Will Wilkinson

I’m not a political journalist, so was gladly surprised at the community I found here last night. To Americans anxious about the upcoming elections, a key thing we learned in Brazil that might help you: DO NOT engage with the far-right online. Don’t share rage bait. Amplify your people. Ignore them.

Lula is to my left. Magyar is to my right. And I don’t care in the slightest, because they are the candidates of democracy against autocracy.

Preemptive pardons for everyone... for 24 hours.

". Those in favor of “government efficiency” and “streamlining bureaucracy” often put the cart before the horse, forgetting that there is a basic, fundamental level of state capacity that must exist for any reforms to work."

“protein enriched chocolate chip cookie” is kinda the perfect synthesis of the conflicting american male desires to be a spartan warrior and also five years old

This is literally the end of the rule of law. If a President can pardon people committing crimes on his behalf - and the Supreme Court says he himself can't be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of his job - then the government becomes a lawless entity able to violate our rights without limit.

I remember people on twitter dot com who found it genuinely shocking that I just don't really value debate as an activity, like in so admitting this I was basically saying I am an authoritarian tyrant. I found this odd! For reasons Alex is saying here - good and worthwhile debate is difficult!

Seems a little early in the century for this.

The big question, it seems to me, is not whether we’ll see a major tech company fail in the near future. It is what happens afterward. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Protestors Criticized For Looting Businesses Without Forming Private Equity Firm First https://theonion.com/protestors-criticized-for-looting-businesses-without-fo-1843735351/

There seems to be a lot of Labour cope going on on this website right now about @polphilpod.bsky.social's work on trans rights. So I'm gonna share it again www.liberalcurrents.com/the-end-of-t...

Past waves of automation have followed a script. Agriculture mechanized, got cheap, and shrank as a share of GDP, and value moved to manufacturing. Manufacturing automated and shrank, and value moved to services. Ben Moll and Alex Imas argue AI will follow that script rather than break it... 1/

“I should only pay taxes for things I use” is a fun precept to adopt after you’ve stopped using services that were funded by the full tax base — you would have needed to pay much much more when your kids were in school if seniors hadn’t been pitching in with property taxes back then!

It’s truly maddening. How much are houses worth in places with crumbling roads, tainted water, overgrown garbage strewn playgrounds, and shambling unschooled idiots?

The generation that got to buy cheap houses thanks to a postwar construction boom, then blocked new housing construction to juice their asset values is now whining that they have to pay taxes on their unearned wealth. Just breathtaking selfishness.

Ysabel Yates'... I mean Cookie Monster's superb takedown of why GenAI in the workplace sucks.

“Goody Two Shoes” by Adam Ant, 1982

Drove four hours to Milwaukee with my kid to hear an orchestra play the music of Undertale. My boy beamed and I learned a great deal about my culture. Then, as we were filing out in high spirits, the Brewers won and everybody cheered. I enjoy but do not begin to understand this world.

This David Bateman article on "democracy-reinforcing hardball" came out in Comparative Political Studies but here it is ungated (it's important) www.davidalexbateman.net/uploads/1/1/...

were the machines in fact close to human-level consciousness in the mid-1960s? if not, why were so many people so convinced that they were, and why are we now immune from whatever tendency drove that view?

Just gonna repost this: You can’t “prove” anything isn’t conscious — a plant, a rock, your iPhone — but even without deeply understanding the nature of consciousness, we can say there’s no good reason to expect it to correlate with what LLMs are good at. juliansanchez.substack.com/p/dont-fall-...

the problem with recommending anything because you bought it fifteen years ago and it’s lasted is thats no guarantee that the ones they’re selling today will because tricking you into overpaying for something that resembles a product that used to be good is one of the two business models now

New working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854

Harris PhD student Jacob Herbstman has an important working paper: The first I've seen to rigorously quantify the costs of aldermanic prerogative in Chicago. More stringent alders -> reduced permit activity and lower density, which means less housing supply and higher housing costs in Chicago.

yearly reminder to people insisting that we view Christopher Columbus as "a man of his time" that *the people responsible for the Spanish Inquisition* thought Columbus was out of pocket

This is as clearly as I've seen this spelled out. If the PCSA smelled off to you but you didn't know quite why, this interview offers very lucid proof that you were correct. defector.com/an-antitrust...

The mood is upbeat here in Iowa City thanks to Saturday’s miracle at The Big House and today’s Atlanta Hawkeyes gaffe.

So-called “inclusionary zoning,” the practice of requiring home builders to rent new apartments at a loss to low-income tenants, is a tax on new housing that worsens the housing shortage and raises rents overall in exchange for a handful of means-tested units. It’s bad policy!

Tennessee plans to execute a woman tomorrow. She was 18 when she committed the crime. She's now 50. Like most on death row, she's also a victim. And like most on death row, she's a far different person now than she was then. No one humanizes the condemned better than @lilianasegura.bsky.social.

"The 'economic issues not culture wars' frame adopted by much of the Democratic Party is entirely wrongheaded. It’s an example of intellectual dishonesty, moral cowardice, historical inaccuracy, and flawed electoral politics all wrapped together." newrepublic.com/article/2159...

Can’t wait for the steel factory we’re definitely getting!

I turned off Iowa-Michigan when Iowa was down with like 4 seconds left, sure the Hawkeyes had lost. What a pleasant surprise.

This is the master key to deciphering contemporary debates about free speech. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/se...