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You may recall a couple of weeks ago Bob Samuelson wrote a column blaming illegal immigration for the apparent lack of progress in fighting poverty.

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

The Washington Monthly has two interesting articles on how to reduce the cost of health care- and at the same time, expand coverage and improve quality. Proof once again that there are humane and just ways to deal with the long-term fiscal gap. Jason Furman, of the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project, testified to Congress on the real "dynamic" affect of the regressive Bush tax cuts- they'll be a net loss for three-quarters of all taxpayers, who'll be burdened with paying them off in taxes and benefit cuts over the long haul. In other words, tax cuts don't pay for themselves- people do.