I am skeptical that, with advanced AI, the sole reason humans will be valuable is human touch (or any other simply statable category). I think it's likely our insights will still be valuable, and the division of roles between AI and humans will be emergent and is hard to predict.

I greatly admire my colleague Sam but I disagree with this interpretation. We have to distinguish decision utility, which is non-comparable across people from normative judgements about welfare which do allow interpersonal comparisons. Economic theory allows us to discuss both.

Rand Paul: "When people watch that video and the government tells them, 'Well, he was assaulting the police officers,' nobody with any objectivity believes that. No American believes he was assaulting the officers. In fact, the opposite appears to be true. So we have to get some rules of the game."

John Thune declines chance to back Noem after Minnesota killing

A bellwether of things to come. Senator Fetterman calls for Kristi Noem to be fired. "A grossly incompetent DHS Secretary"

BREAKING: The Border Patrol's Greg Bovino has been ousted from his role of "Commander at Large"—and Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski could be next to lose their jobs, sources tell @nickmiroff.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

On the execution in Minnesota: Obviously, the individuals involved should be held accountable. But responsibility goes to the top of ICE and CBP, and DHS. Their appropriations come up next week in the senate. Not a cent for DHS without pulling ICE and CBP off the streets, in MN and everywhere else.

Jack Smith: "My fear is that we have seen the rule of law function in our country for so long that many of us have come to take it for granted. The rule of law is not self-executing. It depends on our collective commitment to apply it."

Minnesota: "School officials say the [5-year-old] child was used as bait. They say [ICE] agents made little Liam knock on the door to ask to be let in in order to see if anyone else was home."

Carney: "American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, a stable financial system... this bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition... recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as a weapon. Tariffs as leverage ... "

Two days ago it was Elissa Slotkin. Last week it was Jerome Powell. Before that, Mark Kelly. Weaponizing the justice system against your opponents is an authoritarian tactic. The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good is the federal agent who shot her.

And fascinatingly, the CNN poll shows no change in his net support on immigration: -16%, same as it was in July. That's now several polls showing no meaningful drop in his support on immigration following the shooting of Renee Good. May still be too early, though.

ICE threw a flash bang at a car and it had six kids in it. All six children are in the hospital now.

Senator Says Prosecutors Are Investigating Her After Video About Illegal Orders www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/u...

Cutting off funding to almost all opposition-controlled states is an act of dictatorship. It is outrageous and illegal. That is our money, allocated to the states by our Congress, under our laws. Lawless, dictatorial rampage will come to harm all Conservative and Liberal Americans.

Read this story and decide if this is the America you want to live in. ICE saw a Latino man driving a car. Chased him down and rammed him. Just because he wasn’t white. He was just a guy - an American citizen - driving to the auto shop.

This administration is terrible and unpopular. Let’s not copy them.

I’m no Columbo, so I could be way off here, but don’t you usually investigate the killer and not the victim in a potential murder?

I do not think he is doing these things to distract from the Epstein files.

Self parody He should have stepped down under political fire to…protect the institution’s ability to resist political attack

Video message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KckG... www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/s...

Anticipation #econsky #philosophy marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2026/01/what...

The typical centrist is not like this. Centrists more typically think the left bears some responsibility for the current situation, while the right is more culpable and in many cases reprehensible.

Via WCCO reporter Esme Murphy on X: "Unprecedented - ⁦@ag.state.mn.us ⁩ & Hennepin Co Attorney announce separate investigation into Renee Good’s killing after Feds kick Mn out of their investigation" x.com/esmemurphy/s...

Living rent free

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told his officers that they have a duty to intervene if they see ICE committing crimes and will be fired if they don't. We need more of this. www.ms.now/news/minneap...

The Vice President playing politics with the death of a US citizen, impugning the deceased one day later, before an investigation has even been conducted.

Federal obstruction like this is a threat to the rule of law and our basic rights as citizens. It cannot be that immigration officers kill citizens and the federal government then blocks investigation.

My initial take on the criminal law governing the ICE shooting in MN: 609.066 of the MN Code controls a self-defense claim for a "peace officer" under state law. I'm not going to consider federal law given the capture of the DOJ by the Trump administration. 1/

There is so much optimism and pessimism about AI on the same questions at the same time. People say both that research has already been revolutionized and that it has already been ruined. I think maybe a deep breath is in order.

Very sad to hear of the passing of John Kagel. He was a foundational figure in behavioral and experimental economics and his research reshaped how economists think about strategic interaction and social preferences. His teaching and mentorship influenced generations of students.

From an email to one of our faculty members.... Not even Plato can escape censorship at Texas A&M!

Elias, Lacetera, and Macis

Former BLS commissioner Bill Beach says the agency has lost 25% of its staff since January. 40% of leadership positions are vacant. And DOL leadership “does not seem to support the Bureau.” #ASSA2026 #EconSky

Punishing speech against public figures like this is dangerous - there's a reason we don't in the US. What if Le Pen's party does it? As Trump era shows, shouldn't be hard to imagine!

To be fair, that one long one did take a lot out of me.

One of the problems with a tribal in group culture is that it makes it difficult to even hear good arguments. When you encounter an argument, you always have think “is this really compelling or is it just being said to rationalize our side?”

What happens when you remove medical debt from credit reports? I'll be presenting on this topic at #ASSA2026 in Philly on Saturday at 10:15am (Loews Philadelphia Hotel, Commonwealth Hall D). DM me if you'd like to meet up.

It's kind of funny that the NYCMayor Twitter account just changes names without archiving the old posts so now it's @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social's name on all of Eric Adams' old tweets

I think civility is crucial and, when framed as a diametric opposition as Mamdani does here, I prefer individualism to collectivism. But really the best position is to balance the interests of the individual and the collective. I don’t like the ideology.

Don’t forget to upload your #Econ5K results! sites.google.com/view/econ5k/...

The article’s thesis appears to be that the term “post-neoliberalism” lacks any real content — largely the article amounts to reports of vague statements made at a conference — which left me unclear on what the point of the article was. lpeproject.org/blog/post-ne...

Saw a study about whether counter-speech reduces hate speech. But if we're evaluating counter-speech, I don't think that's the right question: the purported virtue of counter-speech isn't reducing speech by its committed purveyors but rather giving the audience alternative perspectives.

As it's the end of 2025, I'm just reposting our 'Outside the box' starter pack. This features accounts who think across tribal lines. Those on it have ideological sympathies, but are open to different traditions and consider issues on a case-by-case basis. Shares welcome ;-) go.bsky.app/HZxZgvh

Agree. Do a Bluesky search on Ezra Klein. The outcome is ridiculous. It’s fine not to like him, but the reaction is disproportionate. To me it seems to point to unhealthy boundary policing.

As some of us have been arguing for a long time: “the idea that speech should be judged by how it feels to protected groups, rather than by its truth or falsehood, is exactly the standard the right spent a decade railing against.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/29/o...

There is over-confidence both when people are optimistic and pessimistic, often producing wild swings.

I read this paper in 2021 and since then I have tried to block accounts that regularly post moral outrage (especially if I agree with the underlying message). www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

People just keep making my point for me.