Smart piece and well worth a read. But a bit disappointed that Pritchett's *political* critique of aid's focus on narrow welfare-improving interventions doesn't engage with the fact that these uses of aid routinely poll best in donor countries

The Global North's emerging mainstream macro consensus is that gov spending needs to be cut to deal with soaring bond yields, and its emerging mainstream geopolitical consensus is that ramping up military spending should take up trillions of dollars of this precious fiscal space

There has truly never been a dumber argument

The right isn't even bothering with "charity begins at home" stuff anymore. This is the pitch now: less aid, more prisons

Starting to think City really might get sent down...

No one with these attitudes should be allowed near a future Democratic administration

I didn’t expect the NYT to be such Friday Night Lights respecters but I am here for it

Jaw-dropping to see just how much China is not a priority for most Americans. 57% of Americans prefer engagement with China to trying to limit its power. Just 32% see economic competition from China as a critical threat. Only 38% support using US troops to defend Taiwan

Of course international cooperation won't be easy, but the people who frame international cooperation as squishy and passé don’t have any answer except to promise that our team will get to stay on the top deck of a sinking ship. I don't think that future is inevitable

On migration, too, we're told that it's either a massive threat and politically toxic by the same people who would do nothing to address the global conditions that make it inevitable (legal or not). So the implicit promise is a future of militarized societies at huge expense

On climate change, awesome cheap renewables can take us a long way but only so far, especially when their origin makes China hawks want to keep them out. Are we to accept a world of escalating wildfire smoke summers, uninsurable regions, and disasters like Nepal?

Or take peace and security, where we're looking at an escalatory spiral that not only amplifies the risk of war but is leading to a surge in military spending when public funds are most needed to invest elsewhere

My annual frustration each time I watch one of these: This is the one hearing for committee members to discuss international finance + institutions like the IMF. But very few do. Some don't show, many raise out of scope issues. Just once a year actually engage with this stuff!

As Bessent exits, he's heckled by several people over US sanctions policy. "Do you want to starve Cuba?" one asks