Robert Kuttner
Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, and professor at Brandeis University's Heller School. His latest book is Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism? In addition to writing for the Prospect, he writes for HuffPost, The Boston Globe, and The New York Review of Books.
Follow Bob at his site, robertkuttner.com, and on Twitter.
Recent Articles
Market Turbulence Could Benefit Gore
Robert KuttnerDec 19, 2001What would a real stock market meltdown do to the economy and, not incidentally, to the presidential campaign? The market has long been poised for a correction. Internet stock expectations were outlandish. Even the broader market has been experiencing inflated ratios of stock prices to company earnings not seen since 1929. All it took for air to come out of the market were some moderate storm clouds: higher oil prices, which gave us a whiff of wider inflation; reduced corporate earnings; weakness and instability in the world's second-most-important currency, the euro; portents of war. But it would take a much worse market collapse before the real economy would be seriously affected. Consider these factors: A good deal of air has already come out of the market. The technology-heavy NASDAQ has declined from its March 2000 peak by more than 40 percent. Even if the Dow were to decline to, say, 8000, investors would still have more than tripled their money over the past decade. It's true...
Comment: Beyond the Fringe
Robert KuttnerDec 19, 2001A s we go to press, polls show Al Gore running as much as eight points behind George W. Bush nationally, and behind among every major age group except for voters over 65. This is truly remarkable. The economy is strong, the Republicans got the worst of the impeachment scandal, there are no serious foreign-policy problems, and Bush is a palpable lightweight. Voters ought to be increasingly appalled the better they get to know him. But this isn't happening. There are two pretty clear inferences. The vice president is a god-awful candidate; and as Robert Reich suggests [see " The Real Risk for Gore ," page 56], Gore is making a disastrous mistake by running on cautious themes unlikely to animate either base voters or swing voters. The needless party split provoked by the administration's insistence that China had to become a full World Trade Organization (WTO) member this year only diminishes one reliable source of party energy and activism, the resurgent labor movement. While the polls...
For Many Voters a Choice About Choice
Robert KuttnerDec 19, 2001Many viewers were startled to hear George W. Bush and Dick Cheney sound kinder and gentler on the hot-button issue of abortion rights. In the first TV debate Bush seemed to declare that he would not try to overturn the FDA's decision approving the abortion drug RU-486, that he wouldn't make reversing Roe v. Wade a litmus test for judges, and that he'd seek "common ground" on the divisive issue of reproductive rights. Cheney, debating Joe Lieberman, said he'd look for ways to reach "across the divide." The stance of both Bush and Cheney seemed in sharp contrast to that of the Republican National Convention, where the platform committee ostracized prochoice Republicans and not a single abortion-rights advocate was allowed floor time. What gives? What gives is that reproductive rights groups such as NARAL and Planned Parenthood have mounted a phenomenally successful organizing campaign, and Bush and his handlers can read polls. But despite the posturing and disingenuous answers, neither...
Comment: The McCain Mutiny
Robert KuttnerDec 19, 2001On most issues, Republican legislators have presented a solid phalanx to give the Bush administration whatever it wants. The exception is campaign finance reform--and the chink in the Republican armor is Arizona Senator John McCain. Should Democrats be cheered? The answer is a qualified yes. For starters, the reform coalition is mostly McCain plus Democrats. The Democrats are thus identified with an overdue set of popular reforms, while George W. Bush, who won election on a tide of unlimited corporate money, is identified with business as usual. The bad news is that the McCain-Feingold bill keeps getting watered down, and it was less than revolutionary to begin with. In the end, Bush will probably sign it, less because he was out strategized and outvoted than because the bill won't make that much difference. The McCain-Feingold bill is necessary because of the collapse of the post-Watergate system of reforms. This legislation, enacted in 1974, was intended to constrain both individual...
Comment: Taking It with You
Robert KuttnerDec 19, 2001A s Sheldon Pollack writes in this issue ["It's Alive," page 29], Republicans in Congress are close to killing the estate tax. Some remnant will survive, but it could be significantly cut, and with the collusion of many Democrats. Why get rid of a tax paid only by the richest 1 percent of Americans? Why scrap our only wealth tax, one that accounted for $28 billion dollars of revenue in 1999? You can understand why Republicans favor repeal, but why do numerous Democrats follow suit? The answer, in brief, is campaign finance. Only half of 1 percent of voters contribute more than $250 to political candidates. But these are the people that candidates hang out with--and of course these are the people with estates large enough to pay tax. Only in this crowd is $28 billion of federal revenue chump change. As Pollack points out, the lost revenue gradually rises to over $50 billion a year. That kind of money could buy prescription drug coverage for the elderly. It could more than finance...
