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
Author: Matt Bruenig
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
The class composition of college graduates
I have been trying to find good info for a while now on this. And here it is courtesy of Bailey-Dynarski research and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. This graph represents the class composition of individuals born between 1979 and 1982 who completed a bachelor’s degree by age 25. So this is a solid… Continue reading The class composition of college graduates
Higher education is more class diverse than it used to be
If you’ve read any think pieces about higher education recently, you are familiar with the accepted narrative by now. Back in the day — which usually means the 1970s or thereabouts — college was accessible to all and therefore an engine of social mobility and egalitarianism. But now things have changed. Higher tuition, student debt,… Continue reading Higher education is more class diverse than it used to be
Short summary: the federal debt is not a generational issue
The right-wing claims that increasing the federal debt steals from the future generation. This is wrong. First, the federal debt never needs to be repaid, only the interest on the federal debt. Second, most of the federal debt is held by Americans. When the future generation pays money towards that debt, they will be paying… Continue reading Short summary: the federal debt is not a generational issue