First you get the money, then you get the power
Update, 2 October 2012: Corrected a mistake in the data on the charitable contributions tax deduction. An earlier version referred to the wrong table from the Tax Policy Center. The American...
View ArticleThe 3-D Printed Future and its Enemies
(adafruit / flickr) Lately, it seems like everyone is talking about 3-D printers. Until recently, these devices have been seen either as novelties or as expensive pieces of equipment suited only for...
View ArticleEcology, Technology, and Scale
In the debate between Alex Gourevitch on one side, and Chris Bertram and Jacobin contributing editor Max Ajl on the other, I’d put myself more on Bertram and Ajl’s side. Gourevitch’s essay was a bit...
View ArticleFinishing the Civil War
A month or two ago, Bhaskar Sunkara came to me with the idea that we could, on a short deadline, turn our long-running discussions about the future of progressive politics in the United States into a...
View ArticleThe Disposition Matrix
Drone assassination is now the first resort of the state. Inside the CIA’s new dystopian novel. “The Disposition Matrix” sounds like a dystopian science fiction novel. And indeed it is, but...
View ArticleHostess and the Limits of the Private Welfare State
Hostess Brands, maker of the Twinkie, announced its liquidation today. This provoked a wave of now-more-than-everism, as both liberals and conservatives rushed to use the company’s failure as a...
View ArticleEconomic Personalities for our Grandchildren
Given the origins of my blog’s name, I’ve avoided posting on Mondays. But I don’t get paid for doing this, and so this was a misbegotten impulse for the reasons I explain below. Yesterday I heard two...
View ArticleRobots and Liberalism
People know my beat by now, so everyone has been directing my attention to Paul Krugman’s recent musings on the pace of automation in the economy. He moves away from his earlier preoccupation with...
View ArticleNew Issue, Political Miscellany
The new issue of Jacobin will be out next week, just after Christmas, and it’s full of great stuff. You should subscribe if you haven’t already, or give someone else a gift subscription if you have....
View ArticleOccupy Beyond Occupy
As everyone knows by now, Jacobin issue 9 is out (except for you print subscribers, sorry you lot, your issues aren’t being shipped until January 4). There’s lots of great stuff there to dig into. My...
View ArticleIn Defense of Soviet Waiters
There’s been a bit of a discussion about affective labor going around. Paul Myerscough in the London Review of Books describes the elaborate code with which the Pret a Manger chain enforces an ersatz...
View ArticlePost-Work: A Guide for the Perplexed
In Sunday’s New York Times, conservative columnist Ross Douthat invokes the utopian dream of “a society rich enough that fewer and fewer people need to work—a society where leisure becomes universally...
View ArticleThe Perils of Wonkery
As the policy wonk has risen in prestige, we seem to have reached the point where this entire class of commentators is highly susceptible to what I’ll call “Charlie Rose disease.” The economics...
View ArticleWe Have Always Been Rentiers
In my periodic discussions of contemporary capitalism and its potential transition into a rentier-dominated economy, I have emphasized the point that an economy based on private property depends upon...
View ArticlePorno for Pirates
Star Trek meets anti-Star Trek in California District Court, as a science fiction-loving judge demolishes a gang of copyright trolls. As someone who made a certain amount of my reputation by using the...
View ArticleCurious Utopias
The Universal Basic Income hit the Washington Post again this weekend, courtesy of Mike Konczal. He focuses on left objections to the UBI proposal, ranging from its effect on gender equality to its...
View ArticleAshwin Parameswaran and the Future of Work
This Sunday at 3:00 PM, those of you in the New York area can catch me at the Museum of Modern Art’s PS1 exhibition space in Queens, where I’ll be participating in a discussion with Ashwin...
View ArticleHostess and the Limits of the Private Welfare State
Hostess Brands, maker of the Twinkie, announced its liquidation today. This provoked a wave of now-more-than-everism, as both liberals and conservatives rushed to use the company’s failure as a...
View ArticleThe Ethic of Marginal Value
Mainstream economics is an ethical theory masquerading as a description of social reality. Illustration by Kotryna Zukauskaite / Jacobin Recently David Graeber has gotten some attention for an essay on...
View ArticleNew Issue, Political Miscellany
The new issue of Jacobin will be out next week, just after Christmas, and it’s full of great stuff. You should subscribe if you haven’t already, or give someone else a gift subscription if you have....
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