Jonathan Chait

RENEGADE AT THE TOP

Joseph Stiglitz can't be within President Clinton's circle of power. When he first arrived in Washington in 1993 to join Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), he had a persistent habit of saying what he thought instead of what he was supposed to think. After … more

Most people are relieved by the fact that the Asian economic crisis did not turn into the worldwide, government-overturning, riot-and famine-inducing catastrophe some predicted, and no doubt Paul Krugman is relieved, too. But the entrepreneur in Krugman must also feel a small twinge of remorse. His new book, The Return of Depression Economics, was written in the darkest moments of the Asian flu, and it is packaged as a doomsaying prophecy. And now the crisis has disappeared from the headlines,… more

Say what you will about Dan Crippen, the new director of the Congressional Budget Office, but you always know exactly where he stands on the issues of the day. Since taking office in February, Crippen has shared his opinions on topics such as President Clinton's plan to pump funding into Medicare (it "would do nothing to address the underlying problem"), proposals to build up reserves for retirement programs (they "never… more

To justify a new increase in military pay, the Pentagon and legislators are citing a 13 percent "pay gap" between the salaries of servicemen and their civilian counterparts. Ignoring for a moment whether a dramatic increase in military pay is needed, the 13 percent figure is bogus. Even though the Congressional Budget Office debunked the statistic in March, several military representatives continue to cite it in… more

Social Security's critics make much of the program's age. It is a relic of the New Deal, designed during a depressed era when people died younger, and trusted the market less, than they do today. And if you really want to make Social Security look dated, you point out that its basic blueprint comes from Otto yon Bismark. The implication of these historical references is perfectly clear: If we could… more

Do taxes really drive Americans crazy? Amity Shlaes thinks so. Her new book, The Greedy Hand: How Taxes Drive Americans Crazy and What To Do About It, argues that America is on the verge of a civic tax revolt. Voters, she writes, "cry out for tax relief," and when tax breaks are given to them they "discover the puny size of the break" and "turn angry."… more

They are stories of despair, heartrending and outrageous. A young boy with hopes of becoming a doctor is told by his school that "it would be more appropriate for him to be a gas station attendant or a truck driver." Another girl, an honor student, is instructed to consider a career in sanitation. Elsewhere, a young girl named Stacy is continually frustrated with math -- she has never been taught to multiply. But she is fortunate compared to a student… more

The most irritating thing about newspapers is their convention of presenting disagreements on matters of fact as nothing more than differences of opinion. Recently, a city official here resigned because he used the word " niggardly." A Washington Post story reported that the word "means different things to different people." Most of the Washingtonians quoted felt it could be taken as a slur, but others did not. And who is… more

Republicans propose using the federal budget surplus to finance a tax cut. They argue that the tax burden on the average American has grown. A tax cut may be a good or a bad idea for other reasons, but the notion of a growing tax burden rests on two highly misleading statistics.

The first is that "a typical mother and father who both work paid … more

No sooner had President Clinton unveiled his plan to save Social Security than it was savaged as big government run amok.

Republicans are reacting so hysterically precisely because the plan -- a solid proposal surrounded by poll-driven vacuities in his State of the Union address -- is not wild liberalism. Rather, it is fiscal conservatism -- what Republicans used to stand for before they invented supply-side economics -- devoted to progressive… more