iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Wild stat from @mmfa.bsky.social on how many times Fox News ran stories on trans athletes in the WNBA from June 25 to August 11. Per The Economist, there are no trans athletes in the WNBA. If u don't want voters to think about affordability/economics, you distract their attention with social issues.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Very important for @economist.com, like most corporate media, to pin the blame for food inflation on factors beyond the control of food suppliers. Here they blame war and workers. Never mind that a DOJ investigation into price-fixing broke the inflationary fever for eggs.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Hope policymakers & journos are deeply skeptical of any research that comes out of these “AI-pilled economists.” Even @economist.com recognizes a conflict of interest: “Last year Tom Cunningham, an economist, left OpenAI after reportedly growing frustrated about what he could and couldn’t publish.”

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

Nope. Millionaires aren’t buying elections, firing federal employees by the thousands, neutering regulatory agencies, evading taxes via special loopholes, or forcing investors to buy stock in their companies—that is, setting the rules for capitalism. Try again, @economist.com

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Even the billionaires sense that something is inherently unjust with our economic system

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Sigh. The @economist.com’s argument against @gabrielzucman.bsky.social’s 2% wealth tax proposal is slippery-slope. Rather than debate the merits of a 2% wealth tax, as proposed, the magazine wants to debate some hypothetical future tax increase. With that logic, we wouldn’t have an income tax.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Unionization is not mentioned. Instead, the magazine offers some vague “support for workers” to make sure the labor share doesn’t plunge any further.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Wealth taxes are the supreme evil, but inheritance taxes and levies on property are cool? We can’t touch a billionaire’s wealth while he’s alive? Except for his property? What is the economic rationale that squares this inherent tension?

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Note the sleight of hand here. Most government-provision proposals are highly circumscribed. A few government owned grocery stores. Some new government owned housing. The story speaks as if *all* housing and *all* groceries will be nationalized—entire “chunks” of the economy. Nope.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

This @economist.com cover is wild. Apparently, anyone who supports price controls, wealth taxes, nationalization—no matter what the circumstances—is deemed a “socialist” and must be fought back against. This is a signal of the old guard neoliberals losing the debate. A few more thoughts coming..

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

Why does The @economist.com and many (if not most) neoliberals hate workers so much? Even accepting their argument that joint employment would increase franchisor risk, there is no attempt to balance that “loss” against the gains to (lower-income) workers. Cc @briancallaci.bsky.social

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Thanks for the shoutout to my @lpeblog.bsky.social piece, @doctorow.pluralistic.net! doctorow.medium.com/https-plural...

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

There’s a reason that companies love to make expansive, sometimes absurd, claims about market definition: as the Supreme Court has narrowed the scope of per se illegality in antitrust law, plaintiffs are required to demonstrate that defendants possess market power. 1/3

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Warning: To prebut arguments from defenders of price-discrimination, I used figures and basic welfare concepts. Apologies in advance. Delta’s execs told us this month that the AI-based strategy is *increasing* unit revenues. That really should end the debate on output effects.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

We draw support from the economic literature, which highlights how prior investigations under FDR led to massive price declines in the industries under investigation.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

We make the case here that the initiation of the DOJ investigation may have altered the pricing behavior of major egg producers. After all, the first rule of any conspiracy is to stop conspiring while under the microscope of an investigation.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

The mainstream media, egged on by egg industry lobbyists, pointed to a one main culprit for rising egg prices—the bird flu. Here are some examples from the Washington Post.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 27/04/2025

Breaking news from The Economist

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

Kinda stunning that executives would say this to the New York Times. A payment to settle a meritless lawsuit in exchange for the non-enforcement of the antitrust laws. Make graft great again!!!!

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

And tho I appreciate the shoutout, this argument is equally misguided. Concentration of ownership, whether achieved via roll-up or common algorithm, in a neighborhood (not state) confers pricing power regardless of what other policies are in force (eg rent controls)

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

YIMBY pushback against @GovKathyHochul’s proposal to limit investor/private equity roll-ups of homes in New York rests on the false premise that the relevant geographic market is the state. Yet a common owner merely needs to amass properties in a *neighborhood* to exercise market power.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

So a defendant (Disney) can buy off a plaintiff (Fubo) to preserve what a court has found to be an anticompetitive joint venture (leading to higher prices for live sports)? This seems shady. And makes we wish that the former trustbusters were still in charge.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Turns out Carter not only deregulated trucking, but also skiing, ushering in a glorious era of neoliberalism (and the associated indignities like $300+ lift tickets).

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 04/01/2025

Sigh. @TheEconomist assiduously avoids mentioning raising the wage floor as a remedy to the abuses in the H-1B visa program, even after noting that the top three users of H-1Bs impose a wage penalty on their workers. Instead, it only considers raising the annual cap (quota).

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

Hock Tan also appears to have figured out that, so long as you *publicly* cajole your rivals to raise their prices, you won’t draw the ire of antitrust enforcers (even tho there are laws against invitations to collude).

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

Oh yes, The Economist, let’s celebrate another “ruthless CEO” for buying companies, laying off thousands of workers, slashing R&D, and then jacking up prices! This is just an extreme form of late-stage capitalism.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

If I had a dollar for every time some antitrust guru tells us that Amazon has never done anything to raise consumer prices, I’d have like a hundred dollars. How do you think merchants respond to an increase in fees? By raising their prices of course!

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 22/12/2024

A natural implication of this study is that rental inflation in (say) Atlanta should be greater than rental inflation in the rest of the country from the time RealPage was adopted. And that appears to be the case—rents in Atlanta jumped from $1,267 in April 2020 to $1,622 in April 2022.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 22/12/2024

The study estimates that the inflation owing to RealPage is higher in cities like Atlanta, where over 60% of multifamily rental units use RealPage, than in cities like New York, where fewer than 10% of such units use ReaPage.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 22/12/2024

The details are in a technical appendix. But the big idea was to estimate the elasticity of demand faced by landlords using the pricing software and then solve for the profit-maximizing rent if each landlord were settings rents unilaterally. www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 22/12/2024

What some might call “anticompetitive effects” from consolidated buying power over workers in neighboring plants, pro-monopoly types call “cost savings.”

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

The agency is collecting 6% of all revenues generated by Uber/Lyft. So it prefers to collect 6% of a supra-competitive price than 6% of a competitive price. Same thing happened in cable tv, where local regulators tried to keep out entrants at the behest of incumbents.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

Incredible story about how a DC agency is trying to stifle competition from an upstart ride-hailing company that pays its drivers a higher wage share than Uber or Lyft. In addition to massive fines, the agency impounds the drivers’ cars (45 per month). www.nytimes.com/2024/12/16/t...

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

My God The Economist claims the judges got it wrong in Kroger-Albertsons because the merging parties have a small combined share in a … wait for it … non-existent *national* market for groceries. Antitrust is hard, y’all.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

@pkrugman.bsky.social is right to blame billionaires in his final column, but neglects to mention they amplify their reactionary influence via ownership of key platforms (X, WaPo), think tanks, academic centers, and ultimately politicians given the high costs of financing a campaign.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Lots of folks asking what Musk bought with his campaign contributions to Trump. This one—protection from EU regulators—was even news to me. Twitter is now an apparatus of the incumbent political party.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

“Efficiency” is a term cooked up by economists on behalf of their billionaire benefactors to deflect attention from real problems

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

Guys we need to make some real hard choices to slow the growth of our debt, including paring back some entitlement programs oh wait never mind www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/b...

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

This follows on the heels of a finalized rule last month that also would prevent debanking. Seems like Andreesen got the sign of the derivative wrong! The CFPB is clearly on the side of bank customers, including those at risk of being debanked.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

Yet another reason why Andreessen was wrong about the CFPB: By subjecting data brokers to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the CFPB’s proposed rule would make identity verification more accurate, which would PREVENT bank customers from being debanked due to misidentification.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

sigh guess I won’t be invited to tony’s hanukah party this year www.levernews.com/harris-staye...

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

In light of Musk calling for the elimination of the CFPB and Andreessen claiming falsely individuals were debanked due to Biden's antipathy towards crypto, I thought it was a good time to share a video of our event showcasing what the CFPB actually does. utahproject.utah.edu/conference-2...

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

The only thing that Milei can teach Trump is how to look deranged.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Wild. In this week’s leader, @TheEconomist asks what Milei can teach Trump. One lesson is that, by cutting public spending by a third, the “Milei experiment COULD still go badly wrong,” as “austerity has caused an increase in the poverty rate” to 53% in the first half of 2024.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

There is one significant error in the piece. In trying to distinguish Musk’s companies from former monopolies that held undue influence, The Economist claims falsely that none of Musk’s companies have a market share over 30 percent. SpaceX’s share easily exceeds 50 percent.

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

Surprised to see @TheEconomist recognize the danger of economic power being leveraged into political power in its leader. The Musk-Trump bromance risks the emergence of a “corrupt oligarchy,” used to “hobble competitors” and “normalize collusion between politicians and tycoons.”

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Hal Singer @halsinger.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

Imagine how the election would have unfolded had Biden called out unscrupulous actors in the grocery industry (beyond his bs “shrinkflation”), Congress held hearings grilling industry executives for price hikes, and then passed a federal price gouging law. Dems needs villains too!

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