Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper

I am currently a National Correspondent for The Week.

📍 Philadelphia

The Best Tax System on Earth Is in the Remote North Atlantic

Back in October I spent a week in the Faroe Islands reporting on their tax system, called TAKS. I interviewed the head of the tax authority, some government ministers, several academics, and a bunch of other folks. I discovered not only that TAKS keeps continuous track of all normal employment

RIP Twitter. What's Next?

I wondered what Elon Musk would do to that place, but to be honest I did not remotely expect that he would tank it as quickly as he appears to be doing. He's fired half the staff in one week, including many critical security and stability workers. Musk's fan base

On Policing

What do we do with the police? Despite efforts from both liberals and conservatives to bury the George Floyd movement, there's a new story of police brutality virtually every day, and the question keeps bubbling. I've been meaning to set down some basic thoughts on the question, and some tweets

Will No One Defend the American Republic?

In a previous newsletter, I frankly discussed my view that the United States is careening towards a right-wing dictatorship that is highly likely to be either deranged or unstable or both over the medium term, thus threatening a chaotic collapse of the global economic system that might kill billions (especially

This Bloody Nightmare

A short newsletter this time, because I am going on vacation for two weeks to get married starting tomorrow, and also because I imagine like most readers I have been emotionally gutted by the school shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas. I don't think I will ever forget this

These Are the Stakes

I've been listening to the British History Podcast [https://www.thebritishhistorypodcast.com/] by Jamie Jeffers, which is a pretty good pop history-type series that really digs deep into the material—after 390 episodes it's just getting to the Norman conquest. So far I'm just getting into the Anglo-Saxon period after

Newsletter reboot

Apologies for the prolonged radio silence, as you may have seen I recently started a new job at The American Prospect. It turns out being managing editor of a print magazine is a ton of work involving a lot of things I hadn't done in nearly a decade. For the

Book Event Tonight!

I'm shamefully late in writing this, but today is publication day for my book [https://read.macmillan.com/lp/how-are-you-going-to-pay-for-that/]! I'm doing a launch event with David Dayen at the POWERHOUSE Arena at 7 pm today – remote of course, so you can check it out here [https://www.eventbrite.com/

The Case for Medicare for All

I've been swamped lately preparing for my book launch on the 25th, so a short newsletter this time. Part of that was finishing off this video, which is adapted from one of the chapters: I'm also doing an event with David Dayen at Powerhouse Arena on the 25th (RSPV here

Down With Overwork

Matt Yglesias reminds me of an argument I've been meaning to make for some time. Here he makes the case against reducing the supply of labor – that is, cutting the number of people who are employed and/or the hours they are working. This is happening thanks to the pandemic,