Robert Samuelson

Nothing better illustrates the politics of denial than Social Security and Medicare. President Bush wants to modernize both--a worthy project that seems doomed to fail for many reasons. Here are...

The education of George W. Bush on global warming is simply summarized: Honesty may not be the best policy. Greenhouse politics have long blended exaggeration and deception. Although global warming...

Playing party pooper is no fun. I know. For three years, I've written that the economy's glorious boom seems headed for an inglorious end. Well, it hasn't happened. True, we've...

Over the years, we have applied various labels to countries like Brazil: "Third World," "developing," "emerging" and "newly industrialized," to name a few. But even a brief visit here (my...

We are now witnessing a startling collapse of U.S. investment spending in the telecommunications sector--fiber-optic networks, switching equipment, the Internet. This is bad enough, but if it spreads to other...

"Campaign-finance reform" is the modern Prohibition: a misguided moral crusade that, though doomed to fail, infuses its supporters with an overwhelming sense of moral superiority. We are (they say) cleansing...

Over the past decade, Japan's economy has journeyed from a powerhouse (which could apparently do no wrong) to a basket case (which can apparently do no right). Well, not exactly....

The bankruptcy bill about to pass Congress arrives at an awkward moment: the tail end of a prolonged boom in consumer borrowing. From 1995 to 2000, Americans increased their personal...

"The art of prophecy is very difficult--especially with respect to the future." --Mark Twain Some things we can glimpse, and one of them is global aging. It is a specter...

The Napster adventure captures the Internet's confusing present and uncertain future. By many accounts, Napster is the fastest-growing new Internet application ever. There are 62 million registered users for something...