Category: Class

I often hear people remark that the economy is really rough right now and seems like it will remain so into the foreseeable future. I know what they mean: unemployment is high, incomes are not rising, and structural shifts have destroyed the kinds of jobs many once relied upon. Although this is rough, there is… Continue reading On the so-called “rough economy”

I wrote previously about the difficulties of handling class within identitarian frameworks. I called out two main problems. First, poor people do not identify together as a coherent group. Second, to the extent that poorness is an identity, it is one we are trying to eliminate, not empower. Lifting up poor voices and experiences is… Continue reading Class and intersectionality

Absent magical accounting techniques, the only way to reduce inequality is to transfer income and wealth from those who have more of it to those who have less of it. There are reasonable disagreements about how best to do that, but one way or another, it has to be done. Despite this reality, armies of… Continue reading Reduce inequality by reducing inequality

The reason poor people face so many problems is that they do not have very much money. This seems like a simple point, so simple in fact that even raising it borders on condescension. But this fact seems lost on a great number of so-called activists. One such group of activists are those who call… Continue reading Confusion around food deserts

Matt Yglesias has a nice chart today comparing the cost of the mortgage interest tax deduction to the cost of other kinds of housing subsidies: It turns out that the mortgage interest deduction absolutely dwarfs the housing subsidies provided primarily for low-income renters. The mortgage interest tax deduction skews to the wealthy for a few… Continue reading Welfare for the rich