McCAIN SHOULD DUMP FORECLOSURE PHIL GRAMM

and hire Larry Bartels.

McCain Needs Crash Course in Basic Economics: Albert R. Hunt
Commentary by Albert R. Hunt

July 14 (Bloomberg) -- ...two useful books: ``Unequal Democracy'' by Larry Bartels and ``High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families,'' by Peter Gosselin.

Bartels, a Princeton University political scientist, says he hasn't voted in a presidential election since 1984, when he supported Reagan.

``Unequal Democracy'' lays out the widening gap between rich and poor. The dangers of growing income inequality in a democratic society aren't just the rantings of soak-the-rich left-wingers. Conservative central bankers from Arthur Burns to Alan Greenspan have worried about such a gap.

Bartels persuasively argues that this isn't simply a reflection of globalization or other events beyond our control. His research shows that government policies significantly affect economic inequality.

Surveying the last 50 years, he finds real incomes of middle-class families have grown twice as fast under Democrats as Republicans and six times as rapidly for the working poor.