35 Million Americans Are Losing Unemployment Income Today
Pandemic unemployment benefits expire today, leaving 10 percent of the US population with dramatically less household income.
198 Articles by: Matt Bruenig
Matt Bruenig is the founder of People’s Policy Project.
Unemployment Benefit Cuts Don’t Even Succeed on Their Own Terms
There’s still time to avoid major unemployment cuts in twenty-four states. A look at the data makes it obvious: states that have already cut benefits should reinstate them, and states that haven’t should maintain them.
Recent Unemployment Cuts Made People Poorer Without Increasing Employment
The media breathlessly reported on labor shortages this summer, helping generate support for unemployment benefit cuts. But a new study shows such cuts didn’t do much but devastate poor people’s incomes.
In 40 Days, 20 Million Workers in the US Will Lose Unemployment Benefits
Twenty-five Republican-led states have cut unemployment benefits, doing enormous damage to millions of workers. And in 40 days, 20 million more workers will lose their unemployment if Democrats don’t act.
Let’s Make the US a Welfare Nation
With the new Child Tax Credit, two-thirds of people in the US now receive monthly benefit checks. That’s a very good thing — it means delivering poor, working-class, and middle-class people clear material gains while also destigmatizing the welfare state.
What Biden’s Child Tax Credit Is Getting Wrong
Joe Biden’s Child Tax Credit is an important lifeline for poor and working-class families. But his administration has bungled the rollout: 90 percent of eligible children still haven’t been reached, consigning them to brutal poverty.
Choosing Your Own Health Care Plan Has Nothing to Do With Freedom
Picking a health care plan isn’t an exercise in freedom — it’s an impossibly complicated, mind-numbing task seemingly designed to drive you insane. Can’t we just have Medicare for All already?
No, Small Isn’t Beautiful
The power of big business needs to be confronted. But the solution to big business isn’t small business — it’s democratic socialism.
Calm Down, Mass Inflation Is Not Around the Corner
The frenzied warnings of impending mass inflation are completely overblown. The inflation we’ve seen has been limited to a few specific items — and putting the brakes on the economy now would hammer the working class.
Actually, Not Coercing People to Work Is a Good Thing
There’s a lot of talk these days about labor shortages and workers unwilling to work because unemployment benefits are too high. Ignore the hand-wringing: it’s a very good thing if workers have the freedom to say no to low-paying, dehumanizing jobs.
The Stimulus Bill Is a Step Toward Aggressively Fighting Poverty
The House just passed a stimulus bill that breaks the 25-year bipartisan consensus that the very poor shouldn’t be eligible for cash benefits. It’s a watershed moment — and we should build on it by turning the US welfare state into a poverty-fighting machine.
Oren Cass Is Insisting That Starving Some Kids Is Important for Society
Despite branding himself as a fresh “pro-worker” conservative, former Mitt Romney adviser Oren Cass believes that excluding poor children from key social welfare benefits is good and we should do more of it. It’s conservative, all right — but the furthest thing from “pro-worker.”
Scrap Our Means-Tested Child Welfare System and Give Every Family $374 Per Child Every Month
Our child benefit system is bizarre and overcomplicated, Matt Bruenig argues. The US government should eliminate the Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, and Additional Child Tax Credit — and replace those programs with a $374 check sent out to every family every month for every child they are taking care of.
Just Give Us the Damn Checks
Opponents of the $2,000 survival checks claim they’re poorly targeted. That’s nonsense. They would help the working class and poor far more than the rich.
A New Congressional Budget Office Study Shows That Medicare for All Would Save Hundreds of Billions of Dollars Annually
The most exhaustive study on Medicare for All just came out. Its conclusion: a single-payer system would guarantee health insurance to all people while reducing overall health spending by hundreds of billions of dollars every year.
We Deserve a Universal Holiday Bonus
A modest sum of money would ensure that everyone could participate in holiday traditions without breaking the bank. Let’s have the federal government pay out a universal holiday bonus.
The Top 1 Percent Owns Nearly Everything in the US. We Need to Seize Their Wealth.
Capitalism systemically concentrates wealth at the top of society, as the latest US figures confirm yet again. The solution: massive wealth redistribution that attacks disparities across the board.
The Problems With Means-Testing Are Real
Means-testing makes social programs to help average people highly vulnerable to cuts and a bureaucratic nightmare to sign up for. We have to reject means-testing.
What Exactly Is the Liberal Position on the Supreme Court?
The Supreme Court is way too powerful — and its power shouldn’t be wielded for good, it should be permanently undermined. Many liberals are close to coming around to this position, but few articulate it clearly.
The Racial Wealth Gap Is About the Upper Classes
Here’s an idea: we should redistribute wealth from the largely white 1 percent to the poor and working class of all races — tackling both racial and class inequality simultaneously.