He was a blogger for the American think tank Demos covering politics and public policy, and has written on issues including income distribution, taxation, welfare, elections, the Nordic model, and funds socialism.
During his time at the University of Oklahoma, where he graduated summa cum laude in philosophy and Black studies, Bruening founded and ran a chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, and led a living wage campaign on campus.
[13] In response to the conservative argument put forward by the likes of Milton Friedman and Margaret Thatcher who "accused liberals [e.g. left-wingers] of preferring to make the poor poorer if it made the rich less rich", Bruenig writes that "[t]he obvious problem with the statement is that it simply assumes left-wing policies can't improve the incomes of the poor.
"[14] Bruenig is the author of numerous articles, including "Rethinking Noncombatant Immunity",[15] "Fertility Rates and Government Intervention",[16] "How Reform Conservatives Like Reihan Salam and Paul Ryan Misunderstand Poverty",[17] "Nordic Zombie Arguments",[18] "People Aren't Better Off Than Income Trends Show",[19] "The Success Sequence Is About Cultural Beefs Not Poverty",[20][21] "The Success Sequence Is Extremely Misleading and Impossible to Code",[22] "Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty",[23] and "Identitarian Deference Continues to Roil Liberalism", where he criticized "identitarian deference", which he defines as the concept that "privileged individuals should defer to the opinions and views of oppressed individuals, especially on topics relevant to those individuals' oppression".
[24] Bruenig was among the critics of Nima Sanandaji, who argued that the economic success of Sweden and other Nordic countries preceded their establishment of the welfare state.
[26][27] Daniel Denvir of Jacobin described Bruenig as "one of the most incisive analysts of poverty, inequality, and welfare systems and the political conflicts that surround them".
"[32][33] In 2016, Bruenig was fired from his part-time job blogging for Demos after he posted a series of tweets targeting first Joan Walsh and later Center for American Progress president Neera Tanden.
[34][35][36] Demos stated that he was let go due to a pattern of "online harassment of people with whom he disagrees";[37] some journalists nevertheless speculated that there may have been outside pressure on behalf of Tanden.
Bruenig wrote: "The left should focus its energies on organizing under alternative institutions that, if they engage with the Democratic party at all, only do so in order to attempt hostile takeovers of various power positions.
[42][43][44] The think tank, of which Bruenig serves as its president, raises money through crowdfunding,[45] and analyzes politics and produces socialist/social democratic policy proposals tailored to the United States context.
[48] In February 2019, the People's Policy Project released its Family Fun Pack platform,[49] which is loosely based on the Finnish welfare state model.
[50] In a series of analysis that attracted attention,[51] including from Eleanor Mueller of Politico,[52] Bruenig was critical of the child care proposal by Democrats as part of the Build Back Better Act,[53][54][55] which he said would increase prices for the middle class by $13,000,[56][57][58] and how in 2023 it kept work requirements.
[60][61][62] Alongside Rebecca Traister, Bruenig was an early critic of Melissa Kearney's book The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind (2023).
"[69] He also stated that "in ideal liberal theory, citizens themselves are the source of all governmental action",[70] and argued alongside William A. Edmundson et al. that "political philosophy can and ought to make use of the concept of the means of production".
[83] In this vein, he argues that Norway, which owned 58.6 percent of the country's wealth (the double of Communist China) as of 2018 and described it as "by far the most socialist country in the developed world",[84][85] is more socialist than Bolivarian Venezuela,[86][87] concluding that if "government spending of around 40 percent of GDP, a minimum wage, and a small coop sector equals socialism [as argued by some pundits in the case of Bolivarian Venezuela], then Americans live in socialism every single day".
He argues that the postwar decades were "quite anomalous" as the Great Depression and World War II had created historically unique conditions that could not last forever, and adds: "True, inequality goes down.
[98] Smith suggested that Bruenig's plan would not only fix inequality but also find "a way to insure the American middle and working class against technological change".
[99] In Democracy, sociologist Dalton Conley also called, back in 2009 and within the context of the 2007–2008 financial crisis, for the establishment of an American sovereign wealth fund.
[97] In addition to his concept of social wealth funds, Bruenig published a paper authored by The Week writer Ryan Cooper and Dublin-based researcher Peter Gowan arguing that the best response to the issue of housing affordability would be a massive social housing project, in which the government would pay to build ten million homes over ten years, pointing to the success of such a program in European countries like Austria and Sweden.
[109] He also wrote an article about school reform,[110] arguing that "we should do what tons of other countries do and make it easier to be a lawyer" rather than "creating massive barriers to entering the job of reading and writing arguments and following made up procedures".