Bhuvan
The era of The Donald is off to a rollicking start. In today's Daily Brief, I did a literature review of sorts on immigration and the impact of the H-1B visa program, and I wanted to share a few insights. While the program has plenty of loopholes that have been exploited by companies, on balance, it's a net positive for both India and the U.S.
On immigration more broadly, I read a paper by Robert Krol, a professor of economics at the Mercatus Center, which does a good job of summarizing the research. Here are some notable facts: Immigrants in the U.S. have risen from 10 million in 1960 to 40 million as of 2019. As a share of the population, that's a jump from 5.4% to 13.7%.
- 7.25% of immigrants start companies, compared to 4.03% of native-born Americans.
- Immigrants have founded more successful businesses on the Fortune 500 list than native-born Americans. These companies also create a significant number of jobs.
- Patenting by immigrants has increased significantly over the last 20 years.
- First-generation immigrants created about 25% of all new firms in the U.S.
Data from Our World in Data shows 50 million immigrants as of 2020.
The second thing on the topic of immigration that comes to mind is this part of the conversation between the "information monster" Tyler Cowen and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman:
COWEN: Immigration policy. Maybe your views on this have changed over time. If you could set an ideal immigration policy for 2018, what would it be? How would it impact income inequality?
KRUGMAN: First, this is one of those areas where my views have changed. If you'd asked me about it 20 years ago, I basically went with a simple model of the labor force being workers with different levels of education. Immigration of low-education workers would widen income inequality. Then you could ask about some of the other effects and dilemmas and so on. But I've been mostly convinced by evidence that says an immigrant with a high school degree or less is not really competing head-to-head with native-born workers who have similar educational credentials. It doesn't look like they're filling the same jobs or competing in the same labor markets. So, I think the income distribution effects of immigration are actually much less than we thought.
COWEN: The backlash effects—that if too many foreigners enter too rapidly, a lot of native-born Americans become Trump supporters. How much does that worry you?
KRUGMAN: My view on immigration has always been that if you aren't at least somewhat conflicted about it, there's something wrong with you. If you want to have a strong social safety net, which I do and most people do if actually pressed on it, then completely open borders are going to get in the way. Whether or not it's really going to bankrupt the system, the sense that lots of people are coming in to take your benefits is going to be a problem.
On the other hand, not allowing anybody in is, from a global welfare point of view, a terrible thing because one of the best ways to improve people's lives is to give them a chance to move to a place where they're more productive.
And there are good reasons to think that just our own economic prospects are enhanced by immigration. So, some kind of inevitably awkward compromise is what you're going to do. Then the question becomes, "How many million immigrants a year are we talking about?" That's a hard question to answer.
Restricted immigration, but not slamming the door, has got to be the right place to be. This is America. Diversity has been our huge strength over the centuries. It's a real betrayal of our own history and of our prospects to turn it off.
Tyler Cowen also wrote another insightful post on the Marginal Revolution blog. Here's an excerpt that stood out to me:
The second issue, and it is a biggie, is that voters dislike immigration much, much more than they used to. The size of this effect has been surprising, and also the extent of its spread. I am writing this post on Election Day in France, and preliminary results suggest a very real risk that France ends up ungovernable. Immigrants are clearly a major factor in this outcome, even under super-benign views that do not "blame" the immigrants themselves at all.
Versions of this are happening in many countries, not just a few, and often these are countries that previously were fairly well governed.
I think it is better for countries in such positions to be much tougher on immigration, rather than to suffer these kinds of political consequences.
But let's look honestly at the overall revision to our views. Politics is stupider and less ethical than before, including when it comes to immigration (but not only! Fellow citizens also have become more negative about other fellow citizens of differing views, and I view negativism as the root of the problem all around). We need to take that into account, and so all sorts of pro-migration dreams need to be set aside for the time being, at least in many countries. Nonetheless, the actual practical consequences of immigration, political backlash excluded, are somewhat more positive than we had thought.
There are always ifs and buts, but on net, immigration is a net positive, as the stats prove. However, immigration is not just about the stats—it's about feelings, and right now, feelings are firmly in the driver's seat. There is a strong anti-immigration sentiment across large parts of the world. As tempting as it is to ascribe mono-causal reasons to this backlash, there are none. It's a complex issue with social, cultural, political, and economic dimensions. This is both a fascinating and depressing topic that I want to explore in the future.
Pranav
While I'm ambivalent about all political parties, the farm laws were a policy package that I was absolutely thrilled about, and I think it was tragic that they were taken back.
There are ideas here that I hope to go deeper into some day. Reading Acemoglu/Robinson and now Karthik Muralidharan, I've repeatedly come across this notion that a society's elites have an outsized role in shaping its political destiny. I suspect those ideas will explain what happened here as well.
Anyway, the reason I was so in support of the farm laws is stories like this.
You can't make restaurant-grade french fries with just any potato. You need specific strains of large, long potatoes that fry in just the right way to give you that incredible mixture of crispness and mush. In the 2000's, when McDonald's first came to India, we had to import all our fries. Indian farmers just didn't have the capacity to grow those potatoes. Our agricultural market was simply not developed enough.
We had to import those potatoes for decades.
Fast forward to 2025, and those imports have stopped. India is exporting those same potatoes everywhere from the Middle East to Japan. This market was once controlled by the United States and Europe, but we're now a player in it.
Why? Because of companies like Hyfun Foods, that went into contract manufacturing, got the right breeds and know-how to Indian farmers, and gave them the certainty that their produce would be bought. This was possible in states like Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. These are, of course, the very states that went ahead and reformed their own farm laws, when the country was caught in the protests.
There are two lessons here.
One, private enterprise doesn't only come in the form of Ambani or Adani. It comes in all avatars, including those that learn to play positive-sum games with people, generate virtuous cycles and scale into something truly remarkable. This isn't a naive take—I'm not telling you that corporations can't exploit farmers. But private enterprise offers these farmers a higher ceiling. Government-empowered middlemen already exploit farmers all over the country. But they are far less likely to enrich them with the profits of foreign trade.
Two, that federalism is a great boon to this nation, and we need more decentralisation. When power is more distributed, you get to try out a far higher number of experiments and learn from those that work. Of course, you get that much more room for missteps as well. But here's a thought: there are very few ways of succeeding at development and many, many ways of failing at it. When those are the odds, you want to have as many attempts at success as possible. Here were three attempts we made, and they've created a brand new Asia-wide export industry.
Tharun
I think I am slowly turning into a "Self improoover", trying to optimize every second of my life like those LinkedIn bros posting their 4 AM cold shower routines. I am slowly becoming him. Self improover And in that quest to become the optimal male, I recently came across this article, where Luc van Loon cites research to explain the best time to have protein, the optimal quantity and what leads to muscle loss and how to prevent it. So if you are a fellow "self improover" and want to get jacked this year, here are some pearls:
Best time to have protein
According to the science, exercise makes muscles more sensitive to protein signals, enhancing muscle repair. So consume your first scoop after working out. Also, consuming 40 grams of protein before bed boosts muscle protein synthesis during sleep. This supports muscle repair and growth overnight. So consume your last scoop just before you sleep. (Though don't blame me if you're spending extra time in the bathroom the next morning)
What leads to muscle loss?
Age. The older you get, the more muscle you lose, but muscle loss is accelerated after an injury or illness where periods of inactivity increase. Just 1 week of bed rest can cause muscle loss equivalent to 3.1 pounds. Sounds less, but that is the amount of muscle that you gain after strength training for 6 months. Also, comatose patients lose 20–30% of muscle fibre size in a matter of weeks.
How to prevent muscle loss?
Stay active. Duh. But no seriously, even something as simple as walking, even when you are sick, can prevent muscle loss. However, if you are bedridden and want to ensure the damage done to you in terms of muscle loss is reduced, you can ask the hospital staff to do Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation (NMES). They might look at you weird, but hey, gains are gains. In studies, immobilized legs treated with NMES showed significantly less muscle loss compared to untreated legs. However, please note it is less effective than exercising. Now that you know everything there is to know about muscle building, go forth and improve yourself.
Anurag
I recently got into a very weird rabbit hole of exploring how our ecosystems could change once EVs completely take over roads. One interesting area where this shift could make a big difference is in predator-prey dynamics. That's because EVs are almost silent, and that lack of noise could end up reshaping how predators and prey interact near roads.
For one, predators might become far more effective hunters. Traffic noise has, for a long time, been a cover of sorts for prey species. It has helped them mask their movements and sounds. Without that noise, predators like owls could have the upper hand and could easily hunt down rats near quieter roads simply because they can hear them more clearly.
On the flip side, prey species that used vehicle noise as a shield could suddenly find themselves exposed. This could then lead to population declines for these species near roads and might even bring in predators closer to the quieter roads in search of meals. And these changes could ripple through the entire food web too. For instance, if small mammal populations drop because of increased predation, the plants they eat could start living unchecked.
And over time, all this might cause a huge shift in the balance of ecosystems near roads. Vegetation patterns could change, insect populations could respond to those changes, and even the composition of the soil could change because of all of it. Yes, honking on Indian roads could be a very fair counter. But my assumption is that as we develop over time, sense will prevail and we'll reduce our honking habits.
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