Morning Must-Read: Matt Bruenig: How Reform Conservatives Like Reihan Salam and Paul Ryan Misunderstand Poverty

Matt Bruenig: How Reform Conservatives Like Reihan Salam and Paul Ryan Misunderstand Poverty: “Oh boy. Reihan Salam has a piece riddled with confusions…

…some conceptual, some technical, and some just downright strange…. Poverty measurement that also includes tax credits (like the EITC) and non-cash benefits (like SNAP) called the Supplemental Poverty Metric… the only thing that has reduced poverty since 1967 is non-market benefits. That’s it. Those advocating non-market benefits to cut poverty are not the crazy ones. Those thinking the market will do it are…. Let’s just make some things clear…. Market income is not distributed according to desert (i.e. each get what they produce). Nobody produces nature, yet its massive marginal productivity flows to random private owners…. The majority of the national output each year is attributable to inherited technology and knowledge (aka TFP) that nobody alive produced…. Nobody is economically independent from the government…. If you want to make people’s flow of material resources independent of the government, you must repeal property law first and foremost, the biggest government welfare program in history…. More disposable income doesn’t solve all of the problems in the society, but it does solve the problem of inadequate diposable income…