Hoover Institution - Hoover Digest - Hoover Digest 1997 No. 4

Why a Crash Wouldn't Cripple the Economy
Now that human capital has become the most important form of wealth in America, even a very serious stock market correction would have only a relatively minor effect on employment, output, and wages. Alan Greenspan, lighten up. By Nobel Prize–winner and Hoover fellow Gary S. Becker.

Two Deficits That Just Don't Matter*
Day in and day out, politicians and the press harp on the trade deficit and the federal deficit. Hoover fellow Charles Wolf Jr. and former Citicorp chairman Walter Wriston explain why they should save their breath.

Social Security

Keeping Savers from Saving
Beginning in the 1980s, the government began introducing individual retirement accounts and 401(k) programs--widely heralded moves. Since then, in widely unheralded moves, the government has imposed new, all but confiscatory taxes on the saving these programs have encouraged. An analysis by Stanford dean John B. Shoven and Hoover fellow David A. Wise.

Securing Social Security
Hoover fellow Rita Ricardo-Campbell chaired President Reagan's 1981 task force on Social Security. Here she looks at the latest proposals for fixing the system.

Environment

Global Chill
Hoover fellow Thomas Gale Moore argues that in the name of cooling the global climate the United States is about to ice its economy.

State Department Goes Green
American soldiers being sent overseas to combat . . . noxious emissions? According to a new State Department document, the notion isn't as far fetched as it sounds. Hoover fellow Henry I. Miller, M.D., examines the latest wrinkle in the administration's foreign policy.

Health Care

Joe Camel: Brought to You by the FTC*
Why didn't tobacco companies ever compete with one another to produce safer cigarettes? It turns out that many years ago they started to do just that--until the federal government stopped them. Hoover fellow David R. Henderson explains why Washington regulators are hazardous to your health.

The Courts

How Congress Can Rein in the Courts
Judges have assumed vast powers the founders never intended. The solution? Congress should assert a few powers the founders did intend. An analysis by Hoover fellow and former Attorney General of the United States Edwin L. Meese III.

Federalism

States' Rights--and Wrongs
Republicans on Capitol Hill say they're determined to shove power out of Washington and back to the states. Hoover fellows John A. Ferejohn and Barry R. Weingast examine the issue, arguing that there are both right ways and wrong ways to restore power to the states.

Education

Robin Hood Lives in Texas
Last spring, Governor Bush proposed a hike in the state sales tax to fund Texas schools. Hoover fellow Robert J. Barro explains what the governor was up to, why the financing of Texas schools is such a mess, and how the problem really ought to be solved.

Politics

George F. Will Tours the Scene
At the Hoover Institution's dinner for its Board of Overseers this past summer, the columnist and television commentator George F. Will discussed the political scene. A tour d'horizon that is also a tour de force.

Supply-Side Politics*
If you want to understand politics, argues Hoover fellow Thomas Sowell, look at the supply side--the kinds of people who make politics their career. It's the candidates, stupid.

Europe

Job Woes in Europe? Don't Blame High Tech
In the face of high, chronic unemployment, European politicians are blaming high technology for stealing jobs. Nobel Prize–winner and Hoover fellow Gary S. Becker argues that, instead, they should blame the big governments they built.

When Business Don't Get No Respect
Now that communism has fallen, why hasn't Eastern Europe embraced capitalism more wholeheartedly? Hoover fellow Tibor R. Machan explains.

Russia

The Election of ´96
The good news about last year's presidential election in Russia is that communism was defeated forever. The bad news is what won. Hoover fellow Michael A. McFaul examines the present state of Russian democracy.

The Bear Sharpens Its Claws
As a proportion of Russia's overall budget, defense has been shrinking steadily in recent years. Or has it? Hoover fellow Richard F. Staar argues that Russia has actually more than doubled its spending on one aspect of defense, research and development.

China

No Regrets
Hoover honorary fellow Margaret Thatcher wonders whether she did the right thing when she signed the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, under the terms of which Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule. She doesn't wonder long.

Ignoring Taiwan at Our Peril
The mainland wants to rule Taiwan. Taiwan has other ideas. Hoover fellow Arnold Beichman argues that sooner or later there's going to be trouble.

Latin America

Defanging the Cobra
In Nicaragua, the army and intelligence services remain under the control of former Sandinistas. Hoover fellow Timothy C. Brown argues that President Alemán must change--fast.

What Latin America Owes to the "Chicago Boys"
Economists educated at the University of Chicago have for some two decades been putting free market reforms into effect in Chile, Argentina, and other Latin American countries. One of their teachers, Nobel Prize–winner and Hoover fellow Gary S. Becker, examines the results. What does he find? Dictatorships that have been turned into democracies and economic stagnation that has been transformed into growth.

Ten Tests for Latin Democracy*
Latin America has seen one authoritarian regime after another replaced by democratic institutions during the last decade and a half. Hoover fellow Larry Diamond nevertheless argues that Latin American democracy remains shallow and unstable--and he presents ten challenges that Latin American democracies must yet overcome.

Lead or Move Over
Hoover fellow William Ratliff argues that President Clinton's interest in Latin America has proved wayward at best. If the president were serious about the region, here's what he would do.

Africa

Democracy in Congo? Laugh On
No sooner had Laurent Kabila overthrown the dictator of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko, and renamed the country the Democratic Republic of Congo than Westerners began clamoring for Kabila to hold elections. The response of Hoover fellow Robert J. Barro? "You have to be kidding."

A Black Man Confronts Africa
Hoover fellow Thomas Sowell examines a new book, Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa. The book is honest, Sowell finds, a quality that by itself is enough to render the volume "almost shocking."

History and Culture

Tearing Down That Wall
In 1987, President Reagan stood before the Berlin Wall and addressed a challenge to the general secretary of the Soviet Union: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall!" Ten years later, Hoover fellow Peter Robinson, who drafted the historic address, tells how the speech came about.

The Man Who Mobilized America
At the outbreak of World War II, the United States found itself with a weak, outmoded military and a civilian population utterly unprepared for the shock of total war. Serving as undersecretary of war, Judge Robert P. Patterson mobilized the nation. An appreciation by Keith E. Eiler.

The Marshall Plan
An essay by Hoover fellows Peter Duignan and the late Lewis H. Gann on the fiftieth anniversary of "the greatest voluntary transfer of resources from one country to another."

Interview

Rich Man, Poor Man
The difference between the income of rich and poor in the United States is growing--and growing dramatically. In talking recently with Hoover fellow Peter Robinson, two experts, Stanford professor and Nobel Prize–winner Kenneth Arrow and Hoover fellow Kenneth L. Judd, agreed about the reasons but disagreed about whether anything should--or could--be done.