Is an inheritance tax a good idea or a bad idea? Well, it depends. What does it depend on? It depends on whether you are a Congress supporter or a BJP supporter. What else does it depend on? It depends on whether you are answering this question in 2024, 2019 or 2014. What does it not depend on? Economic analysis. I have read innumerable tweets/messsages today about the inheritance tax. Or death tax. Or estate tax. These are tweets and messages from economic analysts, politicians, think-tankers, journalists and policy makers. Every single discussion has been about who has said what about inheri ..read more

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New Preprint!@JayVanBavel, @KareenadelRosa and I go inside the "Funhouse Mirror Factory" of Social Media to explain how SM is distorting our perception of social norms– by making moderate opinions practically invisible and over-representing the most extreme voices. pic.twitter.com/Dno8aSS3pg — Claire Robertson (@CRobertson500) April 1, 2024 ..read more

I’m conflicted about using Zepto (or its substitutes) for a variety of reasons, but these days, during the summer, I think it is a Most Magical Thing. The ability to order pretty much anything you want, from the comfort of your home, is a wonderful thing – and especially so when the world outside resembles the middle of a 250 degree oven. And so when Zepto introduced Zepto Pass, I was more than happy to sign up: Quick commerce firm Zepto on Thursday officially announced the launch of its paid subscription service—Zepto Pass—that will offer greater discounts to consumers, ratcheting up competi ..read more

There’s Ukraine, there’s Gaza and there will be Taiwan. Not “may well be”. Not “it’s a question of when, not if”. There will be a war in and over Taiwan. Or that, at any rate, is Mike Studeman’s take. And who, you might wish to ask, is Mike Studeman? Mike Studeman was the former commander of the Office of Naval Intelligence and director for intelligence (J2) of the Indo-Pacific Command. He is a member of the National Bureau of Asian Research advisory board and is MITRE’s first national security fellow. Source: https://warontherocks.com/2024/04/china-is-battening-down-for-the-gathering-storm-o ..read more

The ability to exercise good judgment is the binding constraint in development is the title of Gulzar Natarajan’s blogpost on Oliver Kim’s essay, which we’ve covered earlier here. Almost all of doing development is about making non-technical decisions (the technical ones are easier, have limited degrees of freedom, and mostly slot themselves into place). Such decisions are invariably an exercise of judgment by taking into consideration several factors, one of which is the technical aspect (or expert opinion). The most important requirement for the exercise of good judgment is experience or pr ..read more

Keith McNulty starts his day, every day, by solving a math problem: Every morning before I start work I tackle a math problem. I schedule 30 minutes to solve this problem, and if I don’t succeed I stick with it the next morning and subsequent mornings until I have solved it and I am ready to move on to the next. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/start-your-day-math-keith-mcnulty-eqsye/ He does it for a variety of reasons, all of which he mentions in the rest of his blog post, but in the main, he does it to exercise his brain, and to give him the confidence to start the rest of his day. I’m total ..read more

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