I had a post at Demos today about Greg Mankiw’s weak at best understanding and adherence to a Just Deserts theory. The main focus of the post was not to attack Just Deserts theory, but to actually work out what it entails. The thesis is that Just Deserts does not entail the kind of distribution… Continue reading A circularity in Just Deserts
Author: Matt Bruenig
Policy Shop: LGBT Employment Rights
New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt: Last week, Pew released a fairly detailed survey of LGBT opinion in the United States. One of the more interesting findings is that the top policy priority among LGBT Americans is equal employment rights, beating out marriage equality by 4 percentage points. This prioritization makes sense of course: the… Continue reading Policy Shop: LGBT Employment Rights
Policy Shop: College Isn’t the Answer to Inequality
New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt: What’s so bizarre about the education focus is that there is a totally dominant strategy for fixing our distributive woes: change our institutions so that the national income is more evenly distributed. This would make dramatic dents in inequality, poverty, and social mobility right now. There is no need… Continue reading Policy Shop: College Isn’t the Answer to Inequality
Policy Shop: How About a U.S. Sovereign Wealth Fund?
New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt: Instead of going down either of those routes, I think we should go in a totally novel direction, at least in the short-term. What if there was a way we could reduce the federal deficit and the federal debt without raising taxes and without cutting spending? It seems too… Continue reading Policy Shop: How About a U.S. Sovereign Wealth Fund?
What’s more important: a college degree or being born rich?
I previously shared data from Pew’s Economic Mobility Project about social mobility (I, II). As far as income mobility goes, you are 10x more likely to wind up in the richest fifth as an adult if you were born there than if you were born in the poorest fifth. As far as wealth mobility goes,… Continue reading What’s more important: a college degree or being born rich?