tacj.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

I'm going to be giving a talk about Why We're Getting Poorer at Conway hall on April 20th. You can join there or online - as so much happens these days, most of the talk will be new stuff not in the book! www.conwayhall.org.uk/whats-on/eve...

submitted 11 hours ago • 0 comments

To be clear, the absolutely should NOT include NICE or the MHRA even though these bodies 'have powers over policies of national importance.' Side note: I've been waiting my whole professional life for the civil service to take technical expertise seriously. I am not optimistic.

submitted 17 hours ago • 1 comment

It's forgotten now, but Britain's decision to go protectionist and institute Imperial Preference in the 1930s was a more fatal blow to the international trading system than Smoot-Hawley.

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Keynesianism is like Ozempic in that it's something that works but makes people mad because they want moral hazard to be involved

submitted 3 days ago • 49 comments

Always heard this as “prowess”.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

By banning cars, nationalising all the land, and building millions of council houses? 🤔

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

Cycling Home, by Simon Palmer, who has lived and worked in Wensleydale for 40 years.

submitted 3 days ago • 9 comments

Quite funny to see America go through a Brexit in the exact same way step by step. For the exact same reason as well, in that their voting population were conned by right wing people while the centre party was too complacent to offer anything substantial to counter it

submitted 3 days ago • 3 comments

Indeed so but it didn’t take a strategic genius to see what would happen if Reeves walked into a trap by Hunt that was visible from space and there wasn’t a growth lever to pull

submitted 5 days ago • 7 comments

feel strangely emotional about this?

submitted 7 days ago • 10 comments

worth noting another common pathology of British government Investments halfway down; committing to something then changing your mind, making sure that everyone who invests themselves feels like a fool.

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

Honestly such an awesome book. Niven just phoning in concentrated Niven in his old age.

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

the people who wanted "everything run like a business" also transformed how businesses were run, and it broke those too. (they transformed businesses into the idiot share-price maximizers of pathetically stylized economic models, which is not how most businesses actually functioned before 1970!)

submitted 8 days ago • 17 comments

Again. Why does Labour love to hate vulnerable people? They don’t have to cut welfare.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

“Long-lasting systems cannot grow without bound; they need weeding” @alexwlchan.bsky.social #MonkiGras I’ve been part of building some great stuff, but lots of what I’m most proud of has been “weeding”; shutdowns, migrations, cleanups etc Invisible to users, but invaluable for sustainable progress

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

The last minute scramble around welfare & the desire to get the headroom back to £9.9bn (so it was the same as in October) are both pretty depressing. Ridiculous way to set fiscal policy.

submitted 12 days ago • 6 comments

The idea the world is getting worse is absurd.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Y'days post: Labour’s strategic error on tax mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2025/03/labo... The failure to raise taxes further reflects the absence of any serious analysis of what will be required to allow a noticeable (to voters) improvement in public services before the next election.

submitted 12 days ago • 2 comments

The Treasury! I knew it was them. Even when it was the QUANGOS/NIMBYs/Tories, I knew it was them! #AbolishTheTreasury

submitted 13 days ago • 1 comment

Some thoughts on @jo3hill.bsky.social‬'s excellent essay, which argues that a lack of focus and an urge to model success as delivery across multiple objectives underlies repeated Government failures. /1

submitted 13 days ago • 3 comments

Discover how Keynes’ ideas shape our world—from government spending to inequality. Join Paul Krugman & Zachary D. Carter for The Price of Peace on March 25 at 6:30 PM. Don’t miss it! @pkrugman RSVP: www.gc.cuny.edu/events/price...

submitted 20 days ago • 5 comments

New HMRC data on employment of non-UK origin workers: some further very large increases. UK nationals decreased by 241,000 (1%) EU nationals decreased by 80,200 (3%) non-EU nationals increased by 400,300 (11%) [NB nationality at time of registration, not now: many non-UK are now UK citizens]

submitted 13 days ago • 17 comments

Obama chuckled. "You mean the Chaos Emeralds?"

submitted 19 days ago • 4 comments

As I've said before, the primary problem with the BBC news and current affairs department is not so much their political leanings as the fact they are ill informed, credulous and incurious

submitted 17 days ago • 1 comment

ONS downgraded to “beleaguered” at the FT. on.ft.com/4c3cO2t UK’s statistics agency admits issues with more key data

submitted 17 days ago • 5 comments

Not the only org caught out

submitted 17 days ago • 4 comments

Keir Starmer has pledged to slash the number of arm's-length government bodies, but how big is the quango state really? Had fun creating some pretty graphics for this @financialtimes.com piece with @pmdfoster.bsky.social on.ft.com/4hHWKEb

submitted 19 days ago • 1 comment

Say what you like about the British government, there are some digital services that work quite well.

submitted 20 days ago • 2 comments

The thing about the lab leak theory is I don’t even understand why it was ever considered crazy or “controversial”. Maybe it’s true? Who cares?

submitted 22 days ago • 1 comment

Kalecki (1943): Political Aspects of Full Employment Reads like a comment on the great reversal in common sense on fiscal policy among German economists

submitted 22 days ago • 5 comments

Presumably ROCs, FiTs, and CfDs also contribute somewhat?

submitted 23 days ago • 1 comment

“Repellent” is a bit strong. Presumably it would be better if Starmer just blandly accepted whatever he’s being given? Also note “Gus”’s obsession with “comms”, as if the only problem was the presentation.

submitted 23 days ago • 1 comment

The thing about the govt is that it wants change, but without upsetting capitalists - hence reforms to local govt & attacks on the civil service & disabled whist not recognizing that our sclerotic productivity growth might be the fault of bosses, rentiers & vested interests.

submitted 23 days ago • 6 comments

Surely an important part of this is the BBC's mission not to explain ("oh sorry to be terribly boring and nerdy but we've got to mention a fact about how parliament works here")

submitted 27 days ago • 5 comments

Something I wrote 13 😬 years ago, using a toy model to make a simple point. tl;dr: The % of current claims for a benefit that are long-term -say, >2 years -is a very different statistic to the % of claims over time that run for > 2 years. The former is always higher. lartsocial.org/24hourcarpark

submitted 27 days ago • 7 comments

Mark Carney being made “prime minister designate” without being a Canadian MP is wild.

submitted 28 days ago • 1 comment

Nabokov taught a European fiction course at Cornell in the 1950s. His exam questions, here on BLEAK HOUSE, are something else (reproduced in his "Lectures on Literature" volume).

submitted 28 days ago • 5 comments