Jo Michell
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jomichell.bsky.social
Jo Michell
@jomichell.bsky.social
8K followers 910 following 3.9K posts
Professor of economics at UWE Bristol. Chair of Post-Keynesian Economics Society. Interested in macro, finance, banking, climate change, inequality, demographics.

https://people.uwe.ac.uk/Person/JoMichell
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jomichell.bsky.social
November 21, 2025 at 8:13 AM
jomichell.bsky.social
I'm going to put it more strongly. The 'austerity' chart in the previous post is badly misleading. Look at the RF analysis of the actual Osborne period.
November 21, 2025 at 8:11 AM
jomichell.bsky.social
Also, if we want to measure the economic consequences of Osborne, the period should end earlier than 24-25. A lot has happened since 2019 that isn't 'austerity' in the narrow sense.
November 21, 2025 at 7:59 AM
jomichell.bsky.social
Great charts in this, but I'm going to take issue with one sentence. These were political choices, not the unavoidable outcomes of a fiscal crisis.
As such, the prevailing narrative about the UK’s tough austerity in the 2010s misses a crucial detail: there were indeed steeply regressive and damaging cuts to benefits and public services, but this was not a classic move for a government of the right, cutting spending to finance tax cuts for the rich. So deep was the fiscal crisis that public spending was cut and taxes on the rich went up. The result is that Britain’s top 10 per cent is the only segment paying more in taxes today than in 2010. Even after including the impact of benefit cuts on the bottom of the income distribution, the top has seen bigger income losses than anyone other than the poorest fifth.
November 21, 2025 at 7:34 AM
jomichell.bsky.social
It’s regularly claimed that universities lose money on teaching domestic students. The behavioural evidence suggests otherwise.
November 20, 2025 at 7:51 AM
jomichell.bsky.social
A bit perplexed by this review of Congdon by Martin Wolf. I think that consensus is that 21-22 inflation was caused by some combination of post-pandemic supply bottlenecks, the war in Ukraine and potentially US fiscal stimulus and shifts in demand structure. There's no 'i told you so' in that lot.
Money and Inflation at the Time of Covid by Tim Congdon (Edward Elgar) I admire Congdon. He has stuck to his monetarist principles, however unfashionable, through thick and thin. On at least two occasions they have made him spectacularly right when conventional wisdom was just as spectacularly wrong — the “Lawson boom” in the UK of the late 1980s and the post-Covid inflation. On both of these occasions, happily, he influenced me, too. He is right that money continues to matter. He is also right that the relevant money is “broad money”, namely, money in the hands of the public. This excellent book is his “I told you so”. Alas, conventional wisdom continues to ignore what he knows.
November 19, 2025 at 5:28 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
Topical panel at the Bristol Festival of Economics today.
November 19, 2025 at 12:04 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
For example.
"This first paper in a three-part Lancet Series combines narrative and systematic reviews with original analyses and meta-analyses to assess three hypotheses concerning a dietary pattern based on ultra-processed foods."
November 19, 2025 at 11:13 AM
jomichell.bsky.social
There's some acknowledgement of criticism of the taxonomy in this paragraph, but I don't really understand the implied counter-argument.
However, the value of the UPF concept is not universally accepted. Some critics argue that grouping foods that might have nutritional value into the UPF category, including fortified breakfast cereals and flavoured yoghurts, together with products such as reconstituted meats or sugary drinks, is unhelpful. But UPFs are rarely consumed in isolation. It is the overall UPF dietary pattern, whereby whole and minimally processed foods are replaced by processed alternatives, and the interaction between multiple harmful additives, that drives adverse health effects.
November 19, 2025 at 11:02 AM
jomichell.bsky.social
Do they not teach people how to write in English at these schools and newspapers any more? “Reducing inequality is key versus wealth creation above all else”?
November 15, 2025 at 3:02 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
Guardian determined to get in on the act.
Officials said the change had been made because official forecasts showed Reeves’ fiscal black hole was closer to £20bn than £30bn, allowing her to take less radical steps to raise money. Instead of raising income tax rates, a move heavily hinted at by Reeves in recent days, the chancellor has decided to freeze thresholds for two years, a move that economists estimate will raise £7.5bn.
November 14, 2025 at 5:32 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
I’m going back to only reading the news once a day.
November 14, 2025 at 2:59 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
The idea that cutting thresholds is not a taxonworkingpeople is a silly as everything else going on here.
One option to raise revenue would involve cutting the thresholds at which people pay different rates of income tax, while leaving the headline basic and higher rates of the tax unchanged.
November 14, 2025 at 7:25 AM
jomichell.bsky.social
😱
November 12, 2025 at 3:09 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
Excellent as ever from @benansell.bsky.social . This sounds like exactly the kind of basic but slightly subtle (and potentially catastrophic) error that these guys would make.
Where does this all lead to. Bluntly I think the McSweeney pivot has been a mistake. It assumes that Labour-curious voters in the marginals Labour needs to win are fundamentally different from Labour-curious voters elsewhere. And that social values are the key difference. That's just not accurate.
November 12, 2025 at 2:11 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
This is kinda interesting in an “aghast in grim fascination” way. Written by the guy who did the hoax sociology papers I think.
Introducing the Woke Right So here's the gut punch: some on the Right are starting to play the same game: not with pronouns or DEl quotas, but with a different brand of targeted shaming, purity tests, and mob tactics for not being right-wing enough; or even racist, sexist, or antisemitic enough. Meet the Woke Right-right-wingers who (sometimes) claim to love God, country, and freedom (usually not too much freedom) but who want to fight for them with the Left's weapons and through the Woke's tortured view of the world.
November 12, 2025 at 9:56 AM
jomichell.bsky.social
*taps sign*
November 11, 2025 at 11:01 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
🙄
November 11, 2025 at 10:59 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
it's amazing how much better stuff works in Macao and Qatar than in the US
November 11, 2025 at 4:12 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
Been online long enough to remember when Noah at least pretended to be an economist. Now he's happy to use dollar-terms GDP comparisons as a proxy for his inability to book flights and follow airport signs.
November 11, 2025 at 4:08 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
actually five times
November 11, 2025 at 1:44 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
This is an interesting take.
The JPMorgan GBI-EM index of bonds in local currencies currently yields about 5.92 per cent, versus 3.45 per cent for the Bloomberg Global Aggregate. That premium is increasingly difficult to justify.
November 11, 2025 at 7:45 AM
jomichell.bsky.social
Found a fox trapped in a fence earlier today. Unfortunately I was not wearing a kimono.
November 8, 2025 at 4:59 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
Interested by this comment: what is it about the language of economics that seems insincere in this context, even to an economist?
Her manifesto - to recognise the value of "having it almost" - is empowering, but she risks sounding insincere by wrapping advice in the language of economics; she writes of women "figuring out ….. your utility function" "investing in a partner" and "outsourcing". The message is sound, but economics jargon may not be the best fit for a self-help manual.
November 8, 2025 at 9:38 AM
jomichell.bsky.social
Does this really warrant a fully FTified visualisation?
November 7, 2025 at 9:45 AM