Oren Levin-WaldmanFeb 224 minIt is Time to Apply the Fifth Amendment to Losses Suffered by Business Owners and WorkersState officials have been hiding behind a fiction that businesses are shuttered and people are out of work because of a pandemic. This is...
Oren Levin-WaldmanFeb 95 minMore than a $15 an hour Minimum Wage, the Nation Needs a Serious Wage PolicyAs part of the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill, the minimum wage is expected to be raised to $15.00 an hour. Whether this should be part ...
Oren Levin-WaldmanJan 265 minThe Wages of HubrisThe more things change, the more they stay the same. A new administration has taken power, and it appears to be the usual politics of und...
Oren Levin-WaldmanJan 125 minThe Median Voter Theorem may Offer a Better Understanding of PolarizationOne version of the median voter theorem holds that the greater the distance between the median voter’s income and the average income of s...
Oren Levin-WaldmanDec 28, 20205 minThe Congress that Couldn’t Care Less about the PublicThere are a couple of models of representation. The first model is where the elected representative, say a member of Congress, serves as ...
Oren Levin-WaldmanDec 15, 20205 minThe 2016 Election Was No AberrationIn the wake of the 2020 presidential election, there is a question that looms large. Was the 2016 election an aberration? Or did it refle...
Oren Levin-WaldmanNov 30, 20205 minRed States Cannot See Wage Inequality in the Same Way that Blue States CanI have written in this space in the past about how polarization in America is really about a tale of two economies and their respective l...
Oren Levin-WaldmanNov 16, 20205 minBad Polling Can Also be a Form of Voter SuppressionWe have heard a lot in recent years about voter suppression. Voter ID laws, for example, are an effort to suppress the vote. Because poor...
Oren Levin-WaldmanNov 2, 20205 minCongress’s Constitutional Obligation to Compensate Workers for Job LossIt is the eve of the 2020 election and still no agreement has been reached on a second coronavirus relief bill. The Democrats still hold ...
Oren Levin-WaldmanOct 19, 20205 minIf Only We Had a Meaningful Discussion About TaxesAs we move into the two final weeks of the 2020 election, we are once again hearing about taxes. The Trump people claim that Biden will r...
Oren Levin-WaldmanOct 5, 20205 minThe Roots of Polarization Lie in the Labor MarketIn his new book, The New Class War, Michael Lind suggests that American society could best be divided into the managerial elites who are w...
Oren Levin-WaldmanSep 21, 20205 minThe Next Supreme Court Justice will be Critical to Workers and the Survival of the Middle ClassIn the wake of the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the selection of the next Supreme Court justice has enormous implications. Thi...
Oren Levin-WaldmanSep 8, 20205 minIn Defense of Varieties of Capitalism (VOC)In the current campaign for the presidency, we hear quite often that the choice before us is between capitalism and socialism. Or worse, ...
Oren Levin-WaldmanAug 24, 20204 minOur National Divide: A Tale of Two EconomiesA couple of weeks ago in this space I talked about the roots of polarization lying in the economy. It is almost as though we have two eco...
Oren Levin-WaldmanAug 10, 20205 minThe Roots of Polarization lie in the EconomyThe U.S. has long been divided along ideological lines. Republicans and conservatives are to be found disproportionately in what are refe...
Oren Levin-WaldmanJul 27, 20205 minThe Mis-Excuse of the Reservation WageRepublicans again appear to be haggling over minor stuff these days with the potential to incur huge political costs. First, there were t...
Oren Levin-WaldmanJul 13, 20204 minCOVID-19 and the Need to Lower the Retirement AgeWith coronavirus cases around the country rising and some states slowing the pace of reopening their economies, there are those calling f...
Oren Levin-WaldmanJun 29, 20204 minIs it Time to Revisit Corporatism?Over the years, the economy has evolved from the small pre-industrial craft economy, where business enterprises were truly small and the ...
Oren Levin-WaldmanJun 16, 20205 minRethinking the Need for a National Industrial PolicyThe country is beginning to reopen and the cold reality is that the economy will not be what it was before, nor should it be. Perhaps COV...
Oren Levin-WaldmanJun 2, 20205 minLabor Monopsony and the Need to Resurrect Labor Market InstitutionsOver the last few decades we have seen a tendency in many cases not to enforce anti-trust laws, which were designed to break up monopolie...