The claim that the freest market produces the best economic and social outcome is the centerpiece of the conservative political resurgence. But without government intervention, the market can destroy a lot of things–including itself.
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 inMoney, Politics, and Power
Up From 1994
S ince Franklin Roosevelt, the central liberal credo has been the use of government to benefit ordinary people. That premise is now battered–fiscally, politically, ideologically. In 1994, swing voters rejected both the concept and the party of government. The 1994 midterm election is not yet the epochal realignment that prefigures a new governing coalition and […]
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Only Connect
The New York Times Book (sic) Review for March 6, 1994 ran a feature piece reviewing a CD-ROM. “Microsoft Art Gallery,” an interactive digitized catalog of Britain’s National Gallery collection, won a rave. Just point and click, and you can pull up paintings by artist, period, or genre; you can also get spoken critical commentaries […]
Posted inEconomic Policy
Back to the Future
During the postwar boom, it seemed that mass unemployment had been cured forever. A mixed economy–based on activist government, deficit spending, public investment, strong trade-unionism, a welfare state, and a warfare state–kept the industrial West on a high-growth path. Living standards rose steadily. Satisfied voters returned to office politicians who believed in this model. Not […]
Posted inWorking in America
Market, State, and Dystopia
A dystopia is a utopia in reverse. The post-1980 era is likely to be remembered as a free market dystopia–a headlong compulsion to throw away the mixed economy that was built on the ruins of depression and world war in favor of a marketized society. This compulsion has been ground into the lenses of the […]
Posted inEconomic Policy
The Moral Equivalent of War Production
Restoration of robust growth is the paramount challenge facing the nation, the most significant issue of the 1992 election, and the first task that will face a new administration. Indeed, all other important public questions are being held hostage to a sick economy that depresses aspiration, increases unemployment, de pletes revenue, and makes public remediation […]
Posted inEconomic Policy
Liberalism, Socialism, and Democracy
What, if anything, can be usefully salvaged from the socialist tradition, now that communism lies in final disgrace? Paul Starr argued in these pages last fall that four developments — the implosion of communism, the collapse of efforts to reform communism from within, the failure of socialism in the Third World, and the shift of […]
Posted inEconomic Policy
Is There a Democratic Economics?
The real issue is not the current downturn, but the fifteen-year decline in living standards. That should be the focus of a reframed debate—and different remedies.
