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Robert Kuttner

Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, as well as a distinguished senior fellow of the think tank Demos. He was a longtime columnist for Business Week and continues to write columns in The Boston Globe. He is the author of Obama's Challenge and other books.

Recent Articles

Getting Over The Lock Box

Robert KuttnerDec 19, 2001

For six decades, Democrats have been proud defenders
of America's most popular government program, Social
Security. But the debate is now becoming so muddled that when
the dust settles, Social Security may well end up partly privatized
with George W. Bush getting credit for saving it.

How could this have happened?

Twenty years ago, it became clear that Social Security
needed adjustment because people were living longer. Unlike a
private retirement account, Social Security keeps sending the
checks as long as you live.

In 1983, Congress slightly raised both taxes and the
retirement age. It also adjusted the cost-of-living formula.

A Misguided Goal for Social Security

Robert KuttnerDec 19, 2001

The stock market has been pretty stagnant. Despite one rate cut after another by the
Federal Reserve, the market shows no signs of reverting to its 1990s performance any time
soon. One casualty of a bear market is likely to be the campaign to privatize Social Security.

Bush Is Playing With Religious Fire

Robert KuttnerDec 19, 2001

Does George W. Bush appreciate what fire he is playing with when he stirs up the religious
right? It is almost as if we are on the road to religious war.

In so many corners of the globe, people are brutalizing their neighbors because each is convinced that he
has a direct pipeline to the true deity, while the outsider is a dangerous infidel.

Whether in the Middle East, or Ireland, Iran or Afghanistan, state-fomented religious intolerance is the
great blight on the right of ordinary people to live as they choose, as well as a grave threat to the peace.

Gore's Gamble With Lieberman

Robert KuttnerDec 19, 2001

Jewish immigrants to America used to respond anxiously to any major public news event by asking: Is it good for the Jews? Al Gore's embrace of Joe Lieberman invites a new twist: Is it good for the Democrats?


I'm torn. On the one hand, Gore's choice signals boldness. And it could give America an elevated debate about religious tolerance of the sort we haven't seen since John Kennedy and maybe since Thomas Jefferson. On the other hand, it could inflame American tribalism. And the designation ofthe centrist Lieberman, quite apart from his religion, kisses off the Democratic party's liberal and trade union base. Now the liberal on the ticket, relatively, is Gore.


Comment: No Ordinary Time

Robert KuttnerDec 19, 2001

All of us find ourselves shocked to be living, abruptly, in a wholly new era--and none were more shocked than the Bush administration. Globally, the White House is now pursuing a feverish multilateralism, a reversal of the Powell Doctrine to avoid "shooting wars" that we can't easily win, and even may soon embrace yesterday's conservative epithet "nation building." Domestically, the holy free market stands impeached, and even Republicans are necessarily looking to government for everything from civil defense to public health to economic stimulus. As a partisan, Bush seems more like Clinton, governing in coalition with the opposition party and outraging his own troops.


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