Also, no point arguing with obvious bad faith but I feel obliged to note that YIMBYs advocate for consistent, non-arbitrary, rule-bound development standards. Not for public servants to knock down whatever buildings they want with impunity to build a Bribe Cathedral.

Just curious, how many units of housing are going to be in this ballroom?

I've been arguing for a while that YIMBYism and anti-monopolism should be complementary, but until now I haven't seen a systemic effort to synthesize them. Hard to think of a better person to do it than @mtkonczal.bsky.social economicsecurityproject.org/resource/aff...

Today @economicsecurityproject.org released its Affordability Framework by Becky Chao and myself. As affordability remains central to economic debates, it's helpful to step back to see the key drivers of the crisis and build a theory of the case. /1 economicsecurityproject.org/resource/aff...

also, what an image. the president demolishing a portion of a humble people’s house to make room for his royalist monstrosity

shocked to learn that the president lied about this and also this is a horrible defacing of a building that belongs to the people of the United States, not donald trump

This is what solidarity looks like. Together, we will win.

The entire incident is infuriating and terrifying. She’s a Latina woman who was working a service job. On her way home late at night, with her headphones in, she was detained for an hour by masked federal agents who wouldn’t give her their names.

Wow, wow, wow. This has always been legally possible but the law has virtually never been enforced — and now this is the SECOND case I've heard of in the last month (first involving a person with a green card) of a noncitizen being charged for failure to carry their papers.

Truly can’t believe they took this quote www.thebulwark.com/p/the-other-...

Last week California passed a big upzoning law, as well as laws pushing back on pharmacy PBMs and surveillance pricing. The former is a YIMBY priority and the latter populist priorities. Often carried by the same legislators. The policy conflict between the two is overstated.

thank you brett kavanaugh!

New from @nataliefoster.bsky.social on how the pending health care premium spikes are going to really impact young people, already feeling intense economic stress with a weak labor market and sky high housing costs. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/05/o...

Brutal from Larry Summers. I got a deeper dive below.

Folks we are live. Still very initial version, but the first thing I actually got around to pushing to CRAN. pkgdown website coming eventually (I know I know).

Wow! This is a welcome surprise. www.cnn.com/2025/09/30/p...

Horrifying— Barbara Gomes Marques went with her US citizen husband and lawyer on 9/16 to a green card appointment at USCIS office in downtown LA where she was tricked into walking down a hallway away from them, was snatched by ICE and never came back. She now faces imminent deportation in Louisiana.

Think you might be being a bit uncharitable. It’s not like he has a history of back-filling the logic to an answer that’s already been arrived at. Oh, wait…

New post, I finally wrote my thoughts on the Stephen Miran Federal Reserve speech. I think it shows yet another reason for central bank independence. Without it, you can't tell what's a genuine outsider take and what's just carrying water for the Executive. mikekonczal.substack.com/p/mirans-cas...

No spoilers. One Battle After Another: consensus on IMAX or 70mm for viewing? Don't have the 70mm IMAX here, but the bounty of Silver Spring, Maryland, has each within a block of each other, AFI has the 70mm

What even is this?

I decided to take a grad-level dynamic programming macroeconomics class this fall. Here’s a thread where I’ll share fun things I learn, updating it through the end of the semester. I last studied this material 20 years ago, when it felt much less formalized. /1

@profcew.bsky.social well well well I was looking into replicating some unemployment duration estimates from IPUMS microdata and was getting consistently lower estimates; chatGPT gave me an answer as to why, that when I asked for sourcing, it went to this post. forum.ipums.org/t/calculatin...

to me, the “column” is less a form than an opportunity (and a challenge). you’re telling me i have as much space as i’d like to make an argument about anything i’d like to an audience inclined to pay close attention? well let’s see if they’ll read 2000 words on democratic legitimacy. (gift link)

I'm ride-or-die ggplot2, but after seeing Grant demo tinyplot as a co-panelist as a very useful, lightweight, quick and easy replace for base R plot function, I've been using it for quick glances into data. It fixes a lot of the things that made base R plots annoying, e.g. legends. Highly recommend.

I am *so* excited for this book!!! Finally, shipping 12/1. Laura isn’t on social media so I have assumed the PR role — buy this book! I’ve been reading these stories for years and it’s the most compelling political science stuff I’ve ever read. Also Laura painted the cover art!

As CEA director, Miran likely signed off on Trump's recent comical budget claim that GDP will be 3%+ in 2026-2027 and longer-term 2.9%. This is far outside the ~1.8-2% consensus from Blue Chip, CBO, and, notably, the FOMC. Will he make one big outlier datum in the FOMC projections tomorrow?

A very Shklarian day, I’m afraid.

Feel like the chapter in The Sirens’ Call on spam becomes more relevant by the day. What if all content everywhere on every platform was like your inbox - absolutely choked with autogenerated sludge. Wouldn’t that be cool?

Chicago forever

Age verification? The first CDs I purchased with saved up allowances were Spin Doctors' Pocket Full of Kryptonite and R.E.M.'s Out of Time.

NEW: The court rules that Lisa Cook can stay on as a governor as her case against Trump trying to fire her is being litigated. The judge says that "for cause" applies to behavior while in office and that Cook's right to due process was violated

Your daily reminder that US economic data is of extremely high quality even when compared to other advanced nations and the envy of the world

I wrote up my thoughts about Abundance Conference publiccomment.blog/p/when-is-a-...

Here's the fun, topsy-turvy, world of "it's priced in." Can a September cut turn the August bad jobs number around? That's why Trump is rushing Miran and threatening Lisa Cook. But all through August markets priced a Sept cut in the ~90% range. The cut was already there for this bad number!

Here's an interesting find. From the higher-quality CES data, men have lost 56,000 jobs over the past 4 months, with women gaining 76% of the jobs in 2025 (compared to ~50% normally). Trump's effort to bring back men jobs with tariffs has backfired spectacularly, causing those industries to shrink.

Beyond compromise of independence, the CEA director is a comms spokesperson for the administration, while a Fed governor needs to say difficult things. A good argument for a rate cut is that Trump's labor market is weakening; a CEA director isn't going to go off-message to argue that. /1

To be clear, this means he will still be a member of the CEA, i.e. the White House, while also serving on the FOMC. No questions there about monetary policy independence! *MIRAN: I WILL BE TAKING UNPAID LEAVE FROM CEA WHILE AT THE FED

Fed independence is a question of power. As with many institutions today, President Trump is trying to reduce the Fed’s power and increase his own. That dramatic backdrop makes today’s Senate hearing on Stephen Miran for Fed Governor anything but normal. stayathomemacro.substack.com/p/who-will-b...

I didn't catch the unemployment rate was 4.2479% last month, which makes the firing even more erratic, as that's as generous as the rounding gods could ever be. It's 0.0021% away from the accurate "highest unemployment since 2021" headline (as journalists just go to 1 digit).

is the "a.i." "bubble" "bursting"? or, four ways to consider a vibe shift maxread.substack.com/p/is-the-ai-...

Macro thing I learned today with new PCE. The slowdown in consumer spending (which I did know about) is being driven by (core) services. I had assumed it was a lot of goods timing, but it's the much more broad and worrying services category. Anyone else see writing about this? Need to dig in more.

An important intellectual vacuum right now: we need to think through an agenda to weaken executive power, if one exists or is feasible. But the last people to do that, the Watergate Babies, are hated by every flank of the intellectual left and center, so recent materials paint them negatively. 🤷🤷

Trump’s attempt to remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook is illegal and politically motivated. It threatens Fed independence—and the economy. The courts must block this. Here's my full statement—it explains exactly how this will hurt the economy in a (hopefully) accessible way: www.epi.org/press/trumps...

Adam Levitin on the flimsiness of criminal charges against Lisa Cook given what is known at this stage

Just received this statement from Lisa Cook: "President Trump purported to fire me 'for cause' when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so. I will not resign. I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American economy as I have been doing since 2022."

Not that it matters, but a tell that even as Lisa Cook is considered a more dovish FOMC vote (see attached from BofA in 2024), she's still targeted by Trump. She has normal, mainstream concerns about tariffs and inflation; that independence from Trump's party line makes her a threat to him. /1

Just did a long drive solo and listened to the audiobook of @tonytula.com's Rejection. It's excellent, and I also have to 🫡🫡🫡 the voice actors. They all got into the characters very well, and I hope did not descend into despair and madness during the process.

On the left: Nate Cavanagh, a 28-year-old DOGE staffer and college dropout. On the right: Mohammad Halimi, a 53-year-old exiled Afghan scholar. This is the story of how DOGE targeted Halimi on social media. Then the Taliban took his family. 🧵

Pretty, pretty good.