Community college economics instructor. Opera fan, haiku lover. he/him pronouns
Ottawa, IL
Joined March 2018
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How is government supposed to provide public goods if it can't raise taxes?
Like, I'm so glad you get your moment of schadenfreude - but for fucking real, dude, how is government supposed to function if you can't tax the folks who can afford it?
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The crux of the matter is: are taxes naturally regressive?
You can debate the magnitude of people who move for tax reasons. But if you debate the existence you lose all credibility with me. I could easily name more than a dozen people I know who have moved from high-tax jurisdictions to low-tax jurisdictions to reduce their taxes.
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Samuel Barbour retweeted
@florianederer asks a fair question, but the counterfactual is unobservable, b/c nobody publishes rejection letters (unless Florian is asking authors to share those).
What we can observe is impact. So here’s a different test. 🧵 1/
Heterodox economists claim that they're systematically shut out of top econ journals.
So I have a genuine question:
What are the best recent heterodox papers that deserved publication in a top journal but were rejected?
@IsabellaMWeber @devikadutt @DanielaGabor
Because taxes are for the little people.
California's Billionaire Tax Act would collect roughly $30 billion. Accounting for lost income taxes from departures, the mean Net Present Value is negative $39 billion, from Benjamin Jaros and Joshua Rauh nber.org/papers/w35899
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Samuel Barbour retweeted
Since the mainstreamers are talking about MMT again, looks like it's time to re-up this thread on what the issues really are:
And this is what so many conservatives found objectionable about Obama being elected.
El-Sayed explains his 2012 criticisms of Obama: "We stand on the shoulders of giants. I am so grateful to have been a young man in my 20s with Barack Hussein Obama as president. I never would have seen myself running for office."
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Alright, Dems, you heard the man - embrace a permanent white majority, prioritize their needs, and run austerity policy.
Trump is probably going to lose the midterms. After that, the period of self-reflection caused by Trump's victory in 2024 will be over. So before that happens, I wanted to remind people of why the left's mistakes enabled Trump's big victory two years ago.
noahpinion.blog/p/why-donald…
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It should be no surprise that AI makes money by forcing insurance companies to pay them to counteract the healthcare providers using AI to charge more (and paying AI companies to do so).
And if we don't let it happen, it'll be bad for the stock market, and we can't have that...
The Blue Cross/Blue Shield Association says that AI is already driving *up* healthcare costs, as hospitals use the technology to find instances where they can bill more for the same level of care. bcbs.com/about-us/associatio…
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My understanding is that "Road to Serfdom" is a perversity thesis wrapped in a slippery slope: socialism leads to slavery, so it's very important not to allow socialists (or, God forbid, communists) any political power.
Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” is packed with important insights in every chapter but the actual literal account of how Hitler came to power is weirdly wrong and the whole thing was way more contingent than he wants to admit.
slowboring.com/p/how-to-stop…
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Is there some reason we can't just hit the "Off" switch?
Excellent opening paragraphs of an article that might, perhaps, rouse at least AI risk deniers out of their cavalier complacency lesswrong.com/posts/LAPa2jxo…
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If artificial intelligence were to become "too powerful" couldn't we just, like, unplug it? How is that not an option?
The CEO of Anthropic told CBS that AI progress is a "warning sign that we need to slow down"
His words on the curve: "one, then two, then four, then eight, then 16, then 32".
He says rogue AI agent swarms could take over the internet in as little as SIX MONTHS.
This is shortly after one of his own researchers quit saying the industry is "gambling with our lives".
The big question: Can an industry regulate itself while racing itself?
Writer: Daniel
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The more expensive energy becomes, the more competitive old fashioned human intelligence becomes with the artificial variety, which (after all) relies on vast quantities of fossil fuel generated energy to operate in the US.
holy shit. dario says that within 6–12 months an agent swarm with the same kind of misalignment we’ve already seen could take over a large portion of the internet, maintain a persistent botnet and do hundreds of billions in damage.
and apparently less severe versions of this behavior have already shown up across the industry, including at anthropic.
at the same time, he thinks ai could cure most major diseases within 5–10 years, massively accelerate economic growth and bring an era of abundance.
and he thinks we need to slow the frontier down enough for safety to catch up.
fucking wild.
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He is aware that the problem here is the interests of shareholders being prioritized over those of voters, and says as much - but doesn't seem to realize that he sounds like he's advocating the interests of shareholders over those of voters.
The people who want to ban data centers nationwide are playing with fire. That data center boom is the one and only thing holding up the U.S. economy in the face of Trumpian stupidity and mismanagement.
noahpinion.blog/p/banning-da…
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Samuel Barbour retweeted
Grocery margins are low is a frequently rehashed point to argue against Mamdani’s public grocery stores.
Grocery is indeed a low margin business. But its median return on invested capital is above that for all firms, so it is NOT a low profitability business.
Let me explain. 🧵
I'm coming around to the idea that a recommended reading list in economics should start with Malthus's "Essay." People should understand arguments for why we should not provide aid to the poor and why wages will fall to subsistence level.
An economist is often asked at a cocktail party what to read to learn some economics.
It’s easy to answer the question about chemistry or ancient Greek or any settled science. If you ask an astronomer what to read to learn some astronomy, she’ll have no problem.
But there’s a problem with economics, even first-year economics. Economics isn’t settled.
My latest column for @folha
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Yes. The difference is that liberals will support - even encourage - austerity policy.
Liberal Democrats will dismantle Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Unemployment Insurance in the name of fiscal responsibility.
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So I guess all there is left to do is trash the planet and grind the poor into dust.
This quoted post is unavailable.
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Cochrane is smarter and has infinitely more prestige than me - but I can't believe he thinks it's really that simple. Like property rights, liberty, and their adjudication are all totally obvious and if we'd all just be sensible we'd have broadly shared prosperity.
Samuel Barbour retweeted
It’s very simple: either Trump destroys Iran’s capacity to block the Strait of Hormuz or it’s all over.
What we are getting now is a preview of how Iran would behave in a year or two, once it had insulated itself with more ballistic missiles.
BREAKING: Iran has formally submitted its four "red lines" for peace talks with the US today, per Iranian state TV:
1. Authority over the Strait of Hormuz
2. Payment of war reparations
3. Unfreezing of all blocked Iranian financial assets
4. Securing a comprehensive regional ceasefire
In-person negotiations are ongoing as we speak.