🚨 Austerity never went away. It's just Labour austerity instead - quieter and harder to notice, but it's there... www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Remember: The richest 1% evade over $160 billion in taxes every year. That amount would fund SNAP for a year with money to spare. Ask yourself who the real freeloaders are.

Wild graphic on front page of WSJ.

🎉New publication ▶️ Russian speakers are less willing to fight for Latvia than ethnic Latvians. ▶️This is driven by greater Soviet nostalgia. Russian speakers in Latvia are less likely to see Russia as responsible for the war against Ukraine, which reduces their willingness to fight.

Is AI making job recruitment less meritocratic? We're getting some v interesting research studies on this question now, and the news is... not good. @jburnmurdoch.ft.com & I dive in, in the latest edition of our newsletter The AI Shift www.ft.com/content/e5b7...

It's a useful reminder that sometimes tech can make a task more efficient for one side (applying for jobs), and more efficient for the other side (writing job adverts), and yet make the system as a whole completely inefficient.

Social Democracy’s Lost Spark: When the Third Way Led Nowhere The centre-left's millennial triumph marked not a new dawn but the beginning of a long decline into cautious centrism. www.socialeurope.eu/social-democ...

Research shows strong public support for global climate & redistributive policies — and this new study by @adrien-fabre.bsky.social confirms it, through an original survey representative of the population in 🇫🇷 🇩🇪 🇮🇹 🇵🇱 🇪🇸 🇬🇧 🇨🇭 🇯🇵 🇷🇺 🇸🇦 🇺🇸 Read more: wid.world/news-article...

Record numbers of younger women want to leave the U.S. news.gallup.com/poll/697382/...

🚨 New paper with Maria Grasso on generational shifts in political values. Despite talk of rising age polarisation, we show that gaps in attitudes are stable or even narrowing. Economic attitudes move in cycles, while social values have become more liberal – mainly due to generational replacement.

Have our personal networks become more politically segregated? New research looks at the consequences for political participation and political tolerance. @johnsides.bsky.social breaks down the data here: goodauthority.org/news/have-ou...

you should quit social media if you can. if you can't, you should use apps that give you and old-school reverse chronological feed of posts from people you follow. yes, like bluesky. www.gelliottmorris.com/p/you-should...

New paper on the fatal consequences of job loss using 🇫🇮 administrative data: "For every 100,000 displaced men, there are 1,100 additional deaths. 60% accrue to the displaced worker, 40% are due to excess spousal mortality.. no such dire consequences are observed after a woman’s job loss"

Worried about AI musicians taking over from humans? We should be. The robots are already here. #musicnews

Racial differences in policy responsiveness are small. But policy is more responsive to whites under Republicans control, not explained by class, age, or ideology but partially by party. Republican Senators' votes also better represent white constituents. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

🚨Elites often warn: taxing the rich hurts everyone. 🤔But do citizens buy that story? With @bcastanho.bsky.social & Hanna Lierse, we find: They don’t! Most people believe progressive taxes can deliver both — more equality and more growth. @jpublicpolicy.bsky.social #openaccess cup.org/3JVuvHm

🚨 In the late 19th/early 20th century many people scoffed at the idea that Labour could replace the Liberals. But it can and does happen. Parties emerge and parties decline. Starmerism is currently killing the Labour party. It speaks to no one. It inspires no one. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

"And while the value of crypto and tech stocks bob up and down, one thing is certain: the rich keep getting richer." The combined net worth of the 10 wealthiest 🍁 people on the @macleans.bsky.social rich list is $310 billion, a nearly 20 per cent increase over last year. #WealthInequality #CdnPoli

Rising wealth concentration tends to undermine democracy, according to a Stone Center Working Paper by @schechtlm.bsky.social. In this interview, he discusses how he drew on two new sources of data to compare democratic backsliding in 50 U.S. states. stonecenter.gc.cuny.edu/the-effect-o...

Le Pen’s RN has become the party of billionaires By voting to save the ultra-rich, the RN has clearly positioned itself as the party of billionaires, as a right-wing party on every level, much like Trump’s Republican Party thomaspiketty.wordpress.com/2025/11/11/l...

The evidence keeps accumulating that Brexit was an astonishing self-inflicted economic policy disaster. The fact that it is a slow-moving one bodes ill for those who think that populist economic mismanagement will translate into voters punishing populists. www.nber.org/system/files...

Here is some hard evidence that Mamdani actually managed to bring young voters to the polls. 18-29 year olds voted at similar rates than 40-49 year olds.

England homelessness grown by a fifth since 2022, now 300,000. Successive govts cut local authority funding in real terms, cut real wages/benefits, no curbs on profiteering, lack of social housing. Cheaper to build social housing than using temporary accommodation. Misery is a political choice.

A single shared source of truth is essential for a functioning democracy. Without it you’re left with fragmentation, polarisation and a perpetual culture war where the discourse focuses on what divides us rather than what we have in common. My column from last week: www.ft.com/content/5060...

Yes, this is correct. And the reason is because our capitalist classes have decided that it is not sufficiently profitable, so they're not going to do it. We must understand this reality. Capital *cannot* be relied upon to address the climate crisis.

Trump is trying to use his TikTok deal to expand his propaganda machine, and the young people who use the app the most may be unwilling to look away. From Thomas Riley: trib.al/YYoYhIp

No single US news source is consumed by more than 25% of Americans, whereas 60% of Brits regularly watch/read/listen to the BBC. A single shared source of truth makes it harder for partisan echo chambers to form, or for divisive narratives to dominate. It’s good for social cohesion and compromise.

Donald Trump is Joe Biden now POTUS's job approval on prices is where Biden's was during peak inflation in 2022-23. Voters say 2:1 that Trump has made the economy worse. Oh, and consumer sentiment among independents hit a new all-time low in November, www.gelliottmorris.com/p/donald-tru...

That an ex-con, enriched by a speculative activity that is both utterly useless & environmentally destructive, in cahoots with a despot who threatens our country, now tops the ranks of Canadian capitalism, proves we've gone right off the rails. Time to think big about change.

Layoffs are reaching their highest levels since the pandemic, but America's corporate elite have never been doing better. Is it any wonder why so many think the system is rigged?

In the past 20 yrs, China extended >$800 billion in loans to emerging market and developing country economies to finance infrastructure, energy etc. China’s loan portfolio surpassed those of the World Bank, the IMF, and all 22 Paris Club creditor governments combined.

🎯🎯

According to this ranking, Canada’s reputation has improved since 2024. We are now the 2nd most reputable country in the world. The United States has dropped from 30th to 48th in that same year, the biggest drop of any nation BY FAR. Its reputation-peers are now Kuwait, Algeria, Kazakhstan…

📢 THIS 🔽 plus your occasional pre-budget reminder that not taxing the super-rich means (by definition) choosing to tax poorer folk. The fact this is Labour's 'go to' option shows (a) the malign influence of the very rich, and (b) the cowardice of the Starmer govt. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

If Musk meets all the benchmarks of his new $1 trillion pay package from Tesla he will be paid $274 MILLION EVERY DAY FOR THE NEXT 10 YEARS This is his part-time job

The Green surge is about to break Labour Polanski’s increasing popularity has huge implications for the future of British politics www.newstatesman.com/politics/202...

X effect: How Elon Musk is boosting the British right

The UK Must Urgently Distance Itself From Elon Musk and Space X, Warns Parliamentary Report The UK’s infrastructure has become far too reliant on the far-right billionaire, who could ‘politicise’ our reliance upon his companies, the report warns bylinetimes.com/2025/11/04/t...

Economic Anger Once Again Punishes the Party in Power: The biggest contests on Tuesday were decided by voters who listed the economy or the cost of living as the top issue where they live. (WSJ-unlocked) www.wsj.com/politics/ele...

I reviewed Susan Stokes's new book, The Backsliders: Why Leaders Undermine Their Own Democracies, for Washington Monthly. This is an important book b/c it explains the connection between economic inequality and the rise of authoritarianism. washingtonmonthly.com/2025/10/30/t...

📰 Many PR firms work for brutal regimes — polishing their image, attacking critics + helping dictators cling to power. 🚫 @alexdukalskis.bsky.social, Christian Gläßel & @ascharpf.bsky.social ask: why does this happen, and what can democratic societies do to stop it? 👉 bit.ly/496GA6Y

In the hunt for billions in defence dollars, the federal government has chosen to follow the neoliberal playbook—shrinking government, cutting taxes and leaving more to the private sector. This leads to greater inequality. @kjscott.bsky.social #budget2025 www.policyalternatives.ca/news-researc...

If guaranteeing essentials sounds radical, it speaks to how far we’ve drifted from democracy’s core promises. Markets will not beat back the far right. But an antifascist economics might. Mamdani provides a playbook for democrats around the world. My latest www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

"This budget seems to have a case of mistaken identity [...] Instead of making historic investments to modernize and update health and social care, they are asking under-resourced systems to increasingly do more, with less." Read the latest from @danyaalraza.com : www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

Remember: Wealth cannot be separated from power. We've seen how the extreme concentration of wealth is distorting our politics, rigging our markets, and granting unprecedented power to a handful of billionaires. Be warned.

Not enough people are talking about the actual biggest political story in North America this week. A majority of voters in the Yukon voted (in a non-binding plebiscite) in favour of moving to a ranked-ballot voting system. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Generally, when a party is trying to appeal to a new cohort of voters, they don’t send masked men to publicly kidnap and disappear thousands of members of that cohort.

There will be a brain drain out of the US to Canada, Europe and other countries. And once we lose these top researchers we may never get them back. It‘s been a monumental mistake to attack science and higher education.

Voters in New Jersey and Virginia who said the economy was their number 1 issue voted 63-35 for Democrats last night. That’s a sharp reversal from 2024, when Trump won economy voters by 60 points www.gelliottmorris.com/p/seven-data...