The Job Guarantee (JG) is a policy whereby the government guarantees public jobs to all people at a decent wage. It is meant to function like an employer of last resort. I have raised concerns with this idea elsewhere, but have never written a post about it. So let me lay out those concerns here.… Continue reading Issues With The Job Guarantee
How “Consistent Liberal” Deceives
At Upshot, Nate Cohn has settled on a very specific line about Bernie Sander (I, II) that I don’t think he argues very well for. The argument in a nutshell is this: Bernie Sanders is very liberal and so he appeals to others who are very liberal, but not to those who are less liberal,… Continue reading How “Consistent Liberal” Deceives
Why Have Property At All?
So I’ve been reading this paper from libertarian philosopher Matt Zwolinski about why a basic income is both consistent with, and even required by, libertarian precepts. What’s interesting about Zwolinski basic income advocacy is that the way it works is by first establishing that property is anti-libertarian, in the sense that it clearly relies upon… Continue reading Why Have Property At All?
An Actually Meaningful Homogeneity Argument
When you point out that other countries grow as fast (or faster) than the US does and innovate as much (or more) than the US does, all while having higher tax levels, lower poverty, and lower inequality, eventually partisans of laissez-faire capitalism come around to say those countries are all one-off exceptions owing to their… Continue reading An Actually Meaningful Homogeneity Argument
A Basic Welfare Framework
Often, it’s said that welfare states are dizzyingly complicated. So many programs! Impossible to rationalize! But this isn’t necessarily true. You can make welfare systems that are bizarrely complicated, but laying out a basic welfare framework doesn’t have to be a byzantine affair. Consider the following four-part framework that captures the vast majority of what… Continue reading A Basic Welfare Framework