Category: Class

New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt: But, as Hacker correctly points out, my view is almost certainly an outlying one. For cultural or other reasons, Americans tend to be more supportive of equality-producing measures that get baked into paychecks than they are of equality-producing measures that go through more overt government channels. As a result,… Continue reading Policy Shop: The Most Viable Way to Give a Boost to Low-Income Workers

New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt: This is not because all of the jobs being created in the wake of the recession are those that require college-degreed workers. In fact, around 44 percent of the job growth last month came in the retail and hospitality/leisure sectors, sectors traditionally open to those without a college education.… Continue reading Policy Shop: College Grads Take Bad Jobs That Once Went to Non-College Workers

I have a piece in The Atlantic today, the first of hopefully many to come. An excerpt: All of this is to say that there are non-material ways in which high levels of inequality diminish quality of life, for the poor especially, but even for middle and upper-income individuals. Distrust and mental illness are two… Continue reading The Atlantic: Inequality Hurts the Rich and Poor Alike

New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt: These two facts — decoupling and income growth divergence — are the only facts you need to make the case that our distributive institutions are failing. Growth is supposed to benefit everyone at relatively equal rates. That is the official story of why productivity growth is the greatest thing… Continue reading Policy Shop: The Trickiness of Measuring Inequality

I wrote a post yesterday about poverty and race. The basic gist was that there are a lot of poor Whites, which is something quite a few people do not realize. The percentage of White people in poverty is lower than Blacks and Hispanics, but because there are just so many Whites, there are also… Continue reading Poverty and race … and net worth