Tom Clark

Musk, Zuck & Bezos as the new Robber Barons

A story of money, power, and the bending of rules & truth in two ages

By @davidsonofaaron.bsky.social in @prospectmagazine.co.uk

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/united...

A sickening society is clear in these statistics

So why is it not in the news?

Powerful wake-up call from @chakrabortty.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Busting the trusts!

Terrific long view & contemporary reporting from @philtinline.bsky.social

Timely economics in the age of the Tech bros

And for progressive politics a way to reintroduce some, well, politics into the conversation

There’s a minor sub-plot to all the law stuff you discuss within 80s academic economics… did you ever come across “perfect contestability theory”? Idea is you can have all the benefits of perfect competition with no actual competition. Monopolies adequately kept on toes by purely potential rivals!

I really did!

Busting the trusts!

Terrific long view & contemporary reporting from @philtinline.bsky.social

Timely economics in the age of the Tech bros

And for progressive politics a way to reintroduce some, well, politics into the conversation

The literally chilling & scarcely appreciated flipside of climate change

Brilliant piece

2016 Vs 2026

BTW here’s the Case & Deaton ref I ran out of space to embed earlier in the 🧵

www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

Don’t get me wrong, there will be a v complex mix of causes

But the link with poverty is profound & becoming more so

Healthy eating & cooking etc harder when stressed & broke

Here’s the trends in middle-age mortality since 1990

UK is the dark green where deaths of both men & women stop getting rarer & start becoming more common during 2010s

Average of peer countries = purple

Source: academic.oup.com/ije/article/...

All these trends would, presumably, be even starker if we could compare life expectancy between more & less prosperous individuals rather than just across poorer & richer localities

Case & Deaton famously compared the death certificates of more & less educated individuals in US, revealing a chasm

Covid deaths by poverty of postcode from ONS, with dark blue bars the most deprived

Poverty was itself, in the parlance of that time, an “underlying condition”

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...

Look again at the recent decline & how concentrated it was in poorer postcodes — where people already died much earlier

Yes Covid was part of the picture, but official stats show that its toll was also far heavier among men in poorer postcodes

I’m adding posts to thread on Covid

ONS stats pointed specifically to women in poorer postcodes dying earlier than before by the later 2010s

Of course the pandemic colours early 2020s data

But what’s beyond doubt is something that always used to go up began to stall before Covid hit — as this long view chart shows

Is “healthy life expectancy” a bit subjective?

Could we just be self-diagnosing more, & deeming ourselves unhealthy?

Sadly, a glance at trends in actual life expectancy (roughly: the age people die) dispels that comforting thought

A sickening society is clear in these statistics

So why is it not in the news?

Powerful wake-up call from @chakrabortty.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

But is “healthy life expectancy” just subjective?

Are we just more inclined to self-diagnose & deem ourselves unhealthy?

Looking at actual life expectancy (roughly the age people die?) rather puts paid to that cheery thought

This is a reasonable Q to ask about the “healthy life expectancy” stats @chakrabortty.bsky.social quotes

But any idea that it’s all explained by subjective tendency to class ourselves sick more readily is a bit hard to square with this — the actual life expectancy stats

The poisoning of the wells Why discrediting election results without waiting for due process is unhealthy for a democracy

A timely warning from @davidallengreen.bsky.social

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/th...

Reminds one of the essay often attributed to Orwell: “Shooting a Wirehaired Pointer”

Yep, but I think he would prob have been spooked by this use?

Orwellian

📰 Prospect’s latest issue hits newsstands today! Here’s a peek at what’s inside... 1/7

For the cover essay, @davidsonofaaron.bsky.social considers the parallels between today’s tech bros and the robber barons of yesteryear:
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/united...

Learnt lots sitting up late with @resolutionfoundation.org after the Chancellor’s statement

Despite weak growth she’s had strong receipts

& had spent half her good luck before global conflict overtook her numbers

Full analysis here

www.resolutionfoundation.org/app/uploads/...

Unwelcome line from OBR

"Net additions to the UK housing stock are expected to fall from an average of 260k/yr in the early 2020s to a low of 220k in 2026-27, as recent subdued housing starts feed through"

(OK, so then big uptick to 305k by 2030-31 due to planning dereg, but 30-31 = post-GE)

Live commentary on Chancellor's speech coming up. Expect to be told some version of "the plan is working" with themes on stable public finances, growth and cost of living. More unusually for only about 20 minutes!

By 49% to 28%, Britons are opposed to the US military action against Iran

Net support by 2024 vote
Reform: +33
Con: +14
Lab: -45
Lib Dem: -49
Green: -59

yougov.com/en-gb/daily-...

World politics already rippling back into British politics in potentially important ways