failing to work together. In 1981, for example, America's NATO allies sided with the United States in only 75 percent of the votes in the General Assembly. Most of the NAM's members, contrast, voted for the group's official position more than 90 percent of the time.
Western disunity, the authors argue, stems from the cynical view in some Western European capitals that what the UN does matters very little. Europeans cast General Assembly votes with an eye to winning the Third World's goodwill "on...
Bob Kuttner, in The Atlantic ~onthly(~uly1983), P.O. Box 2547, Boulder, Colo. 80322.
New technology often takes jobs away with one hand and gives them back with the other. But Kuttner, former editor of Working Papers mag-azine, argues that the overwhelming majority of jobs created during the 1980s will be routine and poorly paid. The result, he fears, will be a shrinking middle class and an increasingly stratified U.S. society.
The decline of America's "smokestack" industries-machine...
10-20 percent, and government, which now provides entry level slots for well over half the nation's black and female college grad- uates. Both, he notes, are now in relative decline-which augurs ill for the "high-tech" society of the future.
"Quality on the Line" David A. Garvin,
Japan's in The �£a�£�£Business Revieiu (Sept.-
Oct. 1983), P.O. Box 3000, Woburn, Mass.
ualitative Edge 01888.
Japanese manufacturers p...
10 percent") workers and foremen in shop floor quality control circles. Detailed reports on defects discovered on the assembly line and by field repair- men allowed the Japanese to pinpoint problems; top management met daily to discuss the reports.
Some U.S. air conditioner makers, by contrast, kept virtually no rec- ords on product failures, and none collected data as precise as the Japa- nese did. In the factory, quality almost invariably came second to meeting production schedules, and...
"The American Family in the Year 2000"
ecycli~gthe Andrew Cherlin and Frank F. Fursten-
berg, Jr., in The Futurist (June 1983),
World Future Society, 4916 St. Elmo
Ave., Bethesda, Md. 20814.
During the past two decades, the American family changed so rapidly that its very future sometimes seemed in doubt.
From 1960 to 1980, the U.S. divorce rate doubled and the birthrate dropped from a 20th-century high to an all-time low. Cherlin and Furs- tenberg, sociologists at Johns Hopkins...
Boom of the 1950s was an aberration. Today's developments actually climax long-term trends: The birthrate has been dropping since the 1820s; di- vorce has been slowly rising since the Civil War.
Despite the travails of the past two decades, there is no evidence that Americans today are turning their backs on marriage per se. Of the chil- dren under age 18 today, the authors estimate, 90 percent will eventu- ally marry; 50 percent will marry and divorce; and 33 percent will marry, divorce, and remarry.
Yet,...
Second Thoughts Robert J. Samuelson, in National Journal (July 9, 1983), Government Research Cor- YL School Mom poration, 1730 M St. N.W., Washington,
D.C. 20036.
Behind today's grassroots push for reform of the public schools is "the faith that strong schools represent a fundamental source of the nation's prosperity and international competitiveness," notes Samuelson, a Na-tionalJournal contributing editor. He suggests that such faith may be a prescription for dashed hopes.
The Wilson...
Gilbert Austin of the Univer- sity of Maryland suggests, however, that successful schools share these common features: strong principals, parents actively engaged in their children's education, firm discipline, and high teacher expectations of their pupils' performance.
"To a considerable degree," concludes Samuelson, "education is and must be an act of faith." Schooling cannot be regarded "as a mechani- cal process leading to automatic rewards." Schools, he believes,...
economists Robert B. Pearl and Matilda Frankel to show where the two groups had their assets in 1979. Home ownership absorbed 46 percent of blacks' wealth but only a third of whitesJ-blacks had little money remaining for other "nones- sential" investments. Another 21 percent of black and 15 percent of white assets were in rental housing. Household goods and vehicles ac- counted for 24 percent of black wealth; four percent of blacks' money and 13 percent of whites' was invested in small...
34 reporters. The Pentagon's large staff of press officers strains to be help- ful. Conflict is kept to a minimum because, in military matters, it is far easier for journalists and officials to agree on what is an official secret, and what is merely embarrassing. Perhaps more important is the sheer size of the bureaucracy. As Richard Halloran of the New York Times put it, "If someone is promoting the M-1 tank, there are plenty of people around who will tell you what's wrong with the M-I."
Hess...