The Right Stuff

Excerpt from a newspaper column written by David Warsh in 1982 criticizing Robert Reich.

"Having lots of money doesn't change anything. It just amplifies it. Jerks become bigger jerks, and nice guys become nicer."
-- Ben Narasin, founder and CEO of Boston Prepatory, an apparel company in New York City, on the effects of entrepreneurial wealth

Those of us who read his columns every week know that David Warsh is the best economic journalist in the United States today. Unfortunately, we are a select group, since his columns appear regularly only in the Boston Globe (Warsh's home newspaper) and the Chicago Tribune (which carries most of his stuff). The good news for the rest of you is that the Free Press has collected 158 of Warsh's best columns in a book titled Economic Principals: Masters and Mavericks of Modern Economics, released this past spring. Here's a sample from a prescient piece written 11 years ago about Robert Reich, then a Harvard professor, now secretary of labor:

"My daughter worries that there is a bear in the closet. That is unrealistic, I tell her. There is no bear in the closet. The problem is Robert Reich. I confess that I am afraid that when I open my closet, Robert Reich will jump out and begin to expound on the way to get America moving again."

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