Darel E. Paul

As both @theSNP & @UKLabour are currently going wild for price controls, I am re-upping my review of a recent book on Portuguese and Brazilian corporatism, regimes that were centered on the failed task of achieving just prices. compactmag.com/article/when-s…

@sarobertson_ Yeah, tell that to Alberta.

Carney: The new world order will be built from Europe. Canada is the most European of non-European countries, and we are transforming our cooperation with the EU ... In a more dangerous and divided world, Canada has chosen to build and work in partnership with Europe.

@zenahitz Yes, less true now, but i believe we are accomplishing this in the PSCI department @WilliamsCollege. Of course, that doesn’t stop 30% (and rising) of the students from majoring in ECON.

This was true twenty years ago. Less and less true now.

@JohnJSSoriano @RAVerBruggen

A good troll paper would be looking at the effect of quasi-random admissions to PhD programs on family life and then framing the results as academia derailing life

@zenahitz No reason for a universal race to the bottom. There will always be a relevant minority of students who want to learn and work. They will be attracted by difficulty. Signaling & giving strong letters of recommendation to students who meet high standards can work.

This is a collective action problem. If all the professors assign lots of reading, the students will rise to it. If there's competition over the ease of the class, it will be a race to the bottom.

The people warning that science is becoming political are the same people who spent years making politics the central feature of scientific institutions. Nobody did more to blur the line between science and politics than the people who spent the last fifteen years running America’s woke scientific institutions. This person Skorton was a senior administrator at Cornell, the Smithsonian, and now the AAMC during an era when politics permeated nearly every aspect of these institutions. The hypocrisy is obvious. These people never objected to politics in science when they held power. They embraced it as long as it was politics they agreed with. They celebrated it, institutionalized it, and punished those who challenged it. Now they want to present themselves as defenders of scientific neutrality. The issue is not politics in science for them. The issue is that they mistake their politics for science.

You don't build socialism by taxing the rich. You build socialism by taxing everyone. A lot.

@sfmcguire79 I think the word "top" here is struggling for a definition.

Berkeley math professor: “Today, the more successful a public high school is at preparing its students, the lower its graduates' chances of getting into top UC campuses like Berkeley and San Diego.” Berkeley admitted 45% of applicants from a high school where nearly 94% of “students failed to meet the state standards in mathematics.” It admitted less than 14% of applicants from a school where “nearly 100 percent of its students in AP Calculus BC pass the national exam with a perfect score of 5.”

It's official: The Beatles' first album, PLEASE PLEASE ME, was released closer to the 1800s than to the present day. Dec 31, 1899 to March 22, 1963 = 23,091 days March 22, 1963 to June 11, 2026 = 23,092 days

If you’ve given to Compact’s summer fundraising campaign, you’ve already received a personal note of thanks from me. If you haven’t donated yet, please consider supporting our work with a tax-deductible gift. compactmag.com/donate/

@jamesbundy I think you just answered your own question!

What is the point of Leader's #FMQs when questions are being asked for social media clips, rather than proper scrutiny?

@ElectionMapsUK Looks like election upset season is definitely over.

By-Election Winner Odds | Implied Chance - One Week to Go! Makerfield: 🌹 LAB: 2/11 | 82% ➡️ RFM: 6/1 | 14% ⬛️ RES: 22/1 | 4% Aberdeen South: 🎗️ SNP: 4/7 | 62% 🌳 CON: 7/4 | 35% ➡️ RFM: 66/1 | 1% 🌹 LAB: 80/1 | 1% Arbroath & Broughty Ferry: 🎗️ SNP: 1/10 | 89% 🌹 LAB: 16/1 | 6% ➡️ RFM: 20/1 | 5% 🌳 CON: 40/1 | 2% Via @oddschecker, 11/06.

@theSNP's fundamental claim for independence is that Scotland is an essentially left-wing country being ruled by England, an essentially right-wing country. Yesterday's protests across Scotland threaten @theSNP's narrative at its very core.

@TomHCalver As they say, at some point fertility delayed is fertility foregone.

A slightly different way to look at fertility from today's ONS release. Women born from 1995 onwards have been having drastically fewer children by the age of 30. Will they catch up in their 30s?

@JesusFerna7026 @CatNyanpital A popular version is here: compactmag.com/article/the-fa…

@JesusFerna7026 @CatNyanpital No, the evidence is not overwhelming. See my upcoming article in Comparative Population Studies.

Thailand has one of the lowest total fertility rates (TFR) in the world. In 2025, the TFR was 0.87, and the preliminary numbers for the first months of 2026 are even lower. The rate is so low that deaths have exceeded births since 2021 and now run 34% higher than births. Thailand’s fertility collapse has always fascinated me. With a flight to a Bank of Thailand conference in Bangkok ahead of me, I spent some time reviewing the data. Thailand’s TFR fell below replacement in 1991. That is early. It means completed fertility has been below replacement for at least a full generation. In 1991, Thailand was neither rich nor well-educated. Even today, its income per capita (in PPP, the right measure here) is about Mexico’s level, around 28% of the U.S. The standard theories for East Asian ultra-low fertility, such as a toxic educational arms race or extreme gender inequality, have little bite here. On the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index 2025, Thailand scored 0.728 and ranked 66th. South Korea scored 0.687 (101st of 146), and Japan 0.666 (118th of 148, last in the G7). I think Thailand is the clearest example of modernity without high income, and that combination is a recipe for demographic collapse. To illustrate this point: if Thailand’s TFR remained at its current level for 200 years, the population would decline from 65.8 million in 2025 to 1.51 million in 2225. While this is a hypothetical scenario used to make the argument, not a forecast, it gives a sense of the magnitude of the population change involved unless TFR increases at some point. This is not about closing a few maternity wards or fixing Social Security, but about winding down an entire country. Does anyone have a better theory? I don’t have enough information on Thai demographics, and I am happy to update my view. Two caveats. First, I use Thailand’s official data from the National Statistical Office. The UN WPP data (and the databases built on it, such as the World Bank’s) are, as always, way off. Second, the official statistics may undercount births somewhat. Even if they do, the picture changes little.

Scotland's April 2026 births data was released today. The below chart reflects that data. Births and fertility are still down this year--but not by much. Perhaps even Scotland can turn its 1.25 TFR around!

@KeithNHumphreys Large age differences in marriage give off strong patriarchal vibes. In a feminist era, age differences must be small to be acceptable.

In my lifetime, people went from disapproving of marriages between people of different races to disapproving of marriages between people of different ages.

The climate fear, Ezra argues, is a cover story for guilt. The climate guilt, I believe is a totem for a deeper guilt: a belief that deep down we are bad, and the world would be better off without us. This isn’t just about emissions or pollution. It’s a deeper self-loathing.

Secession attempts in culturally homogeneous countries (e.g. 🇬🇧🇨🇦🇦🇺) are always motivated by partisan divides between center and periphery that feel irreconcilable and permanent. Just sayin'.

@moveincircles After all, any fertility level below replacement is an extinction trajectory.

@moveincircles You seem to have an implicit theory of fertility recovery and I wonder what that is.

This isn't going to endear me to anyone, but IMO the fertility "crisis" isn't a crisis at all, it's just the human population rebalancing after an unprecedented stretch of increase occasioned by changing environmental conditions