From Vox, a look at America’s biggest economic dilemma: Private affluence amid public squalor. Jeff Spross on why Americans are so nostalgic about the manufacturing industry. Miya Tokumitsu on why we should listen to Frank Lloyd Wright: Properly harnessed, industrial production can reduce exploitation and increase leisure time. Dean Baker on how U.S. trade policy is pro-rich, not free trade. How do we fight concentrations of private corporate power? By studying how they did it last time — K. Sabeel Rahman on how to revive progressive-era economics for the new Gilded Age. Amazingly, supply-side trickle down is somehow still a thing. David Dayen on how the GOP’s austerity hawks are throwing away a golden opportunity (again). Jesse A. Myerson on what Uncle Sam really owes: The debt limit debate is meaningless unless it accounts for the government’s extensive assets. Brad DeLong on the need for more government, more government debt, less worry. Are average Americans better off now than in 2008?
From Jacobin, Matt Bruenig on how class and race immiserate (and more). Emily Badger on how black poverty differs from white poverty. Dylan Matthews on what smart conservatives want to do to fight poverty. What if we reported on poverty the way we report on the stock market? Rich people, surrounded by other rich people, think the U.S. is richer than it really is — and this influences how they feel about programs for the poor. Elise Gould and Alyssa Davis on how persistent poverty’s largest cause is inequality, not family structure. Jedediah Purdy (Duke): Wealth, Inequality, and Democracy. David Cay Johnston on why America’s inequality problem is about a lot more than money. Mark Thoma on the politics of income inequality. What do we know about economic inequality and growth? Capitalists, arise: We need to deal with income inequality. Can a (billionaire) hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones fix income inequality? A report by Joseph Stiglitz proposes “rewriting” decades of economic policy (and more and more and more).
