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Ben Ansell

Ben Ansell

@benansell.bsky.social

31K followers 1K following 7.4K posts

Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions, Nuffield & University of Oxford, FBA. http://benansell.substack.com. BBC Reith Lecturer 2023. Host BBC Radio 4 Rethink. Columnist for Prospect. Director, Centre for Advanced Social Science Methods (CASSM). .. more

Ben W. Ansell is Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Nuffield College, University of Oxford and, with David Samuels, editor of Comparative Political Studies.

Source: Wikipedia

Political science 47%

Economics 40%

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 8h

An actual supply side reform

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 9h

The Claude-code-pilling of Bluesky

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 9h

Now there, the person who you are subtweeting achieved all those goals easily when themselves in charge of government <finger to ear> what’s that I’m hearing?

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 9h

Need money to do that though. Or Claude code I suppose

Reposted by Ben H. Ansell

YouGov @yougov.co.uk · 9h

With Nigel Farage claiming it was a "load of nonsense" workers were more productive at home, Britons are divided on whether people who WFH are more or less productive

More productive: 32%
Neither: 26%
Less productive: 31%

yougov.co.uk/topics/econo...

Reposted by Ben H. Ansell

Alexander Brown @alexofbrown.bsky.social · 10h

Turns out The Times gave an interview promoting the content of a far-right neo-Nazi
www.channel4.com/news/unmaske...

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 10h

The answer to this is to edit in a journal in your 40s so that when you think the journals are broken and stupid you have to point at yourself in the mirror.

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 10h

BRB just recommending a Weierstrass function to Rachel Reeves

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weierst...

Weierstrass function - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 10h

They should have let us just run the Treasury two decades ago Stephen

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 10h

New Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Just Dropped

Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · 1d

The White House just sent a "Don't Panic" email. That'll do it

Don’t Be a Panican. We’re Winning — and We’re Not Slowing Down.

Under President Donald J. Trump’s leadership, this Administration is smashing through the chaos and destruction left by Democrats and unleashing the most aggressive pursuit of the America First agenda in history. While the Fake News and Radical Left collude to distract, depress, and divide, they’re simply lying to mask the undeniable truth: America is safer, stronger, richer, and more secure than at any point in decades.

Don’t take the bait. New victories pour in daily as President Trump delivers on his promises and rebuilds the foundation for long-term success in the greatest nation on Earth.

Here are a few things to celebrate from just the past few days:

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 10h

Posting on Bluesky before Bluesky existed would be peak Bluesky

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 10h

The £12 of freedom

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 10h

Should have written Big Differentiable Function - curses

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 10h

Yeh but where to get started on that ;)

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 10h

I think you would probably need to do a switcheroo at 100k, taking away loss of personal allowance but increasing the marginal rate (and perhaps again that at 125k too) rather than for anyone under 100k (say at £90k) who would then be a net loser.

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 10h

I'm with Juan - I actually don't think people mind the steady levels of marginal tax rates (although I agree they create mini-cliffs). I think there is something to be said for heuristics here.

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 10h

Yeh I think that keeping mental calculations and comparisons simple is worth the small cliff edges. The weird ones (for student loan repayments, loss of child care, loss of personal allowance) are the ones to turf out

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 10h

Brought to you by the Big Continuous Function lobby

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 10h

Creating a labour supply cliff edge at £100k is a great way of having doctors, senior managers, high paid professionals etc engage in lots of salary sacrifice or withdraw labour rather than just the pay the exchequer a standard and high proportion all the way up, as you rightly note

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 10h

And we tax incomes much more than we tax property, perhaps accordingly...

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 10h

This is all true but I think the bigger issue is that a normal house in Blackpool might still be ten times incomes in Blackpool. So the problem that what seems to people to be 'reasonable' house prices versus 'reasonable' salaries is out of whack everywhere.

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 11h

I am comfortable with the idea that the press can be annoying but the source of most political success or failure is in the hands of politicians themselves

Reposted by Ben H. Ansell, Tim Bale, Stephen Jones

Tom Roberts @tpgroberts.bsky.social · 11h

Right, but if you strip out the hyperbole it's just "the public are angry about the cost of living, immigration and the NHS and don't particularly understand any of them" which, sure, but what do I do with that?

Robert Shrimsley @robertshrimsley.bsky.social · 13h

You may not like it, but strip out the hyperbole and abuse and it's quite hard to argue with this Cummings asssessment of the public mood

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 12h

I suppose the government’s policy for the past five years has been to use wage inflation as a tax raising device.

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 12h

Even John McDonnell would shiver at a 62% tax rate at £50k

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 12h

Beginning to wonder if British public realise that £100,000 and £1m are measured on the same scale

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 12h

Obviously it’s not been changed because no one cries for the £100k earner but as you say it’s totally mad and as inflation has increased it will affect more and more people.

Reposted by Ben H. Ansell

ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 12h

The tweet that said ‘Britain is a strange place where people think 100k is a high salary but £1m is a normal price for a family home’ lives rent free in my head forever. Pretty clearly is something psychological about it that the boundaries haven’t moved despite v large inflation since then.

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 12h

Perhaps Darling suddenly just made £100k on promotion and this was Brown’s revenge

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 12h

There something quite magical about how crossing the £100k income threshold has all these myriad of negative shocks. It’s a bit like cleaning your room by throwing everything under the bed. Oh, we’ll just make the numbers add up by stopping everything at exactly £100k…