Walt Disney dubbed one of his attractions the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT), but the name might better describe his design for private government.
Economic Policy
Posted inEconomic Policy
The Contract and the Consumer
The conservatives haven’t made “tort reform” a crusade to stop a flood of products liability litigation. There is no such flood. This is a straight payoff to their benefactors.
Posted inEconomic Policy
Gingrich’s Time Bomb: The Consequences of the Contract
Did anyone read the fine print? The Contract with America has been devilishly constructed with provisions that will set off a fiscal — and social — explosion years from now.
Posted inEconomic Policy
Our NAIRU Limit: The Governing Myth of Economic Policy
It’s now a familiar story: The Fed raises interest rates to slow the economy. But new research suggests that we are needlessly sacrificing prosperity on the altar of false economic assumptions.
Posted inEconomic Policy
Behind the Numbers: Class Dismissed?
The Democrats have hinged their political strategy upon the empirically shaky notion that most Americans consider themselves middle class. The consequences are not just rhetorical.
Posted inEconomic Policy
Do Poor Women Have a Right to Bear Children?
The current movement to reform welfare implies an uncomfortable thought: Perhaps poor women don’t have the right to bear children. Are we really prepared to say that?
Posted inEconomic Policy
The Inequality Express
While the trend toward greater inequality is no longer in doubt, recent work in the social sciences suggests a number of possible explanations. We can now begin to sort them out.
Posted inEconomic Policy
Bank Failure: The Financial Marginalization of the Poor
In poor areas across the country, banks have been replaced with check-cashers and pawn shops. While both liberals and conservatives extol the virtues of savings, the recent trend encourages just the opposite.
Posted inEconomic Policy
What I Really Say about Balancing the Budget
However you look at it, America is failing to prepare for its economic future. Each decade our savings performance worsens, and each decade so do our prospects for higher living standards. During the 1960s, U.S. net national savings averaged 8.1 percent of GDP. During the 1980s, that rate fell by half (to 3.9 percent). Thus […]
Posted inEconomic Policy
Is The American Economic Model the Answer?
The financial elites that favor the “American” model — deregulation, weak unions, and a minimalist welfare state — ask the wrong question: how to compete against countries with lower wages and living standards.
