Our Economy Keeps Limping

It has been a rough few months for George Bush. Last summer the administration believed that the recession was caused by jittery consumers who quit spending because of the Gulf War. But the economic slowdown was not related to the war. This recession was brought on by weak consumer demand caused by eighteen years of falling incomes for most Americans and cutbacks in the welfare state under Reagan and Bush. The long-run contradictions of American society (as Mike Harrington would surely say, i...