I’ve been going on and on and on about socializing finance ever since Seth Ackerman’s pulled the idea out of relative obscurity by writing a piece about it in Jacobin. Without going into the particulars of how it is done, the basic idea is to have the government buy up some (or perhaps all) financial… Continue reading Socialize finance to reduce inequality
Author: Matt Bruenig
US poverty rates broken down finer than ever before
The Census has a neat report out today using American Community Survey data to detail poverty rates by race, metropolitan area, and so on. The most interesting part of the report is the breakdown of poverty rates within given races. Asians, for instance, are often treated as a monolith population with high incomes and low… Continue reading US poverty rates broken down finer than ever before
Thoughts on degree inflation
Catherine Rampell had a piece about degree inflation in the New York Times yesterday. What follows are some scattered thoughts about the piece and degree inflation more generally. First, the piece manages to run down someone with an undergraduate degree that has over $100,000 in student loan debt. The New York Times is really talented… Continue reading Thoughts on degree inflation
Women’s labor force participation across different countries
The New York Times had a very good Sunday piece from Stephanie Coontz called Why Gender Equality Stalled. Much of the piece is dedicated to highlighting the ways in which our economic institutions force women to make hard choices about labor force attachment. Throughout the piece, Coontz makes comparisons between the United States and other… Continue reading Women’s labor force participation across different countries
A flowchart of Rawls’ theory of distributive justice
This flowchart is basically how I think about putting part two of John Rawls’ difference principle into practice as part of a political project.