It used to be that people who couldn’t pay their debts could go into personal bankruptcy and start over. Their future credit rating would suffer, of course, but at least they’d be able to come out from under compound interest charges that were eating up their paychecks and forcing them into ever deeper debt. No […]
Robert Reich
Robert B. Reich, a co-founder of The American Prospect, is a professor of public policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few, one of the books featured in the Prospect’s High School Essay Contest.
Posted inSpecial Report
The Vanishing State?
More permeable borders seem to make it more difficult for a nation to maintain a mixed economy, regulate capital in the public interest, provide decent wages, and foster a political coalition to defend all of the above. Indeed, there is an extensive conservative literature contending that the global market renders the role of the state […]
Posted inColumns
Deepening the Religious Divide
In the religious war now being waged by the Republican Party, battles are designed not to be won but to mobilize troops for larger battles to come. The ultimate goal is not to dismantle the wall between church and state, although this would be a byproduct. It is to bring the majority of Americans who […]
Posted inArticle
The Fed’s Preemptive War
Just 110,000 jobs were added in March, not nearly enough even to keep up with population growth. Meanwhile, the wages and benefits of non-supervisory workers — about 80 percent of the American workforce — continue to drop, in real terms. This is unusual for this stage of a so-called recovery. What’s going on? Blame higher […]
Posted inArticle
Who Should Get Scholarships?
If your child gets a fat envelope from the college of his or her choice this week, watch your wallet. Deposits are due May 1, and tuition and fees are up by double digits again. Colleges say they can’t help it. Their health care and energy costs are still soaring. Endowments are still depressed. And […]
Posted inArticle
High on the Hog
We’re now deeper in hock to the rest of the world than ever before, and the dollar is poised to drop even further. Americans are living too high on the hog — higher than we can possibly afford. And as the old saying goes, when you’re living too high on the hog eventually you’re going […]
Posted inArticle
It’s the Wages, Stupid
As the President’s plan to privatize Social Security flounders, the White House is shifting its attention to “reforming” the tax code. One idea that’s getting a lot of play is called a consumption tax. It’s a tax on what you consume rather than on what you earn. Fed chief Alan Greenspan seemed to endorse it […]
Posted inArticle
The China Card
Think of the world as containing three great centers of economic power — the United States, Europe, and China. Each is intertwined with the other. President Bush is in Europe right now, trying to make amends for America’s go-it-alone invasion of Iraq. But what’s really upsetting Europe these days is America’s go-it-alone economics. And how […]
Posted inColumns
Mangling Franklin
When I appeared on FOX News’ The Big Story on February 4, anchor John Gibson asserted that Franklin D. Roosevelt anticipated George W. Bush’s privatization plan, quoting FDR as saying in 1935 that Social Security “ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.” I told Gibson that FDR couldn’t have been referring to private […]
Posted inArticle
Scrushy and the Bandit
A few years ago, America’s high-flying CEOs wanted everyone to think they were hands-on executives who knew everything that was going on — super-human masters of the universe who didn’t suffer fools and whom no one could fool. Well, times have changed. Some CEOs these days would rather people think they didn’t know much of […]
