Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
if you don’t challenge the executive because you think “you’ll lose”, then you’ve already lost. if you want any hope of winning, you have to act.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
are any legislators proposing to amend the Alien Enemies Act to define less precarious review and relief, and place limits on to where “enemy aliens” can be removed? i know nothing will pass unless and until the orange wall breaks. but you make change by pushing and failing before you push through.
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
(yes. that’s what makes the suggestion so very brilliant.)
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
via @scaggs.bsky.social, watch techbros cure the trade deficit by insisting surplus countries use the trade proceeds to… buy US debt. “So basically… buy our stuff, or buy our debt. Either way, you're paying up.” xcancel.com/seanheilweil... brilliant disruptive novel ideas from our tech sector.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
The Silicon Valley arc of history, from the Apple’s 1984 commercial and “think different” to automating a domestic Stasi. ht @bananapantz.bsky.social
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
don’t think it will be easy. it isn’t black and white.
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
“A trillion comments have been wasted accusing the wrong people of Trump derangement syndrome. The real TDS afflicts those who keep seeing a rational actor, or an economic chess game, where none exists.” @edwardluce.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/9f51... ht @antoniofatas.bsky.social
Trump has no idea what he has unleashed
Link Preview: Trump has no idea what he has unleashed: There is no school of foreign policy realism or trade mercantilism that could explain the US president’s actions
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
yesterday: “i read the news today, oh boy.” today: “i read the news today, oh boy.” tomorrow: “i read the news today, oh boy.”
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
“When he makes sales, whether of Trump University courses or Trump-branded cryptocurrency, he is usually taking advantage of the buyer, and he views global trade through the same zero-sum lens.”
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
“Kennedy and his nonprofit sued to prevent the Covid vaccines from ever coming to market. Those vaccines saved 3 million lives…the additional death toll from Covid wld have been larger than the population of Chicago.” @radleybalko.bsky.social radleybalko.substack.com/p/profiles-i... ht Brian Marick
Profiles in poltroonery: Senator Bill Cassidy
Link Preview: Profiles in poltroonery: Senator Bill Cassidy: The Louisiana senator and physician could have stopped the world's worst antivaxer from taking over the regulation of vaccines. He didn't. And now we're paying for it.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
they like outcomes that give advantages to the wealthy but lets the state do what it will to the poor. it’s a kind of meritocracy to them. drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/11/19/p...
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i feel like Roberts + Barrett know the Court is violating core values they pretend to share, but don’t want to actually thwart the insurrection. so they take turns ineffectually joining dissents (while the other helps plunge the knife). they can present themselves as one of the good ones, i tried!
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
miserable. from Justice Jackson dissenting www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p... ht @stevevladeck.bsky.social @proptermalone.bsky.social
Text: At least when the Court went off base in the past, it left a record so posterity could see how it went wrong. See, e.g., Korematsu v. United States, 323 U. S. 214 (1944). With more and more of our most significant rulings taking place in the shadows of our emergency docket, today's Court leaves less and less of a trace. But make no mistake: We are just as wrong now as we have been in the past, with similarly devastating consequences. It just seems we are now less willing to face it.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
oh, i too was once a neoliberal. but i realized a lot of my worldview was mistaken, including the notion that private willingness to invest is a quantitative bottleneck on investment and growth. 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
(that notion might become more true than it has been, however, because of constraints that might come to bind due to Trump’s recklessness with faith in the dollar system and inflation expectations.) /fin
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
monopoly rents come through as corporate profits, though we could sometimes try to target them more specifically than a traditional perhaps progressive corporate profits tax does. www.interfluidity.com/v2/9416.html
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
not by as much as you’d think, for a bunch of reasons. 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
* it hits all of investors’ equity alternatives at once, and they still have funds to invest. 2/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
* investment is mostly a state function, private capital’s role is directing investment and bearing first loss. monetary, fiscal, and subsidy programs can ensure a sufficient overall level of investment, the pattern of equity investment is unaffected by the level of a profits tax 3/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
* corporate profits taxes can and have historically been progressive, as an encouragement to and effective subsidy of startups and new entrants, if that’s a concern. /fin
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
this is such a delicious and true point. xcancel.com/PhoenixWrigh... ht @justinwolfers.bsky.social and the left-right-and-center podcast
Tweet from A. Ham, @PhoenixWrightA1: It's essentially Critical Trade Theory. Any trade imbalance between two countries is de facto evidence of systemic unfair trade practices.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Income taxes much less, and corporate income taxes also less, the profit maximizing strategy is not altered when profits are transformed by a positive monotonic function. 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
(the main issue with corporate taxes is the debt preference it brings—firms tilt towards debt rather than equity, because payouts to creditors are tax deductible interest while payouts to shareholders remain taxable profit—but we should address that by eliminating tax deductibility of interest.) 2/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i think the progressive income tax is our main distribution-sculpting too. i'd like to add progressive wealth taxes to the mix. i'm curious if you think there are tools that would be better? /fin
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
indeed.