New post at policy shop. Excerpt: There are two conceivable paths to having a low post-T&T poverty rate, this again being the rate of most significance to people’s lived lives. A country can put a lot of effort into bringing up the market incomes of low-income people. Or it can compensate for those low market… Continue reading Policy Shop: How Low-Poverty Countries Do It
Author: Matt Bruenig
OECD poverty animation for 2010
A while ago, I had a post with an animation showing how much countries reduce their poverty rates with taxes and transfers. I have recreated that animation with a new stock of data coming from the OECD for 2010. It features 26 countries. Each dot represents a country (hover over to see which). The dots… Continue reading OECD poverty animation for 2010
What motivates the austerity crowd?
I’ve written earlier that austerity does not appear to materially benefit anyone really. This was meant to raise a challenge to the claims of some that austerity is being pushed by a class of people who stand to benefit from it. Emails and comments and various other methods of communication flooded in, but a persuasive… Continue reading What motivates the austerity crowd?
My favorite libertarian argument
The most interesting thing about libertarians is that their normative arguments fail on their own terms. Well-constructed theories only permit disagreement on the basic principle level. Excepting consequentialist libertarians, libertarian theories are so bad that their basic principles don’t even generate the conclusions libertarians claim they do. The arguments are internally contradictory on a scale… Continue reading My favorite libertarian argument
Mondragon cooperatives use capital accounts
Worker cooperatives are worker-owned businesses. The left likes them for two main reasons. First, workers capture the profits the business makes, not separate owners. This arrangement therefore eliminates exploitation in the Marxist sense of the word. Second, workers control the business, not separate owners. This arrangement therefore reduces alienation, at least the part of alienation… Continue reading Mondragon cooperatives use capital accounts