Matt Bruenig

And also, there's a great thing, you'd be fascinated.

I don't know if you've, uh, followed Matt Bruenig at People's Policy Project, but he talks about sort of the transitory nature of pov- poverty in America, where it's like the population of people who are poor is actually not very stable from year to year.

Mm-hmm.

And so, like, you can fall into poverty at any point, and you're always at threat, because we don't have any social safety net in America, of falling into it.

We can do better.

This week we welcome Matt Bruenig, who I consider to be one of the most important and solutions-focused voices in our nation on exactly what this podcast is about, issues of poverty and inequality.

Matt is the founder and the president of the People's Policy Project.

He's a lawyer.

Matt, welcome to We Can Do Better.

Thanks for having me.

Well, as I said, I'm a big, big fan of your work over the years, especially on welfare state analysis, welfare state proposals, and I, for one, would sign up for a multi-hour seminar on all things Matt Bruenig research over the years.

But, but today we wanna focus on one specific path to we can do better on addressing poverty and in- inequality, and that is sovereign wealth funds and/or state-owned enterprises.

This is...

That's all, but that's been a thing, there's been factional stuff there with like Freddy DeBoer and Matt Bru- uh, Matt Gran- Matt Graney [laughs] Matt Bruenig.

Um, those dividing lines were always there.

Like even, I know, I think-

And yet somehow people find it mysterious that the Democratic Party isn't more anti-AI.

Matt Bruenig.

With this sort of thing, there is always a Rorschach test element to it where you can either go less well-off people use getting versions of services previously unavailable to them.

That's great or less well-off people are stuck using inferior services.