With the official unemployment rate still at 8% and current rates of job additions indicating that we will remain well below full employment for some time, it is easy to get despondent. You look at the above graph and you see just 6 years ago we had less than 5% unemployment. What happened? It wasn’t… Continue reading A little inspiration from John Maynard Keynes
Author: Matt Bruenig
I published a paper in “Philosophy and the Black Experience”
I just realized that a paper I wrote and published a year ago is now publicly available online (pdf). The paper is called “Atomistic Individualism and the Hermeneutics of Racist Philosophy” and is published in Volume 11, Number 1 of “Philosophy and the Black Experience.”
The correct vantage point of distributional debates
I have received some pushback on my last post, and so I thought I might clarify my main point. The bulk of the pushback has been, not surprisingly, from libertarian-leaning folks who believe it is quite clear that when you take private property from one person and then give it to another, that constitutes redistribution.… Continue reading The correct vantage point of distributional debates
There is no such thing as redistribution
The blogosphere is ablaze with discussions of redistribution: who redistributes to who, how much redistribution is happening, and so on. As it is, the discussion is not particularly lopsided. The right-wing can claim we are redistributing to poor folks because of government programs. The left-wing can claim we are redistributing to rich folks because of… Continue reading There is no such thing as redistribution
Robert Nozick, paternalist hater of liberty
As I mentioned in the previous post, the basic problem with procedural accounts of property rights is first ownership. There is simply no way to get around the fact that when the first owner asserts himself, every other person in the world is dealt a blow. They can no longer access a piece of a… Continue reading Robert Nozick, paternalist hater of liberty