@astonc My view is that meaningful causality is much more from trade deficit to fiscal deficit than the other way around. Trade deficit is a demand drain. The easiest way to counter that and sustain full employment is with a trade deficit. (The article is a mixed bag to me, I don’t buy his trade-balance-is-futile-while-big-fiscal-deficit view, though agree tariffs are a dumb approach. I share his view we should have terms out US debt when rates were low, said so at the time.)
@astonc In general, budget balance requires (1) a diminishment of demand for USD securities, otherwise you get dangerous private-sector “AAA” substitutes and financial fragility; and (2) alternative means than deficit spending of sustaining demand (like taxing the rich to “fund” benefits to the nonrich, who spend rather than bank their marginal dollar).
“If you’re a political party, your goal is not just to know where voters stand, but to know how to move them.” #PeterShamshiri https://stringinamaze.net/p/the-tyranny-of-public-opinion ht @ryanlcooper
a bit ironic that it's the people making a world ever more dystopian who are most up-in-arms about the crisis of collapsing birth rates.
This post remains relevant unconfirmed.
the default american attitude is "the government is fucking up and screwing us", so whoever is the government has to swim upstream hard to avoid becoming unpopular.
[tech notebook] Zero-ish overhead logging facade in Scala 3 https://tech.interfluidity.com/2025/05/26/zero-ish-overhead-logging-facade-in-scala-3/index.html
sometimes i'm not quite sure whether it is a grift or a scam.
we’re all going through some things.
You blame the government for making it more expensive while you raise your price in the name of compliance.
Such a shame they are making it so expensive.
One thing Biden and Trump have in common is a BBB as their early signature legislative initiative, although they are very different BBBs.
"A much more promising path to abundance than the one this book offers is to embrace a twenty-first-century New Deal. That is the tried-and-true model for a 'liberalism that builds' in the United States" #SandeepVaheesan https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-real-path-to-abundance/
// this really is an excellent piece.
From a fantastic piece by @DeanBaker13 (Thanks to David Brooks for provoking it!)
A thing I'd add is that the welfare costs of people not getting treated because prices are too high may rival or even dwarf the financial cost of the patent monopoly.
mock the administration all you want, it is rather a remarkable achievement to render Harvard sympathetic. https://www.wonkette.com/p/kristi-noem-shoots-harvard-as-warning ht @Axomamma
[tech notebook] Scala 3 inline vs implicit ordering https://tech.interfluidity.com/2025/05/22/scala-3-inline-vs-implicit-ordering/index.html
from #KevinErdmann https://kevinerdmann.substack.com/p/a-conversation-about-cities
// a great piece from Kevin Erdmann. exclusive places are really boring, but we've so strangled the possibility of vibrant places that we compete to occupy the highest amenity mausoleums.
The problem of the last century of housing is that half the country is always below average, and we have frozen all of our neighborhoods in place in an attempt to get the lower half to live somewhere else. But the lower half still lives somewhere. So, now we have a lower half of the population, but not a lower half of housing stock that evolved to serve them.
Are they fucking with annual flu shots in the way they are fucking with annual COVID boosters?
On how the absence of a strong left cripples policymaking even (perhaps especially) on the liberal center. By #ChrisDillow
Placating the right yields terrible governance — practically, morally. Outcompeting the left requires delivering.
How much does US vaccine politics (e.g. imposing huge burdens on booster by the FDA) affect availability of vaccines outside the US? Will boosters be readily available elsewhere?