Jon Chait’s reply to the “liberaltarian” proposal is both amusing and sound, including such crucial points as “wooing a small bloc with unpopular views is not a sound political strategy.” He notes that “the politically fertile terrain seems to lie in the anti-libertarian direction” and that the Democrats’ non-libertarian nature notwithstanding, there’s a non-crazy case to be made that libertarians should vote for Democrats rather than Republicans anyway. In sum:

I think the spirit of my proposed arrangement was best expressed by Michael Corleone, who said, “You can have my answer now if you like. My offer is this: nothing.” I don’t blame libertarians for wanting more than the lesser of two evils. But, when your beliefs are wildly unpopular, supporting the lesser of two evils is about the best you can expect.

With that as a new baseline, I’m prepared to make some minor concessions. There are a variety of ways in which the status quo has the heavy hand of the state being deployed to further entrench existing wealth and privilege, notably certain aspects of intellectual property policy. Liberals have our own reasons for opposing such measures but, in practice, liberal politicians are often nowhere to be seen on these issues. What’s more, there’s a foreign policy aspect to these questions and I think I’m more eager than Chait to see the Democrats oppose senseless militarism. At the end of the day, though, I agree with this conclusion:

The most impressive Democratic performances in 2006 came from candidates like Bob Casey, James Webb, and Heath Shuler, who combined economic populism with social traditionalism. The ideological counterpart to this strategy would be to flesh out a kind of liberal-populist fusionism, rooted in fighting the ways that massive inequality and income fluctuation have undermined traditional family life.

That’s where the real possibilities lie — trying to outline a vision where progressive economic policy is seen as a better means of shoring up family life than is legal discrimination against gays and lesbians.

I’ve been recommended these two (one, two) Mark Thoma posts on Alan Reynolds’ views about inequality. Thoma makes several points including the important one that the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey uses $999,999 as the maximum income that can be coded so that a person making $1 million, a person making $10 million, and a person making $100 million will all register as earning $999,999. This is a serious flaw in the data’s utility as a measure of inequality. He also notes that Piketty and Saez argue, in a manner that most economists seem to me to regard as perfectly credible, that “fiscal manipulation” in response to changes in the tax code could be responsible for short-term errors in the IRS data but not for problems with the long-term trend.

Jonah Goldberg:

I could swear Ted Kennedy said this morning on Fox News Sunday that some 36 million Americans go to bed hungry every night and 12 million of them are children (I’m quoting from memory). He insisted that the numbers were on his side. I’m sorry, but does anyone think that’s even remotely true? That systemic hunger is a chief symptom and problem of poverty in America? Come on.

It’d be good to know what Kennedy actually said. I assume he was referring to “food insecurity” as in, “In 2004, 38.2 million people lived in households experiencing food insecurity, compared to 33.6 million in 2001 and 31 million in 1999.” The Agriculture Department puts people into three category, “food secure,” “food insecure,” and “food insecure with hunger” based on answers to the questions you can find here. The essence of the “food insecurity” condition without hunger is more-or-less that a food insecure household finds its income to be a substantial constraint on food consumption. You find that your kid wants to eat more, but you can’t let him because you can’t afford more food. Members of your household need to skip meals sometimes to save money. You need to cut people’s portion sizes to make the food you have last as long as you need it to. You lose weight because of an inability to afford as much food as you’re inclined to eat.

That sort of thing rather than conditions of hunger or starvation provoked by the actual absence of food.