Features

T he temporary work industry has been around for a long time, but it exploded in the 1990s. The number of temp agency jobs has doubled in the past six years, to 3.5 million. Ever more young adults are using temp agencies as bridges into the work force and between jobs. Nearly one in six […]

A merican culture thrives on contradictions. It exalts individualism yet is rife with the conformity so essential to consumerism. It preaches self-reliance and personal accountability (especially for poor people) while enriching pop psychologists who provide excuses for sins of the middle class. It nurtures feminism and encourages face-lifts. So we shouldn’t be entirely surprised by […]

With unemployment at a 30-year low, opponents of current proposals to raise the minimum wage by a dollar to $6.15 an hour will be hard-pressed to argue such a move will cost low-wage workers their jobs. But what about that other stock argument that a higher minimum will reduce training for low-wage workers? New research […]

This year’s presidential election may be the first in which gay and lesbian voters play a decisive role. That could be bad news for George W. Bush, who last April held a widely publicized meeting with a dozen gay Republican backers, amid hints that he’d like to corral homosexuals into his compassionate-conservative corner. “I welcome […]

Since 1980 the average tuition at four-year colleges (in inflation-adjusted dollars) has doubled. Median income for families, however, has not kept pace, increasing just 12 percent over the same period. Student loans help families fill the cash gap. And a powerful industry has grown up to handle the loan business. Taxpayers subsidize the private student […]

George Orwell‘s classic essay “Politics and the English Language” noted that euphemistic language had political effects. In Stalin’s Soviet Union, murder of political opponents was politely termed “liquidation.” Get people to change language, and you change how they think. This is a banner year for political euphemisms, and the right seems to do it better […]

G eorge W. Bush and Al Gore are talking the education talk, but neither is walking the education walk. By far the biggest obstacle to upward mobility in this prosperous nation is the lousy schools so many poorer kids attend. But neither candidate comes close to a solution. I think I have one–or the beginnings […]

In 1957 the Fund for the Republic asked a young historian to write a brief memorandum on the original understanding of the First Amendment. Leonard Levy, who was teaching at Brandeis University, examined the sources and concluded that, at the time the amendment was framed, American courts recognized the crime of “seditious libel”–criticism of the […]

O n the October 23, 2000, issue of TAP, Wendy Kaminer argued that political calls for regulating “toxic media”–like violent movies or profane rap albums–can lead to dangerous censorship and repression. But what if there’s a legitimate public interest in monitoring the cultural products kids consume? Michael Massing says that Kaminer’s argument is typical of […]

I n Justice John Paul Stevens’s despairing words, Bush v. Gore has shaken “the nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.” Coming as it does from a justice known for his sobriety, this judgment should give all of us pause–and I mean Republicans no less than Democrats. We […]