The Supreme Court just made it even easier for billionaires to buy elections. Good coverage here of the implications of the ruling: it will disproportionately benefit Republican groups, and make it even harder for a future administration to regulate Super PAC and dark money spending.

The Supreme Court Just Gave the G.O.P. a New Midterm Edge

nytimes.com

This is a pretty bad misquote. The actual quote and what the graph says is that the *share* of total wealth has only increased for the top 0.1% of US households. But *total* and *per capita* wealth has increased for every group

Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · last mo.

“.. Since the end of the Great Recession in 2009, only the top 0.1% of U.S. households have seen their wealth increase--from about $5.8 trillion to $25.1 trillion in the first quarter of 2026.” - Schwab

Wealth concentration was already way off the rails before Musk became a trillionaire. The wealthiest megabillionaires in the country have basically been doubling their wealth annually in recent years. Feels near impossible to maintain a liberal democracy in this kind of situation.

When admin scholars talk about the Court’s attack on functional government, we have in mind not just high profile cases like Cook and Slaughter, but rulings like today’s decision in FCC v ATT. Decisions like this and — what they reveal — are death by 1000 cuts. 1/8

This week’s review!—back to Daunton, this time on the demolition of Bretton Woods and the potential lessons within. A guest post by the brilliant @samthorpe.bsky.social.

Slouching Towards Liberalization

The Economic Government of the World, Martin Daunton, 2023 (Pt.II).

open.substack.com

New from me, on the wonderful @angusbylsma.bsky.social's blog: an essay about the collapse of Bretton Woods and the possibility of building such a system anew today, and a review of Martin Daunton’s comprehensive history of The Economic Government of the World.

Slouching Towards Liberalization

The Economic Government of the World, Martin Daunton, 2023 (Pt.II).

unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com

New working paper out today for the real UI heads, from me and David Wasser: ⬆️ UI generosity - ⬆️ wages - for UE, J2J, and EE workers - especially at the bottom - ⬇️ hiring from U - ⬇️ LF exit - maybe ⬇️ job postings - ⬆️ posted wages - ⬆️ new entrant hiring - and more!

As usual, incredibly thoughtful stuff from Maia. I found the arguments (referencing Andrew Caplin's new paper) about the shift in costs from 'finding information' to 'asking questions and directing inquiry' particularly interesting. Great pairing with the new papal encyclical.

Maia@maiamindel.bsky.social · 2mo ago

New post: is AI going to be conscious? What will it be able to do? Is it a normal technology, or something else? Is central planning real? And what would a bunch of stuffy German philosophers think about Taylor Swift? someunpleasant.substack.com/p/imitation-...

Against my better judgement, I've finally started a (free) Substack. As I explain in my first post, I see this as an avenue to write on some of the big questions that economics research isn't well-suited to: normative claims, historical work, and thinking about the roots of economic analysis.

Kicking things off

About me, about this blog

thestockexchangeandtheholygrail.substack.com

A fun bit of history: this is the conclusion of Ben Bernanke's speech on the occasion of Milton Friedman's 90th birthday. (Delivered in 2002!) www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/sp...

New from me: by the end of the week, the war in Iran will likely have cost $25 billion, with Trump poised to ask for $200 billion more Below is a writeup, but the meat of it is this table, which shows what an equal amount of funding could cover domestically www.americanprogress.org/article/by-t...

In our new paper, colleagues from @taxpolicycenter.bsky.social and I offer a preliminary assessment of OBBBA, covering what it changed and what its effects will be on the budget, the economy, distributional outcomes, and future fiscal policy. taxpolicycenter.org/research-rep...

One Big Beautiful Bill? A Preliminary Assessment

The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025” (OBBBA), signed into law July 4, 2025, is a sweeping tax-and-spending package that could reshape federal fiscal policy for decades to come.

taxpolicycenter.org

A stylized fact that was new to me: the amount of gold (measured by weight) held by central banks barely changed through late 2025. The reason gold reserves went up so much as a share of non-US central bank holdings had more to do with the rising price of gold than a geopolitics-influenced choice!

Really useful thread on housing supply, affordability, and how we should think about elasticities and supply-demand dynamics in the housing market!

Joe Fish@sadbusdriver.bsky.social · 5mo ago

in reality, and thankfully, extreme spatial equilibrium is wrong -- people have heterogeneous preferences, it takes a long time for people to migrate, etc. these break spatial equilibrium. but the takeaway should be that YIMBYism is 1. a longrun commitment 2. best done at the region or nation level

Defense secretary openly states that a pro-Trump billionaire taking over a news network (following regulatory help from the administration) will result in coverage more favorable for the administration.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 5mo ago

Hegseth: "Some in the press can't stop. Allow me to make suggestions. People look at the TV and they see banners, 'Mideast War Intensifies.' What should it read instead? How about, 'Iran increasingly desperate.' More fake news from CNN. The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better"

The Van Hollen-Beyer et al tax cut bill was released today so just re-upping our prior thread and adding a few tweets with numbers now that more details are available:

The latest Democratic affordability proposal–this one from Senator Van Hollen– was previewed in the Washington Post by @jeffstein.bsky.social this morning. While we don’t have all the details, it seems like a case of good intentions but some problematic results www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

$11.3 billion could cover any of the following for a full year: -1.4 million people on Medicaid -19 million kids getting free school lunches -1.4 million people getting affordable housing -1.1 million hungry seniors fed -0.8 million children given free child care

Seung Min Kim@seungminkim1.bsky.social · 5mo ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pentagon tells Congress the first week of the Iran war cost the US $11.3 billion, an AP source says.

Why didn't the Biden administration get more credit for its investments? In part, because they didn't raise wages or create jobs widely enough or quickly enough. @samthorpe.bsky.social and I examine the political economy of industrial policy across America's energy communities

This elitist view that only rich/Ivy/private school kids should study/have access the liberal arts is so deeply ingrained in so many highly educated Democrats’ views (including tons who majored in the lib arts themselves) that they don’t even realize they hold it, let alone how ugly & elitist it is

Asheesh Kapur Siddique@asheeshks.org · 6mo ago

(3) But the Democrat view is also bad: while it's fine for people at Princeton and Harvard to study Latin and Sanskrit, public higher education is about job training and $ ROI. There is no room for the idea that curiosity-driven inquiry is a good that should be supported by the public.

🚨 SCOOP: The IRS improperly disclosed confidential immigrant tax information to DHS, per sources. It opens up HUGE liability for the US government. Trump is suing the IRS over substantially the same disclosures -- for $10 billion. 🎁 Gift link:

IRS improperly disclosed confidential immigrant tax data to DHS

The tax agency only recently discovered it improperly disclosed tax information on thousands of the wrong people to immigration enforcement.

wapo.st

This was to be expected - after cutting support to pro-democracy civil society last year, the US state is now looking to actively support far-right affiliated think tanks and charities in Europe.

Financial Times@financialtimes.com · 6mo ago

Senior state department official Sarah Rogers travelled to European cities in December and has spoken to key figures in Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK party about deploying grants to spread ‘American values’. ft.trib.al/Kx8ta8a

We have a Boston Review Forum out today on the Democratic Party in a time of authoritarianism www.bostonreview.net/forum/how-no...

A @budgetmodel.bsky.social analysis of the megabill's combination of tax cuts, cuts to programs, and higher deficits will make the bottom 80 percent of kids born today worse off in the long run.

New 25-page @centeronbudget.bsky.social paper from me summarizing the distributional, fiscal, and economic effects of One Big Beautiful Bill's tax cuts and cuts to health care, food assistance, student loans, and climate investments. 🧵 www.cbpp.org/research/fed...

Republican Megabill Trades Essential Support to Low-Income People for Skewed Tax Cuts

The sprawling megabill passed by the Republican-controlled Congress and signed by President Trump in July 2025 will redistribute trillions of dollars upward over the next decade, making it harder for ...

cbpp.org

📢now forthcoming in ECMA! The Class Gap in Career Progression: Evidence from US Academia Class is rarely a focus of research or DEI in elite US occupations. Evidence suggests it should be: we find a large class gap in at least one occupation - tenure-track academia...🧵

Thinking a lot about this excerpt from Vollmann's Rising Up and Rising Down. It feels like for most of American history - and likely still today - we've lived in a society where force alternates with forbearance, and nonviolence is therefore an incredibly effective tactic for winning change.

Lifting this up again. A huge problem now is that there’s a giant slush fund for ICE & CBP separate from annual funding — that Trump can continue to use even during a shutdown. Ds *must* make rescinding those pots of money the price of any future funding deals, as Rs did w/ IRS money from the IRA.

Bobby Kogan@bbkogan.bsky.social · 6mo ago

In 2022 we gave the IRS $80 bn. When Rs took the House they made rescinding that $$ the price of funding the govt. In each funding bill enacted since, large chunks of that were pared back Ds should do that for the ICE money from OBBBA. Paring back that $$ must be a prerequisite for funding the govt

Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.