“Let’s tell the truth,” said Walter Mondale as he accepted the Democratic Party’s 1984 presidential nomination. “It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.” That comment looms large in popular memory as the cause of Mondale’s crushing defeat that November. Of 50 states, he carried only one, his home state of Minnesota, polling only 40.6% of votes nationwide to Ronald Reagan’s 58.8%.
Tag: change
The Roots of Inertia
Why don’t low-skilled workers try harder to better their condition? While this might seem a neoliberal question, it weighs on Barbara Ehrenreich’s mind: I was baffled, initially, by what seemed like a certain lack of get-up-and-go on the part of my fellow workers. Why didn’t they just leave for a better-paying job, as I did when […]
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Negroes With Guns: The Untold History of Black NRA Gun Clubs and the Civil Rights Movement
With the violent crime rate increasing disproportionately in urban communities, it’s no surprise that a recent phone survey of black voters found that 80 percent felt gun violence was an “extremely serious” problem. However, it seems this surge in violence actually has many in the black community changing their views on gun ownership.
The Down Side of Impeachment
Unless there’s some dramatic change in the political landscape over the next month or so, I believe that the US House of Representatives will impeach President Donald Trump. Unless there’s some dramatic change in the political landscape between now and Trump’s trial in the US Senate, I don’t believe the Senate will vote, by the necessary 2/3 majority, to convict him. Taken together, those two outcomes constitute a bad thing. Here’s why.
Build, Barbara, Build: Reflections on Nickel and Dimed
I can understand someone saying, “Deregulation isn’t enough.” But you could double the supply of public housing without making a noticeable dent in the housing shortage. Rent subsidies are much easier to scale up, but subsidizing demand without increasing supply is almost the definition of crazy policy. Furthermore, if you want to create high-paid job opportunities for non-college workers, a rapidly growing construction sector is a dream come true.
“The Grid” is the Problem, Not the Solution
Extreme weather often results in power loss to large numbers of people. I’ve experienced multi-day outages from thunderstorms, blizzards, and ice storms in the midwest and hurricanes in the southeast. Most Americans probably recall similar outages. That’s what happens when you string wires and transformers all over the place then pray nothing knocks them down or stresses them out.
When the Quest for Education Equity Stifles Innovation
In March, efforts to open an innovative public high school in a diverse, urban district just outside of Boston received a devastating blow. Powderhouse Studios was in the works for seven years, with grand hopes of changing public education from a top-down system defined by coercion to a learner-driven model focused on student autonomy and self-determination. The vision for this school was so compelling that it won a $10 million XQ Super School innovation grant and was positioned to lead efforts to inject freedom into a conventional schooling system characterized by force.
Anarchist Colonization of Mars
I was on a recent episode of the Anarchy Bang podcast with the topic being Anarchist Colonization of Mars. Here are the pieces that I wrote for the intro and the editorial for this episode.
Straightforward Communication
What was novel and wild is now kind of tiring. Everyone sounds the same to me now. And they sound the same while not really saying anything. Or at least not anything interesting. They are shouting and flashing big neon lights but my senses are adapted to a noisy, bright environment.
Letter from a Pakistani Homeschooler
I recently received this email from Pakistani homeschooler Fasih Zulfiqar. I advised him to seek out econ professors at the nearest universities, but he’d likely appreciate further advice. Reprinted with his permission. Hello Prof Bryan, Fasih here. Perhaps Prof Cowen informed you about me, but in case he did not, let me introduce myself. I’m […]
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