We need to understand misinformation & disinformation as systems, not just individual actions. An economy of false information.

[this thread continues from what I posted last night, about some of the most prominent South African misinfo posters]

When I started teaching courses on false information systems a few years ago at Wits, I made a point to look at it systemically: there are producers of information, distribution channels/platforms, and audiences (which can also distribute/reshare content).

To try and understand the types of false information, I also felt it was important to look at the intention/motivation of the producers of the false info. What motivated them? Money? Notoriety? Political agenda? (all of these types are in play)

It's NB to understand motive of the false info maker so you can effectively disrupt or correct their false and/or harmful information. A guy in it for clicks/fame requires different strategy to a paid actor or propagandist – although both messages/content may be the same

What we're seeing with Covid-19 misinfo is that the content created and shared by deniers is effectively the same as the conspiracy theories shared by lobbies that are anti-government, anti-media, or who blame Soros etc. This is not an accident, although original motives diverge

Income by race converged at the greatest rate between 1940 and 1970.

However, as of 2018, Black/white income disparities were almost exactly the same as they were in 1968, 50 years

Although clear majorities supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a national poll conducted shortly after its passage showed that 68% of Americans wanted moderation in its enforcement.

In fact, many felt that LBJ was moving too fast in implementing integration.

On the heels of Reconstruction came a period that Southerners called “redemption,” a violent project to restore white hegemony.

Redemption coincided with the vast upheaval of industrialization and urbanization, when the United States more broadly plunged into the Gilded Age.

But as the century turned and the Gilded Age gave way to the Progressive Era, a diverse group of reformers grabbed the reins of history and set a course toward greater economic equality, political bipartisanship, social cohesion and cultural communitarianism.

Some six decades later all of those upward trends reversed, setting the United States on a downward course that has brought us to the multifaceted national crisis in which we find ourselves today, which bears a remarkable resemblance to the Gilded Age.

1/25
Patrick Byrne, former CEO of Overstock. com & he’s served in executive leadership over several other large companies in the tech & manufacturing industries.

2/25
He is a Constitution-loving registered Libertarian and who has helped the FBI fight the rampant corruption on Wall Street. He says, “I knew what the Bad Guys were going to do this Election and I had a reason to know that there was something big coming, that I won’t go into

3/25
right now.” While the Democrats and the Mainstream Media have been claiming that there is “no evidence of widespread fraud” during the 2020 Elections, this is because they refuse to investigate the matter or report on it.

4/25
In fact, Tucker Carlson turned Patrick Byrne away, when Sidney Powell recommended he interview him. That’s why Byrne decided to make a spate of appearances on Independent Media, such as on Black Conservative Patriot and on The Pete Santilli Show.

5/25
- 2018 DALLAS ELECTIONS FRAUD -
In November of 2018, the Dallas elections, which were run on Dominion systems had encountered irregularities, so Texas’ state government had hired a cybersecurity firm to figure out and explore these irregularities.

Happy #JobsDay. 8:30 ET @BLS_gov delivers the most-important signals abt how economy is changing.

Forecasts' center:
+432,000 jobs
6.8% unemployment, tick down from 6.9%

But lots of reason to expect weaker jobs growth.

+245K jobs gained last month (mid-Oct to mid-Nov).

Small +11K revisions of last 2 months.

This continues the deceleration of job growth we seen steadily for months.

We are down 9.8 million jobs since Feb and growth is decelerating, likely to turn negative over the current month.

For comparison, during the Great Recession, we lost fewer than 9 million jobs.

We lost 9.19 million jobs over the last 12 months.

We gained 245K last month (0.2 million). This is half the growth rate over the last 3 months and an eight of the growth rate over the last 6 months.

Deceleration is clear.

In response to my posts supporting repeal of Section 230 (https://t.co/ceZZWXyzi6 and https://t.co/af0rjlGTVF) I have a number of people give me horror stories about bad post-repeals hypotheticals (thread)

Let me say that none of these hypoetheticals sound that bad to me (I couldn't care less if Substack goes under -- sorry to all the Substackers out there), but let me give a hypothetical horror story allowed by Section 230

Imagine that some right-winger bought tens of millions of dollars worth of ads on Facebook, with a doctored photo, showing your favorite politician, activist, writer, academic etc, doing the the most disgusting thing imagineable

The target of these ads would of course have the right to sue the person who paid for the ads for defamation.

Suppose that "person" was the XYZ corporation, whose existence is a post office box in Lincoln, Nebraska, registered to John Doe.

1/💩ton

OK we have text of the new Stimulus bill... combined w/ a WHOLE lot of other legislation.

In all the PDF version of the full bill clocks in at 5593 pages. Can be found: https://t.co/RwPOMZ5b7d

Buckle up. This is gonna be a LONG ride!

2/x

But before we dive into the bill, a quick note from my soap box… This whole process is absurd. They JUST released a 5k+ page bill, and they are going to vote on it TODAY.

They aren't even pretending to have time to read what they're voting on anymore.

*Steps off soap box*

3/x

Ok... on to the meat. Let's start by answering the question that so many are already asking... “Will I be getting another #stimulus check?”

The answer, like last time, is “Maybe.”

Notably, the maximum stimulus amount per person this time around is $600.

4/x

Under the CARES Act, adults got $1,200 for themselves, and $500 for children as a ‘base amount.’ This time, it’s $600 for each person.

So, for instance, a single filer w/ no kids starts w/ base of $600. Family of five, like this👇starts w/ a base amount of $600 x 5 = $3k

5/x

But those amounts" will be reduced once income exceeds the following thresholds:

Single: $75,000
Joint: $150,000
HOH: $112,500

As was the case under the CARES Act, the ‘base’ stimulus check will phase out by $5 for every $100 a taxpayer is over their applicable threshold.

November 2020 US NPD THREAD - November 2020 consumer spending across video game hardware, content and accessories reached a November record $7.0 billion, 35% higher when compared to a year ago. YTD spending totaled $44.5 billion, 22% higher than the same time period in 2019.

US NPD HW - Consumers spent a November record $1.4 billion on new video game hardware, an increase of 58% versus YA. Growth was driven by the launches of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series. Year-to-date hardware spending reached $4.0 billion, 34% higher than a year ago.

US NPD HW - PlayStation 5 was November's best-selling hardware platform in consumer spending, while Nintendo Switch led the market in units sold.

US NPD HW - PlayStation 5 achieved the highest launch month unit and dollar sales for a video game hardware platform in U.S. history. The records were previously held by the PlayStation 4, which debuted in November 2013.

US NPD HW - Nintendo Switch has been the best-selling hardware platform in units sold for a record 24 consecutive months.

These are 10 of my favourite #UrbanEconomics articles published in 2020, in alphabetical order by author, continuing with a tradition from the last couple of years

1) @TrebAllen, Arkolakis & Takahashi, JPE. Shows key theoretical properties & predictions of large class of trade/geography gravity models depend on 2 parameters: elasticities of supply and demand. Proposes IV estimation strategy relying on GE structure

2) Ambrus, Field & @rmgonzalez046, AER. 1854 London: prices fell in blocks served by well transmitting cholera. Differences persist. Model: tenants change as contracts expire, -ve externality of poor tenants, shock makes landlords persistently target poor

3) @kon_buechel & @maxvehrlich, JUE. More sociable individuals sort into cities. Even after accounting for sorting, those in denser areas call each other more often & longer, suggesting complementarity between face-to-face and phone interactions

4) @CarozziFelipe, JEEA. Shows how credit constraints affect composition of housing sales & access to home-ownership by the young. Neat model of housing markets as ladders with young in cheap units, possibly trading up as they age, post-2008 UK evidence

1/10 - It's 5:52 in the morning, and I am revisiting decades-old thoughts about race, class, and privilege; about "Line" and "Staff" jobs and who tended to get each in the civilian Federal workplace from which I retired; ...

2/10 - ... about EEO, Diversity, "avoiding the appearance of impropriety" in assigning salary ranges to different classes of hard and sometimes dirty work, and the extent to which these salaries and classes seem "Stamped from the Beginning," to use a phrase from @DrIbram.

3/10 - These ideas and thoughts woke me up from sound sleep and had their seeds in a dream on a recurring theme I was having: I was back in my Federal Civilian office job, and we were once again wrestling with reorganization because it was moving our duties out from under us

4/10 - I have these kinds of dreams because of, I think, my disposition, which according to the way my Federal @DeptofDefense workforce management wanted to divide up the work to be done, made me a tough person to fit . . and possibly to promote.

5/10 - I had no desire to do anything but the fascinating technical work for which I was hired and, later, for which I boosted my productivity tenfold by cross-training. This came at a price, but also raised in my mind questions about that price.

Here is a list of Philosophy of Economics courses offered at different universities and their syllabi. These are the ones I could find via Google Search. If you are teaching PhilEcon and your syllabus is available online, please reply to this thread with its link. Thank you.

Matthias Brinkmann - Philosophy of Economics - University of Virginia - Fall 2018

Patricia Marino - Special Topics: Philosophy of Economics - University of Waterloo - Department of Philosophy - Winter 2014

Kevin Zollman - Philosophy of Economics - Carnegie Mellon University - Spring 2013

Kevin Hoover - The Philosophy and Methodology of Economics - Duke University - Spring 2014

What you need to know about Nigeria’s Petroleum Industry Bill.

Crude oil dominates Nigeria’s economy, accounting for around 90% of export earnings. #NigeriaNeedsPIB

The country has the largest oil and gas reserves in sub-Saharan Africa with an estimated 37bn barrels of oil and 188 trillion cubic feet of gas. #NigeriaNeedsPIB

Yet for decades, the virtually ungovernable industry has been plagued by poor leadership, eye-watering corruption and environmental degradation. #NigeriaNeedsPIB

Value has leached away through opaque licensing deals, unaccountable middlemen, a lack of refining capacity and graft in the government and state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). #NigeriaNeedsPIB

Sabotage and pipeline theft in the oil-rich Niger Delta have ensured that the taxpayer loses out on billions of dollars in annual revenues. #NigeriaNeedsPIB

Payrolls in November rose a mere +245k. That's the sort of number you might see in a "normal" month, and definitely not what you're hoping for in the snapback from a covid-induced shutdown.

THE RECOVERY IS STALLING.

Remember, the economy lost 22 million jobs, then gained roughly half of them back.

We still have 10 million fewer jobs than we did in February. Clawing the rest back at +245k per month will take basically forever. If this is the second half of the recovery, it's going to be grim

The dramatic ups and downs of recent months might hide the real story here: The economy is in a deep hole -- as deep as in the darkest days following the financial crisis -- and the recovery is faltering. Barely there. Making no progress. Stalled. Stopped.

The proximate causes of our slowing economy are obvious:
The virus is back, which hobbles the service sector, and stimulus has basically petered out, leaving the economy with little help. It doesn't have to be this way.

The household survey suggests that employment actually declined (by -74k) last month. So the fall in unemployment from 6.9% to 6.7% largely reflect the fact that an additional 400k people dropped out of the labor force.