Mike Konczal
director. Economics, finance, inequality. . Book FREEDOM FROM THE MARKET (1/12/2021 ) 🍞🌹Less twitter for now.
Last synced from Twitter 701d ago
Fixing Private Health Insurance
Nationalaffairs.com 54d 5 tweets
The Affordable Care Act has wreaked havoc on the individual insurance market, causing many healthy people to drop coverage, contributing to soaring premiums, and rendering individual-market plans almost worthless to most people. To mitigate these...
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Mike Konczal Must feel awful to be a conservative policy intellectual out here in 2020 writing plans to replace the ACA. You just had united control of Congress, President who'd sign anything, and an infrastructure around this singular mission; is next time the charm? 9d
As Pandemic Rages, the United States Slashes an Economic Lifeline
Foreign Policy 15d 1 tweets
Lockdowns and outbreaks have hit the poor hard—and governments worldwide are struggling.
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Mike Konczal “The unemployment insurance worked,” Konczal said. “It showed us that our government has the capacity to ensure people’s economic security through deep depression and global health crisis in a way that should surprise us.” I know how to kicker it, sayin. 15d
If the Filibuster Remains, the Progressive Agenda Is Doomed
The Nation 16d 1 tweets
It takes 60 votes for Democrats to build something, but only 50 for the GOP to tear it down.
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Mike Konczal Remember the asymmetry here. Because they use defunding and privatizing as their means, GOP agenda is not really blocked by the filibuster. It certainly wasn't in 2017-2018. It takes 60 votes to build something, but only 50 to tear it down in the Senate. 16d
The Populist Right Will Fail to Help Workers or Outflank the Left
Mikekonczal.substack.com 32d 7 tweets
No horseshoe theory is going to form, even as the populist right attacks neoliberalism, because of these five assumptions and arguments they make.
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Mike Konczal I wrote a blog, a deep dive into why there's going to be no left-right horseshoe alliance, no "post-left." The populist right will fail to help workers or outflank the left, even as they consciously attack "neoliberalism," because of these 5 assumptions. 32d
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Mike Konczal Of potential interest, but honestly probably not. 32d
The Origins of the Urban Crisis
Press.princeton.edu 52d 1 tweets
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Mike Konczal Also if you are looking for a history about structural racism and the urban economy, 's classic "The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit" is 50% off and free shipping. 52d
Understanding the Recent Rise in Municipal Bond Yields
Kansascityfed.org 53d 1 tweets
The municipal bond sell-off in late March likely reflected investors’ concerns over liquidity rather than credit risk.
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Mike Konczal And even if we're doing the run-ending as a subsidy, the Fed also put a halt to the run in all asset classes, see this study on how the excessively high March 23rd rates for munis collapsed after Fed and Congress action. 53d
NYT Is Threatening My Safety By Revealing My Real Name, So I Am Deleting The Blog
Slate Star Codex 53d 79 tweets
So, I kind of deleted the blog. Sorry. Here’s my explanation. Last week I talked to a New York Times technology reporter who was planning to write a story on Slate Star Codex. He told me it w…
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Mike Konczal It feels like a lifetime ago, but pseudonymity was always an essential element of the amateur-writer-yet-expert blogosphere. I used it for my identity in 2008-2010, and it was incredibly common in the financial blogs. It's still important out here in 2020. 53d
The Hidden Rules of Race by Andrea Flynn
Cambridge Core 60d 1 tweets
Cambridge Core - American Studies - The Hidden Rules of Race - by Andrea Flynn
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Mike Konczal I'm bias, but the book Hidden Rules of Race by my colleagues here at Roosevelt ( ) is also great on all things race, economics, and market structure. It's also free through mid-July! 60d
How to Rescue Main Street From Coronavirus Before It’s Too Late - Economic Innovation Group
Economic Innovation - Economic Innovation Group 150d 21 tweets
A tidal wave of insolvency is about to crash on the American small business community, and Congress is running out of time to stop it. By Adam Ozimek and John Lettieri It is now clear that the coronavirus pandemic will exact a staggering toll on the...
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Mike Konczal Without endorsing, here's one approach from . Note how he's talking about fixed costs with liquidity and future income with solvency. This plan isn't about worker income replacement; we already know how to do that, and it is different. 75d
Liberal Punishment | Dissent Magazine
Dissent Magazine - Dissent Magazine 76d 2 tweets
Naomi Murakawa’s remarkable book The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America shows how, since the 1940s, liberals have provided legitimacy for the prison state.
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Mike Konczal As we figure out where to go next, it's worth reflecting on Naomi Murakawa's book The First Civil Right. That efforts to "reform" policing don't just fail, but end up justifying the expansion of it, isn't new, but a problem that goes back to the 1940s. 76d
Unemployment Insurance Is a Vital Part of Economic Freedom
The Nation 78d 2 tweets
Finding a way to provide economic security to our fractured labor force is one of the central goals of our time.
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Mike Konczal Unemployment insurance expansion was a big victory for progressive priorities: social insurance, fighting labor fissuring, empowering workers, especially low-wage ones. It's also helping to fight a depression. Why isn't the Left rallying on its extension? 78d
Many Americans Are Getting More Money From Unemployment Than They Were From Their Jobs
Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux - FiveThirtyEight 92d 7 tweets
The coronavirus crisis has transformed our system for compensating jobless workers.
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Mike Konczal Shorter Wyden and Bennet: Nothing's too good for the working class. If you don't see the extension of this UI as a big opportunity to redefine low-wage work, or see the forces of reaction gearing up to attack it, you aren't reading the graph correctly. 91d
Even If You're Trying To Avoid Grubhub By Calling Your Favorite Restaurant Directly, Grubhub Could Still Be Charging It A Fee
Venessa Wong - BuzzFeed News 92d 12 tweets
“If a customer calls to place a coffee order, we’re paying a $6.42 fee — for a coffee.”
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Mike Konczal Remarkable story about an awful practice I didn't know about. More on how internet companies were suppose to diffuse knowledge, and have instead come to choke it. This is exactly the type of market activity the public utility ideal was made to suppress. 91d
Economists Want to Put Stimulus on Autopilot. Congress Has Other Ideas.
Neil Irwin - Nytimes.com 92d 6 tweets
The idea is to link government aid to certain indicators, like the jobless rate, so it shrinks or grows without further action by politicians.
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Mike Konczal Great piece. Automatic renewal of core spending priorities (unemployment insurance, checks to families, state/local support, etc.) is essential, solving numerous economic and political problems at once. House Dems passing on it is a bad sign. 92d
The Death of the Central Bank Myth
Foreign Policy 94d 10 tweets
For decades, monetary policy has been treated as technical, not political. The pandemic has ended that illusion forever.
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Mike Konczal Great piece on the collapse of central bank independence. 3 points in it mirror my own thinking: underlying model is gone, Japan-style stagnation means our Fed will become the bond market, and fighting climate change will require Fed planning. 93d
Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Paul Krugman on the dangerous return to austerity and how to stop it. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.
Zoom Video 94d 4 tweets
At a time when states and cities around the country are facing immediate fiscal crises and we risk millions more in layoffs, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that further federal relief would "endanger the future of our country.” With a...
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Mike Konczal So excited to announce this webinar, Monday at 12pm. talking with and historian Kim Phillips-Fein all about austerity. From the economic disaster to how it changes what citizens demand of the state, this will cover it. Register! 94d
Married a foreigner? Kiss that tax rebate goodbye
chicagotribune.com 110d 1 tweets
When Congress passed an economic stimulus package giving hefty rebates to most taxpayers, it tried to make sure that illegal immigrants didn't get any of the cash.
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Mike Konczal Denying a tax rebate to those married to an immigrant, happening under CARES Act, started with W. Bush tax rebate. It was a successful demand by then-growing, and now dominant, anti-immigrant groups on the right. I'd love to see this history reported out. 110d
Guest Post: Reinhart/Rogoff and Growth in a Time Before Debt - Roosevelt Institute
Mike Konczal - Roosevelt Institute 118d 2 tweets
[Mike Konczal here.  Yesterday I wrote about a paper by Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin of University of Massachusetts, Amherst. They replicated the influential Reinhart/Rogoff paper Growth in a Time of Debt. There were many responses...
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Mike Konczal Time hasn't been kind to the formatting of just-turned 7-year old blog posts after many redesigns, but Top-5 All-Time classic of the econoblogging-era, walking through how the Reinhart-Rogoff 90% "tipping point" was absolutely reverse causation. 118d
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Mike Konczal Here, time and redesigns have not been kind to the formatting, though this remains an absolute classic of peak econblogosphere. I think turned it into a paper if you need a cite or more formal stuff. 31d
The Right Way to Balance the Budget
WSJ 121d 1 tweets
In The Wall Street Journal, Andrew G. Biggs, Kevin Hassett and Matt Jensen of the American Enterprise Institute write that their research on the experience of 21 countries over 37 years yields a simple truth: Cutting spending works, and raising...
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Mike Konczal AEI's Biggs, Hassett and Jensen arguing the right way to turn to deficit reduction in December 2010 (85-15 cuts-taxes). Heavily cited by the 3/11 GOP JEC report "Spend Less, Owe Less, Grow the Economy," GOP's negotiating position during the Grand Bargain. 121d
Winter War
Basic Books 634d 7 tweets
The history of the most acrimonious presidential handoff in American history--and of the origins of twentieth-century liberalism and conservatism When Frankl...
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Mike Konczal FYI wrote a whole book tackling (and demolishing) the argument that Roosevelt forced a depression and collapse against Hoover's benevolence between FDR's election and his inauguration. In case you are reading a new round of Hoover appreciations. 134d