Mike Konczal - Dissent Magazine

How Ideology Works

Mike Konczal ▪ January 22, 2018

Any successful political project binds together ideas, actors, and power. “Neoliberalism” helps us understand how these fit together.

The Austerity of the Obama Years

Mike Konczal ▪ January 19, 2017

Austerity, both as a practice and as a metaphor, defined the landscape, culture, and politics of the Obama era.

To understand how the housing market really works, we need to hear the stories of those who have been pushed out. Two essential new books shine a spotlight on those stories, and illuminate much more in the process.

8 Thoughts on Bernie Sanders’s Democratic Socialism and the Primary

Mike Konczal ▪ November 25, 2015

What was missing from Bernie Sanders’s democratic socialism speech and policy agenda is just as interesting as what was included.

Generation Debt

Mike Konczal ▪ Fall 2015

Education is a human right. Anyone willing and able should be able to attend an institution of higher education irrespective of their ability to pay for it.

Liberal Punishment

Mike Konczal ▪ Spring 2015

Naomi Murakawa’s remarkable book The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America shows how, since the 1940s, liberals have provided legitimacy for the prison state.

Citizen Coupon

Mike Konczal ▪ December 12, 2012

Conservatives and neoliberals envision a government that provides a comparable range of benefits to the one advocated by earlier American liberals. But rather than designing and delivering services directly, the neoliberal government provides coupons for citizens.

An Elite Like Any Other? Meritocracy in America

Mike Konczal ▪ June 15, 2012

M. Konczal: Meritocracy in America

Kinder, Gentler Cuts

Mike Konczal ▪ Spring 2012

The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics by Thomas Byrne Edsall Doubleday, 2012, 272 pp. Arizona has sold its state capitol. Government budgets are contracting, especially when it comes to services and goods essential for the poor. …