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LPE Originals

Predistribution and the Law and Economics of Income Inequality

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Law and Economics scholars argue that if income redistribution is to happen at all, it should occur exclusively through the tax system, rather than through supposedly less efficient methods, such as the minimum wage, collective bargaining, or housing regulation. Yet even by their own lights, these arguments fail: in many cases, predistributive policies are actually more efficient than the tax and transfer system. More fundamentally, to address economic inequality, we must move beyond narrow issues of distribution and transform the mode of production itself.
LPE Originals

Rebuilding State Authority In A Post-Trump America

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In the ruins of the administrative state after Trump, many on the left see an opportunity to design a New Deal-type reconstruction agenda. But building state capacity requires a government that is seen as legitimate, and it is precisely the erosion of legitimacy in the eyes of the public that has enabled Trump to carry out his deconstructive agenda. In order to durably rebuild, we must fundamentally reconstitute the political basis for administrative authority, abandoning our preoccupations with technocracy and reshaping the relationship between the American people and the institutions that serve them.
LPE Originals

The Neoliberal Foundation of the Authoritarian Turn in Higher Education

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Recent authoritarian attacks on higher education mark a significant shift from the neoliberal era, which celebrated institutional independence from the state, the role of education in boosting worker productivity, and the value of research in driving profitable innovation. However, there are key continuities between the two periods. The neoliberal era laid the groundwork for today’s authoritarian turn by making public institutions increasingly reliant on federal funding, dismantling independent state planning boards, and deepening inequality within the higher education system.
LPE Originals

The Staying Power of the Antimonopoly Movement

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In the United States and elsewhere, the forces of monopoly, antitrust, and corporate power tend to follow a certain historical pattern, with long-term swings between strong anti-monopoly policies and pro-business policies. To anticipate the future of anti-monopoly politics, we need to understand the dynamic forces that drive these recurring large-scale shifts between monopoly and competition.
LPE Originals

The Same Script: Value-Based Payment, Managed Care, and Neoliberalism

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Though heralded as a policy innovation, value-based payment has not succeeded in lowering costs and has instead fueled corporate consolidation, as many physicians are ill-equipped to assume the financial risk that the payment model requires. Embodying the core tenets of neoliberalism, VBP is ultimately a failure of policymakers to equitably and efficiently administer a public health care program.
LPE Originals

Local Electricity and Bottom-up Energy Planning

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To build an electric system that meets the needs and opportunities of the 21st century, we need proposals that strengthen public control and improve regulation of Investor-Owned Utilities. Yet on their own, such proposals ignore a fundamental issue: almost all federal, state, municipal, and coop utilities currently operate with the same centralized, top-down planning and system control as Investor Owned Utilities. Unless that changes, public ownership will do little to remove the barriers that now largely block the evolution of decarbonized, resilient, and more equitable electric service.
LPE Originals

State Efforts to Rein in Corporate Medicine

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Private equity firms are acquiring dominant shares of physician practices, creating conflicts between shareholder value and physicians’ professional and ethical duties. While longstanding state laws that prohibit lay ownership of medical practices have been under-enforced and evaded, recent litigation and legislative proposals suggest they could be revitalized to address today’s forms of corporatization.
LPE Originals

Anti-Domination and the Future of Progressive Administration

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The Trump administration is simultaneously dismantling, weaponizing, and centralizing state capacities in order to enact a reactionary vision of administration — one which seeks to roll back efforts by prior generations to equalize economic and social relations. In contrast to this vision, progressives ought to aspire to a regulatory state whose purpose is to prevent domination. This alternative vision can guide us in deciding which forms of administrative power we should build and which we should actively work to restrain.
LPE Originals

Beyond Redistribution: Rethinking UBI and the Politics of Automation

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Silicon Valley tech bosses often promote Universal Basic Income as a progressive solution to job losses caused by automation. However, by portraying such displacement as inevitable rather than socially determined, these proposals obscure the critical role that power structures and market dynamics play in shaping technological innovation. They also fail to address how automation further concentrates control over technology, production, and data.