Occupation: Economist Birth: February 28, 1953
The raw fact is that every successful example of economic development this past century every case of a poor nation that worked its way up to a mor….
Democracy or breakdown in Syria would change the whole Middle East overnight..
The public has no idea that the deficit has been falling like a stone..
If you're doing your job right, some substantial group of people [is] going to be mad at you..
There's nothing magic about spending on tanks and bombs rather than roads and bridges..
However, the fact that an economist offers a theoretical analysis does not and should not automatically command respect. What is needed is some assur….
A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy..
We should try to create the society each of us would want if we didn't know in advance who we'd be..
Until the Great Depression, most economists clung to a vision of capitalism as a perfect or nearly perfect system. That vision wasn’t sustainable in ….
For decades the G.O.P. has won elections by appealing to social and racial divisions, only to turn after each victory to deregulation and tax cuts fo….
Wealthy individuals bought themselves a radical right party, believing - correctly - that it would cut their taxes and remove regulations, but failed….
Republican candidates had to appeal to their base, which is by and large elderly white people arguing with empty chairs..
Friedrich Hayek is not an important figure in the history of macroeconomics..
Consumer spending is now plunging at serious-recession rate ... even if the rescue now in train succeeds in unfreezing credit markets, the real econo….
It’s not about the budget; it’s about the power...So will the attack on unions succeed? I don’t know. But anyone who cares about retaining government….
[T]he next time you hear serious-sounding people explaining the need for fiscal austerity, try to parse their argument. Almost surely, you'll discove….
Simple doesn't mean stupid. Thinking that it does, does..
Most people, I suspect, still have in their minds an image of America as the great land of college education, unique in the extent to which higher le….
The trouble with poverty, as an issue, is that it has basically exhausted the patience of the general public..
I think so long as fossil fuels are cheap, people will use them and it will postpone a movement towards new technologies..
These days, however, the main problem comes from the right - from conservatives who, unlike most economists, really do think that the free market is ….