Progressives prioritize a trade agenda that would not actually achieve the objectives they have in mind. It’s time they adopted a reality-based approach.
James K. Galbraith
James K. Galbraith holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen, Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas at Austin. He is a member of the Lincean Academy and author most recently of Inequality: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2016).
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Rich World, Poor World
The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time by Jeffrey D. Sachs, foreword by Bono (Penguin Books, 416 pages, $27.95) The Global Class War: How America’s Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future — And What It Will Take to Win It Back by Jeff Faux (Wiley, 304 pages, $27.95) Jeff […]
Posted inArticle
The Floodgates Have Opened
Hurricane Katrina and the death of New Orleans have changed everything, exposing the rot in government and the failures of the free-market worldview that has dominated our politics and economic policy for more than 30 years. Once again, the country must take stock of a terrible failure; once again we must change direction. It is […]
Posted inArticle
Reasonable Doubt
Anywhere else, the police killing of the young Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes in the London Underground on July 22 would be called a gangland-style murder. Yet the authorities are unmoved. Sir Ian Blair, commissioner of Scotland Yard, stiffly warned that more shootings might follow. Home Secretary Charles Clarke stated “full support” for the police. […]
Posted in15th Anniversary
1994: Boasting on Demand
“Are we really on a cliff by the sea, poised perilously above the waves and the rocks? Or are we in fact down by the beach, on a gentle slope of soft and agreeable sand?” “Can’t We Go Faster?” TAP, September 1997 I claim the best record of any economist to survive the […]
Posted inFeatures
Bankers Versus Base
There may come a day, in January 2005, when the Democrats will come back to power. Can we perhaps divert ourselves from the campaign long enough to ask, what then? The Democrats have a problem. Their base wants jobs and security. Their financial leadership wants a return to the Clinton formula of deficit reduction, leaving […]
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Works on Progress
Downsizing in America: Reality, Causes, and Consequences By William J. Baumol, Alan S. Blinder and Edward N. Wolff, Russell Sage Foundation, 321 pages, $29.95 The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans and Their Families By Beth Shulman, The New Press, 255 pages, $25.95 Back in 1994, the late, […]
Posted inArticle
Healthy Skepticism
Recently, Andrew Sullivan was good enough to quote my last column — in which I argued for continued opposition to the war in Iraq — on his Web site. He cited me as an example of poor military forecasting, which I don’t deny. The nightmare prospect of house-to-house fighting across Baghdad made me extremely anxious, […]
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Still Wrong
In a recent column, TAP Online Editor Richard Just and TomPaine.com Executive Editor Nick Penniman prescribed “the only moral and practical option” for liberals quavering over the war. It is, they wrote, “to begin immediately campaigning for a more ambitious, comprehensive and compassionate reconstruction of Iraq . . . while supporting the war effort that […]
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Lötterdämmerung
Think of it: If God had made Strom Thurmond just six weeks older, the Senate would still be under Democratic control. It’s enough to shake one’s faith — and mine was none too strong to begin with. But then it became apparent that the Almighty was, as usual, one step ahead. He had devised a […]
