The Populist Revolt Against Cognitive Elites

One of the great mysteries about the rise of populism, in both the United States and Europe, is why it has benefited the political right so much more than the left. For years, American progressives have been trying to get people worked up over rising rates of economic inequality, with the expectation that this anger could fuel greater support for the Democratic Party. Yet the … [ Read more ]

Author: Joseph Heath
Source: The Atlantic (December 15, 2025)
Subject: Politics & Public Policy

Tax breaks don’t trickle down

Trickle-down economics suggests that tax cuts for wealthy citizens energize ailing economies, as recipients of the cuts use their windfalls to hire workers. And conventional wisdom among policy makers and economists contends that the main beneficiaries of corporate tax breaks are workers, who see wages increase. 

But some research suggests that if you want to create jobs, it’s better to cut taxes for the bottom 90 … [ Read more ]

Authors: Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato, Owen Zidar
Source: Chicago Booth (August 30, 2016)
Subjects: Economics | Economy, Politics & Public Policy

The Short-Circuiting of the American Mind

For decades, American politics have relied on the same logic that polygraph machines do: that liars will feel some level of shame when they tell their lies, and that the shame will manifest—the quickened heartbeat, the pang of guilt—in the body. But the body politic is cheating the test with alarming ease. Some Americans believe the lies. Others refuse to. Some Americans recognize the lies’ … [ Read more ]

Author: Megan Garber
Source: The Atlantic (April 29, 2025)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy

The LA protests reveal what actually unites the Trump right

Philosophically speaking, the right has long been defined by its emphasis on the value of stability — as odd as it may seem in the era of Trump’s radically destabilizing administration.

Conservative theorists, most notably Edmund Burke, have long maintained that political flourishing depends on the existence of stable social rules developed gradually and from the bottom up over the course of generations. Those who seek … [ Read more ]

Author: Zack Beauchamp
Source: Vox (June 11, 2025)
Subjects: America, Articles & Links, Excerpts, International, Politics & Public Policy

The reconciliation bill is Republicans doing what they do best

The Republican Party stands for lower taxes, especially on the rich; lower spending on programs for the poor; and big spending on defense. That’s what Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan, and other figures who defined the party have all stood for, for nearly half a century now… The essential Republican message may become blurred around the edges, the way that George W. Bush messed … [ Read more ]

Author: Dylan Matthews
Source: Vox (May 22, 2025)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy

Inconspicuous Consumption

University of Chicago economists Kerwin Kofi Charles and Erik Hurst… along with Nikolai Roussanov of the University of Pennsylvania… found… insight into the economic differences between racial groups… [that] challenges common assumptions about luxury. Conspicuous consumption, this research suggests, is not an unambiguous signal of personal affluence. It’s a sign of belonging to a relatively poor group. Visible luxury thus serves less to establish … [ Read more ]

Author: Virginia Postrel
Source: The Atlantic (July2008)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Culture, Demographics, Economics | Economy, Excerpts

Sigmund Freud’s Personality Onion

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, used to say that most of us have a personality that looks very much like an onion: In the center you have the Id, a very simple component that all it wants is immediate gratification and self-Pleasure thus following the … Pleasure Principle. Built around the Id, there is a second entity called the Ego, which basically is a … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Psychology | Behavior, Thought Starters

First Person Plural

An evolving approach to the science of pleasure suggests that each of us contains multiple selves—all with different desires, and all fighting for control. If this is right, the pursuit of happiness becomes even trickier. Can one self bind” another self if the two want different things? Are you always better off when a Good Self wins? And should outsiders, such as employers and policy … [ Read more ]

Author: Paul Bloom
Source: The Atlantic (November2008)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Psychology | Behavior

The Short-Circuiting of the American Mind

Fact-checking was a theme of Donald Trump’s first presidency. Journalists kept count of those first-term fictions—30,573 in all, per one count—guided by the optimism that checking the president’s words might also serve as a check on his power. In late 2020, when Trump claimed victory in the presidential election he had lost, scholars saw in his declaration the kind of propaganda … [ Read more ]

Author: Megan Garber
Source: The Atlantic (April 29, 2025)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Concepts, Life & Society, News | Media | Publishing, Politics & Public Policy, Truth | Right | Wrong

Feeling Insecure? 5 Science-Backed Strategies Could Help Break the Cycle

A self-schema is the information and beliefs you hold about yourself. This cognitive framework influences how you feel, how you react, your actual behavior, and your perception of your place in the world.

How your self-schema influences your actions can be nuanced: For example, you may have internalized that you’re not athletic during childhood — and then, later in life, limit yourself when you want to … [ Read more ]

Author: Sarah Sloat
Source: Inverse (April 22, 2025)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Studies: Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From Venus

An excerpt from the book, The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics.

A wide range of academic scholarship exploring political belief-formation reveals that those who identify themselves as politically conservative, for example, exhibit distinctive values underpinning their world view and their orientation towards political competition.

Conservatives, argues researcher Philip Tetlock of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, are less tolerant of compromise; … [ Read more ]

Author: Thomas B. Edsall
Source: The Atlantic (February 6, 2012)
Subjects: Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy

One Word Describes Trump

Max Weber wondered how the leaders of states derive legitimacy, the claim to rule rightfully. He thought it boiled down to two choices. One is rational legal bureaucracy (or “bureaucratic proceduralism”), a system in which legitimacy is bestowed by institutions following certain rules and norms…

The other source of legitimacy is more ancient, more common, and more intuitive—“the default form of rule in the premodern world,” … [ Read more ]

Author: Jonathan Rauch
Source: The Atlantic (February 24, 2025)
Subjects: America, Excerpts, International, Politics & Public Policy, Trump

The Populist Cure Is Worse Than the Elite Disease

Populism is never separate from this “voice of passion.” That is its defining characteristic. It begins in deep grievance. Some of those grievances can be quite real and consequential — such as when modern populist anger is rooted in fury over the Great Recession, long wars in the Middle East or shuttered factories in the Midwest.

Some of the problems, however, that motivate populists aren’t problems … [ Read more ]

Author: David French
Source: The New York Times (February 9, 2025)
Subjects: Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Trump

How McKinsey Destroyed the Middle Class

Because complex goods and services require much planning and coordination, management (even though it is only indirectly productive) adds a great deal of value. And managers as a class capture much of this value as pay. This makes the question of who gets to be a manager extremely consequential.

[…]

Middle managers, able to plan and coordinate production independently of elite-executive control, shared not just the … [ Read more ]

Author: Daniel Markovits
Source: The Atlantic (February2020)
Subjects: Economics | Economy, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

The Six Forces That Fuel Friendship

  1. Accumulation. The simplest and most obvious force that forms and sustains friendships is time spent together. One study estimates that it takes spending 40 to 60 hours together within the first six weeks of meeting to turn an acquaintance into a casual friend, and about 80 to 100 hours to become more than that. So friendships unsurprisingly tend to form in places where people

… [ Read more ]

Author: Julie Beck
Source: The Atlantic (June 10, 2022)
Subjects: Excerpts, Family & Friends, Life & Society