Tax Reform: More Questions Than Answers

It takes political courage to reform a tax system. The deepest, most difficult questions of democracy get raised. What is government really for? How much...

score:9, 08/14/1986, ,

Winter is Coming, and So is a Recession

A recent headline reads, "Recession May be Looming on the Economic Horizon." But a market analyst says, "Job growth is the economy's bottom line...

score:9, 09/11/1986, ,

Peru's Young President Balances on the High Wire

In the circus of politics, some national leaders are strong-men, some are clowns. Very few are high-wire artists, taking on the most challenging...

score:9, 02/26/1987, ,

What Happens when the Bank Fails?

About half the people I met in Oklahoma had personally experienced a bank failure over the past year or so. On Thursday, January 8, of...

score:9, 03/12/1987, ,

When the Stock Market Goes up and the Economy Doesn't

Why is the stock market shooting up while the economy is in the doldrums? As usual with questions about economics, you can find someone to...

score:9, 02/19/1987, ,

A Billion-Dollar Primer

The President is requesting $6 billion for Star Wars. U.S. farmers received $23 billion in subsidies last year. Congress overrode the veto on the...

score:9, 04/23/1987, ,

Land Protection is More Than Champagne and Quiche

Some people here in New England say that land protection is a "champagne and quiche" issue. They clearly doesn't understand land economics. Land protection...

score:9, 04/16/1987, ,

Why Should We Be Glad when the Gnp Goes Up?

With that special, kindly sparkle in his eyes the President said in his news conference that there would be good economic tidings the next day...

score:9, 03/03/1988, ,

Ronald Reagan in the Shadow of Thomas Jefferson

When a President summons the image of a great predecessor to cast a gleam of glory onto a present action, watch out. The current incumbent...

score:9, 07/09/1987, ,

Prophets of Depression Are Without Honor in Any Country

Back in the booming 1920s, when Wall Street was the glamor capital of the world, when the rich were getting much richer and the poor...

score:9, 10/22/1987, ,

The Stock Market is Not the Economy

"Everyone is a little puzzled," said President Reagan on the day the Dow dropped 508 points. "I don't know what meaning it might have...

score:9, 10/29/1987, ,

The Stock Market Crash -- Layers of Causes

By now we've heard hundreds of theories about The Cause of the stock market crash. It was the greed of the yuppies that did...

score:9, 11/12/1987, ,

Trading Debt for Nature Instead of Nature for Debt

It is a tragedy, but not an accident, that the world's most threatened tropical forests are in some of the world's poorest and...

score:9, 04/14/1988, ,

The New American Scarcity

We can't afford to keep the post offices open full time. We can't fix the roads or educate our children properly. Whenever a...

score:9, 04/07/1988, ,

Waking up from Eight Years of Illusion

"If you let me write $200 billion a year in hot checks, I'll give you an illusion of prosperity too," said Lloyd Bentsen in...

score:9, 01/19/1989, ,

Millions, Billions, Trillions, and the Peace Dividend

Ever since the Cold War ended a month or so ago, politicians and columnists have been having fun figuring out what to do with the...

score:9, 01/12/1990, ,

Our Gnp is Up; Our Welfare is Down

Are you better off than you were ten years ago? The government says you are -- or at any rate the average American is. The per...

score:9, 03/08/1990, ,

The Grass Doesn't Pay the Clouds for the Rain

"In the current vocabulary of condemnation there are few words as final and conclusive as the word 'uneconomic'," wrote E.F. Schumacher in Small is...

score:9, 03/22/1990, ,

Paying the Third World to Save the Ozone Layer

Last week in Geneva the United States positioned itself for the fourth time in six months as an international pariah by refusing to go along...

score:9, 05/17/1990, ,

The Abcs of the S&ls

If five hundred billion dollars had been robbed from us Jesse James style, we would have understood what happened. We would have risen up in...

score:9, 08/02/1990, ,

None of the Above

It took them four months of high-level haggling. They produced a plan for the biggest deficit yet -- an estimated $250 billion NOT INCLUDING the...

score:9, 10/04/1990, ,

What We Don't Know About the Budget Isn't Easy to Find out

"I never knew that, about rich people not paying Social Security tax on all their income," an outraged friend told me last week. Said another...

score:9, 11/01/1990, ,

Three Case Studies for the Business Schools

"This is a case study for the business schools," said an environmentalist on the day McDonald's renounced its polystyrene foam hamburger package. In the...

score:9, 11/08/1990, ,

The Costs of War to Those at Home

The people who tried hardest to warn us against this war were those who had experienced war. Among them were veterans who stood up in...

score:9, 01/24/1991, ,

Markets Don't Make Energy Policy, People Do

George Bush's National Energy Strategy is causing heads to shake in disbelief all over the world. It is a strategy for the 1950s, when...

score:9, 03/14/1991, ,