PoliticsThe big problem with no tax on tipsThe list of eligible jobs is here and wildly broad.by Eric LevitzSep 4, 2025, 11:00 AM UTCShareGiftWaitstaff at Barbacana, a Houston restaurant, on August 21, 2025. Melissa PhillipHouston Chronicle via Eric Levitz is a senior correspondent at Vox.
He covers a wide range of political and policy issues with a special focus on questions that internally divide the American left and right. Before coming to Vox in 2024, he wrote a column on politics and economics for New York Magazine.The Democratic Partys problems have a two-word solution: economic populism.Or so suggests much recent commentary (including, to an extent, my own).
Yet, the merits of populist economic policies depend a lot on how that term is defined.Populism is best understood as a rhetorical mode that portrays political life as a conflict between the many and the few the righteous people and the extractive elite. This narrative frame has been a staple of Democratic politics since the days of FDR (if not Andrew Jackson) and for good reason.
Many economic issues genuinely pit the interests of the rich against those of ordinary people. And the Republican Party often takes the minoritys side of those fights.Politically, Democrats have an interest in increasing the salience of the GOPs plutocratic loyalties and reestablishing their own credibility as guardians of working-class interests.
*Reporting by Vox.*
