concludes, is the discovery that "human rights and strategic interests turn out to be consistent far more often than many Americans expect."
Brothers .in S "Success Story: Blacks in the Amy" Charles
C. Moskos, in The Atlantic (May 1986), 8 Ar-lington St., Boston, Mass. 02116.
Once a racial tinderbox, the U.S. armed forces now boast a degree of integration unmatched in civilian society.
So says Moskos, a sociologist at Northwestern. In his opinion, "there is
no question...
executive order in 1948. Throughout the 1950s, integration proceeded apace, especially during the Korean War, when blacks and whites fought in the same Army combat units for the first time. Then came the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the Vietnam War, which heightened racial tensions among troops and highlighted remaining anomalies, notably a paucity of commis- sioned blacks. (As late as 1972, only one in 25 Army officers was black, compared with one in 10 today.) Seeing the need for intervention...
the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) reduces the incentives to Egyptian fanners to harvest their own grains. AID projects also tend to siphon off Egypt's top talent, as well as to favor the use of American-made (rather than locally manufactured) machinery and materials. Such facts have led to charges that the United States-creating "production disin- centives" and cultivating dependency-is guilty of exploiting Egypt for its own economic ends.
Weinbaum rejects that notion,...
Edward
L. Morse, in Foreign Affairs(Spring 1986), 58 East 68th St., ~ew
York, N.Y. 10021.
As oil prices plummeted, from a record high of $40 per barrel in 1980-81
to less than $12 per barrel this past winter, American motorists-and
Washington economists-celebrated the good news.
But Morse, managing director of the Petroleum Finance Company, sees trouble not far down the road.
For nearly a century the oil market has experienced major price fluc- tuations, cycling from boom to bust and back...
Paul L. Burgess,
Jerry L. Kingston, and Robert D. St. Louis, in
Industrial & Labor Relations Review (April
1986), ComeU University, Ithaca, N.Y. 14851-0952.
Stories about "vacations" funded unemployment insurance (UI) benefits are as common as those about welfare-financed Cadillacs.
But are they true?
Yes, suggest Burgess, Kingston, and St. Louis, all economic research- ers at Arizona State University. Many UI recipients have no intention of getting a job until their weekly checks...
William J. Baumol, in The American Economic Review (May 19861, 1313 21st Avenue So., Ste. 809, Nashville, Tenn. 37212-2786.
As masterpiece paintings command ever-higher sums at Manhattan auc- tions, art investment has come to look like a sure-fire way to show off and make a profit.
But Baumol, a Princeton economist, argues that big price tags do not necessarily mean big profits from paintings.
Drawing mainly on Gerald Reitlinger's three-volume compilation of art sales data (The Economics of Taste:...
comparison. Paintings Jan Verrneer (1632-1675) "virtually disappeared from sight for several centuries" be- fore they were resurrected; today they are considered priceless. El Greco (1541-1614) was another modem rediscovery. Works by J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851), the great Romantic painter, became "an embarrassment to [London's] Tate gallery" earlier this century. Yet today Turner's paintings are "among the most valued items in the museum's collection."
Not that Baumol...
. "Is Welfare Really the Problem?'David T. Ellwood and Lawrence H. Summers, in The Public Interest (Spring 1986), 10 East 53rd St., New York, N.Y. 10022.
Of late, Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty has become a target for conser- vative reformers. The notion that federal efforts to help the poor have undermined their desire to earn a living rapidly gained currency in Wash-ington through Charles Murray's widely quoted Losing Ground (1984) [see WQ, Autumn ,841.
Ellwood and Summers, who teach...
Neil Spitzer, in The Atlantic (June 1986), 8 Arlington St., Bos-ton, Mass. 02116.
In October 1981, Senator Paula Hawkins (R.-Fla.) convened the first con- gressional hearing on missing children. "We simply do not know how many children disappear from their families each year," she said. "The estimates are as high as 1.8 million children per year."
Then the media blitz began: made-for-TV movies, fingerprinting carn- paigns, posters. Staring out from grocery bags and milk cartons,...
a parent (usually in a postdivorce quarrel over custody) account for 626,000 abductions-each year.
Only a small number of children are kidnapped each year strangers. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) annually investigates fewer than 100 such cases. Although some specialists believe the FBI figure is too low, the discrepancy of tens of thousands between the FBI estimate and popular "guesstimates," says Spitzer, deserves more scrutiny.
Spitzer lauds such organizations as the...