Nationally syndicated Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson began a book event in 2009 (1/13/09) with a comment that could be interpreted as either self-deprecating humor or defensiveness: I am not an economist. I’m a journalist. And so that anything I say that seems contradictory to what a freshman in college would learn in your basic Principles of Economics course, I should be absolved of any sin for that, because as I say I am not a card-carrying member of the fraternity. Despite having a name that’s fortuitously easy to confuse with prominent economic textbook writer Paul Samuelson, and despite his [...]

Way back in 1983, corporate media helped sell the dubious notion that Social Security needed saving by a blue-ribbon commission (Extra!, 1-2/88). The panel—headed by future Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan—raised payroll taxes and the retirement age for the ostensible purpose of accumulating a large surplus to help finance the retirement of the baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964. That this surplus, loaned to the general federal budget in exchange for Treasury bonds, would also help to finance the Reagan-era tax cuts for affluent taxpayers was treated as a complete coincidence. Twenty-seven years later, the baby boomers are retiring [...]