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Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality—The SubStack
WELCOME TO BRAD DELONG’S GRASPING REALITY: My attempt to make my readers—and myself—smarter, while keeping all of you out there in SubStackLand…
Dec 26, 2025
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Brad DeLong
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Quantitative Long-Run Global Economic History: Econ 196: Seminar: Special Topics in Economics (Spring 2026)
And we are now launched, with a new preparation for a new course: a Royal Road into the millennia of global economic history, hopefully designed for…
Jan 21
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Brad DeLong
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READING: JOHN WARNER: David Brooks Sucks
What can I say? I do not see how anyone sane can disagree. Shame on the "New York Times" for having given him a sinecure-platform for so long. Shame on…
Feb 12
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Brad DeLong
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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…
Feb 12
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Brad DeLong
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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…
Feb 12
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Brad DeLong
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Most Popular
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Donald Trump Is too Old to Be President, Yet Every Day, Live on Camera, We Get the Daily Farce of Pretending This Is in Some Way Normal
May 6, 2025
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Brad DeLong
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8% of the Flow of US Real GDP Is Likely to Vanish in the Next Three Months: The Ports Will Be Empty, & then the Shelves
Apr 29, 2025
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Brad DeLong
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TRUMPXIT: The Bell Tolls for Thee
Apr 8, 2025
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Brad DeLong
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The "Wall Street Journal" Tells Us: Trump Takes Command of Inflation, Which Was Massively Unsatisfactory under Biden
Jan 24, 2025
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Brad DeLong
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Recent posts
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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!…
Feb 10
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Brad DeLong
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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.
Feb 9
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Brad DeLong
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Seduced by the Louis XIV Treatment
What JD Vance and his entourage in Milan teach us about Epstein’s magnetism
Published on Paul Krugman
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Feb 9
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…
Feb 9
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Brad DeLong
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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…
Feb 11
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Brad DeLong
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A $140,000/Year Poverty Line? I: Stewarding & Utilizing Resources
Four factors making even rich people live poorly and hence feel poor in our immensely rich modern economy: a sense of precarity, a lack of centeredness…
Dec 4, 2025
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Brad DeLong
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Using GPT LLM MAMLMs as Your Rabbit—Your Pacer
GPT LLM MAMLMs are not oracles, subordinates, or colleagues. They are emulations of TISs—Typical Internet S***posters. If you are at all a good writer…
Nov 22, 2025
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Tuesday Economic Growth Blogging: The Pre‑Modern Treadmill Was Real on Necessities, Not on Technology, or Luxuries, or Culture, or Means of…
Greg Clark’s “Farewell to Alms” still tempts with one big, clean story: pre‑modern humanity stuck on a Malthusian treadmill until cultural-bio selection…
Nov 20, 2025
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Brad DeLong
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The False Calm Before Steam: The Index H, Malthus, & the Long Slog, for Growth Was Very Real Before It Became Visible in Average Living…
The cliché says nothing happened before 1800. The data say capability rose steadily—only population swallowed the dividends. Replace vibes with an…
Nov 11, 2025
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Brad DeLong
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Time for a "Land Acknowledgement"!
The SubStack Attempt to Avoid the ClickBait-Rage Trap Is Failing: The argument against the idea that SubStack needed to develop a social-media…
Dec 4, 2025
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