I have a piece in The Washington Post that argues for a Universal Basic Income. The piece is part of a general UBI forum with lots of participants. I was solicited to provide a left-of-center perspective, and so that’s what I did. The piece identifies two problems inherent in capitalist economic systems — employer coercion… Continue reading Capitalism is coercive and creates patterns of deprivation, as explained by libertarian blockquotes
Author: Matt Bruenig
Want to Fight Poverty? Expand Welfare. Always Expand Welfare.
Catherine Rampell has a piece at the Washington Post titled “Want to fight poverty? Expand access to contraception.” As you can probably guess, the poverty solution here is to try to nudge women with low market incomes away from having families, a troubling strategy that rich folks have been eager to push in one form or another for… Continue reading Want to Fight Poverty? Expand Welfare. Always Expand Welfare.
Nobody Is On Twitter
Terrell Jermaine Starr has a piece at the Washington Post titled “On Twitter, Bernie Sanders’s supporters are becoming one of his biggest problems.” In it, he argues “the social media battles have shown that Sanders’s supporters also have become a major hurdle for the candidate in building a positive image with the black electorate.” As… Continue reading Nobody Is On Twitter
Lies About Corbyn from the Capitalist Hyena Press
The media is in a tizzy over new UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Given the ideological composition of the press, this is understandable. Corbyn is himself a fairly far left man while the reporting and commenting class scarcely stray beyond center-left respectability. In the process of projecting their anger and alarm at his success,… Continue reading Lies About Corbyn from the Capitalist Hyena Press
Technical details for my analysis of 2014 poverty data
I use eight categories of people to break down the poverty data. They are defined as follows: Children — Ages 0-17. Elderly — Ages 65+. Disabled — Either 1) had one of the serious disabilities the Census tracks (PRDISFLG = 1), 2) was out of the labor force for the entire year because of an… Continue reading Technical details for my analysis of 2014 poverty data