Kristian

Every version of this take takes the Westphalian boundary as the fixed edge of the risk pool. Change the unit (the Nordic union, the EU, the US federal system with its interstate movement) and the take becomes a question about fiscal design across jurisdictions. It's 2026. Not 1826.

brent 🌹🗽@therealbrent.bsky.social

Yes well it does require things like “empathy” and possessing a basic understanding that all of our lives are interconnected

About the "vibecession" I said: if the sentiment drop isn’t concentrated among the young and renters, I’m wrong. I ran the Michigan microdata, 2015 to early 2026 and found it's not. Among independents, 2019 to 2023, older homeowners’ personal-finance score fell most (−52), young renters least (−39).

My conclusion: higher prices caused the drop in how people rated their finances, and partisanship shapes which side reports it. Savings and assets explain why about a third of adults still haven’t recovered. A functional welfare state would help a lot more than better political messaging by Dems!

Caveats: these are separate surveys that point the same way. No public data follows the same households from 2022 to 2025, so this isn’t proof but that is what qualitative research is for. Michigan also switched from phone to web surveys in 2024, so recent readings look worse than earlier ones.

Many households had no savings to fall back on long before 2022. In every Fed Survey of Consumer Finances since 1989, at least half of households couldn’t have lived three months at the poverty line on their cash after paying off credit card debt. For renters it’s 73% today!

Housing costs are a large part of why. Since 2000 median household income roughly doubled, about the same as prices for everything other than **housing**. Rent rose about two and a half times and home prices more than tripled, so the money that could have gone into a savings cushion went to housing.

Households without savings covered the shortfalls with credit cards, just when card interest rates rose from about 16% to 23%, the highest since the Fed began tracking them in 1994. The share of card balances going 30+ days late hit its highest level since 2011 and is still above 2019.

Low-wage workers did not get smaller raises. The lowest-paid quarter of workers got the **largest** raises: 34% since 2020. What separates the people who recovered from those who didn’t is **savings and debt*, not pay.

Recovery for Americans since 2022 has been uneven. In the Fed’s household survey, among people with three months of emergency savings, 29% said they were worse off than a year earlier in 2022 and 20% in 2025. Among people who couldn’t cover three months of expenses, the share was 46% and 43%.

Michigan’s survey shows the same pattern within each party. From 2022 to mid-2024, independents who own stocks improved their ratings of their own finances three times as much as independents who don’t. People with savings and investments recovered very well; people without them mostly did not.

Political party effects don’t explain why people’s ratings of their own finances fell though. Between 2019 and 2022, the ratings of independents, whose answers don’t swing with the White House, fell just as much as everyone’s. High earners’ ratings fell at least as much as low earners'.

Prices do explain why the fall in those ratings was so widespread. From 2020 to 2023, grocery prices rose 21% and rent rose 18%, while the typical worker’s pay rose 16%. Before 2020, pay grew faster than grocery prices. Pay has since caught up, but most people lost several years of getting ahead.

First, rising prices were the main reason people gave in surveys. In Michigan’s consumer survey in 2019, 7% of people said higher prices were why they were worse off than a year earlier. In 2022, 40% said so, and the share has stayed around 40% or higher since. From 7% to 40%.

Second, party loyalty now shapes how people describe their own finances 😅 When the White House changes hands, supporters of the new president soon say they are better off. Since 2025, Republicans report far better finances than independents, while Democrats report about the same as independents.

Why did so many Americans feel bad about the economy from 2022 to 2024, when the usual numbers looked good? I spent a week with the public survey data from the Federal Reserve, the University of Michigan and the New York Fed. Here is what I found.

Kristian reposted

Charlotte Lydia Riley

@lottelydia.bsky.social

Right. But the thing is, in the Second World War, the British government specifically told the British people not to stockpile food, and ruptured water mains were overcome with water bowsers for drinking and EWS for the fire service, not individual stores. There was a municipal and state response.

John C@badsocialism.bsky.social

"The barges on the miry river, the familiar streets, the men in bowler hats, the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, the red buses, the blue policemen, all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs."

I am disgusted with investors and American CEOs that will support morally depraved people until it hurts their investments

Mike@mike-umbkm.bsky.social

A 'SpaceX' investor said he’s not only “disgusted…from a humanity perspective” (by restrictions on Starlink in Ukraine), but also because: “.….they've given everybody a reason not to use Starlink, that Starlink isn't reliable for national security for anybody but Trump.”

The reader is where value is realized. So all this provenance anxiety looks like a symptom of weak reading and perceptive capacity. A perceptive reader experiences the inner meaning of the text: is it true, is it alive or bloodless? Does it see or hear or feel or shape something!?

A reader who can’t make that judgment, cannot hear or perceive or känna, needs proxies: the credential, the prize, the author’s biography, and now the “human-made” label. The purity regime is for readers who have lost, or were never given, the capacity to perceive. It does them no favors.

Borges made the joke long ago in “Pierre Menard”: the same words become a different book depending on what the reader brings and believes. Can people read with perception? That is, without inserting their false self between the text and their real self?

In 2025, 53% of US households could not live above the poverty line for 3 months on their cash minus their card and BNPL debt. One in five (19.6%) owe more on cards than they hold in cash, so their cushion is a mirage. The median household has 2.2 months. Things really do suck for a most people!

Kristian@kltblom.bsky.social

Yes, we do need data and we have data. But we also need something called qualitative research. Data tells you what is happening, but qualitative research tells you why/how it's happening. And how to account for structural shocks and other events that shifts what the data is measuring. 🧵

The CPI leaves out mortgage interest, so the jump in monthly payments on a newly bought home since 2021 barely registers. The cost lands on renters and new buyers, the same groups with the thinnest cushion.

We know that survey questions change meaning. “Better off than a year ago?” was answered in 2021 against stimulus checks, a monthly Child Tax Credit and paused student loans. Then all of it expired. A survey series that ignores that break isn’t measuring the same thing over time.

Nonviolence needs a channel: Gandhi needed Britain to be Britain. But that argues *against* riots in France and the US, not for them. Sweden in 1917 had a parliament and a press, and that’s why the people won the vote. Elections, courts, media and press: use them. Do not give Fascism a boost.

Sandy Hendry@sandyhendry.bsky.social

To far-left folks saying looting and burning in France is normal and not being manipulated by extremist puppet masters to the joy of Le Pen/Putin/Trump, I would note that the US is also seeing a form of protest that has historical precedent and is usually much more productive in achieving its aims.

Sums up so much more about Westernized/quantified culture than the delusions of speculators that dominate financial markets most of the time. "And then there are all the “number go up!” people who were desensitized to fundamentals by BitCoin." - Brad DeLong

Centrist policies have completely failed to address the key issues of the information age; financial insecurity, socioeconomic and political inequality, and environmental destruction. As a result, institutional trust has collapsed in all nations built on the Imperial model, except China. Why?

Kristian@kltblom.bsky.social

I predict that socioeconomic volatility will continue to grow in every nation built on the Imperial (technical term) model. These structures are simply not fit for purpose in a world where the Westphalian nation state is in conflict with the information age and the knowledge economy.

Jack@kuuga.bsky.social

The data does not say that nobody will have adverse experiences! You are describing a fictional version of Darling, Stancil, et Al that have space alien opinions! What Darling and Stancil say is that the horribly adverse experiences are not the majority, and that you have to measure these things!

Result: 53% of households have under three months of cushion. One in five owe more on credit cards than they hold in cash. Middle income ($63k to $104k): 57% under three months, 25% below zero. **Renters: 73% under three months.** This isn’t poverty but stark awareness of the absence of a floor.

What we want: mobility with a floor. Sweden shows they aren’t a tradeoff. Children’s incomes there depend far less on their parents’ than in the US, and universal healthcare and job loss insurance keeps a lost job from becoming a lost home. A floor is what makes risk taking survivable.

Jack@kuuga.bsky.social

How much cushion does American households have before poverty? If the paychecks stopped tomorrow, how many months could a family live above the poverty line on its own cash, after paying off its credit card and buy now, pay later debt?

I ran this question on the Fed’s 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances. Cash means checking, savings and money market accounts. Subtract credit card and buy now, pay later balances. Divide by the Supplemental Poverty Measure cost for that household’s size and housing. No borrowing allowed.

youtube.comAdresse aux Français.YouTube video by Emmanuel Macron

Ulrike Franke@rikefranke.eu

Macron addresses the nation tonight. Starts by very strongly condemning the violence and those that are “trying to make the republic fall” and siding - in the name of the nation - with the police. Then pivots to acknowledge that there are legitimate demands by the protesters.

Most American families aren’t poor. They’re one bad month away from it. 2/3 say they spend everything they earn, and more than a third couldn’t cover a $400 surprise bill without borrowing. Nearly three in four workers say even a one-week delay in their paycheck would cause them real hardship.

Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social

It doesn’t do progressives any good to pretend most of America is deeply impoverished or that poverty is the norm here. A sense of widespread scarcity does not make people more generous. We are a rich nation, most of us are middle class. There is a suffering minority and we can afford to help them.

More importantly, we live in a country with massive structural flaws and people are discussing minor tweaks!? Grow the hell up and be real is all I have to say to people that keep voting for moderates and centrists at a time when the Executive is completely unfettered from democratic oversight.

It would be really interesting if serious conversations about such things as consciousness were happening on social media.

Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social

Again: “AIs aren’t conscious” is a strong, affirmative claim. It implies a lot of specific things about consciousness. It requires strong evidence. “We can’t say for sure if AI is conscious” is a weaker, cautious claim. It doesn’t make any particular evidence about consciousness.

Kristian reposted

Graze Social

@graze.social

Replying to @graze.social

We've been hard at work behind the scenes the last few weeks to prepare for this - a 52-feed deep dive on the state of the election, run by *you*, the community that depends on this information. We've also partnered with some great folks in the ecosystem. Let's take a quick tour.

Opus 5.5 identified 9 false assumptions about the claimed cause and effect relationship between the Yandex strikes and the asserted drop in bot traffic. Only a minority of humans on social media bothered to question a single assumption. Perhaps LLMs are more conscious than most humans?

Sven-Erik Volberg@volberg.bsky.social

Again, none of its true. People are looking at graphs they don't understand and inventing stuff. Note the grifter language, "if confirmed" "its reported" No meta data! These graphs do not show russian propaganda bot disappearance, only normal internet information tool collapse.

A strong institutional structure does not depend on good or bad people

Max Berger@maxberger.bsky.social

The last 100 years of US politics

unfamiliarlurker.bsky.social

Amazon didn't kill downtown. Commercial landlords did.

Kristian reposted

@unfamiliarlurker.bsky.social

Replying to @jdcmedlock.bsky.social

the friction of having to learn [art] was a crucial firewall protecting society from the terrible taste of [~everyone]

Funniest demo of why private market solutions to socioeconomic problems are just plain stupid

Jake Grumbach@jakemgrumbach.bsky.social

He used his IRA account to buy private paypal shares below their value at like $0.001 per share, staying under the $2000 annual contribution limit AND making his taxable income less than the $110k IRA restriction. You, a regular person, cannot do this

It's true that millions of people are active on X and other websites. It's false to believe that this fact prevents me from knowing what is going on in parts of the world that are not generally covered by American and British sites/media. X and similar platforms mostly amplify the same few stories.

Asher HELLbein@asherelbein.bsky.social

It is intensely frustrating to me that non-anglosphere communities (as well as quite a few anglo ones) have stayed on X, but nonetheless, they *are* there, and that's a fact that has to be reckoned with

Before you pass a claim on, stop. Look up who published it. See whether anyone else reports it. Find the first photo or the first document. Old pictures from other wars and incidents get recirculated. Signs of propaganda: no names, dates or places. Heroes on one side, villains on the other.

Wait. Much of what breaks on Monday is gone by Friday. What is still there by then is usually closer to the truth or at least more obviously lies and propaganda. Make friends all over the world and call them. Question your assumptions. Then question the assumptions behind those assumptions. End

Asher HELLbein@asherelbein.bsky.social

State media like TASS and Xinhua: read them to learn what a government wants you to believe. Same with the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Daily Mail etc. Read to understand what the establishment and their financiers think and want you to believe.

Look at raw data frequently. ACLED logs conflict and protest events each week. ReliefWeb carries UN field reports. The IMF and World Bank publish debt and growth tables. When a headline and the numbers disagree, go with the numbers and ask why they differ. Think!

Asher HELLbein@asherelbein.bsky.social

For each region, find a newsroom that lives and works there. Meduza for Russia. The Continent for Africa. Caixin for Chinese business. Dawn and The Hindu, read side by side, for Pakistan and India. Eurasianet and OC Media for Central Asia and the Caucasus. There are many more.

Use translate in your browser. The local-language pages often carry more than the English editions, which are written for outsiders. Check who owns the outlet. Qatar pays for Al Jazeera. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. Asharq Al-Awsat is Saudi. Don't make them useless. Think!

Asher HELLbein@asherelbein.bsky.social