New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt: One point missed in the debunkings so far is that the source Tom Coburn is almost certainly using, shadowstats.com, is total nonsense. The basic thrust of Coburn’s and Ron Paul’s inflation conspiracy theory is that the government has changed the way it measures inflation over time to intentionally generate… Continue reading Policy Shop: Shadow Stats and Tom Coburn’s Inflation Fantasies
Policy Shop: Transferring Cash to Poor People at the Local Level
New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt: The real fascinating case, then, is the Montgomery County EITC. Because most local governments do not have their own income tax, a local EITC program seems impractical. But Montgomery County has gotten around this problem by piggybacking off of Maryland’s state EITC program. When a Montgomery County resident receives… Continue reading Policy Shop: Transferring Cash to Poor People at the Local Level
TM Scanlon is wrong about in-kind benefits and you might be too
My prior post was about cash transfers versus in-kind benefits. In the twitter thread which motivated that post, I noticed Mike Konczal linking back to a TM Scanlon argument on his old WordPress site on the issue. I am pretty sure Mike and I have had this argument out in a comment section somewhere before,… Continue reading TM Scanlon is wrong about in-kind benefits and you might be too
A way to think about in-kind benefits and cash transfers
Evan Soltas asked a question on Twitter regarding whether in-kind benefits (things like government-provided health insurance and food stamps) are better than cash benefits. There are all sorts of arguments about this. Konczal even tried his hand a general theory of this question a while back, which met mixed reception. I think this question tends… Continue reading A way to think about in-kind benefits and cash transfers
On process and scarcity
Occasionally I’ve weighed in here on the process versus substance debate, generally on the side of substance. My partiality towards substance is not based simply on some assessment that it is more important than process. It’s more that, after years of effort trying to work on theories of process, it became clear that process was… Continue reading On process and scarcity