talmon joseph smith
@talmonsmith
economics reporter @NYTimes for @nytimesbusiness || formerly @GQmagazine, NYU, @tufts|| newyorleanian || [email protected]|| rep’d by @aevitascreative
rounding out the year with some personal news: it's book time
the ONLY thing keeping Google from going super hard and wide with this immediately is that it will kill their entire existing ad model overnight they have to figure out how not to cannibalize themselves and that will be hard (they could give a shit about news orgs)
I now think in a few years, certainly after the next presidential election, cross-party elite opinion will have gravitated towards a soft consensus that the Trump tariffs, while slapdash and sometimes misdirected, were net good and trade barriers should have been higher earlier.
cross pressures i'm seeing: --folks yell at men to go get good jobs in construction and the trades that pay well --then yell about the costs of construction and trades people who are organized --govt can help things pencil but libs and conservatives love illegal/underpriced labor
I never thought it would happen to me. There is scaffolding going up outside my window. How long will it be here, 8 weeks, 8 years? No one can say.
car insurance has increased by 45.8% since 2022 if you were to start a mixed economy from scratch, you probably 1) would not have an oligopoly in this market 2) wouldnt allow them to be publicly traded firms with an obligation for margin protection & year over year profit growth
Gotta admit I love the idea of 18 year olds taking out massive student loans so they can help pay the University quarterback his $4m salary startribune.com/new-u-student-…
In fact, young men with a college degree now have the same unemployment rate as young men who didn’t go to college, completely erasing the graduate employment premium. Whereas a healthy premium remains for young women.
The Wire is a documentary.
A D.C. police commander is under investigation for allegedly making changes to crime statistics in his district. The police union claims supervisors manipulate crime data to make it appear violent crime has fallen considerably compared to last year. nbc4dc.com/WSssIZY
ever think about how all of this (everything, our entire lived world) is only possible because of thumbs? just...thumbs. no thumbs, no anything.
I’ve been saying
It would be extremely good if we had a residential investment boom. But I do not agree that this is an alternative to zoning reform. The best case for a boom is that we must *take full advantage* of all of the necessary and powerful zoning reforms taking place across the country.
The US desperately needs a home construction boom. But it's not happening. New homes completed plunged in June to the lowest level since January 2022. Building permits and housing starts are also at some of the lowest levels since the pandemic. Yes, zoning rule changes would…