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 […]
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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.
Posted inHealth and Social Policy
Dealing with Legalization
What would happen if we legalized hard drugs? Here are six different plans for what to do after the end of drug prohibition—and why one of them makes the most sense.
Posted inCivil Rights in America
Can Democracy Save Chicago’s Schools?
With much fanfare, Chicago has moved to decentralize control of what some have called the worst public school system in America. But reform has been financially and politically crippled from the start.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
The Liberal Idea
Textbooks tell us that a great gap separates classical from modern liberalism—James Madison from Franklin D. Roosevelt. Some conservatives say modern liberals betrayed the earlier tradition, and some progressives agree. But the continuities are funda
Posted inEnergy and the Environment
Priming the Pump: Paying for Clean Water in the 1990s
Federal standards for clean water have been rising; federal money for clean water has slowed to a trickle. So, many communities are facing fiscal nightmares, and you may be facing astronomical rate increases.
Posted inBooks
From Crisis to Working Majority
Reports of the death of the Democrats are greatly exaggerated. Three new books, despite their author’s pessimism, suggest how to reconstruct the party’s middle-class foundations.
Posted inHealth and Social Policy
The Rehabilitation of the Asylum
The shift of mentally ill patients out of institutions has not worked out the way supporters of deinstitutionalization wanted. But is the remedy a return to the asylum? Some neoconservatives think so.
