The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas L. Friedman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 496 pages, $27.50) I opened Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat expecting another paean to globalization, and though it surely is that, this book is also a well-reported, original, and nuanced discussion that every […]
Robert Kuttner
Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. His latest book is Notes for Next Time: Surviving Tyranny, Redeeming America. Follow Bob at his site, robertkuttner.com, and on Twitter.
Posted in15th Anniversary
The Death and Life of American Liberalism
“I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy.” — Jon Lovitz playing Michael Dukakis, Saturday Night Live, October 1988 Why are we losing to these guys? On nearly every major issue, public-opinion polls show that the Bush administration and the Republican Congress are well to the right of the country. Yet George W. […]
Posted inArticle
A New Model for Elder Care
By the time my mother turned 90, she had outlived the several friends and neighbors who lived in the Brookline apartment building where she’d spent the past 25 years. It was getting lonely and a bit risky. She and I began touring assisted-living complexes, whose apartments for the most part were small and pricey. ”This […]
Posted inArticle
Not Rich? Not Poor? Watch Out
There is one useful thing about President Bush’s ”progressive indexing” proposal for Social Security. It finally makes explicit what we suspected — that Bush intends benefit cuts for most American workers in order to finance his privatization plan. Privatization, let’s recall, requires either new taxes or increased government borrowing or benefit cuts — you can’t […]
Posted inArticle
Whose Nation Under God?
When John Kennedy was running for president and passions were running high about whether a Catholic could serve both the American citizenry and Rome, a joke made the rounds about a priest and a minister whose friendship nearly came to blows. Finally the priest phoned his old friend. ”What a pity,” he said. ”Here we […]
Posted inArticle
An Economy Going Nowhere
What has been ailing the stock market? Economic fundamentals haven’t changed much in the past few months. The dollar has been weak for more than a year, the worsening trade imbalance is an old story, and oil prices have been high for months. So why the big dip last week? The immediate precipitating cause is […]
Posted inSpecial Report
Ownership and Government
Ownership, President Bush told the Republican national convention last August, brings security, and dignity, and independence. It is an assertion few Americans would dispute — and one that we should welcome. For it turns out that Bush’s proposed policies would frustrate his stated goal. Bush’s version of an ownership society is both ideological and tactical. […]
Posted inColumns
Hammered
Just when you’re on the edge of despair about the resilience of American democracy, an ancient pattern reasserts itself. People drunk with their own self-importance overreach and begin to destroy themselves. Names like Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon, and Newt Gingrich come to mind. And now, perhaps, Tom DeLay. The House majority leader is in trouble […]
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The Biggest Tax Cheats
How can we possibly reduce the federal deficit and find enough money for high-quality public services without raising everyone’s taxes? Actually, there’s a remarkably easy solution. The government just needs to get serious about collecting money from tax cheats. And this doesn’t mean audits of ordinary taxpayers or mom-and-pop businesses — that’s not where the […]
Posted inArticle
The Stealth Tax Spreads
Happy tax time, everyone. Don’t you wish rates were lower and filling out your returns were less of a hassle? Well, President Bush may have another gift for you. His next big goal, which he has entrusted to a presidential commission, is ”tax simplification.” So: Is George W. Bush the taxpayer’s friend? Bush’s new commission […]
