– I have a post up at Dissent, Three Crises in Higher Ed Affordability. It’s helpful for me to divide out the current crisis into three different crises, each with different battlefields, strategies, ideas and solutions – and I’ll probably continue to build it out this way.
– In Keynes’ the end of laissez-faire, Keynes attacks the state socialists for being “little better than a dusty survival of a plan to meet the problems of fifty years ago, based on a misunderstanding of what someone said a hundred years ago.” Matthew O’Brien has a great post that ends up arguing conservatives attacking the Federal Reserve now are trying to meet the problems of 30 years ago (stagflation) based on a misunderstanding of what someone said 50 years ago (Milton Friedman). Glad to see O’Brien at The Atlantic Business page – great hire.
– Mac McClelland goes undercover at an online shipping warehouse. Horrifying look into the actual physical infrastructure that makes all this online activity run.
– Noah Millman on Smith’s Why I’m Leaving Goldman Sachs New York Times op-ed.
– Jason Stahl on historicizing conservative think tanks. Crucial to understand in light of the Koch/Cato fight: “In the sixties and seventies conservatives in places like AEI, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute did more than anyone else to discredit the idea of policy making as a social-scientific endeavor.”
– From end of February: Jonathan Chait brings the 2012 or Never for the GOP arguments, updating and placing the Emerging Democratic Majority arguments into the 2012 area.
– Rick Perlstein discusses why conservatives are crazy after all these years, demolishes Mark Lilla in the process.
– The Not-So-Simple Arithmetic of Fiscal Policy in a Depressed Economy. How to get people to understand this?
– Daniel Rodgers’ “Age of Fracture,” which I really enjoyed, just won a Bancroft Prize. Here he is discussing the Tea Party in Democracy Journal. Love this: “But if progressives cannot find a language of more concrete and encompassing interdependence than this, if they cannot explain more articulately and persuasively how our economic lives are entangled, from the poorest and most marginalized to the very top of society, they will exhaust the moral and intellectual capital that early twentieth-century Progressives bequeathed to them without replenishing it.”
– This weekend at Left Forum in New York City the Dissent and Jacobin people are putting on a panel on student debt. Corey Robin, Alex Gourevitch and Doug Henwood are on a panel discussing freedom and the left, which will likely involve Corey’s excellent essay on the topic. Another panel is about Meritocracy and the Left, featuring Aziz Rana and Alex Gourevitch, which will likely involve their excellent essay on meritocracy they did for Roosevelt’s 99% Plan.
– I like my neighborhood, I like my gun. Several people I was talking with last night didn’t believe that Xiu Xiu once covered Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” on an album. Here it is. Also, here’s their Sad Pony Guerilla Girl live:
Rortybomb 
hi, just wanted to take the time to tell you thank you for an iteresting and thoughtful posting. In todays economy its important that people understand, true economics. What most people dont realize, is even though that 1% might hold as much as 90% of the wealth, its the 99% that actually drive the economic market. When in times of economic crashing fueled by tax policys that cut taxes on the 1%, thats when we see what the 1% money can do and what it doesnt do.When taxed, fairly with sir charges on the wealthiest few and when corporations are also taxed fairly (and by fairly i do not mean in favor of the 1% but rather that they pay their fair share of taxes. Thats where the money held by that 1% drives the economy, because with their tax money, the government is then able to fund the programs that actually help drive the economy into a working economy. That money spent on so called entitilement programs actually put more money back into the economy than is ever spent on those programs. Thats because the 99% may not have the money that the 1% does, but they have sheer numbers on their side. When you cut spending on the entitilement programs coupled with no fair taxation on the 1% you have created a depression. The only way out of that depression is to raise the taxes and restart all entitilement programs. The money then goes back out into the economy, thus creating by ripples the money that actually drives our economy. When will the 99% realize that its the 99% that are the job creators and the force behind our economy and our government. That is what the 1% are so afraid of, that we will find out that all we need from them is their tax money. They do not influence our economy in a good way from their spending and their luxury items. Just on the numbers alone, there really arent very many of them, so their purchases dont really have any real impart on our economy. So in reality it truly is as simple as to recieve you need to give. In order for our economy to regain its footing will entail the 99% re-thinking economical issues and to realize that without the 1% paying their fair share of tax money, they are worthless and a total drain on society