“Well-designed subsidies help the poor make the best of whatever opport...” — Abhijit Banerjee Quote

Well-designed subsidies help the poor make the best of whatever opportunities they have; poorly designed ones either do very little or actually make things worse for them.

Anyone who has a child knows the importance of not over-playing your hand. He was up all night playing some game on his smartphone and you feel like saying that if it happens again the phone is gone. Forever. Till he is old enough to buy his own. Till then he can have your old Nokia.

This is why universities, and civil society more generally, are so important for a democracy like ours, founded on a genuine idealism that we have a hard time holding on to. They provide a space to question whatever we are doing in the name of things we say we believe in or might believe in.

My guess is that while the elites would like cleaner air, they are not willing to give up the convenience of being able to use their cars at will to get it, perhaps because they believe (I suspect incorrectly) that they can protect themselves from the consequences of vehicular pollution by investing in air-conditioners and air purifiers.

When I'm creating, that's my heaven. If I haven't designed something every day, it is a failed day - that's how much I love fashion.

The way we designed self-driving payroll, it ends payroll as an independent system that you're entering information in by hand.

Flip or Flop' was a house show based on designing houses for the masses - they were always designed so that any person could walk in and like it and picture themselves living in it.

They were a very good form for me - the way a short story has to be designed in order to function, to get in everything it needs to - and they tend to be absolutely chock-a-block full of mechanisms and tricks that writers use to do the things they need to and have the effects they need to have.