link roundup
There have been two blockbuster policy things that have come out recently. I suspect everyone who reads this newsletter has already seen them, but:
Sam Bowman, Samuel Hughes and Ben Southwood have put out an incredible manifesto outlining why Britain has stagnated. As noted by Kane Emerson, they take a somewhat right wing view on growth, but I think growth is key for the left as well. A welfare state that works takes $$$ (or in this case, £££); we need growth to continue to provide a functioning safety net.
IFP has put out a series on metascience 101, featuring Heidi Williams, Caleb Watney, Alexander Berger, Patrick Collison and Matt Clancy.
US mortality increases are concentrated in the bottom 10% of the education distribution. I also read Melissa Kearney’s The Two Parent Privilege this weekend, which also sort of makes the same point; the US has very bad outcomes for people near the bottom of the educational distribution. How do we fix this? I… don’t really know, but it seems like a key policy challenge in the US.
Across a large sample of cities in a wide variety of countries, tighter land use control drives people into the informal sector instead (that is, slums).1
Asterisk also has a really good piece on developing country cities (and how they do and do not drive development).
Work from home increases the likelihood of employment for people with disabilities. This makes intuitive sense to me; also, suggests that WFH should be considered as a tool for making work more accessible.
Doing a PhD is bad for your mental health. To quote Shea Minter on Twitter, “my friends and I have been investigating this using small sample ethnographic methods for years”.
Costco UK sells LEGO luggage. I want it so badly.
Yes, I have a YIMBYism For The Developing World manifesto in progress; I’m actually going to write it next month, I promise.