All the banal forms of evil ever written up in white papers just landing and expanding, over and over, right alongside the sensationally terrible stuff

New in @npquarterly.bsky.social: Roosevelt's @socio-steve.bsky.social and Noa Rosinplotz break down how narratives about who “deserves” help shape recent debates on Medicaid and SNAP—and how advocates can refocus the conversation on the real people who rely on these programs. bit.ly/49eMxPc

"inflation is a concept from the 50s [...] soooo dumb"

A very serious and angry second to this. Fail videos and cute animals and emotional best friend reunions are the reason we put up with the rest of the garbage online. It's the way we connect to each other's humanity. Take that away and the Internet is probably bad on balance.

Economists when they see a policy change

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...

The large uptick in federal unemployment insurance claims in the initial spate of layoffs last spring have been overshadowed nearly 10 fold by the UI claims of federal workers after the end of the fiscal year, in the longest ever government shutdown. #NumbersDay #EconSky

I can't tell if it's racist to distract people from how dumb it is, or if it's dumb to distract people from how racist it is.

you could fact check this — there aren’t 30 million illegal immigrants and there is no evidence that the presence of an immigrant in say houston has any impact on housing in madison, wisconsin — or you could note straightforwardly that this is just nazi rhetoric

I'm excited to share a new way to support Malengo students! Through a new partnership with Neta (netafoundation.org), you can now invest in the success of @malengo.org students, and earn a return on your investment. 1/4

It’s not enough to rebuild someone else’s broken government. We need to innovate. This partnership will speed up our efforts to fight poverty, help renters become homeowners, and make sure Marylanders can quickly get basic services like food assistance and financial support.

As much as social media wrecks our brains, it's very clear that "posting idle thoughts to twitter/bluesky" is a much better idea than "emailing idle thoughts to Jeff Epstein".

"A mental object - mobject" is something I'd find in my unsent twitter drafts.

@jakemgrumbach.bsky.social @gelliottmorris.com @simonbazelon.bsky.social Larry Summers, Eric Maskin, and Jeffrey Epstein discuss whether centrism helps win elections.

All of BLS has been furloughed since October 1st. That means no one was collecting data in Oct. You can’t just walk into a Costco in mid-November and find out what the price of a good was in October. That’s why an October CPI isn’t possible.

The Friends of BLS are currently seeking organizational and individual support for our FY26 BLS Endorsement Letter and hope you will join us by signing on as an organization or individual. #EconSky #NumbersDay

And none of them happened!

Since Larry Summers is in the news for being a real son of a bitch I wanted to show my favorite piece of economic wisdom he had about the US coming out of COVID where he just lists all the possibilities and says they’re all equally likely

Very useful stuff here:

Wondering when you'll get your #BLS data?? The Friends of BLS have posted an FAQ about the impact of the shutdown on #BLSdata: www.friendsofbls.org/updates/2025... #econsky @aaronsojourner.org @betseystevenson.bsky.social @justinwolfers.bsky.social @jasonfurman.bsky.social @jedkolko.bsky.social

This is false. The shutdown is the reason October employment data wasn't collected -- that's why it's not going to be released.

Because we read the BLS Handbook of Methods?

TV conspiracies: we’ve hacked their computers but they’ve perfectly cleaned up the evidence! Real conspiracies: To: conspirator From: famous person Attachment: evidence.png

There's this weird conception that people have where the inflation/employment data is just released after the BLS does a vlookup command. The CPS is based on interviews with 60,000 people every month! It's a ton of work to collect the data - if people are not working, there's nothing to release!

This is straight up disinformation. Don't post stuff like this, you're feeding a narrative that is just straightforwardly not true.

"The economy is my thing" is a great line. "Good, services, the exchange there of? Yeah, that's me. It's what I'm about."

(I wonder to what extent this informed the decisions on the shutdown)

How does employer access to prisoners’ labor through work release impact the well-being of those workers & of free workers? New working paper by Sue Helper, Suresh Naidu, Akseli Palomaki, Adam Reich, + me provides evidence, focus on auto manufacturing in AL #EconSky papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

You can tell especially because of how they shifted around. Like how computer work was considered "women's work" until people realized it was important and could be lucrative, at which point it suddenly became a man thing and women were pushed out.

Left, right, and center, if you stand in the way and say "Hey, this feels good to believe, but is it really true? Does it match the evidence? Is it more complicated than it feels?" - well, you'll just get run over by people stampeding towards the thing they already want to believe.

The Matts Stand Alone

Keep digging. You are so close.

Hector, 1251 BC:

🦶New version of our WP “Nobody Wants to Work Anymore”🦶w/ @danielavidart.bsky.social Headline: a major contributor to the 50-year decline in U.S. male labor force participation is changes in men's beliefs about returns to work, shaped by lifetime experiences of aggregate male labor markets.

While we are Illiad posting, a few weeks ago I read "The Song of Achilles" and was a bit confused - it's just a prose version of the Illiad? Then I realized that it was published in 2005 and the Achilles/Patroclus relationship was at the time Controversial.

Diomedes is the greatest Greek hero, and Ares is a whiny little bitch (as proven by Diomedes).

we're all clear that SNAP has work requirements for almost everybody, correct

"They're actually able to go out & negotiate their own insurance"" How exciting!

Citation standards should no longer ask that you say the date a website was accessed - primarily because it's kind of embarrassing to have to say you looked at a website 3 days before a proposal was due.

i advise everyone to consider that it is possible to be wrong about things i increasingly get the impression that a substantial amount of posters here sincerely do not ever expect to possibly be wrong

🚨 New research 🚨 "Interventions To Automate Medicaid Renewals Reduce Procedural Denials And Increase Coverage," published in Health Affairs from authors @pamherd.bsky.social @giannella.bsky.social, me, @lukef.bsky.social and @donmoyn.bsky.social Full paper: www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10....

Economic-Data-Analysis-Blue-Sky being awful quiet rn.

...and That's Good.

@jwmason.bsky.social as Green New Kalecki. (i think he’s right. @schwarz.bsky.social’s “iron law of institutions” applies to particular capitalists and the economy at large. they’d accept economic collapse and catastrophe if that’s what preserves their own capacity to control.)

Witness the birth of Meta-Stancil.

it's not 'performative' if you're taking pictures of random fucking strangers reading. they're just reading! you're the creepy one!