Derek Thompson

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Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson

@DKThomp

Sign up for my new newsletter! (Link below) Also: Co-author of Abundance, host of Plain English, and contributing writer at The Atlantic.

Washington, D.C. Katılım Mayıs 2009
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Derek Thompson
Derek Thompson@DKThomp·
Some personal news. Today, I’m leaving The Atlantic after almost 17 years and moving my writing to Substack. It would be convenient, for the purposes of crafting an exciting departure announcement, to have a dramatic exit story: a fight, a grievance, a shouting match with an editor that ended with me hurling a bunch of leather-backed Thoreau volumes across the open-plan office. That is not the case here. I love The Atlantic, and I'll remain a contributing writer there. But after almost two decades at one publication, I wanted to write for myself. The things I've published that I'm most proud of—whether it was the original abundance agenda essay, or my piece on workism—emerged from a very personal expression of frustration, or confusion, or curiosity. I want to know what my thinking and writing is like if I lean into a more independent and personal writing life. That's brought me to Substack, which is already home to an astonishing share of my overall reading. I'm excited to join their community and excited to build my own. The name of the newsletter should be easy to remember: Derek Thompson. The newsletter will have three main pillars 1. Abundance 2. The frontier of science and technology—GLP1s, AI, biotech, energy breakthroughs—covered in a way that’s both curious and skeptical 3. The anti-social century & the social crises of anxiety and aloneness Thanks to The Atlantic for 16.8 incredible years and thanks to everybody who follows me across the river. - dt
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Derek Thompson
Derek Thompson@DKThomp·
i saw it 2 years ago and the whole movie holds up much better than i remembered, with the important caveats that orlando bloom, playing one of history's great punchable weenies, overshoots the mark and enters a zone of uncomfortable punchability and brad pitt's accent is, actually, illegal
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Lucas Shaw
Lucas Shaw@Lucas_Shaw·
@MikeIsaac Holds up better than you think. But the manufactured outrage over the odyssey is very dumb.
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Peter Schorsch
Peter Schorsch@PeterSchorschFL·
The "anti-social century" — America's quiet collapse in dating, friendship, parties, and group time — sitting next to GLP-1s that now appear to cut heavy drinking, ease depression, and slash liver fat 80%. 2 trends. 1 country trying to figure out what to do with itself. Read @DKThomp's 6 megatrends of 2026 derekthompson.org/p/the-6-megatr…
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Ben Thomas
Ben Thomas@Ben_Thomas_o7·
Great podcast presenting important economic theory clearly. You could send this to your grandma! Derek & Alex cover: - Lump of labor fallacy: tech frees humans up to do new jobs - Jevon's paradox: structurally lower prices often increase quantity demanded -> more jobs (demand is often elastic) - O-ring model: many jobs need high certainty on all tasks; automating % of tasks doesn't automate the job - Human privilege: handmade goods & services are a luxury good; you buy more not less as income increases I would add: - Liability: jobs are about delegating responsibility/blame, not just tasks. and the legal system needs liability somewhere - Relative status seeking: humans care about their relative standard of living >> their absolute standard of living (for better & for worse). just look to academia to see competition, scarcity, and work created in an environment of normative abundance! - New goods: there is so much more work to do. feed & educate everyone, explore the oceans, inhabit space, terraform moons! energy, intelligence, and materials too cheap to meter. there is a lot to do before an AK economy
Derek Thompson@DKThomp

New pod: THE SMARTEST CASE AGAINST THE AI JOBS APOCALYPSE AI is the first technology that seems to automate the same cognitive sectors that absorbed work during previous waves of automation. For that reason, many people worry that it will destroy tens of millions of jobs imminently. But after I review the evidence showing that AI is not clearly destroying work today—and might even be stimulating demand for certain tech jobs— I brought on the great @alexolegimas to talk about the best reasons to doubt the doomsday narrative. We talk about all sorts of economic principles—lump of labor fallacy, income elasticity, Jevon's Paradox—but maybe his most interesting point is about the nature of desire and status. Desire is insatiable, and technology will never solve for status. Even in a world where AI can automate many tasks, status might go up rather than down or flat. And status motivates a lot of economic activity. So even in a world where AGI is very good at 99% of existing tasks is still a world where people will want to send their money to things that are perceived as "scarce" and "status-enhancing." You can create a lot of jobs on this basis alone. You could argue that this is how economic transformations have always worked. Our economy is a rough register of human desires. And in a world where artificial intelligence automates some tasks, it might not destroy work so much as it moves dollars and labor toward new desires in new sectors of the economy. The pet care economy wasn't really a thing in 1800. Now it's a >$100 billion business, made possible by the fact that a richer country moved dollars and workers from corn farms to bespoke poodle manicure spas. It is easy to imagine that AI could automate many tasks and even some jobs. What's harder to imagine is that we'll be permanently stuck in an disequilibrium where people with disposable income aren't trying to satisfy their desires and burnish their status. And in a world where AI is abundant, the question we should be asking about the future of work is: What will be scarce? What will be kind of jobs will be produced as desire and status shift, once again? open.spotify.com/episode/74OPgO…

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Ben Dreyfuss
Ben Dreyfuss@bendreyfuss·
How dare Christopher Nolan offend Greece by casting a black woman in his film as a Greek. He must apologize immediately to the one Greek person Americans can even name: a black basketball player in Milwaukee.
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Derek Thompson
Derek Thompson@DKThomp·
@Aidan_Regan obviously i'm talking about private wealth! i explain that i'm talking about personal wealth in the very next sentence. "public wealth exonerates anybody of a crime" doesn't make any sense as a sentence.
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Aidan Regan
Aidan Regan@Aidan_Regan·
It’s very far off. The left wants a rich, prosperous society. It holds that public wealth matters, and that unfettered private accumulation ends in oligarchy. r > g.
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Derek Thompson
Derek Thompson@DKThomp·
From today's megatrends post 1. Economics and aging: Older Americans are driving both federal spending and job growth: Average annual federal spending on seniors is roughly $43,000, compared to about $4,300 for children and young adults; and health care employment is the primary driver of new job creation. 2. AI and media: Academic journal submissions skyrocketed by 50 percent after the release of ChatGPT, with the increase driven entirely by papers that were deemed to be "at least half-written by AI" 3. Culture and kids: According to the Institute for Family Studies, one in ten teenagers isn’t allowed to leave the house without an adult companion, and 80 percent aren’t allowed to leave the neighborhood without an adult. 4. GLP-1s: A placebo-controlled, double-blind trial of Ozempic found that the drug reduced both heavy drinking days and overall alcohol consumption among people seeking treatment for addiction.
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Derek Thompson
Derek Thompson@DKThomp·
@Bernstein he's doing this, like, half Oxbridge received-pronunciation accent that sounds like a college senior pretending to be lawrence olivier in a standup routine. i don't care how ripped he is, it's an objectively embarrassing thing to watch/listen to
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John Lettieri
John Lettieri@LettieriDC·
Great newsletter from Derek today featuring not one, but TWO charts from the team @InnovateEconomy!
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Derek Thompson@DKThomp

New newsletter: THE 6 MEGATRENDS OF 2026 I took my favorite charts, essay passages, science and econ papers, and posts of the last few months and bucketed them into six categories. ECONOMICS: The Peter Pan Economy Young people are grappling with a declining hiring rate, lower employment levels, higher housing costs (Graph 1 below), cities that are unalienable to families, a Boomer Bottleneck in the labor force, and overwhelming support for older Americans over younger Americans at the federal level and throughout the economy HEALTH: The Making of a Do-it-All Drug In the last few months, randomized studies have shown GLP-1s can reduce psoriasis severity by up to 80%, treat addiction disorders, ameliorate several kinds of mental distress (Graph 2 below), and melt fatty liver disease. And new and better GLP-1 drugs are waiting in the wings. AI: Apocalypse Nope AI discourse is dominated by people predicting “the end of” things: growth, jobs, the human race. But the best way to evaluate AI *at this moment* is to analyze it as the opposite of an apocalypse, and more like a normal business cycle with headwinds, tailwinds, and urgent questions about the durability of consumer demand and the elasticity of compute supply. POLITICS: The Paradox of Global Violence I haven’t seen many people point out that America is becoming historically peaceful (Graph 3 below) at the same time that many indicators of global violence are rising—just as a new technological revolution, drones, threaten to reshape the future of war. MEDIA: Quantity Is Eating Quality The number of e-books and science papers has exploded since the release of ChatGPT. AI might lead to a quality boom in art in the coming decades. But for now, “more” is beating “better.” CULTURE: The Anti-Social Century Life is “time spent.” (Graph 4 below) And the last few decades have seen a devolution of time spent with other people—partners, children, coworkers, and friends—as Americans couple less, have fewer children, work alone, and spend less time with people outside their home. derekthompson.org/p/the-6-megatr…

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Derek Thompson
Derek Thompson@DKThomp·
New newsletter: THE 6 MEGATRENDS OF 2026 I took my favorite charts, essay passages, science and econ papers, and posts of the last few months and bucketed them into six categories. ECONOMICS: The Peter Pan Economy Young people are grappling with a declining hiring rate, lower employment levels, higher housing costs (Graph 1 below), cities that are unalienable to families, a Boomer Bottleneck in the labor force, and overwhelming support for older Americans over younger Americans at the federal level and throughout the economy HEALTH: The Making of a Do-it-All Drug In the last few months, randomized studies have shown GLP-1s can reduce psoriasis severity by up to 80%, treat addiction disorders, ameliorate several kinds of mental distress (Graph 2 below), and melt fatty liver disease. And new and better GLP-1 drugs are waiting in the wings. AI: Apocalypse Nope AI discourse is dominated by people predicting “the end of” things: growth, jobs, the human race. But the best way to evaluate AI *at this moment* is to analyze it as the opposite of an apocalypse, and more like a normal business cycle with headwinds, tailwinds, and urgent questions about the durability of consumer demand and the elasticity of compute supply. POLITICS: The Paradox of Global Violence I haven’t seen many people point out that America is becoming historically peaceful (Graph 3 below) at the same time that many indicators of global violence are rising—just as a new technological revolution, drones, threaten to reshape the future of war. MEDIA: Quantity Is Eating Quality The number of e-books and science papers has exploded since the release of ChatGPT. AI might lead to a quality boom in art in the coming decades. But for now, “more” is beating “better.” CULTURE: The Anti-Social Century Life is “time spent.” (Graph 4 below) And the last few decades have seen a devolution of time spent with other people—partners, children, coworkers, and friends—as Americans couple less, have fewer children, work alone, and spend less time with people outside their home. derekthompson.org/p/the-6-megatr…
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Andy Hall
Andy Hall@ahall_research·
This is a really, really great podcast ep. It makes it crystal clear why AI's effect on jobs is going to be complex and hard to predict. Given that, the labs should spend less time drafting expansive, new social contracts that Americans haven't asked for yet, and more time helping us measure and understand how the economy is changing. freesystems.substack.com/p/the-politics…
Derek Thompson@DKThomp

New pod: THE SMARTEST CASE AGAINST THE AI JOBS APOCALYPSE AI is the first technology that seems to automate the same cognitive sectors that absorbed work during previous waves of automation. For that reason, many people worry that it will destroy tens of millions of jobs imminently. But after I review the evidence showing that AI is not clearly destroying work today—and might even be stimulating demand for certain tech jobs— I brought on the great @alexolegimas to talk about the best reasons to doubt the doomsday narrative. We talk about all sorts of economic principles—lump of labor fallacy, income elasticity, Jevon's Paradox—but maybe his most interesting point is about the nature of desire and status. Desire is insatiable, and technology will never solve for status. Even in a world where AI can automate many tasks, status might go up rather than down or flat. And status motivates a lot of economic activity. So even in a world where AGI is very good at 99% of existing tasks is still a world where people will want to send their money to things that are perceived as "scarce" and "status-enhancing." You can create a lot of jobs on this basis alone. You could argue that this is how economic transformations have always worked. Our economy is a rough register of human desires. And in a world where artificial intelligence automates some tasks, it might not destroy work so much as it moves dollars and labor toward new desires in new sectors of the economy. The pet care economy wasn't really a thing in 1800. Now it's a >$100 billion business, made possible by the fact that a richer country moved dollars and workers from corn farms to bespoke poodle manicure spas. It is easy to imagine that AI could automate many tasks and even some jobs. What's harder to imagine is that we'll be permanently stuck in an disequilibrium where people with disposable income aren't trying to satisfy their desires and burnish their status. And in a world where AI is abundant, the question we should be asking about the future of work is: What will be scarce? What will be kind of jobs will be produced as desire and status shift, once again? open.spotify.com/episode/74OPgO…

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Derek Thompson
Derek Thompson@DKThomp·
swear i'm not being cheeky or dense here: what is the central issue? i remain torn on what ASI would do to the workforce but i think economists have made several compelling arguments as to why even 99% task automation wouldn't lead to (even semi-)permanent disemployment (e.g., O-ring work, demand elasticity)
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Stefan Schubert
Stefan Schubert@StefanFSchubert·
@binarybits It’s not that he doesn’t consider every possible argument, it’s that he doesn’t engage with the central issue at all
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Stefan Schubert
Stefan Schubert@StefanFSchubert·
These kinds of posts are so incredibly shortsighted. Sure, current trends don’t point to immediate labour displacement. That obviously doesn’t show that will never happen. It’s an embarrassingly basic logical error.
Andrew Ng@AndrewYNg

There will be no AI jobpocalypse. The story that AI will lead to massive unemployment is stoking unnecessary fear. AI — like any other technology — does affect jobs, but telling overblown stories of large-scale unemployment is irresponsible and damaging. Let’s put a stop to it. I’ve expressed skepticism about the jobpocalypse in previous posts. I’m glad to see that the popular press is now pushing back on this narrative. The image below features some recent headlines. Software engineering is the sector most affected by AI tools, as coding agents race ahead. Yet hiring of software engineers remains strong! So while there are examples of AI taking away jobs, the trends strongly suggest the net job creation is vastly greater than the job destruction — just like earlier waves of technology. Further, despite all the exciting progress in AI, the U.S. unemployment rate remains a healthy 4.3%. Why is the AI jobpocalypse narrative so popular? For one thing, frontier AI labs have a strong incentive to tell stories that make AI technology sound more powerful. At their most extreme, they promote science-fiction scenarios of AI “taking over” and causing human extinction. If a technology can replace many employees, surely that technology must be very valuable! Also, a lot of SaaS software companies charge around $100-$1000 per user/year. But if an AI company can replace an employee who makes $100,000 — or make them 50% more productive — then charging even $10,000 starts to look reasonable. By anchoring not to typical SaaS prices but to salaries of employees, AI companies can charge a lot more. Additionally, businesses have a strong incentive to talk about layoffs as if they were caused by AI. After all, talking about how they’re using AI to be far more productive with fewer staff makes them look smart. This is a better message than admitting they overhired during the pandemic when capital was abundant due to low interest rates and a massive government financial stimulus. To be clear, I recognize that AI is causing a lot of people’s work to change. This is hard. This is stressful. (And to some, it can be fun.) I empathize with everyone affected. At the same time, this is very different from predicting a collapse of the job market. Societies are capable of telling themselves stories for years that have little basis in reality and lead to poor society-wide decision making. For example, fears over nuclear plant safety led to under-investment in nuclear power. Fears of the “population bomb” in the 1960s led countries to implement harsh policies to reduce their populations. And worries about dietary fat led governments to promote unhealthy high-sugar diets for decades. Now that mainstream media is openly skeptical about the jobpocalypse, I hope these stories will start to lose their teeth (much like fears of AI-driven human extinction have). Contrary to the predictions of an AI jobpocalypse, I predict the opposite: There will be an AI jobapalooza! AI will lead to a lot more good AI engineering jobs, and I’m also optimistic about the future of the overall job market. What AI engineers do will be different from traditional software engineering, and many of these jobs will be in businesses other than traditional large employers of developers. In non-AI roles, too, the skills needed will change because of AI. That makes this a good time to encourage more people to become proficient in AI, and make sure they’re ready for the different but plentiful jobs of the future! [Original text in The Batch newsletter.]

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Derek Thompson
Derek Thompson@DKThomp·
I would very happily attend or host an event to decide whether the editor in chief of the New Yorker (a magazine whose mascot is a monocled dandy named Eustace) or a billionaire venture capitalist (who in 2021 bought the most expensive house in the history of American real estate) is the "most out of touch." Round one: "Please summarize your favorite episode of NCIS."
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Chris Williamson
Chris Williamson@ChrisWillx·
Modern fatherhood would be unrecognisable to a 1950’s dad. “Compared to their Boomer parents, childcare time among Millennial dads has more than doubled. Compared to their Silent Generation grandparents, it’s nearly quadrupled. You will be hard-pressed to find any part of day-to-day modern life that has changed more in the last half-century than the way today’s parents—and fathers, in particular—spend their time. The new American dad is more present and more exhausted—but also, more satisfied with life.” — @DKThomp
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Derek Thompson
Derek Thompson@DKThomp·
I'll keep linking good answers but definitely want to counsel against the over-confident "it's entirely explained by [something that happened in the last 5 years" High school drinking has been declining linearly for like 40 years!
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Derek Thompson
Derek Thompson@DKThomp·
It's remarkable how many independent, secular trends are anti-alcohol right now. Just off the top of my head - GLP-1s - post-1970s rise of helicopter parenting - reaction to the binge-drinking spike in late 20th c - phones killing teenage partying - surge in young adult fitness (dancing clubs down, running clubs up) - general rise of healthmaxxing culture among both liberal yuppies and MAHA devotees
Grant Bailey@grantjbailey

Huge collapse in drinking among high schoolers 👀

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Keşfet

@MikeIsaac @Aidan_Regan @IFP @calebwatney @Bernstein @InnovateEconomy @binarybits @elonmusk