The recent hysteria over bike and ebike regulation is infuriating, dumb, and counter-productive.
Blair Fix
@blairfix.bsky.social
Political economist. Blogger. Scientist. Editor of the Review of Capital as Power. Support my research here: https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/membership/
The diarrhea lettuce company, Taylor Farms, uses slave labor contracted from the Arizona Dept. of Corrections. The backbreaking labor is often performed by imprisoned Mexican nationals who would be otherwise ineligble to work in the US. They are paid $1.50 an hour.
The Diarrhea Lettuce Company Has Been Linked to Forced Labor
The lettuce-producing Taylor Farms was linked to the widespread use of prison labor before its involvement in a cyclospora outbreak.
futurism.com
So CBS and others invested in a pro trump audience that won’t arrive, alienating their actual audience, and trump propagandists are losing audience bc people are souring on Trump. Also helps explain the increased racist shrieking as they try to farm engagement www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/u...
How the Pro-Trump Media Ecosystem Is Splintering Ahead of the Midterms
Once united in support of President Trump, right-wing influencers are embroiled in feuds and losing viewers, creating a problem for Republicans in the midterm elections.
nytimes.com
Congrats on getting Hamas to say “okay fine, we’ll disarm after Israel totally withdraws” and Israel to say “okay fine, we’ll withdraw after Hamas totally disarms.” No one’s accomplished that before, better make it the top headline.
Insane satellite imagery. This is the change from May to July. Europe has cooked. (🎥 Colin McCarthy)
A massive giveaway from Carney to Big Tech. Elbows up to punch yourself in the face, I guess. www.thewirereport.ca/2026/07/28/b...
BREAKING: Ottawa to scrap all contribution requirements for U.S. streamers - The Wire Report
In a recent letter to the Federal Court of Appeal, the government outlined its intention to “eliminate the base contribution requirement on streaming services and to provide government funding to repl...
thewirereport.ca
If there's one thing society needs right now, it's a technology that makes people way more wrong but way more confident at the same time, a combination that was sorely lacking before
AI advice made people three times less accurate but twice as confident, researchers found
A study found that access to AI advice collapsed people's willingness to say "I don't know" from 44% to 3%, while accuracy dropped from 27% to 9%.
thenextweb.com
I'm pleased to share this new paper, "The myth of 'catch-up' development". The paper assesses trends in core-periphery inequality since 1960, and draws several main conclusions: 🧵https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13563467.2026.2659076
The myth of catch-up development: trends in core–periphery inequality from 1960 to 2023
The conventional narrative in international development holds that poorer countries are “catching up” with richer countries through the process of capitalist growth. This paper assesses this claim ...
tandfonline.com
Given Trump's return to war, I think I'll re-up this post on the mismeasurement of US military power. economicsfromthetopdown.com/2026/05/22/t...
The Business of War and the Mismeasurement of Military Might – Economics from the Top Down
The US military is the most expensive armed force on the planet. But what exactly does this spending buy?
economicsfromthetopdown.com
Uncharted Territory! El Niño means The Boy, but this El Niño is certainly El Hombre! 2026 is the white line, far above all others for the water temps that define El Niño. Latest forecast calls for an event so record shattering that it stays above historic levels for 6 full months! That’s insane 1/
“A simple data-entry error, magnified and broadcast nationwide by a growing surveillance network operated through an opaque partnership between a private company and public agencies, led police to identify me as a car thief and set up a sting to take me down.”
How Flock Cameras Wrongly Tracked Me for Days Over ‘Stolen’ Plates and Sent Police After Me
A simple error got magnified by Flock's nationwide surveillance camera network and ended with four cop cars boxing me in.
thedrive.com
Mark Carney is privatizing healthcare and he is going to do it by allowing the provinces to do it and not enforce the Canada 🇨🇦 health act. You can’t afford private healthcare and you can’t leave it up to someone else to fix it.
Friends of Medicare@friendsofmedicare.bsky.social · last mo.The full 23-page legal opinion on Alberta's Bill 11 is out via @cdnhealthcoalition.bsky.social ! The legal experts' conclusion? "Facilitating a two-tier regime ... is directly contrary to the core requirements, criteria & principles of the Canada Health Act." www.healthcoalition.ca/albertas-bil...
Economist @blairfix.bsky.social presents striking historical data showing the rise of extreme inequality following Republican control of state legislatures. Read more: economicsfromthetopdown.com/.../partisan...
Longer-term perspective on the rise of US oligarchy. Chart from Economist @gabrielzucman.bsky.social. Sources in comments.
Economist @blairfix.bsky.social presents striking historical data showing the rise of extreme inequality following Republican control of state legislatures. Read more: economicsfromthetopdown.com/.../partisan...
A few months ago, Isabella K. Sabatino wrote a seminal critique of attempts to test the labor theory of value using the national accounts. Here is a response from Moraitis & Basu. In my reading, it essentially concedes Sabatino's technical points of criticism. capitalaspower.com/2026/06/mora...
Moraitis & Basu, 'Deciphering the Drivers of Price-Labor Value Vector Proximity in Empirical Studies' – Capital As Power
Abstract In the tradition of Classical Political Economy, empirical studies of labor values and prices ask whether labor-value vectors are close to observed market-price vectors. This paper examines t...
capitalaspower.com
Striking graphic in this latest Reuters piece, which finds that while President Trump and his family have profited by at least $2.3 billion since he retook the presidency, their more than a million investors have suffered $2.3 billion in net losses. www.reuters.com/investigatio...
I wrote about how “gold standard” tools for psychiatric diagnosis are far from ideal in terms of reliability. “Diagnostic interviews,” those criteria check lists you go over with provider, are the main tool doctors have to diagnose conditions like depression, anxiety and substance use disorders.
New study casts doubt on reliability of mental health diagnosis interviews
Diagnostic interviews seen as ‘gold standard’ vary in reliability from condition to condition, study says
theguardian.com
As the Iran oil crisis unfolds, folks are again talking about 'stagflation' .... inflation combined with stagnation. The truth, though, is that in modern capitalism, stagflation is the norm. economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/01/17/i...
Is Stagflation the Norm? – Economics from the Top Down
I use World Bank data to test Nitzan and Bichler's 'stagflation thesis' --- the idea that inflation in the midst of economic stagnation is the norm.
economicsfromthetopdown.com
Remember the current NIH director going on about protecting researchers from government censorship? Today his people called the police in to forcibly remove my colleagues from their own society meeting for sharing an editorial published in their flagship journal that was critical of him. Gift link
Police Remove Diabetes Experts From Conference for Distributing Critique of Trump Administration
nytimes.com
📈This just in: Scientists at @ucsandiego.bsky.social's Scripps Oceanography reported that carbon dioxide levels at Mauna Loa Observatory reached 432.00 parts per million (ppm), an increase of 1.8 ppm over May 2025’s measurement of 430.2 ppm. @keelingcurve.bsky.social ⤵️ bit.ly/4uVwI87
Annual Carbon Dioxide Peak Reaches 432 Parts per Million
Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego reported today that carbon dioxide levels at Mauna Loa Observatory reached 432.00 parts per million (ppm) in...
scripps.ucsd.edu
Here's my one-chart summary of the Iran war. Trump picks a fight with a country that on paper, is poor. But money misleads. Iran is an industry-dominated country, where its GDP underestimates its industrial base. The US and the Pentagon are the opposite. economicsfromthetopdown.com/2026/05/22/t...
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The Alberta Worker@abworker.bsky.social · 2mo ago158 readers of The Alberta Worker sent in over $2,400 last month to support independent labour journalism in Alberta. Remember, The Alberta Worker relies 100% on reader support to operate. No billionaire backing No government grants No annoying ads albertaworker.ca/support
Pentagon spending is a poor proxy for military power because it measures income and profits as much as war-making capacity. Tracing US military spending against wages and energy use, this essay claims the Pentagon has shifted toward a business apparatus. By @blairfix.bsky.social buff.ly/XuOKAYQ
The Business of War and the Mismeasurement of Military Might – Economics from the Top Down
The US military is the most expensive armed force on the planet. But what exactly does this spending buy?
economicsfromthetopdown.com
I'm exploring China's National Bureau of Statistics. It's quite good. I was amused to find that the energy data was reported in units of SCE ... standard coal equivalent. It's a telling statement about how China industrialized with coal. www.stats.gov.cn/english/
National Bureau of Statistics of China
国家统计局
stats.gov.cn
1/ Cuba is out of fuel, strangled by the US fuel chokehold. People are dying, systems are breaking down. This is collective punishment against a people who have done absolutely nothing except live their lives under hard conditions imposed by the US blockade for decades.
Via @blairfix.bsky.social. (Followers of Michael Hudson's work and podcasts will find the thesis confirmed that the US and Nato are to a large degree military paper tigers with golden toilets, and that you are insane if you compare the military #power of the US and Russia based on GDP.)
Lumpenanalyst@resisdance.bsky.social · 2mo ago"McCain made the case for sanctions against #Russia by dismissing the state as “a gas station masquerading as a country”...(the #Pentagon is) a bureaucratic regime for channelling public funds into private coffers—a money funnel masquerading as a military" economicsfromthetopdown.com/2026/05/22/t...