The hottest Economics Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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Giving Up on the ‘Giving Pledge’

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 194 implied HN points • 23 Mar 26
💼 Business Economics
  1. Many billionaires are backing away from the Giving Pledge, and new sign-ups have slowed dramatically.
  2. People point to several causes: a shift toward political donations, reinvesting wealth in businesses, and growing criticism that the pledge was performative or associated with problematic figures.
  3. Abandoning the pledge can be seen as positive because it often prioritized image and affectation over substantive, accountable charitable impact.

The future isn't what it used to be

Noahpinion • 20235 implied HN points • 15 Mar 26
🕹 Technology Economics
  1. The future is much less predictable now because AI and political and global shocks could upend the old path to security. You can't assume the 2016 playbook—hard work, saving, college, and a professional career—will guarantee your kids' success.
  2. AI could bring huge benefits or huge harms very quickly, so it's unclear which jobs and skills will still be valuable. Rapid technological change may transform the economy and society in a short time.
  3. Because we can't reliably extrapolate from the past, people are losing confidence in the future and feeling nostalgic for more predictable times. That rising uncertainty is changing how families and markets plan for the next generation.

Links for March

By Reason Alone • 50 implied HN points • 26 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Economics
  1. Transformer and GPT breakthroughs have reshaped how people build language models and sparked lively debates about agents, AGI timelines, and whether markets expect transformative AI. Economists and researchers still disagree about when AI will be transformative and what that would do to interest rates and the wider economy.
  2. Classic free-market arguments remain influential but often skip important institutional and empirical details, so policies like tax changes or minimum wages can have very different effects depending on context. Careful evidence and nuanced models are needed rather than broad claims.
  3. This month’s curation mixes culture, research, and community: podcasts, albums, papers, grants, and meetups all feed into conversations about science policy and funding. In Ireland there’s a clear push toward building research capacity and a metascience unit to improve how science is funded and evaluated.

Erdmann Housing Tracker, 2025 Year in Review (January to March)

Erdmann Housing Tracker • 252 implied HN points • 25 Mar 26
💼 Business Economics
  1. The housing shortage and rules that block new construction, along with tighter mortgage access, have pushed rents way up and suppressed household formation, which hits low-income families hardest.
  2. Common economic measures get the story backwards: rising rents drive price/rent ratios and displace poorer households, and metro-area averages mask the within-city inequalities that matter most.
  3. Policy choices — from lending rules to bans on investor activity and restrictive zoning — are a major cause of the problem, and building more homes is the practical market solution that would reduce inequality.

Top Links 1044 Global LNG. China's gig-workers. Haiti's carnage and Althusser on ideology and history.

Chartbook • 329 implied HN points • 17 Mar 26
🌍 World Politics Economics
  1. Top links focus on several major issues: global LNG markets, the situation of China’s gig workers, and the violence in Haiti paired with Althusser’s ideas on ideology and history.
  2. Market commentators are increasingly worried about risks building up in private credit.
  3. The newsletter is supported by paid subscriptions while offering some free access and encouraging reader support to keep it running.
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加油比特币 Let's Go Bitcoin

Crypto Trader Digest • 2281 implied HN points • 28 Oct 24
🔮 Crypto Economics
  1. Governments often inflate property bubbles to maintain public support, as owning property ties people's wealth to the state. If people feel secure about their homes, they're less likely to revolt.
  2. China is facing a property bubble crisis similar to those seen in other countries, and it might inject a lot of money into the economy to recover. This could lead to more yuan being traded for Bitcoin as people seek to protect their wealth.
  3. Even though the current stimulus might seem small, once people realize that money is being pumped into the economy, there could be a rush to buy Bitcoin. Historically, Bitcoin tends to rise sharply when significant money is printed.

Roundup #78: Roboliberalism

Noahpinion • 17882 implied HN points • 27 Feb 26
💼 Business Economics
  1. We still don’t know if AI caused a real productivity boom in 2025 — micro studies show task-level gains but macro data are noisy, subject to revisions, and other explanations exist.
  2. Building lots of new, high-end housing can actually lower rents for lower-income people by freeing up older, cheaper units — evidence from multiple cities supports this “Yuppie Fishtank” effect.
  3. The decline in extreme poverty has largely finished outside Africa, and because African poverty rates remain high while population grows, forecasts show global extreme poverty could rise again unless African growth or fertility patterns change.

Implications of Coase for Law

David Friedman’s Substack • 314 implied HN points • 23 Mar 26
💼 Business Economics
  1. Harms like pollution are the result of choices by both the emitter and the harmed, so assigning blame or charging only one side only works if that side is actually the cheapest to prevent the harm.
  2. When bargaining is cheap and property rights are clear, people will make deals that reach the efficient outcome without needing taxes or heavy regulation, so who legally has the right mainly affects who pays.
  3. In the real world bargaining often fails because negotiations are costly, many people are involved, or holdouts occur, so the right legal response depends on those transaction costs rather than a fixed preference for taxes or regulation.

Male Workplace Subordination Is the Behavioral Sink

72 Degrees North • 59 implied HN points • 01 Nov 24
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Economics
  1. Many people today feel overwhelmed by the pressure of competition in the workplace, leading to a sense of hopelessness. This competition affects their self-esteem and can cause them to feel unappealing and worthless.
  2. Some argue that men are suffering more under current economic systems, feeling subordinate and less attractive due to their work situations. This can lead to a broader crisis that affects relationships and family life.
  3. There is a belief that our society needs to change the way we view work and success. Instead of relying on old structures that don't support everyone, we should create a system where all individuals contribute to and support each other.

Trends in US Construction Productivity

Construction Physics • 17537 implied HN points • 12 Feb 26
💼 Business Economics
  1. U.S. construction productivity has been stagnant or fallen for decades, especially compared to strong gains in the rest of the economy. Many sector-wide measures show little to no growth and some show long-term declines.
  2. How productivity is measured matters a lot — sector, subsector, project, and task metrics can tell different stories, and results are highly sensitive to deflators, changing output mix, labor accounting, and quality adjustments. These measurement problems make precise conclusions difficult.
  3. Other countries also show weak construction productivity gains since the 1990s, and while some tasks or subsectors have improved, overall construction growth is much lower than manufacturing and the broader economy.

Chartbook 436 Unseasonal war. How the US-Israeli war on Iran threatens the global agricultural cycle.

Chartbook • 3404 implied HN points • 04 Mar 26
🌍 World Politics Economics
  1. The war is interrupting LNG and fertilizer flows from the Gulf, causing urea and ammonia shortages and forcing some plants to cut output.
  2. The timing is critical because shipments are needed now for the spring planting season, so delays could force farmers to switch crops or accept lower yields.
  3. Large fertilizer producers are likely to profit, while poor, smallholder farming countries—especially in Africa—plus fiscally stretched governments like India, will bear the worst food-security and budgetary costs.

Top Links 1040 Tax the billionaires. America's first new refinery in half a century. The economy as strategy. Cancer odds.

Chartbook • 472 implied HN points • 13 Mar 26
📰 News Economics
  1. There’s a growing push to tax billionaires through a wealth or "billionaire" tax to raise revenue and address inequality.
  2. America is building its first new oil refinery in about half a century, signaling a shift in energy and industrial policy priorities.
  3. Policymakers are increasingly treating the economy itself as a strategic tool, using economic measures to pursue geopolitical and domestic objectives.

Top Links 1039 Oil profit spikes and who benefits. China needs a better welfare state. The origin of the Cumberland sausage and the second life of drop tanks.

Chartbook • 643 implied HN points • 12 Mar 26
🌐 International Economics
  1. Oil prices and profits have jumped, and the gains are flowing unequally to companies and owners rather than to workers or consumers.
  2. China needs a stronger welfare state to give people better social protection and to help reduce inequality.
  3. Small histories reveal surprising stories — from the origin of the Cumberland sausage to how military drop tanks were reused, everyday objects can have unexpected second lives.

On Technologies vs. Commodities

Construction Physics • 23383 implied HN points • 29 Jan 26
🌞 Climate & Environment Economics
  1. Manufactured technologies tend to get cheaper more reliably over time, while commodities can also fall in price but do so less consistently, especially in recent decades.
  2. The price dynamics overlap: commodities face depletion, tradability, and cartel effects, while technologies benefit from learning, scale, and process improvements, yet technologies can hit siting or resource limits and commodities can improve via better extraction methods.
  3. It’s unclear whether commodities follow learning curves because long-run cumulative production data is often missing, so analyzing specific price-driving mechanisms is more useful than relying on a simple technology-vs-commodity split.

How the War With Iran Will Trigger a Global Financial Crisis (w/ Yanis Varoufakis) | The Chris Hedges Report

The Chris Hedges Report • 275 implied HN points • 17 Mar 26
🌍 World Politics Economics
  1. The war has choked key oil and gas routes, sending fuel, power and fertilizer prices sharply higher and causing shortages that will ripple through global supply chains for months even if the fighting ends.
  2. Those energy shocks, falling investment and likely central-bank tightening make high inflation plus rising unemployment more likely, meaning working people will suffer the most while elites and oligarchies can be insulated.
  3. The economic collapse will deepen political instability and authoritarian tendencies, weaken existing global and regional power structures, and increase the need for organized political resistance to defend democracy and social protections.

Let's save the human species!

Noahpinion • 30176 implied HN points • 22 Jan 26
🌍 World Politics Economics
  1. Fertility rates are collapsing across many countries, creating shrinking and rapidly aging populations that threaten economic productivity, public finances, and the upkeep of infrastructure.
  2. Common reassurances—higher productivity, automation, immigration, or baby‑bonus payments—are uncertain or insufficient and won’t reliably reverse the trend without huge cost or social disruption.
  3. We urgently need a large, well‑funded research effort (observational studies, RCTs, technological and public‑health trials) supported by governments and major donors to find practical, scalable ways to stabilize fertility near replacement.

Roundup #76: Great Powers acting stupid

Noahpinion • 24882 implied HN points • 26 Jan 26
🌍 World Politics Economics
  1. Political movements that flout the law and reject scientific expertise are causing deadly enforcement actions and undermining public health. This anti‑science stance is also driving vaccine hesitancy and weakening biomedical research and innovation.
  2. A sweeping purge of senior military leaders concentrates power but removes experienced commanders, risking instability and reducing military effectiveness. That personalistic control could hurt long‑term strategic strength and decision‑making.
  3. India is rapidly building scientific capacity and electrification industries, positioning itself to become a major global electrotech manufacturer. Its large domestic market and supportive policies give it a good chance to leapfrog other powers.

Hard Money and Hard Men

Postcards From Barsoom • 3906 implied HN points • 13 Oct 24
🔮 Crypto Economics
  1. To create good times, we need to focus on becoming great individuals first. It's not just about what you do, but about who you choose to be.
  2. In our current world, there's a lot of distraction and mediocrity. We must resist this and strive for excellence by not settling for average.
  3. History shows us the importance of strength and preparation. To appreciate peace, you must understand the value of being ready for conflict.

Judge Foreign Policy Decisions by Their Immediate Impacts

Richard Hanania's Newsletter • 1682 implied HN points • 16 Mar 26
🌍 World Politics Economics
  1. Judge foreign policy by its immediate impacts and short-term market signals, since markets aggregate information and reflect what people with money at stake expect. Reserve judgment only briefly while events are still unfolding, but don’t wait years or generations to decide.
  2. When early indicators all point positive—rising markets, political openings, and clearer paths to better governance—treat the intervention as a success relative to the likely alternative rather than chasing long-run counterfactuals. Use these proximate signals as your baseline for comparison.
  3. If signals are mixed or the situation is early, hold off and weigh market losses and economic costs against gains in policy objectives using a short, clear horizon; employ market proxies plus simple cost–benefit tools (including statistical value of life) rather than waiting indefinitely.

Against Against Boomers

Astral Codex Ten • 40814 implied HN points • 19 Dec 25
🎭️ Culture Economics
  1. Anti-Boomer anger is trendy but overbroad, and real differences between generations on many issues are smaller than the rhetoric suggests.
  2. Claims that Boomers are selfishly “plundering” younger people miss important context: per-person benefits haven’t grown dramatically, and higher public spending largely reflects demographics and rising healthcare costs.
  3. Turning policy debates into Boomer-vs-younger identity politics is unhelpful and short-sighted, because it obscures actual welfare trade-offs and risks the same tribalism when today’s critics age.

Top Links 1036 India’s trade deficit, CO2 Emissions of Chocolate, and US Bases in Italy.

Chartbook • 515 implied HN points • 09 Mar 26
🌐 International Economics
  1. India’s trade deficit is largely shaped by oil imports, with the rest of goods adding to the shortfall.
  2. Chocolate production has a significant CO2 footprint, showing that everyday foods can carry meaningful environmental costs.
  3. The network of US military bases in Italy is a notable strategic and political factor, influencing both regional geopolitics and domestic debates.

How AI Labs Are Solving the Power Crisis: The Onsite Gas Deep Dive

SemiAnalysis • 20002 implied HN points • 30 Dec 25
💼 Business Economics
  1. The electric grid can’t keep up with exploding AI datacenter demand, so labs are increasingly bypassing it and building onsite gas power to get capacity online months faster and capture huge revenue.
  2. Datacenters pick from aeroderivative and industrial turbines, reciprocating engines, and fuel cells, each with clear tradeoffs in cost, lead time, ramp speed, efficiency, and space needs.
  3. Suppliers and supply chains are bottlenecked and high-reliability needs force overbuilding, so onsite power is often pricier per kWh and operators use hybrids—rented truck units, batteries, and Energy-as-a-Service—to balance speed, cost, and uptime.

The Shrinking Economic Weight of Energy

The Honest Broker Newsletter • 1177 implied HN points • 02 Mar 26
🌞 Climate & Environment Economics
  1. Since 1970 the physical energy intensity of major fossil fuels has fallen sharply—about 70% for gasoline, 64% for natural gas, and 84% for coal—driven by 1970s price shocks, policy, technology, and a shift toward services.
  2. The 1970s were a turning point: economic growth began to decouple from rising fuel use so GDP could grow while physical fuel consumption fell, but the share of GDP spent on energy still swings with volatile global commodity prices.
  3. Coal now represents a vanishingly small share of the economy (around 0.1% of GDP) despite high political attention, while electricity’s intensity has declined less because the economy is electrifying and could rise again if EVs and AI data centers boost demand.

At least five interesting things: Buy Local edition (#74)

Noahpinion • 17941 implied HN points • 31 Dec 25
💼 Business Economics
  1. Reducing regulatory costs and investing in infrastructure makes it much easier for small businesses to start, compete, and find customers. This kind of "abundance" policy lowers barriers to entry and helps local economies revive.
  2. Building more market-rate or "luxury" housing lowers rents for everyone by giving high earners places to live so they don’t bid up older, affordable units. Increasing overall housing supply acts like a containment for upward pressure on rents.
  3. Tariffs have raised some prices and hurt certain industries, but the broader U.S. economy has been resilient because actual tariffs paid are much lower than headline rates due to exemptions and trade rules. Also, much of the damage from tariff shocks can appear with a year or two of delay.

⚛️ A nuclear step forward—maybe

Faster, Please! • 1553 implied HN points • 05 Mar 26
🌞 Climate & Environment Economics
  1. A new kind of nuclear reactor has been approved, offering a path to reliable, carbon-free power, but small modular reactors remain expensive and their economics will only improve if costs fall with repeated, mass-produced builds.
  2. Electricity demand is rising fast because of AI data centers, electric vehicles, and electrified heating, so the grid needs much more generation and transmission soon; in the near term solar and batteries will add capacity while natural gas provides reliability.
  3. Data centers function like infrastructure rather than big job creators — they use few permanent staff, bring substantial tax revenue, and impose little strain on local services; they can also spur local power investments (including on-site small modular reactors), though opposition often mixes environmental concerns with distrust of big tech.

Six (or seven) predictions for AI 2026 from a Generative AI realist

Marcus on AI • 20196 implied HN points • 20 Dec 25
🕹 Technology Economics
  1. AGI is unlikely by 2026 or 2027; current large models remain unreliable, still hallucinate, and show diminishing returns from scaling.
  2. Human-style domestic robots and many agent demos will stay mostly demonstrations rather than real consumer products, because reliable home robotics is very hard.
  3. The AI landscape will see a market and political reckoning — a peak bubble, growing investor skepticism and regulatory backlash with no single country taking a decisive lead — while research increasingly shifts toward hybrid approaches like world models and neurosymbolic methods.

How An Informed Minority Took Over The World’s Biggest Firms

High ROI Data Science • 119 implied HN points • 29 Oct 24
💼 Business Economics
  1. Information asymmetry is when one group knows more than another. This can create unfair advantages in social systems and businesses.
  2. The Werewolf Game illustrates how a small, informed group can control the majority. This game teaches us about strategy and deception in group dynamics.
  3. To protect ourselves from manipulation, we need to build mental firewalls. Knowing about information asymmetry helps us fight back against unfair advantages.

⚡ War reminds us of civilization’s true currency

Faster, Please! • 913 implied HN points • 09 Mar 26
🌍 World Politics Economics
  1. Energy is civilization's universal currency. Almost everything we do needs energy transformed into useful work, and our prosperity depends on mastering that transformation.
  2. Geopolitical conflicts and shocks quickly show how vulnerable modern life is to fuel disruptions, for example by pushing up gasoline prices.
  3. The global food system relies heavily on fossil-fuel-driven processes like using natural gas for the Haber-Bosch fertilizer synthesis, so energy disruptions can raise fertilizer and food costs worldwide.

✨ The race to economic supremacy in the Age of AGI

Faster, Please! • 1553 implied HN points • 03 Mar 26
🕹 Technology Economics
  1. AI could be a powerful general-purpose technology like the PC or the internet, bringing big but historically familiar economic change.
  2. If AI reaches human-level general intelligence, it could perform nearly every economically valuable task and radically reshape work and the economy.
  3. How AI is developed and deployed will determine whether the world converges toward shared gains, diverges into greater inequality, or sees one actor achieve runaway economic dominance, sparking a global race for supremacy.

No, buses should not be "free"

Machine Learning Everything • 1379 implied HN points • 19 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Economics
  1. Fares are more than revenue — they’re information that reveals demand and cost so transit agencies can decide where to add, trim, or change service.
  2. Making buses free changes behavior: zero price pulls in marginal riders who value trips less, which can crowd, slow, and degrade service for others.
  3. A small fare acts as a behavioral gate and preserves competition; instead of blanket free service, targeted subsidies, income‑based fares, and enforcement are better tools to help riders and keep the system functioning.

Top Links 1032 Hormuz to Asia. Cuba goes solar. Gramsci on sex and production & Brecht on shooting people like me.

Chartbook • 457 implied HN points • 05 Mar 26
🌍 World Politics Economics
  1. U.S. LNG exports have created a new decade in global gas trade, reshaping energy flows and geopolitical links from the Gulf (Hormuz) to Asian markets.
  2. Cuba is embracing solar power, marking a notable shift toward renewable energy and greater island energy resilience.
  3. There is renewed engagement with thinkers like Gramsci and Brecht, using their ideas about sex, production, and violence to rethink political and cultural conflicts.

At least five interesting things: Debunking the Debunkers edition (#73)

Noahpinion • 18353 implied HN points • 12 Dec 25
📰 News Economics
  1. Basic income trials boost recipients' cash but don’t meaningfully raise their labor income or reduce crime in the short run, so unconditional cash alone won’t solve many social problems.
  2. Mississippi’s big gains in fourth‑grade reading don’t appear to be just a selection artifact from holding kids back, since improvements show up across all score deciles and have persisted beyond the first retained cohorts.
  3. Nick Fuentes’ online popularity was at least partly manufactured by coordinated, anonymous (often foreign) accounts that artificially amplified engagement, demonstrating how viral platforms can be gamed to inflate extremist influence unless better gatekeeping is built.

How Reality Destroyed Europe’s Green Energy Dreams

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 811 implied HN points • 04 Mar 26
🌞 Climate & Environment Economics
  1. Europe's once-strong push for aggressive net-zero and green energy has fractured. Skyrocketing energy costs and economic realities made those plans hard to sustain.
  2. Recent geopolitical turbulence, especially the war in Iran, has driven up oil and natural gas prices and put extra pressure on European economies and energy policy choices.
  3. Early political enthusiasm for big carbon prices and rapid green transitions is now meeting resistance as voters and governments prioritize affordability and energy security over ambitious climate goals.

When Reality Hits You Over the Head

Life Since the Baby Boom • 1152 implied HN points • 27 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Economics
  1. Experts who favor elegant theory over messy reality can be wrong when policies ignore actual outcomes, so evidence should steer decisions.
  2. Legalizing and taxing drugs does not automatically eliminate black markets or crime, because tax incentives, regulatory burdens, and cross‑jurisdictional demand keep illegal supply alive.
  3. Basing budgets and policy on optimistic models or drug tax revenue can backfire, since oversupply and falling prices can collapse revenues and undermine promised services.

A Play-By-Play Of Jeffrey Epstein's Staggering Financial Illiteracy

TK News by Matt Taibbi • 2765 implied HN points • 13 Feb 26
💰 Finance Economics
  1. Jeffrey Epstein, long billed as a Wall Street whiz, comes across as financially illiterate in an interview about the 2008 crisis.
  2. Many people are puzzled about how he made his money, and viewers hoped footage from Steve Bannon’s abandoned documentary would shed light.
  3. The Department of Justice released over 3 million documents that include the Bannon footage, and much of the interview focuses on finance and economics but still doesn’t clearly explain his fortune.

✨ The end of work? Not yet—maybe not ever

Faster, Please! • 1919 implied HN points • 22 Feb 26
🕹 Technology Economics
  1. People are scared that AI will automate white‑collar jobs and trigger massive unemployment, especially if office tasks like contracts and accounting are quickly automated.
  2. Those apocalyptic scenarios have become a popular genre, but it’s worth stepping back and not assuming the end of work is inevitable.
  3. Whether or not human‑level AI appears soon, AI’s spread will shape politics and policy — the 2028 election and debates about incomes, regulation, and oversight will likely revolve around it.

If You Think Our Rulers Do Bad Things In Secret, Wait Til You See What They Do Out In The Open

Caitlin’s Newsletter • 2957 implied HN points • 09 Feb 26
🌍 World Politics Economics
  1. Powerful governments and wealthy elites commit massive harms openly—wars, economic sieges, resource plundering, environmental destruction, and global military dominance happen in full view of the world.
  2. Many of the worst abuses are public and systemic, driven by state policy and corporate profit, not just secret scandals behind closed doors.
  3. While private scandals matter, attention and accountability should focus first on the far greater, visible harms that shape millions of lives.

Hidden Open Thread 424.5

Astral Codex Ten • 481 implied HN points • 12 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Economics
  1. A paywalled, subscriber-only thread titled "Hidden Open Thread 424.5" is dated March 12, 2026.
  2. The page prompts readers to subscribe and also offers a sign-in option for existing paid subscribers.
  3. Visible engagement indicators (the numbers 5 and 109) and a share option suggest some level of interaction on the thread.

What Should the Dems Do to Win—And Then to Govern?

Breaking the News • 1103 implied HN points • 17 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Economics
  1. Democrats should build a transparent, detailed governing playbook now—a positive counterpart to Project 2025—and use Congress to normalize these ideas and force votes so positions are on the record.
  2. The Shearer/Carnoy/Reich "Bold Economic Program" is a practical, costed starting blueprint focused on job creation and fairness, and it should be refined collaboratively by experts and candidates.
  3. Tackle solvable problems first (like housing) while recognizing harder fights (like taxing the rich), and create a simple, unifying slogan or brand now to rally voters around a forward-looking agenda.

TSMC Overseas Fabs – A Success?

SemiAnalysis • 13334 implied HN points • 01 Dec 25
🕹 Technology Economics
  1. TSMC is a key player in semiconductor manufacturing, but most of its production happens in Taiwan. Their overseas expansions to the U.S., Japan, and Germany face challenges in replicating the efficiency and ecosystem found in Taiwan.
  2. The founder, Morris Chang, is skeptical about the success of U.S. fabs, suggesting that high costs and a lack of local supply chains could make them less competitive compared to TSMC's operations in Taiwan.
  3. The U.S. government is pushing for onshore semiconductor production for national security reasons, but building and operating fabs in places like Arizona is complicated and significantly more expensive than in Taiwan.