"In Norquist's vision, America a couple of decades from now will
be a place in which elderly people make up a disproportionate share of the poor, as they did before Social Security. It will
also be a country in which even middle-class elderly Americans are, in many cases, unable to afford expensive medical procedures
or prescription drugs and in which poor Americans generally go without even basic health care. And it may well be a place
in which only those who can afford expensive private schools can give their children a decent education. ... " --Paul Krugman, New York Times
1. The Cartoon and the Reality... [The cartoon is Bruce Tinsley's comic
strip, ''Mallard Fillmore."]
... A result of the tax-cut crusade is that there is now a fundamental
mismatch between the benefits Americans expect to receive from the government and the revenues government collect. This mismatch
is already having profound effects at the state and local levels: teachers and policemen are being laid off and children are
being denied health insurance. The federal government can mask its problems for a while, by running huge budget deficits,
but it, too, will eventually have to decide whether to cut services or raise taxes. And we are not talking about minor policy
adjustments. If taxes stay as low as they are now, government as we know it cannot be maintained. ...
2. How High Are Our Taxes? ...
3. Supply-Siders, Starve-the-Beasters and Lucky Duckies ...
4. From Reaganomics to Clintonomics
5.
Second Wind: The Bush Tax Cuts
6. A Planned Crisis
7. What Kind of Country?
The astonishing political success of the antitax crusade has, more
or less deliberately, set the United States up for a fiscal crisis. ... But what gives -- whether we decide that the New Deal and the Great Society must go or that taxes aren't
such a bad thing after all -- is up to us. The American people must decide what kind of a country we want to be.
Paul Krugman is a Times columnist and a professor at Princeton.
His new book is ''The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century.''
His latest two articles are available printed in full,
free of charge. Older articles, like the one above, may be purchased online.
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