Noahpinion
Noah Smith · 68 korrents · 26 pieces · noahpinion.blog
AI vs. the railroads3 korrents · 15 Oct 2026 · no page here yet
- Any slowdown in the pace of AI revenue growth could cause a blowup because companies are borrowing a lot more money now.
- AI is one of the two biggest infrastructure booms in American history.
- Increased borrowing by hyperscalers creates a financial danger where they might default on debt if revenue does not arrive.
A Nobel for New Keynesian macro, at last!1 korrent · 13 Oct 2026 · no page here yet
Maybe the Rapture is already here2 korrents · 9 Oct 2026 · no page here yet
There is no “Indian Question”2 korrents · 7 Oct 2026 · no page here yet
What the AI boom is doing for Americans1 korrent · 5 Oct 2026 · no page here yet
The second Trump presidency is a world-historic failure2 korrents · 3 Oct 2026 · no page here yet
No, you are not on Indigenous land1 korrent · 24 Sept 2026 · no page here yet
How we can beat China3 korrents · 20 Sept 2026 · no page here yet
- The United States is too internally divided to pursue the far-seeing, purposeful kind of international competition it waged effectively in the 20th century.
- Donald Trump has willfully degraded or torn up America's key alliances, especially with Europe, creating enmity where friendship existed.
- Donald Trump has forfeited America's claim to moral superiority over China.
Roundup #88: Is it time to panic yet?3 korrents · 18 Sept 2026 · no page here yet
- AI will be as central to how the world is run and to humanity's future as industrial technology was from 1870 to 1970.
- Japan is not usefully described as a Confucian society; the label is applied as a lazy racial category.
- A competent, empowered civil service that performs crucial government functions with in-house expertise is good.
The anti-American Right3 korrents · 16 Sept 2026 · no page here yet
- The New Right will view nonwhite immigrants and their children as enemies and invaders no matter what they do.
- The New Right sees the world as zero-sum group competition, viewing Indian admissions to universities as White people being replaced.
- The New Right's pathological inability to understand alliances and coalition-building will ultimately doom it.
Two missing pieces in the AI safety discussion2 korrents · 14 Sept 2026 · no page here yet
Get the Middle East out of my politics!3 korrents · 12 Sept 2026 · no page here yet
- The era of heavy U.S. involvement in the Middle East has been a disaster for U.S. power and prestige and should end.
- The War on Terror, including the fight against ISIS, was generally successful and necessary.
- The United States needs general disengagement from the Middle East, including ending military adventures, dialing back support for allies including Israel, and rejecting Middle Eastern issues in domestic politics.
Liberalism needs a new philosophy of immigration2 korrents · 9 Sept 2026 · no page here yet
AI keeps stubbornly refusing to take our jobs2 korrents · 7 Sept 2026 · no page here yet
America is still beating China in the AI race3 korrents · 5 Sept 2026 · no page here yet
- A large, sustained AI capability lead by either the US or China could shift the global balance of power between them.
- It seems much more likely that China would cooperate on AI safety if US AI capabilities were comfortably ahead.
- AI-enabled cyberwarfare lacks an equivalent of nuclear deterrence's mutually assured destruction.
Why you won’t get a flying car3 korrents · 3 Sept 2026 · no page here yet
Roundup #87: Technology BAD!!3 korrents · 1 Sept 2026 · no page here yet
- AI alignment will forever involve balancing a tradeoff between paperclip-maximizing and disempowerment, because these rival concepts of alignment are fundamentally incompatible.
- Humans will keep their jobs for a good long time because someone will need to keep AIs on task.
- America is missing out on the global electrification revolution, the first major tech shift it has completely whiffed on.
Could development economics be more useful?5 korrents · 6 May 2026
Our page for this piece →Read it on noahpinion.blog ↗
- It is better for researchers to study something knowable than something unknowable, even when the knowable question matters less.
- Economic development happened once in each country, which is why the big theories of why nations get rich cannot be tested.
- Development economists can contribute far less to a poor country’s growth policy in real time than either they or their critics assume.
- There is no science of development, and it is not clear there ever will be one.
- Pushing development economists onto the big questions risks pressing them to pretend they have big answers.
Yes, assimilation is good7 korrents · 9 Apr 2026
Our page for this piece →Read it on noahpinion.blog ↗
- A multi-ethnic nation cannot survive as a salad bowl in which each group keeps its distinctiveness indefinitely.
- Cultures that stay permanently separate inside one country end up unequal.
- A country without cultural unity struggles to provide public goods, because its politics turns into an ethnic spoils system.
- Assimilation should never require an immigrant to give up their religion or their heritage.
- Shared everyday experience binds a nation together better than shared ancestry does.
- The current American movement against immigration is a periodic nativist backlash of the kind the country has had before, not a new phenomenon.
I think India can do it3 korrents · 18 Dec 2025
Our page for this piece →Read it on noahpinion.blog ↗
- If India holds its current growth rate it will be a developed country within about two decades.
- Most manufacturing miracles began with women moving from farms to cities into labour-intensive light industry.
- India’s government has shown it can push pro-growth reform through over the objections of incumbents.
Corporations aren't the reason your rent is too high1 korrent · 13 Aug 2025 · no page here yet
Developing countries: A follow-up6 korrents · 14 Jul 2025
Our page for this piece →Read it on noahpinion.blog ↗
- Industrialisation is still a live path for poor countries today, despite all the post-pandemic pessimism.
- Whether India gets rich will decide much of the course of human flourishing this century.
- Export success is not enough: a country that wants to manufacture has to build whole domestic ecosystems of interrelated industries.
- Exporting natural resources can lift a country out of poverty and cannot make it rich.
- What keeps poor countries poor is political and economic instability, not a shortage of well-designed programmes.
- A country can still catch up all the way to developed-country income without producing a world-beating national champion manufacturer.
On immigration, what Americans want is democratic control2 korrents · 28 Oct 2024
China's demographics will be fine through mid-century1 korrent · 20 Jun 2024
Market-rate housing will make your city cheaper1 korrent · 25 Mar 2024 · no page here yet
Four things I got wrong since I started this blog3 korrents · a turn · 25 Jul 2022 · no page here yet
- Pandemic relief checks function mainly as retroactive social insurance rather than stimulus, because people receiving them during a pandemic save or pay down debt instead of spending.
- Cash welfare benefits contributed at least somewhat to the inflation of 2021-2022.
- Stocks sustained by persistent online attention can stay overpriced for long periods, so overvaluation alone does not imply a near-term correction.