#economic-populism

#economic-populism

James Talarico, a Democratic Senate candidate in Texas, has raised a staggering $27 million so far this year, with California donors contributing just under $1.2 million to back his campaign - second only to Texas supporters among those donors whose names were disclosed.

"I was thinking, well, it's a little inconsistent for me to refuse induction, refuse to go into the military, yet pay taxes that would fund other people to go into the military," the 81-year-old told Fortune.

Mamdani has carried his highly disciplined, media-forward messaging style into office, combining practical city management with a focus on visible and public-facing execution.

For years, giant tax prep companies like TurboTax and H&R Block have rigged our system so they can cash in on your hard-earned dollars. It's amazing that anyone could oppose this-especially when filing your taxes is something that Americans are required by law to do each year.

Billionaireism describes both the pathology that affects you when you are so wealthy that you're effectively above consequences and above moral consideration for others, and the pathologies that having a society dominated by such people inflicts on the rest of us.

Vance is as unpopular as he is unlikable, which is quite the parlay, if you think about it. Even his bungling attempts to influence the Hungarian elections... were spun as his 'stepping up' into a more important role in the administration.

The defeat of Viktor Orbán required not just an ordinary election campaign but the construction of a broad, diverse, and patriotic grassroots social movement, changing politics around the world.

"I'm in favor of not having any rules against insider trading. I would like all the information out there as soon as it's available. Because look, as a society, we are better off knowing as soon as possible anything that is knowable."

"Today's vote ignores the well-documented harmful consequences of wage hikes by economists. Not only would this proposal slash up to 86,000 jobs, it would also worsen inflation for Pennsylvania workers and residents."

Within the workplace, the content and conditions of work are largely controlled by employers who often have an interest in degrading the quality of work, both to increase productivity and to increase their control over employees in the workplace. Outside the workplace, employers have both an incentive and the power to undermine measures that would improve the quality of work through the political process.

The labor of this kind of organizing was invisible and deeply exhausting. In a precarious workplace, where a so-called 'performance review' could amount to job loss, organizing meant building a bridge while standing on it.

Work, in the words of Karl Marx, is a "means of life" in two senses. It is, first of all, an instrument for human life. It is the activity by which we reproduce ourselves from day to day, from year to year, from generation to generation. But work also forms, so to speak, much of the matter of human life, at least for most people in any society with which we are familiar.

Populism may well have been the defining word of the previous decade: a shorthand for the insurgent parties that came to prominence in the 2010s, challenging the dominance of the liberal centre. But no sooner had it become the main rubric for discussing both the far left and far right than commentators began to question its validity: worrying that it was too vague, or too pejorative, or fuelling the forces to which it referred.

Democratic Representatives Mike Thompson (CA-04) and Richard E. Neal (MA-01) even introduced a bill called the American Affordability Act, which promises to reduce housing, educational, and childcare costs with a variety of tax credits. Congressional campaign professionals have been urging candidates from coast to coast to adopt an "affordability agenda." And-for good reason-recent polling shows that the cost of living tops the list of voters' concerns.

Traditionally, critiques of bureaucracy take the perspective of the little man caught in the obtuse machinations of faceless corporations or an unyielding state. Kafka's Joseph K., for example, or Catch-22's Yossarian. Even The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy begins with protagonist Arthur Dent lying in front of a bulldozer to thwart an intransigent planning department. In recent years, we've seen the return of anti-bureaucratic mobilization,