Brad DeLong

Econ 196 :: Societies of Domination :: Pre-Class Assignment—do before 2026-02-15 23:59 PST

What I am teaching in my seminar these days: predatory thugs with spears and transitory economic booms with limits—agrarian-age antiquity as both domination and efflorescence…

CROSSPOST: JOSH MARSHALL: Thinking Clearly About the Global Authoritarian Movement

Billionaires, Bots, and a 'Bloid for Smart People: In Praise of Josh Marshall’s TPM “Talking Points Memo”. Today we have Josh’s analysis of today’s “global authoritarian movement” of Trump, Musk...

Econ 210a :: Why the Agrarian Age Stayed Poor: Just What Was the Long-Run Trap Anyway?

What kept the rate of growth of human “technology” at less than 3% per century back before the year 200—and progress not guaranteed, as the Late Bronze Age collapse and the post-Roman-Han Dark Age...

Pre-Class Assignment for Tuesday: 2026-01-27 :: Econ 196 :: Productivity & Technology

From candles to code & the brightness of modern prosperity: Malthus, LEDs, LLMs, & MOAR!…

CROSSPOST: PAUL KRUGMAN: Seduced by the Louis XIV Treatment

Paul Krugman's subhead is: What JD Vance and his entourage in Milan teach us about Epstein’s magnetism.

Assessing Brink Lindsey's "the Permanent Problem"

The Enlightenment and modernity have, Brink Lindsey argues, led to mass society and mass affluence. But their overrun has also created a world where individuals are buffeted by strange alien and...

CROSSPOST: PHIL H: What Does Corruption Look Like?

Phil H.'s subtitle is: "They'll tell you not to believe what you can see with your own eyes". The post is about China's Tang Dynasty poet Han Hong's "Cold Food Festival" poem.

Trailer for the "Hail Mary" Movie, Starring Ryan Gosling, Made by My First Cousin Phil Lord & All His Contubernales

My first cousin's latest movie, after the book by Andy Weir: Ryan Gosling & Rocky vs. the world-ending astrophage apocalypse, as the sun itself is on the line...

The Streaming Wars Were Just Plain Weird

Netflix climbs to the top of the streaming-success mountain only to see a much bigger mountain in front of it still to climb: The streaming wars were always going to end like this as the cable...

Flummoxed by My Open Epstein Tabs

Conspicuously failing to successfully wrap my mind around any of this…

CROSSPOST: STEVE VLADECK: The Fifth Circuit Jumps the Immigration Detention Shark

Steve’s subhead: “Late Friday, two of the nation’s most right-wing circuit judges adopted an odious legal claim that district court judges from across the country (and ideological spectrum) have...

CROSSPOST: DAN DAVIES: Snobby About Excel

Dan Davies has his finger on something important here. It is not, at root, about "AI". It is about work. The spreadsheet first escaped from the finance department and colonised the world. “Serious”...

CROSSPOST: IAN McKELLEN: William Shakespeare (& Other Playwrights) on Thomas More on Immigrants

On “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”. Immigration, Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Thomas More, ICE, Minneapolis, Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, & Senator Collins’s little carve-out for Maine from the ICE...

WEEK 2: The Practice & Scope of Economic History: Graduate Economic History :: Spring 2026 :: Econ 210a

75,000 years to go from 10,000 foragers to 200 million farmers to 10 billion post-industrialists. But from -5000 to 1500 life for the overwhelming majority was truly nasty, brutish, and short; with...

A Brief Note on the Near-Absence of Pre-1500 "Economic Growth"

& some of my musings on how to teach it. The long agrarian-age Malthusian night of the trap, of the ensorcellment: thugs, patriarchs, & standard-of-living stagnation, that is. For 5,000 years...

HOISTED FROM THE ARCHIVES: Yes: Pre-Modern Economies Were Meaningfully "Malthusian" (Which Does Not Mean Incomes Were Stable)

Putting this here so I can find it easily. Originally 2023-03-07. Contra Rafael Guthman; or, what a Malthusian economy looks like. Rafael is doing something genuinely interesting and valuable: he...

Econ 196 :: Quantitative Long-Run Global Economic History :: Experimental Seminar :: Spring 2026

READING: Judith Shklar as Proto-Feminist in the 1950s

Sewing circles & sections: Judith Shklar’s early Harvard wars of gossip, fairness, & drift as she found a way...

A New Rule for Social Interactions with Anyone Who Ever Voted for or Thought of Voting for Donald Trump

They must begin with an abject apology, declaration of repentance, and agreement to be guided for **all** their future voting decisions by somebody who is not such an easily grifted moron…

CROSSPOST: TIMOTHY SNYDER: Ethnic Cleansing in Ohio: Nazi Lies in Vance's America

In his first term, the analogues of Hermann Göring, Josef Goebbels, and Reinhard Heydrich did not show up for Donald Trump. Now, in Trump's second term, JD Vance is auditioning for the slot(s)...

Dan Davies Demonstrates for Immigrants: He Returns Home Worried About How Hopelessness Powers Xenophobia

Is the real threat not open cruelty but a corrosive conviction that rich societies are too broken to solve solvable problems. Dan Davies describes Britain’s anti-immigrant protesters as people...

Three Significant Military Powers on the European Continent?: Muscovy 'Rus, But Also an "Inner Europe" and the "Viking Alliance"

Muscovy ‘Rus, in military affairs, punches well above its relative economic weight—plus it has nuclear weapons. And NATO is no longer a thing—The Holy One Who Is alone knows what bizarre s***show...