i wouldn’t advise individuals freelancing. but in the past, in a disaster of that scale, i’d expect the US government to offer logistical support, for getting water from place to place, or people from place to place, if there were a disaster of this scale. 1/

For any US administration, Iran would be politically difficult to help, and the Iranian government might not accept it. I’d certainly not advise US help, organized or by individuals, if their government doesn’t permit it. 2/

But when there are big natural disasters, we have in the past suspended political differences to help. I think that’s a good tradition. /fin

it’s not just Trump. it’s a key dynamic of the contemporary right. parody sites make up bullshit, are explicit and overt that it is bullshit, but influencers forward it in less plainly attributed way until it’s a thing everybody knows in MAGA-land. 1/

you can call out its origin to what passes for public intellectuals in that crew, and they’ll cheerfully concede it’s fake, in its details if not its essence. (think Vance’s simultaneous concession and defense of the “eating dogs and cats” lie.) 2/

but it will still be a thing that everybody knows. it shapes people’s unexamined baseline priors, their sense of what is plausible, how the world works. /fin

it’s not unimportant but it tells you almost nothing about welfare over long periods of time. 1/

consider a person who walked 10 mins to work in 1925 vs someone who commutes an hour / 30 miles today. 2/

the today person is buying in real terms something entirely unaffordable in 1925. her real purchasing power is huge! 3/

any CPI, W/P style calculation would score her as much much wealthier for being able to afford transportation at contemporary norms. 4/

but all that purchasing power must be expended on a commute that in welfare terms buys no more than the 10 walk that was common in 1925. 5/

contemporary circumstances — norms, the nature of the built environment etc — can absorb much or all or much more than all of what you might correctly score as W/P. 6/

the cost of the prerequisites to sustaining that W, the ever-changing cost of the level of resources required to live an ordinary life are not tallied in inflation measures. 7/

that’s not to say the measures are wrong. you really can buy a lot more stuff than you could in 1925! but the relationship between stuff and welfare is very far from fixed. 8/

there’s all kinds of stuff (transportation, education) you need tons more of than you did 100 years ago to live a remotely welfare comparable life. /fin