Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Mike Konczal wrote a column over the weekend suggesting that an “anti-rentier” agenda had some potential to unite left and right. Reihan Salam comments:

Konczal also identifies tensions between what we might describe as the anti-rentier agenda of the right, which tends to focus on how state interventions serve the interests of incumbents and wealthy, influential individuals, and the anti-rentier agenda of the left, which is more concerned about the dangers of wealth concentration as such and the market power of firms that flourish in an open, lightly-regulated economy, due to first-mover advantages, network effects, and much else.

Is this really a serious agenda anywhere on the right? I’ve occasionally seen committed libertarians make the point that state interventions often serve the interests of economic incumbents, but even that’s rare.1 Outside of that, there’s Tim Carney and….

Anyone else? Any actual working Republican politicians, for example? Maybe I’m missing something, but it sure seems to me that the Republican Party is pretty firmly dedicated to defending the privileges of big corporations and the rich. Has there been a tectonic shift that I’m not aware of?

1It’s even rarer to see them arguing against state intervention because it would benefit the rich too much. In fact, I’m not sure I ever remember seeing an example of this.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate