Cure-alls and Remedies
I am one of those ideologically-impure liberals that worries a lot about public sector unions. On the one hand, I favor workplace democracy and collaboration; on the other hand, I worry about the fact that as union membership has declined, the majority of remaining union members haved tended to be at the top of the…
John Quiggin has been taking up the case against the basic income guarantee at Crooked Timber recently. See here and here . Unfortunately, he is attacking a weak man version of the policy. It doesn’t look like he actually opposes the BIG, in theory, but his objections all appear to demonstrate that a Basic Income…
This Newsnight piece paints a picture of the widespread breakdown of the Greek social compact: What was no joke were the clashes between police and the hardline protesters.[…] Time and again, on the grounds of confronting the rioters, police made incursions into large masses of peaceful protesters. […]I can tell you from repeated experience, it…
Here’s the gist : I would like to argue that most of the really important public policy issues are not even part of the ongoing debate in the press. Here are some examples: 1. The huge rise in occupational licensing. 2. The huge rise in people incarcerated in the war on drugs, and also the…
[caption id=”” align=”alignleft” width=”336″] US Customs and Border Protection officers enforce our labor market protections with paramilitary techniques.[/caption] One of my favorite liberal policies is the basic income proposal. The idea is that all citizens have a basic guaranteed income, below which no one may fall. As the argument goes, this supplies more flexibility than…
Steven Maloney asked his students to stabilize the budget using the CRFB’s simulator . Some couldn’t do it without making draconian choices that were particularly painful for seniors, or undoing the President’s decisions to preserve troop levels in Afghanistan and extending the Bush-era tax cuts. Some wouldn’t do it: That students would hand in deficits…
Megan McArdle discusses budget negotiating strategies . She’s right. Ezra Klein outlines why liberals don’t like it . He’s also right: Obama’s got 156 million people splitting $214 billion in tax cuts and benefits. The GOP’s got 4[.8] million people splitting $133 billion in tax cuts. On a per-person level, the GOP’s tax cuts are…
Walmart is planning to open several new ” urban ” stores in the District, and I’m pretty excited about it. ( via ) One of them will be just two blocks away from me, and I plan to shop there. Right now, I do most of my shopping at the rundown, overpriced Safeway or at…
I didn’t hear Jon Stewart’s speech from the Mall, so his quote about where real Americans live didn’t hit me until today. I’m guessing his claim was designed to set up the old, tired prejudice that the 495 Beltway is some kind of line that separates real Americans from the DC punditocracy. Given his various criticisms…