The Public Interest articles from June 1993

The Public Interest archives from June 1993

On gender. (gender differences in Western culture)
June 22, 1993... NATURE HAS PLAYED a cruel trick on humankind. It has made males essential for reproduction but next to useless for nurturance. Yet if children are to do more than survive, they must be part of a community. For such a complex social organization...

A human capital policy for the cities.
June 22, 1993... A NEW NATIONAL administration has taken office, one of whose defining characteristics is its commitment to human capital investment, which it sees as crucial for the restoration of vigor to the American economy, the increase of good jobs for...

Mr. Jefferson comes to town. (Thomas Jefferson's aversion to urban life)
June 22, 1993... ON MARCH 4, 1809, in the newly completed hall of the House of Representatives, Thomas Jefferson attended the presidential inauguration of his friend and fellow Virginian, James Madison. Observers noted--they could hardly fail to, such were...

Homosexuality, the Bible, and us - a Jewish perspective.
June 22, 1993... OF ALL THE ISSUES that tear at our society, few provoke as much emotion, or seem as complex, as the question of homosexuality. Most homosexuals and their heterosexual supporters argue that homosexuality is an inborn condition, and one,...

Are drug prices too high?
June 22, 1993... THE AMERICAN pharmaceutical industry is under assault. Patients are upset about the high prices of medicines. Congressional committees and consumer groups are aroused by reports of high profits. And the president of the United States has...

The environmentalist assault on agriculture.
June 22, 1993... RECENTLY, environmentalists have "discovered" agriculture. Sleepy old farm issues like land use, soil conservation, and animal husbandry are attracting fresh attention, and farmers increasingly find themselves faced off against a horde of...

How not to stimulate the economy.
June 22, 1993... SHORTLY AFTER taking office, President Clinton began pushing for a stimulus program to end the country's recession. But according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the recession was already over. It began in July 1990 and ended in...

The end of taxation?
June 22, 1993... FOR A PEOPLE so ready to cast off ancient customs, Americans have been strangely reluctant to question the practice of taxation. Begun millennia ago, taxation developed as a method of exploitation. Instead of massacring defeated peoples, or...

Toward a new intolerance. (social problems facing New York, New York) (Comment)
June 22, 1993... IT WILL BE fifty years ago this June that I graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in East Harlem, in the company of State Senator Joe Galiber, and any number of prominent New Yorkers. I find myself at this half-century mark thinking: "How...

Adam Smith in His Time and Ours: Designing the Decent Society.
June 22, 1993... IN THE PREFACE to his first volume of memoirs, H. L. Mencken offered this fetching defense of his row-house origins in the Baltimore of the 1880s: I was a larva of the comfortable and complacent bourgeoisie, though I was quite unaware of the...