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Jonathan Portes

@jdportes.bsky.social

63K followers 610 following 4.1K posts

Professor of Economics and Public Policy, King's College London; Senior Fellow, UK in a Changing Europe. Immigration, economics, public policy. Personal views only; usual disclaimers apply. Books: Immigration (Sage), Capitalism (Quercus) .. more

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Jonathan Daniel Portes is a professor of Economics and Public Policy at the School of Politics & Economics of King's College, London and a senior fellow at UK in a Changing Europe.

Source: Wikipedia

Political science 31%

Economics 28%

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Reposted by Jonathan Portes, Steve Peers, Richard Waite , and 1 more Jonathan Portes, Steve Peers, Richard Waite, Brian Keegan

Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 6h

This is an exact encapsulation of why I moved to Bluesky.

No amount of handwringing in the Atlantic about how I owe some eternal Promethean suffering to the discourse is going to make me stay on a site I hate, that stopped doing anything for me professionally years ago.

Well – no. Bluesky may or may not be, as one centre-right friend who felt unwelcome put it, “self-righteous island”. But the idea that’s why we went is nonsense. That I’ve largely stopped posting on a site that’s done more to shape my career and social circle than the rest of the internet combined is less about avoiding rival opinions (I love arguing with people who are wrong!) than with the fact the site simply became unusable. It stopped generating the things (good jokes, interesting debate, clicks) I wanted; it became extremely good at generating the things (racists, pornbots, racist pornbots) I did not.

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Reposted by Jonathan Portes, Lesley A. Hall, Margot C. Finn

Sarah Murphy @13sarahmurphy.bsky.social · 6h

“I’m old enough to remember when mainstream British politicians, who should know better, stirred up racial hatred as a path to power. You’re old enough to remember too because it was last Tuesday. And it was Robert Jenrick”

Cathartic anger at flag-flying racism.

www.thenerve.news/p/stewart-le...

Stewart Lee: The thugs have taken my flag. So I’ve taken theirs

What do you do with a lot of cheap banners hanging from motorway bridges once you’ve torn them down?

www.thenerve.news

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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 20h

My point -which you couldn't be bothered to read or understand -is taxes need to go up regardless of what Reeves or the OBR says the "black hole" is. Seriously, not sure why I waste my time. I shall leave it there.

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 20h

Sigh. Your endless witterings are irrelevant to my original thread - the whole point of which was that the OBR/fiscal rules aren't the issue. Can you not bother to even read/think before jumping in?

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 20h

actually not, technically (models can and will incorporate different marginal propensity to consume. That usually means taxing the rich reduces demand less). But in any case there is still an intertemporal government budget constraint.

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 21h

the *whole point* of my thread was that the OBR is not the issue here! I do wish people would actually read what I say before jumping in...

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 21h

And on your point - no, it's nonsense to suggest that having a fiscal constraint obscures the choices! If you have to put up tax it has to go up on someone/something. What obscures the choices is those on the left & right who pretend there is no constraint because MMT or Laffer or whatever.

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 21h

if he'd said "yes taxes need to rise but I think the target should be X" that would have been fine - probably wrong but OK - but almost entirely irrelevant to my thread.

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 21h

No. Not really at all. Phil jumped into this thread to claim that those of us who think fiscal constraints are genuine/taxes need to go up are somehow part of an Osborne conspiracy.
bsky.app/profile/mcdu...

Phil McDuff @mcduff.bsky.social · 1d

You can say this all you want, but the chancellor is out here saying that's how it works and telling the papers that black holes need to be filled, so in reality it's exactly how it works, isn't it?

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 1d

This from Andy Haldane gets some basic stuff wrong, notably this:

"A £30bn will need to be filled in this year’s Budget,e ven though a stalled economy needs a 1% of GDP fiscal tightening like a hole in the head."

Just wrong. Not how the fiscal framework works at all.

www.ft.com/content/1c4d...

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 21h

Raising income tax would mostly hit those with incomes well over median - that's how a progressive tax system works (and ours is quite progressive). But (as I've written elsewhere) there are quite a few other things I'd do on tax that would hit upper/upper-middle incomes/better-off pensioners.

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 21h

sure, it's complicated. And I agree if doctors are unemployed then we should employ them, and immigration would boost supply and ease some constraints (as you know I've written extensively on this). But the overall macro constraint remains (and it's partly global remember)

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 22h

I don't think the markets have any problem with infrastructure spending. But the overall savings-investment balance is a macro question; we can't "do" it (because we have limited overall resources) without increasing expected inflation. So we can't afford it..(unless we raise taxes/cut other spend).

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 22h

NHS spending in 1st year was half a billion. Even on comparable basis (as %age of GDP) we spent well under half what we spend now.

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 22h

[so it's highly relevant, and a good summary of why we *didn't* need Osborne-style austerity, but we do need tax rises now. We could "do" more then - investment was too low - and afford it. Now, sadly, much more constrained on both.]

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 22h

No! Point of Keynes' aphorism here is "affordability" is determined by the savings/investment balance (of which market interest rates are a measure) not by crude deficit numbers. So we could "afford" to do much more in early 2010s despite the deficit - as indicated by v low interest rates then.

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 1d

Keynes would have regarded gilt yields as a clear signal of "what we can do", so yes, consistent with my view

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 1d

Please. You could read the Krugman blog which cites me *on exactly that*. Or you can carry on with this garbled nonsense. Your choice. I will leave it there.

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 1d

That's garbled but in any case that has literally *nothing whatsoever to do with the Rogoff paper*. Why make stuff up?

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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 1d

As I say in the thread, the point is that we need some combination of higher taxes/higher growth; not because of the OBR/"fiscal rules"/Rachel Reeves but because that's fiscal reality. This is not 2011 (as Krugman and Simon Wren-Lewis have also pointed out).

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 1d

No. They didn't. That is just utter BS. Go back and look at their forecasts. Why are you simply making stuff up?

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 1d

Seriously, which part of this (or my quote in the Guardian) did you not understand? When I say this is not abour the OBR, what part are you not getting?

bsky.app/profile/jdpo...

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 1d

...but the fundamental error here (as with many other articles blaming fiscal framework and/or OBR) is that these are 2nd order issues.

Ultimately, it's fiscal sustainability (as judged by markets short-term that's the constraint. The UK needs some combination of higher growth and higher taxes...

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 1d

(And your claim related to the OBR's use of the Rogoff paper. Which you just invented, didn't you?)

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 1d

Sigh.

archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blog...

Deleveraging Shocks and the Multiplier (Sort of Wonkish)

This situation is different, and predictably so.

archive.nytimes.com

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 1d

No. That's just normal policy uncertainty at this time and unlikely to be perceptible in macro terms.

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 1d

?? To repeat, I am the one making the very simple point that taxes need to go up because they are too low (unless we want to cut spending a lot).

You are the one claiming that we don't because "rules" are a con trick played by an establishment that includes me and George Osborne.

Laughable.

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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 1d

Sigh. You might want to go back and read how many times Krugman quoted me (as well as vice versa) on this topic?

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 1d

That's a) utter BS (I wrote extensively on this, including the Rogoff paper at the time and you have no idea what you're talking about) and b)birrelevant.

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 1d

???? Your claim is the only reason taxes need to go up is some sort of conspiracy by the austerity establishment against the people. Mine is the simple one that its because otherwise our fiscal position is unsustainable, regardless of what Reeves/OBR says. This is not hard.

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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 1d

?? What's the uncertainty? The TCA has been in place for more than 4 years

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 1d

Indeed, that's clearly not what he's saying. I am fairly sure we changed the rules in the late 2000s so that alcohol/drug dependency no longer were disabling conditions for IB