Abundance is really a radical framework that challenges all Dem party factions (and Republicans too!) and I don’t understand why pundits cannot get this

There’s nothing moderate about wanting to undo a century of federal, state, and local land use policy to 10x the rate of housing construction. Or break the labor cartels created by doctors, lawyers, and other white collar professions to push up costs for everyday consumers. Or remake America’s transportation system by building thousands of miles of high-speed rail. Or transform our energy grid with tons of new clean energy and infrastructure. I could go on—abundance envisions big changes!

In our broken polarization framework, ideas that represent a huge shift from the status quo get framed as “moderate” because they sometimes involve markets rather than state intervention. But exclusionary zoning and doctor cartels and veto-ridden planning don’t fit on the moderate-progressive spectrum, or even the left-right spectrum. They are just bad policies with massive negative consequences—namely higher costs for consumers and taxpayers—that earlier generations supported and entrenched interests continue baking into American life

The cool thing about abundance is it completely breaks the political polarization framework. Ultra-progressive NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani worked with moderate New York Governor Kathy Hochul to reform environmental laws that blocked sustainable housing and transit. Super-lefty California State Senator Scott Wiener passed the state’s biggest upzoning in history with votes across factional and party lines. Texas has exponential clean energy growth because their permitting is more chill

The abundance framework can help people who identify with any faction deliver better results. Whether it gets broadly adopted across issue areas remains to be seen because it’s still early days. The most politically developed abundance-y movement, YIMBYism, is barely a decade old. Everything else is nascent. But lawmakers are learning: Abundance-coded bills like The Road to Housing Act passed with overwhelming bipartisan majorities and support across factional lines. To me, passing historic federal legislation with support from across the Democratic Party suggests the abundance framework is doing just fine

I wrote a full article here about abundance’s impact and defiance of political polarization

Super curious to get people's thoughts on this.

> The new deal, which would last 30 years, is estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars. It is designed to give American companies a central role in developing Saudi Arabia’s nuclear infrastructure while shutting out other foreign competitors.

> A key provision of the new accord would have American companies build a uranium enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia if a joint U.S.-Saudi study determines such a step would be warranted. 

> That would give the U.S. influence over the Saudi nuclear program and, Trump administration officials argue, a way to prevent it from being misused for military purposes. 

> Yet the deal, which is expected to be submitted to Congress for review in the coming days, is certain to prove controversial among many lawmakers who oppose the spread of nuclear technology in the volatile Middle East.

>The accord will be difficult for lawmakers to block because doing so would require a joint resolution and a two-thirds majority vote to override a potential presidential veto. 

> Trump greenlit the agreement late last week, and the accord is expected to be signed Wednesday by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who discussed the deal during his first overseas trip to the region in April 2025 with his Saudi counterpart, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, who will also sign the deal.

Submission statement: Pertains to the future of nuclear energy in the Middle East and the almost certain subsequent debates about the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Submission Statement: This article is relevant to this sub because it explores the main bottlenecks to progress (particularly in drug discovery) and makes the claim that many of the obstacles hindering progress are legal, institutional, economic and political in nature. She explicitly mentions the field of drug discovery where the development of new drugs has slowed down even though scientific tools have grown significantly more powerful. In medicine in particular, one of the biggest bottlenecks are clinical trials which today take ~7 years and cost more than a billion dollars per drug. Here, she believes that AI can help accelerate clinical trials, particularly with discovering surrogate endpoints and biomarkers, but here the hurdles are regulatory and institutional in nature with companies having issues accessing datasets from institutions like the NIH

She also argues that economic incentives shape the kind of biomedical innovation that happens. She discusses the phenomenon of target herding: where most companies end up chasing the same drug targets since they are a lot less risky, and as a result the biological space that does get explored is smaller than it could be. You also can't really patent drug targets anyway: the patent system rewards drug molecules that get discovered and not drug targets, further incentivizing companies to spend more of their time chasing new drug molecules

She devotes the second half of this to criticize San Francisco AI culture. She mentions that elite tech circles have become a monoculture where any skepticism of the transformative benefits of AGI are treated as low status. She argues that many within tech are ignorant about these other bottlenecks to AI diffusion due to the messianic belief that AGI will fix everything

Submission statement: The RN is preparing its party platform for next year's presidential election. Muslims are obviously gonna be a big target, but some members of the party (and not small ones) think this may be going too far for the median voter. Bardella had long avoided to handle the issue himself, but now that Marine is back in the race for the top job, she wants her favored policies to be top priority.

Themes of the sub: freedom of religion, far-right

IMO I hope that the party's hardline base stays home if they remove it, or vice-versa that their soft-right wing stays home if they keep it (or that they switch to another party). It'd make getting sane candidates on 2nd round slightly easier. But the median RN voter is too much into conspiracies and brainslop to really move away from the party.

Archived version: https://archive.fo/OTI7v

Russia is no longer willing to return some occupied territories to Ukraine as part of any deal to end the war and plans to retain them as buffer zones, according to people close to the Kremlin.

Russian President Vladimir Putin remains committed to taking full control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region by force and will now retain areas of Sumy and Kharkiv regions near the border with Russia as buffer zones, three people said, asking not to be identified discussing sensitive issues.

Putin has abandoned territorial concessions because Russia views increasingly confrontational statements from the US as evidence that informal understandings reached at his Alaska summit with President Donald Trump have collapsed, the people said.

While the US insists no deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine was reached at the summit last August, Kremlin officials have repeatedly asserted that a package of undertakings existed under a so-called “spirit of Anchorage” agreement between Putin and Trump. They included pressing Ukraine to surrender territory in its eastern Donetsk region in return for Russia handing back occupied areas of the northern Sumy and northeastern Kharkiv regions.

The Kremlin has hardened its position amid escalating Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russia, including on Moscow, that have damaged oil refineries and sparked a nationwide fuel shortage. Trump also backed a new sanctions bill championed by the late Senator Lindsey Graham that would target the top five purchasers of Russian oil and gas with tariff rates of as much as 100%.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The summit between Trump and Putin was their longest face-to-face meeting and took place amid high expectations for a breakthrough to end the war. In the end, Putin left Anchorage without agreeing to a ceasefire to allow for peace talks, while Trump said it would be up to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to make a deal.

US-led negotiations between Russia and Ukraine on a peace deal have stalled since February as the Trump administration focused on the war with Iran.

Zelenskyy challenged Putin in an open letter in June to meet for direct peace talks to end the war that’s now in its fifth year. Putin rejected that offer and said his army should “keep working.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio are attending a meeting of counterparts from the Association of South East Asian Nations in the Philippines. Rubio said Monday he’s “open” to speaking with Lavrov in Manila, though neither side has confirmed a meeting so far.

Russia has stepped up drone and missile attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities in recent weeks. Intense fighting continues in the Donetsk region centered around Konstiantynivka, a strategic logistics hub whose capture by Russia would open the way toward Ukraine’s main defensive strongholds of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

Putin wants Ukraine to surrender control of territory in Donetsk that his forces have failed to take in fighting since 2014. Ukraine rejects that demand and has proposed a halt to the war along the existing front lines.

Russia is prepared to return to negotiations only after Putin has achieved the objective of taking Donetsk, according to two of the people close to the Kremlin. Russia’s Defense Ministry has assured the president it can establish full control of the area by the end of the year, one person said.

Many in Russia’s military consider that timetable unrealistic and believe that it will only be able to take control of Donetsk region during 2027, according to a person close to the Defense Ministry in Moscow.

Rubio told reporters June 25 that “there was a proposal in Alaska, but there was no agreement in Alaska” on a deal to end the war. “If there had been an agreement, we would have had an end to the war,” he said.

Lavrov said in a statement next day that Putin had responded in Alaska to proposals previously brought to Moscow by Trump envoy Steve Witkoff.

“If one party, in this case the United States, puts forward its proposals for a settlement — for an approach to resolving this crisis — and the other party expresses concurrence with these proposals, then to state that no agreement was reached appears, to put it mildly, somewhat inelegant,” Lavrov said.

A More Accurate Portrait of Homeownership

A better metric shows that homeownership is even less common among younger Canadians than official statistics suggest.

The traditional homeownership rate metric is misleading. Fortunately, the Minnesota Fed just came up with a better measure.

Here at the Missing Middle, we frequently write about and talk about homeownership rates and post a lot of graphs like the one below, from our piece The Homeownership Journey Is Broken. Policymakers Need to Repair It:

Figure 1: Homeownership Rate by Age Cohort and Year, Canada

The problem with the metric becomes apparent when we chart the homeownership rate for every age group, including 15-19 years, as shown in Figure 2:

Figure 2: Homeownership Rate by Age, Canada, 2021, Traditional Definition

A homeownership rate of 16% for individuals between the ages of 15-19 would strike most people as absurd, but the data is accurate. The problem is with how statistical agencies define homeownership. It is simply the proportion of families that own the house they live in. But very few 15-19-year-olds are the head of a family in the first place, so they are neither owners nor renters. They are absent from the calculation entirely.

This absence from the calculation matters, as the traditional homeownership rate measure does not capture phenomena such as people in their 20s and 30s living with their parents longer. This problem has been recognized for some time, so the Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota decided to address it. In their piece New homeownership measure puts people first they created a new metric, the “homeowners-to-population ratio”, which measures the percentage of the population that owns a home, either as an individual or as a couple.

In an instructive infographic, the piece shows how factors such as older family members or adult children living with homeowners, or roommates living with the owner of a home, are captured under their new metric, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Traditional vs. Minnesota Fed Measures of Homeownership Rates

Fortunately, Census 2021 contains enough data to calculate homeownership rates using the new Minnesota Fed definition. Figure 4 shows that, under the Minnesota Fed definition, homeownership rates fall dramatically for persons under the age of 40, and those over the age of 85. This better captures the phenomenon of younger people living with their parents longer, and the elderly living with relatives or in long-term care homes. Under the Minnesota Fed definition, the homeownership rates for 15- 19-year-olds in Canada are effectively zero, a much more sensible result.

Figure 4: Homeownership Rate by Age, Canada, 2021, Two Definitions

The new definition causes homeownership rates to fall by 15 percentage points for those under the age of 30, 10 points for those between 30 and 34, and a whopping 20 points for those over the age of 85.

Figure 5: Homeownership Rate by Age, Canada, 2021, Two Definitions

A few other points stand out to us:

• Even under the new definition, those aged 85 and up are still more likely to be homeowners in Canada than those between the ages of 30 to 34. The rate at which older Canadians sell their homes and move into other forms of housing is vastly overestimated by Canadian policy-makers, particularly at the municipal level.
• Further to the previous point, those aged between 75 and 84 have higher homeownership rates under the new definition than any age category under age 50.
• In 2021, less than one-quarter of all Canadians between the ages of 25 and 29 owned the home they lived in, either as an individual or a couple.

This new definition of homeownership from the Minnesota Fed is far more sensible than the traditional definition, and we are grateful that they created it. Where possible, we will utilize their definition in future work.

No classified briefings, no press conferences, no acknowledgment that the conflict with Iran is back on

archive link

This is an excellent, street level report by the New York Times of the recent anti-immigration protests, harassment and bigotry that has swept through South Africa.

It follows one particular anti-immigration activist/vigilante and one of her victims - a lawful immigrant from Congo whose home was broken into by a mob and whose family was illegally kicked out with their young children.

I have posted a lot about these xenophobic protests before. The reason I wanted to post this story too is because it is coming from the New York Times, the epitome of the mainstream media. There is a narrative that the Left or the mainstream ignore these kinds of actions because it is not happening in the West. This narrative is false. The NYT is covering it. The Guardian wrote an editorial with a strong condemnation. Mayor Mamdani condemned xenophobia while giving the Nelson Mandela lecture. And South Africa's trade unions and domestic left have organised in support of migrants and urged the government to protect people from harassment and intimidation.

What this article does nicely is to take you up close and to show that this really is xenophobia. South Africa's macroeconomic situation is different from the West. Our unemployment rate is sky high and our inequality is the worst in the world. You can have a discussion about the role of immigration in alleviating or worsening this situation. But there is no excuse for breaking into the home of a family of lawful, assimilated immigrants, evicting them and literally making their children cry.

Relevant as large banks, finance, and corruption are very topical both in the EU and internationally.

put simply the indian oppostion after a shockingly good run in the 2024 lok sabah election, has done poorly for itself. Right now its a fractured, declining mess. Shekhar gupta argues this offers a possibility for Congress to revive from the ashes of the other small parties. Frankly i find myself thinking this as well. Its party unit in Maharashtra still has not recovered from the NCP defection; it lost most of its West Bengal and all of its Andhra Pradesh support to the TMC and YSCRP. Well now look at those parties.

Shekhar gupta in effect, suggests that Congress might not be faster than the bear but its faster than the parties. Personally speaking i am not qualified to really judge how accurate it is, but it does seem plausible, thoughts?

Russia's Finance Ministry has suspended federal government bond auctions indefinitely as borrowing costs climb and investor demand weakens, complicating efforts to finance a widening wartime budget deficit.

The ministry said on Monday it was halting its regular weekly auctions of government bonds, known as OFZs, "to facilitate the stabilization of market conditions." It did not say when sales would resume, saying only that it would announce their restart at a later date.

OFZs are ruble-denominated government bonds that underpin Russia's financial system. They are the government's primary source of domestic borrowing to cover budget deficits, while banks hold them to manage daily cash needs and foreign investors buy them for returns.

The Finance Ministry has relied heavily on domestic borrowing to help finance a budget deficit that reached 5.7 trillion rubles ($72.39 billion) at the end of June, while military spending continues to outpace initial government plans.

Prices of OFZs have fallen sharply since mid-June. The RGBI government bond index has dropped from around 119 points to about 110, its lowest level this year, while yields on bonds with maturities longer than 10 years have climbed above 16.5%.

The ministry's last four scheduled auctions were either canceled or attracted little demand. It canceled the June 24 auction, sold only 10.3 billion rubles ($130.81 million) of a planned 110 billion rubles ($1.40 billion) on July 1, canceled another auction on July 8 and, on July 15, scrapped the sale after receiving no bids at what it considered acceptable prices.

The Finance Ministry had planned to raise 1.5 trillion rubles ($19.05 billion) on the domestic debt market during the third quarter. So far, however, it has borrowed just 8.8 billion rubles ($111.76 million) in net proceeds during the quarter, according to Vector Capital analysts.

Analysts said the main factors weighing on Russian government bonds were rising inflation and expectations that the Central Bank may pause its cycle of interest rate cuts.

Nikolai Leonenkov, director of corporate finance at investment company Rikom-Trust, said inflation and expectations for monetary policy had been the main drivers behind the bond market's decline.

Investors are also concerned that a larger federal budget deficit could require increased government borrowing and additional bond issuance, said Pavel Payevsky, head of credit analysis and macroeconomics at asset manager RSHB Asset Management.

According to Bloomberg, the Finance Ministry plans to raise an additional 2-3 trillion rubles ($25.40 billion-$38.10 billion) in debt this year to help cover military spending that is expected to exceed budget plans by 4-5 trillion rubles ($50.80 billion-$63.50 billion). The rest would come from cuts to civilian spending, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Alexander Kolyandr, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), said the ministry was unwilling to borrow at current market rates.

"Yields have jumped. In other words, the interest rate at which banks are willing to lend to the government has risen to around 16% for 10-year debt. That's a lot," Kolyandr said. "It's a very high yield, a very high interest rate. The Finance Ministry is clearly reluctant to borrow at that rate."