@QuintenJacobs3 @cauwelaert De ruimte voor de HRF in het no-deal-scenario lijkt trouwens klein. De terugvalpositie is gekoppeld aan een vooraf bepaalde verdeelsleutel. De HRF maakt hier geen politieke afweging.
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Kevin Spiritus
6.2K posts
Kevin Spiritus
@KevinSpiritus
🇧🇪 Professor Openbare Financiën bij Erasmus School of Economics. Belastingen & Begroting. Find me on Bluesky.
Belgium Se unió Ekim 2016
25 Siguiendo1.1K Seguidores
@QuintenJacobs3 @cauwelaert Ik speelde met hetzelfde idee toen we de open brief schreven. Maar vraag is: hoe operationaliseer je het? Je loopt het risico dat men alsnog niet tot een akkoord komt en dat dan de burger betaalt. Bovendien is de kans groot dat men het no-deal-scenario niet streng genoeg maakt.
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De kritiek van @cauwelaert en @QuintenJacobs3 dat de begroting een technocratische aangelegenheid wordt, is onterecht.
1. Europa spreekt zich uit over het pad van de *netto* uitgaven. De uitgaven mogen stijgen, zolang de inkomsten voldoende meestijgen. 1\
tijd.be/opinie/column/…
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Kevin Spiritus retuiteado
Ook olieprijzen zijn historisch niet uitzonderlijk hoog.
Toch zijn er bij ons regeringspartijen die per se energiesteun willen geven (en dat uiteraard met geleend geld)…
Javier Blas@JavierBlas
CHART OF THE DAY: European natural gas benchmark prices (TTF) fall to 7-week low. Current prices are about the same as in late-January, when I don’t remember anyone in Brussels (or Frankfurt) talking about a crisis and/or inflation problem. LNG market went into crisis oversupplied; Asia switched from gas to coal very quickly; renewable generation is helping; and demand destruction in poor nations is doing the rest.
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Kevin Spiritus retuiteado
Als je nu energiesteun geeft, dan is je beleid niet bezig met het gezond maken van de overheidsfinanciën en een duurzame economie, maar met het winnen van stemmen.
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@QuintenJacobs3 @cauwelaert In landen als Duitsland, Italië, Spanje, Oostenrijk, ... is dat toch ook niet het geval? Ervaring leert dat er anders gewoon geen akkoord komt.
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@KevinSpiritus @cauwelaert Punt is niet zozeer dat begroting europeaniseert, wel dat het Belgische samenwerkingsakkoord de verdeling van de Europese inspanningen depolitiseert. Ik ben voorstander van een politiek akkoord, en door ingebakken terugvalpositie zal dat er nooit meer komen.
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4. Ik ben het wel eens met beide heren dat het nieuwe akkoord best wordt afgedwongen met een wijziging in de bijzondere financieringswet. \\
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3. Zelfbinding is voor economen geen controversieel idee. Het belang van een onafhankelijke centrale bank wordt algemeen erkend, en landen met verstandige, afdwingbare begrotingsregels evolueren naar een houdbaarder pad. Over mandaten en regels wordt democratisch beslist. 5/
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Interesting: Understanding Support for Inefficient Environmental Policy Instruments
nber.org/papers/w35073
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De wet van de creatieve destructie speelt volop – Paul De Grauwe
liberales.be/teksten/2026/3…
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Kevin Spiritus retuiteado
Registration is open for the 6th Tinbergen Institute Public Economics Workshop on 20 May at the University of Amsterdam, with @DavidRAgrawal, David @SeimSeim, Kate Smith, and Etienne Lehmann.
Register: tinbergen.nl/event/2026/05/…
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Food for thought: Social security should be a forced savings program not a welfare program
marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu…
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Toch weer een verschilletje BE-NL: in NL zijn er serieuze voorbereidingen voor Q-day, de dag dat quantumcomputers onze encryptie kunnen kraken en onze havens, luchthavens, … kwetsbaar worden. In BE hoor ik hier niets over. Ik heb er geen vertrouwen in dat men ermee bezig is.
Justin Drake@drakefjustin
Today is a monumentous day for quantum computing and cryptography. Two breakthrough papers just landed (links in next tweet). Both papers improve Shor's algorithm, infamous for cracking RSA and elliptic curve cryptography. The two results compound, optimising separate layers of the quantum stack. The results are shocking. I expect a narrative shift and a further R&D boost toward post-quantum cryptography. The first paper is by Google Quantum AI. They tackle the (logical) Shor algorithm, tailoring it to crack Bitcoin and Ethereum signatures. The algorithm runs on ~1K logical qubits for the 256-bit elliptic curve secp256k1. Due to the low circuit depth, a fast superconducting computer would recover private keys in minutes. I'm grateful to have joined as a late paper co-author, in large part for the chance to interact with experts and the alpha gleaned from internal discussions. The second paper is by a stealthy startup called Oratomic, with ex-Google and prominent Caltech faculty. Their starting point is Google's improvements to the logical quantum circuit. They then apply improvements at the physical layer, with tricks specific to neutral atom quantum computers. The result estimates that 26,000 atomic qubits are sufficient to break 256-bit elliptic curve signatures. This would be roughly a 40x improvement in physical qubit count over previous state-of-the-art. On the flip side, a single Shor run would take ~10 days due to the relatively slow speed of neutral atoms. Below are my key takeaways. As a disclaimer, I am not a quantum expert. Time is needed for the results to be properly vetted. Based on my interactions with the team, I have faith the Google Quantum AI results are conservative. The Oratomic paper is much harder for me to assess, especially because of the use of more exotic qLDPC codes. I will take it with a grain of salt until the dust settles. → q-day: My confidence in q-day by 2032 has shot up significantly. IMO there's at least a 10% chance that by 2032 a quantum computer recovers a secp256k1 ECDSA private key from an exposed public key. While a cryptographically-relevant quantum computer (CRQC) before 2030 still feels unlikely, now is undoubtedly the time to start preparing. → censorship: The Google paper uses a zero-knowledge (ZK) proof to demonstrate the algorithm's existence without leaking actual optimisations. From now on, assume state-of-the-art algorithms will be censored. There may be self-censorship for moral or commercial reasons, or because of government pressure. A blackout in academic publications would be a tell-tale sign. → cracking time: A superconducting quantum computer, the type Google is building, could crack keys in minutes. This is because the optimised quantum circuit is just 100M Toffoli gates, which is surprisingly shallow. (Toffoli gates are hard because they require production of so-called "magic states".) Toffoli gates would consume ~10 microseconds on a superconducting platform, totalling ~1,000 sec of Shor runtime. → latency optimisations: Two latency optimisations bring key cracking time to single-digit minutes. The first parallelises computation across quantum devices. The second involves feeding the pubkey to the quantum computer mid-flight, after a generic setup phase. → fast- and slow-clock: At first approximation there are two families of quantum computers. The fast-clock flavour, which includes superconducting and photonic architectures, runs at roughly 100 kHz. The slow-clock flavour, which includes trapped ion and neutral atom architectures, runs roughly 1,000x slower (~100 Hz, or ~1 week to crack a single key). → qubit count: The size-optimised variant of the algorithm runs on 1,200 logical qubits. On a superconducting computer with surface code error correction that's roughly 500K physical qubits, a 400:1 physical-to-logical ratio. The surface code is conservative, assuming only four-way nearest-neighbour grid connectivity. It was demonstrated last year by Google on a real quantum computer. → future gains: Low-hanging fruit is still being picked, with at least one of the Google optimisations resulting from a surprisingly simple observation. Interestingly, AI was not (yet!) tasked to find optimisations. This was also the first time authors such as Craig Gidney attacked elliptic curves (as opposed to RSA). Shor logical qubit count could plausibly go under 1K soonish. → error correction: The physical-to-logical ratio for superconducting computers could go under 100:1. For superconducting computers that would be mean ~100K physical qubits for a CRQC, two orders of magnitude away from state of the art. Neutral atoms quantum computers are amenable to error correcting codes other than the surface code. While much slower to run, they can bring down the physical to logical qubit ratio closer to 10:1. → Bitcoin PoW: Commercially-viable Bitcoin PoW via Grover's algorithm is not happening any time soon. We're talking decades, possibly centuries away. This observation should help focus the discussion on ECDSA and Schnorr. (Side note: as unofficial Bitcoin security researcher, I still believe Bitcoin PoW is cooked due to the dwindling security budget.) → team quality: The folks at Google Quantum AI are the real deal. Craig Gidney (@CraigGidney) is arguably the world's top quantum circuit optimisooor. Just last year he squeezed 10x out of Shor for RSA, bringing the physical qubit count down from 10M to 1M. Special thanks to the Google team for patiently answering all my newb questions with detailed, fact-based answers. I was expecting some hype, but found none.
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Interview met De Morgen, samen met @WillemSas demorgen.be/nieuws/econome…
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Kevin Spiritus retuiteado
We completed the most comprehensive study of how economists and AI experts think AI will affect the U.S. economy.
They predict major AI progress—but no dramatic break from economic trends: GDP growth rates similar to today's and a moderate decline in labor force participation.
However, when asked to consider what would happen in a world with extremely rapid progress in AI capabilities by 2030, they predict significant economic impacts by 2050:
• Annualized GDP growth of 3.5% (compared to 2.4% in 2025)
• A labor force participation rate of 55% (roughly 10 million fewer jobs)
• 80% of wealth held by the top 10% (highest since 1939)
🧵 Here's what we found:
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Zij heeft natuurlijk gelijk: het pensioenbedrag wordt al aangepast voor het feit dat men voltijds/deeltijds werkt. De bonus/malus is een correctie voor het feit dat men minder of meer jaren pensioen krijgt als men langer/korter werkt. Die zou moeten gelden voor iedereen.
Kim De Witte@DeWitteKim
Professor Ria Janvier legt helder uit waarom de pensioenmalus deeltijdse arbeid discrimineert. Je pensioen ligt al lager — en nu dreig je EXTRA te verliezen. Volgens Europa is dat discriminatie. Nu hoort de regering het ook eens van iemand anders. 😉
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