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I’m Back!
Taking a big chunk of time off was just what the doctor ordered. And while I did it so I could focus on my health, it turns out I also needed some time to decompress; I love banging my head against the...
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Rooting My Framework in History
After the break, I’m beginning to wonder if the problem with my framework is that it’s too abstract. Ideally I’d like to have a framework that’s abstract – that’s where a lot of the power of theory...
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Social Security Keeps 22 Million Americans Out Of Poverty
While I was taking a break, I squirreled away some factoids. Courtesy of the Center On Budget and Policy Priorities, here are some stunners for the next time your uncle complains about spending on...
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The Rise of the Devil’s Bargain
To figure out how my framework connects with history, first I need to lay out that history. Here’s a quick rough draft: When most pundits talk about the rise of the middle class, they talk about it as...
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The Fall of the Devil’s Bargain
By the 1960s, it looked like the Devil’s Bargain might be finally coming to an end. The Civil Rights movement – the culmination of decades of struggle – was able to break the power of Jim Crow in the...
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Note to Self: Gender and the Devil’s Bargain
In my Devil’s Bargain posts, I talk about how race and class shaped the way we think about the role of government in the economy, but I don’t say much about gender. I know gender plays a critical role...
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Quick High-Level Framework Dump
When I first decided to write about the rise and fall of the Devil’s Bargain, the idea was that at the end I’d write a reflection on what I had learned from the history and and then use what I’d...
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Notes Dump: Power in the Economy
And now for a more detailed notes dump of the new approach. It’s pretty long, so I’m going to break it into 2 posts: this one, on Power in the Economy, and the next one, on We’re Not As Smart. Ensuring...
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Notes Dump: We’re Not as Smart
Ensuring Everyone Has a Real Say: To Drastically Reduce Risk, Ensure Everyone Has a Real Say Union of Coal Mine Canaries: take advantage of old Open Source saying – with 1,000 eyes, all bugs are...
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Bring Me the Decrypticizer!
Reading over my notes dump, one thing pops out: I am getting way too cryptic. It’s one thing to use shorthand when I can link to the arguments I’ve made before. But there’s an awful lot here that is...
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The Union of Coal Mine Canaries
Once upon a time, coal miners worked in a dirty, incredibly dangerous environment where the people who ran the coal mining companies weren’t too worried about their working conditions (come to think of...
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Taking Another Break
Although I really want to make blogging a priority, other facets of my life are demanding most of my attention. Once I’ve got them squared away — hopefully in a few months — I’ll be back at it.
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I’m Not As Smart As I Think I Am
It happens like clockwork. About two weeks after I wrote that I was taking a break from blogging, I hit a wall and decided it was time to really stop for a while. Two days later: a new framework popped...
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Racism in the US: Some Useful Links
From a piece by Ta-Neisi Coates about the development of his thinking, some useful links on race in the US: I was grappling with the Civil War. I had some sense of Reconstruction. I had begun to grasp...
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Slavery’s Massive Impact on the US Economy
Just how important was slavery to the US economy? Some stats from a post cited by Coates: by 1860, there were more millionaires (slaveholders all) living in the lower Mississippi Valley than anywhere...
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Too Big to Fail: the $70 Billion/Yr Handout
How much does Too Big to Fail subsidize the big banks? The IMF has put a price tag on it: up to $70 billion a year. And of course, that's nowhere near the true price — the IMF didn't factor into...
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Rethinking: Theory as Pie
Here’s what I’ve been playing with: More on this in upcoming posts.
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Sadomonetarists And the Limits of Swedish Social Democracy
Oy. Sweden, touted by the Washington Post as “the rock star of the recovery”, has been overrun by what Paul Krugman calls the Sadomonetarists who demanded high interest rates even when inflation was...
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Why Swedish Sadomonetarists Don’t Stroke Cats
One more note on Swedish Sadomonetarists. Why, asks Krugman, did the Sadomonetarists insist on high interest rates that would tank the economy? Where does this gut dislike for low [interest] rates come...
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