Nathan Tankus

Covet thy neighbors wife is about foreclosing on her for a debt

That Nazis got brought over to the U.S. to work on things was reported at the time but wasn't accorded the significance it would have later and thus it was forgotten until the documentary evidence reuncovered it and revealed the full scope.

I'm sorry but if you are a public commentator and your line in 2024 was like "pro-worker Republicans like Josh Hawley and JD Vance are building an interesting new labor-friendly lane for the second Trump administration" you are both dumb and dangerous and should retire

1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken.

Hundreds of kids are still detained.

We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵

Too early in my process to talk publicly, but happy to email/msg about it!

Hahaha our books are going to end up having opposite narratives, quite funny.

I also like the conflation between "he isn't doing it" and "you should trust he can't or won't do it".

Surprised too! Especially since its an event study follow up to, among other things, the Indonesia paper from Suresh I know you are familiar with.

Ferguson's "Betting on Hitler" paper is a very good starting point on this topic.

sites.stat.columbia.edu/gelman/stuff...

There was always support, the question is the extent of the support. Just as there was business support for Trump 1. The analogy is for the uptick of support in both cases, not overall business support.

Indentured Servants and The Domestic Economy - JSTOR Daily Many 18th-century households included not only relatives and slaves, but also indentured servants, people sold into bondage for a specified length of time.

So this was seen as requiring support for children more than anything else. "Slave support" and "child support" lawsuits have this common root. Wrote about this some here.

daily.jstor.org/indentured-s...

It connects to a bigger theme I've been interested in for a long time which is that instant manumission was seen as generally reflecting the neglect of slave owners rather than a respect for freedom on the theory that it must be motivated by avoiding caring for elderly/disabled enslaved people.

Not a correction! Just a nuance/detail.

I did a lot of research a decade ago on NY Slavery & want to mention that while the 1827 manumission deadline is true, the children of enslaved people were indentured to their masters & thus, theoretically, someone could have been in indentured because of their parents enslavement as late as 1848

An interesting thing that has come out of a side project I've been involved in is just how much Léon Blum was infamous as a socialist who supported Zionism and his "endorsement" was the endorsement among famous socialists that Jewish Antizionist socialists had to most frequently combat.

To compare, business willingness to support Hitler in 1932 and 1933 had Nazism's mass support as a basis, not as a drive of that mass support. While lending that support didn't put them in the driver's seat but instead collapsed the framework which made them so dominate before casting their lot in.

I just think its important to distinguish which one is the "Trumpism". I also think its important that this is in large part a rationalization in the face of the durability and depth of Trump's core support.

I'm not disagreeing that this is an important explanation of this fresh business support for Trump or that there is a convergence of interest here. Trump certainly has no problem with playing the role of crushing professional workers, certainly in the Civil service.

It seems to me that this isn't really a theory of Trumpism but a theory of Business support for Trump 2 that was missing from Trump 1.

Crazy story: A bank analyst published a report showing Kalshi users lose money even faster than sports gamblers, so Kalshi first tried to pressure the data provider to change their data and then accused them and the analyst of conspiring to extort them when that doesn’t work.

And so for a lot of people who have been immersed in that sort of work, it is dispiriting to be told that actually we should be deferring to him on questions of movement strategy now, even as he gained notoriety piggybacking on groundwork he didn't lay.

Extremely useful piece related to all this, focusing on the origins of the so-called "30% rule"

utoronto.scholaris.ca/server/api/c...

To anyone tempted to celebrate Noem's big announcement that ICE will use body cams and that it will be expanded nationwide as funding is available...

That's already been official ICE policy for over two years.
www.ice.gov/news/release....

Thanks! I don't think I've ever had food poisoning as bad as this. When you can't get any relief, my god. Only thing comparable I've experienced is a gallbladder attack (which was worse).

Hey man, for breakfast I need a white plastic container of 9 blueberries 4 strawberries, 2 blackberries and random other one off fruits to go along with my omelet and potatoes.

The heating in the pan point you made off hand I think makes it clear- what you are saying isn't about the labor theory of value at all but about an "all other things being equal" assessment of the production process. Which is totally valid! But not about the LtV.

What I am saying may make more sense if you follow the through line from the automat to fast food. But it doesn't exclusively apply to that.

I mean, it all depends on the production process. I only responded because you invoked the labor theory of value and I am a value theory nerd lol. If you hadn't brought up value theory I would have had no problem.

Then, of course, there is the question of pricing. I think this is more significant than the question of costs since the customer base of groceries versus restaurants is distinct (though overlapping). The contribution margins for restaurants are clearly far higher on average.

Taking the question of value theory out of it, the average direct cost (or total cost) of producing a meal varies by production technique and different production techniques can absolutely (and have at times) led to lower average direct costs (or total costs) for producing the "same" meal.