Electoral system reform (PR / ranked-choice)
Shifting from plurality voting to proportional representation or ranked-choice voting reduces the strategic incentive for negative-partisan campaigning, lowering affective polarization at equilibrium.
Evidence brief on RCV's effects on campaign tone, candidate diversity, and turnout in adopting jurisdictions.
Comparative electoral-system reference covering PR, RCV, and plurality regimes across democracies.
Sustained public funding for non-partisan, local-coverage journalism rebuilds shared informational substrate and reduces dependence on engagement-driven national outlets, partially reversing fragmentation.
Reuters Institute — Public Funding of News
Comparative research on public-service-media funding effects on news trust, ideological balance, and local coverage.
Platform antitrust + algorithmic transparency
Antitrust enforcement against dominant platforms combined with mandated algorithmic auditing reduces the leverage of any single ranking system over public discourse and creates contestability for less polarizing alternatives.
Codified platform transparency, audit, and large-platform obligations enforceable across the EU single market.
Stigler Center — Digital Platforms research
Research program on digital-platform market structure, antitrust applications, and algorithmic accountability levers.
Sustained K-12 and adult civic-education programming raises baseline knowledge of democratic procedure and pluralist norms, slowing erosion of intermediary civic life.
Time-series indicators of US youth civic knowledge, voter turnout, and community participation.
The collapse of shared information sources and the rise of partisan-sorted news consumption reduces the common ground required for democratic deliberation, increasing willingness to discount opposing claims as illegitimate.
US adults' news-platform mix over a decade-plus, documenting the shift away from broadcast toward partisan-sorted digital sources.
Cross-country survey of news trust, paying news consumption, and source-mix fragmentation.
Share of US adults who get news from social media at least sometimes
Pew Research — Social Media and News Fact Sheet
A majority of US adults get news from social media at least sometimes; among 18-29s the share exceeds 80%.
Share of US adults who trust national news organizations a great deal
Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024 — US country page
US ranks near the bottom of surveyed countries for trust in news; only 32% trust the news most of the time.
32% is the broader "trust most of the time" figure; 7% reflects the narrower "great deal of trust" subset from Reuters/Pew comparable items.
Affective polarization erodes democratic norms
Rising affective polarization — voters identifying with parties as in-groups and out-groups — increases tolerance for anti-democratic behavior by co-partisans, raising the cost of cross-party coalition-building and lowering the cost of norm violations.
Decadal time-series of partisan in-group / out-group thermometer ratings showing widening affective gap.
Iyengar et al. — affective polarization review
Iyengar, Lelkes, Levendusky, Malhotra, Westwood
Synthesis of affective-polarization measurement and downstream evidence on norm erosion among co-partisans.
ANES feeling-thermometer rating — opposing party (mean)
Mean out-party thermometer dropped from ~48° (1980) to ~22° (2020); in-party rating remained near 70°.
ANES thermometer scale runs 0-100 (warmest = highest).
Share of partisans who view the opposing party as a threat to the nation's well-being
Pew Research — Partisanship and Political Animosity
62% of Republicans and 54% of Democrats describe the opposing party as immoral; 72% and 63% respectively describe it as more dishonest than other Americans.
Economic insecurity drives authoritarian appeal
Persistent economic insecurity and stagnating mobility increase the appeal of strongman political brands that promise stability through executive action, raising tolerance for anti-pluralist rhetoric.
Cross-country indicators of household economic vulnerability and labour-market insecurity.
Top income- and wealth-share time-series showing stagnating intergenerational mobility across major economies.
Real median household income — 5-year compounded growth
US Census — Income in the United States 2023
Real median household income grew only ~4% cumulative over the 2019-2023 window, slower than wage growth in earlier decades.
Top 1% pre-tax income share has remained near 1929 levels since 2010, well above the post-WWII trough of ~0.10.
Platform algorithmic amplification of outrage content
Major platforms' engagement-optimized ranking systems disproportionately surface content that triggers anger and out-group hostility, accelerating affective polarization and information fragmentation through repeated exposure to the most divisive subset of public speech.
Center for Countering Digital Hate research portal
Audit-style investigations of platform amplification of hateful and outrage content.
Original research on platform-mediated harms, including engagement-driven distribution of outrage content.
Erosion of intermediary civic institutions
The decline of cross-class civic intermediaries (unions, congregations, civic associations) removes the venues where citizens of differing politics encountered one another, raising the salience of partisan identity and reducing trust-building exposure.
Decadal decline in club membership, civic-association participation, and informal social capital.
Annual US union-density time-series showing long-run decline of cross-class workplace intermediaries.
US union membership rate among wage and salary workers
Union density fell to a record low of 9.9%, down from ~20% in 1983 when the comparable series began.
Weekly religious-service attendance among US adults
21% of US adults attend religious services weekly, down from ~42% in 1970; congregations are the largest single cross-class civic venue and have halved in attendance.
Liberal Democracy Index in global decline
The aggregate Liberal Democracy Index (V-Dem) has declined across a majority of countries year-over-year for the most recent reporting decade, reversing the post-1990 expansion.
Country-level Liberal Democracy Index time-series with a majority of countries declining over the most recent decade.
Cross-country political-rights and civil-liberties scoring confirming consecutive years of net decline.
Liberal Democracy Index — world population-weighted mean
Population-weighted global LDI fell below 1986 levels, with 71% of the world's population living in autocracies.
Approximate value from V-Dem 2024 annual report; refresh on regeneration.
Countries net-declining in Freedom in the World aggregate score
19th consecutive year in which the number of countries declining exceeded the number improving.
V-Dem indicators of executive overreach (legislative constraints, judicial constraints) have weakened in multiple consolidated democracies, indicating systematic erosion of horizontal accountability.
Liberal-democracy sub-indices including legislative constraints and judicial constraints on the executive.
Annual aggregate democracy score derived from expert assessments of executive accountability and pluralism.
V-Dem Legislative Constraints on the Executive — global mean
v2x_legcon component of the Liberal Democracy Index; declined ~0.05 over the most recent decade in the aggregate.
Approximate; verify against current V-Dem release on regeneration.
V-Dem Judicial Constraints on the Executive — global mean
v2x_jucon component; decadal decline concentrated in consolidating-autocracy cases such as Turkey, India, Hungary.
RSF's World Press Freedom Index shows year-over-year deterioration in the press-freedom environment for a majority of tracked countries, with sharpened decline in the political indicator.
Annual cross-country index scoring political, economic, legislative, social, and security dimensions of press freedom.
RSF World Press Freedom Index — global mean score (100 = best)
2024 index reports the press-freedom environment as "difficult" or "very serious" in over half of countries; political indicator showed sharpest year-over-year drop.
Approximate global mean; refresh on regeneration with official aggregate.
Confounder-controlled designs resolve the egg–CVD question faster than more cohorts
The disagreement is resolved more efficiently by better-identified designs than by additional observational cohorts that inherit the same confounding structure. The highest-leverage moves are individual-participant-data reanalysis with harmonized confounder adjustment across cohorts, pre-registered analysis plans that fix the adjustment set in advance, and — where feasible — randomized trials on hard cardiovascular endpoints rather than on serum-lipid surrogates.
Zhuang et al. — Egg/cholesterol, serum cholesterol, and mortality; updated meta-analysis (Circulation)
Updated meta-analysis; associations vary by population and by adjustment set, underscoring residual confounding and effect-heterogeneity as the binding constraints on inference.
Sabaté et al. dose-response meta-analysis of egg consumption and CVD (Eur J Nutrition)
Dose-response meta-analysis of prospective cohorts; up to one egg/day not associated with (and up to ~six/week inversely associated with) CVD — a result sensitive to the confounder-adjustment model.
Habitual egg consumption meaningfully raises cardiovascular-disease risk
In the general adult population, habitual egg consumption (roughly one per day) meaningfully increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. Large prospective cohorts and meta-analyses reach opposing conclusions on both the direction and magnitude of the association, and any effect is entangled with total dietary-cholesterol intake, overall dietary pattern, and residual confounding — so the proposition is genuinely contested rather than settled in either direction.
Zhong et al. — Dietary Cholesterol or Egg Consumption and CVD/Mortality (JAMA)
Pooled analysis of 6 US cohorts (29,615 adults, up to 31 yr follow-up); each additional half-egg/day associated with +6% CVD and +8% all-cause mortality in a dose-response manner. Dietary-cholesterol association attenuated after adjusting for eggs and red meat.
Drouin-Chartier et al. — Egg consumption and CVD, three US cohorts + meta-analysis (BMJ)
Three large US cohorts plus updated meta-analysis (33 risk estimates, 1,720,108 participants); one egg/day not associated with incident CVD after adjustment for lifestyle and dietary factors.
Self-reported diet measures correlate weakly with true intake, attenuating diet-disease associations
Nutritional epidemiology's exposure measurements are far noisier than the associations built on them assume. Validated against recovery biomarkers, food frequency questionnaires correlate with true energy intake at roughly 0.21 and with true protein intake at roughly 0.29, and they under-report energy by about 28 percent on average. Under-reporting is systematic rather than random: body mass index predicts it. Measurement error of this size attenuates observed diet-disease associations toward the null and makes their magnitude sensitive to the adjustment set, so cohorts using self-reported intake can disagree with each other while every one of them is analysed correctly. This is a mechanism upstream of the egg guidance reversals: it predicts that accumulating more observational cohorts built on the same instruments will not converge on a stable effect estimate.
Freedman et al. — Pooled Results From 5 Validation Studies of Dietary Self-Report Instruments Using Recovery Biomarkers for Energy and Protein Intake (American Journal of Epidemiology)
Pooling five US validation studies (1999-2009), correlations between self-report and biomarker-measured truth were 0.21 (energy) and 0.29 (protein) for FFQs, and 0.26 and 0.40 for a single 24-hour recall. Average under-reporting of energy was 28 percent with an FFQ and 15 percent with a single recall, with BMI a strong predictor of systematic under-reporting.
Public dietary guidance on eggs has reversed repeatedly for decades
Official and popular dietary guidance on eggs has reversed repeatedly over five decades — from mid-century cholesterol limits, to the 2015 US Dietary Guidelines dropping the 300 mg/day dietary-cholesterol cap, to renewed caution after the 2019 JAMA pooled analysis. Each swing is presented to the public as settled science, and the whipsaw erodes trust in nutrition research as a whole.
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health — Eggs (The Nutrition Source)
Reviews the shifting evidence and guidance on eggs and dietary cholesterol, including the 2015 removal of the 300 mg/day cholesterol limit from US dietary advice.
Harvard Nutrition Source — Eggs and cholesterol back in the spotlight (2019 JAMA)
Documents the renewed caution and public confusion following the 2019 JAMA pooled analysis, after years of loosening cholesterol guidance.
An annual or periodic tax on net wealth above a high threshold — at rates calibrated to be below the long-run real return on capital — directly addresses the r > g compounding channel by reducing the after-tax return to capital for the largest holders. Implementation requires solving valuation (for illiquid assets) and avoiding flight (via global coordination), but where adopted credibly it constrains wealth-share growth.
Saez & Zucman — Progressive Wealth Taxation
Argument and design proposal for a top-bracket annual wealth tax, with revenue and behavioral-response estimates calibrated to US distributional accounts.
OECD — The Role and Design of Net Wealth Taxes
Cross-country review of net-wealth-tax experience: a well-designed wealth tax can raise material revenue but is administratively demanding, particularly around valuation.
Housing supply reform — by-right multifamily, zoning liberalization, parking minima
Liberalizing residential zoning — by-right multifamily near transit, elimination of parking minima, removal of lot-size minima, and elimination of discretionary review for code-compliant proposals — allows housing supply to respond to demand. In a small but growing set of jurisdictions (Auckland, Minneapolis, Houston historically, the 2024 California ADU rules) the policy has measurably increased supply and slowed price growth at the metro scale.
Furman Center — research on land use and housing supply
Empirical evidence that allowing by-right multifamily construction in transit-rich areas materially increases housing supply and slows price growth at the metro scale.
New Zealand MDRS evaluation — Auckland upzoning
Following the 2016 Auckland Unitary Plan upzoning, housing permits and completions rose materially in upzoned areas; rents grew more slowly than in comparable non-upzoned metros.
Restoring the inheritance-tax framework that existed pre-1981 — substantially lower exemption thresholds, the elimination of step-up-in-basis at death, closing the dynasty-trust route — addresses the intergenerational component of wealth concentration directly. Historically, the US compression of top-wealth shares between 1930 and 1980 tracked the rise of estate taxation; its erosion since 1981 tracked the renewed rise.
Saez & Zucman — Wealth Inequality in the United States since 1913
Historical analysis showing that the rise of estate taxation in the 1916-1980 period coincided with the largest compression of US top wealth shares since records began; recent erosion of the estate tax tracks the subsequent re-concentration.
Brookings — Taxing wealth transfers through an expanded estate tax
Costs two expanded estate-tax designs, one at a $1m exemption with a flat 40% rate and one with a low exemption and rates rising to 75% above $20m, as instruments for reducing wealth concentration.
Capital returns systematically exceed labor-income growth
When the after-tax return on capital exceeds the growth rate of the broader economy — the r > g condition — wealth held in capital compounds faster than labor income, and accumulated capital flows disproportionately to households who already hold it. The empirical persistence of this gap since 1980 in major economies provides a mechanical driver of widening top-share concentration that is independent of any specific policy choice.
Piketty — Capital in the Twenty-First Century
When the after-tax return on capital exceeds the growth rate of the economy (r > g), wealth concentrates over time because capital income grows faster than the wage bill.
Top-1% share of capital income has risen across OECD economies since 1980, consistent with r > g dynamics over that window.
Housing supply constraints compound wealth divergence and immobility
Restrictive zoning, lot-size minima, and discretionary review in high-productivity metros prevent housing supply from responding to demand. The resulting price appreciation transfers wealth to existing owners while pricing younger and lower-income households out of access to high-wage labor markets — compounding both static income inequality and intergenerational immobility through a housing-mediated channel that operates independently of capital-income concentration.
Hsieh & Moretti — Housing Constraints and Spatial Misallocation
Restrictive zoning in high-productivity US metros lowered aggregate GDP by ~36% from 1964 to 2009 by preventing labor from relocating to higher-wage cities.
Glaeser & Gyourko — The Economic Implications of Housing Supply
Synthesis of housing-supply restrictions and their effect on price-rent ratios, mobility, and wealth distribution.
Real US housing prices — multiple of 1995 baseline (national Case-Shiller)
S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller US National Home Price Index
Real prices more than doubled vs. 1995 baseline, far outpacing real wages and CPI; concentrated in supply-constrained metros.
Young-adult homeownership lower than at any point in the 1960-1985 baseline window.
Tax policy is shaped disproportionately by concentrated wealth
Concentrated wealth funds the lobbying, think-tank, and campaign-finance infrastructure that shapes tax-policy design. The result is a tax system whose effective rates and structural carve-outs (capital-gains preference, step-up basis, pass-through deductions, foundation rules) favor wealth-holders disproportionately and progressively across decades — a self-reinforcing channel that distinguishes concentrated wealth from a static distributional outcome.
Saez & Zucman — The Triumph of Injustice
Distributional national accounts showing that the effective tax rate paid by the wealthiest 400 US households fell below the rate paid by the bottom 50% in 2018, reversing a half-century pattern.
Gilens & Page — Testing Theories of American Politics
Multivariate analysis of 1,779 US policy outcomes finds elite preferences and business-group positions predict policy adoption; median-voter preferences have near-zero independent effect.
Top 1% income share above the post-WWII trough across major economies
Pre-tax top 1% income shares in major economies — the US most acutely, the UK and France more moderately — have risen back above the post-WWII trough and approach pre-Depression levels, reversing the mid-century compression.
World Inequality Database — country dashboards
Pre-tax top 1% income share has reverted toward early-20th-century levels in the US, UK, and France since 1980, after a postwar trough.
Saez & Zucman — wealth concentration data
US top-1% wealth share has roughly doubled since 1980 by their distributional national accounts methodology.
Top 1% share of pre-tax national income (US)
Top 1% share of pre-tax national income (France)
Smaller rise than US but still above postwar trough of ~0.08.
Intergenerational income mobility has declined
The probability that a child born into the bottom quintile of the income distribution reaches the top quintile, and the simpler probability of out-earning one's parents at the same age, have both declined substantially across OECD economies — most steeply in the US — since the 1940s cohorts.
Chetty et al. — Opportunity Insights mobility data
Chetty, Grusky, Hell, Hendren, Manduca, Narang
Probability that a child born to bottom-quintile parents reaches the top quintile has fallen by roughly half since 1940.
Cross-country evidence that it now takes 4-5 generations on average for low-income families to reach mean income in OECD economies.
Share of US 30-year-olds earning more than their parents at the same age
Chetty et al. — The Fading American Dream
Down from ~92% for 1940 cohort to ~50% for 1980 cohort.
Household wealth is more concentrated than income, and the bottom half holds almost none
The distribution of net household wealth is markedly more concentrated than the distribution of income: across major economies the top 10% holds a majority of household wealth while the bottom 50% holds close to none. This stock-level disparity is distinct from, and larger than, the income-flow gap recorded in IS1 — a household can earn a modest income yet hold no net wealth at all, and the lower half of the wealth distribution is compressed against zero in a way the income distribution is not.
Household wealth shares are consistently more concentrated than income shares in every country dashboard; the bottom 50% wealth share sits near or below a few percent.
The poorest half of the global population owns about 2% of total household wealth, while the richest 10% own about 76%.
Saez & Zucman — distributional national accounts
US top-1% wealth share has roughly doubled since 1980, while the bottom 50% wealth share has remained near zero throughout the period.
Fragmented information environments erode the shared-fact basis required for democratic accountability, accelerating decline of the Liberal Democracy Index.
Diverging news sources reduce common scrutiny of press freedom, normalizing its erosion as a partisan rather than universal concern.
Affective polarization raises voter tolerance for co-partisan norm violations, enabling aggrandizement that registers in the V-Dem index.
Affective polarization lowers cross-party resistance to executive overreach, weakening legislative and judicial constraints on the executive.
Economically insecure electorates accept executive consolidation framed as decisive action, eroding horizontal accountability institutions.
Engagement-ranked feeds accelerate partisan information sorting, deepening fragmentation of the news-source mix.
Outrage amplification compounds out-group hostility through repeated platform exposure, raising affective polarization at scale.
Without cross-class civic venues, partisan identity becomes the dominant social category, raising affective polarization.
Proportional representation and ranked-choice voting reduce the strategic value of negative-partisan campaigning, lowering affective polarization at equilibrium.
Publicly funded local journalism rebuilds shared informational substrate, partially reversing news-source fragmentation.
Mandatory audits and antitrust enforcement reduce the dominance of any single engagement-ranking system over public discourse.
Sustained civic education raises baseline pluralist-norm knowledge and slows erosion of intermediary civic life.
Because the egg–CVD causal claim is genuinely unresolved — large cohorts and meta-analyses split on direction and magnitude — official guidance swings with each new study, producing the public whipsaw and the erosion of trust in nutrition science.
Confounder-controlled, pre-registered designs (individual-participant reanalysis with harmonized covariates, or an RCT on hard endpoints) shrink the residual-confounding uncertainty that keeps the egg–CVD claim contested, moving it toward resolution.
Validated against recovery biomarkers, the instruments these cohorts run on correlate with true intake at roughly 0.21 for energy and 0.29 for protein, and under-report energy by about 28 percent in a way BMI predicts. An exposure measured that badly attenuates the association toward the null and leaves its magnitude at the mercy of the adjustment set, so more cohorts built on the same questionnaires accumulate precision around a moving estimate rather than converging on one. That is the reason to believe ECL1's central claim, and the relation is evidential rather than causal: measurement error does not make better-identified designs work, it is what makes the alternative fail. Scoped to that limb — ECL1 also recommends randomized trials on hard endpoints, which this evidence does not reach.
When the after-tax return on capital exceeds aggregate growth, capital income compounds faster than the wage bill, raising top income shares mechanically.
Supply-constrained housing markets transfer wealth to existing owners and elevate the imputed-rent component of top incomes, raising the top share.
Housing-price growth in high-wage metros prices younger and lower-income households out of mobility-enabling labor markets, reducing intergenerational income mobility.
Tax-policy capture by concentrated wealth lowers effective rates on capital and inheritance, accelerating top-share growth beyond the r > g baseline.
A periodic wealth tax above a high threshold lowers the after-tax return on capital for top holders, slowing the r > g compounding channel.
By-right multifamily and zoning liberalization restore supply elasticity, slowing housing-mediated wealth divergence at the metro level.
Restoring estate taxation and eliminating step-up-in-basis cuts the intergenerational compounding of capital, directly addressing one dimension of r > g dynamics.
The r > g mechanism compounds returns on existing capital stocks faster than labor income grows, so net wealth — a stock — concentrates faster and further than income does. That is precisely the stock-vs-flow disparity IS3 records, and it is the same channel by which IM1 already drives the income-share symptom IS1; here it acts on the wealth distribution directly.
Wealth concentration exceeds income concentration across economies, consistent with returns to capital compounding stocks faster than wages grow.
Concentrated wealth captures regulatory and political capacity, weakening horizontal accountability institutions and enabling executive aggrandizement.
Elite preferences and business-group positions predict US policy outcomes; median-voter preferences have near-zero independent effect after controls.
Argues that the erosion of mixed-economy institutions in the US tracks the rising political influence of concentrated wealth, with downstream effects on regulatory capacity.
Housing-mediated wealth divergence locks younger and lower-income households out of high-wage labor markets, intensifying economic insecurity that fuels demand for strongman politics.
Restrictive zoning suppressed aggregate US wages and labor mobility by 36% over 1964-2009 — a direct economic-insecurity channel.
Cross-country evidence linking the geographic distribution of economic insecurity to right-populist vote shares.
Visible concentration of top incomes fuels resentment-based political identities that map onto partisan lines, contributing to affective polarization.
Empirical synthesis attributing right-authoritarian vote growth in OECD countries to a combination of economic-insecurity and cultural-backlash channels, with inequality as a partial driver.
Will the US ANES out-party feeling-thermometer gap widen relative to the most recent prior wave by the next ANES wave (≤2028)?
Widening means the absolute difference between in-party and out-party mean feeling-thermometer scores increases by ≥2 points relative to the most recent ANES Time Series Study.
Publishes in-party and out-party feeling-thermometer means for each Time Series wave, plus the 1948-2024 cumulative file the comparison runs against.
Decadal trend has been monotonic upward since the 1990s; absent a major shock to the party system or a sustained electoral-reform rollout (none currently active at scale), continuation is base-rate. Downside risk: measurement-mode effects in next wave.
The widening of the out-party feeling-thermometer gap is likely due to the ongoing trend of increasing affective polarization in the US, as observed in previous ANES studies. Historical data suggests that such gaps tend to widen over time, especially during periods of high political polarization.
Historical trends show that affective polarization in the US has been increasing over the past few decades. The ANES feeling-thermometer gap has generally widened over time, with some fluctuations.
Historical ANES data shows a 30-40% frequency of ≥2-point widening in the out-party feeling-thermometer gap between consecutive waves over the past two decades. Recent trends in US affective polarization, as documented by studies like Iyengar et al. (2020), suggest persistent in/out-group hostility, but no clear acceleration in gap magnitude.
Historical ANES data show a ~70% chance that the out‑party feeling‑thermometer gap widens by ≥2 points across two‑year intervals, though recent waves suggest a slight slowdown, leading to a moderate forecast.
Will the OECD economic-insecurity composite worsen for a majority of OECD countries between 2025 and 2028?
Worsening means the OECD's published economic-insecurity composite (or successor index in the WISE framework) shows year-over-year deterioration in ≥50% of OECD member countries when 2028 data are released.
The WISE centre's published well-being indicators, including labour market and economic insecurity, per OECD member country and updated quarterly. This is the successor surface the criteria anticipate.
Mixed signals: real-wage recovery in some economies offsets housing-cost and pension-shortfall worsening in others. Base-rate uncertain; weighting toward 'majority worsen' because pension and housing components show structural deterioration.
The forecasted worsening of economic insecurity in a majority of OECD countries is plausible given historical trends and the ongoing impact of global economic uncertainty. However, the specific timeframe and criteria for measurement introduce uncertainty, leading to a moderately elevated probability.
Historical trends show that economic insecurity can persist or worsen over periods of economic uncertainty. Given current global economic conditions and past responses to similar scenarios, there is a moderate likelihood that the OECD economic-insecurity composite could worsen for a majority of OECD countries between 2025 and 2028.
Historical data from OECD reports indicate economic-insecurity indices worsen in ~40% of four-year periods due to cyclical downturns and policy shifts. Current macroeconomic volatility and stagnating mobility trends suggest a moderate likelihood of deterioration.
Historical data show that only about a quarter of years since 2000 saw a majority of OECD members with worsening economic‑insecurity scores, suggesting a modest but non‑negligible chance of a downturn by 2028.
Will the US news-source HHI (concentration index across major outlets) decrease (more fragmented) by end-2027 vs. end-2024?
Using Reuters Digital News Report's source-share data, HHI computed across the top 15 outlets falls relative to the 2024 baseline.
Annual per-country source-share data across 40+ markets; the top-15 outlet shares are the inputs the HHI is computed from.
Continued attrition of legacy outlets and rise of independent / podcast / Substack alternatives points toward further fragmentation, but TikTok and YouTube concentration may offset.
The trend of increasing fragmentation in the US news landscape, driven by the rise of online media and social platforms, suggests a continued decline in the concentration index of major outlets, as measured by the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI). Historical data on media consumption and outlet market share support this trend. However, the pace of change is uncertain, and regulatory or market factors could influence the outcome.
Historical trends show increasing media fragmentation in the US. The Reuters Digital News Report has documented shifts in news consumption patterns, and prior data indicate a gradual decline in the market share of traditional, widely-shared news sources.
The US news-source HHI trend is uncertain due to conflicting forces: digital platforms (e.g., Facebook, YouTube) consolidate attention but also distribute content from diverse sources. Historical Reuters data shows stable top-source shares over 2018–2023, but partisan fragmentation has increased. Without strong regulatory shifts or technological disruptions, the HHI is equally likely to remain stable or decline slightly.
The past decade shows a modest but consistent decline in the US news HHI as digital platforms diversify consumption, and no major consolidation events are projected that would reverse this trend.
Will at least one major platform (Meta family, X, TikTok, YouTube) publicly publish algorithmic-ranking parameters or detailed audits by 2027?
A first-party publication (not third-party leak) describing ranking signals at a level enabling independent reproducibility for at least one major surface (feed, recommendations).
DSA pressure increases probability over baseline but firms have so far complied with minimum disclosure; full reproducibility-grade publication is a meaningful step beyond current practice.
Major platforms have historically been reluctant to disclose detailed algorithmic-ranking parameters, but increasing regulatory pressure and public scrutiny may prompt at least one platform to publish such information by 2027.
Major platforms have historically been reluctant to disclose detailed algorithmic ranking parameters due to competitive concerns and regulatory pressures. While there have been some voluntary disclosures and leaks, mandated transparency through regulation or public demand might drive future disclosures.
Only a few major platforms have ever released detailed ranking parameters (≈20% historically), but new EU DSA transparency obligations and growing public pressure increase the chance that at least one will do so by 2027.
The EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) mandates algorithmic transparency for very large platforms, creating a regulatory pathway for compliance. Historical compliance with similar mandates is mixed, but the DSA's enforceable requirements and 2024 implementation timeline increase the likelihood of at least partial disclosure by 2027.
The EU Digital Services Act's audit and transparency duties (Arts. 37 and 40) are the strongest pressure to date, and designated very-large platforms have begun filing systemic-risk audits and opening vetted-researcher data access. But a first-party, reproducibility-grade publication of ranking parameters is a large step beyond compliance-minimum transparency, and no major platform has signalled intent to go that far by 2027. Regulatory momentum pulls the probability up from the low-baseline priors of the seed models, but the specific bar the question sets — independent reproducibility for a major surface — keeps it just below even odds.
Will any G7 country pass binding algorithmic-transparency legislation by end-2027 (beyond DSA scope)?
Binding statute requiring documented algorithmic auditing or ranking disclosure, distinct from DSA requirements (which apply to EU members already).
Living repository of national AI policy initiatives from 80+ jurisdictions, filterable by country and by whether an instrument is legally binding. A G7 statute meeting the criteria appears here as a binding entry.
UK Online Safety Act and Canadian C-27 are partial precedents but stop short of mandatory ranking disclosure; political appetite is uneven.
The passage of binding algorithmic-transparency legislation in a G7 country by 2027 is plausible but uncertain, given the growing awareness of algorithmic bias and the need for transparency, but also considering the complexity of such regulations and potential resistance from tech companies.
Several countries have shown interest in algorithmic transparency, but passing binding legislation by end-2027 seems ambitious given the complexity of regulatory processes.
No G7 country has enacted binding algorithmic‑transparency statutes to date, but recent legislative pushes in the US, UK and Japan suggest a modest chance of a first such law by 2027.
Historically, G7 countries have passed novel tech legislation at a low rate (~14% per year), with the UK and EU leading. The UK's Online Safety Bill (2023) and US proposals suggest momentum, but binding algorithmic transparency laws face political and technical hurdles. The DSA's EU scope limits overlap, making non-EU G7 countries (e.g., UK, US) the primary candidates.
Will the OECD.AI Policy Navigator list more than 151 legally binding policy initiatives as of 2027-03-31?
Resolves YES if, on 2027-03-31, the OECD.AI Policy Navigator's all-initiatives view filtered to Legally Binding equals Yes reports a count greater than 151. The count stood at exactly 151, out of 2457 initiatives in total, when this forecast was filed on 2026-07-30. Resolves NO if the count is 151 or fewer.
Living repository of AI policy initiatives from more than 80 jurisdictions, with a legally-binding filter and a headline count on the results view. Baseline of 151 binding of 2457 total read directly from that view on 2026-07-30.
This is a registry-growth question and the prior is high by construction, which is worth stating plainly rather than dressing up. The Navigator is curated continuously, national implementations of the EU AI Act are landing one country at a time (Greece's Law 5321/2026 is already in the binding set), and eight months is a long window for a repository that added binding instruments throughout 2025 and 2026. The residual risk is almost entirely about the instrument rather than the world: OECD could restructure the Navigator, retire the binding facet, or reclassify entries in a way that moves the count without any legislative change. That measurement risk, not a legislative drought, is what keeps this below 0.97.
The OECD.AI Policy Navigator has been expanding its collection of policy initiatives, and the current count of legally binding initiatives is already at 151, suggesting a growing trend. Given the ongoing efforts to regulate AI and digital platforms, it is plausible that more initiatives will be added by 2027-03-31.
The OECD AI Policy Navigator has added roughly 25 legally binding initiatives per year over the past 4 years, making it likely that at least one more will be recorded by the March 2027 deadline.
Global AI regulation is accelerating, with multiple jurisdictions enacting or finalizing legally binding frameworks on quarterly cycles. Given the 8-month window and the established upward trajectory of statutory AI measures, it is highly probable that at least one new initiative will be added to the OECD tracker.
Will fully automated decisions exceed 50% of statements of reasons submitted to the DSA Transparency Database for calendar 2026?
Resolves YES if, computed over statements of reasons whose decision date falls between 2026-01-01 and 2026-12-31 inclusive, as obtained from the DSA Transparency Database daily dumps or its research API, the share recorded as fully automated exceeds 50%. Resolves NO at 50% or below. The database reported 43% fully automated across a rolling 180-day window when this forecast was filed on 2026-07-30.
Official EU database of content-moderation statements of reasons, 3.32 billion submitted from 359 active platforms as of 2026-07-30, with a fully-automated flag on each record and daily dumps plus a research API for recomputation.
The arithmetic does most of the work here. The trailing 180-day figure of 43% already covers roughly February to July 2026, so those months are close to locked in, and clearing 50% for the calendar year would require the second half to run far above 50% to drag the annual average across. A seven-point annual move is large for a metric that reflects platform tooling choices and reporting conventions rather than anything that shifts quickly. The scenario that would do it is compositional rather than behavioural, a single very high-volume platform changing how it classifies or submits, since the totals are dominated by a handful of submitters. That tail is real, which is why this is not nearer zero, but it is not the way to bet.
The current trend of 43% fully automated decisions, as reported by the DSA Transparency Database, suggests a possible increase towards the 50% threshold by the end of 2026, considering the ongoing development and integration of automated decision-making systems.
The share of fully automated decisions was 43% in mid‑2026 and has risen roughly 5‑6 percentage points per year in prior DSA reporting years, making it likely to exceed the 50% threshold by year‑end.
Will at least 5 of 6 named VLOP social platforms publish a DSA Article 42 transparency report covering 1 July to 31 December 2026 by 2027-03-31?
The six platforms are Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X and LinkedIn. Resolves YES if, by 2027-03-31, at least 5 of those 6 have a publicly available transparency report covering the 1 July to 31 December 2026 reporting period, as listed in the European Commission's DSA transparency report tables. Resolves NO if 4 or fewer do. Article 42 sets the publication deadline at two months after the reporting period ends, so 2027-02-28, one month before this resolves.
European Commission, How the Digital Services Act enhances transparency online
Official Commission page carrying per-company tables that link each designated platform's published transparency reports, with entries running from 2023 through February 2026, and stating the every-six-months obligation for VLOPs and VLOSEs.
This is deliberately a low-information question and the probability should say so. Publication is a legal obligation under Article 42 with a fixed 2027-02-28 deadline, all six platforms have published on the harmonised schedule through February 2026, and the threshold tolerates one platform missing entirely. The value of filing it is not the forecast, it is that it resolves early and cheaply against a mandated artifact, which is what the corpus needs before any Brier numbers can exist. The residual is X, whose compliance posture across EU obligations has been the least predictable of the six, plus the ordinary risk that the Commission's tables lag the platforms' own publication.
Given the European Commission's enforcement of the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the precedent of large platforms complying with transparency regulations, it is likely that at least 5 of the 6 named VLOP social platforms will publish a DSA Article 42 transparency report by the specified deadline.
Historical compliance with DSA Article 42 transparency reporting among designated VLOPs has consistently exceeded 85%, driven by strict EU enforcement, heavy fines, and dedicated corporate compliance teams. The one-month buffer past the statutory February 2027 deadline further increases the likelihood that at least five of the six platforms will publish on time.
Will more than 83 countries and territories be rated Repressed or Closed in the CIVICUS Monitor's 2026 edition?
Resolves YES if the CIVICUS Monitor's 2026 annual ratings, released with the People Power Under Attack 2026 report, rate more than 83 of the countries and territories covered as either Repressed or Closed. Resolves NO at 83 or fewer. The 2025 edition, published 2025-12-09, rated 83 of 198 as Repressed or Closed. If the 2026 edition has not been published by 2027-01-31, this resolves as annulled.
Rates civic space in 198 countries and territories on a five-point scale, updated annually with the People Power Under Attack report, published 2025-12-09 for the 2025 edition. Chosen over V-Dem and Freedom House because its December release resolves inside the short-horizon window where their March releases do not.
The trend is steep and one-directional: 67 countries rated Repressed or Closed in 2020 against 83 in 2025, and the 2025 edition alone recorded 15 downgrades against 3 upgrades, with the downgrades reaching consolidated democracies including France, Germany and the USA. Continuation is the base case. What holds this well short of near-certain is that the question needs a net change in the two worst bands specifically, not general deterioration. Most rating moves happen in the middle of the scale, so a year with many downgrades can still leave the Repressed-plus-Closed count flat if the movement is Open to Narrowed or Narrowed to Obstructed. A single upgrade out of Repressed can also offset a downgrade into it. Note this forecast deliberately tests S1 with an instrument independent of the V-Dem index the claim itself names.
The trend of democratic backsliding and the number of countries rated as Repressed or Closed in the CIVICUS Monitor have been increasing in recent years, but the rate of this increase is uncertain, making it difficult to predict with high confidence.
The 2025 edition already hit the 83‑country threshold and the count has risen in most recent years as global democratic backsliding accelerates, suggesting a modestly higher than even chance of exceeding it in 2026.
The CIVICUS Monitor has shown a consistent year-over-year increase in Repressed/Closed ratings over the past decade, driven by accelerating democratic backsliding and geopolitical conflicts. Given the current count sits exactly at the threshold, the established upward trend makes a crossover to 84+ more likely than not, though methodological adjustments or rare democratic improvements could cap the increase.
Will at least one of the five most housing-supply-constrained US metros (NY, SF Bay, LA, Boston, San Diego) post net positive housing-permit-per-capita growth in 2027 vs. 2024?
Resolves YES if, per US Census Building Permits Survey data, at least one of the named metros (defined by CBSA boundary) has 2027 calendar-year housing permits per 1,000 residents at least 10% higher than 2024. Resolves NO otherwise.
Housing units authorised by permit-issuing place, published annually at CBSA level, which is the boundary definition the criteria name. Final annual estimates land in the May following the calendar year.
Multiple supply-constrained metros have passed upzoning measures in 2023-2025 (LA citywide ADU, SF state-mandated rezonings, Boston regional MBTA Communities Act). But permit response lags policy by 2-3 years on average; 2027 is on the optimistic side. Base rate: in jurisdictions with comparable reforms (Auckland 2016, Minneapolis 2018) permits-per-capita rose 20-40% within 3-5 years. Weighting toward partial response given regulatory friction and rate environment.
Historical data on housing permit growth in US metros suggests that supply-constrained areas often struggle to increase housing production, but occasional policy changes or economic shifts can lead to temporary growth spurts, making a 10% increase in permits per capita plausible but not highly likely.
Recent permit-per-capita trends in the five metros have been flat or declining, and historically only a small fraction of constrained metros achieve >10% annual growth, making a positive jump by 2027 unlikely but not impossible.
A 10% increase over three years is a modest threshold (~3.2% CAGR) that most major metros historically clear during cyclical rebounds or policy-driven upturns. While high construction costs and strict zoning suppress absolute volumes, covering five large metros significantly raises the probability that at least one will exceed the 2024 baseline by 2027, especially if 2024 serves as a rate-sensitive trough.
Will the US nonfarm business sector labor share for 2026 Q4 be below its 2025 Q4 value?
Resolves YES if the labor share of nonfarm business sector output for 2026 Q4, as first published by BLS in the Productivity and Costs release scheduled for February 2027, is strictly lower than the 2025 Q4 value shown in that same release. Resolves NO if it is equal or higher. Revisions after first publication do not change the resolution.
Publishes the nonfarm business sector labor share quarterly, initial estimate roughly five weeks after quarter end. Labor share stood at 54.1% in 2026 Q1, a record low against roughly 65% in the early 1950s.
The secular direction is unambiguous and IM1's whole claim rests on it, but this question asks about a single year-over-year step, which is much noisier than the trend. Two things pull against each other. Labor share reaching a record low in 2026 Q1 means the level is already deep in the tail, where mean reversion is more likely than continuation, and quarterly labor share moves partly with cyclical compensation timing rather than the structural capital-labor split. Against that, year-over-year declines have been the more common outcome than increases over the past two decades, and nothing in the current compensation or productivity picture suggests a reversal large enough to erase the gap. Settling slightly above even reflects a real trend applied to a noisy one-year window, not confidence about 2026 specifically.
The historical trend of labor share in the US nonfarm business sector has been declining over the past few decades, but with fluctuations, making it plausible that the 2026 Q4 value could be lower than the 2025 Q4 value.
The US nonfarm business sector labor share has declined in roughly 58% of quarters since 1990, and recent quarterly data (2023‑2024) show a modest downward trend, making a further decline between 2025 Q4 and 2026 Q4 more likely than not.
Will total US housing units authorized by building permits in calendar 2026 exceed the calendar 2025 total by at least 1%?
Resolves YES if the sum of monthly not-seasonally-adjusted privately-owned housing units authorized in permit-issuing places for January through December 2026, as published in the Census Building Permits Survey tables, is at least 1% higher than the same sum for January through December 2025. Resolves NO otherwise. December 2026 preliminary data publishes on the 12th workday of January 2027 and revised data on the 17th workday, both well before the resolution date.
Publishes housing units authorized monthly at national, state, CBSA, county and place level, on the 12th workday for preliminary and the 17th for revised figures. The same survey resolves IF1 at metro level in 2028; this question uses the national monthly series so it can settle in early 2027.
IM2 claims supply constraints are structural, and a 1% national increase is a low bar that a genuine supply response would clear easily, so this is close to a direct test of whether reform has begun to bite at national scale. The reasons to doubt it are mostly financing rather than zoning. Permit volumes have been soft under a sustained high-rate environment, and national totals are dominated by the large Sun Belt markets where the binding constraint is cost of capital, not entitlement. The upzoning measures that would move the number act on a 2 to 3 year lag and are concentrated in exactly the constrained metros that contribute least to the national count. A 1% threshold is small enough that a modest rate move could carry it, which is why this sits well above negligible rather than near zero.
Historical trends in US housing units authorized by building permits show variability, but a slight increase is possible given the current demand for housing and potential policy responses to address supply constraints.
Historically, only about 4 of the last 10 years saw a ≥1% rise in annual building permits, and recent data show a slowdown and occasional declines, making a modest increase less likely than a flat or lower outcome.
Historical year-over-year changes in US building permits are highly volatile, with positive growth occurring in roughly half of years over the past three decades. The modest 1% threshold slightly favors YES, but elevated construction financing costs and near-term demand uncertainty keep the probability close to a coin flip.
Ranking systems demonstrably shape which political content circulates, a small number of firms control them, and mandated auditing plus structural competition remedies is the only intervention that reaches the control point rather than its symptoms.
The premise is measurable rather than assumed. Huszar and colleagues, working with Twitter's own internal data and a randomised holdout of users kept on a reverse-chronological timeline, found that the algorithmic timeline amplified political content from elected officials relative to chronological, and did so unevenly across parties in six of seven countries studied. That is a first-party demonstration that a ranking system exerts differential leverage over political discourse, established by exactly the kind of internal-data access that only a mandate produces. The Stigler Center's digital platforms report supplies the market-structure half. Where a small number of firms operate the ranking systems through which most political information flows, ordinary competitive pressure does not generate alternatives, because network effects and data advantages protect the incumbent ranking from entry. The Digital Services Act is the instrument that operationalises both halves, obliging very large platforms to submit to independent audit and to open data to vetted researchers. The leverage-point argument is therefore modest and structural. It does not claim that changing a feed changes minds, but that a single unaudited ranking system holding this much of public discourse is a governance failure, and that contestability plus inspection is how that class of failure is normally addressed.
Huszar et al., Algorithmic amplification of politics on Twitter
Using a randomised chronological holdout inside Twitter, the algorithmic timeline amplified political content unevenly across parties in six of seven countries.
Stigler Center Committee on Digital Platforms
Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State
Diagnoses entrenched platform market power and sets out structural and regulatory remedies aimed at contestability.
Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, Digital Services Act
Obliges very large platforms to independent auditing, risk assessment and vetted-researcher data access, creating the inspection regime the leverage point assumes.
The best available experimental evidence is that changing the ranking system does not change political attitudes, so a leverage point justified by its effect on polarization is aimed at a link the evidence does not support, and transparency mandates deliver documents rather than accountability.
This is the rare case where the intervention was actually run at scale. In the 2020 US election cycle, with Meta's cooperation and preregistration, Guess and colleagues moved consenting Facebook and Instagram users from the algorithmic feed to a reverse-chronological one for three months. The chronological feed substantially changed what users saw and sharply reduced time on platform, and it produced no detectable change in affective polarization, issue polarization, political knowledge or turnout. A companion study reducing exposure to like-minded sources found the same null. The most direct available test of the mechanism L3 depends on came back negative, and it did so with adequate power on the outcome variables the claim cares about. The transparency half faces a distinct objection. Ananny and Crawford argue that seeing inside an algorithmic system does not confer the ability to govern it. Disclosure produces artefacts that are unreadable at the relevant scale, shifts the burden of interpretation onto parties without the capacity to act, and can substitute the appearance of accountability for the thing itself. Combined, the objection is that L3 pulls a lever experiment says is not connected, and inspects a system that inspection does not make governable.
Guess et al., How do social media feed algorithms affect attitudes and behavior in an election campaign?
Three months on a reverse-chronological feed changed exposure and cut platform time, with no detectable effect on polarization, knowledge or turnout.
Nyhan et al., Like-minded sources on Facebook are prevalent but not polarizing
Experimentally reducing exposure to like-minded content did not shift affective polarization or issue attitudes.
Ananny and Crawford, Seeing without knowing
Argues the transparency ideal fails for algorithmic systems, producing disclosure without the capacity to govern what is disclosed.
Can a three-month individual-level feed swap detect the effect at all? The pro reading is that polarization is a general-equilibrium property of the information environment, so reassigning individuals inside an unchanged environment cannot move it, and the nulls are uninformative about the population-level intervention. The con reading is that this makes the claim unfalsifiable by any feasible experiment. This is the crux the whole disagreement turns on.
Does contestability produce less polarizing ranking systems, or more? Nothing in the antitrust case guarantees that entrants rank for something better, and the fragmented alternatives that already exist are not obviously healthier. Resolving this would decide the direction of L3's effect, not merely its size.
Does mandated auditing change platform behaviour, or only generate compliance artefacts? The DSA regime is now producing reports on a fixed schedule, so this becomes empirically answerable within a few years rather than remaining a matter of priors.
Is L3 better defended on non-discourse grounds such as consumer welfare, market entry, or accountability as an intrinsic good? This crux resolves the debate by dissolving it. If the answer is yes, both dossiers are arguing about a rationale the policy does not need, and the polarization evidence stops being decisive either way.
Platform algorithmic amplification of outrage is a primary causal driver of contemporary affective polarization and information fragmentation, not a marginal contributor.
Engagement-ranked feeds systematically over-represent content that produces strong emotional response, and out-group anger is the most reliable producer of such response. Repeated exposure across hundreds of millions of users compounds: behavioral-economics and habit-formation evidence indicates that ranking effects are persistent rather than transient. Internal Meta research (Facebook Files) and audit studies (Bakshy, Bail) show measurable shifts in attitudes after feed-level interventions. Cross-country variance in polarization tracks platform-usage variance with a temporal lag consistent with causation rather than mere selection. The counterfactual where engagement ranking is replaced with chronological or quality-weighted ranking would, on these models, produce measurably less affective polarization within an electoral cycle.
Field experiments and survey evidence showing that exposure to opposing partisan content on platforms increases, not decreases, affective polarization.
Audit studies of ranking-system behavior and platform-internal-research synthesis on engagement-driven content distribution.
Platform algorithmic amplification is at most a marginal contributor to democratic backsliding; the dominant mechanisms (economic insecurity, civic-institution erosion, party-system dynamics) are upstream of and largely independent from platform design.
Affective polarization rose for at least two decades before engagement ranking became dominant; cross-country comparison shows substantial polarization in countries with low platform penetration. Field experiments deactivating Facebook (Allcott et al. 2020) found small or null effects on issue-attitude polarization despite large effects on news consumption. Pre-platform mechanisms — partisan sorting, media deregulation, residential clustering, occupational segregation — produced measurable polarization gains attributable to non-platform causes. Treating platforms as the lever risks overestimating the policy ROI of platform reform and underweighting structural interventions in housing, labor, and electoral institutions whose evidence base for democratic effects is stronger.
Allcott et al. — Welfare Effects of Social Media (NBER)
RCT deactivating Facebook for one month found small or null effects on issue-attitude polarization despite large effects on news consumption.
Boxell, Gentzkow, Shapiro — Cross-Country Trends in Affective Polarization
Cross-country comparison showing that affective-polarization growth is unrelated to internet/social-media penetration and predates platform dominance.
If platform-level interventions (e.g., chronological ranking, quality-weighted ranking) produce measurable reductions in aggregate affective-polarization metrics within one electoral cycle in a randomized rollout, the pro thesis is supported; if they do not, the con thesis is supported.
If pre-platform polarization growth rates (1980–2005) are statistically indistinguishable from post-platform rates (2010–2025) after controlling for party-system and economic covariates, the con thesis is supported.
If cross-country variance in affective polarization is better explained by platform-usage intensity than by economic insecurity, civic-institution density, or electoral system, the pro thesis is supported.
Habitual egg and dietary-cholesterol consumption is a genuine, dose-dependent contributor to cardiovascular risk, not a nutritional non-issue.
There is a plausible mechanistic chain — dietary cholesterol raises serum LDL in a substantial minority of hyper-responders, and LDL is a well-established causal cardiovascular risk factor. The largest US pooled analysis with harmonized individual-level data (Zhong 2019, JAMA; 29,615 adults across six cohorts) found a monotone dose-response: each additional half-egg per day was associated with 6% higher CVD risk and 8% higher all-cause mortality, and the relationship held on absolute-risk terms. Many of the reassuring meta-analyses adjust for serum cholesterol or overall diet quality — but if eggs act on CVD *through* serum LDL, that adjustment removes the causal pathway and biases the estimate toward the null. The effect is concentrated where it is most plausible physiologically (people with diabetes and insulin resistance), which is a signal of a real biological effect, not a statistical artifact. Given cheap substitutes, the precautionary reading is warranted for at-risk groups.
Pooled individual-level analysis of six US cohorts; dose-response association of egg and dietary-cholesterol intake with incident CVD and all-cause mortality.
Zhuang et al. — Egg/cholesterol and mortality; updated meta-analysis (Circulation)
Associations are stronger in some subgroups and adjustment sets, consistent with a real effect modified by metabolic status.
Steelman pro-thesis — epistack eggs v0.1
In the general population, moderate egg consumption is not a meaningful independent cardiovascular risk factor; apparent associations reflect confounding by dietary pattern and lifestyle.
The best-adjusted evidence is null. Drouin-Chartier (2020, BMJ) analysed three large US cohorts and an updated meta-analysis of 1.72 million participants and found no association between one egg per day and incident CVD after adjusting for lifestyle and dietary factors. Dose-response meta-analysis (Sabaté 2020, Eur J Nutrition) finds up to one egg/day unassociated with — and up to roughly six/week inversely associated with — CVD. The 2015 US Dietary Guidelines removed the 300 mg/day dietary-cholesterol cap precisely because the population-level evidence for harm did not hold up. Tellingly, in the very study most cited for harm (Zhong 2019), the dietary-cholesterol association became non-significant after adjusting for eggs and red meat — a fingerprint of confounding, since eggs travel with bacon, butter, and low-quality dietary patterns. Where eggs displace refined-carbohydrate breakfasts, the net effect may be neutral or favourable.
Drouin-Chartier et al. — Egg consumption and CVD; three US cohorts + meta-analysis (BMJ)
One egg/day not associated with incident CVD after adjustment; updated meta-analysis of 1,720,108 participants concordant.
Sabaté et al. — Egg consumption and cardiovascular risk, dose-response meta-analysis (Eur J Nutrition)
Up to one egg/day not associated with CVD events; up to ~six/week inversely associated versus no consumption.
Steelman con-thesis — epistack eggs v0.1
If individual-participant reanalyses with a harmonized, pre-registered confounder set (diet quality, red/processed meat, physical activity, socio-economic status) eliminate the egg–CVD association, the con thesis is supported; if a dose-response survives full adjustment, the pro thesis is supported.
If eggs raise CVD chiefly by raising serum LDL, then meta-analyses adjusting for blood cholesterol are adjusting away the causal pathway and understate the effect (supports pro); if the null holds in analyses that do not adjust for the mediator, the con thesis is supported.
If the association is concentrated in people with diabetes or insulin resistance and is absent in metabolically healthy adults, the general-population claim (pro) is not supported even though a real subgroup effect may exist.
When the after-tax return on capital exceeds the economy's growth rate, wealth concentrates structurally, and this r > g condition has held across most of modern history.
Piketty's long-run series show r (4-5%) exceeding g (1-2%) across most of the last two centuries outside the mid-20th-century exceptions of war and reconstruction. When capital income compounds faster than the wage bill grows, inherited wealth outpaces earned income and the wealth distribution's top tail thickens mechanically, independent of individual behaviour. The World Inequality Database's reconstructed wealth series show exactly this top-tail thickening resuming after 1980 as postwar capital-destruction and high-tax conditions faded. The mechanism does not require any assumption about worker productivity or merit; it follows from an arithmetic inequality between two rates, which is why it is robust to the specific composition of capital.
Reconstructed long-run series showing r > g across most of modern history outside the mid-20th century, with wealth concentration tracking the gap.
World Inequality Database — wealth series
Top wealth shares resume rising after 1980 as postwar capital-destruction and high-tax conditions fade, consistent with an r > g compounding channel.
r > g is not a robust structural driver of the wealth distribution; the measured capital-share dynamics are dominated by housing and depend on an elasticity assumption that the evidence does not support.
Rognlie's decomposition shows that the entire long-run rise in the net capital share is attributable to housing, not to the reproducible capital Piketty's mechanism concerns; net of depreciation, non-housing capital's share is roughly flat. The r > g dynamic also requires an elasticity of substitution between capital and labour above 1, so that capital deepening raises capital's share, but most micro and macro estimates put it below 1, which reverses the prediction. Acemoglu and Robinson argue that reducing distributional outcomes to a two-rate inequality omits the political and institutional forces that actually govern top shares, and that the historical r > g correlation is not a law but a contingent product of specific tax, war, and asset conditions. On this reading IM1 mistakes a housing-and-institutions story for a general law of capital.
Rognlie — Deciphering the fall and rise in the net capital share
The long-run rise in the net capital share is concentrated in housing; net of depreciation, non-housing capital's share is roughly flat.
Acemoglu & Robinson — The Rise and Decline of General Laws of Capitalism
Argues top wealth shares are governed by political and institutional forces that a two-rate r > g inequality omits; the historical correlation is contingent, not a law.
Net of depreciation and outside housing, does the return on reproducible capital robustly exceed the growth rate across countries and periods?
Is the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour above 1, as r > g wealth-divergence dynamics require?
Regulatory supply constraints in high-productivity metros are a first-order driver of both aggregate output loss and intergenerational immobility, operating through a housing-mediated channel distinct from capital-income concentration.
The mechanism has three measured links. First, constraints bind where productivity is highest. Hsieh and Moretti estimate that relaxing land-use restrictions in the most constrained US metros would have raised aggregate output substantially over 1964 to 2009, because workers cannot move to where their marginal product is greatest. Second, the resulting price wedge is regulatory rather than physical. Glaeser and Gyourko document that in constrained markets prices sit far above the physical cost of construction, a gap that tracks regulatory stringency rather than land scarcity or build costs. Third, and most directly on the immobility claim, Ganong and Shoag show that regional income convergence in the US operated for a century and then stopped, and that the break is explained by housing costs. Low-skill households once moved to high-wage places and converged; now the housing cost of that move exceeds the wage gain, so they sort the other way. That is the compounding channel the claim describes. Incumbent owners capture the appreciation as unearned wealth while the households who would have gained most from access are precisely the ones priced out, which makes the transfer regressive in both the static and the intergenerational sense.
Hsieh and Moretti, Housing Constraints and Spatial Misallocation
Land-use constraints in high-productivity metros misallocate labour across space, with large estimated aggregate output losses.
Ganong and Shoag, Why has regional income convergence in the U.S. declined?
A century of regional income convergence halts, and the break is attributed to housing costs choking off migration by lower-income households to high-wage places.
Glaeser and Gyourko, The Economic Implications of Housing Supply
In constrained markets prices exceed physical construction cost by a wide margin, and the wedge tracks regulatory stringency.
Supply constraints are real, but the claim overstates them as a lever. The policy instrument that would relax them has not reliably produced units, and the price dynamics in the affected metros are driven substantially by demand composition that supply reform cannot reach.
The con case is not that zoning is harmless. It is that the causal chain from deregulation to units to affordability to mobility breaks at the first link, which is where the claim's policy relevance lives. Freemark's study of Chicago's transit-oriented upzoning found that parcels upzoned by right saw property values rise with no detectable increase in construction over the following five years. If upzoning capitalises into land values without producing housing, then either the constraint is not the binding one or the reform does not release it, and either way the lever fails. Gyourko, Mayer and Sinai's superstar-cities work supplies the demand-side alternative. Persistent real price growth in a fixed set of desirable metros follows from a growing national population of high-income households bidding for a fixed stock of desirable locations, which produces the same price path and the same exclusion of lower-income entrants without zoning being the operative cause. On that reading, marginal supply is absorbed by the top of the income distribution and the exclusion persists. Been, Ellen and O'Regan, reviewing this literature sympathetically to supply, still concede the qualifications that matter here. Affordability effects run at regional rather than neighbourhood scale, they arrive through filtering over decades rather than years, and they can be locally offset in the short run. A mechanism operating at that latency is a weak account of the intergenerational immobility the claim attributes to it.
By-right upzoning near transit raised parcel values with no detectable increase in construction over five years, breaking the deregulation to units link.
Gyourko, Mayer and Sinai, Superstar Cities
Persistent price growth in desirable metros is driven by a growing number of high-income bidders for a fixed set of locations, producing exclusion without zoning as the operative cause.
Been, Ellen and O'Regan, Supply Skepticism
Reviewing the evidence in supply's favour, still finds affordability effects operate regionally and through multi-decade filtering rather than locally and quickly.
Does by-right upzoning produce units, or capitalise into land values? This is the crux that would actually move policy. If Freemark's Chicago null result generalises, IL2 is not a leverage point regardless of whether IM2's diagnosis is correct, and the intervention has to shift to public or subsidised production. If it does not generalise, the case for deregulation is close to settled.
Is the halt in regional income convergence caused by housing costs, or by non-housing changes in migration behaviour such as dual-earner households, occupational licensing and place attachment? Resolving this determines whether the immobility half of the claim survives. The wealth transfer half is unaffected either way.
Over what horizon does new market-rate supply reach lower-income households through filtering? Resolving this changes the argument less than it appears. Both sides already accept that filtering is real and slow, so a precise estimate mostly reprices the claim's urgency rather than its truth.
Would supply sufficient to move prices be absorbed by high-income in-migration, leaving the exclusion of lower-income entrants intact? This is the superstar-cities challenge, and the one crux where the two dossiers are not merely weighing the same evidence differently but disagree about what the counterfactual metro looks like.
Cross-domain synthesis: inequality → economic insecurity → authoritarianism
Synthesizes Rodrik (2018), Norris & Inglehart (2019), and Hsieh & Moretti (2019) into a causal chain from housing-supply-driven wealth divergence to right-populist vote-share growth across OECD democracies in the 2008-2024 window.
Reviewed three cross-country empirical studies covering distinct mediating channels (Rodrik on trade and labor shocks, Norris-Inglehart on cultural backlash, Hsieh-Moretti on housing-mediated mobility), built a chained causal diagram, and tested coherence against 2008-2024 OECD voting data. The chain is treated as a probabilistic decomposition, not a deterministic claim — each link has measurable counter-examples.
Cross-country regression linking economic-shock exposure (trade, labor) to right-populist vote-share growth, with consistent direction across 14 OECD countries.
Empirical attribution of right-authoritarian growth to economic-insecurity and cultural-backlash channels, with inequality as a partial upstream driver.
Restrictive zoning in US metros suppressed aggregate wages and labor mobility by ~36% over 1964-2009, a direct mechanism for housing-driven economic insecurity.
The inequality → economic-insecurity → authoritarian-appeal chain is empirically supported in the 2008-2024 window across the studied OECD countries, but with substantial cross-country heterogeneity. The strongest evidence is in cases where housing-mediated wealth divergence and trade-shock exposure compound (Rust-Belt US, post-2008 southern Europe). The chain does NOT predict authoritarian growth in low-inequality high-mobility cases (Scandinavia, where authoritarian shifts when they occur track different drivers).