Who will actually profit from the AI boom?

Competition still exists, folks. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 3 months ago

Did RFK just take away your cancer treatment?

mRNA promised to help turn cancer from a death sentence into a manageable condition. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 3 months ago

Immigrant memoir comics!

Learning about the immigrant experience by reading graphic novels | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 3 months ago

What can India do to industrialize?

A guest post by Prakash Loungani and Karan Bhasin. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 3 months ago

Will data centers crash the economy?

This time let's think about a financial crisis before it happens. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 3 months ago

Why does everyone still hate the Democrats?

It should be easier to capitalize on the anti-Trump backlash. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 3 months ago

The only thing worse than sweatshops is no sweatshops

Poor countries have to get rich somehow. This is the tried-and-true method. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 3 months ago

Xi Jinping is the main thing holding China back

If the Chinese Century underwhelms, it'll be partly due to a single man. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 3 months ago

MAGA doesn't build anything

Why I think this political movement isn't going anywhere in the long term. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 3 months ago

Should Democrats go back to neoliberalism?

To some degree, yes. But what they really need is a development state. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 3 months ago

The anti-immigration backlash comes to Japan

It was always bound to happen. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 3 months ago

Stop pretending you know what AI does to the economy

Alarmism is everywhere, but a lot of it is just brainworms. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 3 months ago

At least five interesting things: Bad Policy edition (#67)

ICE backlash; progressive bumbling; antisocial Americans; bad inflation data; the Roaring 20s; AI politics; China vs. America | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 3 months ago

Trump is enabling Chinese power

An incompetent, selfish, inwardly focused administration is making America less of an obstacle to China's rise. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 3 months ago

Developing countries: A follow-up

Checking in on some countries I wrote about a few years back. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 3 months ago

Why tariffs haven't raised inflation much (yet)

Three possible explanations. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 4 months ago

Free-market economics is working surprisingly well

Which economic approach works depends a lot on where you start from. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 4 months ago

At least five interesting things: It Isn't That Bad edition (#66)

U.S. wage growth; fertility and sexism; construction costs and house prices; the next financial crisis; macroeconomics vs. microeconomics; | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 4 months ago

How to take our country back

The America you grew up in is under attack from technologies that we ourselves invented. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 4 months ago

The Elite Overproduction Hypothesis

A repost from the Noahpinion archives, with a few updates. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 4 months ago

We can't afford to keep cutting taxes for the rich

Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" is an advanced stage of a disease that took hold long ago. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 4 months ago

Jewish Americans are feeling unsettled

Increasingly squeezed between the new leftism and the new rightism. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 4 months ago

Would you rather have cheap energy, or stupid culture wars?

Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" is an attack on American energy production. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 4 months ago

The dawn of the posthuman age

Between new technology and low fertility, our existence as a species is not going to be the same. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 4 months ago

A chat with Derek Thompson

One of my favorite writers has joined Substack! Let's see what he has to say. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 4 months ago

Zohran Mamdani's policies will (mostly) not bring abundance to NYC

Progressive ideas still try to defy economic realities. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 4 months ago

The economic consequences of a war with Iran

I wouldn't be too worried. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 4 months ago

China's industrial policy has an unprofitability problem

China is paying its national champions to fight each other to the death. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 4 months ago

Western democracies are actually pretty good at war

The authoritarian advantage is hype. But China is the real deal. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 4 months ago

Progressives take their best shot at Abundance (but it falls short)

A review by Sandeep Vaheesan fails to discredit Abundance, but it points to what the movement could be doing better. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 4 months ago

Feeling cautiously optimistic about American democracy

This is still the country I grew up in. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 4 months ago

Social media destroyed one of America's key advantages

We used to be able to spread out. Now we're locked in with each other. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 5 months ago

At least five interesting things: Anything but protests edition (#65)

Government efficiency; Solar power; Data suppression; American wealth; Trade and manufacturing | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 5 months ago

A bunch of thoughts and evidence on immigration

I've been writing about this for a while. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 5 months ago

Immigration is not an "invasion", nor should it be

The far right and the far left both want you to think that the purpose of immigration is to overthrow America. Don't let them get away with it. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 5 months ago

It's OK not to be fat

Instead of moral problems, let's think of things like obesity as technological problems. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 5 months ago

Even if Trump chickens out, you should still be worried about the economy

Tariff pauses are keeping us afloat for now. But debt and interest rates are a big threat. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 5 months ago

How Chinese drones could defeat America

A Ukrainian drone attack shows our extreme vulnerability. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 5 months ago

It's time for Abundance to get mad

Sunny visions of the future are great. But if you want to lead the Democrats, you need to fight. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 5 months ago

The anti-economists have overreached

Before you criticize something, at least try to understand it. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 5 months ago

Service costs aren't exploding anymore

Another common economic narrative that's out of date. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 5 months ago

America needs its foreign students

We're messing with the engine that makes our country run. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 5 months ago

The Age of Twitter is finally ending. Can Substack take its place?

Some thoughts on the future of the media. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 5 months ago

Memorial Day chat with Matt Yglesias

A recording from Noah Smith's live video | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 5 months ago

At least five interesting things: Stubborn optimism edition (#64)

YIMBY wins; America calming down; Biotech miracles; Progress in education; The good kind of nationalism | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 5 months ago

Shops make a city great

The missing piece in our urbanist discussion. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 5 months ago

White Americans as a normal minority

Creating a stable multiracial nation is a tricky thing to do. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 5 months ago

Is the U.S. in a "high-level equilibrium trap"?

When countries start fearing the future, they stagnate. | Continue reading


@noahpinion.blog | 5 months ago