Daniele Girardi
@dgirardi.bsky.social
Economist at King's College London. https://danielegirardi.github.io/
Reading articles on the amounts HE has spent in APCs over the last 5-10 years, and slowly watching my blood pressure rise. Millions upon millions, on something WE CAN ABSOLUTELY DO OURSELVES FOR A FRACTION OF THE COST - what universities couldn't do with that kind of money now... 😠 And breathe...
This politician in Canada used ChatGPT to write his speech and then just directly read out loud the AI prompt without realising it, announcing to legislators “Here's a more natural, flowing version of that section that reads like a legislative speech rather than a series of short points." Glorious!
Another mass resignation from an academic journal- Review of Social Economy- over the clash between scholarly values and the commercial logic of for-profit publishers. Sad to see a valuable journal like RoSE go, but the editors made a principled choice. leiterreports.com/2026/07/20/a...
Another journal implodes: Review of Social Economy
Roberto Veneziano, a former co-editor of the journal (which publishes a lot of philosophically-minded economics), writes: On Saturday, the 4th of July all four co-editors of the Review of Social Ec…
leiterreports.com
OSSOFF: Who won the 2020 election? CLAYTON: Uhm, you know, I'm not going to do this with you O: This is a job interview. You have an obligation to be honest with the committee. Who won the 2020 election? C: I'm not gonna get into that with you O: You're not being honest or forthright C: ...
Determined to extract as much money as they can before Thames Water eventually gets nationalised
Jim Pickard@pickardje.bsky.social · 3w agolooks like Thames Water has given a 14% pay rise to its chief executive and a 26% rise to its finance director
Why do workers dislike inflation? Because wages catching up to prices means costly conflict: tough pay talks, job search, bargaining. Survey + model show conflict more than doubles inflation costs. Joao Guerreiro, Jonathon Hazell, Chen Lian & Christina Patterson. buff.ly/S1GJdlV
Ed Miliband is, as far as I can think, the only cabinet minister in this government (except possibly Rayner) to have both clearly been largely successful in policy delivery and not have vacillated like a weathervane under pressure. These are both key attributes for a Chancellor!
The era of trillionaires will be dire for democracy. Here is how we can fight back | Gabriel Zucman
The era of trillionaires will be dire for democracy. Here is how we can fight back | Gabriel Zucman
There is a fundamental tension between extreme wealth and the very possibility of democracy. That’s because extreme wealth is always an extreme power
theguardian.com
The social media ban doesn’t have to stop every under 16 from using social media - if it stops most of them using it, and causes those who still do to use it less, that's a big win. 10 responses to common objections to the ban. www.edrith.co.uk/p/social-med...
Social Media Ban: Responses to 10 common objections
And six ways in which we could tackle broader social media harms.
edrith.co.uk
I have worked in the Belgian colonial archives & what's already available to researchers is horrifying, I can only imagine how bad the rest is. We must bring the truth to light. Transparency is the only way to recovery, reparations, & eventual healing.
Financial Times@financialtimes.com · 2mo agoDR Congo pushes Belgium to release millions of colonial-era documents ft.trib.al/H9QWHYh
The subhead: When 30 States Raised Minimum Wages, What Happened to Pay and Jobs? The minimum wage job-loss apocalypse that never arrived. At work here we see monopsony, not mayhem. Assessing Card, Krueger, Dube, and the end of the textbook minimum wage story: **CROSSPOST: ARINDRAJIT DUBE... 1/
The richest person in human history is pouring his time, energy, and resources into inciting racist violence in Belfast and beyond. The United States Congress should terminate all US subsidies to, and contracts with, the firms that funnel money to his sickening skinhead project.
Sunder Katwala (sundersays)@sundersays.bsky.social · 2mo agoX owner Elon Musk has reposted his Sept 2025 call that pre-emptive inter-ethnic violence (civil war) is necessary for 'self-defence "Elon Musk was always right "You either fight back, or you die."
This is what a pogrom looks like: men in masks coming to drive you from your home. This is a collective failure of our political and media class because we did not have the courage to say no, and because too many were allowed to embrace this without shame
Saul Staniforth@saulstaniforth.bsky.social · 2mo ago#BBCBreakfast: "... families had to be led to safety through the flames.. it wasn't just homes, cars were also torched by young masked men in these predominantly unionist streets, but the target here was immigrants.." This is what the likes of Reform are inciting.
At moments of crisis, leaders have a responsibility to speak to, and for, their country. The PM should be on the airwaves, telling the stories of the children, teenagers and families who have been burned out of their homes; naming those responsible; and leading a national fightback against them.
Sam Freedman@samfr.bsky.social · 2mo agoWe need leaders who can spell out what's happening clearly and with force.
I wonder how much of this disconnect is because decisions on economic (and especially fiscal) policy in the Blair governments were taken by Gordon Brown without too much participation from Blair.
James Ball@jamesrball.com · 2mo agoOne mildly interesting thing: Blair's recent essay is a total repudiation of Blairism. It doesn't at all resemble what he did as PM, especially on tax and spend. And yet 'Blairites' are largely applauding it as a serious document (it isn't). Maybe it really is just vibes all the way down.
"You were correctly outraged by how Ben-Gvir treated your nationals. Please think of how he treats ours.”
Amin Abdullah, Nadir Awad and Mansour Kaziha distracted and delayed two gunmen at the Islamic Center of San Diego. Their actions saved the many children and staff inside the mosque and cost them their lives. n.pr/4uRJkwk
The San Diego mosque shooting victims remembered as 'heroes' for protecting children
Amin Abdullah, Nadir Awad and Mansour Kaziha distracted and delayed two gunmen at the Islamic Center of San Diego. Their actions saved the many children and staff inside the mosque and cost them their lives.
n.pr
Labour lost almost four times as many voters to the Greens as they did to Reform UK in the local elections, according to new YouGov polling
It cannot be stressed enough: something like this would be impossible in a country like Brazil, certainly not with this brazenness. US institutions have turned out to be remarkably weak. www.nytimes.com/live/2026/05...
Trump Administration Live Updates: $1.8 Billion Fund Could Funnel Money to Trump Allies
nytimes.com
Labour's processes for changing leader are hopelessly, catastrophically unsuited to government. More than half of all prime ministers since 1945 have taken over between general elections. This is not an unusual procedure. So it really matters when parties screw this system up... 🧵
This, from Nicholas Kristof, is extraordinary, harrowing, morally urgent journalism. Notably not in the NYT’s news pages, which are an exemplar of that silence. Gift link. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/o...
Opinion | The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians
nytimes.com
A please @labouruk.bsky.social, stop saying that it's up to us to stop Reform. YOU could stop a Reform government in 2029, by introducing the proportional representation so many in the country have been clamouring for. The only way Farage can win is through our crazy first-past-the-post system.
utterly brilliant slides on Marx thank you Jesús Fernández-Villaverde www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/ET_... x.com/JesusFerna70...
Jesús Fernández-Villaverde on X: "Since I have posted so much on Marx vs. Weber, modernity, and development over the last few weeks, I have posted an updated slide deck of my lectures on Karl Marx and the Marxian Tradition (together with @ferarteaga) here: https://t.co/YsdgkHPJuS This is a long deck: 437 slides https://t.co/hmYDUEBEld" / X
Since I have posted so much on Marx vs. Weber, modernity, and development over the last few weeks, I have posted an updated slide deck of my lectures on Karl Marx and the Marxian Tradition (together with @ferarteaga) here: https://t.co/YsdgkHPJuS This is a long deck: 437 slides https://t.co/hmYDUEBEld
x.com
After the mass resignation from Journal of Economic Surveys over bad publisher terms, I could not imagine in a couple of years we would have **Reviews of Economic Literature** Non-profit. True OA. With @stanfordpress.bsky.social; 2 articles already up this year rel.journals.sup.org/index.php/rel
Novel solution to problems inherent to for profit academic publishing: Nonprofit publishing!
Daniele Girardi@dgirardi.bsky.social · 3mo agoAfter the mass resignation from Journal of Economic Surveys over bad publisher terms, I could not imagine in a couple of years we would have **Reviews of Economic Literature** Non-profit. True OA. With @stanfordpress.bsky.social; 2 articles already up this year rel.journals.sup.org/index.php/rel
New working paper on the California Fast-Food minimum wage (will come out as NBER WP soon but posting now). Big increase in wages. Big drop in separations. Little change in jobs. (Bonus: sheds light on QWI vs QCEW measurement of jobs.)
After the mass resignation from Journal of Economic Surveys over bad publisher terms, I could not imagine in a couple of years we would have **Reviews of Economic Literature** Non-profit. True OA. With @stanfordpress.bsky.social; 2 articles already up this year rel.journals.sup.org/index.php/rel
The United States now has the most government restrictions on academic freedom of any high-income country. www.chemistryworld.com/news/academi... Raw data from @vdeminstitute.bsky.social —> academic-freedom-index.net/research/Aca...
Interesting how no-one around him either in office or assisting him feels able to intervene privately and explain to save him from himself. In fact the incentives are so extreme that the way to respond is to draw attention to the error and invent an entirely new arithmetic to justify it.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3mo agoRFK Jr: "A Democratic senator claimed it's mathematically impossible to have a drug drop by 600%. I said, 'Well, if the drug was $100 and it raises to $600, that would be a 600% rise. If it drops from $600 to $100, that's a 600% savings.'" Trump: "Right"