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David H Feldman

@dhfeldman.bsky.social

2.5K followers 660 following 2.9K posts

I write about the economics of higher education and international trade. Love New Mexico & cats. My books: https://academic.oup.com/book/7559 https://academic.oup.com/book/5108 Social media posts are my own views and do not reflect my employer.

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David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · Apr 15

Thank you to the Peterson Institute for International Economics (@piie.com), and to my coauthor Gary Hufbauer for allowing me my say on the Trump Administration's venal power grab in destroying the world's rules-based trading system.

www.piie.com/blogs/realti...

The world trading system is dying: You should fear its replacement

Too few Americans may understand what Canadian prime minister Mark Carney is talking about when he refers to a “system of global trade.” Too few may grasp what we are losing and what we are likely to ...

www.piie.com

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David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 1h

Sneaky reporter, maybe. We need more questions like that to show people just how uneducated Trump is about just about everything but how to grift.

David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 3h

He should not live, dine, or go, to any structure taller than two stories ...

David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 3h

A reason for the US to maintain sanctions against Cuba.

David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 4h

I'm thinking that a united and tenacious Republican opposition, supported by Congressional norms that the Democrats did not simply sweep away, may have contributed to the party's inability to enact its full policy agenda. That and a SCOTUS majority that often blocked them when they tried.

David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 5h

If the US hasn't gone completely authoritarian by 2029, and a Democrat occupies the White House, we're gonna fire every last one of them...

We have no need of ICE as a separate organization, and working for this ICE should disqualify all 20K employees from further work in the federal government.

David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 6h

2/ There is also an America, and it overlaps with the America First, that simply doesn't believe anything you say. They have different facts, many offered by people like Jesse Watters, and that's what they believe. That America doesn't care at all, and feels fine and smug about it.

David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 6h

I wish I could believe that there was some unified "America" that believed that, but I don't. There is an America that cares about global poverty and that believes we have a constructive role to play, but there is an America that averts its eyes and mutters platitudes about America First instead.

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David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 7h

Yep, you have pegged him in ways that I probably shouldn't ... at least not in public. 😉

Can you imagine what Tip O'Neill would have said about him?

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David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 22h

This is why a Democratic wave in 2026 is so important. They can only ooze contempt because they know that the Republicans in Congress are content to see GOP authoritarianism and executive rule by presidential decree.

David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 22h

3/ Michael Bloomberg has given three billion $$ to one small institution (Johns Hopkins) in recent years to make it need-blind for undergraduates and tuition free for medical students. Surely preserving independent national statistics is as useful to society as much the philanthropy done today.

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David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 22h

2/ Could a private organization produce credible statistics, not fully replicating what the BLS does, but credibly independent information about some of the most important things we want to know about the labor market and prices.

A $2B endowment would throw off roughly $100m per year.

David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 22h

Yes, another excellent point. But I'm going to continue spitballing for a bit.

What if the BLS does get degraded and/or turned into a house organ of the GOP, but the nation does not go full totalitarian of the Soviet sort where all truth and news is contained in Pravda and Izvestia.

David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 1d

Ahahhaaah! 🤣

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David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 1d

Russia's "open window" policy at work again.

If anyone knows where any of the bodies are buried or has any dirty information about Putin then they had better have a plan to evacuate to Sweden before the next open window trips them up ...

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...

Publisher of famous Soviet newspaper Pravda falls to his death

The secretive head of Pravda publishing house, Vyacheslav Leontyev, 87, plunged 70ft from his home in western Moscow .

www.dailymail.co.uk

David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 1d

Tuberville wins the "Tuberville Award" for the week. The award was named after the Alabama senator and it celebrates the most inane thing a politician in DC said during the prior week.

Sen. Tuberville remains the single most frequent recipient of his namesake award ...

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David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 1d

That’s a good point. But, it does presume that the same sorts of statistics couldn’t be collected at lower cost by a private nonprofit agency. 😉

David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 1d

2/ ... made up of a group drawn from the nation's best social scientists. Its employee base could replicate the non-partisan expertise we currently find in federal statistical agencies that heretofore have been havens of excellence devoted to factual documentation of the economy.

David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 1d

Could independence AND adequate funding be meshed if someone endowed a private non-profit to replicate the statistical collection and reporting that agencies like the BLS currently do? Such a non-profit could be chartered to be independent of the donor, with a private non-partisan oversight board

David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 1d

Are planes still landing? Are we just in "maintain visual separation" mode?

David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 1d

2/ One thing I can't quite figure out about this fake citation stuff. One should never put a citation into a paper unless something specific about that article winds up in your paper. One should never simply dump lots of parenthetical citations into your work just to pretend you've read stuff.

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David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 1d

Is there a systematic way to search to see if someone has hallucinated a citation to an article you did not write?

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David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 1d

Because he seems to be the actual president? They roll out the elected president occasionally so he can utter demented word salad to serve Miller's agenda, like perverting the US military, including its officers, and debasing it in the eyes of progressives and moderates in order to foment civil war.

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David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 2d

He sounds far worse than anyone's crackpot uncle bloviating at the dinner table, and nobody would have been content to see uncle so-and-so with the power to give commands affecting millions of peoples' lives.

David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 2d

At what point does the governor of Oregon call out his own guard to protect peaceful citizens on the streets of Portland?

David H Feldman @dhfeldman.bsky.social · 2d

3/ shredded in making stuff "free."

This is where the fiscal costs are, but they are less than making tuition zero for everyone.

Retains benefit of targeting (less cost) while reducing complexity for students and families, especially 1st generation students who don't fully understand the process.