sometimes i think it would be best if Netanyahu were to pull an Idi Amin, but Saudi Arabia would find it harder to give sanctuary to Bibi than it did to that other gentleman.
Trump on the other hand has said he might go to Venezuela, by which he usually means El Salvador, if an electoral loss puts him in carceral jeopardy. plausible enough!
“A big reason why the right talks so much about immigration is that to talk about anything else - climate change, the cost of living, failing public services, unaffordable housing, flatlining real wages and so on - would be to bring capitalism into question. And that it must not do.” #ChrisDillow https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2024/08/the-end-of-modernity.html
// see also his explanation why the British center-left no longer talks about “modernisation”. they loved to in the 80s and 90s, when “it meant attacking unions and the poor”.
#MattBruenig points out that the current union certification process amounts to a kind of bureaucratic trench warfare that the National Labor Relations Board lacks the resources to adjudicate. We could massively expand its funding, or better yet, streamline the process of certifying a union with card-check, an Obama campaign promise abandoned due to Congressional resistance. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/21/opinion/starbucks-union-government.html
Text: But even more important is to revive and pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow unions to be certified if a majority of workers sign certification cards. This would assess workers' support or opposition to unionization without requiring the government to run costly elections. The legislation would also allow an arbitrator to approve first contracts when bargaining breaks down, preventing companies from dragging out negotiations endlessly, refusing to sign collective bargaining agreements and then assisting efforts to decertify unions — as has been the case with Starbucks.
This post is hitting my socials right now.
Bernie is a Moses figure.
it’s weird how you can watch dead people performing live.
“within every lean, hungry, tech start-up founder, a bloated monopolist was struggling to get out.” @henryfarrell https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2024/08/no-exit-opportunities-business-models-and-political-thought-in-silicon-valley/
// from what is actually a thoughtful and sympathetic meditation on reconciling Silicon Valley ideals with complicated human reality, not a mere polemic against tech founders and VCs.
love the humans, each and every.
Great pushback to the egregious Obama apoligism and Biden accomplishment minimization by a certain cadre of self-proclaimed “centrists”. (They are the center of nothing, may they forever rule their domain.)
By @ryanlcooper https://prospect.org/economy/2024-08-19-in-defense-of-bidenomics/
from @csissoko https://syntheticassets.wordpress.com/2018/09/16/why-claims-that-the-2008-bailout-was-a-success-should-make-you-angry/ ht @ryanlcooper
Text: Forcing lenders to come to the table on the basis of economic reality is something that every collateralized borrower can do - except for the little guy whose only collateralized loan is on his/her primary residence. Fixing the cramdown inequity was one of President Obama's promises before he was elected. But lo and behold Treasury staffers in his administration "stressed the effects of cramdown on the nation's biggest banks, which were still fragile. The banks' books could take a beating if too many consumers [were] lured into bankruptcy by cramdown " (Kiel & Pierce 2011). Treasury's position on this should be read: we need to bail out the banks, so we can't allow the economic reality of the situation to affect the cut that the banks get.
“Oh great. It's no longer possible to download the Barnes & Noble Nook app, which means there's no way to install it on my new tablet. This in turn means that the ~100 books I have on Nook are now gone. Pffft. I will never be able to read them again.
Three cheers for the intersection of modern technology and crappy corporations.” #KevinDrum https://jabberwocking.com/no-more-nook/
“Generally speaking, firms with more market power can price gouge, so [price gouging] laws are sometimes known as ‘antitrust as last resort.’” @matthewstoller https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-price-gouging-vs
[new draft post] Murdering Hayek https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/08/18/murdering-hayek/index.html
“If you’re not not paying for the product, you’re the product, and if you are paying for the product, you’re still the product.” @pluralistic https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/17/hack-the-planet/#how-about-a-nice-game-of-chess
“the soft bigotry of low expectations”
Screenshot of tweet from @XLProfessor: The bias in the press is the bias of massively lower expectations for Republicans, who aren't expected to tell the truth, make sense, have policy based on reality or pretends to help people, or even not be criminal authoritarians But purposeful bias would be easier to counter.
from “Why Inequality Matters”, #BrankoMilanovic https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2024/08/14/why-inequality-matters/
Text: High inequality has also political effects. The rich have more political power and they use that political power to promote their own interests and to entrench their relative position in society. This means that all the negative effects due to exclusion and lack of equality of opportunity are reinforced and made permanent (at least, until a big social earthquake destroys them). In order to fight off the advent of such an earthquake, the rich must make themselves safe and unassailable from "conquest". • This leads to adversarial politics and destroys social cohesion. Ironically, the social instability which then results discourages investments of the rich, that is it undermines the very action that was at the beginning adduced as the key reason why high wealth and inequality may be socially desirable.
“Look, I’m a prosecutor, and I’m going to prosecute the people who are ripping you off,” is not so bad a pitch!
The crypto industry opposes the creation of a central bank digital currency for the same reason Intuit dislikes free tax-prep software from the IRS.
@John We are usually on a knife’s edge, that’s the attractor of a two-party system. But the knife’s edge isn’t on a one dimensional continuum, left or right. The preferences and inclinations (on policy and other things) that drive voters are multidimensional. 1/
@John That we are 50/50 balanced does not tell you we are “where voters are”. The deep insight of “What’s the matter with Kansas” is that the knife’s edge is defined by the dimensions along which the parties choose to compete. What Frank pointed out is that, during the Clinton/Bush/Obama era, parties (there are only two!) chose not to compete on “economic populism”, so the balance was set by positions on social issues. 2/
@John We were not “right there” on economics during that era. That’s not to prejudge where were would have ended up, if parties had competed on that dimension (although yes, like the libertarians I suppose, I have a view). Both parties governed within a narrow consensus. Barack Obama appropriated the Mitt Romney / Federalist society health care plan. 3/
@John What Frank pointed out was that the “paradox” that downscale Kansans who pay almost no income tax voted for tax-cutting Republicans becomes easy to understand when neither party was offering much in economic terms that would affect them. (I’m not claiming that about Obamacare, he wrote earlier.) 4/
@John Sure, directionally and by (post-FDR) historical vibe, the Democrats better served their economic interests. But the difference was so minor, it was perfectly reasonable to vote values. Democrats could have shaken this equilibrium and potentially won votes, but both a 70s/Carter/Reagan hangover and how financial support gets allocated in an increasingly unequal society dissuaded them. 5/
@John The process of even trying to limn that 50/50 edge on economic issues was suppressed, until in 2016 both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump broke the tacit agreement between the parties not to compete aggressively along this dimension. Now, finally, we are groping our way towards something like the 50/50 point (although that has to be hedged, our system doesn’t find that point on any one dimension, but holistically across all issues). /fin
@John * (all issues the parties contest!)
A bad economist is one that presumes supply is price elastic, when in fact the price elasticity of goods and services varies tremendously over time, across different goods, across different regulatory regimes. Supply is expected to be less inelastic when industries are consolidated and firms have market power.
A lot of bad economists are wagging their fingers today.
Core to the art of economic policy is to engender price-elastic supply. It’s a difficult, remarkable achievement.
