Category: Uncategorized

Joe Biden’s recent budget proposal includes increases to military spending. Many on the left criticized this part of the budget proposal and then Noah Smith criticized them and defended the decision. Smith’s argument for increased military spending is comically bad. First he argues that there isn’t a tradeoff between military spending and other kinds of… Continue reading Military Spending Should Be Cut

Over the last year, I’ve been slowly re-reading notable intellectuals in the socialist canon and recording podcasts about them. My “Socialism Series” currently has 8 episodes spanning from François-Noël Babeuf to Moses Hess. In the podcast so far, I have covered only pre-Marx socialists (Marx is next) and tried to emphasize a few things about… Continue reading Socialism and Industry

When I wrote the Family Fun Pack 3 years ago, I was interested in not just proposing a suite of child benefits for the US, but also in writing a paper that was based in a certain kind of universalist welfare state theory that you rarely see in think tank papers. The norm for think… Continue reading The Argument in the Family Fun Pack

Inflation is up and there is a debate about why this is. One explanation is that consumer demand increased a lot because people are using their pandemic transfer payments and pandemic savings to buy goods and services. Producers have responded to this demand in part by ramping up production, e.g. by adding 5.8 million jobs… Continue reading The Inflation Question

I entered Boston University Law School in the Fall of 2011. Like most law schools during the heyday of blogging, BU’s prospective students website featured a handful of blogs that were written by current students. To get a blog on the site, you had to be selected among various applicants, and, if you were selected,… Continue reading Carmen Ortiz Has Blood On Her Hands