Martin Wolf on the threat of neofascist kleptocracy; Sal Kahn on ChatBots as educational tool; Dobbs and female voter registration; Lynley on the Langchain ChatBot framework, Iber on Chile as exemp...
Cider: It's going to take more than this to persuade me that Steven Pinker is an Enemy of the People or even one of the useful idiots of the anti-democratic Right. :)
Two other key books for understanding the crisis of democratic capitalism: Gary Gerstle, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order and Helen Thompson, Disorder
"If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people…"
Ah ha ha ha ha. So in other words, the will of the Group of Seventeen was the will of everyone.
Barro: it is disappointing, although hot surprising that Barro does not include tax increases as a way of putting the debt ceiling issue permanently behind us or even as the central point of the negotiation that should not occur.
”Jim Crow U.S. South from 1876-1965. It was less than half as rich as the rest of the United States for almost a complete century.”
Still is, although the geographic grouping is different: in 2016 and 2020 the Clinton and Biden counties accounted for two thirds of GDP, i.e. Trump counties were half as rich.
I particularly enjoyed reading Wolf's clear explanation that "Democratic Socialism" is an oxymoron:
[In a socialist state] "those who control the state will also control the economy. Since they will control both the economy and the government, they will control politics. There can then be no fair competition either for political power or in economic activity. Thus, the idea of a socialist democracy is a chimera, a will-o'-the-wisp."
Lucas had a reasonable critique of theories of macro policy that depended on fooling workers into thinking they were being paid more than they were. DSEG models might (yet) yield insights into setting of optimal inflation targets and how rapidly to return to them after a sufficiently large shock has produced a deviation. But that is not the way Lucas's thinking went.
There is something in the plutopopulist story, but it does not work perfectly. Too much of the populism is harmful to plutocrats, too. Trade and immigration (at least/especially merit immigration) restrictions are as harmful to plutocrats as to everyone else. Plutocrats have decedents that will suffer from our not having a tax on net CO2 emissions as much as anyone else.
.The problem with fiscal rules is that they restrain investment more than they require revenue increases. This is perverse because the sense of a rule is to promote the investment whether by taxing private consumption or by public investment. Future generations pay for debt by not receiving the income from investment not made today.
Cider: It's going to take more than this to persuade me that Steven Pinker is an Enemy of the People or even one of the useful idiots of the anti-democratic Right. :)
Two other key books for understanding the crisis of democratic capitalism: Gary Gerstle, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order and Helen Thompson, Disorder
Iber: If the golden years in Chile were the center-left version of neo-liberalism,
why is its demise something to celebrate?
"If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people…"
Ah ha ha ha ha. So in other words, the will of the Group of Seventeen was the will of everyone.
Barro: it is disappointing, although hot surprising that Barro does not include tax increases as a way of putting the debt ceiling issue permanently behind us or even as the central point of the negotiation that should not occur.
”Jim Crow U.S. South from 1876-1965. It was less than half as rich as the rest of the United States for almost a complete century.”
Still is, although the geographic grouping is different: in 2016 and 2020 the Clinton and Biden counties accounted for two thirds of GDP, i.e. Trump counties were half as rich.
I particularly enjoyed reading Wolf's clear explanation that "Democratic Socialism" is an oxymoron:
[In a socialist state] "those who control the state will also control the economy. Since they will control both the economy and the government, they will control politics. There can then be no fair competition either for political power or in economic activity. Thus, the idea of a socialist democracy is a chimera, a will-o'-the-wisp."
Lucas had a reasonable critique of theories of macro policy that depended on fooling workers into thinking they were being paid more than they were. DSEG models might (yet) yield insights into setting of optimal inflation targets and how rapidly to return to them after a sufficiently large shock has produced a deviation. But that is not the way Lucas's thinking went.
There is something in the plutopopulist story, but it does not work perfectly. Too much of the populism is harmful to plutocrats, too. Trade and immigration (at least/especially merit immigration) restrictions are as harmful to plutocrats as to everyone else. Plutocrats have decedents that will suffer from our not having a tax on net CO2 emissions as much as anyone else.
.The problem with fiscal rules is that they restrain investment more than they require revenue increases. This is perverse because the sense of a rule is to promote the investment whether by taxing private consumption or by public investment. Future generations pay for debt by not receiving the income from investment not made today.
% of Republican women did *what* in the aftermath of Dobbs? Register Dem? Unclear