A leftist project in the United States needs to both be technically sound and politically persuasive. As Bhaskar Sunkara has often pointed out, the left right now is much too obsessed with the technical “wonky” side of the project. As a result, the moral and political arguments get neglected, and conservative moral and political narratives… Continue reading Problems with a left moral and political narrative
Author: Matt Bruenig
Introducing Datasets Project — First Up, Disability
Partly to better familiarize myself with the Current Population Survey and partly because I have a hard time finding certain important information, I have started a Datasets Project. I will track certain social statistics on an ongoing basis and update the datasets as the new numbers come in. For now, all of the datasets will… Continue reading Introducing Datasets Project — First Up, Disability
John Quiggin criticizes socializing finance
John Quiggin of Crooked Timber fame has a post on the Jacobin website today critiquing a recent article on socializing finance by Seth Ackerman. After Ackerman’s piece was published, I wrote two sympathetic posts (I, II) about the idea of socializing finance. Quiggin is skeptical. In his response, Quiggin does not appear to take exception… Continue reading John Quiggin criticizes socializing finance
Kant’s great dodge
At one point in Theory and Practice, Kant sets out to establish who should have voting rights. In one very fascinating paragraph, he concludes thusly: Anyone who has the right to vote on this legislation is a citizen (citoyen, i.e. citizen of a state, not bourgeois or citizen of a town). The only qualification required… Continue reading Kant’s great dodge
Virtue ethics and sovereign debt
Analysts tend to write about policy and political institutions in very consequentialist ways. That is, they describe the immediate consequences of some institution or policy, and then use those expected consequences to argue that the institution or policy is good or bad. Discussions around fiscal deficits and the federal debt almost uniformly utilize such a… Continue reading Virtue ethics and sovereign debt