Jonathan Chait is mad that people call him a “neoliberal” and so insists that the word has no meaning and that it does not describe a real political change that occurred a few decades ago. Many have already explained how silly this feint is, but I would like to add two other points. First, potent… Continue reading Neoliberals Used to Refer to Themselves as New Democrats
Year: 2017
Alabama Part II
I wrote a post yesterday pointing out that the real story of Doug Jones’s upset in Alabama was the inordinate amount of white support for the Democratic candidate. In support of this position, I used the 2008 and 2012 exit polls to show that black turnout was no different in 2017 than those years, and… Continue reading Alabama Part II
What actually happened in Alabama?
The overwhelming mainstream narrative of Doug Jones’s victory over Roy Moore in Alabama has been focused on black turnout. Here is the New York Times: According to CNN exit polling, 30 percent of the electorate was African-American, with 96 percent of them voting for Mr. Jones. (Mr. Jones’s backers had felt he needed to get… Continue reading What actually happened in Alabama?
Weird UBI Argument About Rents
I am not that interested in arguing about UBI on a day-to-day basis, but I’ve now seen one silly argument against it enough times that I feel compelled to intervene. The argument is this: In fact, workers may not even see much of the benefit of their UBI check: if their new gains are simply… Continue reading Weird UBI Argument About Rents
Land as soil and land as space
The argument that people can appropriate unowned land by mixing their labor with it has a lot of problems. Labor is not a substance, and so it cannot be mixed. Even if it could be mixed, it is not clear why mixing it with something transforms the unowned particles into owned particles. Even if you… Continue reading Land as soil and land as space