Thomas Masterson
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thomasmasterson.bsky.social
Thomas Masterson
@thomasmasterson.bsky.social

Senior Scholar and Director of Graduate Programs at Levy Economics Institute of Bard College

Economics 23%
Political science 16%

Reposted by Thomas Masterson

Well, we got six nice days.

Reposted by Thomas Masterson

Not once does this @politico.com piece mention that CPI is near the highest of Trump’s term.

www.politico.com/news/2025/11...
straight-up jury nullification. this guy did it, confessed to it, and the jury instructions explicitly said that if he did it intentionally, it was assault.

Reposted by Thomas Masterson

“Critics dismiss this as pie-in-the-sky socialism. But what they’re really objecting to is more fundamental: the idea that democratic governments should guarantee people’s basic needs, even if it means intervening in markets”
Our latest working paper from Levy President @ptcherneva.bsky.social traces the "enshittification" (Doctorow)) of the modern labor market and how the postwar promise of full employment turned into a trap of precarity and debt

The Job Guarantee could be the answer.

levyinstitute.org/publications...
All 6 Branches Of Armed Forces Present At Arrest Of Undocumented Nanny
All 6 Branches Of Armed Forces Present At Arrest Of Undocumented Nanny
BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI—In what they described as a collaborative effort to share resources and information in defense of U.S. territory, Pentagon officials confirmed Monday that all six branches of the ...
theonion.com

Reposted by Thomas Masterson

The first "Disturbance" of November! Tune in for new material from vibraphonist Yuhan Su, DJ Nicola Conte, composer/arranger Zhengtao Pan, and trumpeter/multi-instrumentalist Nicholas Payton.

www.jazzfluxus.com/episodes

*photo creds/ALT
Welp — @davidhogg.bsky.social to Scott Jennings: "People are tired of being lectured by men with Rolexes on CNN about affordability in this country. That’s why Zohran is resonating."

Reposted by Thomas Masterson

Why do we pay so much for healthcare? Hint, it's not Obamacare deanbaker22.substack.com/p/why-is-hea...
Why Is Healthcare Expensive?
It's the Costly Trinity: Drugs, Insurers, and Doctors
deanbaker22.substack.com
Trump did on 60 Minutes what he does every time. He spews a blizzard of lies, exaggerations and assorted other falsehoods, and if (as usual) the reporter isn’t equipped or doesn’t bother to push back, he keeps going.

Here is a detailed list, via @mehdirhasan.bsky.social

zeteo.com/p/factchecki...
It doesn’t matter what I think. Also, none of this would ever happen. But if I had a zillion dollars:

1. Run a “we do hard things” campaign across southern and rust belt states. Invest heavily in local, state and regional social infrastructure. Sponser later hours at a library, build a skate park…
If I were to sum up my advice to the Democratic party leadership about how to defeat Trumpism, it would be to set aside policy for now and focus instead on articulating a vision of what American society should look like and what role the US should play in a rapidly changing world today.

Reposted by Thomas Masterson

The goal post will always be moved.

When your parents used to say, "you gotta be twice as good to get half as much...." it never stopped being true.

I dont wanna hear about meritocracy or "DEI."

Reposted by Thomas Masterson

This Day in Labor History: November 1, 1879. The Carlisle Indian School opened in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. This school, central to the genocidal project to end Native American culture in the late nineteenth century, was replicated across the nation. Work was central to the genocidal project!

Reposted by Thomas Masterson

SCOOP: The Trump administration acknowledged they don’t know the identities of the people they’re killing; can’t meet the evidentiary burden to prosecute survivors; and consider those survivors to be “unprivileged belligerents." theintercept.com/2025/10/31/t...
Trump Administration Admits It Doesn’t Know Who Exactly It’s Killing in Boat Strikes
Officials acknowledged they don’t know the identities of the people they’re killing and can’t meet the evidentiary burden to prosecute survivors.
theintercept.com

Great conference with a lot of great ideas for infusing macroeconomics theory and practice with gender analysis. Check out the other two plenary sessions as well, featuring former Levy Scholars, research associates and attendees at our gender workshops over the years.
Levy Scholar Ajit Zacharias joined leading feminist economists on Day 2 of Gendering Macroeconomics during the 29th Annual FMM Research Conference—a milestone event advancing gender-aware approaches in heterodox economics.

Watch now: youtube.com/watch?v=9CCR...
29th FMM Conference: Gendering Macroeconomics Day 2
YouTube video by Hans-Böckler-Stiftung
youtube.com
I love how Rep. Joe Neguse reframed this question.
Trump trashes Obamacare in a new post. Funding under this law is the main dispute between the two parties in the ongoing government shutdown standoff.
The Jewish right discovering in real time that the Trumpist right, and the open bigotries it has unleashed upon the US body politic, is not in fact going to spare Jews, is quite a trip.
Yesterday, Institute President Pavlina Tcherneva (@ptcherneva.bsky.social) delivered the keynote at the CIRIEC International & Bordeaux GSEF 2025 conferences—highlighting global successes of the job guarantee and the social and solidarity economy movement.

www.levyinstitute.org/news_items/p...
President Pavlina R. Tcherneva Delivers Keynote at CIRIEC International and Bordeaux GSEF 2025 Conferences – Levy Economics Institute of Bard College
Institute President Pavlina R. Tcherneva delivered the joint keynote address at the CIRIEC International and Bordeaux GSEF 2025 conferences, bringing together leading voices from across the global soc...
www.levyinstitute.org

Reposted by Thomas Masterson

Levy Scholar Ajit Zacharias joined leading feminist economists on Day 2 of Gendering Macroeconomics during the 29th Annual FMM Research Conference—a milestone event advancing gender-aware approaches in heterodox economics.

Watch now: youtube.com/watch?v=9CCR...
29th FMM Conference: Gendering Macroeconomics Day 2
YouTube video by Hans-Böckler-Stiftung
youtube.com
Opinion: Full of faux bravado, Trump's Border Patrol turned a children's Halloween parade in Chicago into chaos, tossing tear gas canisters without warning.
Judge tells faux-tough-guy Border Patrol chief not to tear-gas trick-or-treaters | Opinion
Full of faux bravado, Trump's Border Patrol turned a children's Halloween parade in Chicago into chaos, tossing tear gas canisters without warning.
bit.ly
Under Trump, the draconian future of homelessness policy is coming into focus: mass internment. Utah is building a 16-acre site to detain up to 1,300 homeless people inside locked "accountability centers." This is profoundly alarming.

Vital reporting from @ellenbarry.bsky.social and Jason DeParle:
In Utah, Trump’s Vision for Homelessness Begins to Take Shape
www.nytimes.com
A Nazi Tattoo Exposes Democrats’ Greatest Weakness www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/o...

@tressiemcphd.bsky.social is unmatched. Read her latest piece—and everything else she writes.

Reposted by Thomas Masterson

I assumed this had to be AI.

It is not AI.

It's like concept design for Neil Patrick Harris at the end of Starship Troopers that Verhoeven rejected for being too on-the-nose.
"Kids dressed in halloween costumes walking to a parade" do not present an immediate threat to law enforcement officer and riot control measures may not be used, Ellis says.

Reposted by Thomas Masterson

I have been asked from time to time this year if I have any thoughts about the New York mayoral election. I have one and only one thought about it. danieldrezner.substack.com/p/my-one-ver...
My One Very Important Thought About the New York Mayoral Race
Drezner to New York: Drop Dead!
danieldrezner.substack.com

Reposted by Thomas Masterson

It’s cool that I need to figure out how to organize a food bank at my kid’s school because Donald Trump is a hobbyist child molester and dissolved Congress so he could keep people from talking about it
Trump: AOC is low IQ. If you give her an IQ test, have her pass like the exams that I decided to take when I was at Walter Reed. Those are very hard…

The first couple of questions are easy. A tiger, an elephant, a giraffe..
okay grandpa, let's get you to bed
BREAKING—40 million set to lose food aid next week after Trump USDA says it refuses use emergency funds for food stamps. www.axios.com/2025/10/24/g...
Exclusive: USDA says it won't use emergency funds for food stamps
States also won't be reimbursed if they cover SNAP expenses on their own, the memo says.
www.axios.com