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"Luke Ford reports all of the 'juicy' quotes, and has been doing it for years." (Marc B. Shapiro)
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff) LATEST POSTS:
- Dennis Prager v Cedars-Sinai Lawsuit
- Dennis Prager Through Randall Collins: Interaction Ritual Chains
- What is a ‘Received Idea’?
- Jordan Bardella: The Manufacture of Normality
- Everyone Became Television: Bourdieu’s Warning and the 2026 Iran War
- Marine Le Pen
- The Coalition-Proximity Rule
- Nigel Farage
- Bernard Haykel: A Life Between the Text and the Gun
- Walker Connor (1926-2017)
- Benedict Anderson and the Nation as Imagination
- Anthony D. Smith: The Student Who Kept the Question and Rejected the Answer
- Ernest Gellner
- Eric Kaufmann: The Man Who Made the Majority Visible
- Dominic Cummings: A Biography
- Steve Lopez: The Last City Columnist
- California Historian Kevin Starr
- Stephen Kotkin: A Life in Power
- William T. Vollmann: An American Life in Excess
- Rod Dreher: A Life in Exile
BEST POSTS:
- * The Enlightenment Wasn’t Enlightened (6-23-26)
* Mr. Burge Draws The Line (6-23-26)
* 'Improving on Democracy' (6-17-26)
* People Leak To People Who Are Fun (6-11-26)
* Why Does Australia Produce So Many Great Journalists? (6-11-26)
* Steve Wynn and the Press: Power, Litigation, and the Contest Over Las Vegas (6-3-26)
* Sheldon Adelson and the Journalists (6-3-26)
* The Vigilant Animal: Thinkers Who Reject the Myth of Human Gullibility (6-2-26)
* The Cost of Refusing the Misunderstanding Myth (6-2-26)
* Show Me How It Travels (6-2-26)
* The Norm Explainers (6-2-26)
* Centering Marginalized Voices (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Washington Post put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Financial Times put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for the Los Angeles Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for The New York Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* Why Wembanyama Lives on the Perimeter (5-31-26)
* The Emotional Palettes Of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco & Sacramento (5-27-26)
* The Administrative Capital: Sacramento Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* San Diego - The Quiet Republic (5-27-26)
* The Quiet Bar: San Diego Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* SF v LA Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* Why Talent Travels Poorly Between San Francisco and Los Angeles (5-27-26)
* San Francisco and Los Angeles as Rival Models of Urban Access (5-27-26)
* Social Cliques in New York, 2026 (5-25-26)
* Social Cliques in San Francisco, 2026 (5-25-26)
* The Rival Courts of Washington (5-25-26)
* The City of Private Rooms (5-25-26)
Category Archives: Economics
The Worship Of Abstract Theory Over Human Welfare
The buffered love to worship theory while the porous are more likely to love other things. Robert Lighthizer writes in his 2023 book, No Trade Is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America’s Workers: Free trade is always … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Judaism, Marc B. Shapiro
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Trump Fires Fed’s Serial Fabulist Lisa Cooke
Peer-reviewed reanalysis Michael Wiebe (2024), “Can We Detect the Effects of Racial Violence on Patenting? Reanalyzing an Article by Lisa Cook,” Econ Journal Watch — questions log specifications, treatment of riots/segregation laws, and reproduces weaker/insignificant effects under alternative, arguably cleaner … Continue reading
Posted in Economics
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The Prestige Economy
The more prestigious your job (such as an Ivy League professor or network news anchor), the more vulnerable you are to cancellation for crime think. The professor and the elite journalist primarily work in a prestige economy while the businessman … Continue reading
Posted in Economics
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Politics As Resource Distribution
There seems to be a strong belief among the elite, as exemplified by the 2004 book What’s The Matter With Kansas?, that politics should primarily be about resource distribution. I moved to America in 1977 when I was 11. By … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Politics, Populism, Stephen Turner
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The Wealth Of Nations (1776)
1. “Division of Labor” Yeah, Adam Smith says dividing labor increases productivity. Which explains why I’m broke—my labor’s been divided so many times there’s nothing left but me handing out resumes and emotional damage. 2. “Invisible Hand” Adam Smith’s invisible … Continue reading
Posted in Economics
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Did NAFTA improve the standard of living for the average American?
Nathan and Dave Green debate this question. Grok says: The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), implemented in 1994, had a mixed impact on the standard of living for the average American, with evidence suggesting modest overall benefits but significant … Continue reading
Posted in Economics
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The Washington Consensus
Grok says: The Washington Consensus refers to a set of ten economic policy prescriptions promoted in the late 1980s and 1990s by institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and U.S. Treasury, primarily for developing countries. Coined by economist John Williamson … Continue reading
Posted in Economics
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The World Turned Upside Down: America, China, and the Struggle for Global Leadership
Clyde Prestowitz wrote in this 2021 book: The United States got rich by imitating Great Britain and thereby marking a trail followed by Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, and South Korea — all of … Continue reading
Posted in Economics
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Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests (2001)
Ralph Gomory, the former IBM chief scientist and Sloan Foundation president, and William J. Baumol, former American Economics Association president, wrote: * In [David] Ricardo’s time trade is estimated to have constituted about 1 percent of world GDP. Since then, … Continue reading
Posted in Economics
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The Prestige Of Economics
Inflation has dropped every month under Donald Trump. Economists and media are hardest hit. Economists in particular were predicting higher inflation due to Trump’s tariffs. They were wrong. Again. The credibility and prestige of social science depends in large part … Continue reading
Posted in Economics
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