Lately, everyone is arguing that the United States got rich off of cotton. The New York Times recently put out a story arguing that American capitalism “begins on the plantation”. This completely misunderstands the relationship between slave and serf-based agriculture and industrial capitalism. A dominant agricultural industry is not the foundation for industrial success–it is an impediment. Let me show you why…
Continue reading “Cotton is Not What Made the United States Rich”
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.
As Bernie Sanders sags in primary polls and Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris surge, it’s time to talk about the big mistake we made after 2016–we tried to win over the Clinton voters.
The bulk of “the squad” comes from districts that voted for Clinton:
Continue reading “The Left Cannot Win the Country by Campaigning Like Hillary Clinton”
I co-wrote a piece with Current Affairs’ Nathan J. Robinson on why Sanders’ Medicare-For-All plan is much better than Buttigieg’s “Medicare For All Who Want It” and the “many paths” advocated by Warren and Harris. You can read it here:
Politicians are really good at fooling voters. Voters have jobs and kids and lives to lead. They are too busy to look very closely at things politicians say and do, and increasingly journalists are every bit as overtaxed and unable to do the job in their stead. We saw this during the Democratic debates. The moderators asked the candidates to raise their hands if they supported Medicare-For-All, and most of the candidates obliged. But several of the hand-raisers routinely deploy a rhetorical sleight of hand I call the “Many Paths” trick. It works like this:
Continue reading “On Healthcare, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris Think You’re Stupid”
Benjamin Studebaker 