Back in February, a short-term spike in oil prices managed to find itself into the cacophony of stupidity that is right-wing cable and television programming. The sentiments expressed ranged from Obama being a failure because he cannot control oil prices to Obama conspiring to raise oil prices to serve his environmentalist agenda. I had a… Continue reading Remember oil price hysteria?
Author: Matt Bruenig
Everything about the economy is a distortion
John Cassidy had a piece a few days ago at the New Yorker about class warfare in America. Buried in the piece, he makes a point that really deserves underscoring: The argument of free-market economists that productivity determines wages and profits is mistaken. Productivity determines the over-all size of the pie. How it is distributed… Continue reading Everything about the economy is a distortion
All the merit money can buy
Chris Hayes has an excellent piece in The Nation about the slipperiness of meritocracy in the United States. In it, Hayes establishes what he calls the Iron Law of Meritocracy: The Iron Law of Meritocracy states that eventually the inequality produced by a meritocratic system will grow large enough to subvert the mechanisms of mobility.… Continue reading All the merit money can buy
Unions and inequality
Declining union density is one of the contributing factors to the last few decades of rising inequality. Estimates on its impact vary, but one often-cited study found that declining union density accounts for around 20 percent of the recent inequality growth. The Economic Policy Institute had a blog post yesterday with graphs and other resources… Continue reading Unions and inequality
Desert theory and taxing the poor
James Kwak has an article in The Atlantic today about the ideological motivations of the modern-day Republican party. Specifically, he tries to explain why Republicans — the pre-eminent haters of taxation — often suggest raising taxes on the very poor. Kwak suggests, Republicans are believers in just deserts: The other, even-more-disturbing explanation, is that Republicans… Continue reading Desert theory and taxing the poor