From the People’s Policy Project, Nathaniel Lewis on how the U.S. spends far too little on social welfare. How big data is helping states kick poor people off welfare: Sean Illing interviews Virginia Eubanks, author of Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor (and more). Oklahoma GOP candidate Christopher Barnett proposes euthanasia for disabled and poor to avoid food stamps. Sarah Jaffe on how the media is abetting the GOP’s war on “welfare”. Trump wants to slash welfare with stricter work requirements. G.O.P. insists making poor people work lifts them up — where’s the proof? Derek Thompson on busting the myth of “welfare makes people lazy”. The facts about work requirements are being ignored — here’s why. End work requirements for welfare once and for all. Instead of work requirements, why not a jobs guarantee? Kevin Drum on Medicaid work requirements and the politics of whiteness.
Mrittunjoy Majumdar (Cambridge): Identity, Intersectionality and Welfare. Hana Brown (Wake Forest): The New Racial Politics of Welfare: Ethno-Racial Diversity, Immigration, and Welfare Discourse Variation. After all these years, “welfare reform” is the same racist dog whistle it always was.
Samuel Hammond on the free-market welfare state: Preserving dynamism in a volatile world (and more).
