Emeritus Stanford professor. History & sociology of US education. Latest book is The Emergent Genius of American Higher Ed. Blog at https://xitter.cf/t.co/0xbH5pzHYI.
Palo Alto, CA
Joined November 2016
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David Labaree retweeted
This 👇
Sustainably financing Nordic-level public services/pensions needs high labour force participation, long working lives, and broad taxes.
Sweden raises the age automatically by cohort. For my age group, it’ll be 69. Debt-to-GDP 34%
pensionsmyndigheten.se/other…
Denmark is raising its retirement age to 70. French election candidates pledge to reducing it to 60 or 62.
Denmark's debt to GDP ratio is 27%; France's is 117%.
You reap what you sow.
cnn.com/2025/05/23/business/…
David Labaree retweeted
Friendliest States Ranked :
🇺🇸 1. Minnesota
🇺🇸 2. Tennessee
🇺🇸 3. South Carolina
🇺🇸 4. Texas
🇺🇸 5. Wyoming
🇺🇸 6. Indiana
🇺🇸 7. Colorado
🇺🇸 8. Kansas
🇺🇸 9. Oklahoma
🇺🇸 10. Hawaii
🇺🇸 11. Ohio
🇺🇸 12. Louisiana
🇺🇸 13. Nebraska
🇺🇸 14. Illinois
🇺🇸 15. Idaho
🇺🇸 16. Georgia
🇺🇸 17. New Mexico
🇺🇸 18. Pennsylvania
🇺🇸 19. Kentucky
🇺🇸 20. South Dakota
🇺🇸 21. Alabama
🇺🇸 22. Missouri
🇺🇸 23. Mississippi
🇺🇸 24. Oregon
🇺🇸 25. North Dakota
🇺🇸 26. Wisconsin
🇺🇸 27. Maryland
🇺🇸 28. Michigan
🇺🇸 29. Iowa
🇺🇸 30. West Virginia
🇺🇸 31. Maine
🇺🇸 32. Utah
🇺🇸 33. North Carolina
🇺🇸 34. Vermont
🇺🇸 35. Virginia
🇺🇸 36. Montana
🇺🇸 37. Alaska
🇺🇸 38. Connecticut
🇺🇸 39. Arizona
🇺🇸 40. California
🇺🇸 41. Rhode Island
🇺🇸 42. Florida
🇺🇸 43. Nevada
🇺🇸 44. New Hampshire
🇺🇸 45. Washington
🇺🇸 46. New Jersey
🇺🇸 47. Massachusetts
🇺🇸 48. Delaware
🇺🇸 49. Arkansas
🇺🇸 50. New York
U.S. overall — Minnesota ranks friendliest; New York ranks least friendly in this tourist and survey ranking
Note: Based on tourist feedback, social media surveys, and politeness indexes. Rankings are subjective and vary by source. SmartAsset’s 2026 study using time spent socializing, volunteering, and helping others ranks Montana, Utah, and Wyoming highest instead.
Source: World Population Review / tourist survey rankings and DataPandas Politeness Index, 2024–2026; SmartAsset friendliest states study 2026 for alternative method
David Labaree retweeted
How much gold was mined in the history of mankind? Have a look. Very fun article - have a look at the pictures. Source: buff.ly/2FxMJMJ
David Labaree retweeted
This is a problem: "Roughly 30% of science, technology, engineering and maths PhD dissertations from US universities this year contained text generated by artificial intelligence, according to an analysis of more than 226,000 dissertations."
nature.com/articles/d41586-0…
David Labaree retweeted
Young Europeans are being screwed, writes Niall Ferguson. But they’re pointing their fingers at the wrong people.
David Labaree retweeted
Dwight Eisenhower (born today 1890) weeps in 1952 while recalling those who died under his command in World War II:
David Labaree retweeted
Rearranging Europe. The most populated country gets the largest country. I quite like a few of the innovations this map brings. Austrian Portugal? Tell me more! Norwegian Croatia? Yes, please! Poland finally gets a direct Russian border again? Yikes.
Source: buff.ly/5vySlxK
David Labaree retweeted
Oct 7, 1763: King George III drew a line down the spine of the Appalachian Mountains and told American colonists they couldn't cross it.
Britain had just won the French and Indian War and taken control of everything east of the Mississippi. That spring, Native nations led by the Ottawa war chief Pontiac rose up across the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley and captured or attacked British forts all over the frontier. London wanted to stop the bloodshed and avoid paying for endless Indian wars.
So the Proclamation of 1763 reserved all the land west of the mountains for Native peoples. Colonists already living out there were told to leave. Nobody could buy Native land except through the Crown.
The colonists were furious. Many of them had fought in the war specifically to open up that land. Veterans had been promised land grants out there. Speculators had already staked claims. One of those speculators was George Washington, who privately called the proclamation a temporary measure and kept quietly surveying western land anyway.
Thousands of settlers ignored it and crossed the mountains regardless. The line never really held. But it was one of the first times Americans felt London was deciding their future without them, and that feeling kept growing for the next 13 years.
David Labaree retweeted
Choosin the wrong kind of Texas. How to redistribute money from the poor to the rich through education. nytimes.com/2026/10/07/opini… via @NYTOpinion @DianeRavitch @Larryferlazzo @shankerinst
David Labaree retweeted
The Ottoman Empire at its greatest historical extent.
Credit: Maven Mapping & The World In Maps
Size Comparison of Roman & Ottoman Empires At Their Peak: brilliantmaps.com/roman-vs-o…
David Labaree retweeted
A new piece in the Financial Times created a great visualization of the results from this study.
TL;DR: Rent control helps people whose rents get limited, but it hurts everyone else. It pushes up rents, pushes down new building, and makes cities worse.
It is horrible policy.
David Labaree retweeted
Only 1 in 5 US soldiers during WW2 were 'combat forces', everyone else was in support roles.
David Labaree retweeted
The spread of the Industrial Revolution across Europe. While a map like this will be able to exactly capture a momentous historical development, it is immensely helpful in understanding the geographic spread and reading local history in context. Source: buff.ly/3qR4rUs
David Labaree retweeted
Wife: "Rome wasn't built in a day."
Me: You're absolutely right honey. Rome began as a cluster of huts on the Palatine in 753 BC. It wasn't until the reign of Trajan that it reached its greatest expanse. That's nearly 1,000 years!
Wife:
David Labaree retweeted
The internet gets angry fast, and moves on fast. Across 15 recent controversies, Google search interest fell below 25% of its peak after a median of just 6 days Most controversies had largely faded within eight days. The online attention cycle is very short. Source: buff.ly/xa4Upo3
David Labaree retweeted
121 years ago today, on September 27, 1905, Annalen der Physik received a 3-page paper from Einstein:
"Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?"
In it, Einstein derived the relationship that would become the most famous equation in physics:
E = mc²
3 pages that changed our understanding of mass and energy.
A paper worth reading. Here's the annotated version: fermatslibrary.com/s/does-th…
David Labaree retweeted
The shortest physics paper ever published is the 1951 Physical Review note by Friedrich Lenz, titled
“The Ratio of Proton and Electron Mass.”
At just 27 words long (plus one equation, one number and a single reference).
David Labaree retweeted
Elite schools’ impressive results largely reflect the students they admit, rather than the value they add.
stevestewartwilliams.com/p/f…
