Now that the Bernie Sanders movement is comprehensively failing, it is time for those of us who supported it to take a step back and reflect. We can only learn from defeat if we are willing to be honest with ourselves and recognise it as such. This post is more autobiographical than most of what I run here. The aim is to do some hard introspection about how I came to support the Sanders movement and where its downfall leaves me, politically.
Tag: Automation
The Real Stakes of Trump’s Trade War With China
I have a new piece out at New Republic on the president’s tariffs. You can read it here:
https://newrepublic.com/article/154852/real-stakes-trumps-trade-war-china
They have edited it to sync up with their preferred style, so it reads a bit differently from the rest of my work.
Are We Trying to Make Everyone an Aristocrat or a Peasant?
On the left, we care a lot about equality. But we really, really don’t agree on what that means. Some of us want everyone to be an aristocrat. Some of us want everyone to be a peasant. Some of us want everyone to be a worker. Some of us want everyone to be middle class. Some of us want everyone to spend some time doing all of these things. We don’t talk about this difference very much, but it seems kind of important, because these proposals are not at all the same thing.
Continue reading “Are We Trying to Make Everyone an Aristocrat or a Peasant?”
Comparing Keynesian Neocorporatism and Market Socialism
There is a lot of fuzziness and misunderstanding about what the left is trying to do, economically. A while back, I discussed some of the things which distinguish postwar liberals–who remain committed to reforming capitalism–from democratic socialists, who seek to one day abolish capitalism outright. Today I want to get into a bit more detail and discuss more precisely how these economic models work. The case I want to make to you is that despite what you may hear, the postwar liberals and democratic socialists have more overlap in their proposals than either side realises.
Continue reading “Comparing Keynesian Neocorporatism and Market Socialism”
How to Read That Productivity/Wage Gap Chart We’re Always Seeing
You’ve probably seen this chart before. It’s everywhere now. I’ve used it more than a few times over the years. It’s the chart from the Economic Policy Institute that shows that while US productivity has continued to increased over the last few decades, real inflation-adjusted wages haven’t kept pace:
I’ve seen two bad misreadings of this chart lately, and I want to clear them up.
Continue reading “How to Read That Productivity/Wage Gap Chart We’re Always Seeing”
Benjamin Studebaker 