Fresh audio product: transhumanism, fiscal politics
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): September 11, 2025 Émile Torres on the tech moguls’ dream of transcending the merely human (article written with Timnit Gebru here) • Daniel Wortel-London, author of The Menace of Prosperity, on the fiscal history of NYC, and how we could do better than subsidizing the rich
Taxing the rich is only a start, though it’s a good one
It’s become near-consensus on the social democratic left that you can fund a decent welfare state by taxing the rich and shrinking the military. Sad to say that isn’t true. Those are good things in themselves, and you could pay for some excellent things with that agenda, but it would still be well short of actual social democracy. I’m defining social democracy as a large and robust welfare state that socializes a lot of consumption through taxation and spending, compressing the income distribution, reducing poverty sharply, capping the political power of the… Read More