“I’ll look forward to reading your book on why it failed this time,” Senator Moynihan told me on my first visit as cochair of the Clinton working group on welfare reform. Herewith, the first installment.
Economic Policy
Posted inEconomic Policy
Was Welfare Reform Worthwhile?
T here is no question that David Ellwood, the Clinton administration’s chief welfare intellectual, has been on a rough ride. But the political lessons he draws are less than useful (see “Welfare Reform As I Knew It,” May-June 1996). To discuss lessons, we need some agreement about what happened. Ellwood thinks more has been accomplished […]
Posted inEconomic Policy
Welfare as We Might Know It
Why I resigned in protest over President Clinton’s signing of welfare reform–and what can still be done to repair it.
Posted inEconomic Policy
The Hidden Paradox of Welfare Reform
If former welfare beneficiaries can get jobs, they’ll be better off, right? Not necessarily. Because their costs will be higher, particularly for child care and health care, they may earn more yet do worse.
Posted inEconomic Policy
How She Got a Job
Everyone who participates in this innovative welfare-to-work program finds steady employment. Too bad it’s precisely the kind of effort that the new federal welfare law discourages.
Posted inEconomic Policy
The Martian Plan
N ewt Gingrich thinks Americans need a new frontier to explore. He also believes in paying bounties to promote public objectives. Hence the proposal prepared at his invitation by space entrepreneur Robert Zubrin for a federal bounty of $20 billion payable to the first private organization that puts someone on Mars and brings that man […]
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Behind the Numbers: The Treadmill Economy
Even before the swooning of the Dow, the current economic expansion was less robust than it appeared. Is this a new economy? Or just people working harder to stay in place?
Posted inEconomic Policy
Test the Limit
I t has been amusing to watch the natural rate of unemployment come down. Two years ago, the community of respectable economists held-though with exceptions including Robert Eisner of Northwestern, Ray Fair at Yale, Harvard’s James Medoff, and myself-that 6 percent unemployment was as low as the economy could go without triggering inflation. This meant, […]
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Special Report: The Crime Debate
I n places as diverse as Anchorage and El Paso, Nassau County and New Orleans, get-tough prosecutors are promising to ban plea bargaining. Too many criminals get off easy, they insist; take away plea bargains, and more will get the punishments they deserve. But these officials may want to consider what happened in the Bronx […]
