iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sam Thorpe @samthorpe.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

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.

nytimes.com

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

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Joe Fish @sadbusdriver.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

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

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

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.

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Noah Rosenblum @narosenblum.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

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

supremecourt.gov

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Angus Bylsma @angusbylsma.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

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.

open.substack.com

Slouching Towards Liberalization

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

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Sam Thorpe @samthorpe.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

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.

unevenandcombinedthoughts.substack.com

Slouching Towards Liberalization

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

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Kevin Rinz @kevinrinz.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

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!

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Sam Thorpe @samthorpe.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

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.

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Sam Thorpe @samthorpe.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

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.

thestockexchangeandtheholygrail.substack.com

Kicking things off

About me, about this blog

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Sam Thorpe @samthorpe.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

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...

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Bobby Kogan @bbkogan.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

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...

What the cost of the Iran war could cover if used differently
Select services and how many more people they could support with funding equivalent to what is being spent on Iran war

Table with 6 columns and 6 rows.
People covered by Medicaid for a year Children receiving free school lunch for a school year People housed in Section 8 for a year Children covered for year of child care Adults with free tuition at community college for a two-year associate degree
$25 billion
Estimated likely cost of war as of March 26, 2026
3,106,000 29,614,000 3,147,000 1,780,000 2,865,000
$200 billion
Reported likely request for additional war funding
24,850,000 Every child in the United States, with >$170B left over Every eligible person, with >$60B left over 14,237,000 22,917,000
One 30,000-pound bomb 625 5,925 625 350 575
One Tomahawk missile 275 2,600 275 150 250
One THAAD missile 1,575 15,050 1,600 900 1,450
One Patriot interceptor 500 4,850 525 300 475

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Bill Gale @billgale.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

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...

taxpolicycenter.org

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.

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Sam Thorpe @samthorpe.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

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!

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Sam Thorpe @samthorpe.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

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

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Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

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.

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chuckcbpp.bsky.social @chuckcbpp.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

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:

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Bobby Kogan @bbkogan.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

$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

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Joe Peck @joepeck.co.uk · 02/03/2026

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

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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

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

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Jacob Bogage @jacobbogage.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

🚨 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:

wapo.st

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.

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Nicolai von Ondarza @nvondarza.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

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.

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

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

Senator Chuck Schumer conducts a news conference in the U.S. Capitol in May 2025. Image: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
FORUM
How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism
Moderation used to help Democrats win, but its advantages now have been greatly exaggerated.
Adam Bonica, Jake Grumbach
With responses from →
Cori Bush, Amanda Litman, Matthew Yglesias, G.
Elliott Morris, Julia Serano, Eric Rauchway, Suzanne Mettler & Trevor E. Brown, Thomas Ferguson, Timothy Shenk, Jared Abbott & Milan Loewer, Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, Lily Geismer, Danielle Wiggins, William A. Galston, and Henry Burke

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Brendan Duke @brendanvduke.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

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.

Bar chart showing lifetime cost of the Republican megabill by income quintile for those born in 2025, including effects of higher federal debt. Four red bars show losses: Bottom 20% loses $17,200, second quintile loses $9,600, middle quintile loses $9,800, fourth quintile loses $4,300. One yellow bar shows the top 20% gains $2,600. Title states "Only households with the highest incomes will gain" and "Households with the lowest incomes lose the most." Source: Penn-Wharton Budget Model, July 8, 2025. Chart by Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

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Brendan Duke @brendanvduke.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

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...

cbpp.org

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 ...

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Anna Stansbury @annastansbury.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

📢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...🧵

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Sam Thorpe @samthorpe.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

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.

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Bobby Kogan @bbkogan.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

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.

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Chuck Schumer @schumer.senate.gov · 24/01/2026

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

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Sam Thorpe @samthorpe.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

The full video of this shooting is one of the most harrowing things I’ve ever seen. ICE just murdered another American in cold blood. I’m terrified to think about what’s going to happen to our country if this isn’t stopped.

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Benjamin Braun @benbraun.social · 19/01/2026

Financial war in response to trade war and territorial threats? More and more people appear to be calling for it. So I updated my post on U.S. Treasuries holdings—now with the latest data. benjaminbraun.org/posts/treasu...

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Sam Thorpe @samthorpe.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Loved this - thank you for sharing. Excerpt attached was especially compelling. I think one of the biggest issues in academic economics is exactly this class of problems: so many of the most important insights are unquantifiable and therefore ignored. It's a disservice to the profession + the world!

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Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

if i could make you read ONE (1) single post to improve your understanding of the challenges of social science in general it would be this one from @markfabian.bsky.social about wellbeing science specifically profmarkfabian.substack.com/p/airing-my-...

profmarkfabian.substack.com

Airing my grievances with wellbeing science

We have a streetlight problem

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Thor Berger @thorberger.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

Everyone talks about the "credibility revolution", but I think one of the most valuable shifts in econ over the last decade has been the rise of rigorous descriptive historical work like this in top journals:

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 17/01/2026

New QJE for the minimum wage literature uses IRS data to study effects on small and medium size businesses. The effects seem…very good academic.oup.com/qje/article/...

Who's Afraid of the Minimum Wage? Measuring the Impacts on Independent Businesses Using Matched
U.S. Tax Returns* Nirupama L Rao, Max Risch
The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 141, Issue 1, February 2026, Pages 373-427, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjaf053
Published: 10 December 2025
Article history V
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Abstract
A common concern surrounding minimum wage policies is their impact on independent businesses, which are often feared to be less able to bear or pass on cost increases. We examine how these typically small and medium-size firms accommodate minimum wage increases along product and labor market margins using a matched owner-firm-worker panel data set drawn from the universe of U.S. tax records over a 10-year period, and using state minimum wage changes as identifying variation. We find that on average, firms in highly exposed industries do not substantially reduce employment-they do not lay off workers but moderately reduce part-time hiring. Instead, these firms are able to fully finance the new labor costs with new revenues, leaving average owner profits unchanged.
Higher wage floors, however, forestall entry, particularly for less productive firms, reducing the number of independent firms operating in these industries by roughly 2%. Yet these industries do not shrink; instead, incumbent responses and strong positive selection among entrants reshape industries that rely heavily on low-wage workers, yielding fewer but more productive firms after the cost shock.
We also take a worker-level perspective to examine how potentially vulnerable individuals are affected by minimum wage increases. Using panels of low-earning and young workers, we find that their average earnings rise substantially with the minimum wage, while they are no less likely to be employed. Worker transitions indicate that minimum wage increases boost retention and that worker reallocation from independent firms toward corporations buffers dis…

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Ben Casselman @bencasselman.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

I get this question a lot (not always in such polite language), so worth addressing directly. (Short thread)

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Jennifer Sullivan @jenniferlsullivan.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

The House passed a measure today to extend the Premium Tax Credit enhancements for three years. The bipartisan vote shows there’s strong support for immediate action to make millions of people’s health care more affordable. All eyes are now on the Senate. x.com/JakeSherman/...

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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

"we live in a world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world". (Stephen Miller, White House deputy Chief of Staff). This is what that world looks like. The history of freedom is the struggle to constrain power by law

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Sam Thorpe @samthorpe.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

Absolutely baffling that mainstream coverage of the Paramount bid for WBD barely alludes to its political dimension. If it goes through, right-wing billionaires will wholly own FOX, CBS, and CNN. This, not antitrust claims, is the reason that Paramount is likely to succeed.

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Justin Bloesch @justinbloesch.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

It still seems relevant to compare within, say, 25-34. The ratio of college unemployment to high school unemployment is definitely higher than it has been previously.

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Prof Dynarski @dynarski.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

A senior academic using mentoring as leverage to obtain sex is a contemptible abuser of power.

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Sam Thorpe @samthorpe.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

R:e the 'AI bubble,' this analysis of what drove the 1929 bubble from White (1990) feels rather familiar. The difficulty of assessing fundamentals in novel industries + a massive expansion of retail investors + an expansion in credit availability are all seen as providing fuel to the fire.

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Sam Thorpe @samthorpe.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

Another fantastic new stylized fact from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com - stable or declining NEET rates in many developed economies have been driven by a decline in parenting. The share neither studying, in work, looking for work, *or parenting* has marched up steadily since 2000. www.ft.com/content/bd61...

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Sam Thorpe @samthorpe.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

Really interesting new paper that changed my priors on recent shifts in college education! In short, strong labor markets explain most of the decline in community college enrollments, while four-year enrollments have actually remained similar. See also www.chalkbeat.org/2025/11/11/i....

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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

These big wins will embolden Dems to take on Trump's lawbreaking and show there's a price for GOP enabling of him. Folks hate to hear this, but normal patterns are asserting themselves: Liberalism isn't dead, Rs are likely to lose in 2026, and Trump is really unpopular, not a magical exception.

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Benjamin Braun @benbraun.social · 21/10/2025

The Pentagon “inviting in” private equity “to refurbish some real estate, or even raise financing against the real estate” and to develop “financing tools for the army’s supply chain and overall capex”: surely the apotheosis of long-hegemonic-cycle theory. Arrighi undefeated. on.ft.com/3WPMwcU

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Bobby Kogan @bbkogan.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

Trump's mechanism to pay the troops during the shutdown is by far the most illegal budgetary action he's taken as POTUS, potentially setting the stage to break everything. It's also needless because Congress would easily pass a troop pay bill if Johnson were willing to gavel in. Long thread.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/10/national-security-presidential-memorandum-nspm-8/

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