Ben Krause

Work like the attached highlighting that 90% of 10-year-olds in low income countries cannot functionally read helps frame how far we have to go.

hashtag#HCI2025 hashtag#BeyondReadiness

openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/c...

As we're discussing the disparity in educational outcomes around the world today in the Human Capability Initiative, measurement is paramount.

If you've not see it yet, check out these conversations I'm hosting on economics at #UChicago!

Having a great time back in #SaudiArabia speaking at the Human Capability Initiative emphasizing the need for more collaborations between innovators, implementers, and researchers to advance both evidence-based policy and policy-based evidence.

#HCI2025 #BeyondReadiness

Exclusive: Anthropic mines its data on real AI use The research shows more users collaborating with AI than automating tasks.

In case you missed the launch of Anthropic's new Economic Index, here's a great summary from Axios highlighting the primary takeaways:

www.axios.com/2025/02/10/a...

I'm very excited about this initiative and in particular the contributions of @beckerfriedman.bsky.social scholars especially Anders Humlum, as well as Michael Kremer
@devinnovationlab.bsky.social and John List @johnlist.bsky.social. More to come!

www.anthropic.com/economic-index

Gutting USAID threatens billions of dollars for U.S. farms, businesses U.S. businesses that sold goods and services to USAID are in limbo, including American farms dealing in rice, wheat and soybeans.

Still, I'm dang proud of all the good USAID indeed accomplishes for the rest of the world even as I've been one of its intended primary beneficiaries: an American enjoying cheaper food, lower unemployment, more prosperous rural communities, and great security here at home. wapo.st/3WSo7nI

I also feel pretty ashamed that we so often pretend at the end of that long chain that the primary goal was helping people all along.

Again, I got a whole lot of thoughts on how to make that last step more effective and less often unintentionally destructive, (best of all would be to uncouple benefiting ourselves from helping others).

USAID is an America first strategy whose charity saves lives as an added bonus.

In other words, USAID directly benefits a whole heck of a lot of Americans, and when the stars align, it also saves lives.

and other geopolitical benefits that accrue through aid, that are the primary motivation and justification.

I have had the privilege to see each step of that process in person, and it is always the last one that sustains me. But I've never forgotten that it is each of the prior steps - and lastly the benefits that the US enjoys from the good will, reduced refugee flows, regional stability,

Nevertheless, at the very end of all of that, the food still has the tremendous benefit of filling the famished families who gather together to share it.

It was received around the world by workers who could only fly on US airlines who mostly worked for US based companies and organizations. US interests always played some role in determining which countries received how much.

Then all my trucking fam out there as well as the private railroads benefited as the gov paid them to ship that excess to storage silos who then also benefited. Once it got to the water, it always had to be on US flagged vessels.

So, for instance, farmers in my home state of Nebraska and across the country were the first and perhaps most protected beneficiaries as the US government artificially pushed up the price of their harvests by buying up way more than the market would demand.

However, I rarely ever agreed with the dominant narratives criticizing USAID because most lost sight of the fact that USAID, like all of US policy, is first and foremost set up for the benefit of the American people.

Gutting USAID threatens billions of dollars for U.S. farms, businesses U.S. businesses that sold goods and services to USAID are in limbo, including American farms dealing in rice, wheat and soybeans.

I work on using research, specifically the scientific method, to improve policy in general and programs in poor counties specifically. So until the last few weeks, most of my engagements with USAID involved me critiquing their work so to get better results for people living in poverty.

Save USAID: The Greatest Agency You Never Knew The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was created by President Kennedy in 1961 in a spirit of optimism and global collaboration and as a…

Listen to Presidents of both our political parties stretching back to JFK remind us why #USAID embodies the best of America as you watch the work in action around the world.

vimeo.com/1052680025?s...

and I'd be willing to wager that dang near all of the rest are much closer to those standards than they are to anything you're going to hear Elon call them as he attempts to groom you for the next call to violence.

Is everyone who has picked up a paycheck at USAID a saint or a superhero? No, but again, if you know me personally, please take my word when I tell you that many of them are much closer to being so than I'll ever be,

Could the institution improve - YES! Improving this system is much of what I do professionally.

Lies. Dehumanizing, desensitizing lies. Segregating, scapegoating lies cleave some of us off into an "other", a subhuman "them" for the lucky remaining "us" to blame for all of our frustrations. A "them" we can be called to purge and in the melee forget all of our leaders' failings.

These are the people that Elon has been so vilely and baselessly slandering - and as he knows well from his home country, he is choosing language powerful men use when they are preparing a population to slaughter itself.

They give up being a daily part of our lives here at home for decades. They miss births & birthdays, graduations, weddings & funerals. They do it for us and for others - & at a much lower salary than they could be making in almost any other job with their experience, skills, networks & credentials.

And they are saddled with the need to ensure that in all they do, they maximize the benefits for the American people while also attempting to save as many lives as possible where they are.

They accept assignments that are at times unachievable, but they still strive and struggle and creatively work toward the goal.

They end up in war zones and in the midst of coups. They fly into disasters and epidemics when all the rest of us are fleeing. They are charged with minimizing suffering in the face of the worst of what humanity faces.

get plunked back in remedial language classes in midlife to ensure they're able to speak in whatever new setting they are sent to, and do rotations in countries their families cannot even visit making them live apart for months or years at a time from their spouses and children.

Just to give you a sense, they uproot their lives and families every four or so years to move to new countries, have relatively little say in where they go,