Author: Matt Bruenig

Fun with equal opportunity

In my last post, I said liberals do themselves a disservice by talking about equal opportunity all of the time, instead of raising other grievances they have with our economic institutions. If you listened to the people who talk on television, you’d believe the only thing concerning liberals is that the positions in our economy… Continue reading Fun with equal opportunity

Equal opportunty is inadequate

Steve Pearlstein has a long piece titled “Is capitalism moral?” in the Washington Post. The piece is a total mess. It seems to misconstrue different moral traditions and hops between them without seemingly realizing it. Nonetheless, it does provide a jumping off point for a point that needs to be emphasized: equal opportunity is totally… Continue reading Equal opportunty is inadequate

How to argue for public goods

Note: I use “public goods” in a general sense here as goods provided by the public, whether non-excludable or not. Arguments about public goods tend to be very sloppy. Advocates for such goods often conflate distributive issues with public provisioning issues, even though the two are conceptually distinct. This is partly what I was getting… Continue reading How to argue for public goods