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My conversation for Bloomberg's Odd Lots with Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal. Very fun conversation. Enjoyable. Great questions. www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/...

From @evonomics.bsky.social (fb edition). In "Neoliberalism and the New Fascism" I wrote how "trickle down" policies of cutting taxes for the rich did not increase productivity nor benefit workers - in fact it inaugurated a massive *upward* transfer of wealth as the rich engaged in speculation.

I replied today. And I think we agreed to end it there. Whatever you think, it is, I believe, an interesting conversation. branko2f7.substack.com/p/more-on-tr...

I retweeted it yesterday. Alex criticized it in this post: alexcallinicos.substack.com/p/a-reply-to...

A nice exchange btw @alexcallinicos.bsky.social and myself on Trotsky and view of Trotsky by Leszek Kolakowski. I started with this piece I wrote several years ago. Trotsky after Kolakowski branko2f7.substack.com/p/trotsky-af...

The contribution of the book, while it looks at China specifically, is not only that it enables us to study the philosophy behind the statistical work in China but to see the ideological or philosophical underpinnings to much of statistical work in general.

Statistics as a philosophy and art The use and misuse of statistics in the early years of the People’s Republic A review of Arunabh Ghosh's "Making it Count" branko2f7.substack.com/p/statistics...

After this absolutely meaningless war, longer than was WW2 for the Soviet Union, launched light-heartedly by Putin, but with unnecessary tensions and unfriendly moves leading to the war made by both sides, Russia and Ukraine will

● Both countries will decline demographically, economically, politically and culturally. And given low population growth rates, it does not seem that they would recover any time soon (I am speaking of half-a-century or more and assuming no new wars). So enjoy the continued war!

● Its proponents will mouth-off nonsensical things about Christian values while murder rates, domestic violence, abortion and alcoholism will be at all-time European and Asian peaks.

● Russia will remain for a long time totally cut off (economically, politically and culturally) from Europe which is its natural cultural milieu. It would produce art of ersatz nationalist quality compared to which socialist realism could be considered a top artistic creation.

● Its ideology & art will be extremely nationalistic, with probably being the only country in Europe officially celebrating Nazi fighters.

● Ukraine will remain an armed camp, with half of its pre-war population only, and with most of its valuable assets owned by foreigners. It will be part of the EU with constant fights there arguing that no economic aid will ever be a sufficient compensation for Ukraine's human sacrifice.

● In addition to the military losses, both countries will lose millions of citizens who will emigrate for good. ● They would lose best actors, physicists, writers, AI specialists, doctors. In many areas the damage will take two or three decades of peace just to be fixed.

● Openly crazy nationalist regimes whose main educational task is to twist history in a pro-fascist direction--while, unlike socialist education, not providing any uplifting and positive message re. the future: ideologies of gloom and hopelessness, of soil and blood.

● Destroyed large parts of infrastructure (heating plants, refineries, warehouses, roads, bridges), and also hospitals and schools, Most of it inherited from socialism which did build things that current regimes have a pleasure to destroy.

(if the war ends w/o the use of nuclear weapons) boast at the end of the war the following results. ● About 2 million killed and disabled citizens in total, mostly males which will additionally destabilize gender balance that was already bad.

After this absolutely meaningless war, longer than was WW2 for the Soviet Union, launched light-heartedly by Putin, but with unnecessary tensions and unfriendly moves leading to the war made by both sides, Russia and Ukraine will

A bleak but credible perspective on the longer term impact of AI, by @brankomilan.bsky.social substack.com/@branko2f7/n... (for me it was redolent of EM Forster's "The machine stops" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mac...) Q: is thinking about these issues in the AI Minister Kanishka Narayan's brief?

Half Way through this illuminating book by @brankomilan.bsky.social. I really like how the author combines intellectual history with contemporary economic analysis. Probably the most important work in 2026 to understand the present state of Capitalism globally?