The Bruenigs

The wacky twosome answer your relationship-related questions in this valentine's special. They also talk hot topics, including Ilhan Omar, and close with a flourish about the late great Lyndon LaRouche (may he RIP).

Matt is here with a solo ep (dual ep releasing soon) about one of his great wonk irritations: policies that seem to have a big impact only because they take advantage of quirks in the way we measure certain things like poverty and wealth inequality. These policies achieve great "success" defined as getting a certain statistic to move a lot but actually do not meaningfully address the bigger evil -- the reduction of material deprivation in the case of the Earned Income Tax Credit and the wealth difference between the black and white community in the case of baby bonds.

The dynamic duo discuss the interesting philosophical and policy questions that flow from the fact that some people (disproportionately women) prefer to be stay-at-home parents. Is this a preference that should be respected and with benefit systems built around it or is it a preference that should be discarded as patriarchal? If you do build a benefit system around it, how should you do so?

These become important questions when talking about paid leave and child care policy and were both questions Matt had to confront when writing his Family Fun Pack paper.

The gang (mostly Matt, apologies in advance) talk about Elizabeth Warren's book The Two-Income Trap. As with most things, the book errs in not recognizing the superiority of the welfare state in solving the problems identified.

The crew commemorate the anniversary of Josh TPM's porn tweet, talk about liberal paranoia ramping up around the election, and Sawhill's modest proposal to reduce poverty by giving poor woman IUDs, which the NYT gave new life this month.

In this rare solo episode, Matt outlines his whole vision of what's the chief problem with capitalism and how best to tackle it. He starts with a discussion of capital's share and wealth ownership and then turns towards his neo-Hilferdingist vision of exploiting finance capital to socialize the means of production.

It's truly wonderful listening.

Liz and Matt are joined by Antti and Joona of Parecon Finland.

Liz and Matt have a wide-ranging discussion with citizen advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader. We ask him about his views on recent trends in the Democratic party and play a game: Nader 2000 Platform Item or Fresh New Democratic Idea.

Nader has a new humor book out called How The Rats Reformed Congress here: https://ratsreformcongress.org/.

The crew sits down with Tom Frank (Listen Liberal, What's the Matter with Kansas?) and have a sprawling conversation primarily about fascism, the subject of Frank's next book.

Apologies for the slight audio issues on this one. They are fixed going forward.

Subscribe: https://www.patreon.com/thebruenigs

The gang discuss Matt's cancellation over his blog post about student debt forgiveness in the first half of the episode.

Will Butler of Arcade Fire comes on in the second half of the program to discuss the suburban gothic, Betomania including The Beto Tweet, and his experiences with Canada Medicare system and welfare state.