Author: Matt Bruenig

Unions and redistribution

Last week, Demos released a study that proposed raising wages for workers at big box retailers. According to the study, establishing a $25,000 wage floor at big box retailers would cost big box retailers $20.8 billion per year. If that additional cost were made up through price increases alone, it would amount to a 1%… Continue reading Unions and redistribution

Proudhon hilariously slamming Say

For my money, P.J. Proudhon is still history’s greatest critic of property theories. His writing is also wildly entertaining because it is extremely angry and vitriolic. In his magnum opus —

The radical Rawls

Martin O’Neill and Thad Williamson had an article in the Boston Review outlining some of the radical components of Rawls’ philosophy. The short thesis is: “to treat Rawls simply as a defender of Democratic Party liberalism and the welfare state—as he is widely regarded—is to misread him.” The authors then go on to explain Rawls… Continue reading The radical Rawls

I am getting fed up personally paying the incomes of everyone else

So we could have a set of distributive institutions where I owned all of the social product. That’s conceivable. As it turns out, we do not have that set of distributive institutions. We have this other cocktail of things which is kind of pieced together haphazardly: some market wages, some transfers, some in-kind public benefits,… Continue reading I am getting fed up personally paying the incomes of everyone else