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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 14h

Eminent philosopher Martha Nussbaum got pushed out at Harvard years ago. Hmm, what do all these scholars have in common?

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Wrong. Athenian democracy actually worked extremely well - which is why elitist philosophers and oligarchs couldn't stop smearing it.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

What's hilarious is this interpretation of Athenian democracy is completely wrong! See Roberts' Athens on Trial. Athenian democracy had 1 short-lived coup during wartime, but other than that was remarkably stable. It fell because of external conquest, not internal instability.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Sorry for being pedantic. My analytic philosophy training kicked in! :D

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

The necessity for the exchange of goods & services does not entail that it is the primary purpose of social interaction - simply that it is a necessary purpose of social interaction. Components of a concept can be required to exist while remaining of lesser importance.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

His terrible mis-reading of Rawls should have been a clue at how obtuse Yglesias is.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I mean there's a problem treating "the left" as homogenous. Be specific! Also too many economists take wealth pre- and re-distribution off the table.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

One quibble= non college is not "working class"

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Eh this is a perfectly plausible poll in a D+9 environment. Doesn't mean the D is going to win, and I concur that there is a likely drift of undecideds back to core partisanship, but these numbers seem fine.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Slight downward trend since 1980, and (as far as I can tell) doesn't take increase in part-time work into account: fred.stlouisfed.org/series/avhwp...

fred.stlouisfed.org

Average Annual Hours Worked by Persons Engaged for United States

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Right, because workplace organization is about power, not efficiency. Sometimes I think economists and political scientists don't realize they're studying two facets of the same subject.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Yeah I came to this conclusion in 2002. I was hearing inexplicable arguments from consultants and realized "oh man they're idiots."

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The DCCC has sucked at its job for at least 30 years. Like, so badly everybody makes jokes about it. THREE DECADES!

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Inorite? I mean, why get offended at this? It's bewildering.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Moved to a new town in my 50s and work from home. Always had a rich social life but it has been ROUGH to start over (again) in these circumstances.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Grant's memoirs are A+. Definitely worth your time.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Ugh I HATE that. One time I got a review that said I should look at differences by political party, and I was like "Yeah, table 2? Did you READ the paper?"

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This problem has existed for law enforcement in general for.....decades.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

On the other hand, there are vast areas of institutional research that don't get done because it's impossible to get external funding to do it.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Trump's performance among low-engagement voters screwed with the models. Doesn't affect midterms & he doesn't do well among them anymore anyway.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Which one? Stabilizing an Unstable Economy?

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The political science literature is pretty clear that in high-profile general elections, candidate quality only matters on the margins. This could certainly be one of those cases! I'm just on a campaign right now to let people know that we VASTLY overrate the importance of campaign effects.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

As someone who routinely engages in social science work across disciplines, this is one of my biggest pet peeves. Hell, even the greek symbols conventionally used in equations can be different!

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Or (now hear me out!) candidates don't make a huge difference and the fundamentals in Ohio are D+8, which is why both Democratic candidates despite their dramatic differences are posting identical margins.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Good book, but you have to lean into the schadenfreude.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer beneath this fucking sun of york.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I don't listen to the radio? Also, I detest modern country music? For someone brought up on rock/pop this revival of 90s douche country is just exhausting.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Great. How long will his prison sentence be?

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I've kind of been out on them since I read Buckley vs. Valeo (1971) in grad school, but Bush v Gore definitely sealed the deal.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Confiscatory wealth taxes would be a great start.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I study early childhood markets, and THE biggest issue is insufficient supply because of the low wages of child care workers. It's a classic market failure that is woefully undercapitalized. Double child care worker salaries and it'll solve a lot of the access problem.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Having said that the best show of the period was clearly the Good Place.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Dude, you know they publish these lists just so we'll argue about them. And it's an aesthetic choice - there's no cardinal "best" in art!

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Great now I'm going to be haunted too.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

So let me know if you're intetested! :)

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Hmmm my spouse does work on an Antarctica project, and I believe there is a artistic initiative. So it's not actually impossible!

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

More evidence for my political principle of first asking what black women think (they've identified the winning dem presidential primary candidate since Clinton).

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Sigh. This graph is probably just a proxy for age.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Also, anyone who's done any kind of textual analysis knows that things "can be interpreted" in some pretty wild ways.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I dunno, maybe bad-faith questions sometimes deserve bad-faith answers? Also, this is terribly vague - "could be interpreted"? Really?

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Soooo many hospitals are going to close.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Those polls are just testing name recognition. They are meaningless.

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Nathan A Burroughs @naburroughs.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

That's.....not how presidential politics works. The graveyard is full of overperformers at the state level who were utter failures at the national level.

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