Yu-Ming Liou
@yumingliou.bsky.social
700 followers 440 following 300 posts
Unfrozen caveman political economist. In my day, we didn't have fancy tools like causal identification, but we knew how to ask: “cui bono?" Former political scientist. Now I do research for an internet thing. The good one, though. Washington, DC
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Reposted by Yu-Ming Liou
agordonreed.bsky.social
1)You may remember the articles criticizing liberal students for their hesitancy to make friends with conservative students—alleging that they were less open-minded than their conservative counterparts.
Reposted by Yu-Ming Liou
jakemgrumbach.bsky.social
The research does suggest that competitive primaries hurt the party in high salience races like this one.

I'd bet that it's even bigger when party organizations like the DCCC fundraise for one side in the primary--half of the base will get really mad at that.
Reposted by Yu-Ming Liou
opinionhaver.bsky.social
#polisky #econsky I know that there's methodological concerns about Bayesian Informed Surname Geocoding for race and that a lot of folks have expressed doubts about it's accuracy. is there any consensus on how if you *have* to do it, the least bad/most defensible way to do it is?
Reposted by Yu-Ming Liou
sameyler.bsky.social
The lesson, which we should already know, is that confining fascists behind a cordon sanitaire is a condition for the exercise of democracy. Authoritarians simply cannot be folded into electoral politics for all the reasons in this thread. They make it impossible for democracies to credibly commit
atherton.bsky.social
This is not to say that elections don't matter; they clearly do, and democracy requires them, and in every case I'd rather my side win than lose. But if I'm working on the question of what to do *while in power*, it's going to be heavily biased towards *how do we ensure electoral defeat isn't fatal*
Reposted by Yu-Ming Liou
atwilliams.bsky.social
i mean if these arent your interests, what is your pathway to becoming a Young Republican these days?
politico.com
EXCLUSIVE: Thousands of leaked messages show leaders of Young Republican groups joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape in a private Telegram chat.

Inside rising GOP leaders’ racist chats — obtained by POLITICO and spanning more than 7 months👇
‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat
Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape.
www.politico.com
Reposted by Yu-Ming Liou
donmoyn.bsky.social
"Residents in Chicago and Portland are living in a police state where masked armed forces kidnap who they want to kidnap, where they have to listen to public officials routinely lie about what is happening in their neighborhoods." donmoynihan.substack.com/p/purge-merg...
strictlychristo.bsky.social
Federal Secret Police and plainclothes ICE agents kidnap multiple people from a neighborhood in Chicago. They then deploy teargas and brutally beat neighbors who come out to express their concern.
yumingliou.bsky.social
20th century American social novels >>> 19th century British social novels
rachelfeder.bsky.social
Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat
Reposted by Yu-Ming Liou
rivertam.bsky.social
As I've said before, the eternal tension with populism is that people want to be both a downtrodden underdog but also part of a dominating majority.
amandamarcotte.bsky.social
That's part of why I wrote this. It's important to understand that MAGA is not "real" America.

On the contrary, the reason they're all so fucking bitter is they know most people aren't like them. And they resent that.

www.salon.com/2025/10/01/m...
MAGA can't expand its base — and Christian music tells us why
The songs from Charlie Kirk's memorial exposed a serious problem
www.salon.com
Reposted by Yu-Ming Liou
kwcollins.bsky.social
It's just gutter racism, through and through
brendannyhan.bsky.social
What if the unidentified masked men with guns don't accept the validity of your papers?
Reposted by Yu-Ming Liou
darinself.com
Here is some findings from a survey experiment I did. We tested support for candidates based on support liberal democracy vs strengthening anti-corruption.

Anti-corruption was much higher than traditional liberal democracy AND its resilient to partisanship!
yumingliou.bsky.social
I’m now the exciting frontier papers professors insert on syllabi as optional reading are now foundational work for which people win Nobel prizes years old.
soumayakeynes.ft.com
The not-a-Nobel-but-we're-gonna-treat-it-like-a-Nobel in economics goes to

Joel Mokyr "for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress"

Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt "for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction"
yumingliou.bsky.social
My discipline is represented by tons of egalitarian libs… and some notorious professional racists.

Higher Ed in general is pretty good at *peer pressuring* you into better politics, but 1) that’s not the mechanism the “teach critical thinking” people have in mind 2) heterogeneous treatment effects
walmsley.bsky.social
a lot of people want there to be Knowledge That Makes You Good and unfortunately that is not a thing that exists
Reposted by Yu-Ming Liou
johnpavlovitz.bsky.social
Good people need to start outing their ICE family members, neighbors, and community members.

They need to be made into pariahs in the places decent Americans gather.
Reposted by Yu-Ming Liou
skulryk.bsky.social
I feel like Joseph Heller had their number back in the 60's in Catch-22 and I still think of this quote whenever I hear farm owners complaining about socialism or benefits or taxes. It was a short little aside but it stuck with me for like 25 years.
Major Major's father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. he was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Major Major's father was an outspoken champion of economy in government, provided it did not interfere with the sacred duty of government to pay farmers as much as they could get for all the alfalfa they produced that no one else wanted or for not producing any alfalfa at all. He was a proud and independent man who was opposed to unemployment insurance and never hesitated to whine, whimper, wheedle and extort for as much as he could get from whomever he could.
yumingliou.bsky.social
Ohio has somehow managed to become way worse politically despite exporting its car dealership gentry to Florida.
rickywlmsbong.bsky.social
correct, i actually track florida’s descent into fascist madness with skyline openings. i knew we were fucked when they opened one in broward. we’re evacuating if they ever move north of ocala
octopodeeznuts.bsky.social
it's true, you even have some Skyline locations down there
Reposted by Yu-Ming Liou
opg.bsky.social
WAIT IT WAS HOMECOMING FOR PENN STATE?!??

I AM GOING TO START CACKLING UNCONTROLLABLY AGAIN
yumingliou.bsky.social
Kinda looks like CalPERS already owns the Big Ten.
Reposted by Yu-Ming Liou
collincornell.bsky.social
“One of the chants that has become ubiquitous at these protests at Broadview is, ‘Love your neighbor, love your God, save your soul and quit your job,’” said Black, who pastors at the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago. “Everybody chants that.”
Reposted by Yu-Ming Liou
reichlinmelnick.bsky.social
My first thought was “wow I hope this guy didn’t give out his name because he could absolutely be charged” and yup, he is correct to stay anonymous.

This man’s account is shocking. His neighbors’ situation is shocking. The entire Chicago raid is shocking.
On the other side was a mom and her 7-year-old daughter, pleading for his help.
"I wasn't planning on letting her stay, but I didn't know what the hell was going on," the man said of his Venezuelan migrant neighbors. But he quickly relented. The little girl was inconsolable and hid under his bed.
"I didn't want them to take her," said the man, who didn't want to be named because he fears he'll be targeted by federal authorities for his actions.
"I gave her my bedroom, and I just told her,
'Just stay there. Don't open, don't, shh, just stay quiet," he recalled telling the mom and daughter as he choked back tears.
yumingliou.bsky.social
I’ll say it again: the best actually imaginable outcome for “abundance” is for it to become politically polarized such that it’s a *progressive shibboleth*.

Do the stuff locally and at the state level. When we have a national trifecta, we can shove it down their throats.
mattyglesias.bsky.social
Terrible on its own terms, and also poisoning the waters in congress for any kind of bipartisan deal on transmission/permitting issues.
jael.bsky.social
SCOOP: The Bureau of Land Management says the largest solar project in Nevada — the Esmeralda 7 mega-farm — has been canceled

The news was quietly dropped via a sudden website update with no public word from any of the companies involved or a statement from the agency

@heatmap.news
yumingliou.bsky.social
“Gen X…are particularly miserable”.

Yup.
darinself.com
Silent Gen/Boomers had far higher experienced economic growth and have higher levels of trust.

Millennials with lowest levels of experienced growth but somehow more trustful than Gen X who are particularly miserable
Reposted by Yu-Ming Liou
beijingpalmer.bsky.social
I think Paul, of blessed posting memory, is entirely right here, and I say this *even though* the young people I know remain highly literate and engaged, because I think his sample is way more representative than mine.

musgrave.substack.com/p/a-post-lit...
A Post-Literate Society is a Too-Literal Society
Directness is a virtue and subtlety is lost
musgrave.substack.com
yumingliou.bsky.social
An answer for where I grew up: “always” is pronounced “all-wez”

An answer for where I’ve put down roots: “Reagan National” is pronounced “National”
merriam-webster.com
What’s the word where you’re from that, when pronounced exactly as it looks, identifies a tourist immediately?
Reposted by Yu-Ming Liou
boxelderdust.bsky.social
If there is good news it seems to be that exposing the interior to the immigration despotism of the borderlands through ICE’s manhunting seems to be having the exact same radicalizing effect that exposing the North to the slaver despotism of the South did through the Fugitive Slave Act’s manhunters
yumingliou.bsky.social
LKY / Singapore admiration really is a synechdoche of *pre-Trump* American right-wing thought.

Rigid cultural conservatism, a state explicitly aligned with large firms, and maybe most importantly: a system of formal racial equality paired with an obvious and unquestioned racial hierarchy.
josephpolitano.bsky.social
two thing that annoys me about Lee Kuan Yew worship is that nobody who does it seems to care about *modern* singaporean politicians and American right-wingers who do it would never accept LKY's policies of, e.g., massive public housing projects in a country that makes posting racism illegal