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JW Mason

@jwmason.bsky.social

15K followers 2.8K following 5.3K posts

Associate professor of economics, John Jay College-CUNY, senior fellow at the Groundwork Collaborative. Blog and other writing: jwmason.org. Study economics with me: https://johnjayeconomics.org. Anti-war Keynesian, liberal socialist, Brooklyn dad.

johnjayeconomics.org.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 9d

Coming this spring. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Against Money

A powerful deconstruction of humanity’s most influential invention, from the acclaimed economists J. W. Mason and Arjun Jayadev. Money is unavoidably fundamental to our daily lives. It lurks behind ...

press.uchicago.edu

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 9h

Unless you’re Tharsis, cities aren’t necessarily that great, imo.

JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 9h

Terraforming Mars.

JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 9h

Honestly this is one that almost everyone who plays modern boardgames has played. Now if I’d posted a picture of Inis, say….

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 9h

If nothing else, at least we are living in the golden age of board games.

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Reposted by JW Mason

Amanda Katz @katzish.bsky.social · 1d

The Antifa’s Daughter. I can see the cover now — it’s a woman’s head seen from the back with her fist raised in front of a burning skyline

JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 1d

I’m going to be very disappointed if my local bookstore doesn’t have a novel called “The Girlfriend of Antifa” out on its front display table sometime next year. Or it could be a short story collection.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 1d

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 1d

What’s the objection to LFI?

JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 1d

nope! (tho the two senses overlap in this case)

JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 1d

Just checked - I have 36 tabs open at the moment. But that’s low, I went through and closed a bunch just recently.

Dom White @domw.bsky.social · 1d

I don’t understand how it’s possible to have fewer than, say, 20 tabs open at all times.

There are just too many things on the internet that I’ll definitely get around to reading at some point!

YouGov @yougov.co.uk · 1d

How many browsing tabs do you typically have open?*

1: 6%
2-5: 54%
6-10: 14%
11-20: 8%
21-30: 2%
More than 30: 3%

*across all windows, on desktop/laptop

yougov.co.uk/topics/techn...

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 1d

A dumb gotcha from a right winger tells us nothing about the validity of liberal (not a pejorative!) arguments for taking race and gender into account in various contexts.

JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 1d

I am genuinely a bit puzzled that this they have not done this.

Alan Mygatt-Tauber @amtappeals.bsky.social · 1d

Every time a GOP Senator blames the shutdown on Democrats, a reporter should ask why they don’t just eliminate the filibuster for budget bills, like they just did for block confirmations.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 1d

I recommend deleting this.

JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 1d

Settled gains for personal liberty and equality were reversed, substantive democracy was rolled back while keeping the formal electoral process unchanged, and racial resentment and an idealized past were used to mobilize a broad constituency for a program that directly benefited only a small elite.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 1d

Well obviously. Any solution to this problem will come from us, not the authorities.

JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 1d

This is one of the hardest to acknowledge truths in American politics.

ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 1d

he probably doesn't! most American police forces are some combo of rogue paramilitary and criminal gangster conspiracy! but that's all the more reason to start standing up some loyal formations bsky.app/profile/kitc...

kitconway.bsky.social @kitconway.bsky.social · 1d

Pritzker seems to be semi waving the white flag on that and acting like he doesn't control his state police. Hope he reconsiders.

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Reposted by JW Mason

Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 1d

Perhaps not the main point but I always hate it when people view it as a sign of failure when poorer countries grow faster. There is absolutely no intrinsic reason why Poland should have lower income than the UK or any other EU country forever, and that means it will have to grow faster sometimes

Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 1d

"15 years ago, Polish workers came here to find opportunity. Now Poland is growing twice as fast as we are," says Kemi Badenoch.

Any ideas what may have happened in the interim?

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 1d

When I was trying to come up with historical precedents in these threads last spring, the most salient element of the regime seemed to be Musk and DOGE. But looking at the situation now, there's a more obvious and closer to home precedent: the end of Reconstruction.

JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · Feb 5

A couple more precedents to think about.

JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · Feb 5

Thinking about historical parallels. People talk about coups and autogolpes, the fascist seizure of power in the 1930s, and there are resemblances. But there are other models we could think about.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 1d

Here’s one noteworthy datapoint on the substantive content of Trumpism. on.ft.com/4o83lvj

The US is demanding the EU water down parts of its green legislation just months after agreeing a tariff pact to avoid an all-out transatlantic trade war.

According to a US government position paper seen by the Financial Times, Washington has asked Brussels to scrap requirements for non-EU companies to provide “climate transition plans”.

It has also demanded that the bloc change environmental legislation on supply chains to exclude US companies and others from “countries with high-quality corporate due diligence”.

The move is part of a wider bid by Washington to push countries, financial institutions and businesses to roll back their climate change policies, using international forums ranging from the World Bank to stock market regulators.

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Reposted by JW Mason

Merijn ´Anti-fascist/Antifa´ Knibbe @merijnknibbe.bsky.social · 2d

About this:
A) Austerity led to HUGE declines in participation and employment
B) These people could have worked, increasing GDP and taxes -> lowering deficits and debt
C) Employment in Greece is STILL lower
D) This also led to the permanent shrinking of Greece. Outmigration. They won´t come back.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 2d

Obviously one can't generalize too much. but I think it's fair to say that very few enlightenment thinkers thought of themselves as expressing some deep-rooted tradition of Christian Europe. Quite the opposite, they were writing against deep-rooted tradition, in the name of universal human reason.

JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 2d

The common feature is the line they draw between people who have rights and are subject to law, and bodies that can be freely coerced or killed.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 2d

Well yes, all of which happened in intense, often violent, opposition to the established governments and religion of "the West". The sort of people who use the term now would have been on the other side.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 2d

Whenever I see something talking about "The West," I mentally substitute "The White Nations" or "Christendom".

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Reposted by JW Mason

Laura Tanenbaum @ltanenbaum.bsky.social · 2d

In case anyone needs a refresher when talking about "normie liberals" Schumer=evil and not a liberal; your mom with a ukelele is good

Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 2d

Shoutout to the Boomers, really showing everybody else up in 2025

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 2d

I'm at the faculty senate meeting where we discuss attacks on academic freedom. I'm at the faculty senate meeting where we discuss the looming budget crisis. I'm at the combination attacks on academic freedom and looming budget crisis.

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