Sam retweeted
I put together an awesome animation of the DMVs month-over-month Home Price change since 2018
Pre-June 2020 the DMV had healthy appreciation
June 2020 - June 2022 was an absolute BOOM across the area except for that hole we call DC Proper
June 2022 - Today sees waves of positive and negative appreciation in pockets except for parts of DC, which is consistently negative
Real estate & mortgage is a long game
Sam retweeted
New from @BPC_Bipartisan this week: my colleague Graham DiLorenzo breaks down pattern books—pre-reviewed housing designs that can cut permitting timelines and reduce costs. bipartisanpolicy.org/explain…
Sam retweeted
the record-breaking moment ⭐️
Up Next 📺: #BALvsDAL 9/27 on CBS
Sam retweeted
The Pitt jersey 🔵🟡 @HamlinIsland
📺📱 NFL Preseason on @NFLPlus
Sam retweeted
The first major federal housing package in 30 years is now law. It combines over 50 bills, and puts the federal government on the side of legalizing housing:
1. Cuts some federal funding from expensive places that don't allow housing and gives it to places that do. The first federal carrots and sticks tied to housing results!
2. Removes the requirement for a metal chassis from manufactured housing, saving ~$5-10K per home and making multifamily manufactured housing possible
3. Rewards zoning reform with grants to support schools, sewers, and other needs
4. Rewards cities that create preapproved building plans so builders can build without delay
5. Federal guidelines for single-stair buildings (!)
6. Federal guidelines for zoning reform
7. Exempts infill and other low-impact housing from environmental review
8. Makes it easier for HUD to get money out the door after disasters without months of rulemaking
9. Ends duplicate inspections for housing funded by multiple federal programs
10. Updates the HOME program to remove blockers for federally-funded affordable housing
11. Creates grants to repair old housing stock
12. Allows banks to invest in more affordable housing
13. Streamlines rehab of old public housing buildings and adding mixed-income homes
14. Encourages financing changes to enable modular housing that lowers construction costs
15. Requires databases of local publicly-owned land that could be used for housing
16. Preserves build-to-rent homebuilding
...plus 42 other sections, most a labor of love from a staffer and their boss trying to tackle the largest cost Americans face each month
Sam retweeted
Some celebrated incomplete passthrough as a success for tariffs. But really it seems to be just slow passthrough, which drags out the pain and makes it harder for the fed to "see through"
libertystreeteconomics.newyo…
Sam retweeted
It's been six months since the Claude Code explosion made it clear social science research was changing forever. Where are we now? Here are some quick notes from my experiences in political science/political economy...
(1) Coding agents keep improving, and I've been surprised how much I value each improvement for research. I loved what I could do with Opus 4.6 back in January, but I can't imagine living without Fable now. It is unlocking increasingly technically complex research for me.
(2) The biggest gains have been in mathematical or technical work that is verifiable. I have not seen big improvements in AI models' ability to come up with good political science questions or deliver new political insights. On the other hand, I've seen huge gains in the ability to do new kinds of research, including automated replications like @xuyiqing has been doing, living research that updates dynamically, and software prototypes.
(3) The AI models' ability to *write* actual papers is horrendous---it almost seems like it's getting worse. I have tried many different setups, different harnesses, different skills, nothing works. There is a particular "Claudeslop" or "GPTslop" tone to the writing that I absolutely hate, and it cannot capture the right kind of unadorned, specific, rigorous tone that an academic paper should have. I don't mind writing the papers myself, but this has been a surprise to me. It doesn't seem like it should be this hard to get right.
(4) I've seen significant uptake of coding agents and AI tools in empirical research, as I expected. Journals are adapting, if a bit slowly. The slopocalypse is happening, but it's moving slower than expected, I would say. But I'm not editing a journal right now so I could be wrong about that.
(5) Where I think we're heading next: building increasingly technically complex research that takes advantage of the latest models. This will be a big complement to human researchers with good judgment who can direct the research and write the papers.
Claude Code and its ilk are coming for the study of politics like a freight train.
A single academic is going to be able to write thousands of empirical papers (especially survey experiments or LLM experiments) per year. Claude Code can already essentially one-shot a full AJPS-style survey experiment paper (with access to Prolific API).
We'll need to find new ways of organizing and disseminating political science research in the very near future for this deluge.
Sam retweeted
Knicks fans are going CRAZY 😭
“My Mayor is Muslim, my bagel is Jewish, my Christian’s Dior… Knicks in 4!!!”
Sam retweeted
June 23 is less than a month away—and I'd love to make this year's Terwilliger Center Summit on Housing Supply Solutions our biggest yet. If you work on housing, this is the room to be in. Help us get there: bipartisanpolicy.org/event/2…
Sam retweeted
Probably the single most effective stat at explaining everything that has gone awry in US society in recent years. ⬇️
Excellent, dismal, important piece on The Social Breakdown by the otherwise cheery @swinshi: cosm.aei.org/land-of-opportu…
Sam retweeted
Polymarket prices are highly accurate in predicting future events. The source of that accuracy is less obvious.
In a new working paper, we find it is not the “wisdom of crowds,” but a small minority of informed traders.
Fewer than 3% of accounts appear to drive price discovery; most perform no better than chance.
The majority generates most of the volume but little of the information, effectively funding the informed minority.
Check the paper here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.…
🤖 Made with AI
Sam retweeted
In “Has Generational Progress Stalled? Income Growth...,” @kevincorinth & @jefflarrimore "evaluate whether younger generations are experiencing slower income growth relative to prior generations,” finding that progress has slowed, except for Millennials. read.dukeupress.edu/demograp…
Sam retweeted
How much have home prices risen since 2020? 50%. That's pushed the salary needed to afford a median-priced home up more than 78%. Supply is a big part of the answer—and it's what we'll be focused on at BPC's Terwilliger Center Summit on June 23. Register: bipartisanpolicy.org/event/2…
Sam retweeted
Stanford paid 35,000 people to quit Facebook and Instagram for 6 weeks
Depression dropped. Anxiety dropped. Happiness went up. Women under 25 on Instagram saw the biggest gains
That was 6 weeks. I'm going a full year.
Sam retweeted
Gen Xers confronted significant obstacles to building wealth. Here’s how their generation stacks up financially, in charts. wsj.com/personal-finance/gen… via @WSJ
Sam retweeted
Important new housing research from @jessrems:
“By 2024, new homeowners were spending 26 percent of their income on housing, compared to 20 percent for existing homeowners — a six-percentage-point gap, the largest in nearly 40 years.”
Goolsbee at @ChicagoFed makes 4 claims on his view of strong economic growth. First, broad based consumer spending is driving growth. Second, AI is not driving growth because AI parts are imported. Third, labor market is steady. Fourth, focus should be on inflation. #NABE2026
