When explaining the design problems with the Supreme Court, people often point to the fact that the judges are unelected or the fact that they are appointed for life. While it is fair enough to dislike these design choices, it does not seem to me that either of them are fundamentally problematic in the sense… Continue reading The SCOTUS Design Is Gamed By Strategic Retirements
Author: Matt Bruenig
Delay and Grandparenthood
A couple of months ago, the NYT had a long piece about people waiting longer to have children. The age of first birth has been climbing steadily for decades and so there is nothing especially new in the piece. Nonetheless, because the topic pushes on certain sensitive cultural and family topics, it naturally generated a… Continue reading Delay and Grandparenthood
Home Ownership Is Still Mostly Renting
In the last couple of weeks, there has been some discussion of large-scale real estate companies buying up single-family homes in order to rent them. Home ownership looms large in the American imagination and so this kind of news is met with lots of negative reactions as people sense that regular people are now competing… Continue reading Home Ownership Is Still Mostly Renting
Does the Tuskegee Experiment Really Explain Black Vaccination Rates?
Black vaccination rates lag the rest of the country, according to data from the Census Household Pulse Survey and other similar sources. One common explanation for this in the discourse is that black people are skeptical of the vaccine because of prior historical events in which they were abused and experimented upon by the US… Continue reading Does the Tuskegee Experiment Really Explain Black Vaccination Rates?
Is Decommodification Socialism?
In a piece that was mostly about something else, Freddie deBoer had this to say about socialism, the welfare state, and decommodification: Since I am a grumpy old man, I will not relent in saying that anything that calls itself socialism must, as the end of the day, point towards decommodification. That is, what separates… Continue reading Is Decommodification Socialism?