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1/ 🧵 Raising children is expensive, but my chapter in the @CatoInstitute's new Handbook on Affordability outlines specific policy changes that reduce costs for families with kids.
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Chelsea Olivia Follett
5.6K posts
Chelsea Olivia Follett
@chellivia
Managing Editor of @HumanProgress & @CatoInstitute Policy Analyst. Author, Centers of Progress: https://t.co/DGV2LNsEoM + Grim Old Days: https://t.co/6Vu4GdMBlL
Washington, DC Katılım Şubat 2010
1.2K Takip Edilen3.4K Takipçiler
Chelsea Olivia Follett retweetledi
Families in the olden days are romanticized, but modern-day fathers are far more involved in their kids' lives than the patriarchs of yore.
Scott Lincicome@scottlincicome
I feel seen
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Only 8% of U.S. homes had electricity in 1907. Today, around 90% of the entire global population has access to electricity.
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Famine's defeat is an underappreciated aspect of the modern world.
"Famine recurred so insistently for centuries on end that it became incorporated into man’s biological regime and built into his daily life. Dearth and penury were continual, and familiar … Two consecutive bad harvests spelt disaster." –Historian Fernand Braudel
Human Progress@HumanProgress
Thanks to hybridization, nitrogen fertilizer, improved pest controls, and genetically enhanced crops, the global average cereal yield has tripled since 1961.
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"My father was a fax machine. That was his job. He started working at 14, for a bank. That was before fax machines. So they'd have my father relay the messages, act as courier, basically do the role of a fax machine."
The elderly man who told me this story today continued that his father kept working for the bank his whole life, doing different roles. So apparently the spread of fax machines didn't render him jobless.
New technology ≠ mass unemployment.
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They definitely weren't ecologists!
Humans have been exterminating wildlife since prehistory. The past 50,000 years saw about 90 genera of large mammals go extinct, amounting to over 70% of America's large species and over 90% of Australia's.
People first settled in New Zealand in the late 13th century. Within a century, they exterminated 10 species of moa and at least 15 other kinds of native birds, including ducks, geese, pelicans, coots, Haast's eagle, and an indigenous harrier.
Elon Musk@elonmusk
Ancient cultures were extremely violent, not “peace-loving ecologists” at all!
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Pakistan’s Punjab Passes Bill Banning Marriage Under 18 humanprogress.org/pakistans-punj… via @HumanProgress
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Virginia’s new Employee Child Care Assistance Program throws taxpayer dollars at the problem instead of addressing the issues actually driving costs.
Pumping in money without cutting regulations or barriers to entry risks higher prices. Better solutions here: cato.org/handbook-affor…
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In ancient Rome, water was “the characteristic drink of the subaltern classes, the cheapest and most easily available drink, fit for children, slaves, and the women who had been forbidden from drinking wine very early on the Republic.”
Human Progress@HumanProgress
In many pre-industrial societies, water was so filthy that drinking it became associated with poverty and low status.
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Chelsea Olivia Follett retweetledi
You can discover, for instance, that when I was born in 1960 in North Carolina, more than 35 percent of the state’s households lacked full plumbing. The good old days!
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Chelsea Olivia Follett retweetledi
Do we live in a golden age for bibliophiles?
𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@CharlesCMann
"There are about 70% more bookstores now than there were six years ago in the United States. After 20 years of declining numbers, they’re coming roaring back." "Since 2020,... American Booksellers Association membership has grown from 1,900 to 3,200." fastcompany.com/91529634/indep…
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Chelsea Olivia Follett retweetledi
.@BorisJohnson claimed today in the @DailyMail that population growth has been "environmentally disastrous" and that even with falling birth rates we are "not out of the woods yet" when it comes to the "Malthusian consequences for resources and the environment" of population growth. He suggests Malthusian fears were overstated only because birth rates are now declining.
He might want to revisit the latest research. Over the past few decades, global resource abundance has outpaced population growth: humanprogress.org/the-simon-abun…
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@HumanProgress That's why alcoholwas so pervasive. It was safer.
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In many pre-industrial societies, water was so filthy that drinking it became associated with poverty and low status.
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"Burned by clothing catching fire" is listed as the cause of death of my children's great-great uncle. He was only 5 years old.
Death by fire was far more common back when interaction with fire (for light and cooking) was more frequent, and before fire retardants were added to clothing.
Chelsea Olivia Follett@chellivia
And perhaps a surprising number of children who died of burns from hearth fires, and other hazards you would never think of in the modern day.
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Chelsea Olivia Follett retweetledi
Chelsea Olivia Follett retweetledi
@chellivia My great Aunt died from burns sustained from the kitchen hearth.
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An IRL friend told me I should start a history podcast and I'm not convinced she was joking, am I cooked?
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Chelsea Olivia Follett retweetledi
It was far more common for children to share bedrooms in the past. The expectation that each child needs a unique bedroom is quite recent.
Jeremy Horpedahl 🥚📉@jmhorp
@bobbyfijan In 1950, only 1/3 of new house had 3 bedrooms and just 1% had 4+ bedrooms Source: fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/new-hous… In 2024, 45% have 3 bedrooms and 49% have 4+ bedrooms Source: census.gov/construction/c…
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