Neoliberal

Sir Keir Starmer will at least be pleased to have been first

"Ontario governments had reduced public grants for university operating revenues from about 80 percent in 1980 to around 50 percent in 2004 and to only 38 percent in 2017. Over this period, domestic and international tuition fees and miscellaneous fees paid by students jumped from 15 percent of operating funds in 1980 to 56 percent in 2017, to become the largest source of operating funds."
...
"Long before Ford, Ontario universities have pursued other avenues of privatization, particularly in ancillary services (internet technology, catering services, food courts, residences, conference venues, parking, merchandise, etc.). These turned many campuses into glorified platforms for landlordism, for contracting out, and for monopolistic forms of profit extraction. The current direction in privatization is to cut even more deeply into core education functions."
...
"The next phase of the Ford government university policy was dominated by the Laurentian University–Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act debacle, which revealed not only the government’s gross negligence in financial oversight but also a range of their anti-democratic education politics."
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"The Laurentian–CCAA process obtained for its supporters an unprecedented, radical downsizing and extraordinary corporate centralization of a public university—now sometimes called “the Laurentian model.”
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"Then, after the program closures and mass terminations were executed, the Ford conservatives moved in to reduce and replace Laurentian’s Board of Governors in their own narrowly corporatist image so as to ensure their ideology of downsized provision, top-down management, and “market-aligned” education would be carried through and maintained long term."
...
"By supporting the CCAA process, the Ford government enabled the Laurentian board to:
• break collective agreements and slash over 200 faculty and staff positions.

• eliminate seventy-six academic programs directly affecting over 932 students, mainly but not only in arts and basic sciences.

• destroy Huntington University, Thorneloe University, and the Université de Sudbury, three small federated universities that provided mostly arts programs and had been founding partners with Laurentian.

• cut the second oldest Indigenous studies program in Canada without any consultation with Indigenous communities

• cut a disproportionate number of programs vital to the Franco-Ontarian community, including the well-enrolled sage-femme / midwifery program

• wipe out individual and institutional donations to Laurentian for teaching and research

• end or disrupt research activities, including research with community and third-party obligations

• close important cultural and sports activities with destructive community effects

• and inflict massive reputational damage on the institution, including internationally.
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"It needs to be emphasized that the entire CCAA process was unnecessary, enormously costly, and could have been ended by the Ford government, which has instead supported it through to the present day."
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"Advocates for public university education face in the Ford government both deepened crisis conditions and a hardened neoliberal drive that seeks to reduce public funding while furthering privatization and corporatization. This is consistent with capitalist accumulation—not “stabilization”—including class streaming and forcing the costs of education onto working people"

Journalists are finding more readers and less hate on Bluesky than on the platform they used to know as Twitter.

How Quadratic Funding Could Finance Your Dreams | Kevin Owocki | TED

https://youtu.be/1GRt0j698T4

Quadratic funding is an economic mechanism that can help solve

1. Underfunded public goods
   - FOSS
   - News media and journalism
   - Art
2. Lobbying dominates electoral politics with various concentrations of wealth influencing elections and public policy in their interest
3. Markets ignore how broad the base of support is for a particular activity leading to inegalitarian results

@neoliberal

What economists don't know - Why industrial policy will disappoint

https://scottsumner.substack.com/p/what-economists-dont-know

@neoliberal

The discussion thread is for casual and off-topic conversation that doesn’t merit its own submission.

What do economists know? - When simple solutions are best

https://scottsumner.substack.com/p/what-do-economists-know

@neoliberal

American Feudalism - A liberalism that divides humanity into a master class and a slave class deserves an asterisk as “white liberalism.”

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/american-feudalism/

"Acquainting ourselves with the early black liberals ... reveals throughlines to modern liberal ideas that we have failed to appreciate, leaving those modern ideas prone to charges of inauthenticity and even illiberalism from more conservative wings of the liberal tradition."

@neoliberal

2024's spread is almost identical to 2020's. just without Florida(which was still considered a swing state then). 2016 was a broad year with something like a dozen states considered gettable, and a couple states that ended up flipping weren't even supposed to be swing states. 2012 only had a handful, I think even fewer than we have now, like 4 or 5. 2008 was another broad year.

Only way it can change is either if a swing state tilts hard enough to no longer be one(Michigan being too blue) , or a formerly safe state tilts enough to be up for grabs again(something like Virginia or Texas)

Washington — U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has made public a key filing from special counsel Jack Smith that includes evidence compiled in his investigation into former President Donald Trump's alleged efforts to subvert the transfer of presidential power after the 2020 election.

Libertarian Party has been gradually weakening and had a massive internal schism in 2022 leading to sections of the hardliners defecting to Trump and many of the moderates ending up with RFK Jr(who dropped out to endorse Trump). Nominee is a Left Libertarian and for reasons they weren't even listed as a third party candidate on most polls or polling conglomerates until September as they weren't in the Top 5 which further hurt their outreach.

Green Party has bounced back as they got Jill Stein's namecred and benefited from being above the Libertarians in the rankings thanks to RFK.

Constitution Party(hard right) has been bleeding support since the Obama era, most of them have been leaving for Tea Party Republicans and the remainder is being siphoned off by Peter Solski's Moderate Christian Party.

The PSL is the fastest growing third party right now, overtaking the Constituion Party in 2020 for 3rd place and set to potentially overtake the Greens and Libertarians if they continue infighting and bleeding support.

Cornel West exists.

Across both 538, RCP, and a few other reliable polling sites as of late the general overall trend is- North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona all go red, with the former weakening the most as it got the least investment. (his checks out as the third party balance nationally has shifted to be less hostile to Republicans. Get rid of third parties completely in 2020 for both sides partitioning the voters and Trump wins Georgia and Arizona then too)

Michigan has been very strongly blue, strongest in 2020 and second strongest in 2016(Nevada is slowly trending Red so ignore that). Wisconsin was super swingy the last two elections, having extremely bad polling and being the reddest of the rust belt both times. However, Tim Walz strengthens this state more than any other while losing Biden and not picking Shapiro weakens Pennsylvania more than most, so barring another massive upset it's going to be bluer than PA, solidly blue in most polls.

Nevada and Pennsylvania are the swingy states. Nevada has a slow weak red trend, Pennsylvania has had a ton of investment and stung from the Biden dropout. Nevada might have mattered in the Nebraska Law Change scenario, but without that it's worthless. Both have had tight polling for a while, albeit Nevada has more consistently leaned blue while Pennsylvania leaned red for a bit pre-debate.

Of course the polls could be wrong again. A 2022 style error and Democrats sweep the swing states and maybe pickup a pink state. A 2020 style error and everything not Michigan falls Red. 2016 level error means Michigan and Virginia too. But I don't see it happening. They've had two national elections to correct for Trump. They've had one big election post-Dobbs and several smaller ones to correct for that error(which was smaller than the Trump errors and made in the shadow of Post-2020 poll corrections). This is the first time both those factors are going head to head nationally and the pollsters have had a chance to weigh both of them. I don't expect badly wrong polls. But just a half a point off determines the election. Being dead on correct right now favors the democrats, but it didn't the day before the debate. It could go either way.