I’m intrigued! I guess the big question is what “almost no math” means. Like I don’t do algebra for principles of micro, but it feels like you have to do graphs and little tables with basic arithmetic, and plenty of students struggle with that. I’m very open to less math if you have ideas
Exam starts, high income individuals 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 Actual 2227 3625 4326 4052 3692 Target 6786 2264 2486
When Trump took office, the IRS was planning on beginning 6,786 new audits of ultrarich individuals that year.
Instead, they actually only began 3,692 that year, around half of their plan. This was a policy decision from Trump.
This year, Trump's IRS has set its target even lower, at just 2,264.
For every year from 1994 to 2023, immigrants in the US paid more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government. Check out the latest study from Cato’s David Bier.
The reckless and cruel histrionics of the Trump administration (DOGE, ICE, tariffs) are almost always terrible solutions to misconstrued or hyperbolized but real problems. And for conservatives, there’s always a better way to address the real problem without embodying MAGA’s caricature of the left.
What are your best ideas for getting this team up to a Super Bowl level for next year? Please include 1) a real idea, 2) a move that involves a time machine and a retired Packer legend, and 3) a move that involves recruiting a Marvel superhero
How likely is it that LaFleur and Love ever win a Super Bowl together? It seems like enough players have regressed or failed to develop that the window is looking narrower than it did when we first traded for Micah
Why couldn’t we just QB sneak or tush push for a yard on more of the 3rd or 4th and 1 situations against the Bears?
Christmas party food question: what’s a snack or dessert that’s almost as automatic as a tush push on 4th and 1?
“We will never become a better or more united country if we cannot point to indecent actions taken and statements made by those we agree with politically and say, ‘This is wrong. This is something that decent human beings do not do.’”
Pick 3 ingredients LaFleur could mix in to cook up something good on offense. Pick 3 ingredients to put into a delicious November soup.
Maybe we should’ve played for the FG 🙃 Love is usually good at not taking sacks but really bad on that front tonight
How worried are you about the secondary on a scale of 1 to 10? Why are we having coverage problems recently even though we were pretty successful with mediocre cornerback talent over the last year or two?
Sounds like a metaphor for American politics
NEW: If successful, the H-1B change would severely damage the most important channel for US entry by workers with advanced degrees & specialized knowledge, causing profound & widespread harm to Americans’ incomes & job opportunities.
By @mclem.org:
If you could design one offensive play for the Packers to use this week, what would it be?
Food question: what’s a food or drink recipe that you love even though it sounds terrible?
The argument is: We're all meant to sacrifice a bit, so that tariffs can help rebuild American manufacturing. Let's ask American manufacturers whether they're helping.
I expand on why I--like just about every economist and wonk I know--believes that EJ Antoni is a terrible pick for BLS Commission.
Shout outs to Alan Cole, Stan Veuger and if more space would have called out dozens more. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/o...
Trump's firing of the BLS commissioner after a weak jobs report drew condemnation from economists across the political spectrum who were worried about the politicization of government data. His choice of replacement has only added to those concerns. #EconSky
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/b...
Powell stressed today that the Fed's decisions will be based on how the economic data performs in coming months.
One problem: That data may be becoming less reliable.
My story on the BLS's latest cuts to CPI data collection:
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/b... #EconSky
If the Packers don’t win the Super Bowl this year, how would you want the season to go and how would you want it to end?
We were lucky enough to have our YouGov/The Economist poll in field when the US bombed Iranian nuclear facilities. You can see the partisan realignment in real time
Good point. It’s possible multiple equilibria exist though. Tenure is an entrenched norm, and trying to unilaterally deviate sends a weird signal in a way it wouldn’t if it didn’t exist. I imagine part of UF’s problem was the political undertone and uncertainty over how evals would be done.
Lastly, it’s worth noting (anecdotally), that it doesn’t seem like tenured profs are generally unmotivated… academia is still a dynamic hierarchy with social status and financial rewards, so UF’s approach probably just poisoned all the trees to try to kill a few bad apples.
It’s also possible that tenure is valued enough by profs (as insurance) and that tenure has sufficiently non-negative (or positive) selection effects, such that raising salaries enough to offset the utility of losing tenure would be prohibitively costly.
In theory, some combo of higher pay without tenure could lead to positive selection and higher productivity. The key parameter is how much profs value tenure (in $). Then the question for the university is how much they want to pay for higher productivity.
Besides the general equilibrium counterfactual of removing tenure at all universities, I think the other counterfactual worth considering is how much UF would have to increase salaries to offset the negative selection effect of removing tenure.
A few top profs got bonuses after their post-tenure evaluations, but mostly this is a clear decrease in the value of the total package offered at UF. So profs valued tenure protection, lost it, and some looked elsewhere, and the better ones had better outside options.
1. This shows profs value the stability of tenure protection
2. It shows it’s a bad idea for a university to unilaterally remove tenure (it’ll drive good profs away to places they can keep tenure)
3. It doesn’t prove that if ALL universities removed tenure productivity wouldn’t improve
This study finds that removing tenure protection (requiring performance review every five years) didn’t increase faculty productivity for tenured profs, but did drive away more productive profs (in retention and hiring).
A few comments:
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A reasonable counter argument is that there’s a natural bias towards lower taxes in state/local gov’ts because the rich will move to where taxes are lower (a race to the bottom), even if a higher level of revenue / service provision is optimal. The total effect of that channel is small though.
