Unspinning the Flint Democratic Debate
There are a few things that were said during last night’s democratic debate between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton that are being spun in a deeply misleading way. Let’s talk about some of them.
Benjamin Studebaker
Yet Another Attempt to Make the World a Better Place by Writing Things
Tag: Poverty
February 5, 2016
Why Bernie vs Hillary Matters More Than People Think
Lately the internet has become full of arguments about the merits and demerits of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been discussing and pondering all the various views about this, and I’m increasingly of the opinion that most of the people engaging in this debate don’t really understand what is at stake in the democratic primary. This is in part because many Americans don’t really understand the history of American left wing politics and don’t think about policy issues in a holistic, structural way. So in this post, I want to really dig into what the difference is between Bernie and Hillary and why that difference is extremely important.
December 10, 2015
Why American Families are Worse off Now Than They Were in 1997
When we evaluate whether or not the economy is performing well, we sometimes pay too much attention to GDP. Gross domestic product tells us about the total amount of exchange going on in an economy, but many of those exchanges only serve to enrich those at the top of the economic ladder. To get a better sense of how ordinary people are doing, we need to look at real (inflation-adjusted) median household income. Today I checked in on the American figures, and they are bleak:
The median American family is not only poorer than they were before the 2008 crisis–they’re poorer than they were during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. What on earth is going on?
