Studying public opinion on economic inequality can make you both hopeful and cynical. On the one hand, we sincerely don't like extreme and rising inequality, for uniquely American reasons. But on the other, we support legislation -the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts being most notable- that make society even more unequal. And we don't support a lot of legislation that would level the playing field.

1-866-544-7573. That's the toll-free number you can call to urge your representatives in Congress to pass an expansion of SCHIP and Medicare reforms (for more on the House and Senate versions of the bill, read this Watcher article). Negotiations over those bills have stalled, and it's vital that Congress hear that they need to pass the most progressive expansion ppossible before the program's authorization expires on September 30th.

Martin Feldstein is resigning as the head of the National Bureau of Economic Research, which as I understand is the commanding heights of the economics profession. To get your head around how he and his peers think, take a look at this excerpt from an address he wrote a few months ago: So economic policy changes occur as the ideas of the economics profession change and as those ideas become more widely diffused. By the late 1970s, many economists had abandoned their old Keynesian views as a result both of experience — especially the poor economic performance of the late 1960s and the

CQ (subscription) reports that negotiations over SCHIP between the Houe and Senate have stalled. Lawmakers left the Capitol on Wednesday in a stalemate over children's health insurance, increasing the likelihood of a short-term extension of the program's funding.