The Atlantic

In many domains, the conventional wisdom among progressives is mistaken, oversimplified, or based on wishful thinking. The economics of immigration is not one of them, Rogé Karma writes. https://lnkd.in/e7sx9s9r Mainstream Democrats used to dispute the notion that immigration hurt native-born workers. But today, both major political parties “are jockeying to convince voters that they are the ones who will truly secure the border,” Karma continues. “This is a tragedy.” When liberals do defend immigration, they often argue that deporting migrants would reduce the labor supply and send prices soaring. This implicitly accepts the premise that immigrants depress wages. Empirical economics suggests otherwise: “Immigrants do not make native-born workers worse off,” Karma writes. They “probably make them better off.” “Econ 101 tells us that when the supply of a good, like labor, increases, then the price of that good falls,” Karma continues. But this theory has a blind spot: “Immigrants aren’t just workers who compete for jobs; they are also consumers who buy things.” This means that not only do they increase the supply of labor, reducing wages, but they also increase the demand for it, thus raising wages. “The two forces appear to cancel each other out.” Further, research shows that immigrants and natives without a high-school education are not easily substitutable workers. Take the restaurant industry: New immigrants hired as fry cooks lower costs and generate new demand, enabling more restaurants to open and hire servers, hosts, and bartenders—jobs that native-born workers are more likely to receive. But the appeal of restricting immigration has never been about economics, Karma argues: “People’s feelings about immigration are driven less by material concerns than they are by cultural anxieties.” And in the past year alone, the desire to reduce immigration has jumped by 10 points for Democrats and 15 points for Republicans. “No matter who wins in November, we will likely see more restrictive immigration policy in years to come,” Karma continues. “If that is the will of the voters, so be it. Just don’t expect it to do anything to help the working class.” Read more: https://lnkd.in/e7sx9s9r 🎨: The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

Henry David Thoreau once argued that autumn wasn’t getting enough attention. This year, Isabel Fattal has noticed that her “personal circles aren’t as full of chatter about apple picking or foliage.” Fattal explores the fall season in The Wonder Reader:

Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998. Over the past decade, he’s noticed a change among his students: They’ve become overwhelmed by the reading. One first-year student shared with him that, at her public high school, she had never been asked to read a single book cover to cover. “My jaw dropped,” Dames told Rose Horowitch. https://lnkd.in/ep_xRzdQ Though no comprehensive data exist on this trend, the majority of the 33 professors that Horowitch spoke with relayed a similar experience: Students are shutting down when confronted with ideas they don’t understand; they struggle to get through challenging texts like they used to; they can’t stay focused on even a sonnet. “It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading,” Horowitch writes, “it’s that they don’t know how.” One explanation is that middle- and high-school students are encountering fewer and fewer books in the classroom. But the decline in reading abilities may also be explained by a shift in values rather than in skill sets. “Students today are far more concerned about their job prospects than they were in the past,” Horowitch continues—and even if students enjoy what they’re learning in literature courses, one professor told her, they want a degree in something that seems more useful for their career. “The same factors that have contributed to declining enrollment in the humanities might lead students to spend less time reading in the courses they do take.” Read the full story on how a generation of college students stopped reading, from The Atlantic’s November issue: https://lnkd.in/ep_xRzdQ

Exercise. Eat well. Have many, and warm, social relationships. In "How to Build a Happy Life," Arthur Brooks —in conversation with Rebecca Rashid and Robert Waldinger—examines what science says about the key elements of happier living: https://lnkd.in/engm3Vk3

Lithium, long used as a drug for mood disorders, might have benefits at low doses for a wider population. But American companies have little incentive to find out, Shayla Love writes:

Long a fearless critic of Israeli society, since October 7 the painter Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi has become a target of protest abroad, Judith Shulevitz writes.

Almost every year now, FEMA finds itself running so low on funds that it puts other relief work on hold in favor of lifesaving measures. Zoë Schlanger on how the U.S. became trapped in a cycle of disasters bigger than the ones our systems were built for:

The notion that former President Carter has rallied in order to vote in this election raises a question Sunita Puri has confronted in her palliative-care practice: Can a person stretch the days of their life to include a last meaningful act or moment?

“The aftermath of Hurricane Helene has shown that, even as technology has theoretically improved our capacity to connect with other people, our visibility into what’s happening on the ground may be deteriorating,” writes Juliette Kayyem:

Many people taking GLP-1 medications find that they’ve suddenly released their desires for food, alcohol, tobacco, shopping, and more—how Buddhists have been contemplating this exact transition for centuries. But if renunciation of desire is the key to enlightenment, Shayla Love writes, “why does the medication version of Nirvana seem relatively lackluster?”⁠ https://lnkd.in/eFEmJvby ⁠ Scientists are still determining how people respond psychologically to GLP-1 drugs. While many express elation at the effects of weight loss, others report feeling uninterested in activities they once enjoyed. If you’re suddenly stripped of strong feelings of wanting, “you have to reestablish what your behavioral drivers should be,” one neuroscientist told Love.⁠ ⁠ This mirrored what Love heard from Sister True Vow, a Buddhist nun at a New York monastery. Buddhism recommends contemplating your cravings over a period of years to loosen your grip on them; but GLP-1 drugs “do it in a chemical way, without the psychology of us coming along with it,” Sister True Vow said. The jarring feeling of abruptly losing your cravings “can also be an opportunity to uncover the roots of our desire in order to eventually let them go in a more deliberate way, Sister True Vow said. This doesn’t mean people have to forgo enjoyment of the present moment—in fact, Buddhism encourages such pleasures.” ⁠ ⁠ The Buddha’s first sermon also described the Middle Way, in which enlightenment is approached not by breaking completely free from desire, but by gaining awareness of how and why you want things. After many months on the drugs, some GLP-1 users appear to be finding their own Middle Way. “I have had to learn more about what desire is, how it works,” one user told Love.⁠ ⁠ Modern American life is accused of overloading our dopamine system, such that some influencers and psychologists have endorsed “dopamine fasting.” “Desire, in other words, is a monster to be tamed,” Love continues at the link in our bio. “Yet people’s emotional responses to GLP-1 drugs reveal that our relationship with wanting is more complex. If an overattachment to every craving can bring suffering, a total renunciation of them can be unsatisfying too.” 🎨: Matteo Giuseppe Pani. Source: Getty.