Top all-time · #1317
Matt Bruenig
Personal blog · mattbruenig.comeconomicspolitics
Matt Bruenig's personal blog at mattbruenig.com covers economics and politics. Since 2013, 53 different Hacker News readers have linked it 70 times, most often “When McDonalds Came to Denmark”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 8 of 38 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
Commenters link his writing on labour unions (the McDonald's-in-Denmark story), basic income, inequality and marriage research, often as evidence for their own points.
- Recommended for · 8 comments
- Fresh points for laypeople; good health-cost analysis; McDonald's Denmark union story; marriage-statistics critique.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 38 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- When McDonalds Came to Denmark15 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2021-09-20
- What’s more important: a college degree or being born rich?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-06-15
- /2017/05/22/californias-surprisingly-cheap-single-payer-plan/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-05-23
- The Story of a Trump Supporter2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-01-02
- /2023/09/20/doing-the-marriage-thing-again/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-10-23
- How to Compare Incomes Across Countries2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-12-10
What Hacker News says?
> Over the last 10 years or so, I have filed a number of high-profile unfair labor practice charges against coercive statements, with many of those statements being made on Twitter. I file those charges even though I am merely a bystander, not an employee or an aggrieved party. > Every time I do this, some individuals ask how I am able to file charges when I don’t have “standing” because I am not the one who is bein…
Comment linking /2024/01/26/why-there-is-no-standing-requirement-for-filing-nlra-charges/
on “OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?”Submitted When McDonalds Came to Denmark as a story · 346 points
HN discussionOne of my favorite unionization stories comes from Denmark when unions in various industry sectors joined together to force McDonalds to adhere to union rules.[1] The US has so few weak and disparate unions that that story could never play out there - even up here in Canada we're pretty anti-union in general. 1. https://mattbruenig.com/2021/09/20/when-mcdonalds-came-to-de...
Comment linking /2021/09/20/when-mcdonalds-came-to-denmark/
on “Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize”Submitted Carmen Ortiz Has Blood on Her Hands (2013) as a story · 293 points
HN discussionIANAL, but you may want to edit or amend this comment if you're in a leadership position because it might technically be illegal (assuming U.S.), even though it's satire. See Ben Shapiro's and Ben Domenech's recent NLRB ULP charges. Shapiro had his thrown out because he RT'd an Employees Rights poster (which is more or less the remedy anyway), and Domenech got lucky and had a judge reach a "no-coercion conclusion" i…
Comment linking /2022/05/21/federalist-ulp-ends-in-big-let-down/
on “SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk”Submitted When McDonalds Came to Denmark as a story · 267 points
HN discussionhttp://mattbruenig.com/2012/08/22/the-never-ending-libertari...
Comment linking /2012/08/22/the-never-ending-libertarian-quest-to-appear-clever/
on “Walmart will soon have robots roaming the aisles in 50 stores”Submitted Does the Tuskegee experiment explain black vaccination rates? as a story · 61 points
HN discussionIf people respect pay for work, then they despise the opposite, including wealth earning income for no work. That saidd... This is consistent with believing owning less wealth is better than owning more wealth. Then that justifies groups with less wealth as better than groups with more wealth because they earn less income without work. Which then means the gender gap, racial gap, poor social immobility, etc are thus…
Comment linking /2017/07/22/some-opponents-of-ubi-necessarily-believe-the-racial-wealth-gap-is-good/
on “People Don’t Actually Want Equality, They Want Fairness”Submitted Home ownership is still mostly renting as a story · 34 points
HN discussionNeither your characterization of the mating behavior of primitive man nor your explanation for low birth rates in affluent societies are consistent with reality. Age of first pregnancy and number of children both tended to be higher in early agricultural societies than hunter-gatherer societies. Finland has a marriage rate above the OECD average[1], which suggests that its low birthrate isn't a result of women being…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/marriagerates.png
on “Why women lose the dating game”Submitted The amusing case of tech libertarians as a story · 13 points
HN discussionJudging from a follow-up discussion, I believe you're using the word "redistribution" in a way that is meaningless and/or needlessly gives ground to a libertarian framing of the situation. In a nutshell, if you say "redistribution", you must have some baseline in mind. Many people are fooled into accepting an "everyday libertarian" distribution of resources as a baseline, but this is both philosophically problematic…
Comment linking /2013/11/14/one-last-note-on-redistribution/
on “Bitcoin and positive vs. normative economics”Submitted Non-aggression never does any argumentative work at any time as a story · 7 points
HN discussion>the solution, in part, has a simple policy component: declare jubilee on all federally-originated student debt Unfortunately this is a pretty terrible idea. First of all it would cost about $1.4 trillion and second it benefits the already better off in society. [1] Not only do the children of wealthy parents have disproportionally more student debt, they're also far better equipped to actually pay it off. A trillio…
Comment linking /2012/08/10/student-debt-disproportionately-burdens-the-well-off/
on “The US startup is disappearing”Submitted AI and the collapse of the intelligence-based hierarchy of merit as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI think the more meta problem is that the people who agree that plurality is bad can't agree on what a better system should be :) IRV actually encourages strategic voting, see e.g. http://mattbruenig.com/2014/11/15/instant-runoff-voting-and-... . For a concrete example, if in the USA we had an IRV election between Trump, Clinton, and Sanders in 2016, there are some (not unrealistic) scenarios where it's possible tha…
Comment linking /2014/11/15/instant-runoff-voting-and-strategic-voting/
on “Your company can increase voter turnout: make Election Day a company holiday”Submitted What Is Lost in Post-Scarcity? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThat's the problem though -- there is not equality is possibilities. Analysis [1] of a study from the Pew Research Center on economic mobility [2] found that you are 10x more likely to be in the top 20% if you're born there than if you're born in the bottom 20%. Someone born in the top 20% who doesn't go to college is still 2.5x more likely to have an income in the top 20% as an adult than someone from the bottom 20…
Comment linking /2013/06/13/whats-more-important-a-college-degree-or-being-born-rich/
on “Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think”Submitted Vampire Capital as a story · 5 points
HN discussionDamore's NLRB claim is by far the most interesting aspect of this controversy. Counterpoint here: http://mattbruenig.com/2017/08/10/the-trump-nlrb-will-smash-... He walks through all the relevant points, concluding: "In basically all cases, a conservative NLRB will want to reduce the ways workers can coordinate with one another, and increase employer discretion to terminate employees. When I raised this point on Twi…
Comment linking /2017/08/10/the-trump-nlrb-will-smash-the-google-guy/
on “James Damore has an above decent chance of winning his legal case against Google”Submitted AI and the collapse of the intelligence-based hierarchy of merit as a story · 4 points
HN discussionMatt Bruenig (who I generally recommend to anybody interested in questions of economic justice because his writing introduces laypeople to brilliant and refreshing points) has a series on Uber surge pricing where, among other things, he makes that precise argument. He's the kind of guy who even includes (hints of) a sample calculation showing how the random distribution of a smaller number of taxis can lead to an ob…
Comment linking /2014/12/28/uber-surge-prices-part-iii/
on “The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics”Submitted Illegal Employee Handbook Rules as a story · 3 points
HN discussionHere is an interesting basic income calculator: http://mattbruenig.com/basicincomecalculator/ Happily, it suggests lots of proverty reduction is achievable with a very manageable percentage of GDP.
Comment linking /basicincomecalculator/
on “The indignity of no work”Submitted When McDonalds Came to Denmark (2021) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionUnions can negotiate more effectively by banding together. For an example, see this article: https://mattbruenig.com/2021/09/20/when-mcdonalds-came-to-de...
Comment linking /2021/09/20/when-mcdonalds-came-to-denmark/
on “Bid to unionize Amazon workers in New York nears milestone”Submitted Solar Panels Reduced My Electric Bill by $2,677 in 2022 as a story · 3 points
HN discussion>In the modern economy skills, training, and education are the surest means to success. Nope. Still land : http://mattbruenig.com/2013/06/13/whats-more-important-a-col... actually it was never just land either. It used to be about owning land, debts, gold and slaves Now it's about owning land, debts (bonds), gold and shares.
Comment linking /2013/06/13/whats-more-important-a-college-degree-or-being-born-rich/
on “America’s elite: An hereditary meritocracy”Submitted Picking a Health Insurance Plan as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
