Mike Madowitz

Graphs of support for policy interventions broken down by party, showing that 81% of Democrats, 49% of Independents, and 34% of Republicans support universal day care. The top text says: Partisan differences are again pronounced. Majorities of Democrats support all three policy options, with more than eight in 10 favoring universal day care. By contrast, only around one-third of Republicans support universal day care or direct payments to parents to help them care for children at home. Some of this low level of support among Republicans may come from the fact that the question asked respondents to consider these programs, “even if they would mean an increase in the federal deficit.” The only program that generated majority support across the political spectrum is an increased child tax credit to be used however parents would prefer. This is one area of potential bipartisan agreement.

I'm sorry, a third of Republicans support universal childcare, even when they're told that it would mean increasing the federal deficit? That's a lot more than I would have guessed! brightspotcdn.byu.edu/ea/ce/3e5b7e...

The final boss OpEd in the Hacks Trying to Bankrupt Social Security game landed this week and I didn't notice?

The stubbornness of market-based PCE rivals my immigrant grandparents, and can't be good news for the Fed.

Overall, a pretty decent reading though--core and headline PCE starting to converge a bit, but it's not just from energy prices going up!
www.bea.gov/sites/defaul...

America’s Three Economies: Vibes Sinking, Data Treading Water, Elites Sailing Away As we approach the end of 2025, it’s a good time to take stock of the US economy. Depending on where you stand, you’re hearing very different things about the economy, but a pretty consistent theme is...

Happy #JobsDay (JK--delayed til 12/16)

I wrote about the lowkey stagflation and awful economic vibes for @rooseveltforward.org's substack this week--I think this holds up well as a description of the statistically OK but unusually narrow/fragile economy of 2025

substack.com/@wonkprogres...

[Chekhov’s significant digits enter the chat]

Implications of policy-driven transmission expansion for costs, emissions and reliability in the USA Nature Energy - Interregional transmission is key to a cost-efficient, reliable and cleaner US grid. Senga et al. find that current legislative proposals can increase reliability while capturing...

New paper out today in Nature Energy!
We evaluate how Congressional proposals for policy-driven transmission expansion would shape U.S. electricity costs, emissions, and reliability. Big implications for climate and grid planning.

rdcu.be/eS7lj

#EnergyPolicy #Transmission #CleanEnergy

Manufacturing snapshot - Sept production, Nov employment #EconSky
econbrowser.com/archives/202...

Sure job growth is crashing out, but we’re deporting a lot of people so it’s much easier to find work 🤔

That’s why the unemployment rate is [checks notes] ⬆️ from 4.0% to 4.4% since January 🤦

The Agency That Protects US Worker Rights Isn’t Helping Trans People Under the Trump administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has thwarted nearly all cases filed by trans workers.

The EEOC, the main federal agency in charge of protecting American workers' rights, has abandoned trans, nonbinary, and other gender non-conforming workers, leaving them with little ability to get justice www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

See you in Philly!!!

Top Economics Group Bans Larry Summers for Life The American Economics Association rebuked the former Treasury secretary amid scrutiny over his correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein.

Lawrence Summers has been banned for life by the American Economics Association, in a further blow to the former Treasury Secretary and Harvard University president stemming from recent revelations about his ties to the late Jeffrey Epstein.

Oh, I remember these! Are they out IRL?

The subtext of my Q (which I doubt we can answer in 300 chars) is how much of the costs are hardware vs soft costs--training on new geo, keeping hardware in spec, etc.

There's prob some airline vs gen aviation maintenance analogy in our future

It was a privilege to honor Bill Easterly at his retirement party at @nyu.edu alongside some of the people I admire most: @nbirdsall.bsky.social, Lant Prichett, Angus Deaton, Clive Crook, Yaw Nyarko, Jonathan Morduch & scores of others.

Bill's unstoppable intellect and generosity changed my life.

‘Influenced by’ doing a lot of heavy lifting, non?
Like if I googled a thing I wanted to prove check and got the Gemini preview…

If the lidar hardware is much cheaper now, any idea why Waymo vehicles are still so expensive? (I know the refit vs mfg approach adds lots of cost, but still)

good piece on Waymo's self driving cars

we can reasonably begin to look at self driving as a potential public health breakthrough, Waymo cars are much better and safer drivers than people

the problem is the economics of the technology not the technology itself
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/o...

Fair, but
1) physicians tend to have virtually no training in statistical inference
2) he has 2 jobs (neurosurgery & vc investor) that train for confidence, so I reserve the right to pour a stiff glass of scotch before reading his ‘analysis’ (which appears to be comparing means)

There's lots of promise in Waymo data, but these might be the worst 2 sentence combo for people who understand causal stats or public policy
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/o...

36,000/ 36,000
No Notes!

A corrosive effect of things like the carried interest loophole is a class of v wealthy investors who don’t pay taxes so they create a mythical (bonkers) tax system in their heads

We call that system ‘wheel of
Fortune’ in inland CA

lol, the first model I remember described as ‘they call it proprietary AI, but it’s identical to what I get w/ regression’

It’s definitely not the best or most open out there but this has whiffs of ‘paying for this was bad for a business where consumers are the product’

Trump take electromagnetic analogue of egg

Was this the first street thing?

AI boosters: i read about this in bad 1950s sci-fi an it’s gonna be dope!

Humans: your pitch is using the most expensive electricity to kill jobs?

This is something I struggle with as a journalist who writes a lot about AI. I have written whole articles about how AI is a misnomer! But I feel powerless in the tides of linguistic drift.

Has anyone else who writes about AI found ways to usefully (and regularly) distinguish types?

Zillow Removes Climate Risk Scores From Home Listings

You can still find property level climate risk scores on Redfin

Zillow Removes Climate Risk Scores From Home Listings
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/c...

Why millennials don't feel richer than boomers — even though they are Rich millennials are doing OK, but they feel terrible about their finances and the economy. They're comparing themselves to peers and boomer parents.

My personal theory of the vibecession remains that a not insignificant part of the problem is that normally very comfortable people are feeling slightly uncomfortable and it's throwing everybody off www.businessinsider.com/millennial-e...

The Sacks put

I hasten to point out that the vibes are still worse than this data.

It probably helps the admin that we're starting to get this flow restarted vs a shutdown where it was exclusively bad vibes

But the data:
- Better than vibes
- not good.