I don't know if these are scary or not. Anyway, they've been sitting as open tabs in Chrome for too long, and I haven't thought of anything clever to say about them, so here they are straight.
- Our World in Data. This site has some really top-notch graphics on a number of topics: population, war and peace, poverty, health. I ended up there because of a specific graph regarding the decline in war deaths since 1945, but the whole site is excellent.
- Gavyn Davies post on whether growth is permanently lower. The post is good example of how you have to be clear about whether you are talking about "growth in aggregate GDP" or "growth in GDP per capita". Growth in aggregate GDP is falling, and has been falling for decades in most rich countries, but that is due in large part to declining population growth rates.
- Morgan Spurlock has a set of web videos explaining the economy in simple terms. You can quibble about lots of little points here, but they are funny.
- Lant Pritchett on why we shouldn't get hung up on thresholds for poverty. It's a response to a SNL sketch spoofing those "39 cents a day" commercials asking you to give money, where all the people in the village keep telling the guy in the commercial to ask for more money. h/t to Chris Blattman for the link.