THE RISK SOCIETY.(The Talk of the Town)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 15-NOV-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Hendrik Hertzberg on four more years

Philip Gourevitch on the search for a mandate

Nancy Franklin on Election Night coverage

George W. Bush was reelected last Tuesday not because of the job he did running the economy in his first term but in spite of it. (Voters for whom the economy was the most important issue voted for Kerry by a four-to-one margin.) Bush doesn't get to coast for the next four years, though; he's facing a host of economic problems, particularly the mounting cost of health care and the looming crisis in funding for Social Security and Medicare. Bush, of course, has a master plan: he intends to turn America into what he calls an ownership society.

That sounds unobjectionable--who's against ownership? But what the President has in mind is nothing less than a radical overhaul of America's entire system...

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