Notices by Matthew W. Thomas (mwt@econtwitter.net), page 2

@violetmadder @pleaseclap @simon_brooke @SallyStrange the number is the first attempt at answering this question. It started a literature. He didn't win the Nobel because he answered the question. He won the Nobel because he asked an important question and innovated an approach to solve it. This is an entire literature now.

@violetmadder @pleaseclap @simon_brooke @SallyStrange the alternative to attempting to answer a question is to not attempt to answer the question. This is an important question. So, attempting to answer it is important.

The model assumes linear costs of climate change (e.g., a 2 degree increase causes twice the damage of a 1 degree increase). This is not correct, but improvements can be (and have been) built off the underlying framework.

Again, this is all radical compared to actual policy.

@violetmadder @pleaseclap @simon_brooke @SallyStrange (btw the target is 3.5°C and people like to round it up, but that's besides the point)

@violetmadder @pleaseclap @simon_brooke @SallyStrange you can't suddenly stop all emissions in one day. So, the question of how you slow them and how much those emissions will raise temperatures is a real question that requires a real answer.

Nordhaus' 4 degrees proposal involved major emissions reductions that no one followed. If the world followed his proposals, we would be in far better shape than we are now.

@pleaseclap @violetmadder @simon_brooke @SallyStrange from my perspective, the status quo is preserving capital and he advocates taking some of that away. Capital didn't like that.

I get that you find him too moderate, but he didn't advocate for business-as-usual like effective altruists. He's not on the other side from you. He's just close enough to be in your punching range.

@pleaseclap @violetmadder @simon_brooke @SallyStrange anyway, feeding, clothing, and housing everyone without emissions requires some sort of system and plan. The "let's break everything first and figure it out later approach" is no good.

Once you have a concrete plan, you might discover that your final proposal isn't that different from the policy approach -- just with bigger numbers.

@feld @SlicerDicer the price decrease would be lower than the interest rate increase. Why do you think it would be larger?

@SlicerDicer @feld you don't even need this math. The home is more unaffordable if you have to pay more interest. If I charge you an extra 3% for your loan, you're worse off even if I give some of that 3% back in the form of tax breaks.

@SlicerDicer @feld so, again a deduction off your income still means that you are paying most of the increase in interest. The interest rate deduction is not a credit.

Homes are expensive for a median household to buy. Would increasing the interest rate help with that? Obviously not. It would make a mortgage more expensive.

@feld @SlicerDicer they are part of the greater picture. Even the people who don't have layoffs are not receiving raises, etc. Things that are bad for a group of people are bad for them. They don't need the things that are bad for them.

The idea that causing a recession would make it easier for low-income people to stay in their homes makes no sense.

It's not obvious what they should do, but you're writing about the costs of high interest rates as though they were benefits.

@SlicerDicer @feld the wages are supposed to go up. High interest rates are a form of belt tightening. They negatively impact the working class.

@SlicerDicer @feld they're just paying more money and getting less than all of it back...

@SlicerDicer @feld you're trying to say that an interest increase is good for someone with a mortgage because last year they got a credit for 20% of the interest rate increases that they faced.

This is not true. They still pay most of the increase and therefore are worse off.

Anyway, not all of the disadvantages of high interest are though debt. The people who receive layoffs are obviously worse off.

@SlicerDicer @feld what are you talking about? I explained why deflation would be bad and you answered something about how things don't seem so bad right now...

@feld you're talking about one downside, but ignoring the other. If you keep the interest rate where it is, you could find down the road that you're in a recession.

It's not like there's an obvious "safe" choice and a corrupt "dangerous" choice. The fed has to walk a tightrope with dangers on both sides.

@SlicerDicer @feld there are lots of problems, but the main one is that people delay their purchases and wait for prices to go down. This reduces the need for production and causes layoffs.

I don't know what debt you're talking about. Lenders love deflation.

@feld deflation is bad too. The goal was never to get the prices to go down. It was to make them increase less quickly.

@RedtheBean the World Bank and IMF are nowhere near that powerful

@weirdwriter is blind and wrote a very interesting article about this: https://robertkingett.com/posts/6230/

@eal @lain @piggo

@thenexusofprivacy @tokyo_0 @Sibilant the only instance I know of that has it is also one that I am unable to fetch from (on Mastodon despite no blocks). So, I think that there is much more than a performance hit. It's also unreliable and difficult to debug.