I enjoy reading Sam Harris, and I'd like to subscribe to him on Substack, but $25/month is too much for the five to eight articles I will read of his each month.
I enjoy reading Sam Harris, and I'd like to subscribe to him on Substack, but $25/month is too much for the five to eight articles I will read of his each month.
Is the $25 for the full length podcasts and the substack or just the substack?
Edit:- According to his website, its $150 a year for everything, so $12 a month.
I enjoy reading Sam Harris, and I'd like to subscribe to him on Substack, but $25/month is too much for the five to eight articles I will read of his each month.
Yeah, I wish more Substack content creators would get together and create sites like The Bulwark.
The Bulwark is great value because for $10 a month you get access to multiple daily newsletters from different commentators and also video podcasts.
Compared to that, it doesn't look like good value to pay $25/month to Sam Harris or some other single author who only posts once a day.
If a site like The Bulwark offers good value, then it will get a huge number of sign-ups, and be able to pay authors well, and I think the total revenue for a lot of authors might be the same as that from their own personal stand-alone substack.
Frank Luntz @FrankLuntz · 3h While it’s not new or illegal for Customs to detain and question US citizens when they re-enter the country, there appears to be a surge in reports of citizens being detained at airports and asked to give access to their phones and social media accounts.
Not many places where the Conservatives ended up holding onto second place and only losing a fifth of their vote.
I'm guessing the Tory candidate is a popular local personality or something similar to do as well as this in the current political climate.
Both the Conservative AND the Green candidates have substantial records of standing in Stroud elections. The Reform candidate lost to a Green in the May Gloucestershire County elections. The County, of course, is run by an LD Leader in an LD/Green/Labour alliance - and is adjacent to Oxfordshire where Reform's pathetic results in May (it lost half its seats, making its performance worse than the Tories, LibDems, Labour and the Greens) is largely down to the popularity of the LD/Green/Labour alliance of 2021-2024.
The problem - of course - is that doing this required him to be seen to be unfit, which meant that (rightly) people noticed that the President was not up to the job of being President.
Frank Luntz @FrankLuntz · 3h While it’s not new or illegal for Customs to detain and question US citizens when they re-enter the country, there appears to be a surge in reports of citizens being detained at airports and asked to give access to their phones and social media accounts.
A couple of my family are going this weekend. Wonder if Homeland want to look over the 000's of pet pics.
When I went through US immigration recently, it was swifter than any previous time. Perhaps because it was Minnesota, but more likely being a middle aged white man. I was through in ten minutes.
The research conference was quiet though, with very few Canadians or Latin Americans, and even many US researchers stayed away as their research was defunded.
I can confirm that US food is as mediocre as ever. Best meal that I had was the chicken fried steak with gravy and mash, a trip down memory lane to my youth in Atlanta.
It was a good budget, and she should have held her nerve.
She was forced to resign by bond yields rising to levels that are better than they are now under Reeves. It puzzles me why this isn't thrown at the PM immediately when he invokes Truss.
It was a good budget, and she should have held her nerve.
She was forced to resign by bond yields rising to levels that are better than they are now under Reeves. It puzzles me why this isn't thrown at the PM immediately when he invokes Truss.
Because even Badenoch isn't dumb enough to bring back memories of Truss..
Bond yields go up and down, but it was the abrupt shift that was so destabilising.
It was a good budget, and she should have held her nerve.
She was forced to resign by bond yields rising to levels that are better than they are now under Reeves. It puzzles me why this isn't thrown at the PM immediately when he invokes Truss.
The ‘Truss crashed the economy’ narrative has been allowed to become fact without ever being challenged. Hence polling like the above.
Clearly the economy did not crash.
People judge it based on the reaction to it. It was never implemented so we cannot tell if it would work. Markets usually knee jerk react to news then settle down. Tesla stock is up 22% after the start of Musks spat with Trump.
As a saver I am quite happy with interest rates reverting to the mean. We have more savers than mortgage holders.
The other day I pointed out the same as you about bond yields. However as it’s the same, or similar, in other developed nations that seems to make it okay. Or that was the response.
It was a good budget, and she should have held her nerve.
She was forced to resign by bond yields rising to levels that are better than they are now under Reeves. It puzzles me why this isn't thrown at the PM immediately when he invokes Truss.
What sunk her, and her Chancellor, was running scared of Martin Lewis and promising to pay everyone's fuel bills on an open ended basis when the steps she was taking with investment and tax cuts were already increasing the already substantial deficit. The major step Hunt took was to walk back on that ridiculous promise. Other than that the budget had some interesting ideas to boost growth, certainly a lot more than Reeves has come up with. But that was a biggie.
It was a good budget, and she should have held her nerve.
She was forced to resign by bond yields rising to levels that are better than they are now under Reeves. It puzzles me why this isn't thrown at the PM immediately when he invokes Truss.
Reeves is going down the steps while Truss just threw herself off the top. That they both got to the bottom is missing the point.
I've come to the view that the most likely way US democracy survives is for Trump to crash the economy and become as unpopular as possible. Like Liz Truss x 3 levels of disaster.
Of course Trump inherited an extremely healthy economy which has inherent advantages as the global superpower. So it will be quite a tall ask to wreck everything in 4 years.
I've come to the view that the most likely way US democracy survives is for Trump to crash the economy and become as unpopular as possible. Like Liz Truss x 3 levels of disaster.
Of course Trump inherited an extremely healthy economy which has inherent advantages as the global superpower. So it will be quite a tall ask to wreck everything in 4 years.
Coming back to the A1 dualling discussion last night.
Some seemed aggrieved that £68 million had been spent on planning cancelled project. When it was cancelled, that project was due to cost significantly more than £500 million. So about 14% of the total budget was, essentially, spent on planning and preparation.
Spending that much to ensure you don't just build the thing right, but you build the right thing, seems justifiable to me. If not, how much do posters think should be spent on planning and preparation? Nothing? 1%? 10%?
It was a good budget, and she should have held her nerve.
She was forced to resign by bond yields rising to levels that are better than they are now under Reeves. It puzzles me why this isn't thrown at the PM immediately when he invokes Truss.
Truss was without a doubt the worst Agriculture Secretary from 1945 to 2024. Only Steve Reeve is self-evidently worse, but that is because of how he sees the role. He sees his task and that of his junior ministers as one of accepting the payments for the office into their personal bank accounts without visibly doing any work whatsoever in return which might be misconstrued as good for any part of the agriculture or food sector. He will see the fact that farmers hate him even more than Truss as a genuine achievement in office.
Reeves is worse than Truss, but it's the boiled frog effect.
Truss had awful timing with her quite trivial tax changes, lumping them in with the energy bill support and within 24 hours of the Bank of England switching to QT. So the bond market reacted quite rapidly and people panicked and she took ownership of all the changes as the buck stops there.
Reeves is just slowly rather than suddenly awful so we see yields going up slowly, even as the Bank has been cutting base rates.
I've come to the view that the most likely way US democracy survives is for Trump to crash the economy and become as unpopular as possible. Like Liz Truss x 3 levels of disaster.
Of course Trump inherited an extremely healthy economy which has inherent advantages as the global superpower. So it will be quite a tall ask to wreck everything in 4 years.
He's on target.
I'm not sure. I think he's done huge damage to long run growth in the US with his science cuts. But inflation was just 2.4% last month, I had expected much higher. It needs to be a fast enough disaster that he gets blamed.
Yesterday's spending review commits the government to increasing current spending by £190bn a year more over the term of the Parliament. Public spending is committed to growing 2.3% in real terms.
These plans, in my view, condemn the UK to higher taxes and lower growth as well as spiralling ever nearer the plug hole of unsustainable debt. It is indicative of the complacency that is shared across the media and elsewhere, despite the lesson of Truss, that this disastrous course of action seems to engender so little comment with the focus being on the individual elements.
We are in serious trouble and yesterday made it worse.
I've come to the view that the most likely way US democracy survives is for Trump to crash the economy and become as unpopular as possible. Like Liz Truss x 3 levels of disaster.
Of course Trump inherited an extremely healthy economy which has inherent advantages as the global superpower. So it will be quite a tall ask to wreck everything in 4 years.
Ramping up debt does grow the economy in the short term. It's quite funny how this is a fine and dandy plan when done by right wing governments, and completely irresponsible economic lunacy when done by left wing ones. It's almost as if commentators are a bit biased by wanting their own taxes cut.
I've come to the view that the most likely way US democracy survives is for Trump to crash the economy and become as unpopular as possible. Like Liz Truss x 3 levels of disaster.
Of course Trump inherited an extremely healthy economy which has inherent advantages as the global superpower. So it will be quite a tall ask to wreck everything in 4 years.
He's on target.
I'm not sure. I think he's done huge damage to long run growth in the US with his science cuts. But inflation was just 2.4% last month, I had expected much higher. It needs to be a fast enough disaster that he gets blamed.
If the BBB gets through Congress the damage will be swift and widely felt
Yesterday's spending review commits the government to increasing current spending by £190bn a year more over the term of the Parliament. Public spending is committed to growing 2.3% in real terms.
These plans, in my view, condemn the UK to higher taxes and lower growth as well as spiralling ever nearer the plug hole of unsustainable debt. It is indicative of the complacency that is shared across the media and elsewhere, despite the lesson of Truss, that this disastrous course of action seems to engender so little comment with the focus being on the individual elements.
We are in serious trouble and yesterday made it worse.
The alternative is another decade of worsening austerity. Even yesterday's plans are significant cuts for many departments. We can't have both growth and the featherbedding of the Granny State.
I take no particular view on what the percentage of GDP spent by the government should be, just want a balanced budget and for the politicians to be honest about the trade offs. I am not expecting either any time soon.
Yesterday's spending review commits the government to increasing current spending by £190bn a year more over the term of the Parliament. Public spending is committed to growing 2.3% in real terms.
These plans, in my view, condemn the UK to higher taxes and lower growth as well as spiralling ever nearer the plug hole of unsustainable debt. It is indicative of the complacency that is shared across the media and elsewhere, despite the lesson of Truss, that this disastrous course of action seems to engender so little comment with the focus being on the individual elements.
We are in serious trouble and yesterday made it worse.
The alternative is another decade of worsening austerity. Even yesterday's plans are significant cuts for many departments. We can't have both growth and the featherbedding of the Granny State.
I take no particular view on what the percentage of GDP spent by the government should be, just want a balanced budget and for the politicians to be honest about the trade offs. I am not expecting either any time soon.
We can't, so we need to choose growth and not the granny state.
Long past time to cut the NHS, Triple Lock etc and prioritise things other than the grey vote.
Yesterday's spending review commits the government to increasing current spending by £190bn a year more over the term of the Parliament. Public spending is committed to growing 2.3% in real terms.
These plans, in my view, condemn the UK to higher taxes and lower growth as well as spiralling ever nearer the plug hole of unsustainable debt. It is indicative of the complacency that is shared across the media and elsewhere, despite the lesson of Truss, that this disastrous course of action seems to engender so little comment with the focus being on the individual elements.
We are in serious trouble and yesterday made it worse.
I think you're being unrealistic to suggest that when public services are in a poor state and demand is increasing due to an ageing population that we could reduce spending on them.
The UK tax to GDP ratio is middle of the pack for the OECD. We have a health system that is largely publicly funded. We are going to need to increase taxes but if they are well selected there is no reason that means lower growth.
Yesterday's spending review commits the government to increasing current spending by £190bn a year more over the term of the Parliament. Public spending is committed to growing 2.3% in real terms.
These plans, in my view, condemn the UK to higher taxes and lower growth as well as spiralling ever nearer the plug hole of unsustainable debt. It is indicative of the complacency that is shared across the media and elsewhere, despite the lesson of Truss, that this disastrous course of action seems to engender so little comment with the focus being on the individual elements.
We are in serious trouble and yesterday made it worse.
The alternative is another decade of worsening austerity. Even yesterday's plans are significant cuts for many departments. We can't have both growth and the featherbedding of the Granny State.
I take no particular view on what the percentage of GDP spent by the government should be, just want a balanced budget and for the politicians to be honest about the trade offs. I am not expecting either any time soon.
The balanced budget is indeed the key. But with the Chancellor having boxed herself in on tax increases only cutting public spending was going to get us nearer to that. We need to both increase taxes and cut spending. An extra £190bn a year...jeez.
I've come to the view that the most likely way US democracy survives is for Trump to crash the economy and become as unpopular as possible. Like Liz Truss x 3 levels of disaster.
Of course Trump inherited an extremely healthy economy which has inherent advantages as the global superpower. So it will be quite a tall ask to wreck everything in 4 years.
Ramping up debt does grow the economy in the short term. .
It depends how you do it and what the other effects are. Cutting business and payroll taxes when the deficit is relatively low will have a large positive multiplier on the economy in both the short and long term while cutting consumption taxes or increasing spending on a sclerotic public sector won't.
In this country in particular, because public sector productivity is so poor, and business confidence in the government already so terrible, increased spending REDUCES short term economic growth as the private sector anticipates higher interest rates going ahead and knows the extra spending won't be sustainable. And if interest rates rise in response, because markets anticipate higher inflation, that cancels out most if not all of the stimulative effects.
As ever with economics, just guessing from possible first-order effects only gives you a small part of the answer, it's the second and third order effects that are equally if not more important.
Yesterday's spending review commits the government to increasing current spending by £190bn a year more over the term of the Parliament. Public spending is committed to growing 2.3% in real terms.
These plans, in my view, condemn the UK to higher taxes and lower growth as well as spiralling ever nearer the plug hole of unsustainable debt. It is indicative of the complacency that is shared across the media and elsewhere, despite the lesson of Truss, that this disastrous course of action seems to engender so little comment with the focus being on the individual elements.
We are in serious trouble and yesterday made it worse.
The alternative is another decade of worsening austerity. Even yesterday's plans are significant cuts for many departments. We can't have both growth and the featherbedding of the Granny State.
I take no particular view on what the percentage of GDP spent by the government should be, just want a balanced budget and for the politicians to be honest about the trade offs. I am not expecting either any time soon.
We can't, so we need to choose growth and not the granny state.
Long past time to cut the NHS, Triple Lock etc and prioritise things other than the grey vote.
Even if you cut spending per old person, the numbers are going up a lot. 11m to 13m over 65s in 10 years. A 20% cut (unthinkable) in pensions would still leave the pension budget increasing.
Trump is taking his lead on many things from the techbroes and their hangers-on.
The problem is that the techbroes don't care about science. They will use science to further their own immediate aims, worldview and money / power acquisition, but anything outside that? Nah.
Which is why, as an example, Musk has not developed any science probes for Mars. You would expect the world's richest man, who *claims* to be fascinated by Mars, and who *claims* to be an engineer, to science the (bleep) out of Mars. But no. Others can pay for that. And his empire is massively based on the scientific work of others.
And this is why the techbroes are remaining silent over the science cuts. Or the antivax agenda that will kill millions, and not just in the USA. Science is only useful if it's useful to them.
So all those unexpected discoveries made by small groups, like the discovery of Graphene, will not happen. In the USA at least...
It was a good budget, and she should have held her nerve.
She was forced to resign by bond yields rising to levels that are better than they are now under Reeves. It puzzles me why this isn't thrown at the PM immediately when he invokes Truss.
What sunk her, and her Chancellor, was running scared of Martin Lewis and promising to pay everyone's fuel bills on an open ended basis when the steps she was taking with investment and tax cuts were already increasing the already substantial deficit. The major step Hunt took was to walk back on that ridiculous promise. Other than that the budget had some interesting ideas to boost growth, certainly a lot more than Reeves has come up with. But that was a biggie.
Hmmm. Budget yesterday - commentary verdicts seem to be somewhere around "Still on the road Speed Bumps Ahead".
I listened to the main speeches yesterday, and I thought Reeves to be quite flat, and perhaps not political enough.
Stride's response was imo not on planet earth - his reliance on comparisons with the fantasy numbers the Cons put forward at Election ("we would have ..."), and by which they lost 2/3 of their MPs, was embarrassing and risible, and his party is nowhere near a position to try and occupy the high ground.
Reeves' reply was better, but still imo not enough of a stake through the heart on the Cons.
On the budget, £39bn to help social housing over 10 years looks like something like 400-800k houses, or 40-80k per year average at 50-100k per unit assuming a partial contribution. Enough in quantity, and is it deloverable?
It may help, and one hopes that social housing providers have the systems in place to enforce standards better - usually the houses have higher spec than equivalent developer houses for sale.
I can't see too many landmines yet, except perhaps impact of police costs on Council Tax, but perhaps there is an upside to reminding communities that we pay for our own police. Usually in England about 2/3 of police funding is national, so there is room to shift that a little.
My first political thought is that the Govt need to make sure they follow through on Council Tax reform alongside the Local Govt reorganisation, including making Council Tax properly proportional to house value, and abolishing Stamp Duty as the biscuit.
I said 28% might take it! Nice win for the Greens, Labour falling apart everywhere, Reforms inevitability not quite inevitable!
It’s encouraging that Labour and LD voters were so clearly willing to swing behind the Greens to keep Farage’s mob out.
I think if they worked that out then Stroud is full of psephologists! Stroud could be very interesting next election
Look at the results for Stroud wards in the recent locals - Greens won half of the seats, with both the Tories, Labour and LibDems winning just one seat each. The Greens have now established themselves as the leading centre-left party there.
Coming back to the A1 dualling discussion last night.
Some seemed aggrieved that £68 million had been spent on planning cancelled project. When it was cancelled, that project was due to cost significantly more than £500 million. So about 14% of the total budget was, essentially, spent on planning and preparation.
Spending that much to ensure you don't just build the thing right, but you build the right thing, seems justifiable to me. If not, how much do posters think should be spent on planning and preparation? Nothing? 1%? 10%?
Used to live in the Morpeth area. Knew one of the undertakers there. Busy guy with the the A1. Not because it was particularly busy but simply due to people being used to dual/motorway driving up to that point. No patience.
I said 28% might take it! Nice win for the Greens, Labour falling apart everywhere, Reforms inevitability not quite inevitable!
It’s encouraging that Labour and LD voters were so clearly willing to swing behind the Greens to keep Farage’s mob out.
I think if they worked that out then Stroud is full of psephologists! Stroud could be very interesting next election
Look at the results for Stroud wards in the recent locals - Greens won half of the seats, with both the Tories, Labour and LibDems winning just one seat each. The Greens have now established themselves as the leading centre-left party there.
True, true. Vote Reform get Green is the Tory battle cry for next time
Trump is taking his lead on many things from the techbroes and their hangers-on.
The problem is that the techbroes don't care about science. They will use science to further their own immediate aims, worldview and money / power acquisition, but anything outside that? Nah.
Which is why, as an example, Musk has not developed any science probes for Mars. You would expect the world's richest man, who *claims* to be fascinated by Mars, and who *claims* to be an engineer, to science the (bleep) out of Mars. But no. Others can pay for that. And his empire is massively based on the scientific work of others.
And this is why the techbroes are remaining silent over the science cuts. Or the antivax agenda that will kill millions, and not just in the USA. Science is only useful if it's useful to them.
So all those unexpected discoveries made by small groups, like the discovery of Graphene, will not happen. In the USA at least...
(Bill Gates is not a techbro...)
"It's no use trying to be clever-we are all clever here; just try to be kind-a little kind."
Unfortunately people like Elon Musk are neither clever nor kind.
Hmmm. Budget yesterday - commentary verdicts seem to be somewhere around "Still on the road Speed Bumps Ahead".
I listened to the main speeches yesterday, and I thought Reeves to be quite flat, and perhaps not political enough.
Stride's response was imo not on planet earth - his reliance on comparisons with the fantasy numbers the Cons put forward at Election ("we would have ..."), and by which they lost 2/3 of their MPs, was embarrassing and risible, and his party is nowhere near a position to try and occupy the high ground.
Reeves' reply was better, but still imo not enough of a stake through the heart on the Cons.
On the budget, £39bn to help social housing over 10 years looks like something like 400-800k houses, or 40-80k per year average at 50-100k per unit assuming a partial contribution. Enough in quantity, and is it deloverable?
It may help, and one hopes that social housing providers have the systems in place to enforce standards better - usually the houses have higher spec than equivalent developer houses for sale.
I can't see too many landmines yet, except perhaps impact of police costs on Council Tax, but perhaps there is an upside to reminding communities that we pay for our own police. Usually in England about 2/3 of police funding is national, so there is room to shift that a little.
My first political thought is that the Govt need to make sure they follow through on Council Tax reform alongside the Local Govt reorganisation, including making Council Tax properly proportional to house value, and abolishing Stamp Duty as the biscuit.
Building social housing only works if they are restricted to British people with roots in the area.
Building them and then giving life time tenancies to immigrants - see Westminster council - is neither going to be politically popular nor economically advantageous.
So, people rushed to complete their home purchases before the stamp duty change, leading March's GDP to be a little better than forecast and April's to be a little worse.
For that we're going to get wall to wall interviews on the economy on this morning's radio and TV
So, people rushed to complete their home purchases before the stamp duty change, leading March's GDP to be a little better than forecast and April's to be a little worse.
So, people rushed to complete their home purchases before the stamp duty change, leading March's GDP to be a little better than forecast and April's to be a little worse.
Stamp duty needs to go.
We’re in a 3 bed family detached home. We’d trade down to a smaller house but even with the minuscule value of properties in the north east compared to other parts of the nation the cost of stamp duty is one thing that makes us think ‘screw that’.
Hmmm. Budget yesterday - commentary verdicts seem to be somewhere around "Still on the road Speed Bumps Ahead".
I listened to the main speeches yesterday, and I thought Reeves to be quite flat, and perhaps not political enough.
Stride's response was imo not on planet earth - his reliance on comparisons with the fantasy numbers the Cons put forward at Election ("we would have ..."), and by which they lost 2/3 of their MPs, was embarrassing and risible, and his party is nowhere near a position to try and occupy the high ground.
Reeves' reply was better, but still imo not enough of a stake through the heart on the Cons.
On the budget, £39bn to help social housing over 10 years looks like something like 400-800k houses, or 40-80k per year average at 50-100k per unit assuming a partial contribution. Enough in quantity, and is it deloverable?
It may help, and one hopes that social housing providers have the systems in place to enforce standards better - usually the houses have higher spec than equivalent developer houses for sale.
I can't see too many landmines yet, except perhaps impact of police costs on Council Tax, but perhaps there is an upside to reminding communities that we pay for our own police. Usually in England about 2/3 of police funding is national, so there is room to shift that a little.
My first political thought is that the Govt need to make sure they follow through on Council Tax reform alongside the Local Govt reorganisation, including making Council Tax properly proportional to house value, and abolishing Stamp Duty as the biscuit.
Hmmm. Budget yesterday - commentary verdicts seem to be somewhere around "Still on the road Speed Bumps Ahead".
I listened to the main speeches yesterday, and I thought Reeves to be quite flat, and perhaps not political enough.
Stride's response was imo not on planet earth - his reliance on comparisons with the fantasy numbers the Cons put forward at Election ("we would have ..."), and by which they lost 2/3 of their MPs, was embarrassing and risible, and his party is nowhere near a position to try and occupy the high ground.
Reeves' reply was better, but still imo not enough of a stake through the heart on the Cons.
On the budget, £39bn to help social housing over 10 years looks like something like 400-800k houses, or 40-80k per year average at 50-100k per unit assuming a partial contribution. Enough in quantity, and is it deloverable?
It may help, and one hopes that social housing providers have the systems in place to enforce standards better - usually the houses have higher spec than equivalent developer houses for sale.
I can't see too many landmines yet, except perhaps impact of police costs on Council Tax, but perhaps there is an upside to reminding communities that we pay for our own police. Usually in England about 2/3 of police funding is national, so there is room to shift that a little.
My first political thought is that the Govt need to make sure they follow through on Council Tax reform alongside the Local Govt reorganisation, including making Council Tax properly proportional to house value, and abolishing Stamp Duty as the biscuit.
Building social housing only works if they are restricted to British people with roots in the area.
Building them and then giving life time tenancies to immigrants - see Westminster council - is neither going to be politically popular nor economically advantageous.
Each local authority sets it's own rules about housing and links to the community are almost always included. However this has to be balanced against the number that have to go into emergency accommodation who might not have links to the community. Until there is more accommodation, then that balance or imbalance will always be there.
Hmmm. Budget yesterday - commentary verdicts seem to be somewhere around "Still on the road Speed Bumps Ahead".
I listened to the main speeches yesterday, and I thought Reeves to be quite flat, and perhaps not political enough.
Stride's response was imo not on planet earth - his reliance on comparisons with the fantasy numbers the Cons put forward at Election ("we would have ..."), and by which they lost 2/3 of their MPs, was embarrassing and risible, and his party is nowhere near a position to try and occupy the high ground.
Reeves' reply was better, but still imo not enough of a stake through the heart on the Cons.
On the budget, £39bn to help social housing over 10 years looks like something like 400-800k houses, or 40-80k per year average at 50-100k per unit assuming a partial contribution. Enough in quantity, and is it deloverable?
It may help, and one hopes that social housing providers have the systems in place to enforce standards better - usually the houses have higher spec than equivalent developer houses for sale.
I can't see too many landmines yet, except perhaps impact of police costs on Council Tax, but perhaps there is an upside to reminding communities that we pay for our own police. Usually in England about 2/3 of police funding is national, so there is room to shift that a little.
My first political thought is that the Govt need to make sure they follow through on Council Tax reform alongside the Local Govt reorganisation, including making Council Tax properly proportional to house value, and abolishing Stamp Duty as the biscuit.
Building social housing only works if they are restricted to British people with roots in the area.
Building them and then giving life time tenancies to immigrants - see Westminster council - is neither going to be politically popular nor economically advantageous.
Labour is creating a client vote in Westminster and they will just tell everyone they’re racist I’d they complain.
Comments
Edit:- According to his website, its $150 a year for everything, so $12 a month.
The Bulwark is great value because for $10 a month you get access to multiple daily newsletters from different commentators and also video podcasts.
Compared to that, it doesn't look like good value to pay $25/month to Sam Harris or some other single author who only posts once a day.
If a site like The Bulwark offers good value, then it will get a huge number of sign-ups, and be able to pay authors well, and I think the total revenue for a lot of authors might be the same as that from their own personal stand-alone substack.
https://x.com/johnrentoul/status/1932827128472486024?s=61
The research conference was quiet though, with very few Canadians or Latin Americans, and even many US researchers stayed away as their research was defunded.
I can confirm that US food is as mediocre as ever. Best meal that I had was the chicken fried steak with gravy and mash, a trip down memory lane to my youth in Atlanta.
She was forced to resign by bond yields rising to levels that are better than they are now under Reeves. It puzzles me why this isn't thrown at the PM immediately when he invokes Truss.
Bond yields go up and down, but it was the abrupt shift that was so destabilising.
Clearly the economy did not crash.
People judge it based on the reaction to it. It was never implemented so we cannot tell if it would work. Markets usually knee jerk react to news then settle down. Tesla stock is up 22% after the start of Musks spat with Trump.
As a saver I am quite happy with interest rates reverting to the mean. We have more savers than mortgage holders.
The other day I pointed out the same as you about bond yields. However as it’s the same, or similar, in other developed nations that seems to make it okay. Or that was the response.
Of course Trump inherited an extremely healthy economy which has inherent advantages as the global superpower. So it will be quite a tall ask to wreck everything in 4 years.
Some seemed aggrieved that £68 million had been spent on planning cancelled project. When it was cancelled, that project was due to cost significantly more than £500 million. So about 14% of the total budget was, essentially, spent on planning and preparation.
Spending that much to ensure you don't just build the thing right, but you build the right thing, seems justifiable to me. If not, how much do posters think should be spent on planning and preparation? Nothing? 1%? 10%?
Truss had awful timing with her quite trivial tax changes, lumping them in with the energy bill support and within 24 hours of the Bank of England switching to QT. So the bond market reacted quite rapidly and people panicked and she took ownership of all the changes as the buck stops there.
Reeves is just slowly rather than suddenly awful so we see yields going up slowly, even as the Bank has been cutting base rates.
Some people are OK with being a boiled frog.
My off topic for the day:
Does anyone here apart from me still eat bananas and custard sometimes? My bananas just went too ripe too quickly !
What about bananas, oranges and cointreau?
But inflation was just 2.4% last month, I had expected much higher. It needs to be a fast enough disaster that he gets blamed.
These plans, in my view, condemn the UK to higher taxes and lower growth as well as spiralling ever nearer the plug hole of unsustainable debt. It is indicative of the complacency that is shared across the media and elsewhere, despite the lesson of Truss, that this disastrous course of action seems to engender so little comment with the focus being on the individual elements.
We are in serious trouble and yesterday made it worse.
I take no particular view on what the percentage of GDP spent by the government should be, just want a balanced budget and for the politicians to be honest about the trade offs. I am not expecting either any time soon.
Nice win for the Greens, Labour falling apart everywhere, Reforms inevitability not quite inevitable!
Long past time to cut the NHS, Triple Lock etc and prioritise things other than the grey vote.
The UK tax to GDP ratio is middle of the pack for the OECD. We have a health system that is largely publicly funded. We are going to need to increase taxes but if they are well selected there is no reason that means lower growth.
https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-united-kingdom.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiX4fKEmOuNAxXdZ0EAHTfkOLgQFnoECBMQBg&usg=AOvVaw3rpzgjwgIHyiCQR8RIdFk_
Orange juice, oranges and cointreau is exquisite as a light desert / palette cleanser, through.
In this country in particular, because public sector productivity is so poor, and business confidence in the government already so terrible, increased spending REDUCES short term economic growth as the private sector anticipates higher interest rates going ahead and knows the extra spending won't be sustainable. And if interest rates rise in response, because markets anticipate higher inflation, that cancels out most if not all of the stimulative effects.
As ever with economics, just guessing from possible first-order effects only gives you a small part of the answer, it's the second and third order effects that are equally if not more important.
Trump is taking his lead on many things from the techbroes and their hangers-on.
The problem is that the techbroes don't care about science. They will use science to further their own immediate aims, worldview and money / power acquisition, but anything outside that? Nah.
Which is why, as an example, Musk has not developed any science probes for Mars. You would expect the world's richest man, who *claims* to be fascinated by Mars, and who *claims* to be an engineer, to science the (bleep) out of Mars. But no. Others can pay for that. And his empire is massively based on the scientific work of others.
And this is why the techbroes are remaining silent over the science cuts. Or the antivax agenda that will kill millions, and not just in the USA. Science is only useful if it's useful to them.
So all those unexpected discoveries made by small groups, like the discovery of Graphene, will not happen. In the USA at least...
(Bill Gates is not a techbro...)
Oh dear. Uk economy shrinks by 0.3% in April. Worst since Oct 2023 and worse than expected...
F1: in boring news, Stroll (rather than Bottas, or Drugovich etc) will apparently be racing in Canada.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/articles/ckg75vkp28mo
Stroud could be very interesting next election
TLDR: To the tune of 'Things can only get better'
I listened to the main speeches yesterday, and I thought Reeves to be quite flat, and perhaps not political enough.
Stride's response was imo not on planet earth - his reliance on comparisons with the fantasy numbers the Cons put forward at Election ("we would have ..."), and by which they lost 2/3 of their MPs, was embarrassing and risible, and his party is nowhere near a position to try and occupy the high ground.
Reeves' reply was better, but still imo not enough of a stake through the heart on the Cons.
On the budget, £39bn to help social housing over 10 years looks like something like 400-800k houses, or 40-80k per year average at 50-100k per unit assuming a partial contribution. Enough in quantity, and is it deloverable?
It may help, and one hopes that social housing providers have the systems in place to enforce standards better - usually the houses have higher spec than equivalent developer houses for sale.
I can't see too many landmines yet, except perhaps impact of police costs on Council Tax, but perhaps there is an upside to reminding communities that we pay for our own police. Usually in England about 2/3 of police funding is national, so there is room to shift that a little.
My first political thought is that the Govt need to make sure they follow through on Council Tax reform alongside the Local Govt reorganisation, including making Council Tax properly proportional to house value, and abolishing Stamp Duty as the biscuit.
My photo quota: police funding:
Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-funding-for-england-and-wales-2015-to-2025/police-funding-for-england-and-wales-2015-to-2025
Vote Reform get Green is the Tory battle cry for next time
Unfortunately people like Elon Musk are neither clever nor kind.
Building them and then giving life time tenancies to immigrants - see Westminster council - is neither going to be politically popular nor economically advantageous.
For that we're going to get wall to wall interviews on the economy on this morning's radio and TV
NEW THREAD
https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/press-releases/britain-is-turning-into-a-national-health-state-as-lower-income-families-gain-most-from-spending-review/
..The £9.7 billion a year increase in capital spending between 2025-26 and 2029-30 includes an increase of £5.9 billion of financial transactions (primarily loans), with around two-fifths of the Warm Homes Plan now being funded by loans rather grants. Once these financial transactions are stripped out, the £7.4 billion a year increase in defence contrasts sharply with the £3.6 billion cut to real investment across all other departments...
And 90% of the spending increases go to health.
President Trump has cited the chief of the LAPD when it comes to bypassing Gov. Newsom and deploying the National Guard.
But Chief Jim MCDonnell tells me tonight, "We’re nowhere near a level where we would be reaching out to the governor for the National Guard."
https://x.com/kaitlancollins/status/1932984306089009210