daniel f stone

Is Immigration Good for Health? The Effect of Immigration on Older Adult Mortality in the United States David C. Grabowski, Jonathan Gruber, Brian E. McGarry #34791 Abstract: We measure the impact of increased immigration on mortality among elderly Americans, who rely on the immigrant-intensive health and long-term care sectors. Using a shift-share approach we find a strong impact of immigration on the size of the immigrant care workforce: admitting 1,000 new immigrants would lead to 142 new foreign healthcare workers, without evidence of crowd out of native health care workers. We also find striking effects on mortality: a 25% increase in the steady state flow of immigrants to the US would result in 5,000 fewer deaths nationwide. We identify reduced use of nursing homes as a key mechanism driving this result

Immigrants save Americans' lives: "...a 25% increase in the steady state flow of immigrants to the US would result in 5,000 fewer deaths nationwide. We identify reduced use of nursing homes as a key mechanism driving this result."
www.nber.org/papers/w34791

DEEP RECKONINGS Deep Reckonings is a two-time Webby Awards  winner

www.deepreckonings.com?utm_source=s...

THE ANTI-DEBATE ​The Anti-Debate is a new format for debate where participants build on each other's insights, so that greater complexity can emerge. Despite its name, the Anti-Debate is not  anti -debate! It...

www.anti-debate.org

substack.com/@abio/note/c...?

🥴

White people are putting Mexican flag stickers on their cars to get pulled over and waste ICE's time.
They call it "ICE fishing."

Opinion | Want to Make a Difference? Donate Your Kidney.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/o...

Can an AI Tool Help Students Disagree Better? A chat platform developed by two scholars aims to encourage productive discussion among students. Some professors who have used it sing its praises.

I used it in two classes last semester, went great 👍👍

www.chronicle.com/article/can-...

Data on student responses
www.swaybeta.ai/research/stu...

YouTube video by Saturday Night Live Mom Confession - SNL

This is good

It's hard to admit you're wrong; harder when you've been wrong longer

If you want people to do it, make them confident you won't make them feel bad about it

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wQh...

I Test Drove a Chinese EV. Now I Don’t Want to Buy American Cars Anymore. Amazing battery range, customizable interiors and sleek software—our columnist fell in love with a Xiaomi SU7 Max after driving it for a few weeks.

www.wsj.com/tech/persona...

Opinion | What Science Tells Us About Arguing With Your Father-in-Law

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/25/o...

Should You Resign? - Marginal REVOLUTION At least six prosecutors resigned in early January over DOJ pressure to investigate the widow of Renee Good (killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross) instead of the agent himself. They cited political inter...

"In other words, when the good leave and the bad don’t, the institution rots."

Don't resign, fight from the inside

marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

White House spokeswoman mocks people asking about this:

“uM, eXCuSe mE??? iS tHAt DiGiTAlLy AlTeReD?!?!?!?!?!”

Reasoning Models Generate Societies of Thought Large language models have achieved remarkable capabilities across domains, yet mechanisms underlying sophisticated reasoning remain elusive. Recent reasoning models outperform comparable instruction-...

"Enhanced reasoning emerges not from extended computation alone, but from multi-agent [LLM] interactions - a society of thought - which enables diversification and debate among internal cognitive perspectives characterized by distinct personality traits and domain expertise"
arxiv.org/abs/2601.10825

Spraying pepper spray directly into the eyes of a detained person who’s already fully subdued

You Need Conservatives. Here’s How to Engage Them in Your Mission. Insights and tips from a conservative who believes nonprofits will fail in their mission if they muster support only from people who think — and vote — like they do.

www.philanthropy.com/solutions/co...

It’s been awhile since I took micro, but my recollection is that the models give pretty clear predictions about what happens to consumer surplus under perfect price discrimination.

An intervention found that blocking internet access on smartphones for 2 weeks improved mental health, subjective well-being, and objectively measured ability to sustain attention; 91% of participants improved on at least one of these outcomes.
academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Partisan Olive Branches: The Case of Marjorie Taylor Greene Why praising your opponents can be rational

An argument for commending MGT for moral courage from
@koosterum.bsky.social

kylevo.substack.com/p/partisan-o...

Tribalism Corrupts Politics (Even When One Side Is Worse) Opposing the far right isn’t an excuse to indulge our tribal instincts.

Opposing the far right isn’t an excuse to indulge our tribal instincts (literally half my posting on this site, but better stated by @danwphilosophy.bsky.social)
www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/tribalism-...

Great! More than happy to discuss, don't hesitate to let me know of any questions/thoughts. Re other UG friendly readings, you've probably considered this already but Ezra Klein's book is an obvious one that comes to mind, covers a lot of research up to when it was published pretty well

Now this is an abstract.

Undue Hate: A Behavioral Economic Analysis of Hostile Polarization in US Politics and Beyond How to understand the mistakes we make about those on the other side of the political spectrum—and how they drive the affective polarization that is tearin

An open access undergrad friendly book on this topic (that uses a particular lens), for what it's worth :)

direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon...

Hi!!! I'm in the process of working on my syllabus for a course focused on US parties/partisanship/polarization.

If anyone's taught a similar course and is willing to share their syllabus, I'd really appreciate seeing how others have done this! Plugs for undergrad friendly papers also welcome (:

And that's how I learned to speak up The academy is no place for self-censorship.

"Academics underestimate the rewards, and overestimate the risks, to researching, teaching, and speaking freely"

guidedcivicrevival.substack.com/p/and-thats-...

Loss aversion ("bad is stronger than good"): evidence from Buddhism

Teaching Quality Higher Ed's Dirtiest Secret

Interesting piece but if this claim is true that means students/parents don't actually care about teaching quality?

"colleges and universities have no incentive to define or measure teaching quality and have not funded serious controlled studies"

hollisrobbinsanecdotal.substack.com/p/teaching-q...

Appreciate this letter from MN State Sen Jim Abler (R-Anoka) to POTUS

Yes... The existence of the college admissions consulting industry is also pretty clear evidence of this (only wealthy people can afford it - and they wouldn't pay if it didn't work - and it doesn't work by improving test scores/grades... though of course $ can be used to improve these too)

We should just use standardized test scores + grades to admit students into college.

Everything else is way too easy to game, allowing the extremely rich to dominate access to prestigious colleges. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

I've been saying this for a long time, but the data makes it clear.