The black community in the U.S. has a rich tradition of self-help institutions. These institutions, essential to black survival, thrived in the time of black slavery, during the period following the Civil War, during the Great Depression and during other crisis — long before there was a welfare state and at times when white society was either hostile or indifferent to the plight of blacks.
With each passing year, the fraction of our national income devoted to health care continues to rise, and therefore no end in sight. One reason is the growing expense of health care for the elderly.
The activities of women in the labor market reveal two crotradictory trends. On the one hand, women are better educated and have more job skills and training than ever before. On the other hand, a substantial number of women are leaving executive suites and returning to have children and care for their families.
Black and White workers earning the same wages pay identical Social Security taxes. Yet because their higher mortality rates, black workers will receive far less in Social Security benefits then their white cohorts.
When the baby boom generation retires and looks to a much smaller working populationto pay its benefits, Social Security will face a finalcial crisis of alarming magnitude. This will occur sometime in the next century. Yet, if we wait until then to deal with the porblem there will be few options available.
Until recently, the U.S. had a clear lead in virtually every aspect of space technology. Today, we are in danger of losing that lead to Europe, to Japan, and even to the Soviet Union.
Throughout the 20th century, in the United States and in countries around the world, people have increasingly turned to government to solve problems they believe cannot be solved through the private marketplace. In recent years, however, scholars have discovered that government solutions to social problems often do not improve upon the private solutions of the marketplace.
The United States is generally thought of as a country devoted to the principle of private property. Yet about 42 percent of the U.S. land is owned by government–33 percent by the federal government and 9 percent by state and local governments.
New evidence shows that there are remarkable differences among the people we label as "poor".
Since 1972, there has been a strong, positive relationship between the amount of welfare spending and the amount of poverty, after adjusting for other important factors, including the unemployment rate and the rate of economic growth.
Following the lead of Britain, countries around the world are applying the techniques of the Thatcher government and are joining the privatization revolution.
As the Administration and Congress persue deficit reduction and tax reform, America's private pension system finds itself in great jeopardy.
The American system of public and private health insurance, by in large, is designed to insure that hospitals do not go out of business, that they receive sufficient revenues to cover their costs.
A privatization revolution is taking place among cities and counties throughout the country. Privatization–the practice of transferring assets and activities out of the public sector and into the private sector–is an option local governments are increasingly turning to in order to cut costs and avoid tax increases.
Whether measured in terms of investment, capital used per hour worked, or labor productivity, the performance of the U.S. economy over the past decare has been poor:
The Reagan Administration is criticized as being hostile to the interests of low-income Americans, women, and the elderly, and as being partial to the rich and well-to-do.
A handful of scientists and visionaries are proclaiming that the next economic frontier, the one that will carry us into the 21st century, lies in outer space.
The federal minimum wage law is having a devasting effect upon black Americans, particularly on black teenagers.
The Soviet Union is trying to achieve total military domination of space and is succeeding in this persuit of this objective.
A proposal currently before the Texas State Board of Education threatens to do great harm to the school children of Texas.
Medicare is bankrupt. At the moment a small surplus exists in Medicare's Hospital Insurance Trust Fund. Yet by any reasonable prediction, that surplus will vanish in a few short years as expenditures quickly outpace tax revenues.
The American private pension industry is in crisis. Although this crisis arises in the private sector of the economy, it is not the result of voluntary exchange in the free marketplace. It is instead a crisis created by federal government policies.
Despite the enactment of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights of 1964, the wage differentil between women and men has not decreased.
The welfare system of the United States is creating proverty, not destroying it. The War on Poverty not only is not being won, but the weapons designed to defeat poverty are being used to insure its proliferation.
The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people.