Dollars & Sense articles from March 1995

Dollars & Sense archives from March 1995

Power and paper. (politics of financial markets)
March 1, 1995... When a leading newspaper can refer to a drop in unemployment as "alarming," as The New York Times did on the front page of its business section recently, you know that the world has become a very strange place. Politicians compete for office over...

Budget-balancing nonsense: the GOP's contract with the devil. (Republican Party's Contract with America)(includes related article) (Special Section: Decoding the Contract) (Cover Story)
March 1, 1995... The new Republican congressional leaders want to accomplish the miracle that eluded Ronald Reagan: cutting income taxes, increasing military spending, and balancing the federal budget all at the same time. As of this writing, the House has...

Is big government really the problem? (includes related article) (Special Section: Decoding the Contract) (Cover Story)
March 1, 1995... Is "big government" the problem with the U.S. economy? The political right certainly has thought so for a long time. Ronald Reagan never tired of making this claim, even as federal spending actually expanded as a share of national income under...

The capital gains tax giveaway. (includes related article) (Special Section: Decoding the Contract) (Cover Story)
March 1, 1995... It's back. Slashing capital gains taxes, a recurrent legislative nightmare on Capitol Hill during the 1980s, has returned from the dead. The current proposal, lurking in the Republican Contract with America, would cut taxes on capital gains by...

Unnecessary evil: why inequality is bad for business. (income inequality) (Special Section: Decoding the Contract) (Cover Story)
March 1, 1995... Within the last six months, both Business Week and The Economist have set aside mutual funds and budding entrepreneurs for a week to examine a problem that has rarely been considered a problem by the business world: income inequality. During the...

NAFTA shock: Mexico's free market meltdown. (North American Free Trade Agreement)(includes glossary)
March 1, 1995... Suffering from a record trade deficit, sustained capital flight, and political instability throughout 1994, Mexico was forced to devalue its peso on the 20th of December. Two days later, the peso was down 40% against the U.S. dollar. U.S....

GATT: a view from the south. (impact of the Uruguay Round on poor nations)
March 1, 1995... After seven years of complex and often contentious negotiations, the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) finally came to a close. The new accord, which took effect on January 1, 1995, calls for average tariff...

California's melting pot boils over: the origins of a cruel proposition. (Proposition 187)
March 1, 1995... On November 8, 1994 Californians overwhelmingly voted for Proposition 187, instituting a policy that denies immigrants without legal papers access to public education, health services (except in emergencies), and other government services. The...

Game theory? Does greed explain enough?
March 1, 1995... "Game theory" sounds like a frivolous pursuit, too much so to be the basis of a Nobel prize. But last year's Nobel award in economics, shared by three of the theory's pioneers, John F. Nash, John C. Harsanyi, and Reinhard Selten, reflects the...

The Sponsored Life.
March 1, 1995... "Advertising now infects just about every organ of society," writes Leslie Saran, advertising columnist for The Village Voice, in the introduction to her book The Sponsored Life. Savan, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism, gives...

The State of the U.S.A. Atlas: The Changing Face of American Life in Maps and Graphics.
March 1, 1995... While waiting for a flight out of Billings, Montana, I had exhausted all available reading material but still was not satisfied. I noticed in the far corner of the airport a blue and white coin-operated vending box of that distinctively colorful...

Global Village or Global Pillage.
March 1, 1995... In this accessible, skeptical book, Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello take the entire free trade movement to task. Rather than simply asserting that corporations have had more of a role than labor in forging the new trade agreements, the authors...

The GOP's 17% mandate. (victory of Republicans over Democrats in Congressional elections)
March 1, 1995... Last November's Congressional elections have been portrayed as a resounding rejection of the Democrats and a mandate for the Republicans. Indeed, the Republicans gained 52 seats in the House and eight in the Senate. Despite this shift in...