Three of the politics of depression paper’s authors are also co-authors on a newer paper arguing that “as efforts to increase policing and roll back criminal legal system reforms in major U.S. cities rise, the collateral consequences of increased criminalization remain critical to document” and looking at the idea that “criminalization may contribute to racial disparities in mental health.” Like most academics, they seem to be quite left-wing. If there were more Republicans working as professors, we’d probably balance out this line of inquiry with papers asking whether rising levels of shootings and homicides also contribute to racial disparities in mental health. But there aren't. So even when all the research being done is good, we primarily see research looking at the questions that progressives think are interesting.

Maybe we're depressed because people like Matt Yglesias are paid 10 times as much as the people doing the actual goddam work to make bullshit observations like this one.