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Joe Thorndike @joethorndike.bsky.social · 25d

Exactly. That whole article is full of dubious characterizations and half-facts. Really terrible.

Joe Thorndike @joethorndike.bsky.social · 25d

Politico: “gas prices have fallen to levels not seen in decades.”

Really? I’d like to see the data behind this claim.

apple.news/AYXYDcb5tT3W...

Trump is selling a strong economy. Voters aren’t buying it. — POLITICO

Privately, aides concede voters remain uneasy about prices but argue their policies are beginning to turn things around.

apple.news

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Joe Thorndike @joethorndike.bsky.social · Aug 29

I think this is probably wrong. As I argued here: www.taxnotes.com/tax-history-...

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Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · Aug 26

A careful study of every populist episode since 1900 finds catastrophic consequences, which play out slowly.

On average, incomes fall behind by nearly 15% over 15 years.

For the U.S., this is a cost of about $13k per person per year. Over a lifetime, that's million bucks.

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Reposted by Joe Thorndike

Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · Aug 20

today I am loving the UN Geneva Archives platform which hosts the complete League of Nations archives, digitised, entirely free

some archive digitisation programs are very clunky & hard to use, this is immaculate & has an incredibly user friendly interface + excellent metadata

archives.ungeneva.org

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Joe Thorndike @joethorndike.bsky.social · Aug 19

I have a similar reaction to AI used for non-math functions. In history, for instance, it’s great for summarizing arguments and evidence — as long as the accuracy and reliability of those summaries aren’t important.

Super useful, for sure. Turns all of us from writers into fact checkers.

Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · Aug 19

Good thing no one uses Microsoft Excel for anything related to legal, regulatory or compliance business functions

www.theverge.com/news/761338/...

Microsoft Excel adds Copilot Al to help ...
theverge.com
The Verget-4.1-mini Al model | 5
successor to the LABS.GENERATIVEAI function Microsoft started experimenting
with in 2023.
Microsoft notes that you can combine its new Al function with other Excel functions, including IF, SWITCH, LAMBDA, or WRAPROWS. The company adds that information sent through Excel's COPILOT function is "never" used for AI training, as "the input remains confidential and is used solely to generate your requested output."
The COPILOT function comes with a couple of limitations, as it can't access information outside your spreadsheet, and you can only use it to calculate 100 functions every 10 minutes. Microsoft also warns against using the AI function for numerical calculations or in “high-stakes scenarios” with legal, regulatory, and compliance implications, as COPILOT "can
give incorrect responses."
Copy Share Select all Web search Dictionary
...

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Joe Thorndike @joethorndike.bsky.social · Aug 19

History suggests that tariff revenue won’t be so hard to quit.

Tax Notes @taxnotes.com · Aug 18

"Tariffs are raising a lot of revenue these days," @joethorndike.bsky.social writes. "And depending on how you feel about regressive taxes that boost prices, slow growth, and raise unemployment, that might be a problem."

Tariff Revenue May Be Hard To Quit, But We’ve Done It Before

Joseph Thorndike overviews 125 years of tariff history throughout which politicians have abandoned productive taxes and tariffs that seemed unfair, unwise, or unpopular.

www.forbes.com

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Joe Brusuelas @joebrusuelas.bsky.social · Aug 14

So much for foreigners paying tariffs. If they did PPI would be falling. Wholesale prices up 3.3% from a year ago & 3.7% in the core. The temperature is definitely rising in the core. This implies a hot PCE reading lies ahead.

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Joe Thorndike @joethorndike.bsky.social · Aug 8

A ChatGPT fail for the historians out there

Joe Thorndike @joethorndike.bsky.social · Aug 8

I think the word “finalized” might be part of the problem here.

The New York Times @nytimes.com · Aug 8

Tensions have been mounting between the U.S. and Japan as both sides appear to have starkly different interpretations of a trade deal finalized last month.

Japan Says Trump to Correct ‘Extremely Regrettable’ Error in Tariff Order

Tensions have been mounting between the United States and Japan as both sides appear to have starkly different interpretations of a trade deal finalized last month.

nyti.ms

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Joe Thorndike @joethorndike.bsky.social · Aug 5

Ronald Reagan: “A creative, competitive America is the answer to a changing world, not trade wars that would close doors, create greater barriers, and destroy millions of jobs...We should always remember: Protectionism is destructionism.”

www.forbes.com/sites/taxnot...

Ronald Reagan Would Have Hated Trump’s Tariffs

Joseph J. Thorndike contrasts Ronald Reagan’s approach to international trade with the tariff policy of the Trump administration.

www.forbes.com

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Joe Thorndike @joethorndike.bsky.social · Aug 4

Ronald Reagan Would Have Hated Trump’s Tariffs

www.taxnotes.com/featured-ana...

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Reposted by Joe Thorndike

Dean Baker @deanbaker13.bsky.social · Aug 4

The New York Times told us the Democrats lost the last election because people hate inflation, but now they are telling us that they can't score political points by promising to bring prices down by getting rid of the Trump tariffs substack.com/home/post/p-...

Remember When the Democrats Lost the Election Because People Hate Inflation? The New York Times Doesn’t

As usual, the New York Times gets things exactly wrong in a piece headlined “Trump’s Tariffs are Making Money.

substack.com

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Joe Thorndike @joethorndike.bsky.social · Aug 3

A good point. And pretty much the same argument that made income taxes popular in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Dean Baker @deanbaker13.bsky.social · Aug 3

NYT gets it backward www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/b.... Tariff revenue means Democrats can promise a big tax cut, paid for by taxes on the rich.

Trump’s Tariffs Are Making Money. That May Make Them Hard to Quit.

www.nytimes.com

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Joe Thorndike @joethorndike.bsky.social · Aug 3

Did anyone seriously think that corporate America would just eat the tariffs forever? That's not how companies work. (Or tariffs, FWIW.)
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/02/b...

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Joe Thorndike @joethorndike.bsky.social · Aug 3

They were hard to quit in the late 19th/early 20th century too. And yet they managed. (They were that unpopular and ultimately inadequate too)

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Joe Thorndike @joethorndike.bsky.social · Aug 3

And … we’ve incrementally quit revenue-producing corporate income taxes over a few decades, embracing the idea that cuts will encourage growth (not saying it’s true, just saying). Presumably we could justify cuts to revenue-producing tariffs with similar growth arguments.

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Joe Thorndike @joethorndike.bsky.social · Aug 3

Plus, “analysts expect the tariffs to weigh on the performance of the economy overall, which in turn could reduce the amount of traditional income tax revenue the government collects every year.”

So maybe easier to quit. Maybe tariff cuts will even pay for themselves!

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Joe Thorndike @joethorndike.bsky.social · Aug 3

Tariffs were hard to quit in the late 19th and early 20th century, too. And yet they managed.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/b...

Trump’s Tariffs Are Making Money. That May Make Them Hard to Quit.

www.nytimes.com

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Joe Thorndike @joethorndike.bsky.social · Aug 2

These doom scenario predictions about AI would be more convincing if they weren’t so obviously designed as clickbait.

www.inc.com/bruce-crumle...

These 40 Jobs May Be Replaced by AI. These 40 Probably Won't

A new Microsoft report ranks 80 professions by their risk of being replaced by AI tools. Microsoft study identified jobs most, and least affected by AI.

www.inc.com

Joe Thorndike @joethorndike.bsky.social · Aug 2

Most regular folks hate bureaucracy but they also like (or at least depend on) institutions, even if they don’t know it.

Arin Dube @arindube.bsky.social · Aug 2

Most regular folks don't wake up worrying about institutions. They have more immediate concerns.

But once you live through a period when core institutions fail, you start paying attention, and historical memory is rebuilt for a time.

We're going through one of those moments now.

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Joe Thorndike @joethorndike.bsky.social · Jul 29

My only question is why these points don’t get made in most other news coverage. (This goes for pretty much all the credulous coverage of Trump’s announced deals.)

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Joe Thorndike @joethorndike.bsky.social · Jul 22

“The move to reduce these so-called hallucinations is seen as crucial to increase the use of AI tools across industries such as law and health, which require accurate information…”

I’m curious about the industries where accuracy is irrelevant.

Financial Times @financialtimes.com · Jul 22

The ‘hallucinations’ that haunt AI: why chatbots struggle to tell the truth https://on.ft.com/4lGGXZn

The ‘hallucinations’ that haunt AI: why chatbots struggle to tell the truth

Tech groups step up efforts to reduce fabricated responses but eliminating them appears impossible

on.ft.com

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Joe Thorndike @joethorndike.bsky.social · Jul 3

The 2017 tax bill was bad for Republican politicians. The 2025 law could easily be worse.

www.taxnotes.com/featured-ana...

Grim Polls for the GOP Budget Bill | Tax Notes

Joseph J. Thorndike examines the results of several polls that report voter support of and opposition to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

www.taxnotes.com

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Joe Thorndike @joethorndike.bsky.social · Jul 3

Not sure I buy these predictions, but if they’re even partly right, this will be a transformative political event.

CEOs Start Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud: AI Will Wipe Out Jobs - The Wall Street Journal