Tag: taxes
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The Progressive Case for the Welfare State: A Refresher
Many of my own fellow-travelers police progressivism in a way I sometimes find frustrating. It is de rigeur to chastise neoliberals and technocratic moderates for their lack of radicality. My work tends towards the technocratic/participatory divide around how policies should be made, and so I often don’t have strong policy preferences unless I’ve researched a…
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When we finally start talking about gun control, what should we say?
I love policy discussions, but the demands for policy discussion on gun control after the shootings in Newtown today are terribly wrong-headed. The problem is that demanding a policy discussion is not the same thing as having a policy discussion. At this point, we’re just talking about talking about gun control. It’s all “mention” and…
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The Season of Political Irrelevance
It is my considered opinion that the next three months will involve no serious deliberations regarding substantive public policy. Though readership and viewership for such matters will be at its highest, none of the things discussed will be discussed in a way that comports with public reason or with anything like the goal of exchanging…
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Another Badly-Aimed Attack on the Basic Income Guarantee from Crooked Timber
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 is…
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Greece and the European Union
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…
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Does Basic Income + VAT “Solve” Immigration?
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 basic provision of essential services, and renders recipients much more autonomous than they currently are, since the government…