How Left Economists Have Challenged Economic “Common Sense”

As things currently stand, we are not doing very well in the United States at meeting even foundational needs to keep people alive and healthy: housing, food, medical care. And those things that we have in reasonable abundance, like clothing, are often produced in ways that involve unacceptable environmental costs and terrible labor conditions. (Things are, of course, better in some other parts of the world and much worse in many others.) And the extremes of income inequality we have reached distort every aspect of economic and political life. But there are plenty of good ideas about how to expand access to people’s basic needs, such as rent stabilization and public housing policies, and a public option or a straight-up single-payer system for medical insurance.