GDP of US States Compared to GDP of Countries

Read about it here.

Is Open Immigration the Key to Reducing Poverty?

Shaun Raviv in the Atlantic argues that it is, here.

Elderly Lobbyist Always Droning On About How Little Legislation Cost In His Day

Read all about it at the Onion, here.

Saving Horatio Alger

A great piece from Brookings, here.

Poverty Capitalism

Thomas Edsall explains it here.

"Poverty capitalism and government policy are now working on their own and in tandem to shift costs to those least equipped to pay and in particular to the least politically influential segment of the poor: criminal defendants and those delinquent in paying fines."

Gilens Continues His Work on Affluence and Influence

Read about it here.

Global Inequality is Falling!

At least, so says Quoctrung Bui at NPR.

Tyler Cowen, writing for the NYT, echoes this.

But maybe we should save our celebrations, says Jordan Weissman, here.

12 Charts Showing US Productivity and What We're Getting--and Not Getting--From It

From Mother Jones, here.

If paying off your student loans is bringing you down...

...you don't even want to know the cost for a middle-class American family to raise one child born in 2013.

And more on this here.

Literature and Economic Inequality

One of the great things about Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century is that it is rife with literary references. The Atlantic follows this lead by offering a nice piece on Jane Austen and economic inequality, found here.

Student Athletes as Exploited Labor

College basketball players received a very important ruling in their favor a few weeks back. Vox fills you in on the details, here.

The Conservative Case for a Guaranteed Basic Income

From the Atlantic.

"[O]ne idea that Frum highlighted is more radical: a guaranteed basic income, otherwise known as just giving people money.

The idea isn’t new. As Frum notes, Friederich Hayek endorsed it. In 1962, the libertarian economist Milton Friedman advocated a minimum guaranteed income via a “negative income tax.” In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.” Richard Nixon unsuccessfully tried to pass a version of Friedman’s plan a few years later, and his Democratic opponent in the 1972 presidential election, George McGovern, also suggested a guaranteed annual income."

New Law Requires Welfare Recipients To Submit Sweat To Prove How Hard They’re Looking For Job

Once more, the Onion.

The working poor who fight to live on $10 an hour

From the Globe.

"For workers in this precarious position, there is a thin line between survival and catastrophe, and one unexpected event — an illness, a rent increase, a layoff — can be devastating. Increasingly, they are speaking up — working with union organizers, demonstrating for higher wages."

Robots and Jobs!

The verdict is still out on whether automation will negatively impact jobs. A new report on this can be found here.

Why Voters Aren’t Angrier About Economic Inequality

Eduardo Porter discusses new research on this, here. From his piece:

 "In every one of the 26 nations, most of them in the developed world, for which they collected data, people believe that the income gap is smaller than it really is. And using perceived rather than actual inequality, the median voter theory works much better: Where people believe inequality is worse, governments tend to redistribute more."

Sean McElwee offers a nice rebuttal to the piece, here. 

Has the ‘Libertarian Moment’ Finally Arrived?

Robert Draper asks this in the New York Times Sunday magazine, here.

Paul Krugman is skeptical.

So's Jonathan Chait.

Add David Frum to the skeptics.

But Conor Friedersdorf offers a very nice response to them, here.

Report: Middle Class Running Dangerously Low On Things To Be Squeezed Out Of

From one of my favorite news sources, The Onion.

S&P Cites Income Inequality As Reason to Reduce US Growth Forecast

• Standard & Poor's sees extreme income inequality as a drag on long-run economic growth. We've reduced our 10-year U.S. growth forecast to a 2.5% rate. We expected 2.8% five years ago.

The article.