Josh Hollinger

Sounds like a metaphor for American politics

New US curb on high-skill immigrant workers ignores evidence of its likely harms President Donald Trump on Friday ordered an unprecedented new restriction on lawful immigration to the US by high-skill workers. Starting Sunday, new applications for H-1B visas required payment of an...

NEW: If successful, the H-1B change would severely damage the most important channel for US entry by workers with advanced degrees & specialized knowledge, causing profound & widespread harm to Americans’ incomes & job opportunities.
By @mclem.org:

If you could design one offensive play for the Packers to use this week, what would it be?
Food question: what’s a food or drink recipe that you love even though it sounds terrible?

The argument is: We're all meant to sacrifice a bit, so that tariffs can help rebuild American manufacturing. Let's ask American manufacturers whether they're helping.

Opinion | Why Economists Are Worried About Trump’s B.L.S. Changes Most of us just accept that government economic data is the best possible estimate of the economy. That could change, and that would be bad for all of us.

I expand on why I--like just about every economist and wonk I know--believes that EJ Antoni is a terrible pick for BLS Commission.

Shout outs to Alan Cole, Stan Veuger and if more space would have called out dozens more. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/o...

Trump’s Pick to Lead Labor Data Agency Adds to Fears of Political Interference

Trump's firing of the BLS commissioner after a weak jobs report drew condemnation from economists across the political spectrum who were worried about the politicization of government data. His choice of replacement has only added to those concerns. #EconSky
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/b...

Cuts to Data Collection May Erode Reliability of Economic Statistics

Powell stressed today that the Fed's decisions will be based on how the economic data performs in coming months.
One problem: That data may be becoming less reliable.
My story on the BLS's latest cuts to CPI data collection:
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/b... #EconSky

If the Packers don’t win the Super Bowl this year, how would you want the season to go and how would you want it to end?

We were lucky enough to have our YouGov/The Economist poll in field when the US bombed Iranian nuclear facilities. You can see the partisan realignment in real time

Good point. It’s possible multiple equilibria exist though. Tenure is an entrenched norm, and trying to unilaterally deviate sends a weird signal in a way it wouldn’t if it didn’t exist. I imagine part of UF’s problem was the political undertone and uncertainty over how evals would be done.

Lastly, it’s worth noting (anecdotally), that it doesn’t seem like tenured profs are generally unmotivated… academia is still a dynamic hierarchy with social status and financial rewards, so UF’s approach probably just poisoned all the trees to try to kill a few bad apples.

It’s also possible that tenure is valued enough by profs (as insurance) and that tenure has sufficiently non-negative (or positive) selection effects, such that raising salaries enough to offset the utility of losing tenure would be prohibitively costly.

In theory, some combo of higher pay without tenure could lead to positive selection and higher productivity. The key parameter is how much profs value tenure (in $). Then the question for the university is how much they want to pay for higher productivity.

Besides the general equilibrium counterfactual of removing tenure at all universities, I think the other counterfactual worth considering is how much UF would have to increase salaries to offset the negative selection effect of removing tenure.

A few top profs got bonuses after their post-tenure evaluations, but mostly this is a clear decrease in the value of the total package offered at UF. So profs valued tenure protection, lost it, and some looked elsewhere, and the better ones had better outside options.

1. This shows profs value the stability of tenure protection
2. It shows it’s a bad idea for a university to unilaterally remove tenure (it’ll drive good profs away to places they can keep tenure)
3. It doesn’t prove that if ALL universities removed tenure productivity wouldn’t improve

This study finds that removing tenure protection (requiring performance review every five years) didn’t increase faculty productivity for tenured profs, but did drive away more productive profs (in retention and hiring).

A few comments:
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Note to Bernie: The 8 arguments for restoring the SALT deduction, and why they’re all wrong Far from seeking to restore the deduction, even if only in part, Congress should be moving towards its abolition.

www.brookings.edu/articles/not....

A reasonable counter argument is that there’s a natural bias towards lower taxes in state/local gov’ts because the rich will move to where taxes are lower (a race to the bottom), even if a higher level of revenue / service provision is optimal. The total effect of that channel is small though.

Pros of lower SALT cap:
1) SALT is itemized and based on state / local taxes paid, so capping this deduction raises taxes on the rich
2) It disproportionately affects places with higher taxes (NY, CA). This makes sense for the party in power. But it’s also just unfair to subsidize high-tax states.

The debate on who benefits from changes always has to be contextualized in an understanding of the status quo (a progressive tax system).

But if we want to tax the rich, we could maintain a lower cap on the SALT deduction… it’s also the only tax hike that makes political sense for Republicans.

Just making an official note-to-self prediction here for the end of 2025:
1) the federal government deficit won’t decrease (at least $1.9 trillion)
2) unemployment rate increases to at least 5%
3) inflation rate increases to at least 4%

i.e. economy gets worse

What is your favorite Packers thing you own and why?

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....

It’s very true that it’s more than money (like honor in this case), but it’s worth noting that playoff performance does come with big financial rewards in the future with subsequent contracts and endorsement deals. What is MJ’s net worth without 6 titles?

There’s a lot of overlap between political strategy centered on negotiation and political strategy centered on accumulating power.

Rand Paul: "The whole [tariffs] debate is so fundamentally backwards & upside down. It's based on a fallacy & the fallacy is this: that somehow in a trade, someone must lose. That somehow when you trade with someone, someone is taking advantage of you... I have a trade deficit with my grocery store"

The main effect of tariff insanity:

Uncertainty poisoning supply networks, degrading a lot of relationships at once.

That scar tissue will linger for a long time.

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Trump Calmly Reminds Nation That Desire The Root Of All Suffering WASHINGTON—Seeking to reassure the public after his latest tariffs sent both U.S. and international markets into free fall, President Donald Trump calmly reminded the nation Thursday that desire is th...

Liberation Day means freedom from access to goods and services and freedom from our consumeristic desires. Now that’s innovative economic policy.

I’m interested!