Mike Konczal
/ fellow. contributor. Finishing book on decommodification as freedom . 🍞🌹 On paternity leave.
Last synced from Twitter 491d ago
The Bernie Sanders Fallacy
David Brooks - Nytimes.com 14h 8 tweets
No, Virginia, there is no class war.
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Mike Konczal After a decade of saying wage inequality is driven by skills and human capital - a race between tech and education - Brooks goes 180 opposite. Wages aren't a market-wide price for skills, now they are set by heterogeneous firms. Maybe note this reversal? 3h
Hoover Institution | Events and Conferences
Mpshoover.org 150d 2 tweets
The Mont Pelerin Society will host a special meeting at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University on January 15-17, 2020. Plenary sessions, break-out sessions, meals, and receptions will take place in Hoover’s Traitel Building. The theme of the...
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Mike Konczal You: neoliberalism doesn't exist, you dolt Today: Paulo Guedes, the Minister of Economy under Bolsonaro, will be introduced by Niall Ferguson at a special Mont Perlerin Society meeting. Peter Thiel gives closing remarks Friday. (h/t ) 27h
A Decade of Liberal Delusion and Failure
slackbot - The New Republic 28d 7 tweets
It was the death of hope by a tiny thousand technocratic "nudges."
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Mike Konczal Excellent by on the failure of center-liberal economic worldview of the 2010s. Deeper than "could the stimulus have been bigger/was a public option passable" debates - it's about a too strong reliance on markets masking a discomfort with power. 28d
Other People’s Blood
n+1 255d 3 tweets
The experiment — known as the Volcker shock — lasted until 1982, inducing what remains the worst unemployment since the Great Depression and finally ending the inflation that had troubled the world economy since the late 1960s. To catalog all the...
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Mike Konczal Given how central it was in setting up the economy of the past 40 years, here and abroad, surprising how little critical or analytical work is done on Paul Volcker's Shock. This by is one of the few; lucky for us it is also an excellent read. 39d
I Was Once a Socialist. Then I Saw How It Worked.
David Brooks - Nytimes.com 43d 22 tweets
Two cheers for capitalism, now and forever.
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Mike Konczal Brooks out here in 2019 with the Whig Party as the solution to our crisis... as if that party wasn't torn to shreds by its complete inability to answer assertive white supremacy, anti-immigration sentiments, and the increasing brutality of waged-labor. 42d
Why One City Has Made Preschool Free for Those Who Can Pay
The Atlantic 49d 1 tweets
Inside the fight for universal pre-k
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Mike Konczal There was an excellent 2016 piece on De Blasio's pre-K program which consciously benefitted everyone, even the 1%. 2 things stood out: (1) universality made it successful and (2) policy gatekeepers *hated* it because it benefitted everyone. 49d
Only 1.4% of Free College Spending Would Go to Children of Millionaires and Billionaires
Mike Konczal - Medium 58d 2 tweets
Here’s an argument you hear often in the free college space.
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Mike Konczal re: Klobuchar's college comment, only 1.4% of free public college would benefit rich kids. The remaining 98.6% would go to everyone else. 58d
The End of Babies
Nytimes.com 62d 30 tweets
From Scandinavia to East Asia, fertility rates are falling and families are shrinking. Has modern life become hostile to reproduction?
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Mike Konczal Moving, deeply reported piece by on declining fertility in the US, Denmark, and China, focusing on workism, late-capitalism anxieties, and reproductive justice. A humanizing way of approaching an often fraught and difficult topic. 62d
The progressive vision for economic growth, explained
Vox 74d 14 tweets
Progressives have a plan to make the economy more fair. But do they have a plan to make it grow?
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Mike Konczal Great piece by on how the broader left-liberal infrastructure is thinking much more aggressively about growth, and how it is limited by measurement, inequality, market power, weak public programs, and more. 72d
Warren’s Medicare for All Plan Jumpstarts a Stalled Debated, Finds a Way to Circumvent the Power of Employers
Mike Konczal - Medium 73d 2 tweets
There’s been a wave of education and political mobilization around Medicare for All (M4A) since Bernie Sanders centered the demand in the…
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Mike Konczal Sleep-deprived, but a post on Warren's Medicare for All plan, with why I think a plan is necessary tactically. I haven't seen people note her Employer Contribution smartly fights monopsony, keeping bosses and owners from eating all the surplus post-M4A. 73d
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Mike Konczal The more I see how people think opaque, nonsalient employer health care spending will end up with workers, the more I worry they aren't taking monopsony seriously. Why not just soak employers upfront, rather than leaving workers to fight on bad terrain? 72d
Capitalism to Egalitarians: You're Welcome!
Will Wilkinson 73d 1 tweets
I’ve posted on this paper once already, but it really, really, really deserves more attention. And people pay attention to Steven Levitt, so listen to him: According to two of my University o…
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Mike Konczal This argument about the poor facing a lower inflation rate (i.e. "consumption inequality") was started ~2008 by Christian Broda and promoted by a big network of those arguing against inequality worries (see link for an example). Then Broda....disappeared. 73d
The Inflation Gap
Annie Lowrey - The Atlantic 73d 9 tweets
A new analysis indicates that rising prices have been quietly taxing low-income families more heavily than rich ones.
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Mike Konczal An obscure but influential argument made for not worrying about inequality is that the poor face a lower inflation rate than the rich. These arguments were everywhere ~2009 and still remain. Turns out new, actual research on the topic finds the opposite. 73d
What John Rawls Missed
Jedediah Purdy - The New Republic 80d 21 tweets
Are his principles for a just society enough today?
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Mike Konczal "Conflict lies at the bottom of politics and political thought, and was merely kept out of sight for some decades." Great review essay by of 's book, on how our debates over justice were created in a no-longer-existing world. 80d
Chile’s People Have Had Enough of Neoliberalism
Slate Magazine 83d 8 tweets
The week has felt like a very risky test to see if Chile can avoid repeating a history it’s sick of—a drastic, paradigm-shifting display of state violence.
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Mike Konczal This is a really useful overview of the protests that are happening in Chile by . 83d
Behind the Numbers: The CBO Just Handed Us $2 Trillion
JW Mason - Roosevelt Institute 88d 2 tweets
Anyone who follows the DC budget game knows that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) serves as its referee; any proposal that involves new spending or revenue is scored by the CBO for its impact on the federal debt over the next 10 years. That...
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Mike Konczal Long-term government debt trajectory just collapsed by a third. Federal government now has an extra $2.2 trillion dollars to work with over the next decade. This is pretty extraordinary, but you won't see headlines explaining this. Luckily will. 84d
Against the Anti-Market Consensus
Noah Rothman - Commentary 92d 43 tweets
Right and left are converging on a misreading of capitalismView Post
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Mike Konczal I'm not sure what part of the conservative brain forces a piece that could just say "markets played an underappreciated role in reducing global poverty" into "China is a free-market country that rejects Keynesian demand management, AOC echos communism." 92d
This One Weird Trick Makes Economies More Fair!
The Nation 98d 3 tweets
A wealth tax is one of the most progressive government levies, falling entirely on the extremely wealthy.
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Mike Konczal Warren's correct, you can fund day care, free public college, paid family leave, and a child allowance with the money you would raise from a wealth tax. 94d
Professional-Managerial Chasm
n+1 99d 8 tweets
In the early years of the 20th century, the professions emerged in their modern forms, establishing uniform standards of practice and conduct in all these fields. The new professionals were in general politically progressive, seeing their purpose as...
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Mike Konczal Independent of the Warren/Sanders stuff that prompts it, this by is one of the better essays in years about broader political changes since (at least) the Great Recession. Anyone thinking of professionals, policy and politics should read it. 99d
The Culmination of Republican Decay
Sean Wilentz - The New York Review of Books 113d 7 tweets
Much of the wreckage Trump has caused is simply the expression of his willingness to pursue long-standing Republican policies while coarsening the polarizing politics practiced by the George W. Bush White House.
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Mike Konczal This is a good piece by reviewing American Carnage, discussing the Trump administration as in continuity with the W. one, something that makes sense but is never discussed. 103d
The ‘Never Trump’ Coalition That Decided Eh, Nevermind, He’s Fine
Jeremy W. Peters - Nytimes.com 104d 29 tweets
They signed open letters, dedicated a special magazine issue to criticism of him and swore he would tear at the fabric of this nation. Now they have become the president’s strongest defenders.
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Mike Konczal Bozell: “These are the people who supported George W. Bush when he did nothing for conservatives" Never Trump until election aside, do many professional, movement conservatives believe W. did nothing for conservatives? That strikes me as insane. 103d