Aveek Bhattacharya

😲

... though I worry Amanda will make us move if I get another big kitchen implement

Do you not need to soak?!

Jarred are supposed to taste better (from a quick search because they don't pick up a tinny taste, and because they tend to have fewer preservatives etc added).

But I don't think I've ever used them - just do dried if I'm being fancy, canned for cheap and everyday

Reading about the Icelandic Constitutional Council, which had some...issues with working class representation

Ed Pemberton - A Question of Value: Raising Productivity by Lowering Inequality - Brave New Europe The focus on low productivity overlooks the crucial influence of inequality. Ed Pemberton, Doctoral Researcher, Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute Cross-posted from Sheffield Political Eco...

There's an important channel from frontier technologies like AI to the everyday economy via demand. If aggregate income growth is high that should influence prices and wages via Baumol mechanisms. But also if new technology increases inequality that could hurt these sectors

It's even worse than that: his writing has a breadth and interdisciplinarity that looks a lot like PPE! Could say he's a best case scenario

I agree with everything you say, and think it probably fits the "base case" (once a mgmt consultant...)

But I think it's possible that AI quality in at least some areas surpasses man made. What if it's less like clothes and more like car manufacturing? "Artisan" handmade cars would just be worse

Good thing I stopped being an extremely average management consultant about 10 years ago then!

"The future is not really my period" 😂

Sure

Can tax/state share of the economy rise enough? Do we Baumol all the way to communism?

2) Lots of people will prefer the cheap thing to the high quality thing. Hand made clothes are probably better, but how many jobs are there for tailors?

I think two things here: 1) you can't be sure that AI produced goods and services will be valued less than human - maybe, but if AI produces better business strategies, I'm not sentimentally going to keep paying consultants!

This should be "Lessons to Mull", surely @jamesmcenaney.bsky.social

Yeah, I'm sceptical of this sort of polling for just this reason (e.g. people think foreign aid is half the budget, they'd be cool with 10%, ergo aid is popular actually)

The lag is pretty standard for official statistics, but also very annoying!

Pretty strong case it has been Labour's most effective policy, politically

Wormald was tasked with "rewiring the state"...but nobody told him what they meant by that

Oof this is a brutal indictment of Starmer via @pronouncedalva.bsky.social

www.newstatesman.com/the-politics...

Shouldn't be a huge surprise, but turns out that if access to GLP-1s on the NHS is too restricted, the drugs are more likely to go to richer people who need them less

www.health.org.uk/reports-and-...

Could be Liverpool's slogan this season too!

I think this covers a lot of policy dilemmas: if you're going to properly confront the issue, you need to spend a lot of money and it's a gamble that might not achieve very much anyway, so are you willing to take the risk

And left bloc beats right bloc in every scenario, just about...though it's tight I'm a few

And b) that higher wages would encourage stronger attachment to jobs, and greater investment by firms in workers and workers in themselves. It's not implausible, but it is convenient.

Labour, particularly in opposition, had a tendency to resolve the cognitive dissonance in a politically convenient direction.

So in this case, there was a belief a) that a higher minimum wage nudges people towards higher productivity jobs and firms towards automation...

Think the real question is whether Brighton could have pushed on and speculated a bit more after 2022/23

By expected goal difference, Brighton are 10th this season. Last year they were...10th. Year before, 9th.

The middle of the pack has got a lot more congested, so it feels more tumultuous, but Brighton have been a league average side for a while now, doesn't seem like that much has changed

"You know what, a philosopher-king wouldn't be so bad"

*Monkey's paw finger curls*

I remember coming across this in the SMF archives and asking about it. What I was told: "The thing you've got to realise is that it was a different time, and Suella is... easily led"

www.smf.co.uk/publications...

I want to pedantically point out it was Tufton Street, but also I know that will make things worse

Read/Watched/Listened/Ate 7: February 2026

Things I enjoyed and/or found thought provoking, edition 7, featuring @keshavaguha.bsky.social @zonal-marking.bsky.social @soumayakeynes.ft.com

aveekbhattacharya.substack.com/p/readwatche...