When you fly over the icy peaks of the Hindu Kush, which march in serried ranks toward the Himalayas, dividing Central Asia from the Indian subcontinent, you get a sense of the scale of the problem: Osama bin Laden may be hiding somewhere out there. Wherever he is, bin Laden continues to give substantial ideological direction to jihadist movements around the globe -- and so American forces are scouring the Hindu Kush to find him.
We have become accustomed to thinking that taxes, like hemlines, can only go up or down. This isn't true. Over the centuries changes in the form of U.S. taxes have been at least as dramatic as changes in the rate of taxation.
For instance, most federal revenues now come from personal and corporate income taxes, and from the payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare. But most government revenues originally came from excise taxes on luxury items such as… more
Despite its unchallenged military might, the United States has an Achilles' heel: its economy depends on foreign capital. Though hardly anyone acknowledges this publicly, China and Japan already hold so much American debt that, theoretically, each could exert enormous leverage on American foreign policy. So far, the economic dependence of these countries on American consumers has kept them from exercising such power. But what would happen if, for instance, Washington changed its one-China policy and officially recognized Taiwan? Or if… more
A four-year college degree has become all but a necessity for getting ahead in the information age. Since the 1980s the average real income of workers with only a high school diploma has fallen, while salaries among those with at least a college degree have risen: they now earn 75 percent more than high school graduates. At the national level, having a highly educated work force is critical in order to sustain our technological edge in the global economy.
Health-care spending is currently rising at a rate of around eight percent a year, and a large proportion of the health care that is delivered in this country simply drives up costs without improving health or increasing longevity.
Previous efforts to address these problems have neglected an element so basic that its wisdom has largely been ignored -- namely, reliable information, the lack of which hampers the efficiency of the health-care market and prevents doctors and hospitals from learning… more
Believe it or not, there is a politically appealing way to achieve universal health-care coverage: simply require all U.S. residents to buy insurance, with government help if necessary.
To understand why and how this might work, consider that the majority of those who lack health insurance are not unemployed. Nearly 60 percent of uninsured Americans work full time; another 16 percent work part time. These tend to be workers whose employers don't offer them health insurance (because they are low-wage… more
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the rivalry between the Democratic and Republican Parties. Ever since 1854, when the implosion of the Whigs paved the way for the birth of the Republican Party (twenty-six years after the emergence of the Democrats), this rivalry has dominated and even defined American politics. Although the reign of these two parties has endured for well over half the life of our republic, it would be a mistake to assume that either party has… more
"I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building. I think our troops ought to be used to fight and win war." -- George W. Bush, October 11, 2000
"We meet here during a crucial period in the history of our nation, and of the civilized world. Part of that history was written by others; the rest will be written by us ... Rebuilding Iraq will require a sustained commitment from many nations, including our… more
In 1909 Herbert Croly, the founding editor of The New Republic and one of the patron saints of the twentieth-century progressive-liberal tradition, published his manifesto, The Promise of American Life. "The Promise of America," he wrote, "has consisted largely in the opportunity which it offered of economic independence and prosperity." According to Croly,
The native American, like the alien immigrant, conceives the better future which awaits himself and other men in America as fundamentally a future in which economic… more
