Hoover Institution - Hoover Digest - Hoover Digest 1999 No. 3

And Now, The Good News
As the millennium approaches, Hoover fellow Thomas Sowell finds a few reasons for optimism.

Social Security

Becker to Uncle Sam: Keep Your Hands Off Wall Street
President Clinton wants to invest some of the Social Security surplus in the stock market. Nobel laureate and Hoover fellow Gary S. Becker sees the president and raises him. Why we should privatize Social Security altogether

Budget

Getting Business Off the Dole
Who are America’s costliest welfare recipients? Not unemployed men or single mothers, but the companies of the Fortune 500. Hoover visiting fellow Stephen Moore analyzes an outrage.

Why the Republican Congress Hasn’t Cut Your Taxes
Republicans control both houses of Congress—yet taxes as a percentage of GDP remain at an all-time high. How can this be? Hoover media fellow Tom Bethell explains.

Tax Policy

The Greedy Hand in a Velvet Glove
How a little-known man in the front office of Macy’s invented tax withholding and gave rise to the modern welfare state. By Hoover media fellow Amity Shlaes.

Itemize This
Hoover media fellow Peter Brimelow explores the high price of America’s onerous tax code.

Regulation

Farmers: Beware Drought, Pestilence, and the EPA
On the one hand, the federal government provides farmers with subsidies worth billions every year. On the other, it imposes arcane, burdensome regulations on the development of new crops, costing farmers billions every year. Hoover fellow Henry I. Miller explains how the government giveth and the government taketh away.

Cancer Risk Analysis: New Science and Old Politics
New breakthroughs have produced a method of testing for carcinogens that is as much as 100,000 times more sensitive than the techniques currently in use. Now the EPA faces a choice. It can embrace the new method, permitting scientists to determine the levels at which chemicals or radiation are safe. Or it can let politicians and environmental activists determine those levels. By Hoover fellow S. Fred Singer.

Race

Racial Quotas in College Admissions: A Critique of the Bowen and Bok Study
In a new statistical analysis, two former Ivy League presidents argue that racial preferences in college admissions are good for both minorities and society at large. Examining the analysis, however, Hoover fellow Thomas Sowell has discovered that the numbers don’t add up.

Education

Bye-Bye, Bilingual
English is the most widely spoken language in the world at large, but in many of America’s own classrooms it remains a foreign tongue. Peter Duignan argues that bilingual education has proven an abject failure—and must be abolished.

Crime

The Dangerous Federalization of Crime
Federal crimes used to be limited to matters that truly involved the whole nation, such as treason and counterfeiting. But lately the federal government has been amending its criminal statutes to take over more and more criminal prosecution from the states. Hoover fellow Edwin Meese III on an especially pernicious form of federal aggrandizement.

Technology

Can America Keep Its Lead?
The information revolution might as well be stamped “made in America,” but there are signs that Taiwan, South Korea, and other nations are moving up on us fast. Hoover fellow Nicholas Imparato on what the United States must do to maintain its edge.

Environment

Silverado Creek: A Tragedy of the Commons
Why private property rights are good for the environment. By Hoover fellow Tibor R. Machan.

Al Gore: A Case Study
In dealing with the Champion Paper plant on the Pigeon River in North Carolina, Al Gore faced a choice: please a group of environmentalists or save 1,300 jobs. Guess what he decided. By Hoover media fellow Bob Zelnick.

Terrorism

The Administration Gets It Half Right
Hoover fellow Abraham D. Sofaer explains what’s right—and wrong—with the administration’s latest antiterrorism proposal.

Diplomacy

Bringing Rogue States to Justice
Violent, tin-pot dictators, bloody regional conflicts, and “ethnic cleansing”—the post–Cold War world is in many ways more dangerous and chaotic than was the Cold War world itself. One critical weapon in the fight against rogue despots: international law. By Hoover fellow Thomas H. Henriksen.

Institutions of Accountability
What do the otherwise disparate nations of Russia, Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria—and, for that matter, dozens of others—have in common? Corruption. Hoover fellow Larry Diamond on how to stop it.

International Institution

How the IMF Starts the Fires It’s Supposed to Put Out
How could the IMF best help the global economy? By declaring itself insolvent and going out of business. By Hoover fellow Robert J. Barro.

Defense

A Warrior on War
Discussing the conflict in the Balkans, General John Shalikashvili, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offers American policymakers some advice. By Hoover associate director Richard Sousa.

Providing for the Common Defense
North Korea and other outlaw states may soon be capable of targeting missiles at the American mainland. What are we doing to defend ourselves? Precious little. Hoover media fellow Michael Barone on the need for an antimissile defense.

Latin America

From Seattle to Santiago, Let the Dollar Reign
Hoover fellow Robert J. Barro endorses a plan that could bring much-needed economic stability to Central and South America. ¡Viva greenbacks!

Europe

A Dangerous Precedent
Hoover fellow William Ratliff and David Oppenheimer explore the real lessons of the Kosovo conflict.

What I Saw
During the Azerbaijani presidential election last October, Hoover fellow John B. Dunlop served as an official observer. Here Dunlop describes what he saw: widespread poverty and massive election fraud.

Iran

Arsenal of Poison
The Tocqueville-quoting president of Iran, Mohammed Khatami, has impressed the West as a moderate—while at the same time amassing an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. By Hoover fellow Arnold Beichman.

Midnight in Tehran
Hoover media fellow Robert Morton argues that the new regime in Iran is every bit as oppressive as its predecessor.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong: Less Free to Choose
Hoover media fellow Edward Neilan discusses the sorry state of Hong Kong today. “To see how the free market really works,” Milton Friedman used to say, “Hong Kong is the place to go.” Would that it were still true.

China

Why China Doesn’t Need the WTO
The centerpiece of Chinese premier Zhu Rongji’s recent visit to Washington was to have been the announcement of a deal to usher China into the World Trade Organization. To the consternation of President Clinton, the deal fell through. Hoover fellow Charles Wolf Jr. asks, So what?

Interview

Beware the Funny Money
Hoover fellow Milton Friedman talks with Hoover media fellow Peter Brimelow about inflation, currency values, and the Asian crisis. An end-of-the-century interview with one of the century’s great economists.

History and Culture

How Liberals Funked It
Liberals spent the Cold War refusing to see communism for what it was. Hoover fellow Robert Conquest on “how the mind of the liberal became so much a subject of self-deception.”