Millions of the working poor earn less than the minimum needed for self-sufficiency. Enabling these families to achieve security is good policy—and smart politics.
Article
Posted inHealth and Social Policy
Why the States Can’t Solve the Health Care Crisis
One of the enduring metaphors of American federalism is that states serve as laboratories for the federal government. States are the basement tinkerers that generate ideas to solve big national problems. They are the crucibles for testing the safety and efficacy of new ideas before the whole country adopts them. State leaders, the argument goes, […]
Posted inLaw and Justice
Rehnquist’s Road to Serfdom: The Ominous Message of -Rust v. Sullivan-
An Orwellian Supreme Court decision creates a false choice between social benefits and individual rights.
Posted inEnergy and the Environment
The Great Environmental Awakening
Conservatives called environmentalism elitist and inconsistent with old American values. But look who’s green now.
Posted inLaw and Justice
Race, Gender and the Supreme Court
In a parody of affirmative action, the Senate failed to assess seriously Clarence Thomas’s fitness for the Supreme Court. Casualties include blacks, women, Democrads, and the Court’s own moral authority.
Posted inLaw and Justice
Civil Reconstruction: What to Do Without Affirmative Action
The time is approaching when we will have no alternative but to find a new road to equal opportunity in America. With the confirmation of Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court now will likely have a black justice among the majority when it votes to overturn Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the 1978 […]
Posted inEconomic Policy
Suite Greed
But for the fact that Democrats are now drinking from the same campaign-finance trough as Republicans, the scandal of executive salaries would be a major issue in the 1992 campaign. The scandal has been growing for years, of course, even before the Reagan-Bush greed decade. In 1960, the chief executive of one of America’s 100 […]
Posted inEconomic Policy
Confessions of an Airline Deregulator
They were sure deregulation would unleash fierce competition, produce better service, and result in lower prices. Five of six assumptions turned out to be wrong.
Posted inEconomic Policy
Is There a Democratic Economics?
The real issue is not the current downturn, but the fifteen-year decline in living standards. That should be the focus of a reframed debate—and different remedies.
Posted inBooks
Domestic Urges, Foreign Obsessions
Constructive engagement with the post-Cold War world requires both a stronger America and clearer global goals. Domestic reconstruction must be a priority—but beware isolationism.