Economy and Business
The Ever-So-Brief Success of the Income Tax
The modern federal income tax turns 100 this year, and historians are already holding special events to commemorate the anniversary. But if we really want to understand just what the federal income tax has accomplished — and failed to accomplish — over the last 100...
Free Trade Economics 101
The Road Back to Serfdom
Here I am In working prime, But all the jobs Are just part-time. The ancestors of many Americans came here to escape mingy monarchs, oppressive priests, and baleful barons who controlled all aspects of communal life back in their countries. They bravely left...
Hogging the Global Pie
Apologists for inequality have a standard retort to anyone who calls for a more equal distribution of the world's treasure. If you took all the wealth of the wealthy and divvied it up equally among all the poor, they claim, no one would gain enough to accomplish much...
Making Caregiving Count in France
Even before the ink dries on the messy budget deal that staved off the "fiscal cliff," the next fight — over raising the debt ceiling — is shaping up. Republicans say they won't vote to pay the nation's bills unless offsetting cuts are made, and Social Security is...
The Capital of Inequality
Politicians inside the Beltway that circles Washington, D.C., most of us would agree, don't understand the challenges of daily life that average Americans face outside the Beltway. But these days, if you really want to understand everyday life in our deeply unequal...
The High Cost of Free Trade
Tidy rip-offs From free trade; For which we So dearly paid. The Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade agreement, being negotiated in secret even as we speak, has a lot to say about worker rights and environmental protections. This pact, which is shaping up between the...
Obama 2.0: Yes We Can Raise Taxes
Republicans seem to have something against tax increases. I get that. But it's still not crazy to think we can win some important revenue battles during Obama 2.0. And given this country's pressing needs – from repairing our infrastructure to rehiring teachers – it...
The Real Obama Emerges Again
If you're having political déjà vu as Obama's second term in the White House gets underway, you're not alone. The supposedly populist candidate — who won re-election promising to tax the rich, protect Social Security, and make the economy fair — has morphed back into...
Making the Tax Code Safe for America’s Aristocracy
Can a democracy survive if its richest people can pass on to their heirs, generation after generation, the vast bulk of their fortunes? In the United States, that question first became a top-tier topic of debate back over a century ago. Huge fortunes were then...
