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Reposted by Betsey Stevenson

Jameel Jaffer @jameeljaffer.bsky.social · 5d

Don’t believe anyone who tells you that intelligence shows anything “without a doubt,” but even if the intelligence was water-tight, this strike was still murder. No law permits the deliberate, premeditated killing of civilians.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · Aug 13

Cities with violent crime rates higher than DC:
Memphis, Tennessee
Houston, Texas
Nashville, Tennessee
Evansville, Indiana
Peoria, Illinois
Toleda, Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio
St Louis, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri
Springfield, Missouri
Little Rock, Arkansas
for more:
usafacts.org/articles/how...

Which cities have the highest and lowest crime rates? | USAFacts

Crime rates stayed constant from 2020 to 2021, but national crime data remains incomplete with about 37% of law enforcement agencies not reporting data last year.

usafacts.org

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · Aug 12

I understand why Trump wants a command and control economy with him at the center. What is confusing to me is why the entire Republican party is so willing to walk so far from a competitive, market-based economy.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · Aug 12

If the concern was really around accuracy why did the Trump administration dismiss the **uncompensated** Technical Advisory Committee and the Data Users Advisory Committee, which gave guidance on statistical methodology and specialized economic expertise?

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · Aug 12

There were 159,539,000 jobs in July. The fears about accuracy refer to the possibility that it was actually 159,439,000 or 159,639,000. Don't get me wrong, I like accurate numbers more than most people, but still: the data is pretty darn good and suspending the data is corrupt.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · Aug 12

One easy way to hide rising unemployment, slowing job growth, and rising prices would be to pause the data release for a few months in the name of "accuracy" and then release it with new definitions a few months later that make it incomparable to the past.

MSNBC Reports @msnbcreports.msnbc.com · Aug 12

President Trump says he is nominating E.J. Antoni to be the new Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner. Antoni has been a critic of the agency in the past.

@betseystevenson.bsky.social, @pbump.com and Gillian Tett join Katy Tur to share their insights.
www.msnbc.com/katy-tur/wat...

Why Trump tapping a BLS skeptic to lead the agency is ‘just a very bad idea’

President Trump says he is nominating E.J. Antoni to be the new Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner. Antoni has been a critic of the agency in the past. Former Chief Economist of the U.S. Departme...

www.msnbc.com

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · Jul 10

The Fed can't be dovish or hawkish right now, they have to be doggish--data doggish that is. nytimes.com/2025/07/02/b...

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · Jul 9

And I am puzzled why, at the dawn of artificial general intelligence, we are knee-capping ourselves, giving our international competitors a fighting chance at beating us in the AI game.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · Jul 9

What I worry about is whether these tariffs cost us American service jobs--all of the workers involved in business and professional services that support companies that import goods. Fewer goods sold mean fewer business services needed.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · Jul 9

American is a service-based economy: Let's take a look at job growth in private sector goods and services over the past 75 years. Spoiler: it's almost all in services. We are not going to even make a dent in this trend. In fact, we may push it further.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · Jul 9

Tariffs are not going to mean that we have more goods-producing jobs in the US. What they will do is change the relative price of goods versus services, pushing Americans to buy fewer goods relative to services. If you are worried about American overconsumption of stuff, then hooray! 🧵

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · Jul 1

The United States GDP per capita is 20 times great than it was at the start of the Guilded Age. And yet so many in power remain just as insensitive, greedy, and detached from the realities of poverty and suffering. Imagine getting that much richer and not using any of it on empathy.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · Jun 27

This fun, creative contest seriously highlights how hard the entire Planet Money team works to communicate economics in a way that both educates and entertains.

NPR's Planet Money @planetmoney.bsky.social · Jun 26

Three Planet Money hosts throw down in our latest edition of Econ Battle Zone. Their challenge – to elucidate the fight over the federal budget, while incorporating their mystery ingredients: rhyme, music, and the genre of romantic comedy.

buff.ly/zjhaaYo

npr.org

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · Jun 26

The public needs to hear this over and over again: work requirements are not about getting Medicaid recipients to work. It’s about increasing the administrative burdens and costs in the system to push both recipients and the program itself to the breaking point.

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · Jun 26

This is a crucial point about why work requirements are doomed to fail: they place new administrative burdens not just on the public, but also on state governments, while removing resources.
No reason that people normally skeptical about govt capacity should be confident it can pull this off.

You may say, these are growing pains. But anyone who is ordinarily skeptical of the government should not suspend their powers of reason when it comes to policies that send messages that they like. This bill cuts the resources for states while piling new demands on them: linking data systems, overhauling workflows, rewriting forms, standing up call centers, hiring auditors, managing appeals, and more. And implementation must happen in just 18 months. Baked into H.R. 1’s DNA is a future of failure.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · May 16

You might be getting bored of tariff talk but the rubber is going to hit the road in the coming months as price increases hit. Walmart tells investors that it's raising prices later this month. And inflation expectations have shot up a shocking amount in the Michigan consumer survey released today.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · May 16

If they really wanted to incentivize work, they would require married stay-at-home moms to work. The second earner effect is their best chance for a work requirement to influence work at all. There is no first earner impact.

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · May 15

This is just not true. The majority view among researchers at this point is that work requirements do not work. There is a reason they do not cite a single study here.

The good news is that history shows us that work requirements work.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton and the speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, joined forces to enact bipartisan welfare reform with a work requirement at the heart of it. The results were astounding. As early as 1997, economists attributed a measurable increase in the national labor force participation rate and a decrease in dependency to welfare reform. That reform — combined with a strong economy and expanded tax credits for low-income workers — led to a steady decrease in rates of child poverty in the late 1990s. Today, the share of kids living in poverty is a quarter lower than it was in 1996. The 1996 welfare reform was so successful that Barack Obama, when he ran for president in 2008, admitted that he had been wrong about it.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · May 16

Walmart might not raise every price by the amount of the tariff, but they aren't going to let their profitability suffer. Their shareholders demand profit maximization and that means passing along tariffs to the fullest extent possible without losing too many sales.

Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · May 16

On @allinwithchris.bsky.social @chrislhayes.bsky.social asked me why tariffs will raise prices if a higher minimum wage doesn't always lead to higher prices.

The answer: People are not things. They respond to a change in their compensation, a sippy cup doesn't.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · May 16

On @allinwithchris.bsky.social @chrislhayes.bsky.social asked me why tariffs will raise prices if a higher minimum wage doesn't always lead to higher prices.

The answer: People are not things. They respond to a change in their compensation, a sippy cup doesn't.

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Reposted by Betsey Stevenson

Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · May 16

It's true. President Trump is forcing economists to rewrite their textbooks. #TeachEcon @betseystevenson.bsky.social

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · May 16

Thank you!

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · May 16

Thank you!

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · May 16

Thank you!

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · May 16

And now Walmart is telling us definitely higher prices in June. Just because there aren’t problems in the hard data yet, doesn’t mean that they aren’t forecastably coming.

Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · May 7

My concern is that we'll see a weaker employment report in June and July, of course the labor market was strong in April. That report measured the weak after liberation day and despite the shock of Trump's tariffs, employers aren't going to shed workers that quickly.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · May 7

My concern is that we'll see a weaker employment report in June and July, of course the labor market was strong in April. That report measured the weak after liberation day and despite the shock of Trump's tariffs, employers aren't going to shed workers that quickly.

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Betsey Stevenson @betseystevenson.bsky.social · May 7

I didn't post my NBC Fed preview before the press conference. Luckily my preview was exactly what they did and said.

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