O ne might have thought (or at least hoped) that the revelations of scandalous fundraising practices in the 1996 campaign would improve prospects for enacting much-needed reforms, much as tales of the outrageous behavior by the Committee to Reelect the President provided the impetus for the last major rewrite of campaign finance law in 1974. […]
Economic Policy
Posted inEconomic Policy
The Great Carjacking
Public outrage about auto insurance costs — which almost derailed Christine Todd Whitman’s re-election in New Jersey — is symptomatic of a deeper problem that reforms typically fail to confront.
Posted inEconomic Policy
Rising Tides, Sinking Wages
The economy has grown, productivity is up, profits are soaring. There’s just one problem: Americans’ standard of living.
Posted inEconomic Policy
Of Our Time: Taking Care of Business
Few trends could so thoroughly undermine the very foundations of our free society as the acceptance by corporate officials of a social responsibility other than to make as much money for their shareholders as possible. -Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom I n a market economy, as Charles E. Lindblom reminded us in Politics and Markets, […]
Posted inEconomic Policy
Behind the Numbers: The Real Electorate
New census data about who voted in 1996 paint a very different picture than did the initial reports from exit polls.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
The Aging Opportunity: America’s Elderly as a Civic Resource
The aging of American society is almost always seen as a problem, but the elderly may be our only growing natural resource — provided we create new ways to mobilize their civic energies.
Posted inEconomic Policy
The Starbucks Solution: Can Voluntary Codes Raise Global Living Standards
Starbucks, Wal-Mart, and Levi Strauss say they will do the right thing all over the world. That’s better than if they made no commitment, but it may not be much.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
The Fleece Police
I t’s Wednesday night on the NBC Nightly News-time for yet another installment of “The Fleecing of America,” the weekly series on government waste. Tonight’s episode stars a job training program in Puerto Rico, designed to move seasonal farm workers off welfare and into better-paying, permanent work. “Nothing wrong with that, right?” Tom Brokaw asks. […]
Posted inEnergy and the Environment
Power Play
The deregulation of the electric utility industry has been billed as a boon for consumers, because competition is supposed to lower prices. But utility companies are using the opportunity to pass the cost of abandoned nuclear reactors to customers. Big business may save, but consumers will pay more and the environment may suffer.