I’ve seen critiques of the poor methodology and cherry-picking in The Bell Curve but I haven’t seen much about the absolutely deranged fever dream of predictions about the coming decades in its closing chapters. It has been 30 years, so let's review. 🧵:

George's understanding of urban rent is shockingly more cogent and prophetic. Why anyone would consider Marx a useful theorist here is beyond me.

The ratio of aggregate income to housing supply explains ~81% of variance in large metro median home values, so it’s kind of wild how often I encounter analysis of the affordability crisis that doesn’t even mention jobs.

Follow the money!

Donald Trump has gone full NIMBY.

It should be absolutely unacceptable for ANY local democrats to side with Trump over Biden’s pro-housing agenda. Every NIMBY Democrat should be primaried.

Very weird when people don't see that government intervention and grievance politics can come from the right. Laissez-faire capitalism and individualism isn't the only form of conservatism. There's a reason why Friedman called himself libertarian and Hayek a (classical) liberal.

The whole 2008/2009 housing/banking crisis was basically about lots of people doing what Trump has been convicted of doing--exaggerating the value of his assets to borrow against them. 15 years ago many of Trump's defenders were complaining that no one went to jail for this.

Talk about sowing the wind, reaping the whirlwind. Or maybe in this case: sowing the whirlwind reaping more whirlwind.

NIMBYs use a lot of rhetorical tricks around “luxury housing” and “vacant units” to try and obfuscate the objective underlying fact:

the best way to make rents more affordable is building a lot of housing. it’s basic supply and demand backed by real world data.

Ulysses S. Grant's feelings on this exact issue are not open to debate. He wrote them down. It's in Chapter 67 of his Personal Memoirs.

Robert E. Lee's 'cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.'

Antivaxxer claims that an increase in cardiac-associated deaths beginning in spring of 2020 was caused by vaccines that were first available in early 2021. What happened in 2020 that could possibly have caused such a thing? 🤔 jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/…

Members of an antivax group wonder why they keep getting sick with a cough and fever

Is it from vaccines shedding onto them, chemtrails in the skies, or not drinking enough urine?

This is Carlos Pena. Last year, a SWAT team threw more than 30 grenades into his printing shop, destroying almost everything. Carlos was not suspected of a crime.

Then, the city left him with the bill. He can no longer make a steady living.

He's not the first victim. A thread.

Doctors who spread antivaccine misinformation enrich big pharma.

So, no, we don’t agree.

More…

All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. Here's why I'd never look to Rogan for a debate; I'd expect only a mockery of it. If you can't count on a host and his fans to apply rudimentary logic, how can you expect them to be able to tell who won the debate?

I've been joking around about this, but the way you can tell the Supreme Court corruption scandal is genuinely scandalous and genuinely corrupt is by following the logic of their own jurisprudence on public corruption issues.

“There is not enough com­pe­ti­tion in the food sec­tor, es­pe­cially in dis­tri­b­u­tion,” said Lu­dovic Sub­ran, chief econ­omist at Al­lianz. wsj.com/articles/why-i…

Couldn’t agree more

It pertains to masks, But applies to any number of interventions, notably #rapidtests for public health use

“Scientists need self/discipline to avoid conducting studies that cannot answer the question that they ask”

statnews.com/2023/05/02/do-…