Matt Bruenig is the founder of People’s Policy Project.
Keir Starmer’s means-testing mania has produced its most absurd policy yet. Limiting access to the Winter Fuel Payment won’t lead to meaningful savings — but it will make it harder for low-income pensioners to access their benefits.
Matt Bruenig reviews Kamala Harris’s new economic policy proposals — from money for first-time homebuyers to fighting grocery price gouging to an expanded child tax credit. Some of her ideas are good. Some are bad. Most are meh.
Yesterday a National Labor Relations Board judge found that the ACLU fired an employee for engaging in the protected activity of criticizing her working conditions.
The most likely outcome of the current constitutional challenge to the National Labor Relations Board is not that the Supreme Court will destroy the agency — it’s that the board will be unable to operate in many states while the litigation is proceeding.
SpaceX just won a preliminary injunction in a Texas federal district court against the National Labor Relations Board. The decision moves us closer to a potential Supreme Court decision declaring the NLRB unconstitutional — and massively empowering bosses.
NBA bylaws allow the league’s commissioner to punish players for statements “prejudicial or detrimental to the best interests” of the NBA or a team. The rule violates workers’ rights — which is why I’ve filed unfair labor practice charges against the NBA.
Welfare programs can’t be replaced by policies that redistribute income from some businesses to others, or from capital to labor — the primary function of the welfare state is to provide for children, disabled people, and others outside the labor force.
The progressive ACLU is trying to establish a precedent that would strike a huge blow against workers’ rights across the country and make union organizing much more difficult. Let’s hope the organization comes to its senses soon.
Though inflation-adjusted wage growth resumed earlier this year, real wages are still down overall since Joe Biden took office. It’s not crazy to suppose that this could be affecting people’s attitudes toward the economy.
There are many good reasons to be unhappy with the economy today: by conventional social democratic metrics like union density, welfare generosity, and public ownership levels, the economy is not in good shape, and recent trends have been mixed at best.
The US could learn from the Faroe Islands, a Danish territory where the state automatically removes taxes owed and adds welfare payments to workers’ paychecks. It’s way easier for workers and shows why universal benefits are better than means-testing.
Some have defended Joe Biden's economic record by noting that median household wealth has increased on his watch. But that uptick is mostly due to home and car value inflation — meaning it's of limited use to regular people who need their home and cars to live.
In many multiparty democracies, left-wing factions often agree to support center-left governments in exchange for a policy or cabinet position. But in the US, the Left is typically expected to support the center left without getting any concessions in return.
Pundits are still scratching their heads about why voters don’t love the state of the US economy. But many workers are in worse straits than they were a few years ago, particularly because Democrats let the COVID welfare provisions expire.
Led by labor-backed mayor Brandon Johnson, Chicago could become the first big city in the US to open a publicly owned grocery store.
New data on wealth distribution in the US confirms what we already knew: within all major demographic groups, whether by age, race, or education, wealth is concentrated at the top. The US is a deeply unequal society.
A new book makes the supposedly brave claim that two-parent families are good, and that unmarried poor people are miring themselves in poverty. But what upper-class people practice is not just “marriage” — it’s “marriage to upper-class people.”
Fully funding Social Security isn’t hard. We should do it.
Children, the elderly, disabled people, and students continue to make up the vast majority of the US poor. We could easily slash poverty by increasing the generosity and reach of benefit programs for the nonworking population — but lawmakers refuse to do so.
Egalitarian reformers have argued that elite college admissions should focus less on test scores and more on personal statements, extracurriculars, and recommendation letters. New research suggests that this approach only further favors the wealthy.