Stay-at-home dad. Lapsed Presbyterian. Wrote about politics and economic policy in ages long past. Sometimes still do. Wile E. Coyote is my spirit animal.
Joined July 2010
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- Followers 5,657
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349 Photos and videos
The two critical mistakes that prevented Obamacare from being the transformative law its boosters hoped for: 50 state marketplaces rather than one national marketplace, and grossly inadequate subsidies.
Obamacare insurance isn’t worth it anymore for some families. After Congress allowed pandemic-era subsidies to expire, many are going without insurance, some for the first time.
From @arjonesreports ⤵️
kffhealthnews.org/insurance/…
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Jeff Spross retweeted
Trump’s under-appreciated masterstroke is that by demonstrating to the Iranians that they can successfully deter aggression by closing the Strait of Hormuz, he’s greatly reduced the incentive to actually build a nuclear weapon as opposed to just a ton of cheap drones.
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Arrested Development narrator voice:
“Trump was not thinking about the deep questions.”
Vance: What's interesting about President Trump is that he doesn't wear it on his sleeve, but he is a person of faith. He thinks about these very deep questions: where did we come from? Where are we going?
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Jeff Spross retweeted
Jun 15
Perhaps one of the most significant impacts of this entire Iran war debacle the neocons got the US into is that it should permanently alter the policy conversation around Iran. Their preferred path, war, has now been demonstrated to be a complete failure. They can't say it hasn't been tried or it might work. Nope, we all witnessed this option and it leads to a dead end.
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Personally, after “Fury,” I will watch anything written/directed by David Ayer and staring Brad Pitt.
Trailers before Disclosure Day for movies that seem entirely fake:
Jimmy Stewart World War II biopic
Brad Pitt and his special forces dog movie
Facebook movie
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Jeff Spross retweeted
Haven't read this article because I don't subscribe, but if you're sad about the loss of teen summer jobs, blame recessions, not trips to Europe
Jun 15
When I was a teenager, the end of school meant it was time to get to work. Summers spent busing tables was more transformative than a trip to Europe, writes Larissa Phillips. thefp.com/p/the-death-of-the…
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Jun 14
Bob Dylan in the NY Times about the best and worst things about being 80.
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There are a lot of problems with using interest rate hikes to control inflation. But a big one is it’s inherently a policy of upward redistribution.
Jun 14
Creating trillionaires the old-fashioned way. One rate hike at a time.
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Jeff Spross retweeted
To me this episode is really about the fact that politics is about the colloquial and not the clinical.
The issue isn't whether Biden would go to the hospital and get a dementia diagnosis. It was that he was behaving "demented" in his job.
Remember when Yglesias actually had an interesting (and correct) take that Biden didn’t have dementia and then it became too unpopular of a take after the disastrous debate and so he chickened out and wrote a mea culpa.
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Hate to break it to you buddy, but you are in fact the weird one in this case.
I’m not even super right wing on questions of suffrage. I’m certainly willing to entertain all kinds of arrangements. But what I believe pretty strongly is that there are no intellectuals remaining on the left with respect to this stuff. I just literally don’t know how you can watch us speed run into having a girls party and a boys party and still have basically no introspection about the intersection of gender and politics beyond just, “patriarchy bad.”
Like, never, even in your darkest moments, even when you’re alone on a desert island and no one can see you or hear you and there’s no risk of you getting in trouble, do you ever think critically about the consequences of universal suffrage? Do you literally have no critiques? Do you genuinely believe there are no downsides? Will you not allow yourself to have any ordinary thoughts at all?
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Jun 15
And here, ladies and gentlemen, is a key problem with our current economic order. It builds a basic fascist assumption—tyranny is exciting, dynamic, and productive—into the governing structure of nearly every company in our society.
This is, by the way, why the corporate structure is so effective as to manage to land rockets on their tail;
you wouldn’t even get off the ground with collective decision making!
Leave democracy to governments; a company must have one will or else be a mystery meat investment.
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Jun 14
Still trying to decide where I’d rank “Disclosure Day” in terms of overall filmmaking craft. But I was really surprised at how deeply it affected me emotionally. Glad I’m not the only one. rogerebert.com/reviews/discl…
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Jun 14
Also unusual for Spielberg: “Disclosure Day” feels like a film where the editing process was almost *too* exacting, and it might eventually benefit from a director’s cut.
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Jun 15
Oh, also: Jane is the real hero of “Disclosure Day.” She’s the one who overcomes a spiritual crisis about what disclosure entails. She saves Daniel from Noah’s dive by sheer force of moral will. And she delivers the mcguffin that saves the day at the climax when all seems lost.
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Jun 14
Inflation was 8% when Matt wrote this and was 3.5% a year later. That was an incredibly fast fall! And Biden’s approval still got destroyed. Saying their approach “didn’t work out” implies a different approach could’ve salvaged their political prospects. But… 1/
Jun 14
There was a conscious choice by the White House to downplay conventional neoclassical economic analysis, that was explicitly justified on political grounds. It didn't work out!
Some of us called for pivoting off this much faster.
slowboring.com/p/for-the-nex…
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Jun 14
If you believe the COVID inflation was demand-induced, the only path that could’ve salvaged Biden’s political prospects would be to not pass all the spending that Biden passed. Which Matt says he’s not arguing for. 2/
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Jun 14
Conversely, if you think it was a supply shock, the only way Biden could’ve possibly saved his poll numbers was by breaking w/ orthodoxy *much more radically* than he did, by passing extensive price controls, industrial policy to goose supply lines, even more fiscal aid, etc. 3/3
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Jun 14
Vance deserves all the contempt he’s receiving for his basic historical illiteracy.
But it would also be certifiably insane to suggest that, since we got Germany and Japan’s unconditional surrender, we should insist on the same from Russia.
Jun 12
JD Vance:
If you go back to WW2 or every major conflict in human history, they all ended with some kind of negotiation.
Community note
World War II ended with unconditional surrenders by Germany on May 8, 1945, and Japan on September 2, 1945, rather than negotiation. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconditi… archives.gov/milestone-docu… nationalww2museum.org/war/topics/end…
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Jun 14
We got Germany’s surrender by invading it and conquering its capital. We got Japan’s surrender by nuking them. And we did all this in the tiny historical window in which we were the sole nuclear power. Thinking we could pull the same trick with Russia in 2026 would be madness.
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Jeff Spross retweeted
Jun 14
It is easier for some to imagine hundreds of thousands or millions of people will live and reproduce on Mars someday than it is for them to imagine policymakers can devise a viable way to tax net worth. And I get it, really. We were all children once.
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Jeff Spross retweeted
Jun 14
Actually, if the government doesn’t give you a patent monopoly, you won’t get very rich, but like Jonas Salk, you will have done a great thing for humanity.
Jun 13
If I cure cancer I will get very rich. And a bunch of people on this site will apparently find my sudden wealth outrageous.
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