Edward Conard

Top Ten New York Times Bestselling Author

  • “…a must-read for serious students of economic policy.” - Glenn Hubbard, Dean, Columbia Business School, and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
  • “…a fresh argument for the productive value of inequality.” - David Autor, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • “…a comprehensive explanation of the modern economy.” - Julian Robertson, Founder, Tiger Management
  • “Unintended Consequences offers deep and well-argued analyses on almost every issue.” - The New York Times
  • “…challenges misconceptions that distort our economic debates.” - Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute
  • “Unintended Consequences is far smarter and more thought-provoking than most economics written for the general public” - Greg Mankiw, Harvard University, Former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors
  • “…serious thinking for serious thinkers. …a thought-provoking blueprint for growing middle- and working-class incomes.” - Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts
  • “…challenges misconceptions that distort our economic debates.” - Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute
  • “…a fresh argument for the productive value of inequality.” - David Autor, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • “A full-throated defense of economic dynamism.” - The Wall Street Journal
  • “…serious thinking for serious thinkers. …a thought-provoking blueprint for growing middle- and working-class incomes.” - Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts
  • “…a very valuable contribution.” - Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury and director of the National Economic Council, president emeritus, Harvard University
Upside of Inequality Oxford Unintended Consequences

Macro Roundup


Thursday, May 23, 2024

AI Summary. Mechanization of cotton spinning greatly increased labor productivity, but the authors find factory workers' real weekly wages barely rose and employment gains were modest, with productivity gains not shared with workers in textiles or offset elsewhere. They argue digital technologies, robotics, and office automation have similarly reduced affected workers' real earnings and employment.

Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson National Bureau of Economic Research
Date Posted:
Is Database:
Database

.@DAcemogluMIT and @baselinescene cite 19th-century textile automation to argue that AI may raise productivity but fail to increase employment and wages as it displaces workers and degrades the quality of remaining jobs.

Do workers share in the productivity gains from automation?

Core argument: Cotton factory operatives' weekly wages rose only from 121 pence in 1806 to 124 pence in 1820, while employment in the sector grew from 90,000 to 126,000, indicating productivity gains from new machinery were not shared with workers.

The dominant industrial fact of the late 18th century was that the use of machines to spin cotton greatly increased labor productivity. David Ricardo believed machinery would help workers but revised his opinion based on the impact of automation. As shown in Figure 3, from 1806 to 1818–1820 the real wages of cotton workers in factories barely increased, while there was a modest increase in employment in this activity. In 1806, 90,000 factory operatives earned a weekly wage of 121[pence], while in 1820, 126,000 workers earned 124[pence]. Productivity gains due to new machinery in cotton were not shared with the workers in textile production, nor were there compensatory gains in other sectors of employment. Today we are in a similarly transformative and disruptive process of technological change. New digital technologies, including robotics, automated equipment, and office automation, have led to declines in the real earnings and employment of workers who used to specialize in tasks that are now being performed by machinery and algorithms. In the meantime, AI and other new tools are also intensifying surveillance and shifting the balance of power from labor to capital.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Cotton factory operatives' weekly wages rose only from 121 pence in 1806 to 124 pence in 1820, while employment in the sector grew from 90,000 to 126,000, indicating productivity gains from new machinery were not shared with workers.
  2. David Ricardo initially believed machinery would help workers but revised that opinion based on the impact of automation, and cotton textile workers saw no compensatory gains in other sectors of employment.
  3. Digital technologies including robotics, automated equipment, and office automation have led to declines in the real earnings and employment of workers specializing in tasks now performed by machinery and algorithms, while AI intensifies surveillance and shifts power from labor to capital.

Related Articles:

  • Navigating the Future of Work — Demographic groups whose work has been more displaced by automation have seen slower real wage growth, and automation is estimated to account for about 70% of between-group wage inequality in the US since 1980. Establishments adopting artificial intelligence have slowed hiring of non-AI workers by more than they have added AI specialists.
  • Assessing the Implications of a Productivity Miracle — If artificial intelligence can perform economically valuable cognitive tasks at very low marginal cost, consumers would buy far more of the cheapened goods and spend the savings in other categories, expanding activity and employment in sectors facing new demand. Where supply is inherently limited, such as real estate, those savings could bid up prices and produce inflation.
  • The Short-Term Effects of Generative Artificial Intelligence on Employment: Evidence from an Online Labor Market — Freelancers in occupations most exposed to generative AI saw employment and earnings decline, with the authors estimating a 2% drop in jobs and a 5.2% drop in monthly earnings on an online labor platform. Offering high-quality service did not mitigate the effect, and top-rated freelancers appear disproportionately hurt.

AI Summary. Falling fertility in rich countries is driven by younger women having fewer children, with more than half the drop in the US total fertility rate explained by women under 19 now having almost no children, while women aged 30 and above are having more. College-educated American women at 24 still want about 2.2 children, roughly as many as earlier generations.

Economist Staff The Economist
Date Posted:

In 1960 the mean US woman had 3.6 children; in 2023, this had fallen to 1.6, driven by declining birth rates among women under 30, while birth rates among women 30 and above have risen.

Are falling birth rates in rich countries driven by younger women?

Core argument: American women's average number of children fell from 3.6 in 1960 to 1.6 in 2023, with the decline concentrated among younger women, while women aged 30 and above are having more children.

Birth rates have collapsed because young women are not having as many children. In 1960 American women had on average 3.6 children. In 2023 they had 1.6. Remarkably, women aged 30 and above are having more children. It is only younger women who are having fewer. The decline among younger women is itself concentrated among teenagers. More than half the drop in America’s total fertility rate is explained by women under the age of 19 now having next to no children. Meanwhile, there is little evidence that middle-class women wish they had many more children, which would at least suggest they might be open to official persuasion. Today, at the age of 24, college-educated American women want on average 2.2 children roughly as many as previous generations. They will now have these children a little later than before, with the first arriving at the age of 30, compared with 28 in 2000. Although trends suggest that they will fall short of their ideal family size, the gap may be the same as for women in previous generations, who missed the target by an average of 0.25 children.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. American women's average number of children fell from 3.6 in 1960 to 1.6 in 2023, with the decline concentrated among younger women, while women aged 30 and above are having more children.
  2. More than half the drop in America's total fertility rate is explained by women under 19 now having next to no children.
  3. College-educated American women at age 24 want an average of 2.2 children, roughly as many as previous generations, though their first child now arrives at 30, compared with 28 in 2000.

Related Articles:

  • US Births Are Down Again, After the COVID Baby Bust and Rebound — US births declined steadily for years before the pandemic, with almost 600,000 fewer annual births in 2019 than in 2007, a 13% drop. The pandemic-related baby bust and subsequent rebound were short-term deviations from that longer trend, and 2022 birth counts remained below 2019 levels.
  • Why Family-Friendly Policies Don’t Boost Birth Rates — Developed countries roughly tripled real per capita spending on child benefits, subsidised childcare, and parental leave between 1980 and 2019 while birth rates fell from 1.85 to 1.53 per woman. Finland's fertility rate has fallen by a third since 2010, and Korea's "baby bonus" mainly paid women already planning children.
  • The Wealthy Are Starting to Have More Babies Than the Poor Again — In developed countries, men's income and education are now generally positively associated with fatherhood, with 70.1% of US men holding graduate or professional degrees having children versus 48.8% of those without a high school diploma. Among advanced economies, those where men take on more housework and child care have higher fertility rates.

AI Summary. China's shrinking labor force, the shift of industrial supply chains to Belt and Road countries, and Western efforts to reduce reliance on Chinese suppliers are expected to erode its trade surplus, while slowing growth, local-government debt, and deflationary pressure from low fertility push interest rates down. These forces are expected to weaken the renminbi, complicating China's escape from middle-income status.

Yi Fuxian Project Syndicate
Date Posted:

.@fuxianyi argues that China’s rapidly shrinking workforce and government debt crisis mean the country is unlikely to escape the “middle-income trap.” He forecasts the PRC’s growth rate slowing to 3% by 2028 and lower growth than the US from 2031-35.

Will an aging population keep China from becoming rich?

Core argument: China's shrinking labor force and the shift of its industrial value chain toward Belt and Road Initiative countries are expected to push the renminbi lower, complicating China's efforts to escape the middle-income trap.

Several factors are expected to put downward pressure on the renminbi, complicating China’s efforts to escape the middle-income trap. First, China’s labor force is shrinking rapidly, and its industrial value chain is shifting to countries participating in the government’s Belt and Road Initiative. Western countries’ attempts to reduce their dependency on Chinese supply chains could further weaken China’s manufacturing sector, eroding the country’s trade surplus. Second, as economic growth slows and local governments grapple with an escalating debt crisis, Chinese interest rates are expected to fall. Lastly, low fertility rates around the world could lead to low inflation and even outright deflation. China’s persistent low fertility rate, combined with insufficient domestic demand and excess capacity, is likely to intensify deflationary pressures, widening the interest-rate gap between the renminbi and the US dollar.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. China's shrinking labor force and the shift of its industrial value chain toward Belt and Road Initiative countries are expected to push the renminbi lower, complicating China's efforts to escape the middle-income trap.
  2. Western efforts to reduce dependency on Chinese supply chains could further weaken China's manufacturing sector and erode its trade surplus.
  3. China's persistent low fertility rate, insufficient domestic demand, and excess capacity are likely to intensify deflationary pressures, while slowing growth and an escalating local-government debt crisis are expected to push Chinese interest rates down, widening the renminbi-dollar rate gap.

Related Articles:

  • East Asia’s Coming Population Collapse — United Nations projections show China's population falling 8%, Japan's 18%, South Korea's 12%, and Taiwan's 8% between 2020 and 2050, while the US population rises 12%. Working-age people per person over 65 are projected to drop to about 1.8 in China and 1.2 in Japan and South Korea.
  • A Revolution Is Coming for China’s Families — Prolonged below-replacement fertility in China is projected to produce a "kin crash" in which rising generations have fewer living relatives than ever before in Chinese history. The authors argue this shrinking of extended family networks will erode the Chinese family's role in protecting people from adversity and helping them seize opportunity.
  • The Neoclassical Growth of China — China's per capita GDP growth path closely tracks those of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan from similar starting income levels, indicating nothing unusual about its growth rate. The authors' model projects China's per capita GDP will level off at about 41% of the US level, reflecting a slowdown in productivity catch-up.

AI Summary. US survey data show per capita reports of past-year cannabis use rose 120% and reported days of use rose 218% over a recent 14-year span, with a 15-fold increase in daily or near-daily use reported over three decades. Daily or near-daily cannabis users now outnumber comparable alcohol users (17.7m vs 14.7m), though far more people drink.

Jonathan Caulkins Addiction
Date Posted:

A 2022 Federal survey recorded more daily and near-daily users of cannabis than alcohol (17.7M vs. 14.7 M.) 40% of Americans who used marijuana in the past month consumed it daily or near-daily.

How much has reported US cannabis use risen over recent decades?

Core argument: Self-reported per capita past-year cannabis use rose 120% between 2008 and 2022, while reported days of use per capita rose 218%, from the annual equivalent of 2.3 billion to 8.1 billion days.

Between 2008 and 2022, the per capita rate of reporting past-year use increased by 120%, and days of use reported per capita increased by 218% (in absolute terms from the annual equivalent of 2.3 to 8.1 billion days per year). From 1992 to 2022, there was a 15-fold increase in the per capita rate of reporting daily or near daily use. Whereas the 1992 survey recorded 10 times as many daily or near daily alcohol as cannabis users (8.9 vs. 0.9 M), the 2022 survey, for the first time, recorded more daily and near daily users of cannabis than alcohol (17.7 vs. 14.7 M). Far more people drink, but high-frequency drinking is less common. In 2022, the median drinker reported drinking on 4–5 days in the past month, versus 15–16 days in the past month for cannabis. In 2022, past-month cannabis consumers were almost four times as likely to report daily or near daily use (42.3% vs. 10.9%) and 7.4 times more likely to report daily use (28.2% vs. 3.8%).

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Self-reported per capita past-year cannabis use rose 120% between 2008 and 2022, while reported days of use per capita rose 218%, from the annual equivalent of 2.3 billion to 8.1 billion days.
  2. The 2022 survey recorded more daily or near daily cannabis users than alcohol users for the first time (17.7 million vs. 14.7 million), compared with a 10-to-1 alcohol margin in 1992 (8.9 million vs. 0.9 million).
  3. In 2022, the median cannabis consumer reported use on 15–16 days in the past month versus 4–5 days for the median drinker, and past-month cannabis users were 7.4 times more likely to report daily use (28.2% vs. 3.8%).

Related Articles:

  • U.S. Overdose Deaths Decline for First Time Since 2018 — U.S. overdose deaths fell about 3% to roughly 107,500, the first annual decline in five years, according to preliminary Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. Deaths involving synthetic opioids, a category largely fueled by fentanyl, fell 2% to about 74,700 and accounted for 7 of every 10 overdose deaths.
  • American Workers Testing Positive for Marijuana Reaches 25-Year Record — Marijuana positivity in U.S. workplace drug tests rose to 4.3% of more than 6m general workforce tests, up from 3.9%, the highest rate since 1997, while positivity for some opioids and barbiturates declined. Positive tests following on-the-job accidents reached 7.3%, tripling over a decade as more than two-thirds of U.S. states legalized recreational or medicinal use.
  • How Fentanyl Laid Waste to Guatemala’s Time-Worn Opium Trade — Opium prices in Guatemala's poppy-growing highlands have collapsed from $64 an ounce to about $9.60, with growers reporting a fall from roughly $2,310 to $256 per kilo. Eradication patrols now find only scattered small plots where cultivation once blanketed the land.

Friday, May 24, 2024

AI Summary. Researchers disproportionately cite work from their own country, and measured against a benchmark that distributes world citations by the size of citing and cited countries, every country studied shows some home bias. The authors estimate China is a clear outlier at 42.3%, followed by Iran and India at 23.2% each and the US at 15.9%.

Shumin Qiu, Claudia Steinwender and Pierre Azoulay National Bureau of Economic Research
Date Posted:
Is Database:
Database

Chinese scientific research shows a strong “home bias” where researchers disproportionately cite work from their own country. An adjusted citation ranking places China fourth globally, behind the US, the UK, and Germany. @ClaudiaSteinwen @pierre_azoulay

Do citation counts overstate Chinese science because researchers favor home-country work?

Core argument: China shows a home bias in scientific citations of 42.3%, a clear outlier above the next-highest countries, Iran and India, each at 23.2%.

We investigate the phenomenon of home bias in scientific citations, where researchers disproportionately cite work from their own country. We measure home bias as deviations from a benchmark model, which we base on a “dartboard approach” by asking: How many citations would we expect country i to receive from country j, if world citations were distributed only according to the size of the citing and cited countries? The benchmark citation flows distribute world citations according to the total share of citations the cited country i received from the world, and the share of the size of the potential citing country j based on its world publication share. We now define home bias of a country i as the deviation of its actual citation shares from the benchmark citation share. In Figure 2 we calculate the home bias across countries implied by [this method]. All countries in our sample exhibit home bias to some extent. However, China is a clear outlier with a home bias of 42.3%, followed by Iran (23.2%), and India (23.2%). The home bias of the US is on the larger side of the remaining countries, at 15.9%.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. China shows a home bias in scientific citations of 42.3%, a clear outlier above the next-highest countries, Iran and India, each at 23.2%.
  2. The authors measure home bias as the deviation of a country's actual citation shares from a "dartboard" benchmark that allocates world citations by the cited country's share of world citations and the citing country's share of world publications.
  3. Every country in the sample exhibits some home bias, with the United States at 15.9%, on the larger side of the remaining countries.

Related Articles:

  • Creating and Connecting US and China Science: Chinese Diaspora and Returnee Researchers — The authors estimate that China-born researchers working in the US contributed to 27% of US-addressed scientific papers, while China-born researchers with US experience who returned home contributed to 38% of China-addressed papers. Papers with these authors averaged more citations and appeared more often in high-impact journals than other papers.
  • The U.S. Is Turning Away From Its Biggest Scientific Partner at a Precarious Time — More than 40% of high-quality U.S. scientific papers involve collaboration with researchers abroad, and China and the U.S. are each other's largest research partners, with their joint work consistently among the most-cited across fields. In some strategic areas, analysis of publication data finds the U.S. depends on China more than China depends on the U.S.
  • Something Is Getting Harder But It’s Not Finding Ideas — The number of researchers in the US economy has grown to 23x its 1930 level while the economy's growth rate has been constant or declining, contradicting the assumption that constant research input yields a constant growth rate. Bloom et al. explain this divergence by assuming ideas get harder to find as more are discovered.

AI Summary. European Union births have fallen to levels Eurostat had not projected for another two decades, suggesting the population may peak before the forecast date of 2026 at 453mm. The EU's working-age population aged 20-64, which supplies most tax revenue, has fallen from a 2011 peak of 270mm to about 261mm.

Valentina Romei, Eleni Varvitsioti and Arjun Neil Alim Financial Times
Date Posted:

The EU’s working-age (20-64) share of the population peaked at 61.4% in 2008 and has now dropped to 58%. Europe is the only continent with falling working-age populations.

Are Europe's births falling faster than official projections assumed?

Core argument: The EU's working-age population aged 20–64, which contributes the bulk of tax revenues, shrank from a peak of 270mm in 2011 to an estimated 261mm this year, according to UN data, falling from 61.4% of the total population in 2008 to 58%.

The EU population rose in the year to January 2023, helped by an influx of displaced persons from Ukraine, after a temporary two-year dip that reflected the impact of the pandemic. Last year, Eurostat forecast that the population would peak at 453mm in 2026. But the 2023 numbers came in below expectations as EU births fell to levels Eurostat had not forecast for another two decades, suggesting the peak may come before 2026. The EU’s working-age population, those aged 20-64, who contribute the bulk of tax revenues, shrank from a peak of 270mm in 2011 to an estimated 261mm this year, according to UN data. Relative to total population, the EU working-age group peaked at 61.4% in 2008 and has now dropped to 58%. The EU fertility rate dropped to 1.46 in 2022, with the figure as low as 1.16 in Spain, 1.24 in Italy, and 1.29 in Poland. It fell below the replacement level of 2.1, at which the population is stable without immigration, in the early 1970s.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. The EU's working-age population aged 20–64, which contributes the bulk of tax revenues, shrank from a peak of 270mm in 2011 to an estimated 261mm this year, according to UN data, falling from 61.4% of the total population in 2008 to 58%.
  2. EU births fell to levels Eurostat had not forecast for another two decades, suggesting the population peak may come before the 453mm in 2026 that Eurostat projected last year.
  3. The EU fertility rate fell to 1.46 in 2022 — 1.16 in Spain, 1.24 in Italy and 1.29 in Poland — having dropped below the 2.1 replacement level in the early 1970s.

Related Articles:

  • Can the Rich World Escape Its Baby Crisis? — Falling fertility in rich countries is driven by younger women having fewer children, with more than half the drop in the US total fertility rate explained by women under 19 now having almost no children, while women aged 30 and above are having more. College-educated American women at 24 still want about 2.2 children, roughly as many as earlier generations.
  • The Wealth of Working Nations — Because of population aging, growth in GDP per capita and GDP per working-age adult have diverged across advanced economies; from 1998 to 2019 Japan's accumulated growth per working-age adult was 31.9% versus 29.5% in the US. The authors find a standard neoclassical growth model calibrated to each country's working-age population tracks output per working-age adult in most economies.
  • Suddenly There Aren’t Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed — The global fertility rate fell to 2.3 by 2021, near the roughly 2.2 rate demographers consider necessary to keep world population stable, and faster than United Nations projections anticipated. National birth registries are reporting births 10% to 20% below United Nations projections, according to an economist's estimate covering about half the world's population.

AI Summary. Under the combined new-Keynesian and fiscal theory of the price level view, inflation is stable, determinate, and long-run neutral with respect to an interest rate target, much like a money growth target. The author argues this implies that a perpetually higher interest rate peg eventually produces correspondingly higher inflation, even if the short run moves the other way.

John Cochrane The Grumpy Economist
Date Posted:

.@JohnHCochrane argues that recent events support the fiscal theory, which implies that high interest rates ultimately raise, not lower, inflation.

.@JohnHCochrane argues that recent events support the fiscal theory, which implies that high interest rates ultimately...

Does a permanently higher interest rate peg eventually raise inflation?

Core argument: Under the new-Keynesian plus fiscal theory of the price level view, an interest rate target makes inflation stable, determinate, and long-run neutral, with inflation eventually settling at the nominal rate plus the real rate, much as it settles down to money growth under a money growth target.

The zero bound, QE, and the post-covid inflation amount to dramatic experiments, about as clean as you can ask for in economics, to distinguish our main theories of inflation. With the new-Keynesian + FTPL view, inflation is stable, determinate, and long-run neutral under an interest rate target. It works much like a money growth target: inflation eventually settles down to the nominal rate plus real rate, as it settles down to money growth. That prediction seems natural, but has a very uncomfortable implication that I have been wrestling with for years. If at zero rates inflation just bats around zero +/- a small real rate, then inescapably if the central bank raises the peg to 2% interest rate, inflation would eventually rise by two percentage points. It might go the other way in the short run, and the short run might last a long time, but the proposition that a perpetually higher rate means perpetually higher inflation, eventually, just flows from stability and (even approximate) neutrality.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Under the new-Keynesian plus fiscal theory of the price level view, an interest rate target makes inflation stable, determinate, and long-run neutral, with inflation eventually settling at the nominal rate plus the real rate, much as it settles down to money growth under a money growth target.
  2. John Cochrane argues that if inflation hovers around zero at zero interest rates, a central bank raising its peg to a 2% interest rate would eventually see inflation rise by two percentage points, even if the short-run response goes the other way and lasts a long time.
  3. The zero bound, quantitative easing, and post-covid inflation constitute dramatic experiments, about as clean as economics allows, for distinguishing among the main theories of inflation.

Related Articles:

  • Fiscal Tidbits, Part 1 — Scaling US deficits by federal debt held by the public shows deficits of a size comparable to those that preceded past inflations, though large deficits have not always been followed by inflation. Fiscal theory holds that only the portion of a deficit people do not expect to be repaid, through future surpluses or lower interest costs, is inflationary.
  • Fiscal Tidbits, Part 2 — The author argues that a shock to relative prices can only raise the overall price level if monetary or fiscal policy provides the demand to accommodate it. On this reading, inflation following supply shocks — as in the conventional account of 1970s oil shocks — is attributable to the expansionary policy response rather than the shock itself.
  • Fiscal Narratives for US Inflation — Fiscal theory attributes the deflation of the deep recession to a fall in real interest rates that lowered real interest costs on government debt, an effect that outweighed large deficits. The predicted deflation spiral and the hyperinflation forecast from quantitative easing both failed to materialize.

AI Summary. Texas has deployed 23.6GW of utility-scale solar versus California's 21.2GW, up from just over 2GW against California's 13GW five years earlier. Its grid operator uses a "connect and manage" model that assesses only essential local connection requirements, and new power generation comes online in about half the time as elsewhere in the US.

John Burn-Murdoch Financial Times
Date Posted:

Texas’ solar energy capacity hit 23.6GW in May, up from 2GW in 2019, and ahead of California’s 21.2GW. A key reason for this growth is a grid access model that takes about half as long to come online as elsewhere in the US. @jburnmurdoch

How did faster grid connection rules make Texas the solar leader?

Core argument: Texas has deployed 23.6GW of utility-scale solar versus California's 21.2GW, reversing a 2019 gap in which Texas had just over 2GW to California's 13GW.

When the latest batch of solar plants comes online, Texas will have added more solar capacity per capita in a single year than any US state and any country in the world. As recently as five years ago this would have been unthinkable. In 2019, Texas had just over 2GW of large-scale solar plants to California’s 13GW. As of this month it has deployed 23.6GW of utility-scale solar to California’s 21.2GW. The ease of building and connecting new renewable projects in Texas relative to elsewhere has been one of the key reasons for the state’s clean energy boom. Its electricity grid operator uses a “connect and manage” model. This assesses new projects based on the essential local requirements needed to connect to the grid instead of carrying out protracted studies into the broader potential ramifications. The result is that new power generation takes about half as long to come online in Texas as elsewhere. The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is now looking to follow a similar approach in order to speed up the transition nationwide.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Texas has deployed 23.6GW of utility-scale solar versus California's 21.2GW, reversing a 2019 gap in which Texas had just over 2GW to California's 13GW.
  2. When the latest batch of solar plants comes online, Texas will have added more solar capacity per capita in a single year than any US state or any country in the world.
  3. The Texas grid operator's "connect and manage" model assesses projects on essential local connection requirements rather than protracted broader studies, bringing new generation online in about half the time as elsewhere, an approach the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is looking to follow.

Related Articles:

  • Republican Districts Dominate US Clean Technology Investment Boom — A Financial Times analysis found that more than 80% of pledged investment in large-scale clean energy and semiconductor manufacturing is destined for Republican congressional districts. The analysis attributes this partly to those districts' available land and cheap labor, and to state-level tax breaks and subsidies in states such as Georgia and Ohio.
  • Electricity 2024 — More than 8,000 data centers operate globally, with about 33% in the United States, 16% in Europe, and close to 10% in China. US data center electricity use is projected to rise from roughly 200 TWh in 2022, about 4% of US electricity demand, to almost 260 TWh, or 6% of total demand.
  • Electricity Grids and Secure Energy Transitions — Under a scenario based on announced government pledges, global electricity demand is projected to grow 2.7% per year, more than doubling from just under 25,000 terawatt-hours to nearly 54,000 terawatt-hours by 2050. Hydrogen production via electrolysis and electric vehicles account for more than half of that projected growth.

AI Summary. Polling shows Trump's narrow national lead is built on gains among voters who pay little attention to politics, don't follow traditional news, and don't vote regularly, while Biden leads among those who voted in the prior presidential election. Almost all of Trump's gains have come from these less engaged voters.

Nate Cohn New York Times
Date Posted:

Based on the latest Times/Siena survey, Trump’s consistent polling advantage depends on people who did not vote in 2020. Biden leads among 2020 voters. @Nate_Cohn.

Is a polling lead built on disengaged voters reliable?

Core argument: Polls have shown Donald Trump with an edge for eight straight months, a narrow lead built on gains among voters who pay little attention to politics, don't follow traditional news, and don't vote regularly.

The polls have shown Trump with an edge for eight straight months. His narrow lead is built on gains among voters who aren’t paying close attention to politics, who don’t follow traditional news, and who don’t regularly vote. To an extent that hasn’t been true in New York Times/Siena College polling in the last eight years, disengaged voters are driving the overall polling results and the story line about the election. President Biden has actually led the last three Times/Siena national polls among those who voted in the 2020 election, even as he has trailed among registered voters overall. And looking back over the last few years, almost all of Mr. Trump’s gains have come from these less engaged voters.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Polls have shown Donald Trump with an edge for eight straight months, a narrow lead built on gains among voters who pay little attention to politics, don't follow traditional news, and don't vote regularly.
  2. President Biden has led the last three New York Times/Siena College national polls among those who voted in the 2020 election, even as he trailed among registered voters overall.
  3. Disengaged voters are driving the overall New York Times/Siena polling results and the election story line to an extent not seen in that polling over the last eight years, with almost all of Trump's gains coming from these less engaged voters.

Related Articles:

  • Trump Leads in 5 Key States, as Young and Nonwhite Voters Express Discontent With Biden — Polling of registered voters showed Trump ahead of Biden in five of six battleground states — Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania — with Biden leading only in Wisconsin. Trump and Biden were essentially tied among voters aged 18-29 and Hispanic voters, groups that each gave Biden over 60% of their vote in 2020.
  • American Politics Is Undergoing A Racial Realignment — National election surveys and Gallup polling show the Democratic Party's advantage among Black, Latino, and Asian voters at its lowest level since 1960. The article argues this shift reflects fading civil rights-era ties, a weakening link between income and party choice, and non-white voters with long-held conservative views aligning their votes with those views.
  • The Deepening Diploma Divide — Recent polling averages show the Democratic presidential candidate winning white college-educated voters by 18 points and losing white voters without college degrees by 27 points, a 45-point education gap. Earlier decades saw the two groups vote much more similarly, with one election producing a divide of just two points.