"Kuttner doesn’t dispute the need for deficit reduction, given all the red ink Clinton inherited from his Republican predecessors. He just takes issue with what became a fetish for balanced budgets. It led Clinton to underinvest in areas like infrastructure and research and development, which some economists, including the Nobel laureate and former Clinton adviser Joseph Stiglitz, believe slowed growth. Meanwhile, the alarming rise in income inequality since 2000, coupled with European countries’ record of rapid, evenly distributed growth, suggests that a more activist government might be preferable on both social and economic grounds."
Noam Scheiber reviews Robert Kuttner's The Squandering of America: How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity in The New York Times.
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