⤴⤵ Up Wing/Down Wing #20

A curated selection of pro-progress and anti-progress news items from the week that was

In case you missed it .. .

✨ What we know about AI and the economy ... so far, at least (Monday)

⚡✨🕸️ The computational power of complex societies: A Quick Q&A with … physicist and computer scientist David Wolpert (Tuesday)

🌀 It's actually a huge failure that we can't control hurricanes (Wednesday)

💥 My chat (+transcript) with economist Eli Dourado on creating a fantastic future (Thursday)

✨🤖🌈 Elon Musk's true economic vision on display at 'We, Robot' (Friday)

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Up Wing Things

🌐 The populist take on free trade is wrong. It actually works great. Econ 101: Free trade policies aim to increase productivity, wages, and consumption rather than directly create jobs. Even so, the weight of the evidence suggests that free trade, including with China, hasn't reduced overall employment, though it has caused disruptions in some sectors. Neo-protectionist measures — often implemented as populist responses to these disruptions — are likely to harm American workers. Policymakers should focus on broader economic benefits rather than narrow metrics like job numbers in specific industries.

Over the past three decades, the real wages of typical workers have grown substantially, and after-tax real median household income has grown even more. The process of creative destruction has led to new opportunities in expanding middle-wage occupations. For well over a decade, broadly measured income inequality has stagnated. America remains an upwardly mobile society. Rising tides may not lift all boats at the same speed, but the hot economy of recent years shows that macroeconomic gains diffuse throughout the economy and are not captured by the elite. Globally, the free-enterprise system has delivered astonishing results. Over the past three decades, hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of abject poverty due to the spread of capitalism. Infant mortality has plunged. The world became more peaceful and secure. The 2008 global financial crisis, Great Recession, and COVID-19 pandemic each led to great economic and human hardship. They led to and sustained the rise of populist politics. But as traumatic as those events were, they should inspire confidence in the American system of democratic capitalism. That system has created the remarkably resilient and innovative workforce, economy, and society that were able to meet these challenges—and to overcome them. (Protectionism is Failing and Wrongheaded: An Evaluation of the Post-2017 Shift toward Trade Wars and Industrial Policy)

☢️ Leading tech companies have turned pro-nuclear. Tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are looking to use nuclear energy to power their energy-intensive data centers, aiming to reduce carbon emissions and meet the high demand for power. They’ve inked deals with nuclear power plants and are exploring next-gen small modular reactors (SMRs). Microsoft plans to revive Three Mile Island by 2028, while Amazon bought a data center powered by the Susquehanna Nuclear plant. Despite the challenges of regulatory approvals, opposition over costs, and environmental concerns related to uranium mining and radioactive waste disposal, SMRs, still in development, promise flexibility and cost-effectiveness. (The Verge)