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LPE Originals

Spread the Fed, Part I

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Central banking and finance in the US have a curiously ‘dialectical’ history – a history mirroring, in interesting ways, that of our federal union itself. Both histories reflect ambivalence about, and hence oscillation both toward and away from, collective agency and its political manifestation in centralized governance. Tracing these parallel trajectories can shed helpful light upon certain features of American monetary history, finance-regulatory tendencies, and of course public finance.

LPE Originals

Policing as Unequal Protection

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Black Americans have endured police violence since the nation’s founding. The origins of American policing have been traced to slave patrols. Today, Blacks are more likely than whites to encounter police, to be stopped by police, and to be fatally wounded by police. In recognition of this history and ongoing experience of violence, the Movement for Black Lives (“M4BL”) has called for the defunding of the police; community control of policing; and the development of nonpunitive, noncarceral institutions for resolving social conflict, among other transformative changes.
LPE Originals

Carceral Feminism at a Crossroad

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In this watershed moment when policymakers feel liberated to embrace noncarceral responses to the behaviors that laws label crimes, one question rings out: “What about rape and domestic violence?” The pro-policing contingent intends this as a rhetorical “gotcha.” But many progressives open to meaningful reform genuinely worry about the demise of gender crime law, which they see as a formidable legal tool against the patriarchy.
LPE Originals

Rent Cancellation: Social Protection in Uncertain Times

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With the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, interlocking structural inequities in health, employment, and racial justice have buffeted vulnerable populations. The looming “eviction apocalypse” sits at the nexus of these three ills. Black and Latinx people have the highest COVID infection, death, and unemployment rates nationwide. Mass evictions would only worsen this situation, preventing these households from sheltering in…
LPE Originals

Where Is the Care in the CARES Act?

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Two pandemic policy stories have been coming to a head: (1) the push for another relief bill as a key CARES Act unemployment insurance benefit expires on July 31, and (2) the ongoing national child-care crisis as school closures for the fall are announced amidst the virus’ resurgence. What connects them is kids’ needs for care and families’ needs for economic support when they—predominantly mothers, of course—perform that caring labor. A little-noticed feature of the CARES Act supports care for children who must stay home due to school closures.
LPE Originals

Situating the Role of Democracy in LPE

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One of LPE’s foundational commitments, as Sanjukta Paul reminds us, is that law constitutes markets – and that, as a result, we are free to constitute them differently. But this simply begs the question: how ought we constitute them? This is where political theory can be useful. As Sam Bagg points out, many LPE scholars already understand that democracy must have something…
LPE Originals

The “New Normal” Privatization of the Workplace

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As the COVID-19 crisis rages on, individuals around the world are now thrown into a work-from-home, digitally-enabled “new normal” of the workplace. For most white-collar workers, homes have become offices, and boundaries between work and domestic life are being reshuffled. This shift, however, is just an acceleration of prior developments well under way since the beginning…
LPE Originals

Last Week’s Surprisingly Deep Victory for LGBT Workers

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This post was originally published at Jacobin. Last Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity is prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The decision brings employment law in line with public opinion: a majority of Americans favor employment protections for LGBT…
LPE Originals

Flattening the Curve and Closing the Gap: The Civil Rights of Health During a Global Pandemic

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“We’re all in this together” has become a familiar call for strengthening our sense of community and social responsibility during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although this phrase can obscure deep social inequities, this recognition of our interdependence presents an opportunity to connect economic justice and public health. COVID-19 has instilled a new public understanding that our…
LPE Originals

The Hidden Shortages of the Market Economy

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If you think shortages—in goods like toilet paper, meat, and masks—came in with the pandemic, think again. Shortages are periods during which demand exceeds supply, and they’re an inescapable feature of all markets, all the time. When an investor bids up the price of Apple stock because none is available at current prices, that’s a…
LPE Originals

The Economics of Shortages

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The price of food increased 2.6% in April, the largest single-month increase since 1974, but food industry executives are insisting that the country has enough food. So why are prices going up? The explanation provided by the industry is that consumers are buying more than they need, creating shortages. But a shortage is not a…
LPE Originals

The Fiscal Reckoning to Come: Paying for Virus Relief in an Era of Tax Cuts

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To combat the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government has enacted relief packages totaling nearly $2.5 trillion, with more aid likely to come. The fourth and latest effort contains $75 billion in grants for hospitals, and $25 billion to improve coronavirus testing. As economist Austan Goolsbee has rightly noted, “the number one rule of virus economics…
LPE Originals

The Institutional Design of Community Control

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As the COVID19 pandemic and economic crises continue to ravage the country, it is increasingly clear that the virus is not just a public health challenge: it is also exposing deep systemic failures of governance, and disparities of political power. Black and brown Americans are the most likely to die from this virus, a reflection…
LPE Originals

Historicizing Consumer Protection

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Learned Hand once described the task of the Federal Trade Commission as “discover[ing] and mak[ing] explicit those unexpressed standards of fair dealing which the conscience of the community may progressively develop.” In a previous post, I argued that moving consumer protection law beyond consumer sovereignty requires recovering this way of thinking, common among Progressives and…