Three things made the US a rich and powerful nation: the rule of law, its science & innovation system, and openness to foreign talent. Remarkable how Trump has taken a sledgehammer to all three. No enemy of this country could do more.

We cannot speak with any sort of authority about the dangers of AI to democracy and the need for authentic communication if we're not willing to show through our actions that we value these things in our own work!

"Do home prices need to come down?" has received a lot of love, and the question: What if wage growth goes up? A: It helps, but even if we could *double* real wage growth, Oakville will still need 19 years to hit 2005 affordability. Read here: www.missingmiddleini...

Yes. Sometimes there will be lists of obviously fake books, but more often we won't notice it at all. AI detectors, zooming in to examine every image and video for "tells," counting on ChatGPT's quirk-of-the-week to out its use is a mug's game. The only solution is a political-epistemic one. 🧵

Business leaders have been screaming this for several years, and yet Canadian provincial governments across the political spectrum continue to aggressively defund their universities' arts programs.

Here's a cheat sheet, for those who claim that Canada's housing crisis is isolated to a few pockets of the country. There are substantial regional variations, but the pockets of unaffordability are very, very large. Raw data here: www.missingmiddleini...

Latest at MMI. The government had a bad week on housing. The problem isn't a lack of message discipline but something larger and more structural: It lacks clear goals and objectives for middle-class housing, which is leading to poor policy. Read here: www.missingmiddleini...

Change in overall provincial government spending vs. total provincial government spending on post-secondary education, Canada, 2006-07 to 2025-26 (2006-07 = 100). It's not austerity, it's the choices.

The new federal Housing Minister's stated goal for middle-class housing affordability is to keep home prices flat and let wages catch up. We ran the numbers - that would take up to 50 years in some parts of Canada. Read more here: www.missingmiddleini...

If the federal government's position is that we don't need to lower the price of homes for the middle class, then I think they'll need to make some changes to the National Housing Strategy Act.

Question for the federal government: The platform contained a lot of (IMO very good) measures, like reducing DCs, to lower the cost of homebuilding. Is the end goal of reducing homebuilding costs to reduce prices, or to increase developer margins?

Not a good start.

This disgraceful episode is brought to you by FanDuel, America's #1 sportsbook!

In case you ever feel like your vote doesn't matter, know there is one person in suburban Montréal who did, literally, cast the deciding vote.

More on Danielle Smith govt breaking access law in this report by @matthewblack.ca - Edmonton Journal: “McLeod’s investigation began in August of 2023 following reporting from the Narwhal and the refusal of all government departments to process a series of requests made by the Globe and Mail.”

This is an appalling development with Bill 54. “McClure writes that some of the bill makes improvements, but other changes "will deteriorate the service provided to electors, compromise Albertans' trust in the democratic process, and remove elements of transparency and accountability."”

JUST NOW: A federal judge ordered the immediate release of Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts PhD student who was taken on the street in Massachusetts by masked immigration authorities. Ozturk has been detained in Louisiana for the past 6 weeks. But today, the judge ordered that she be allowed to go home.

Technology is melting our college students' brains. Link: www.msn.com/en-us/news/t...

Personal news- I’ll be joining the University of Georgia’s Department of International Affairs as an Assistant Professor in 2026, after a postdoc at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center this year. I’m really excited for these next steps and deeply thankful to everyone who’s supported me along the way.

I think it's worth working through the logic of how the AI cheating mess is symptomatic of a broader epistemic and economic crisis, in which the tenuous bargain higher ed struck with to society to credential job applicants in exchange for being allowed to exist has completely eroded. 🧵

Students are AI-cheating their way through college because they are rightly terrified of economic precarity and doing everything they can to avoid it, which means getting a college degree because they've been told that a degree is necessary for a reasonably well playing job. And they're not wrong!

There is something particularly insidious and divisive about insisting you don't support secession while actively working to make it possible.

Happy to announce that I accepted a Visiting Fellow position with the Centre for Development Economics and Trade at the Cambodia Development Resource Institute (CDRI). CDRI is a leading policy research institute in Cambodia. I’m excited to support their research initiative and research network 🙂!

In this response to the 15 scholars who reacted to my original essay on Canada’s EU membership, I sketch out a roadmap for Canada’s pivot to Europe. www.ecsa-c.ca/post/canada-...

Look, I fundamentally refuse to buy into the near-consensus in higher ed that we must train our students to be good users of AI (as if we even know what that means) so that they can do shit like this in their future jobs. I want no part of it.

This is really excellent analysis by @jrobson.bsky.social - electoral ridings most exposed to Trump tariffs tended to vote CPC/BQ, not Liberal - which leads to some interesting policy and political implications for the Carney government. #elxn45 #cdnpoli

It's out! My favourite unexpected finding: the best month to make a deal with the World Bank is June.

Some much damage has already been done and this doesn't touch on the unlawful detentions of students for pro-Palestinian advocacy, but this is still very good news. Challenge everything. They're not invincible.

A big win for Quebec's anglo universities.

Just got my copy of Ineffective Policies, a new book in which I have a chapter on the Volcker Rule, the part of Dodd-Frank which bans proprietary trading by commercial banks -- a noble goal but one continually undercut by the Rule's attempt to preserve US banks' access to capital markets.

Someone just spent $8 million on $TRUMP memecoins after the president announced that the top holders would be invited to join him at a private dinner at his DC golf club. The purchases were funded by a Binance account, suggesting the wallet owner is not based in the US.

Government intervention in the minutiae of university teaching: not just an American problem! Defunding universities, and then using the resulting financial problems as a pretext to intervene in their governance is dishonest and harmful.

A significant portion of the costings in all the party platforms is sourced from the Parliamentary Budget Office. Some of these are reasonable, some of them are bananas, and in *none* of them do the PBO actually show their work. A problem. www.pbo-dpb.ca/en

Beyond the wild accounting there is also this bananas policy:

The Conservative plan is out and, ooof, is this costing a disaster. There's a whole bunch of phantom revenues booked here, and the GST housing pledge is costed at under $2B. Given their proposed eligibility criteria, it should be more in the 4-6B range.

Ever wonder how many lives have been saved by NIH-funded research - including your own? Enter any medical condition and instantly see how your tax dollars transformed science into survival. www.ourhealthroi.com

Three months ago not a single one predicting a recession? Frankly, lmao.

You know it's an American newspaper from the premise of education as a private funded enterprise and the language of 'dependency'.

Senators are fighting back this morning with an email blast alleging the University is conducting a power grab, and calling for an investigation of the Trustees and who they’re accountable to.

If Trump pulls this off, it would be more bad news for Treasury markets, more bad news for the dollar. Central bank independence may be a bland topic, but it's sacrosanct from a market perspective. Global investors don't want the issuer of the world's "safe asset" to act like Turkey.

The Trump regime is now using US Attorneys to intimidate academic journals by sending them letters demanding they explain how they ensure ‘viewpoint diversity.’ Journal editors should be public about this and coordinate to refuse to comply with these fascist tactics.

In case anyone thought tax arbitrage was unique to the modern era of offshore global finance.

Big Finance sees Trump as a vehicle for deregulation and rent seeking. But they don't seem to recognize that the shoe can easily be on the other foot, where lawlessness means they could suddenly become targets based on politically undesirable investment decisions.

Trump's complaints abt Powell are concerning for the Fed's independence, of course. But they also misunderstand the institutional pressures that the Fed faces. If faced with uncertainty abt the right path forward, Powell will lean hawkish IMO for the same reputational reason I described below

arguments for allowing higher overdraft fees tend to turn into "just don't be poor" once you realize banks engage in exploitative practices to maximize overdrafts even if you have the money www.tiktok.com/t/ZT2cVhPvW/

I don't want to defend the People's Party, but if the Commission allows the Greens to debate despite admitting they lied to meet the criteria, then I think they are right to be furious. This is so dishonest and so delegitimizing to a key electoral institution.

total clarity here from @edwardluce.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/4c4b...

It's actually wild. There's literally no mention of why Jackie Robinson is important in the MLB press release. At all. Just that he "played his first Major League game on April 15, 1947."

1. For the 2 civilians and my mom who read this: why we have the FDIC: Banks do maturity transformation - turning short term deposits into long term loans - as their core business. We want them to do this - investment in new factories and homes. But it’s risky!