Justin H. Vassallo

Writer

Brooklyn, NY

Writer and researcher specializing in American political development, comparative political economy, and the future of governance. Columnist at Compact Magazine

Justin H. Vassallo

Writer

Brooklyn, NY

Writer and researcher specializing in American political development, comparative political economy, and the future of governance. Columnist at Compact Magazine

Featured
Biden’s Missing Pieces
Soul-searching within the Democratic Party has reached levels not seen since the wilderness years of the mid-1980s. The remarkable amount of legislation passed during President Biden’s first two years in office—by most measures the most significant period
Commonweal
Featured
Why the Left Is Losing a Winnable Election
As the 2024 campaign ramps up, stalwart Democrats are starting to panic over President Biden’s re-election prospects. This, even as America’s post-pandemic recovery has been unparalleled among Western nations, the economy is growing at a rapid clip, unemp
compactmag.com
Featured
Textile Workers’ Forgotten Warning
REVIEW ESSAY Fraying Fabric: How Trade Policy and Industrial Decline Transformed America by James C. Benton University of Illinois Press, 2022, 304 pages When the Trump administration announced its first round of tariffs on China in 2018, few observers be
American Affairs Journal
Featured
The Bold Idea To Move Millions To Climate Havens
How the U.S. can motivate people to migrate before climate change causes chaos in their cities.
NOEMA
Why Baby Bonds Are a Bust
This year, Connecticut announced that more than 7,800 babies had been automatically enrolled in the state’s baby-bonds program since it launched in July 2023. At $3,200 invested per baby born eligible for Medicaid, the program—one of the first of its kind
Compact
Why the ‘Strike Wave’ Failed
On Feb. 27, Starbucks announced that it would work with Starbucks Workers United, the union which has organized 400 of the multinational chain’s US cafes since 2021, on a “foundational framework designed to achieve both collective bargaining agreements fo
Compact
The Two-Parent Privilege is Real
The surge in economic inequality since the 1980s has led to an explosion of anxious commentary over the last decade. Once minimized or rationalized as the price of market dynamism by mainstream economists, the effects of this inequality are now impossible
liberalpatriot.com
Bring Back the ‘Made-in-America’ Left
Making It in America: The Impossible Quest to Manufacture in the U.S.A. (and How It Got That Way) By Rachel Slade Pantheon, 352 pages, $28 The political “dealignment” between the working class and the Democratic Party has been one of the central themes of
compactmag.com
Featured
The Left's Foolish Attack on Bidenomics
For two generations, the neoliberal model of capitalism has rewarded Wall Street while liquidating the foundations of worker power and shared prosperity. While neoliberalism is often identified with the presidency of Ronald Reagan, Democratic leaders, too
compactmag.com
Featured
The Rural Challenge for Democrats
The Democratic Party’s decade-plus-long collapse in rural and micropolitan America stands as one of the great obstacles to strengthening the nation’s democracy. Owing to institutional constraints that limit simple majoritarian rule—the Electoral College a
liberalpatriot.com
Featured
The World That Municipal Socialists Built
Urban socialists blazed a path toward social democracy. Leftists who want to reclaim this tradition face a whole new set of obstacles. Justin H. Vassallo Fall 2023 Claiming the City: A Global History of Workers’ Fight for Municipal Socialism by Shelton St
Dissent Magazine
Featured
Perked Up
W o r d F a c t o r y Earlier this summer, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois co-introduced the Credit Card Competition Act of 2023, a bill that has gained some bipartisan support. Under proposed regulations that would be implemented by the Federa
The Baffler
Featured
The Travails of Bidenomics
The recent media flurry over “Bidenomics” is the latest attempt to distill a complex but far from complete rupture with neoliberalism. Premised in part on lifting the wages and employment rate of historically low-income groups, Bidenomics is really about
American Affairs Journal
Featured
Supply-Side Coalitions
On Brent Cebul’s “Illusions of Progress: Business, Poverty, and Liberalism in the American Century” Illusions of Progress By Brent Cebul University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023 The Biden administration’s multifaceted industrial strategy of the past two yea
Phenomenal World
A GOP Trade Hawk’s Lessons for the Left
No Trade Is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America's Workers By Robert E. Lighthizer Broadside Books, 382 pages, $32 The 2006 midterms are mostly remembered as a referendum on the Iraq quagmire, the Bush administration’s aborted plan
compactmag.com
Featured
The Limits of Basic Income
REVIEW ESSAY Welfare for Markets: A Global History of Basic Income by Anton Jäger and Daniel Zamora Vargas University of Chicago Press, 2023, 264 pages In recent years, experiments in basic income have proliferated across the United States. According to a
American Affairs Journal

About

Justin H. Vassallo

I'm a freelance writer who specializes in American political development and comparative/international political economy, with an additional focus on social democratic and progressive economic policymaking. I like to study the relationship between development and welfare, as well as the impact of ideology and party system coalitions upon each of these issues. I'm looking for freelance opportunities across a wide range of media platforms as well as major research assignments or full-time employment opportunities with think tanks and policymakers.