strategic stakeholder (ironic: bureaucratese for vested interest)
Sydney
Joined May 2009
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Alan Luchetti retweeted
Pauline Hanson is worried businesses can’t find staff because there aren’t enough immigrants.
Sorry, I appear to have wandered into a parallel universe.
Alan Luchetti retweeted
In May 2025, I painted a mural of Donald Trump titled The Host. The mural was an image if Donald Trump, dressed as Uncle Sam with the Israeli flag in his eyes.
The work was a commentary on how US politics and foreign policy have been co-opted by Israel.
Shortly after its completion, police were called to the mural, a campaign was launched to pressure @innerwestcouncil into removing it (which they did), and I began receiving legal letters.
What followed was a lengthy legal process in which the complainant sought orders from the Tribunal requiring me to:
1. I create a new mural that apologised for the original mural, and that this mural had to be in the same place as the old mural;
2. I had to post photos of the mural apology and post it on my Instagram page;
3. I had to write a letter of apology to the President of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, and prescribed what he wanted me to write in that letter;
4. I pay $10,000 + revenue made on the sale of posters of the mural in equal parts to several Jewish fundraisers; and
5. I was to attend the Sydney Jewish Museum and undertake specific case studies.
After more than a year, I’ve finally put that legal process behind me.
This is yet another in a growing list of attempts to silence and censor my artwork critical of Israel.
Long story short, it didn’t work. 👊
I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Jen Robinson, Danielle, Michael and Lauren at Marque Lawyers, and Oshie Fagir.
You are absolute lifesavers ❤️🙏💪
Alan Luchetti retweeted
My God. The most powerful state in human history, home to Harvard, MIT, dozens of Nobel laureates, and trillions spent on research, is publishing economic analysis on the OFFICIAL White House website at the level of “if you build a free hospital, Americans will be eating each other within ten years.”
At least the Roman Empire waited for the barbarians. America decided to do the job itself.
whitehouse.gov/socialism/
Alan Luchetti retweeted
The "crowding out" myth: government deficits don’t squeeze private investment.
They create net financial assets.
A thread.
🧵1/12
Alan Luchetti retweeted
Terrifying rumors are swirling about Israel pressuring Trump to launch a nuclear strike on Iran immediately after the midterms or some other major escalation. I wish I was sure that this was too unhinged to take seriously, but we do not live in sane times where these kinds of dismissals are possible. Instead, we live amidst the rise of end times fascism, where dangerous accelerationists hold enormous sway in both the Israeli and U.S. governments.
The hardcore religious end timers have partnered with criminals like Trump, Netanyahu, and several tech oligarchs whose only path to avoiding legal accountability for their many crimes is dramatic (and distracting) escalation. I desperately hope the rumors are exaggerated, but we need to be ready in case they are not.
That's why we are releasing this video today on the eve of the U.S. midterms. We can defeat these maniacs, but only if we know what we are up against.
youtube.com/watch?v=obZN_n53…
Alan Luchetti retweeted
*No thanks Minns. I want $94million spent on mental health services not wasted on fully armed military to ‘control’ peaceful demonstrators. Wouldn’t have been one iota of help to Helen Haines MP tragic situation.
*ARC officers, who’ve been training in private, now commencing to do so in public, prior to the deployment of its initial officers. This will then grow to a total 250 ARC officers and 28 civilian staff members, who’ll too be equipped with 24 purpose-built vehicles. And this $94 million investment involves Operation Shelter becoming permanent.
Alan Luchetti retweeted
This is why NSW really can run out of money and the Commonwealth cannot. The states tax and borrow in a currency they don't issue. Canberra issues it. Comparing the federal budget to a household budget isn't a simplification — it's a category error. #MMT
Alan Luchetti retweeted
The guy believed in a non-existed form of banking, taught it, and even analyzed some historical events from the PoV of fractional reserve banking
Sowell is a joke
Alan Luchetti retweeted
Hydrogen is a Trojan horse for the fossil fuel industry.
It is constantly promoted as the future of clean transport.
But most hydrogen produced today comes from fossil fuels, particularly natural gas.
And producing hydrogen from natural gas releases emissions.
Even so-called “blue hydrogen” relies on fossil gas, with carbon capture technology that doesn’t eliminate all emissions.
But here’s where hydrogen cars become completely ridiculous.
To produce just 1kg of green hydrogen through electrolysis requires roughly 50-55kWh of electricity, BEFORE compression, storage and transportation.
That 1kg of hydrogen might get a hydrogen fuel cell car around 60-70 miles.
Meanwhile, put that same 50-55kWh of electricity directly into an electric car and you could travel around 180–220 miles.
The same electricity.
THREE TIMES the distance.
Why would we use renewable electricity to manufacture hydrogen, compress it, transport it to a filling station and then convert it BACK into electricity inside a car?
When we can simply put that electricity straight into the battery?
The the real question is why are fossil fuel companies so enthusiastic about hydrogen?
Because hydrogen offers them an opportunity to continue selling natural gas, investing in infrastructure and maintaining their influence over the energy industry.
Hydrogen absolutely has a role in decarbonising industries where direct electrification is difficult.
But pushing hydrogen as a mainstream alternative to electric cars makes very little environmental or economic sense.
Alan Luchetti retweeted
Which is why I think there should be a #NobblePrizeInEconomics, for people like Nordhaus whose insane assumptions have nobbled sensible economics. – at Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Alan Luchetti retweeted
Gas, not renewables, is the biggest driver of UK electricity bills. Pricier gas explains nearly 90% of the rise in household bills since 2020.
Gas plants still set the power price most of the time. Cutting gas is the surest way to cut bills.
janrosenow.substack.com/p/re…
Alan Luchetti retweeted
Walmart took advantage of the uniquely bad urbanism of the US, taking value from community in ways invisible to most. Not a simple size/efficiency example at all (although a profound political economy example, one that is beyond the Furmans of the world)
Alan Luchetti retweeted
No new coal-fired power station has been built in Australia for two decades.
Not because it couldn’t, but because the market doesn’t want to.
And now the people who have spent their careers insisting that governments should never pick winners are demanding the government pick a loser.
Apparently the free market is always right, except when it disagrees with your ideology.
Alan Luchetti retweeted
A libertarian literally told me that if a corporation bought my town's only water supply and charged $400 a month, I could just start a competing water company.
Fucking brilliant. I'll dig a second river this weekend and let the free market sort it out.
Alan Luchetti retweeted
An economist obsessed with equilibrium could watch a bridge collapse, observe the wreckage settle at the bottom of a river, and publish a fucking paper explaining how the entire structure successfully converged to a stable equilibrium.
Alan Luchetti retweeted
Pretty amazing that its 2026 and prominent economists still say obviously false things about literature they cite and haven't read.
The **title** of Phillips' paper is "The Relation between Unemployment and the Rate of Change of Money Wage Rates in the United Kingdom, 1861-1957"
Is the Phillips curve useful to make sense of inflation?
A.W.H. Phillips first postulated a negative empirical correlation between inflation and the level of economic activity. Looking at inflation in 2021-24---up and down---versus measures of unemployment---roughly unchanged---shows little correlation. Has the Phillips curve failed, yet again? No, it did not.
Friedman and Phelps, almost 50 years ago, clarified that this correlation should only hold keeping expected inflation fixed. Almost every account of how firms choose prices or bargain wages with their workers predicts that expectations would show up in a Philips curve. Moreover, those models of behavior further add that increases in marginal costs (supply shocks) would further shift out this relation. The empirical Phillips curve has for many decades meant a negative relation between inflation and real activity, controlling for expected inflation and supply shocks.
The left figure below shows on the vertical axis inflation, after controlling for expected inflation---mean and disagreement from a household survey---and for supply shocks---gas prices and global supply pressures. The horizontal axis shows a measure of slack in the labor market---the log of the ratio of unemployment to job vacancies. The Phillips curve held nicely and steadily throughout.
A criticism of that figure is that its is looking in the rear view mirror: the measure of supply shocks and the measure of slack were developed in the last few years and the data has been revised. The right figure does instead an out-of sample exercise. Estimate a regression of inflation on (i) expected inflation, (ii) the difference between the unemployment rate and the CBO estimate of its non-cyclical component, and (iii) the PCE energy price index. Do it on data pre-pandemic: 1984Q1-2020Q1. Using that estimated equation, predict inflation in real time from then onwards using the data releases available at the time of the forecast. The Phillips curve was a pretty good predictor of inflation throughout.
The Phillips curve was stable during the inflation surge, and it predicted well the movements in inflation, with expectations playing a key role in those predictions.
Notes: it is important to include the right measure of expectations to understand inflation-activity dynamics at a business-cycle frequency: the short-horizon expectations of households and firms. (For instance, the long-horizon expectations from professionals, or the expectations from models in policy institutions, as in my previous two posts, are the wrong measure.)
Sources:
(i) Section 3 in Reis "Why Did Inflation Rise and Fall in 2021-24? Channels and Evidence from Expectations"
(ii) The simple exercise on the left figure is inspired on the analysis of Bernanke and Blanchard “What Caused the US Pandemic-Era Inflation?”
(iii) The simple exercise on the right figure is inspired on @jadhazell "Comment" in the NBER macro annual 2025, which in turn built on Beaudry, Hou, and Portier "The Dominant Role of Expectations and Broad-Based Supply Shocks in Driving Inflation"
Alan Luchetti retweeted
Capitalism is apparently the most efficient allocation mechanism ever invented, provided you ignore empty houses, homeless people, destroyed food, planned obsolescence, medical bankruptcies, wage theft, monopolies, pollution, bullshit jobs, and periodic financial catastrophes.