Identity politics

[Brad De Long]

Re:
>>
>> Max, you are not an activist. You are a policy wonk. Your politics go
>> hand-in-hand with your occupation. The Economic Policy Institute is not
>> evil. It just doesn't challenge the capitalist system.
>
Max is active. And because of Max the U.S. is a fraction to the left of
where it would be otherwise. That qualifies as an activist...
>
>
>A good case in point is list-member Brad DeL., who has a
>reasonable response to third world poverty, as reforms go,
>but hears all sorts of alarm bells when talk turns to trade,
>labor market regulation, trade unionism, and other solutions
>which go beyond progressive taxation/aid to the poor/lean
>social insurance.
>

I protest.

I want *fat* social insurance. I want OSHA to have more muscle. I want
community college to be free. I want the American union movement--and the
NLRB--back where it was in the 1950s with some serious muscle in it. I want
$2 an hour more in the minimum wage.

And if I thought (as the EPI folks do) that trade protection is a good way
of equalizing the distribution of income within the United States at a low
cost (instead of restrictions on imports of, say, apparel being a way to
transfer roughly $14 billion a year into the pockets of apparel company
bosses and shareholders; roughly $2 billion a year into the pockets of
apparel workers; at a price of reducing consumer welfare by some $30
billion a year), I would be on the EPI's side their as well...

Brad DeLong

Brad DeLong