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The Two Economies The rich have recovered—the country hasn’t. CHARLES R. MORRIS In early January, walking in midtown Manhattan on a bitter-cold morning, I saw a crowd of people standing on the...

The Future of Social Security (July 2019)

Charles R. Morris The Future of Social Security DON'T CUT BENEFITS. RAISE TAXES. The New York Times recently delivered a full-page reminder that we are coming up on crucial policy decisions about...

Time for a Wealth Tax (April 2019)

COLUMNIST Charles R. Morris Time for a Wealth Tax SENATOR WARREN'S OTHER GOOD IDEA The two charts here capture the sad and bedraggled state ofour union. Since 1980 or so, we have endured a kind...

Holding Dreamers for Ransom (December 2018)

Charles R. Morris Holding Dreamers for Ransom HOW TRUMP'S IMMIGRATION POLICY MAKES A BAD SITUATION WORSE Luis Bracamontes, an undocumented immigrant, killed two California policemen in 2014....

Working Hard & Hardly Earning (September 2018)

COLUMNISTS Charles R. Morris Working Hard & Hardly Earning WHY LIFETIME INCOMES HAVE STAGNATED It is a truism that the United States, among all the advanced countries, has the most radically...

The Growth Delusion (April 2018)

BOOKS Charles R. Morris Gross Distortion The Growth Delusion Wealth, Poverty, and the Well-Being of Nations David Pilling Tim Duggan Books, $26, 304 pp. David Pilling is a widely traveled...

The Chickenshit Club (February 2018)

Charles R. Morris Even the Fines Are Deductible The Chickenshit Club Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives Jesse Eisinger Simon & Schuster, $28, 377 pp. Jesse Eisinger earned...

Profits First, Workers Last (January 2018)

COLUMNISTS Charles R. Morris Profits First, Workers Last TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH DON'T LEAD TO HIGHER WAGES Richard White’s The Republic for Which It Stands (Oxford), a monumental account of...

A Tale of Two Cities' Doctors (November 2017)

COLUMNISTS Charles R. Morris A Tale of Two Cities’ Doctors A CASE STUDY IN KEEPING HEALTH-CARE COSTS DOWN Atul Gawande, a splendid New Yorker author who is also a practicing surgeon, wrote an...

The 'Informed Consumer' & Other Myths (August 2017)

COLUMNIST Charles R. Morris The 'Informed Consumer' & Other Myths THE FAKE ECONOMICS OF HEALTH CARE Adepressing feature of the debates about the Republican replacement for the Affordable Care...

Backlash (January 2017)

COLUMNIST Charles R. Morris Backlash TRUMP'S RISE IS PART OF A PATTERN Donald Trump's astonishing victory in the presidential election has provoked much soul-searching among social progressives....

Misdirected Investment (November 2016)

COLUMNISTS Charles R. Morris Misdirected Investment WHAT NEW YORK CITY'S GLUT OF NEW LUXURY APARTMENT BUILDINGS TELLS US ABOUT THE ECONOMY Over the past decade or so, the New York City skyline...

Fix It, Don't Nix It (September 2016)

COLUMNISTS Charles R. Morris Fix It, Don't Nix It QBAMACARE'S REAL BUT IMPERFECT SUCCESS Although it's far too soon to start counting Electoral College chickens, most of the auguries are...

Getting What We Pay For (June 2016)

COLUMNIST Charles R. Morris Getting What We Pay For BELIEVE IT OR NOT, U.S. TAX RATES ARE LOW—TOO LOW Donald Trump, on a recent morning talk show, was asked to describe his tax plan. He opened...

Good for Everyone? (March 2016)

COLUMNISTS Charles R. Morris Good for Everyone? QUESTIONING FREE-TRADE PIETIES It has long been a truism among economists that free trade—competing on price and quality without tariffs or...

Mispricing Risk (December 2015)

COLUMNISTS Charles R. Morris Mispricing Risk THE PROBLEM WITH LOW INTEREST RATES A quarter of a percent, or two and a half cents per hundred dollars, is a miniscule rate of interest. In fact,...

Stuck in the Mire (October 2015)

COLUMNISTS Charles R. Morris Stuck in the Mire WHY SOME 'EMERGING MARKETS' STILL HAVEN'T EMERGED One of the most hopeful signs in the world economy over the past few decades has been the rapid...

Bring Back the Drachma (August 2015)

SHORT TAKES Charles R. Morris Bring Back the Drachma WHY GREECE SHOULD LEAVE THE EUROZONE Euripides and Aristophanes might have enjoyed the current agon of the Greek government, for it offers a...

Fun While It Lasted (June 2015)

COLUMNIST Charles R. Morris Fun While It Lasted WHY THE BIG BANKS MAY GO BACK TO BEING BANKS Slowly, but inexorably the behemoth American banks are shrinking. Among the bigger banks—JPM-organ...

Whose Recovery? (December 2014)

Charles R. Morris Whose Recovery? WHY MOST AMERICANS ARE STILL STRUGGLING There is no question that, in the aggregate, the U.S. economy has been performing fairly well of late. Its recent...

Political Order and Political Decay (November 2014)

Charles R. Morris Slouching Toward Denmark Political Order and Political Decay From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Society Francis Fukuyama Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $35,...

Buoyant Billionaires (September 2014)

COLUMNIST Charles R. Morris Buoyant Billionaires WHY ONLY THE RICH HAVE BOUNCED BACK Frances Trollope, mother of the novelist Anthony, was one of the wittiest and most observant of the early...

Top Heavy (February 2014)

COLUMNIST Charles R. Morris Top Heavy THE PARADOXES OF INCOME INEQUALITY Two important new papers by a team of leading scholars have upended some of the standard assumptions about American...

System Failure (December 2013)

Charles R. Morris System Failure HOW OBAMA BOTCHED OBAMACARE The unraveling of George W. Bush's administration can be dated to the triumphal march into Baghdad when he, his Defense Secretary...

A Good Start (October 2013)

Charles R. Morris A Good Start LAUNCHING OBAMACARE The acid test for the central provisions of the Obama administration's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA)—or "Obamacare," as it is...

Free Market? (September 2013)

Free Market? Charles R. Morris NOT FOR THE OIL GIANTS In the mid-1970s, I spent a couple of years working in the British government as a kind of exchange civil servant. Yes, the meeting rooms...

Bridges to Somewhere (May 2013)

Charles R. Morris Bridges to Somewhere INFRASTRUCTURE IS ALWAYS A GOOD INVESTMENT Remember that wasteful stimulus spending that the Obamani-acs pushed through Congress in early 2009? It was a...

Old Boomers, New Boom (February 2013)

COLUMNIST Charles R. Morris Old Boomers, New Boom will our politics catch up with changes in our economy? An old joke about business management consultants is that if a client company is...

The Carbon Crunch (January 2013)

Charles R. Morris Not Easy Being Green The Carbon Crunch How We’re Getting Climate Change Wrong—And How to Fix It Dieter Helm Yale University Press, $35, 273 pp. Dieter Helm is an Oxford...

Better, Cheaper, Easier (December 2012)

Charles Morris Better, Cheaper, Easier WHY WE'RE SPENDING MORE ON HEALTH CARE In a recent article in these pages ("Boom Times Ahead," September 14), I wrote about the positive impact of the...

Boom Times Ahead? (September 2012)

Boom Times Ahead? Probably. But Will Washington Make the Most of Them? Charles R. Morris The consensus outlook for the U.S. economy is, to put it mildly, pretty bleak. The boomers are retiring,...

College, the New Luxury Item (May 2012)

COLUMNISTs College, the New Luxury Item How will the nonrich pay for it? Charles R. Morris A sad little story has been unfolding at Santa Monica Community College in Southern California....

Political Evil by Alan Wolfe (March 2012)

Leaving Iraq Immunity, Impunity & the End of War Ronald Osborn It was not supposed to end this way. Although President Barack Obama deserves credit for bringing an end to the war in Iraq that...

Hocus Pocus (February 2012)

Charles R. Morris Hocus Pocus HOW ROMNEY MADE HIS MiLLiONS Here is a classic private-equity deal. It's not one of Mitt Rom-ney's, but I use it because it has been well documented. In 2006, near...

Polls Apart (November 2011)

COLUMNISTS Charles R. Morris Polls Apart AMERICANS ARE WAKING UP TO ECONOMIC DISPARITY I haven't watched much of the Republican presidential debates because the little I have seen has been so...

The New Normal? (September 2011)

COLUMNISTS Charles R. Morris The New Normal? WHY SO MANY AMERICANS REMAIN UNEMPLOYED Despite the paralysis in Washington, D.C., there is a consensus that job creation is a prime policy...

Core Meltdown (June 2011)

COLUMNIST Charles R. Morris Core Meltdown THE ATOMIZATION OF AMERICAN SOCIETY Barack Obama's election to the presidency seemed to confirm an old theory of American politics proposed by the elder...

The Two Economies (March 2011)

ARTICLES The Two Economies The Rich Have Recovered—the Country Hasn't Charles R. Morris In early January, walking in midtown Manhattan on a bitter'cold morning, I saw a crowd of people standing...

A Crisis Wasted (January 2011)

COLUMNIST Charles R. Morris A Crisis Wasted WALL STREET IS BACK. WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF US? After a tough 2008 and 2009, Wall Street and big companies made a strong comeback in 2010. By...

10 Tax Myths (October 2010)

Charles R. Morris Tax Myths IT'S NOT AS BAD AS YOU THINK Effective Federal Tax Rate (Percent): All Federal Taxes 1979 19871 19942 20003 20044 Top 1% 37 31 36 33 31 Top...

The Rush to Repeal (August 2010)

COLUMNIST Charles R. Morris The Rush to Repeal REPUBLICANS ARE AFRAID HEALTH-CARE REFORM WILL WORK Liberals may lament the administration's failure to make progress on immigration and...

Degreed & Unemployable (June 2010)

Columnists Charles R. Morris Degreed & Unemployable BEHIND THE JOBLESS RECOVERY Economists have noted with some surprise that the United States is recovering from the "Great Recession"...

Rigged (Vested interests & financial reform) (April 2010)

Columnist Charles R. Morris Rigged WASHINGTON RESISTS EUROPE'S FINANCIAL REFORMS In March Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner delivered a pointed warning to European finance...

Wasted Energy (February 2010)

Charles R. Morris Wasted Energy ThE ProblEM oF CliMATE-ChAnGE PoliTiCS I n the 1950s, the ignorant anti-Communism of Joe McCarthy energized the fellow-traveling Left, and nearly...

A Modest Miracle (December 2009)

Columnists Charles R. Morris A Modest Miracle HEALTH-CARE REFORM COULD HAPPEN AT LAST The stars may—just—be aligned to squeeze a national health-care bill out of Congress within...

Keynes (November 2009)

Books Charles R. Morris He Was Right Keynes The Return of the Master Robert Skidelsky PublicAffairs, $24.95, 256 pp. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was hauled...

The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath (May 2009)

Charles R. Morris Oops The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath The Past and Future of American Affluence Robert J. Samuelson Random House, $26, 311pp. Book publishing schedules are...

Discredited (April 2009)

In the last act of Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore, one character, sitting amid gore and dead bodies, moans, “Worse and worse and worse this story gets!” And so it seems with the...

After the Meltdown (October 2008)

Issues 2008. Charles R. Morris After the Meltdown WHAT THe BAILouT WoN’T soLve We are now well embarked on year two of the great Credit Crunch. And, yes, this is the same crisis...

Health Care for All (August 2008)

Commonweal . August 15, 2008 Health Care for All .Issues 2008 Charles R. Morris noT eASy, noT cHeAp, buT poSSibLe W e z r u t a i i m y l a on the brink of joining all other industrialized...

The Big Con (March 2008)

Charles R. Morris Measuring Inequality The Big Con The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics Jonathan Chait Houghton Mifflin Company, $25, 304...

How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman (August 2007)

Books Not Well Charles R. Morris How Doctors Think Jerome Groopman Houghton Mifflin, $26, 320 pp. As the first waves of baby boomers hit their sixties, the inexorable upward march in...

Trick or Trickle? (May 2007)

Charles R. Morris Trick or Trickle? THE RICHEST GET RICHER O ver the past few years, the enormous share of income claimed by the very rich has become one of the hottest of political issues....

Gambling Our Future (November 2006)

Gambling Our Future Should Wall Street Control the Economy? Charles R. Morris N ot long ago, my wife and I were delayed in an airport in a university town. Across from us, a young woman...

Let Me Finish by Roger Angell (May 2006)

Spring Books Charles R. Morris Perfect Pitch Let Me Finish Roger Angell Harcourt, $25,293 pp. I always feel a frisson of delight at opening a New Yorker and finding a piece by Roger Angell....

Catholics and Contraception (May 2005)

Charles R. Morris Planned Parenthood e-,i ,6 O O ca Catholics and Contraception An American History Leslie Woodcock Tentler Comell University Press, $29.95,335 pp. T he American birth...

The Economics of Health Care (April 2005)

The Economics of Health Care It's Going to Cost a Lot More Charles R. Morris o~ 4 E veryone knows about Social Security's financial problems. At some point in the future, payroll taxes and...

Jews and the American Soul (March 2005)

Charles R. Morris On the Couch Jews and the American Soul Human Nature in the Twentieth Century Andrew H. Heinze Princeton University Press, $29.95,376 pp. O ne of the more remarkable...

Just the Facts (February 2005)

Just the C The Truth about Social Security Charles R. Morris T he first important fact about the Social Security "crisis" is that there is no crisis. The second important fact is that the...

Economic Injustice for most (August 2004)

ECONOMIC INJUSTICE FOR MOST From the New Deal to the Raw Deal Charles R. Morris merica has always had an ambivalent attitude toward equality. In contrast to the social democratic regimes of...

Radical Middle (June 2004)

B O O K S What works & what doesn't Stand Up Fight Back Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge T /. Dionne /r. Radical Middle The Politics We Need Now \lark...

The Great Unraveling by Paul Krugman (December 2003)

MAD AS HELL The Great Unraveling Losing Our Way in the New Century Paul Kruginan W. W. Norton. $25.95, 426pp. Charles R. Morris Paul Krugman is one of the brighter stars among America's...

Correspondence Weakland, Schiltz & more (September 2003)

CORRESPONDENCE To the Editors From the flock Thank you for the excellent article by Archbishop Rembert Weakland ("Looking Forward," August 15). As you indicated in "Et cetera," his "service and...

Wealth and Democracy (July 2002)

CURDLED POPULISM Wealth and Democracy Kevin Phillips Broadway Book, $29.95, 472 pp. Charles R. Morris People yearning for a return to the economic dispensations of Louis XIV may not be...

Work and Welfare by Robert M. Solow edited by Amy Gutmann (February 1999)

WARRING VALUES Work and Welfare Robert M. Solow Edited by Amy Gutmann Princeton University Press,$19.95; 100 pp. Charles R. Morris From 1960 to 1970, New York City's welfare caseload more...

American Catholic (September 1997)

Where we are, how we got here American Catholic The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church Charles R. Morris Times &.+ks. I pp_ John T. McGreevy A t the installation of...

Correspondence Lincoln & Saginaw revisited (August 1997)

Not a feel-good' faith Peter Steinfels's article about Murray Kempton [June 6] hurts me deeply. I am concerned that a respected journalist would attempt to characterize something as deep and...

A TALE OF TWO DIOCESES (June 1997)

A TALE OF TWO DIOCESES From Lincoln to Saginaw Charles R. Morris Sexual innuendoes have added a nasty edge to the ideological struggles within the American Catholic church. Most noticeably,...

Morris, David

Morris, Herbert

Morris, LLoyd

Morris, Lt. S. V.

Morris, Rudolf M

Morris, Rudolph E.

Morris, Rudolph M.

Morris, Simon Conway

Morris, Thomas V.

Morrison, David C.

Morrison, Theodore

Morrissett, Ann