What Brad DeLong thinks about design
Economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury. Author of Slouching Towards Utopia and writer of the Grasping Reality newsletter.
Everything they publish, on ppll ↗
Brad DeLong did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
12 dated positions, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Brad DeLong has said — not written or endorsed by them.
The line under a date shows how recently it was said: empty within a month, full after three years.
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Their wordsHaving separate identities for your private life and work life is not just health[ier], but also a vastly superior product experience.
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Their wordsA self made legible to all roles at once maximizes role strain rather than resolving it.
- 4 days earlier
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Their wordsBut we have not yet built the habits of mind, or the institutions, appropriate to its successor. We are like the first generation of factory workers who still tried to farm on Sundays: our reflexes were formed for a régime of scarcity, and they misfire badly in a régime of superabundance.
- 2 days earlier
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Their wordsTrump's approval has had some news-driven spikes. But the overall trend has been quite persistently downward.
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Their wordsThe café is one of the last machines we have for manufacturing the unplanned collisions.
↗Sana’a Café: Dwight & Telegraph: FRIDAY FOG & FLATLANDSbraddelong.substack.com
- 3 days earlier
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Their wordsMuse’s rise is a useful reminder that AI consumer products can gain share quickly, given buzz and distribution. Users can switch applications at negligible cost, while the underlying model intelligence is available to every serious competitor.
↗FaceBook’s Muse on the Apple iOS App Store: CHART OF THE DAYbraddelong.substack.com
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Their wordsBarry Ritholtz’s guide to building a reading list is generous, disciplined, and quietly self-defeating — because the better his curation, the more it adds to the very flood it’s meant to tame.
↗READING: BARRY RITHOLTZ: How I Build My Reading Listsbraddelong.substack.com
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsIn a word, no. In a few words I’d say this, I’ve always been interested in a neutral rate as an academic matter. Back when I learned economics we used to think of it as the Wicksellian rate, the real equilibrium rate. It’s useful academically, it’s -- it’s a discussion to help us think about policy. Do I think it has any operational effect on decisions that we make today? No, I don’t.
↗CROSSPOST: CLAUDIA SAHM: Questions for the [Fed] Chair [Kevin Warsh]braddelong.substack.com
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Our readingThe AI buildout is unlikely to be a hyperprofits engine for research labs and attached companies.
Their wordsThis week brought me news increasing my confidence with respect to one thing it is not: it is unlikely to be a hyperprofits engine for research labs with companies attached making money serving up calculations made in datacenters by simulated neural networks.
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsthe distinctive modern pathology is unopposed rhetoric: values statements and PR that pre-empt criticism as they are designed to never face an advocate on the other side.
↗CROSSPOST: NICHOLAS GRUEN: Hobbes on Spin & Bullshitbraddelong.substack.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsDisagreement is, often, genuinely about values or truly contested facts.
↗CROSSPOST: NICHOLAS GRUEN: Hobbes on Spin & Bullshitbraddelong.substack.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 4 days earlier
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Their wordsAnd when market opinion is nervous, it might turn and collapse the boom at any moment.
↗DataCenter Risk Is the Real Thing: CHART OF THE DAYbraddelong.substack.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
The line under a date fills as the words age, a quarter at a time: past a month, six months, a year, and three years. Empty means said within the last month; full, more than three years ago. It says when, not whether it still holds — a change of mind is marked on the claim itself.
Dashed means we only know the words existed by that date; they may be older.