Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Karthik Manickam @karthikmanickam.bsky.social · Jul 7

Really important piece by @tghilarducci.bsky.social on the politicisation of the SSA!

Teresa Ghilarducci @tghilarducci.bsky.social · Jul 7

Social Security's new chief sent out a partisan, misleading email celebrating Trump’s unpopular “Big, Beautiful Bill.” It falsely claims tax relief for seniors—when in fact, the bill doesn’t touch Social Security taxes and could actually lead to cuts. Read more here
www.forbes.com/sites/teresa...

New Social Security Commissioner Politicizes The Trusted Agency

trends and policies are happening to Social Security that suggests the agency is becoming more politicized

www.forbes.com

Reposted by Karthik Manickam

Surbhi Kesar @surbhikesar.bsky.social · Jun 28

How do we make sense of the many transitions across employment arrangements in India’s labour market?

New in World Development, @rosaabraham.bsky.social & I study the trajectories that characterise Indian labour market, & identify 7 dominant ones. What do they look like? 🧵

x.com/surbhikesar/...

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Karthik Manickam @karthikmanickam.bsky.social · Jun 25

How Your Neighborhood Voted in the NYC Mayoral Election www.thecity.nyc/2025/06/24/m...

Fantastic data tool by a great set of journalists!

How Your Neighborhood Voted in the NYC Mayoral Election

Check out this map to see which candidates got the most first-round votes in every election district in New York City.

www.thecity.nyc

Reposted by Karthik Manickam

Richard Kim @richardkimnyc.bsky.social · Jun 25

Is it tho???

🤔🤔🤔🤔

www.thecity.nyc/2025/06/24/m...

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Reposted by Karthik Manickam

Teresa Ghilarducci @tghilarducci.bsky.social · Jun 11

We stand by our use of relative poverty measures—an international standard vital for assessing poverty in wealthy nations. They highlight the struggles older Americans face that absolute metrics miss; crucial for a fair discussion on elder poverty.

www.economicpolicyresearch.org/resource-lib...

Lowballing Elder Poverty: Who Counts As “Poor” In America? - The New School SCEPA

Relative senior poverty levels are more than double the official U.S. rate. Issue Brief | Official U.S. poverty rates significantly undercount America’s elderly poor. According to internationally-reco...

www.economicpolicyresearch.org

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Karthik Manickam @karthikmanickam.bsky.social · Jun 7

Resharing this article on changes that have been made to the SSA in the first quarter of the year, in light of today's Supreme Court ruling on DOGE access to SSA data.

www.economicpolicyresearch.org/resource-lib...

Trump Can Rebuild Trust in Social Security By Reversing Layoffs and Office Closures Before it's Too Late - The New School SCEPA

by Teresa Ghilarducci and the SCEPA Team | April 2 2025 This policy note is part of SCEPA’s “Tracking the Retirement Crisis” series Elevator Pitch: In just eight weeks, the trust that Social Security ...

www.economicpolicyresearch.org

Reposted by Karthik Manickam

Teresa Ghilarducci @tghilarducci.bsky.social · Jun 5

Two things the senate can do right now to save Social Security

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Karthik Manickam @karthikmanickam.bsky.social · Jun 1

Really exciting volume of HET articles edited by @alexmthomas.bsky.social for the Review of Development and Change!

journals.sagepub.com/toc/rdca/30/...

Review of Development and Change - Volume 30, Number 1_suppl

Table of contents for Review of Development and Change, 30, 1_suppl

journals.sagepub.com

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Karthik Manickam @karthikmanickam.bsky.social · May 30

Really important series on older Americans and debt, featuring a small soundbite by yours truly!

Teresa Ghilarducci @tghilarducci.bsky.social · May 29

"The assumption is that student debt is an issue for younger people, but it's increasingly become an issue for older people," says New School's @karthikmanickam.bsky.social The squeeze is tightening now that collections on defaulted student loans has resumed.
www.nextavenue.org/student-loan...

Student Loan Debt Haunts Many Retirees

The Trump Administration has resumed collections on defaulted student loans for the first time in five years; older borrowers are most vulnerable

www.nextavenue.org

Reposted by Karthik Manickam

Teresa Ghilarducci @tghilarducci.bsky.social · May 9

SCEPA published a new policy note, "America’s Retirement Crisis Hits a Breaking Point" as part of our "Tracking the Retirement Crisis" series.

www.economicpolicyresearch.org/resource-lib...

America’s Retirement Crisis Hits a Breaking Point - The New School SCEPA

Retirement security in the United States is at a critical turning point. As the Baby Boomer generation ages, the nation now has more retirement-age individuals—and more households relying on Social Se...

www.economicpolicyresearch.org

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Karthik Manickam @karthikmanickam.bsky.social · Apr 3

Really important series by the SCEPA team documenting the timeline and the extent of changes made to the Social Security Administration in the first quarter of 2025, and what its implications could be for benefits payments!

#SSA #SocialSecurity #Retirement #Economics

tinyurl.com/4v3mch58

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Reposted by Karthik Manickam

Erin Simmons @erinsimmons.bsky.social · Mar 31

@karthikmanickam.bsky.social & I are researching @SCEPA the impact of student debt on retirement & compiling NYC resources for people seeking support!
If you know great community orgs/center/person doing this work, esp with older NYers, pls share!
#SocialSecurity #NYC #Debt #StudentDebt #retirement

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Karthik Manickam @karthikmanickam.bsky.social · Mar 20

Fantastic new paper by @prachibansal.bsky.social and co that discusses the distributional effects of inflation volatility in India!

prachibansal.bsky.social @prachibansal.bsky.social · Mar 16

New Paper Alert! 🚨 Inflation Inequality in India 🚨

Our study (2015-2023) shows that the poor face higher inflation volatility than the rich.
Published in @epw_in
#Inflation #Inequality #India #EconomicPolicy

www.epw.in/journal/2025...

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Reposted by Karthik Manickam

Monique Morrissey @moniquemorrissey.bsky.social · Mar 18

Former SSA Economist David Weaver writes about how DOGE attacks on federal workforce disproportionately impact veterans.
www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/202...

With 1.6M Vets In Federal Workforce, DOGE Oversight Is Needed

The federal workforce is an important part of the American labor force, with an estimated 3 million individuals employed directly by federal agencies and 5.22 million individuals w

www.realclearmarkets.com

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Reposted by Karthik Manickam

Haroon Akram-Lodhi @ahakram-lodhi.bsky.social · Mar 17

The ever-excellent Sanjay Reddy on why we all need to care about the efforts to dismantle academic freedom in US universities

indianexpress.com/article/opin...

Why the world – and India – needs to care about the attacks on American universities

The detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a student at Columbia University who was prominent in leading protests against Israeli actions in Gaza, marks an inflexion point. At stake is the very existence of a f...

indianexpress.com

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Reposted by Karthik Manickam

Rachael Sirianni, PhD @docsirianni.bsky.social · Mar 15

This is horrible to post, but I may as well post it. We are essentially shutting down research operations in my group, which is focused on treatments for pediatric brain cancer. I’m a well funded investigator, and there’s no choice. Science can’t function without the stability of NIH

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Reposted by Karthik Manickam

Isabella M. Weber @isabellamweber.bsky.social · Mar 16

Kalecki (1943): Political Aspects of Full Employment

Reads like a comment on the great reversal in common sense on fiscal policy among German economists

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Reposted by Karthik Manickam

Monique Morrissey @moniquemorrissey.bsky.social · Mar 16

Social Security clawed back benefits from a very alive "dead" man. This could be a random error, but in the first Trump administration these purges were anything but random. Here's what Daniel Costa and I wrote at the time. www.epi.org/blog/cleanin...

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Reposted by Karthik Manickam

Teresa Ghilarducci @tghilarducci.bsky.social · Mar 12

TNS Economist Rick McGahey quoted in the @nytimes.com “This is what authoritarians do — manipulate public policy and control it with personal decisions and seemingly idiosyncratic decisions, often to get or push for political support in return.”
www.nytimes.com/2025/03/10/b...

Trump Has Said ‘No Exceptions’ to His Tariffs. Will That Last?

His administration has acknowledged that exceptions undercut the power of tariffs, but it seems hard for the president to resist making deals.

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Karthik Manickam

Monique Morrissey @moniquemorrissey.bsky.social · Mar 10

@joshbivens-econ.bsky.social channeling @delong in 2022: If Tesla sold all the cars bought in the US by the end of the next decade & made a per-car profit 10x that of GM, Ford & Fiat-Chrysler then that would be enough to justify its current stock valuation. www.epi.org/publication/...

CEO pay has skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978: CEOs were paid 399 times as much as a typical worker in 2021

What this report finds: Corporate boards running America’s largest public firms are giving top executives outsize compensation packages that have grown much faster than the stock market and the pay of...

www.epi.org

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Reposted by Karthik Manickam

ProPublica @propublica.org · Mar 10

Tuberculosis, the deadliest infectious disease on the planet, kills more than 1.25M people a year. New infections are expected to surge by 30% as a result of closing USAID, a memo says. The increase will inevitably lead to cases in the U.S.

Internal Memos: Senior USAID Leaders Warned Trump Appointees of Hundreds of Thousands of Deaths From Closing Agency

One million children will go untreated for severe malnutrition, up to 166,000 people will die from malaria and 200,000 more children will be paralyzed by polio over the next decade, the memos…

propub.li

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Reposted by Karthik Manickam

Monique Morrissey @moniquemorrissey.bsky.social · Mar 7

@itpi.bsky.social has an updated resource guide for anyone needing to get up to speed quickly on the effects of privatization, including school vouchers.
inthepublicinterest.org

Home - In the Public Interest

In the Public Interest is a national nonprofit research and policy organization that studies public goods and services.

inthepublicinterest.org

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Reposted by Karthik Manickam

David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · Mar 6

NEW: The Social Security Administration is cutting staff. Field offices will be affected. The same thing happened in the 80s, when 21% of field office jobs were cut. And a new research paper finds that it resulted in 80,000 eligible Americans not getting earned benefits.
prospect.org/health/2025-...

How Social Security Administration Cuts Affect You

A timely research paper looking at SSA staff cuts in the 1980s found that it led to tens of thousands of Americans not getting their earned benefits.

prospect.org

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Reposted by Karthik Manickam

PERI Umass Amherst @periumass.bsky.social · Mar 6

Professor Prabhat Patnaik: "The Crisis of Neo-Liberalism and Its Sequel." Join us on March 11 at 4pm ET. In person at UMass Amherst or via Zoom. Visit: peri.umass.edu/event/7176/ for more info.

Professor Prabhat Patnaik: The Crisis of Neo-Liberalism and Its Sequel

Join us on March 11 at 4pm ET. In person at UMass Amherst or via Zoom. Visit: https://peri.umass.edu/event/7176/ for more info.

peri.umass.edu

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Reposted by Karthik Manickam

Haroon Akram-Lodhi @ahakram-lodhi.bsky.social · Feb 25

The US-funded Demographic and Health Surveys, without doubt the single most reliable data source for umpteen countries in the global South, received a termination email last night.

In the future this may well be viewed as a crime against humanity

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