Pavlina Tcherneva (Bard): Full Employment: The Road Not Taken. This is what a job in the U.S.’s new manufacturing industry looks like. Automation alone isn’t killing jobs: Tyler Cowen on how the long-term unemployed are now burdened by complex interactions of technology, education and market demand. Are class interests perpetuating high unemployment? Paul Krugman on oligarchs and money. Tom Slee on how the “sharing economy” invokes vague leftist sentiments while moving towards more precarious employment. There’s an old saying that the working class’s ultimate weapon is withholding labor through slowdowns and strikes; by that measure, the U.S. working class has been effectively disarmed since the 1980s. Jake Rosenfeld on politics in our non-union age (and more by Sarah Jaffe). How can unions win? David Burr Gerrard investigates. Not your grandpa’s labor union: As “employee” and “employer” become hazy categories, experiments in worker advocacy are replacing unions as we’ve known them. Behold, Target's brand new cheesy anti-union video. Marietta Poshi on how Walmart creates poverty. From Democracy, Jason Furman on poverty and the tax code: Tax credits have arguably done more to reduce poverty than programs have — it’s time to expand them once again; and Monica Potts reviews The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives by Sasha Abramsky. Jared Bernstein on how aid to the poor is also an investment. George Packer on the Right's new “welfare queens”: The middle class. Mike Konczal on the voluntarism fantasy: Conservatives dream of returning to a world where private charity fulfilled all public needs, but that world never existed — and we’re better for it (and James Kwak on how there’s no substitute for the government).
