowest-14-years/amp/"
X Link 2023-09-06T03:30Z [----] followers, 10.5K engagements
"@dandolfa @J2dubyas @WhiteHouseCEA It's an unique historical event though. Another unique historical event was the massive fall in unemployment following mass conscription for WW2. Did the president at the time claimed his administration then had helped to create "x million jobs""
X Link 2023-09-07T02:50Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@arpitrage They were similar to Classical Rome in the sense of being regarded as "world empires" or "civilization states": states that completely dominated their own worlds to the point where lands outside their dominion were regarded as not being relevant parts of the civilized world"
X Link 2023-09-10T22:24Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@ATabarrok It is well documented that since the Ptolemies a large merchant fleet sailed from Egypt across the Indian Ocean every year to India to get spices and other high-value goods. That was how roman soldiers in Hadrian's wall consumed Indian spices"
X Link 2023-09-16T23:11Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Considering that: (1) The labor share of net national product at factor prices tends to be around 70-75%. (2) The difference in returns between bonds and stocks and that wages are almost as safe as bonds. Then I conclude that the risk adjusted labor share is ca. 85-90%"
X Link 2023-09-18T19:29Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@thephilippics You are comparing wartime to peacetime shell production and modern artillery shells are 3-4 times heavier than WW1 shells. Also Russia produced much fewer shells than Germany about [--] million shells during the whole first world war compared to [---] million for Germany"
X Link 2023-09-18T23:56Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@arpitrage @thephilippics The vast majority of German losses in WW1 were against the combined French British American armed forces mostly in the Western front. The combined French+British Empire+American shell production was nearly twice Germany's at [---] million and [--] times Russian output"
X Link 2023-09-19T00:43Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@arpitrage @thephilippics Considering Russia lost to Germany (Treaty of Brest-Litovsk) and then Germany lost to France+UK+US (Treaty of Versailles) I guess so:"
X Link 2023-09-19T00:52Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Over the 20th century Brazil became a self suficient industrial country. The result of a very stupid development strategy called "import substitution industrialization." The basic idea was taken from Nietzsche who said that "what does not kill you makes you stronger." So in import substitution industrialization the idea is that if your society can survive isolated from the global economy then it will make such society more developed to make it so. Over the last few decades Brazil finally started to abandon this suicidal policy and began to open up and integrate into the world. So it started"
X Link 2023-09-21T14:49Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"The buildings below were built in: Italy France Greece Lebanon. The "international style" of antiquity was the classical style. Still awaiting for traditionalists to complain about it"
X Link 2023-09-29T19:12Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@cafreiman US government spending relative to Ukraine's aid is actually close to the ratio of the Earth's and the Moon's mass:"
X Link 2023-09-30T00:25Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@StefanFSchubert @robinhanson Certainly Alexander the Great happened at the time he happened for a reason: European armies only reached India again over [----] years later"
X Link 2023-10-11T21:29Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@S_Surprenant @PhilWMagness Well in some of the books by him published in the US it's stated in backcover that he was the most eminent liberal of the 20th century. BTW unlike libertarians he also was not against a robust social safety net:"
X Link 2023-10-27T16:46Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@phl43 Well in reality international relations are anarchical as there is no State ruling other states and thus military power is central. Consider the USSR and its vassal states: killed ca. [---] million people no "international law police" showed up and put their leaders in jail"
X Link 2023-11-01T17:44Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@lefineder Shows the insanity this policy: fixing the same nominal wage rates across the whole ancient Roman world as if labor market conditions in a prosperous polis like Ephesus were the same as in rural Roman Britain. Imagine fixing the same nominal wages in Germany and Albania today"
X Link 2023-11-03T22:31Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@StefanFSchubert @chribreuer @JgaltTweets I have noticed that the best performing case in a field tends to be an extreme outlier. It's statistically expected. Messi in football for example:"
X Link 2023-11-16T13:52Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@VincentGeloso As the world's population starts to decrease making the trend for long-run growth much slower or even negative will society adapt and learn to live peacefully in an environment with negative growth"
X Link 2023-11-16T22:59Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@ErikVoorhees @DavidSacks Technically no because dictator is a title that only existed in the Roman Republic and refers to emergency powers granted to one citizen in times of emergency. Xi Jinping technically is the king of China"
X Link 2023-11-17T00:54Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@IvanWerning That controversy was just an application of the Sonnenschein conjecture into capital markets: economies can have several equilibrium prices which includes the rate of interest. So leftist economists got inspired at capitalists bcse it meant their interest income could vary"
X Link 2023-11-19T14:54Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"But Milei is very risky what if his radical policies damage the Argentinian economy The Argentinian economy:"
X Link 2023-11-20T04:20Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@lugaricano I have computed these GDP per hour worked figures for developed world and it's fairly obvious that except for South Korea since [----] the relative levels of productivity have been in stationary equilibrium:"
X Link 2023-11-20T13:54Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@krishnanrohit Mainly because games are more niche. There is no such thing as the "Taylor Swift" of games that all young females are playing"
X Link 2023-11-24T16:59Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@LaurentFranckx There is a book that ranked all those classical composers based on number of words reference works of classical music talked about them. Beethoven and Mozart were tied first Bach was third followed by Wagner"
X Link 2023-11-25T13:42Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@RobinBrooksIIF The reality is that Russia is a big industrialized country of [---] million with massive natural resources. Sanctions on such country specially without cooperation of other major economies like China India Brazil etc will not have first order effects on aggregate output"
X Link 2023-11-25T18:24Z [----] followers, 22.2K engagements
"@gunsnrosesgirl3 The lack of technological advances: expectations for technology [--] years in the future were very high in [----] (for example from the movies of the time). Perhaps because of the radical technological advances from [----] to [----]. They imagined cities in would look like this:"
X Link 2023-11-26T02:58Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@benbawan @arpitrage The natural tendency for economies is for productivity convergence to the technological frontier which is around the US's productivity levels. It is weird when the inverse does happen"
X Link 2023-11-26T21:25Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@emollick Considering that modern economic growth in both France and Britain began just after Napoleon while the growth of France and Britain over the decades up to [----] was almost identically slow one might conclude Napoleon British industrial revolution"
X Link 2023-11-26T22:06Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@StefanFSchubert @RuxandraTeslo The history books I read recently don't talk about war for more than a fraction of it's pages. With the exception of a biography of Alexander which being about history's most successful military commander talks about war about 30% of the time"
X Link 2023-11-26T22:19Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@bryan_caplan Thats incorrect. The number of Fortune [---] companies per capita is about the same in US Germany Japan France and UK. It's a popular myth the US is more individualistic but there is not objective way to evaluate that. In reality everybody everywhere is individualistic"
X Link 2023-11-28T19:33Z [----] followers, 38.8K engagements
"Growing up in Brazil I had experienced many more European brands than American. Natural since Brazil trades more with the EU. Big business international brands for cars beer food grocery stores fashion etc until the rise of China tended to be mainly European in Brazil. So I never had the impression US has a particularly high number of big companies. While I noticed living in the US that there is a much higher preponderance of local brands than in Brazil. This might cause this impression that the US has a particularly high number of big companies. However it's true that for tech companies the"
X Link 2023-11-29T01:40Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@PhilWMagness It's very stupid to reduce meat consumption bcse of climate change. The money you save on meat can be used to buy more gas for example which increases emissions on the net. The solution is to focus on low carbon energy sources"
X Link 2023-11-29T04:33Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@simongerman600 @paragkhanna @229Biodiversity Cropland is not exogenous. It can be increased if there is demand for it (as happened in Brazil)"
X Link 2023-11-29T20:12Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"Brazil under Lula is an ally of Venezuela's dictatorship. Lula is unlikely to break his alliance with Maduro to attack Venezuela's army. Instead I find it's perfectly possible that if the US intervenes that Lula will support Venezuela with money ammunition and weapons like NATO is supporting Ukraine"
X Link 2023-11-29T22:42Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@JosephPolitano @phl43 This surge of semiconductor manufacturing in US likely means the market is predicting the loss of Taiwan"
X Link 2023-12-01T22:22Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@StavrosTsipas I had calculated a few years ago that the oil price for cost parity with EVs would be around 11-12 dollars a barrel considering the costs of solar/wind/hydro/coal power"
X Link 2023-12-02T01:27Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@whstancil Median household income collapsed between [----] and [----] that explains the bad personal experiences:"
X Link 2023-12-02T03:44Z [----] followers, 18.5K engagements
"@robinhanson A problem is that they falsely equate "states" with "societies." If we look at European history there were only [--] major cycles of civilization flourishing and then collapse: the Bronze Age Classical antiquity and Modernity. But many more states rose and fell"
X Link 2023-12-02T20:30Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@scottlincicome It is better to have a tonnage graph launched into low earth orbit instead of a "number of objects." The Saturn V used for the Apollo program could launch [---] tons into orbit which counts as [--] object launch but had the mass of hundreds of those Starlink satellites"
X Link 2023-12-02T20:50Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@Noahpinion @bdfernaldpa In an environment with 1% per capita GDP growth like the US over the past quarter century it's perfectly possible that some groups perceive themselves to be more affluent a few decades ago. Specially because half of GDP growth is quality improvements and not quantity growth"
X Link 2023-12-02T23:01Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@wwwojtekk @BrianCAlbrecht @PhilWMagness Indeed. In Brazil our national accounts imply a much higher mean consumption per household than estimated mean household income"
X Link 2023-12-04T19:42Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@MarcGoldwein This is Venezuela's Taiwan apparently. It's also a fact that Venezuela has been claiming this territory for over a century"
X Link 2023-12-06T13:41Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@lymanstoneky The graph of house size is in linear scale so it overestimates more recent growth and houses improved in quality as well. I suspect there was first an increase in the quality of housing and then they got bigger as this was the process that happened in US over last [---] years:"
X Link 2023-12-06T21:10Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@Noahpinion The Saudis are going to have big problems over the next couple of decades. Low oil prices now are likely a reflection of rational expectations regarding falling oil demand:"
X Link 2023-12-06T21:37Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@lymanstoneky Well these population densities are estimated for intervals of 150-200 years (for example a point refers to the population over the 480-320 BC period) and the graph I made is interpolated from a few points. We do not have high-resolution estimates of population growth rates"
X Link 2023-12-06T21:58Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@StefanFSchubert French real wages decreased since [----] based on their consumer price index and nominal wages as productivity tends to increase. This means real costs of labor are lower now so people hire more:"
X Link 2023-12-07T21:18Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@JimMansfieldYWG @simongerman600 Archeological surveys suggests the following relative city sizes (Greece was far less concentrated on Athens although it was already the largest city of the region in antiquity and one of the top 3-4 largest cities in the world at the time):"
X Link 2023-12-13T16:32Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@IvanWerning It depends on wheter agents believe that the fiscal adjustment policy is credible and sustainable. If they believe it then it might even have a big boom. While Brazil did fiscal adjustment in the mid-90s after hyperinflation there was was a boom"
X Link 2023-12-14T03:58Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@StefanFSchubert I think that people in developed countries like the US tend to be more conformist. As it's a natural feature of developed societies that individuals adjust their behavior more according to collective expectations. In underdeveloped societies individuals are more alienated"
X Link 2023-12-14T15:50Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@JonSteinsson They waited too long to raise interest rates as a result the US managed to have inflation higher than Brazil for the first time in the history of both countries time series"
X Link 2023-12-16T14:19Z [--] followers, [---] engagements
"@AnthonyLeeZhang I hold a combination of mutual funds and ETFs. However Brazilian ETFs are less diversified and have higher management rates than in Anglo America so they are comparatively less attractive vis mutual funds"
X Link 2023-12-19T17:29Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@jletanaka @mnolangray They had residential zoning"
X Link 2023-12-21T22:44Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@arpitrage India and China do not appear to experience recessions. While China's national accounts are rather suspect India's only year of negative growth over the past [--] years was the Covid lockdown:"
X Link 2023-12-23T02:22Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@lymanstoneky @BretDevereaux I think the evidence for low fertility is stronger regarding Hellenistic Greece than Roman Italy. But despite the evidence historians in general don't believe the ancients could have had a low fertility regime because they believe thats an exclusive feature of modernity"
X Link 2023-12-23T14:10Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@MrRBourne It's obvious that the post-pandemic inflation was because they increased money supply during the pandemic to attempt to offset the decline in velocity of circulation following the lockdowns. But when pandemic was over the extra money entered in circulation and prices went up"
X Link 2023-12-24T17:15Z [--] followers, [---] engagements
"@culturaltutor Reminding me of my Civilization games "wow" lists those [--] are among the most aesthetically memorable existing buildings to my mind nearly half of them are in Rome: St. Peter Basilica Parthenon/Acropolis Pantheon Colosseum Hagia Sophia Forbidden City Great Wall of China"
X Link 2023-12-28T20:31Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@Uptheleft Jesus' hebrews tribe were as much as a barbarian as the Northern celtic tribes who had been recently "pacified" by Rome. In Greco-Roman culture anything that was not Greek/Latin was categorized as barbarian"
X Link 2023-12-29T19:02Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@Jackbmeyer The fraction of economists who played civilization is certainly very high"
X Link 2023-12-30T17:03Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"It is true that until very recently urbanization rates never exceeded 50% across large areas (counting only the population living in cities over [----] inhabitants if we count all the population living in towns over [----] as the current US census does then it is likely that the urbanization rate already exceeded 50% across the Late Classical Greek world). However if we use the % living in towns over [----] definition of the rate of urbanization then a society with an urbanization rate of let's say 30% (which was the average urbanization rate across Europe and Anglo-America in 1900) has a radically"
X Link 2023-12-30T18:23Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"High-level intellectual activity did collapse across Western Eurasia with the "transformation" of the Graeco-Roman world into the medieval world. This graph is a plot of the number of entries in two encyclopedias for attested figures from the fields of "natural sciences" and "philosophy" whose lifetimes can be reliably dated. The number of attested scientists decreases 98% from 1st century AD to the 8th century and attested philosophers decreases 95% from 1st century AD to the 7th century. Note that as more recent records tend to have higher survivability these figures are actually biased"
X Link 2023-12-30T21:55Z [----] followers, 58.7K engagements
"@BretDevereaux Theologians make up the majority of "philosophers" in the graph since the 4th century"
X Link 2023-12-31T08:03Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@chrysoboullon They are. Many great ancient scientists worked in Alexandria Egypt"
X Link 2023-12-31T13:40Z [--] followers, [---] engagements
"@krishnanrohit @GarettJones Based on the deep roots theory of past accomplishment plus current divergence vis prediction 90% of BlackRock should have been invested in Greece Lybia Iraq Syria Turkey Tunisia and Egypt"
X Link 2024-01-02T23:18Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@phl43 @lymanstoneky Not sure it is unusual in any way. Over 2-3 years nominal GDPs in countries with or without exchange rate controls fluctuate a lot. In real variables this is China relative to the US according to [--] indicators 1997-2022:"
X Link 2024-01-04T17:20Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@phl43 @lymanstoneky Even with a fixed exchange rate in a frictionless economy the price level would adjust instead of the exchange rate and you would get the exact same fluctuations in nominal GDP"
X Link 2024-01-04T17:30Z [--] followers, [--] engagements
"@phl43 @fhotsvhfsab @RichardHanania China is obviously growing faster than the US in recent years not as fast as it used too for obvious reasons. Current devaluation of its nominal GDP is due to currency devaluation which is pretty obvious:"
X Link 2024-01-04T23:32Z [--] followers, [---] engagements
"@fhotsvhfsab @phl43 Of course there is no guarantee of high growth. That always applies (many Subsaharan African countries are stagnant). However the poorer you are the higher the potential for growth. China cannot grow as fast like it used to because it is not as poor now as [--] years ago"
X Link 2024-01-04T23:41Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@phl43 @fhotsvhfsab @RichardHanania The strong dollar is because they raised interest rates to lower inflation which attracted international capital into buying US bonds. Nothing to do with Russia's "failure" to conquer whole of Ukraine. Which we know now was never their objective"
X Link 2024-01-04T23:56Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@besttrousers It's pretty simple to explain this stagnation as a composition of effects: 1) Skill biased technological change shifted mean away from the median. 2) CPI overestimates inflation compared to the GDP (or PCE) deflator. 3) Rise of unpaid compensation like health insurance"
X Link 2024-01-10T15:01Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"The two regions that historically produced the greatest philosophical output were Ancient Greece and [--] - 19th century Germany: perhaps a high level of political decentralization allows for people to talk about radical ideas. guys will literally live like this and see no issue https://t.co/WgdJSzJSxu guys will literally live like this and see no issue https://t.co/WgdJSzJSxu"
X Link 2024-01-12T17:30Z [----] followers, 15.6K engagements
"@timurkuran A difference from that time is that after two world wars today we are aware of the gigantic costs that modern technology imposes on even conventional great power war. Making it less attractive for great powers to risk going to war"
X Link 2024-01-16T20:34Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@Valen10Francois Even Greece was the demographic giant of Europe for a while in antiquity: it had about 5-6 million people at a time when the whole continent had ca. [--] million. Then Italy became the "demographic giant. So France's tenure as the demographic giant was going to end eventually"
X Link 2024-01-17T13:32Z [----] followers, 11.3K engagements
"@buildhomez Many counter examples: Camboriu in Brazil Benidorm in Spain Santiago in Chile Tokyo in Japan"
X Link 2024-01-17T17:55Z [----] followers, 42.5K engagements
"Relative to ancient states America is much more similar to Athens than Rome. Even the global system of international relations during Athens' heyday was much more similar to the present system than during Rome's time (when there wasn't a system of international relations Rome just ordered and the rest of the ancient world obeyed). There were [--] great powers at the time of Athens' heyday like there are today and they have many similarities with modern times. Persia (China): big and populous land power. Athens (America): rich and culturally influential naval power. Formally allied with many"
X Link 2024-01-19T18:48Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@dandolfa Should increase interest rates to 2% to reach 2% target obviously"
X Link 2024-01-19T21:39Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@Noahpinion Japanese civilization is very distinct from rest of Asia. This is obvious from history of the region. The idea that Japan is similar to the rest of East Asia is a recent invention"
X Link 2024-01-20T02:18Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@lymanstoneky I have the general impression that civilizations undergo big cycles of rise and then collapse/decline. We know Europe had [--] the Middle East probably had about [--] or [--]. China also had some cyclical pattern but it was perhaps a bit more stable/stagnant being politically unified"
X Link 2024-01-22T18:13Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@itaisher Well thats not uncommon: in Brazil the president is above the law. In the sense he or she can only be judged by the supreme court (of which 3/4 were nominated by him or his close allies and they usually take about a decade to judge things). Might not be healthy for democracy"
X Link 2024-01-24T15:18Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@StefanFSchubert Also it's adjusted with the PCEPI which is biased vis CPI in favor of recent cohorts compared to earlier cohorts"
X Link 2024-01-24T17:40Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@dandolfa It's funny that sticky price models are called "Keynesian" today when the business cycle theory of Keynes' rival at the time Hayek was actually based on the notion of sticky prices driving the business cycle"
X Link 2024-01-29T02:57Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@phl43 @sc_cath There was an inverted yield curve just after the pandemic as well and recession in the US didn't happen. BTW India's only recession in the last 35-40 years or so was the pandemic. So having recessions might not be an universal phenomena"
X Link 2024-01-29T23:28Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@PaulSkallas The fact is that America is not richer than rich countries in Europe like Germany and Netherlands. GDP per hour worked (the best measure of economic performance) is about the same across Germany France US Sweden Netherlands Austria. It's lower in the UK Spain and Canada"
X Link 2024-01-30T02:18Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@robinhanson I suspect there will not be a global population decline. World population is projected by UN to peak in about [----] and by that point I think enough countries would have solved the low fertility problem"
X Link 2024-01-30T03:08Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@AlexNowrasteh No. The labor market was strong in 2017-2018 with a very low unemployment rate. The extremely high illegal immigration the US is experiencing now is a policy choice of the Biden administration. Because they didn't think they could pass a pro-immigration reform through Congress"
X Link 2024-01-31T15:03Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@phl43 The argument for immigration for natives of countries that receive immigrants is that moving labor from developing to developed countries increases the production of innovation and the scope for division of labor which increases the speed of technological progress globally"
X Link 2024-01-31T20:46Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@phl43 The problem with this argument is that receiving immigrants produces a positive externality: if a small country like Denmark receives a few percentage points of its population in immigrants that will not affect the global economy significantly but can create high local costs"
X Link 2024-01-31T20:49Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@ElbridgeColby India is developing fast so the US needs to hold the line for about a decade as India will likely become a peer counterweight to China by 2035"
X Link 2024-02-01T01:19Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@dandolfa I believe that since 1980s the US doesn't have classical business cycles anymore. Thats because those were driven by monetary fluctuations as documented by Friedman and Schwartz. But as the monetary policy stabilized the money supply recessions now occur for other reasons"
X Link 2024-02-01T13:34Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@phl43 Iran's real GDP is actually estimated at [---] trillion. About half of France or Britain's. The nominal figure for Iran which is comparable to Denmark's is due to the fact Iranian economy is highly sanctioned and isolated so it's not correctly "priced" nominally"
X Link 2024-02-01T14:04Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@phl43 It's perfectly possible that a China+Russia+Iran geopolitical block might become militarily dominant at a global level and thus could "marginalize" US and Europe in global geopolitics"
X Link 2024-02-01T14:09Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@J2dubyas @GabeEcon If you hate US geopolitical power you love the current administration which is delusional and acting in a way to maximally erode the US's international influence"
X Link 2024-02-03T18:54Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@AlecStapp In Brazil it takes ca. [--] years to become a medical doctor: [--] years of college plus [--] years studying for the college entrance exams"
X Link 2024-02-04T19:43Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@StefanFSchubert @whyvert In the US it's more common for poor people to eat lots of frozen food while the upper middle class spends time cooking high-quality meals. Spending time making healthy food is like going to the gym"
X Link 2024-02-04T20:37Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"When I was a grad student I had the idea of actually testing the US's CPI by comparing prices over a decadal period. The result was that the mean change in prices of a basket of a dozen goods matched the CPI almost perfectly. Some prices went up more but others less. The government claims inflation is just 3%. But everywhere you look it seems to be 10% to 20%. Who is correct The government or your eyes when you are shopping 🔊 . 🤨 https://t.co/NlChFp3seG The government claims inflation is just 3%. But everywhere you look it seems to be 10% to 20%. Who is correct The government or your eyes"
X Link 2024-02-04T22:37Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@RuxandraTeslo @mattyglesias @JonHaidt This correlation with social media thingie in regards to declining mental health and increased political polarization is happening mostly in the US. Cross-country evidence shows it's not true globally and therefore it's not a technology-driven phenomenon"
X Link 2024-02-04T22:59Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@phl43 Per capita GDP in PPP is highly relevant much more than any aggregate GDP-related statistic. As it is a good measure of the level of development of a country. While population is the measure of a country's size"
X Link 2024-02-05T14:45Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Thats just the rest of the world industrializing. In [----] US was so dominant in the world's economy bcse only North America Western Europe and Japan were developed. As India China Russia and other regions have been developing US's relative weight is gradually converging to it's relative demographic size in the world. Relative U.S. economic standing in the world has declined since we adopted liberal hegemony as our foreign policy after the Cold War. That's not necessarily causal of course. But it's suggestive. Relative U.S. economic standing in the world has declined since we adopted liberal"
X Link 2024-02-05T15:44Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Also I wouldn't use the label "liberal hegemony" to describe US foreign policy during Washington's unipolar moment following the fall of the USSR. Where in Locke Hume Hayek or Rawls's writings is it stated that half a million Iraquis civilians had to die for liberalism States are organizations based on organized violence and the US's behavior is no different from other States in human history. Without any peer power to contain Washington during its unipolar moment Washinton could invade any country they wanted at will. Sure they use a rhetoric of "spreading democracy" but that was obviously"
X Link 2024-02-05T17:47Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Having several great powers provides a public good because each power contains the other minimizing their destructive tendencies. The example of the USSR makes it clear: the US provided a great service to the world by containing it. Especially because the USSR was a particularly destructive great power since it was spreading its religion of Marxism which was especially hostile to modern institutions. However when the USSR fell the other side of the coin was revealed: without the USSR who was supposed to contain the destructive tendencies of Washington now The lack of any peer great powers to"
X Link 2024-02-05T19:04Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@ElbridgeColby Taiwan has 1.6% of the population of China. What was the last time a country defeated a full scale invasion from another country with a population over [--] times greater Perhaps at Marathon in [---] BC"
X Link 2024-02-05T20:51Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"Depends on what one defines as "American culture." A lot of what people claim is American culture is actually broadly Western culture. For example burgers are originally German food and pizza is originally Italian food. Most of what we understand as rock music has been developed by Europeans in particular British bands like The Beatles Pink Floyd Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. Hollywood movies often used as an example of American cultural power are made by multinational crews. Nolan is British for example while the highly influential designs in Alien were made by Swiss and French artists."
X Link 2024-02-06T18:01Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@StefanFSchubert Although if one picks only the most purely American elements of Western culture: blues jazz rap and country music then the influence of these cultural products is smaller than of pizza or Hollywood but it is still substantial even in Asian countries like Japan and Korea"
X Link 2024-02-06T18:37Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@robinhanson The old world particularly the Middle East is still older. Agriculture was practiced in Turkey and Syria [-----] years ago and this proto-city site in Turkey is [----] years old; Jericho in Palestine has been continuously inhabited for over [-----] years"
X Link 2024-02-06T23:01Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@StefanFSchubert @robinhanson Not quite. Mankind left Africa recently and only reached South America nearly at the same time as agriculture was being invented in the Middle East. Writing was invented when humans reached Greenland as shown in this map:"
X Link 2024-02-06T23:09Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"I wouldn't see this as evidence of "American cultural power" but as evidence of a broad tendency for cultural globalization. This is evident in that the Great Awokening happened simultaneously across many newspapers in the Western world from countries like Spain Canada UK Germany etc: After [----] all these newspapers as well as US newspapers like NYT started adopting "woke" terms at the same time and at the same rates. For another example Lionel Messi is more famous internationally than Trump (I did some research about that BTW) but I wouldn't argue this proves Argentina has a lot of "cultural"
X Link 2024-02-07T22:45Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@ElbridgeColby As I said before the problem of Europe is that it's divided into many small countries: individual countries lack the size to have the potential to make a large difference and hence lack the incentive to act. But in Asia India will likely act as a counterbalance for China"
X Link 2024-02-08T15:10Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@phl43 He talked about: 1) His historical theory that Ukrainians are Russians. 2) Projected NATO expansion into Ukraine. It's the combination of the two that caused the war: Putin tolerates NATO expansion in "non-Russian" countries like Finland"
X Link 2024-02-09T17:07Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"The distinction is artificial. Frontlines do not move much when the forces are relatively equal in strength and cannot easily force the adversary to retreat or if the stronger force chooses to not execute a strategic offensive. Germany defeated the Allies in [--] days in [----] because when they attacked they basically found out their [---] divisions were so strong a force that they could easily force back the Allies across the front. In 1914-1918 the opposing forces were in a tense equilibrium. Strong enough to defend but not strong enough to force the enemy to move back. In Ukraine now I think"
X Link 2024-02-09T19:30Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@ElbridgeColby @ELuttwak Taiwan spends little because it's a little island near China that cannot really defend itself in case of invasion. It is like Luxembourg in WW2. How much Luxembourg spent on the military wouldn't make much difference regarding their deterrence to a German invasion"
X Link 2024-02-09T20:11Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@addermonk And it's not so cheap: the [---] billion of combined aid for Ukraine in [--] and [--] allowed Ukraine to inflict [-----] Russian fatalities: [--] million in aid for each fatality. As the rate of fatalities for Russians is lower now the next aid package would pay [--] or [--] times that "price.""
X Link 2024-02-10T17:14Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"Also strategically speaking the US's status as a superpower does not benefit from the continuation of this war. That's because the more aid sent the longer the war goes on and the more dead Ukrainians and Russians as a result without any strategic gain for Ukraine (as demonstrated by the failure of last year's strategic offensive). Russia's forces in Ukraine are only getting stronger every month the war goes on. Russia will gain territory for each additional day of war. If the US sends unrestricted aid to Ukraine this war will be over either if their government decides to surrender or when"
X Link 2024-02-10T21:00Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@ben_golub I think they planned to use the invasion to scare Ukraine into accepting Instambul peace terms. Which they initially did. However they discovered these terms where not time consistent: Ukraine cannot self commit to terms if they turn unfavorable ex-post"
X Link 2024-02-11T00:19Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"This video shows why in WW2 Soviet casualties were so much higher than the US and the UK: the USSR lost about [--] times the number of soldiers killed as the US or the UK lost in the war mostly because of the difference in the scale of fighting. The USSR had about 5-7 million soldiers engaging the Germans for [--] years and suffered [--] million operational casualties (soldiers killed wounded and missing in battle). They suffered a monthly rate of casualties of 8% for soldiers at the front. US+UK forces of [--] to [--] million engaged the Germans for about [--] months on the Western Front suffering 800000"
X Link 2024-02-11T21:27Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@_alice_evans In Imperial China these official positions paid enormous amounts of money. So they are celebrating because they don't need to work for the private sector since the taxpayers' money is going to support them. Not because they were not materialistic"
X Link 2024-02-12T01:06Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Relative to other developing economies Brazil has been a relative "growth disaster" over the past [--] years: GDP per capita ratio 1960-2021 (1990 international dollars) South Korea ---- [----] China ----------- [----] Indonesia ------- [---] Turkey ----------- [---] Thailand -------- [---] Egypt ------------ [---] Japan ----------- [---] India ------------ [---] Russia ---------- [---] Brazil ----------- [---] Mexico --------- [---] US -------------- [---] The main reason for this relative stagnation is the political system plus high inequality: Importante lembrar que Brasil nao teve muito crescimento desde [----] e"
X Link 2024-02-12T15:07Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"It appears to be the case that autocratic regimes like Russia and China can replicate the economic institutions of liberal democracies. However they appear to need to exist in a world where there are liberal democracies that first develop these institutions. Oh now I see why Tabarrok posted that Cold War picture. The contrast between the two illustrates Russia's convergence to the West since the 1980s this convergence ocurred both in terms institutions and living standards. Today it's easier to do business in Russia than in many Oh now I see why Tabarrok posted that Cold War picture. The"
X Link 2024-02-15T18:50Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@mtracey Mcdonald's outside the US tend to be better than inside. Thats true in general from Brazil to Japan"
X Link 2024-02-16T18:13Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@Uptheleft I remember that AirCanada lost my luggage for two days. So I might have to agree with you"
X Link 2024-02-17T13:50Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@robinhanson @a3voices US males Japan pay a fee for it's military bases: While the US doesn't have any military base in Mexico"
X Link 2024-02-17T17:40Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@timurkuran The problem with a world government is that we already tried that and it doesn't work over the long run: as the collapse of the classical civilization under Roman rule attests. Civilizations need political decentralization to flourish"
X Link 2024-02-19T15:01Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Ancient Greek culture didn't suffer from a "cult of ignorance:" Athenian philosophy lectures were described as a popular entertainment that attracted tourists in contemporary accounts (Heraclides Criticus ca. [---] BC). In particular Theophrastus' lectures were said to attract crowds of [----] at a time when Athens has only a few tens of thousands of adult male citizens (Green 1992). The Romans were a bit brutish compared to the Greeks however a natural consequence of their lower level of development. They still lacked an explicit "anti-nerd" culture that associated intellectual giftedness with"
X Link 2024-02-21T20:17Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"Ancient Greek culture didn't suffer from a "cult of ignorance:" Athenian philosophy lectures were described as a popular entertainment that attracted tourists in contemporary accounts (Heraclides Criticus ca. [---] BC). In particular Theophrastus' lectures were said to attract crowds of [----] at a time when Athens had only [--] to [--] thousands of adult male citizens (Green 1992). The Romans were a bit brutish compared to the Greeks however a natural consequence of their lower level of development. They still lacked an explicit "anti-nerd" culture that associated intellectual giftedness with"
X Link 2024-02-21T20:19Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@ElbridgeColby He is right in the sense that the modern world came from developments in Western Europe. However this obviously does not morally justifies military hegemony of countries of Western European background"
X Link 2024-02-23T12:22Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"While Maddison-type national account datasets suggests that the gap in development between the West and the rest of the world peaked around [----] life expectacy data shows that their convergence to the West's standards has been happening since the early to mid 20th century"
X Link 2024-02-24T19:36Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@Austen His company should aim to get a car among the fastest according to this multi dimensional measure: No Tesla vehicle is currently among the [--] fastest production cars. In fact the fastest Tesla is less than 2% faster than a Golf GTI"
X Link 2024-02-28T18:28Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"We are 9th in Gini index. Surprisingly Hong Kong is above us. South Africa is a the world's leader. Undefeated world champions at income inequality Undefeated world champions at income inequality"
X Link 2024-03-02T14:44Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@phl43 Yet Israel is part of the West the only such country in the Middle East. It's not a non-western country like Bhutan or Turkmenistan"
X Link 2024-03-02T16:34Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@greece_heritage Yes but the spread of ancient hellenic culture was closely related to the founding of polis which continued in the Hellenistic period with the founding of hundreds of polis across North Africa and Western Asia"
X Link 2024-03-03T00:46Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@andrei_mntn @RuxandraTeslo @BenjaminiteMD Peaceful does not mean a lack of any kind of interference. See the numerous examples of US interference even on it's allies"
X Link 2024-03-03T16:10Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@andrei_mntn @BenjaminiteMD @RuxandraTeslo [--]. Unconditional surrender is a type of peace terms. [--]. It increasingly looks like that Russia will be going to force Ukraine into unconditional surrender if they are not going to accept any peace terms as it looks like Russia is not going to stop attacking"
X Link 2024-03-03T23:37Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@StefanFSchubert @Redistrict @itaisher We have to compare apples with apples: polls with polls. Trump was -7.2% on national polls RCP average just before election in [----] and now is +2.3%. Overall this suggests this election will be a very easy victory for Trump"
X Link 2024-03-04T13:53Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@DellAnnaLuca The overall relationship was not clear so these factors probably cancelled each other to varying degrees across countries"
X Link 2024-03-04T17:29Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@ElbridgeColby @VOANews @Eunjung_VOA It's simple: US is a country of [---] million China+Russia are [----] million with clearly superior industrial resources. Given it's resources the US cannot overpower both at the same time (unlike [--] years ago) so it needs a smarter strategy to live with these rival powers"
X Link 2024-03-06T16:03Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@patrissimo @ESYudkowsky I can make a 3rd argument: the degree of technological complexity required to make AI is so high that it is beyond the current scale of our modern civilization. AI might be feasible in an imagined future civilization with populations of hundreds of billions/trillions of people"
X Link 2024-03-07T18:34Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@eyeslasho The big strategic blunder was the US's policy to expand NATO at all costs. This lead to war which revealed Western military weakness: that combined NATO countries can make only 1/7 as many artillery shells as Russia and that Western equipment is not really superior"
X Link 2024-03-07T18:44Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"In Vietnam the US lost the war but there was no uncertainty that US casualties were much lower than North Vietnam's. That was because US was much larger and more developed so it was able to deploy much more firepower inflicting heavier casualties. Similarly there is no uncertainty that Ukraine is suffering much heavier casualties than Russia. It's true that the Russians suffered heavier casualties when they deployed large numbers of convicts as low quality infantry in late 2022-early [----] than now. But overall I don't think those tens of thousands of convicts were numerous enough to greatly"
X Link 2024-03-07T20:14Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@tracewoodgrains @RuxandraTeslo @CoriolisI The US actions in WW2 basically prevented Stalin from occupying the whole of continental Europe: salvaging France Benelux and West Germany was a success. The US couldn't have prevented Stalin from expanding his sphere of influence in Eastern Europe"
X Link 2024-03-09T13:37Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"With something magical called statistics: The US has [---] million citizens China has [----] million. Since [----] million is much larger than [---] million China has much more demographic resources. China's output of steel concrete motor vehicles chemicals electricity and industrial machinery is between [--] to [--] times the US's for each of these categories. Thus Chinese industrial resources are also much larger than the US's"
X Link 2024-03-09T18:16Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@besttrousers Not quite I think that the anomalously high unemployment rate was also likely due to some other policies:"
X Link 2024-03-09T18:59Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@diomavro That's not true. Indian per capita GDP increased by about 400% since the 1990s so in India extreme poverty is now almost eradicated:"
X Link 2024-03-09T19:05Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@diomavro Extreme poverty in many other large countries has decreased a lot in the last decades like in Egypt Brazil Bangladesh Vietnam Thailand Indonesia etc"
X Link 2024-03-09T19:06Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@robinhanson Here are Brazilian exports to the "global north" (i.e. US EU Japan) and "global south"; in [----] the "global north" was clearly dominant accounting for 2/3 of Brazil's exports. Things changed quite a bit since"
X Link 2024-03-09T22:16Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@somatichealer01 @heimbergecon Actually these two graphs cannot be consistent. It is not like Europeans began working a lot more hours than Americans so per-hour productivity fell behind per-worker productivity. Most of this divergence is likely due to error or methodological differences"
X Link 2024-03-10T16:03Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@CalvinMccarter @simongerman600 The decline was basically a slow collapse of social/economic institutions. Only when this general slow collapse reached a level deep enough that the institution of the emperor itself became unstable"
X Link 2024-03-10T23:29Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@CalvinMccarter @simongerman600 The decline in the silver content of coins illustrates a civilization whose long decline was already occuring for [---] years before it manifested itself into an instability of imperial rule:"
X Link 2024-03-10T23:37Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"Yes because our world has a very important difference from the Greco-Roman world. Our world is multipolar with two hundred countries and several major powers while the ancient Greco-Roman world was unipolar with Rome as the central power that had subjected over 80% of the population of both Europe and the Middle East and roughly 99% of the writers of all surviving literature from Europe and the Middle East. This meant a homogeneous civilization that lacked robustness against negative shocks such as a low fertility problem. But the Late Classical and Hellenistic Greek world that is antiquity"
X Link 2024-03-11T18:41Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@prchovanec Well it's likely Trump will be elected. If Vivek is vice-president then looks like US policy would be officially "Taiwan you will be officially on your own after date X""
X Link 2024-03-15T19:12Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@OptimoPrincipi It looked like Athens: a Greek city with an acropolis dominating the skyline"
X Link 2024-03-18T20:25Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"I do agree that culture matters but not in the sense that it explains hegemony. For example Athens was perhaps the most culturally influential/powerful state that has ever existed. Yet militarily it was defeated so many times and reduced to nothing by the late Hellenistic period while its culture became the standard culture of the ancient (western) world. Cultural influence alone does not translate into hegemony. But culture certainly matters a lot. I do expect countries with more similar cultures to go to war more frequently than countries with very dissimilar cultures"
X Link 2024-03-19T01:24Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@lymanstoneky In Greece the population growth from 8th to the 4th century BC was of about an order of magnitude faster than in both Europe and China over the last [---] years. But that was a very special case (it was as exceptional as our modern civilization)"
X Link 2024-03-20T14:19Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"The Persians didn't exist in classical antiquity after Alexander the Great incorporated this empire into his dominions. However I think you might be referring to the Parthians a set of central asian tribes that dominated what is modern Iran and parts of Iraq during the time of the Late Republic and Early Empire. Militarily the Germanic tribes were a bigger issue for Rome than the Parthians. This is shown in the deployment of legions: in the 1st-2nd century roughly 18-20 legions were deployed near Germanic tribes and only 7-8 legions near the Parthian territory. Tacitus himself states the"
X Link 2024-03-21T02:25Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@GhostCoase @primalpoly With globalization the number of great powers drastically reduced as former "local" powers like Portugal and Japan became small next to the superpowers. By the late 20th century the US and USSR were much bigger than other countries leaving the world with only two great powers"
X Link 2024-03-22T21:18Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@GhostCoase @primalpoly Taiwan without US is helpless next to China its 1.6% of China's population compare to Ukraine's 30% of Russia's population. The thing is Chinese industrial superiority over the US is already very large but the US's thousands of nukes essentially level the strategic field"
X Link 2024-03-22T21:24Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@EconBerger Not really. Very few non-EU and US tourists go to Britain. Besides Italy and France Greece Spain and Germany are certainly more popular tourist destinations for Brazilians than Britain. Likely Turkey as well"
X Link 2024-03-27T03:19Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@PossebomVitor Importante notar que as estimativas do Maddison ja eram de um crecimento menor para esses [--] anos do que as estimativas do IBGE"
X Link 2024-04-01T13:57Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@phl43 Lula currently has 47% approval rating and it's expected he will have difficulty running again. But Brazil is moving towards US in recent years: new electoral laws were passed in Brazil to reduce the number of parties in congress. From a peak of [--] parties to only [--] now:"
X Link 2024-04-01T19:00Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@policytensor Wages in terms of silver are the 17th century equivalent to nominal dollars and obviously countries with nominal dollar wages [--] times lower tend to be also poorer in real terms. Pomeranz arguments are not rigorous. I wrote about these issues in my blog: https://rafaelrguthmann.substack.com/p/the-great-convergence https://rafaelrguthmann.substack.com/p/the-great-convergence"
X Link 2024-04-02T14:49Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@jdcmedlock @besttrousers Why would the Great Recession be basically equivalent to a pandemic"
X Link 2024-04-02T18:14Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@bryan_caplan @NoahCarl90 By this "lack of immigration" metric Argentina is also much greater success story than countries like the US and Australia"
X Link 2024-04-02T18:39Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@whyvert When talking about world history people like Ian Morris re-defined "the West" to include the Middle East. This basically includes all the contacts Europeans had with non-Europeans before modern times"
X Link 2024-04-05T22:18Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@whyvert David Wilkinson uses the term "central civilization" instead of "Western" to include both Europe and the Middle East as one civilization. He categorizes "Western" as one historical phase of this central civilization:"
X Link 2024-04-05T22:24Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@whyvert The concept of central civilization makes sense conceptualizing civilizations as systems of international relations. By this definition today this central civilization is the world's only surviving civilization: Chinese Indian Aztec systems were assimilated into the system"
X Link 2024-04-05T22:31Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@whyvert That implies in a different definition of civilization besides a system of international relations. Europe and the Middle East are often said to have been different civilizations because of their different religions for example"
X Link 2024-04-05T22:37Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@StefanFSchubert @KAErdmann Looks like it increased about 20% since [----]. That is relative stagnation compared to the growth from [----] to [----]. Also if we deflate GDP by the CPI (like with wages) instead of the BEA deflator then much of this growth disappears. Industrial production actually decreased:"
X Link 2024-04-06T19:22Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@StefanFSchubert @KAErdmann It is true that if you add net imports of manufactured goods to get an index of "industrial consumption" then per capita "industrial consumption" has performed better since [----] but even considering the massive increase in imports this index had negative growth over 2000-2022"
X Link 2024-04-06T19:38Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@BrazilBrian ".2022 was extraordinary crisis of democracy.therefore they say Moraes had to fight fire with fire " Thats classic dictatorship playbook. Brazil has severe issues with the supreme court that damage free political dialogue and make it's policial system less democratic"
X Link 2024-04-07T19:35Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@BrazilBrian Since no society existing today is 100% democratic (Switzerland might be the closest to being 100% democratic) the question wheter Brazil is "on the brink of dictatorship" or not is subjective. Its very clear that a judiciary that criminalizes policial speech is antidemocratic"
X Link 2024-04-07T19:38Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@BrazilBrian Since no society existing today is 100% democratic (Switzerland might be the closest to being 100% democratic) the question wheter Brazil is "on the brink of dictatorship" or not is subjective. But its clear that a judiciary that criminalizes political speech is antidemocratic"
X Link 2024-04-07T19:40Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@Undercoverhist An economist really made it if they have post-UFC fight citations"
X Link 2024-04-14T19:32Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@phl43 To maintain its huge sphere of influence the US needs to maintain deterrence and spread its assets throughout it. Major war with Iran would force the US to focus its assets on Iran. Thus most of its sphere would become a vacuum and so countries would reorient mostly to China"
X Link 2024-04-14T21:39Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@arpitrage The ad of Xiaomi car plant makes it appear pretty amazing in terms of automation: https://youtu.be/kYkgXkoEBzgsi=XZssDWQVoAMxrI1n https://youtu.be/kYkgXkoEBzgsi=XZssDWQVoAMxrI1n"
X Link 2024-04-15T04:04Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@nilocobau Data with regards to housing space per person shows the gap between US and Europe is not remotely as large as his claim. In countries like Italy and Germany housing space per capita is 2/3 of US's"
X Link 2024-04-15T13:48Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"That patent pie from [----] is basically a demographic map of the developed world in [----]. Therefore gains from increasing institutional quality are the greatest when applied to the most populous countries because they house the greatest potential to produce innovation. "As Jones writes 'The entire world stands to gain when the biggest countries with the best institutions innovate. That means the entire world has a stake in the governance the institutional quality of the worlds seven most innovative nations:'" https://t.co/GWtK0ficFJ "As Jones writes 'The entire world stands to gain when the"
X Link 2024-04-15T15:35Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"The fact that the [--] biggest innovators in [----] were rather small compared to [--] most populous countries illustrates the potential for growth in the technological frontier from the development of the global south:"
X Link 2024-04-15T15:41Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@mmjukic I wouldn't call the 20-30% gap in GDP per capita of US from typical-EU countries as being "far wealthier." That term I would use for something like the Pakistan-US gap"
X Link 2024-04-15T15:57Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@EvanSandsmark @mmjukic Thing is that the US dollar is very strong right now. A dollar was much cheaper 11-12 years ago: a dollar cost [--] yen in [----] now it costs [---] yen and the US had much more inflation than Japan since 2012"
X Link 2024-04-15T16:13Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"The average size of houses in square feet: UK - [---] Japan - [----] Germany/France - [----] US - [----] Saudi Arabia - [----] Ancient Greece - ca. 2800-4000 (in the 4th century BC) Yep Saudis have the biggest houses in the world today. But the average household size is ca. [---]. I added labels. https://t.co/n0GdIiLMMG I added labels. https://t.co/n0GdIiLMMG"
X Link 2024-04-15T19:03Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Mises' popularity in South America is perhaps due to the region's embrace of European-style social democratic policies with large welfare states. Which in developing countries without lot of potential for tax revenues means fiscal insolvency and economic crisis. Naturally the inhabitants of the region are now paying more attention to free-market thinkers. But why Mises and not other famous free-market "activist economists" like Hayek or Friedman Friedman and Hayek are actually just more famous in English-speaking countries because both had their careers in those countries. But Mises was"
X Link 2024-04-16T19:28Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@itaisher Most people are well aware that belief and truth are different things"
X Link 2024-04-17T13:43Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"As the world's capital markets became integrated the return on capital is higher in the "global south" where capital originating in the "global north" flows into increasing growth. But Piketty has to feel mad about it because this capital earn returns the 😱. Bottom line: rich countries pretend to be in favour of fair & open markets devlopment for all etc. but in practice the way financial markets are organized & regulated leads to an enormous income transfer from global South to global North year after year & growing over time Bottom line: rich countries pretend to be in favour of fair &"
X Link 2024-04-18T22:14Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@Empty_America @mmjukic Brazil has more habitable land than the US if you define as "habitable" lands where you don't need heating or AC to survive year round. While with modern heating and AC technology then whole of Russia is habitable"
X Link 2024-04-19T18:34Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@ernietedeschi It's likely that is just measurement error. Productivity growth across advanced economies is determined by the technological frontier which is determined by technology which is globally available (except for countries that are very isolated like North Korea)"
X Link 2024-04-20T16:47Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@phl43 @BergAslak The main argument for the US's support in the war is that it provides deterrence for any future wars: the US is saying that it will provide full and reliable support for the duration of any conflict where Russia or China tries to impose their will onto smaller countries"
X Link 2024-04-20T19:24Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@BrunaFrascolla Rothbard se classificava como esquerda e dizia que Marxistas e socialistas em geral eram centro porque usam metodos conservadores (ditadura/autocracia e coercao estatal) para atingir objetivos progressistas. Jah Rothbard se considerava progressista em objetivos e metodos"
X Link 2024-04-21T14:40Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@pfnery Dira que [--] milhoes de aposentados para [--] milhoes de trabalhadores formais (que inclu funcionario pblico) meio tenso. Deveria ter uns 3-4 trabalhadores formais no setor privado para cada aposentado ou funcionario pblico"
X Link 2024-04-22T04:55Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@JoelPinheiro85 Existe uma diferenca entre cortar impostos e aumentar beneficios em ano eleitoral (algo que nao la muito tico mas perfectamente legal) e censurar fatos inconvenientes para um candidato:"
X Link 2024-04-22T19:21Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@MindlessSelfIn @ElbridgeColby 1930s Germany was a developed country at the frontier of science and technology. But about half of the size of the US in terms of population. China today is still a developing country (close to being developed but not yet) but it is four times the size of the US population"
X Link 2024-04-23T21:53Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@ElbridgeColby It appears that the current US strategy besides cosmetic actions like tik-tok ban and listing it as an "adversary country" is to not oppose China at all. They are focused on containing Russia maybe bcse its much weaker power and so they evaluated it as one they could take on"
X Link 2024-04-25T15:14Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@heimbergecon To be fair OECD said Greek GDP per capita was 37% of US in [----] today it's around 45-50%"
X Link 2024-04-25T17:07Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
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