school vouchers

back to index

65 results

pages: 298 words: 95,668

Milton Friedman: A Biography
by Lanny Ebenstein
Published 23 Jan 2007

Something else has to come along that provides fertile ground for those ideas.”16 This page intentionally left blank 23 SCHOOL VOUCHERS AND SOCIAL ISSUES he primary issue on which Friedman had worked in re Tcent years is school vouchers. He traced evolution of the vouchers idea in 2005: “Little did I know when I published an article in 1955 on ‘The Role of Government in Education’ that it would lead to my becoming an activist for a major reform in the organization of schooling.” His primary reason for supporting educational vouchers—whereby parents would receive financial credits that would be reimbursed or redeemed for their children’s educational costs—was not because he thought that the United States had poor elementary and secondary public schools in 1955.

He does not believe that vouchers would lead to increased socioeconomic or racial separation in or of schools—he believes, in fact, the opposite. In recent years Milton and Rose chose to direct their personal efforts and fortune most to the issue of school vouchers. They established the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation to promote educational choice. Their children, Janet and David, serve on the board of directors along with the elder Friedmans. The school voucher idea has had much influence in the United States and elsewhere. Not only has the school voucher idea been considered outside of this country, but here and abroad the concept of vouchers—providing funding through government but leaving provision of services in competitive, private hands—has proved capable of extension to many other areas, resulting in privatization of government activities.

The royalties from Free to Choose exceed by a magnitude of several times the royalties from all his other works combined. After the book’s success, the Friedmans’ financial status was higher than it had ever been. Friedman introduced many of his basic themes to television audiences around the world through Free to Choose, including educational vouchers, the monetary source of inflation, the power of the market, and the counterproductiveness of much government activity. In preparing the series, he offered these thoughts. To change the course of the previous half-century from collectivism to renewed individualism will require reinforcing our heritage rather than simply living on it.

pages: 226 words: 59,080

Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science
by Dani Rodrik
Published 12 Oct 2015

Acemoglu, Daron, 206 advertising, prisoners’ dilemma and, 14–15 Africa, Washington Consensus and, 162 agriculture: subsidies in, 149, 194 subsistence vs. modern, 75, 88 Airbus, 15 airline industry, deregulation of, 168 Akerlof, George, 68, 69n Algan, Yann, 79n, 200n Allen, Danielle, xiv American Economic Review (AER), 30–31 American Political Science Review (APSR), 30–31 Angrist, Joshua, 108 antelopes, 35n antipoverty programs, 3–4 cash grants vs. subsidies in, 4 antitrust law, 161 Argentina, 166 arguments, mathematics and, 35n Arrow, Kenneth, 31, 49–51 Ash, Michael, 77 Asia, economic growth and, 163–64, 166 asset bubbles, 152–58 asymmetric information, 68–69, 70, 71 Auctions: Theory and Practice (Klemperer), 36n “Auctions and Bidding: A Primer” (Milgrom), 36n auction theory, 36, 168 automobiles, effect of sales tax and demand on, 180–81 balanced budgets, 171 Bangladesh, 57–58, 123 Bank of England, 197 banks, banking, 1n, 2 computational models and, 38 credit rationing in, 64–65 globalization and, 165–66 Great Recession and, 152–59 insurance in, 155 regulation of, 155, 158–59 shadow sector in, 153 bargaining, 124–25, 143 Battle of Bretton Woods, The: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order (Steil), 1n–2n bed nets, randomized testing and, 106, 204 behavioral economics, 69–71, 104–7, 202–4 Berlin, Isaiah, 175 Bernanke, Ben, 134–35 Bertrand competition, 68 Bhagwati, Jagdish, 182n–83n big data, 38–39, 40 Bloomberg, Michael, 4 Boeing, 15 Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen von, 119 Bordo, Michael D., 127n Borges, Jorge Luis, 43–44, 86 Boston University, 3 Boughton, James M., 1n Boulding, Kenneth, 11 bounded rationality, 203 Bowles, Samuel, 71n Brazil: antipoverty programs of, 4 globalization and, 166 Bretton Woods Conference (1944), 1–2 Britain, Great, property rights and, 98 bubbles, 152–58 business cycles, 125–37 balanced budgets and, 171 capital flow in, 127 classical economics and, 126–27, 129, 137 inflation in, 126–27, 133, 135, 137 new classical models and, 130–34, 136–37 butterfly effect, 39 California, University of: at Berkeley, 107, 136, 147 at Los Angeles, 139 Cameron, David, 109 capacity utilization rates, 130 capital, neoclassical distribution theory and, 122, 124 capital flow: in business cycles, 127 economic growth and, 17–18, 114, 164–67 globalization and, 164–67 growth diagnostics and, 90 speculation and, 2 capitalism, 118–24, 127, 144, 205, 207 carbon, emissions quotas vs. taxes in reduction of, 188–90, 191–92 Card, David, 57 Carlyle, Thomas, 118 carpooling, 192, 193–94 cartels, 95 Cartwright, Nancy, 20, 22n, 29 cash grants, 4, 55, 105–6 Cassidy, John, 157n Central Bank of India, 154 Chang, Ha-Joon, 11 chaos theory, butterfly effect and, 39 Chicago, University of, 131, 152 Chicago Board of Trade, 55 Chile, antipoverty programs and, 4 China, People’s Republic of, 156, 163, 164 cigarette industry, taxation and, 27–28 Clark, John Bates, 119 “Classical Gold Standard, The: Some Lessons for Today” (Bordo), 127n classical unemployment, 126 climate change, 188–90, 191–92 climate modeling, 38, 40 Cochrane, John, 131 coffee, 179, 185 Colander, David, 85 collective bargaining, 124–25, 143 Colombia, educational vouchers in, 24 colonialism, developmental economics and, 206–7 “Colonial Origins of Comparative Development, The” (Acemoglu, Robinson, and Johnson), 206–7 Columbia University, 2, 108 commitment, in game theory, 33 comparative advantage, 52–55, 58n, 59–60, 139, 170 compensation for risk models, 110 competition, critical assumptions in, 28–29 complementarities, 42 computable general equilibrium (CGE) models, 41 computational models, 38, 41 computers, model complexity and, 38 Comte, Auguste, 81 conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs, 4, 105–6 congestion pricing, 2–3 Constitution, U.S., 187 construction industry, Great Recession and, 156 consumers, consumption, 119, 129, 130, 132, 136, 167 cross-price elasticity in, 180–81 consumer’s utility, 119 contextual truths, 20, 174 contingency, 25, 145, 173–74, 185 contracts, 88, 98, 161, 205 coordination models, 16–17, 42, 200 corn futures, 55 corruption, 87, 89, 91 costs, behavioral economics and, 70 Cotterman, Nancy, xiv Cournot, Antoine-Augustin, 13n Cournot competition, 68 credibility, in game theory, 33 “Credible Worlds, Capacities and Mechanisms” (Sugden), 172n credit rating agencies, 155 credit rationing, 64–65 critical assumptions, 18, 26–29, 94–98, 150–51, 180, 183–84, 202 cross-price elasticity, 180–81 Cuba, 57 currency: appreciation of, 60, 167 depreciation of, 153 economic growth and, 163–64, 167 current account deficits, 153 Curry, Brendan, xv Dahl, Gordon B., 151n Darwin, Charles, 113 Davis, Donald, 108 day care, 71, 190–91 Debreu, Gerard, 49–51 debt, national, 153 decision trees, 89–90, 90 DeLong, Brad, 136 democracy, social sciences and, 205 deposit insurance, 155 depreciation, currency, 153 Depression, Great, 2, 128, 153 deregulation, 143, 155, 158–59, 162, 168 derivatives, 153, 155 deterrence, in game theory, 33 development economics, 75–76, 86–93, 90, 159–67, 169, 201, 202 colonial settlement and, 206–7 institutions and, 98, 161, 202, 205–7 reform fatigue and, 88 diagnostic analysis, 86–93, 90, 97, 110–11 Dijkgraaf, Robbert, xiv “Dirtying White: Why Does Benn Steil’s History of Bretton Woods Distort the Ideas of Harry Dexter White?”

F., 177n Schumpeter, Joseph, 31 science, simplicity and, 179 Scott, Joan, xiv Second Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics, 47n segregation, tipping points in white flight and, 42 self-interest, 21, 104, 158, 186–88, 190 Shaw, George Bernard, 151 Shiller, Robert, 154, 157, 159 signaling, 69 Simon, Herbert, 203 Singapore, congestion pricing and, 3 single market (partial-equilibrium) analysis, 56, 58, 91 skill-biased technological change (SBTC), 142–43 skill premium, 138–40, 142 skill upgrading, 140, 141, 142 Smith, Adam, xi 48–49, 50, 98, 116, 182, 203 Smith, John Maynard, 35n Smith, Noah, 148 social choice theory, 36 social media, big data and, 38 social sciences: critical review in, 79–80 economics and, xii–xiii, 45, 181–82, 202–7 universal theories and, 116 Sokal, Alan, 79n “Sokal’s Hoax” (Weinberg), 66n South Africa, 24, 86, 91, 111 South Sea bubble, 154 Soviet Union, 98, 151–52 White and, 1n Spain, 207 speculative capital flow, 2 Spence, Michael, 68 stagflation, 130–31 statistical analysis, 7 Steil, Benn, 1n–2n Stiglitz, Joseph, 31, 68 Stockholm, Sweden, congestion pricing and, 3 Stolper, Wolfgang, 58n, 140n Stolper-Samuelson theorem, 58n, 140n stotting, 35n strategic interactions, economic models and, 61–62, 63 string theory, 113 Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The (Kuhn), 64n Subramanian, Arvind, xv subsidies, 4, 34–35, 75, 105, 149, 193, 194 Sugden, Robert, 112, 172n Summers, Larry, 136, 159 sunk costs, 70, 73 Superiority of Economists, The (Fourcade, Ollion, and Algan), 79n, 200n supply and demand, 3, 13–14, 20, 99, 122, 128–30, 132, 136–37, 170 prices and, 14, 119 taxes and, 14 surrogate mothers, 192 Switzerland, 188 Taiwan, 163 Tanzania, 55 tariffs, 149, 161, 162 taxes, taxation, 14, 17, 27–28, 87, 88, 136, 137, 151, 174, 180–81 carbon emissions and, 188–90, 191–92 entrepreneurship and, 74 fiscal stimulus and, 74, 75, 149, 171 negative income and, 171 technology, income inequality and, 141–43 telecommunications, game theory and, 5, 36 Thailand, 166 Thatcher, Margaret, 49 theories: models vs., 113–45 specific events explained by, 138–44 universal validity of, 114 time-inconsistent preferences, 62–63 “Time to Build and Aggregate Fluctuation” (Kydland and Prescott), 101n tipping points, 42 Tirole, Jean, 208–9 trade, 11, 87, 91, 136, 141, 182–83, 194 in business cycles, 127 comparative advantage in, 52–55, 58n, 59, 139, 170 computational models in tracking of, 41 current account deficits and, 153 general-equilibrium effects and, 41, 56–58, 69n, 91, 120 income inequality in, 139–40 liberalization of, 160, 162–63, 165, 169 outsourcing and, 149 public sector size and, 109–10 second-best theory applied in, 58–61, 163–64, 166 2x2 model of, 52–53 trade creation effect, 59 trade diversion effect, 59 trade unions, 124, 143 Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), 41 Transforming Traditional Agriculture (Schultz), 75n transportation, congestion pricing and, 2–3 Truman, Harry S., 151 tulip bubble, 154 Turkey, 166 Ulam, Stanislaw, 51 ultimatum game, 104 unemployment, 102 in business cycles, 125–37 classical view of, 126 in Great Recession, 153 wages and, 118, 150 see also employment Unger, Roberto Mangabeira, xi United States: comparative advantage principle and, 59–60, 139 deficit in, 149 educational vouchers in, 24 federal system in, 187 garment industry in, 57–58 Gold Standard in, 127 Great Depression in, 128 Great Recession in, 115, 134–35, 152–59 housing bubble in, 153–54, 156 immigration issue in, 56–57 income inequality in, 117, 124–25, 138–44 labor productivity and wages in, 123–24, 141 national debt in, 153 outsourcing in, 149 trade agreements of, 41 universal validity, 66–67 Uruguay, 86 validity, external vs. internal types of, 23–24 value, theories of, 117–21 Varian, Hal, 20 verbal models, 34 Vickrey, William, 2–3 Vietnam, 57–58 Vietnam War, 108 “Views among Economists: Professional Consensus or Point-Counterpoint?”

Such experiments have become very popular in economics recently, and they are sometimes thought to generate knowledge that is model-free; that is, they’re supposed to provide insight about how the world works without the baggage of assumptions and hypothesized causal chains that comes with models. But this is not quite right. To give one example: In Colombia, the randomized distribution of private-school vouchers has significantly improved educational attainment. But this is no guarantee that similar programs would have the same outcome in the United States or in South Africa. The ultimate outcome relies on a host of factors that vary from country to country. Income levels and preferences of parents, the quality gap between private and public schools, the incentives that drive schoolteachers and administrators—all of these factors, and many other potentially important considerations, come into play.8 Getting from “it worked there” to “it will work here” requires many additional steps.9 The gulf between real experiments carried out in the lab (or in the field) and the thought experiments we call “models” is less than we might have thought.

pages: 376 words: 118,542

Free to Choose: A Personal Statement
by Milton Friedman and Rose D. Friedman
Published 2 Jan 1980

See Christopher Jencks and associates, Education Vouchers: A Report on Financing Elementary Education by Grants to Parents (Cambridge, Mass.: Center for the Study of Public Policy, December 1970); John E. Coons and Stephen D. Sugarman, Education by Choice: The Case for Family Control (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). 17. Coons and Sugarman, Education by Choice, p. 191. 18. Ibid., p. 130. 19. Wealth of Nations, vol. II, p. 253 (Book V, Chap. I). 20. For example, the Citizens for Educational Freedom, the National Association for Personal Rights in Education. 21. Education Voucher Institute, incorporated in May 1979 in Michigan. 22.

A number of national organizations favor it today.20 Since 1968 the Federal Office of Economic Opportunity and then the Federal Institute of Education encouraged and financed studies of voucher plans and offered to help finance experimental voucher plans. In 1978 a constitutional amendment was on the ballot in Michigan to mandate a voucher plan. In 1979 a movement was under way in California to qualify a constitutional amendment mandating a voucher plan for the 1980 ballot. A nonprofit institute has recently been established to explore educational vouchers.21 At the federal level, bills providing for a limited credit against taxes for tuition paid to nonpublic schools have several times come close to passing. While they are not a voucher plan proper, they are a partial variant, partial both because of the limit to the size of the credit and because of the difficulty of including persons with no or low tax liability.

In terms of test scores, McCollam School went from thirteenth to second place among the schools in its district. But the experiment is now over, ended by the educational establishment—the same fate that befell Harlem Prep. The same resistance is present in Great Britain, where an extremely effective group called FEVER (Friends of the Education Voucher Experiment in Representative Regions) have tried for four years to introduce an experiment in a town in the county of Kent, England. The governing authorities have been favorable, but the educational establishment has been adamantly opposed. The attitude of the professional educators toward vouchers is well expressed by Dennis Gee, headmaster of a school in Ashford, Kent, and secretary of the local teachers' union: "We see this as a barrier between us and the parent—this sticky little piece of paper [i.e., the voucher] in their hand—coming in and under duress—you will do this or else.

pages: 147 words: 45,890

Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future
by Robert B. Reich
Published 21 Sep 2010

Such a tax would not only give employers more incentive to keep workers on, but would also help pay for the wage insurance and skill upgrades of the reemployment system. • • • School vouchers based on family income. Over the longer term, the best way to boost the earnings of Americans in the bottom half is to improve their education and skills. To that end, spending on public schools should be replaced by vouchers in amounts inversely related to family income that families can cash in at any school meeting certain minimum standards. For example, the $8,000 now spent per child in a particular state would be turned into $14,000 education vouchers for each school-age child in a poor family, and $2,000 vouchers for each child in a very wealthy family.

For example, the $8,000 now spent per child in a particular state would be turned into $14,000 education vouchers for each school-age child in a poor family, and $2,000 vouchers for each child in a very wealthy family. School vouchers in this progressive form would improve overall school performance by introducing competition into the school system. They would also give lower- and middle-income families more purchasing power in the education market. Schools located in neighborhoods where there are many lower-income families would get immediate infusions of billions of dollars to upgrade their physical plants, buy new textbooks, and hire more and better teachers. Yet under my proposal, such schools would not be able to count on these extra revenues forever. After an initial three years, they would have to compete with other schools that might put those sizable vouchers to even better uses.

pages: 318 words: 93,502

The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Going Broke
by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi
Published 17 Aug 2004

It might take some re-jiggering to settle on the right amount for a public school voucher, but eventually every child would have a valuable funding ticket to be used in any school in the area. To collect those tickets, schools would have to provide the education parents want. And parents would have a meaningful set of choices, without the need to buy a new home or pay private school tuition. Ultimately, an all-voucher system would diminish the distinction between public and private schools, as parents were able to exert more direct control over their children’s schools.65 Of course, public school vouchers would not entirely eliminate the pressure parents feel to move into better family neighborhoods.

See under Bankruptcies Fresno, California, public schools Friedan, Betty Gephardt, Richard Gore, Al Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck) Great Depression Hadassah Harvard University Hatch, Orrin Health issues and filing for bankruptcy health insurance See also Disability coverage Herring Hardware Himmelstein, David Hispanics Homes of African Americans and Hispanics age of appliances/furnishings for bidding wars for of divorced fathers down payments foreclosures. See also Foreclosure rates of Hispanics home equity and bankruptcy home equity loans home ownership being “house poor,” housing and joint custody of children housing market and public education voucher system prices regulation of housing market renting and school quality single mothers owning size of spending on as proportion of family income vacation homes See also Mortgages Hospitals Housing and Urban Development, department of Hyde, Henry Illinois bankruptcy data collection Income, discretionary(fig.)

I highly recommend to my viewers that they get THE TWO-INCOME TRAP.” —Bill Moyers “[Warren] argues movingly that the misery and shame of bankruptcy is as pungent as ever—it’s just more widely experienced . . . The book is brimming with proposed solutions to the nail-biting anxiety that the middle class finds itself in: subsidized day care, school vouchers, new bank regulations, among other measures.” —Wall Street Journal “Astounding.” —Mortimer B. Zuckerman, editor-in-chief, U.S. News & World Report “Warren and Tyagi argue persuasively that mass ‘over-consumption’ is not the problem . . . Moreover, the book does offer unexpectedly fresh discussions of “deadbeat dads” (it turns out there aren’t very many of them) and the credit-card industry (where the current business strategy is to get financially troubled families ‘to borrow [still] more money’).”

pages: 403 words: 105,431

The death and life of the great American school system: how testing and choice are undermining education
by Diane Ravitch
Published 2 Mar 2010

Cecelia E. Rouse of Princeton University and Lisa Barrow of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago published a review of all the existing studies of vouchers in Milwaukee, Cleveland, and the District of Columbia. They found that there were “relatively small achievement gains for students offered educational vouchers, most of which are not statistically different from zero.” They could not predict whether vouchers might eventually produce changes in high school graduation rates, college enrollment, or future wages. But they did not find impressive gains in achievement. Nor was there persuasive evidence that the public school systems that lost voucher students to private schools had improved.

When Baltimore handed over nine public schools to a for-profit business called Education Alternatives Inc. in 1992, Shanker was appalled. When Republican governor John Engler of Michigan endorsed charter legislation, Shanker denounced him for ignoring his state’s poor curriculum and standards. In his paid weekly column in the New York Times, he repeatedly condemned charter schools, vouchers, and for-profit management as “quick fixes that won’t fix anything.”14 After he turned against charter schools, Shanker steadfastly insisted that the biggest problem in American education was the absence of a clear national consensus about the mission of the schools. He repeatedly decried the lack of a national curriculum, national testing, and “stakes” attached to schooling; these, he said, were huge problems that would not be solved by letting a thousand flowers bloom or by turning over the schools to entrepreneurs.

Thorn, Fifth-Year Report: Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (Madison, WI: Robert LaFollette Institute of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1995); Paul E. Peterson, “A Critique of the Witte Evaluation of Milwaukee’s School Choice Program,” Occasional Paper 95-2, Harvard University Center for American Political Studies, 1995. 20 Cecelia Elena Rouse and Lisa Barrow, “School Vouchers and Student Achievement: Recent Evidence and Remaining Questions,” Annual Review of Economics 1 (2009), 17-42. A study of the Florida voucher program in 2009 found that the 23,259 students using publicly funded vouchers to attend private schools did no better or worse than similar students in public schools.

pages: 410 words: 115,666

American Foundations: An Investigative History
by Mark Dowie
Published 3 Oct 2009

Much of their work is supported by a handful of small- to medium-sized conservative foundations. Invoking studies that demonstrate the declining academic attainments of American students, they argue in widely published essays and op-ed pieces that the government's "education monopoly" should be replaced by a new model based on educational vouchers and private contracting. Finn attributes to "retail complacency" the fact that 70 percent of Americans reject the rhetoric of failure and consider public schools adequate. He and his followers remain frustrated by the public's reservoir of affection for public education and their own inability to supply enough education through free-market systems.

Finn does not point out that the combined grants for all these projects barely equal the travel budget of Finn's employer, the Hudson Institute; nor do they represent the central mission of either Ford or Rockefeller. Yet he describes them as "typical" expressions of a multiculturalist dogma infesting the entire foundation community.49 Before closing his letter to Gates with a predictable pitch for educational vouchers and charter schools, Finn pours cold water on a few of Gates's own philanthropic gestures-particularly his grant to a teachers' union administering a high school technological-training program. He advises Gates to seek out and support "islets of civil society . . . faithbased social services that care for the ill, feed the hungry, wean the addicted and teach the young"-all causes the large foundations shun "because they stress responsibilities rather than rights.""

It led to publication of the controversial The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray (New York: Free Press, 1994). 18. Chester Finn, "Giving It Away: An Open Letter to Bill Gates," Commentary January 1998, p. 21. 19. Quoted in Marina Dunjerski and Jennifer Moore. "Debate Over Government-Paid School Vouchers Is Accelerating," Chronicle of Philanthropy, November 19, 1998, p. 10. 20. Finn, "Giving It Away," p. 21. 21. Author interview with Anthony Ciapolone. 22. 22. Office of the State Superintendent of Education, Report to the California State Assembly Committee on Education, August 1997, p. 3. 23.

pages: 777 words: 186,993

Imagining India
by Nandan Nilekani
Published 25 Nov 2008

This has met with mixed success due to resistance at every level of the government, the lack of awareness among local and elected ward members of their powers and the sheer political clout of the teachers’ unions. A key reform to address this issue of accountability, which could also potentially converge the roles of state and private education, is school vouchers. This idea was suggested by Milton Friedman in 1955, and different kinds of voucher programs have seen successes in some U.S. states as well as in Chile, Sweden and Ireland. The basic idea of an education voucher is that the government funds students instead of schools—a transfer of power, since the money follows the student rather than the institution, and allows student choices to determine where the government’s education funds go.

These concerns now loom large over us, affecting our ability to execute new ideas effectively, challenging the long-term success of our reforms. Our prereform, but still persistent, perception of the state as the “giver and taker of all” has doomed many of our most urgent policy proposals. I think that the single reform that will change this is bringing direct benefits into our welfare system. With health and education vouchers, citizens can choose between private- and public-sector alternatives. These and similar vouchers for essential commodities will free the poor of the middleman in India’s public distribution system and from the tyranny of the bureaucracy. Putting benefits such as cash in the hands of the poor, which would in turn allow them to participate in markets more effectively, can also rid us of the confrontational relationship that now exists between the government and our markets.

This can bring the private sector and NGOs into already existing school infrastructure and government school buildings, instead of the current approach where we are constructing an alternative, private school system from scratch. There are still challenges to such solutions; for example, direct benefits like school vouchers are effective only if there are competing education providers, and this is a high bar to clear in the rural areas. Governments may have to specifically target such regions through incentives such as gap financing options for school entrepreneurs. A truly competitive market in education that involves both private and state schools offers a unique advantage—a rapid dissemination of best practices and effective teaching methods.

pages: 302 words: 95,965

How to Be the Startup Hero: A Guide and Textbook for Entrepreneurs and Aspiring Entrepreneurs
by Tim Draper
Published 18 Dec 2017

Despite the loss, through my efforts, the Supreme Court of the United States met and agreed to allow school vouchers as a viable option for states in May of 2002. The school voucher battle also allowed me to meet and inform John McCain about the benefits of school vouchers at a Ted Forstmann event in Aspen. Senator McCain subsequently promoted school vouchers in his presidential debate with Barack Obama. I have had multiple meetings with both Presidents Bush, Former Governor of California Pete Wilson, Former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger and many other powerful politicians on the topic of school vouchers since, and eventually, I believe school vouchers will come to pass.

BizWorld also led me to the California initiative for school choice (school vouchers). When I first taught BizWorld, I noticed how stark the classrooms were in my daughter’s school. I started asking questions, and I realized there were structural issues that made it difficult to teach and manage schools now. I decided to see how I could help change the system. My activism led me to being appointed to the California State Board of Education, and my tenure there drove my efforts to become author and supporter of a statewide initiative for California to allow parents the right to choose the school their child attends. It was called the school voucher initiative, proposition 38 Yes.

Go on a safari in Botswana Go to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (many times) Visit the New York Stock Exchange (BizWorld and MeVC) See the opening of a Broadway show (Crazy She Calls Me) See Steve Miller Band in concert (with the Doobie Brothers at Shoreline—met him later) Visit the pyramids (and Ramses II) Go to the Olympics games (Summer in Atlanta, Winter in Utah) Friends Play touch football with Joe Montana Meet each President since Richard Nixon (so far, so good) Meet Barry Bonds (he helped coach my kids’ T-ball team) Meet Charles Barkley Meet Michael Milken (Spoke at the Milken Institute) Meet Michael Jackson (I had backstage passes to his concert in London, but he died before the concert was scheduled to begin) Meet Phil Collins (at the Oscars) Freaks Attend a funeral (this has happened too many times) Be in a hurricane (swam during Hurricane Bob) Be in an earthquake (dove under my desk at work) Be in a flood (our dog had to swim through the house) See an active volcano (in Pucon, Chile, and Mt Saint Helens, both from the sky) Visit a prison (Sonora State Prison with Defy Ventures) Fulfillment Create a board game (Stanford: The Game, Voter’s Choice) Create a game for a class (BizWorld) Paint 10 good paintings (“good” is in the eyes of the painter) Plant a tree that lives Build a treehouse with my kids (at my parents’ house before they tore it down) Produce a movie (The Tic Code, The Naked Brothers Band, Stella’s Last Weekend) Produce a CD-ROM title (I think technology has moved past me here) Get 10 articles published (most are about supporting entrepreneurship and driving technology) Write a very long poem Make a success of a dropout (there have been many) Get jobs for 10 friends (very satisfying) Grow a vegetable garden (it attracted crows) Free a prisoner Get a law changed or eliminated (made school vouchers legal) Teach a class at Stanford Business School (with Bill Sahlman) Fascination Learn more Japanese Learn to play 3 songs on the piano well Read 1000 books (I am at 350) Learn to make one spectacular dessert Read the Bible (Old and New) Read the Koran (brilliant legal document) Read the book of Mao (he was awesome, then he was awful) Read The Book of Mormon Shoot below 85 in golf (best score 86; typical score 110) Foolishness Bareback ride an unknown horse (with my brother-in-law in Hawaii) Hang glide (crashed and cracked the mast) Pilot an airplane (bush plane in Alaska) Parasailing (in Mexico) Drink snake blood in Snake Alley (in Taiwan) Swim in the Crystal Springs Reservoir (so muddy!)

pages: 453 words: 122,586

Samuelson Friedman: The Battle Over the Free Market
by Nicholas Wapshott
Published 2 Aug 2021

“Can you conceive of any other measure that would accomplish so much to promote law and order?”31 he asked. Friedman also championed freeing parents from having to send their children to government-run schools,32 a system that meant parents could only exercise control over schools through the political process.33 His solution? Education vouchers provided to parents by government equivalent to the cost of sending a child to a public school that could be spent at independent schools. He hoped his proposal would break the monopoly of teaching unions in public schools and give parents a real choice.34 FRIEDMAN WAS ENGAGED in a long political struggle across many fronts, but even by the early Sixties, in his early fifties, he remained little known outside of academia, and even then he was little regarded outside of a small coterie of economists who did not subscribe to the Keynesian consensus.

Kennedy, 46 Joint Economic Committee of Congress hearing, 152–56 on labor unions, 47, 110, 153 legacy of, 289–94 on legalizing drugs, 50 on liberal bias in the press, 48–49, 52 libertarianism, 48–49, 69, 73, 86, 138, 217–18, 311 on licensing of doctors, 30, 48, 173, 269, 291 macroeconomics, 95–96, 268 on managing the economy, 95 market-based system supported by, 48, 70, 278 on monetary policy, 70, 106–8, 109, 111, 113, 129–31, 289–90 Mont Pèlerin meetings, 35–37, 82, 309 negative income tax plan, 143, 173, 292 Nixon’s 1968 campaign, 141–42, 157 Nobel Prize for economics, 26, 164–71 opposition to military draft, 49–50, 156, 290–91 opposition to wage and price controls, 150–52, 153–55, 157 outsider status, 74, 76, 132, 138, 174, 291 papers archived at Hoover Institution, 284 PhD thesis, 33 Pinochet and, 160–61, 168, 169, 170 popularity in Soviet bloc, 215, 254 praise for Samuelson, 162–63 price system seen as virtuous, 80 on property rights, 80 and protests at Nobel Prize for, 168, 169 quantity theory of money, 45, 95, 98–100, 101–3, 104–5, 107, 126–27 reaction to Samuelson’s 1995 note, 254 Reagan monetary policy and, 201–2 Reagan’s economic policy meeting and, 200–201 reputation in Britain, 229–30 research on role of money, 34–35, 103–5, 107, 262, 280, 320 response to 9/11 terrorist attacks, 255 return to Chicago, 33, 34 rivalry with Samuelson, 10, 27, 34, 71, 83, 132, 295–96 role of individual self-interest in society, 90, 91 Samuelson friendship with, 9–10, 254 in Samuelson’s Economics, 74, 171–73, 315 school voucher proposal, 50, 197 “shock treatment” in Chile recommended, 160–61, 169, 327 similarities to Samuelson, 11 on socialism, 217, 334 Soviet economy and, 218, 334 stagflation and, 119, 170–71, 207, 289, 322 Statistical Research Group at Columbia, 33 on steady money supply growth, 106, 113, 130–31, 140, 157, 203, 266 study at Columbia University, 28 study at Rutgers University, 26–27 supply-side economics and, 204, 207–8 suspicion of big government, 69 on taxation, 32, 79, 85, 155–56, 208, 290 on tax cuts, 44, 155–56, 208, 209, 211, 252 on taxes in wartime, 32 television series, 197 Thatcher’s election and, 239 “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” 114, 226, 321 and A Tract by Keynes, 94–96 tributes after death, 265–67, 268–69 on unemployment, 110–11, 304–5 at University of Chicago, 27–29, 70, 82, 99, 254 on velocity of money, 61, 93–94, 106, 109 view of Greenspan, 259–60 visit to Adam Smith’s grave, 43 visit to the Soviet Union, 215, 334 on Volcker’s Fed policies, 193–94, 195–96, 200–201, 202–4, 212, 214 Volcker’s skepticism about monetarism, 178–80, 181–85, 189, 235 “We are all Keynesians now,” 75 on the welfare state, 74, 76, 173, 230 at Wisconsin-Madison University, 31 work for New Deal programs, 29–31, 311 writing style of Newsweek columns, 10, 57–60 see also specific titles Friedman, Rose Director Aaron Director and, 11, 27 at Bureau of Home Economics, 309 in Cambridge, 39–40 death, 269 marriage, 27 on Nobel Prize for economics, 161–62, 164, 165, 166 resentment of Samuelson’s “privilege,” 27–28 Samuelson’s notes and, 254, 265–66 urging Friedman to work for Newsweek, 8–9, 11 visit to Adam Smith’s grave, 43 visit to the Soviet Union, 215, 334 Friedman, Sára Ethel (née Landau), 25–26 Galbraith, John Kenneth Affluent Society, The, 5, 302 birth and death, 302 favorable comments on the Soviet Union, 216, 219 Johnson and, 7 Kennedy and, 5–6, 22 Life in Our Times, A, 224–25 Nixon and, 147 opposition to Vietnam War, 7, 312 price controls demanded, 152 television series, 197 Garvy, George, 94, 319 Gary, Indiana, 11–12 GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, 291 General Motors, 146, 153 General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, The (Keynes) on Great Depression, 106, 288 Hansen’s exposition of, 15 Hayek on, 44, 311 increasing aggregate demand, 204, 235 key elements and questions, 18–19, 60–61 macroeconomics, 101, 133, 302 monetary theory in, 101–2, 135 multiplier, 18, 97 propensity to consume, 19, 100, 133 publication, 8, 39, 55, 98, 133 quantity theory of money, 98 in Samuelson’s Economics, 18–19 Gilmour, Ian, 230, 231, 236, 244–45 Gingrich, Newt, 49, 251–53, 312 Giuliani, Rudolph (Rudy), 49, 312 God and Man at Yale (Buckley), 19, 306, 324 gold reserves, 148, 325–26 gold standard, 108, 112, 142, 185–86 Goldwater, Barry, 51–53, 139–41, 166, 200, 293, 312 Graham, Katharine Meyer, 4–5, 225, 302 Graham, Philip Leslie, 3–4, 5, 301–2 Great Depression causes, 34–35, 44, 47, 82, 103–5, 106, 323 deflation, 107 effects of, 14–15, 26, 30–31, 104 Keynesian economics and, 8, 23, 74–75, 98, 104, 106–7 Roosevelt and, 78, 104 Great Moderation, 271, 278, 282 Greenspan, Alan, 200, 255–56, 259–60, 271, 338 Griffiths, Brian, 246, 337 Guion, Connie, 2 Haberler, Gottfried von, 15, 305 Halberstam, David, 3, 301 Hansen, Alvin, 15, 304, 305 Hansen-Samuelson model, 14, 304 Harberger, Arnold C., 160, 168–69, 327 Harcourt, William, 75, 315 Harriman, Averell, 21, 306 Hayek, Friedrich attempt to join Chicago’s economics department, 37–38, 303 Ayn Rand and, 81 democracy and economics, 66 duel with Keynes in 1931, 9, 38, 53, 69 on failure of monetary theories, 213–14 on Friedman and macroeconomics, 95–96 on Friedman’s positive economics essay, 44 on intervention by government, 65–68, 87, 222 on Keynes’s General Theory, 44, 311 on managing the economy, 95 on measuring money in an economy, 213–14 microeconomics, 76 Mont Pèlerin meetings, 35–37, 82, 309 Nobel Prize for economics, 164, 166 popularity in Soviet bloc, 215 post–World War I experience in Austria, 61–62, 91 rejection of macroeconomics, 76, 95–96 Road to Serfdom, The, 35–36, 66–68, 87, 215, 222, 237, 334 in Samuelson’s Economics, 74, 315 on taxes in wartime, 309 on unemployment, 199 warnings about politicians, 116, 141, 199 see also specific titles Hazlitt, Henry Stuart, 5, 7–8, 302 Healey, Denis, 180–81, 190, 227–29, 230–31, 242, 330 Heath, Edward defeat in 1974 election, 231–32, 233, 235–36 economic policies, 232–33, 235 on monetarism, 233, 236, 239–40, 242, 243 Heller, Walter H., 116, 307, 321 Heller, Walter W., 116, 307, 321 Hicks, John, 41, 101, 343 History of Economic Thought, A (Barber), 73 Hobhouse, Leonard Trelawny, 88–89, 318 Hoff, Trygve, 309 Holmes, Oliver Wendell Jr., 85, 317 Horse Feathers (movie), 48, 311 Hotelling, Harold, 28, 307 Howe, Geoffrey, 239, 242, 243–44, 245, 246, 337 Hughes, Emmet John, 4–5, 302 Humphrey, Hubert, 142 Hutchins, Robert, 33, 34, 309 hyperinflation in Austria after World War I, 62, 91, 122, 322 Friedman on, 151, 170–71, 203 Keynes on, 62 Samuelson on, 121, 152 in U.S. from 1960s onward, 91–92, 115, 120–22, 125 Volcker and, 178, 202 in Weimar Germany, 115, 122, 322 see also inflation income-expenditure model, 19, 99, 319 Income from Independent Professional Practice (Friedman and Kuznets), 33, 308 IndyMac, 272 inflation cost-push inflation, 121, 124, 152 demand-pull inflation, 77, 121–22, 124 Federal Reserve mandate, 109, 178 Friedman explanation of, 74, 77–78, 125, 128, 130–31 Friedman on causes of, 61, 93–94, 115, 126–27, 129–30, 136–37 Friedman solution to, 113, 127–28, 131–32, 151, 197 as hidden tax, 77–78 higher interest rates urged to control, 122, 123, 128, 130 Keynesians on causes of, 118, 137 Keynes on, 62, 129 monetarist explanation of, 74 Nixon and, 145–50 raising taxes to control, 123–24 rates in U.S., 1975–1980, 175, 176 “rational expectations,” 96, 115, 180–81 Samuelson on problem of, 74, 118–22, 123, 176 Samuelson on remedies for, 122–25 sharp rise from 1960s onward, 115, 120–21, 125, 183–84, 186, 188, 192 in the U.K., 227 Vietnam War and, 121, 145 see also hyperinflation; stagflation “Inflation is Caused by Governments” (Joseph), 233 interest rates as cause of Depression, 34–35, 44, 103, 104, 257 discount rate, 104, 186–87, 188, 212, 282 federal funds rate, 181, 186–87, 188, 190, 192, 263 higher rates to control inflation, 122, 123, 128, 130 “natural” and “market” rates of interest, 110–11, 114 prime rate, 187, 194–95 rate cuts during financial freeze, 276 rate cuts to prevent recession, 255–56 risks of artificially low rates, 66, 107–9 and value of money, 45 intervention by government COVID-19 pandemic, 287–89 by Federal Reserve during financial freeze, 273–77 by Federal Reserve to keep dollar steady, 175 Friedman on, 47–48, 87, 222–23, 236, 278 Hayek on, 65–68, 87, 222 Keynes on, 62–65, 68–69 Samuelson on, 65, 87, 88–90 invisible hand, 90, 91, 95 Japan, liquidity crisis in 1990s, 280 Jay, Peter, 228–29, 335 Johnson, Harry, 39, 310, 323 Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 5, 7, 51–53, 139, 140, 145, 302 Joseph, Keith about, 335 Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), 233 monetarism, 233–35, 237–38, 239 sound money policy and, 234, 238 Thatcher introduced to monetarism by, 237–38, 239 on unemployment, 234–35 views on the poor, 236, 336 JPMorgan, 273 Kahn, Richard, 39, 41, 310 Kaldor, Nicholas, 39, 306, 310 Kennedy, John Fitzgerald assassination, 5, 6, 302, 325 Camelot, 5, 22, 119, 302 Friedman on, 46 Galbraith and, 5–6, 22 Samuelson and, 6, 21–24, 120, 138 Kennedy, Joseph, 22 Keynesianism critique of The Road to Serfdom, 8, 68–69, 87 Great Depression and, 8, 23, 74–75, 98, 104, 106–7 macroeconomics, 18 multiplier effect, 14, 18–19, 39, 97, 100, 133 rift between Keynesians and conservatives, 38–40 stagflation and, 118–19, 289 Keynes, John Maynard about, generally, 302 aggregate demand, increasing, 23, 204, 235, 263, 339 Bretton Woods agreement, 40, 68, 142–43, 148, 177, 185, 310 Cambridge Circus, 39–41, 93, 290, 310 on capitalism, 65 on changing his mind, 42 duel with Hayek in 1931, 9, 38, 53, 69 on equilibrium in the economy, 63, 97 failure of free market, 64 fiscal policy and, 19, 106–8 Friedman’s article not published by, 28–29 Hayek challenge of, 9, 303 income-expenditure model, 19, 99, 319 on inflation, 62, 129 on intervention by government, 62–65, 68–69 “In the long run we are all dead,” 63, 96, 136, 324 on laissez-faire system, 63–64, 65 macroeconomics, 75–76, 94, 101, 133, 302 on managing the economy, 95 on monetary policy, 135 on moral values in economics, 69 multiplier, 14, 18–19, 39, 97, 100, 133 on quantity theory of money, 63, 94, 96–97, 98, 106 “rational expectations,” 96 tax cuts recommended by, 23, 204 on taxes in wartime, 32, 309 on unemployment, 15, 64, 234–35 on velocity of money, 63, 94, 97, 98 “You cannot push on a string,” 256, 263, 277, 338 see also specific titles Keynes, John Neville, 43 Kipling, Rudyard, 57, 313 Knight, Frank, 14, 28, 34, 82–83, 99, 304 Krugman, Paul, 285, 322 Kuhn, Thomas S., 94, 319 Kuznets, Simon, 29–30, 33, 71, 308 Laffer, Arthur lack of PhD, 206–7, 332 Laffer Curve and taxes, 205, 206, 208, 209, 332 supply-side economics, 205, 206–7, 250, 332 Lawson, Nigel, 245, 247, 337 Lehman Brothers, 275 Leigh-Pemberton, Robin, 246 Leijonhufvud, Alex, 283, 341 Leontief, Wassily, 15, 16, 29, 305 leveraging by banks, 272 Life in Our Times, A (Galbraith), 224–25 Lippmann, Walter, 4, 283, 302 Lucas, Robert Jr., 82, 283, 287, 317 Luce, Henry, 3 Luria, S.

pages: 147 words: 42,682

Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America
by Charles Murray
Published 14 Jun 2021

Whereas I was pessimistic about the potential of federal social programs to do good in most arenas, I thought the one exception was school vouchers, especially for parents who were already actively engaged in overseeing their children’s education. “I suggest that when we give such parents vouchers, we will observe substantial convergence of black and white test scores in a single generation,” I wrote, confident that I was right. During the 1980s, a number of new studies gave reason to think that things were getting better even without a school voucher program. When Richard Herrnstein and I were writing The Bell Curve in the early 1990s, we included encouraging signs that the European–African test-score difference was diminishing, though we were worried about signs that the narrowing had stalled.

Coleman Report college admissions; and IQ distribution College Board Consortium on Financing Higher Education Cotton, Tom Crime in the United States (FBI) crime rates: big-city; and economic activity; index crimes; murder arrests; and policing practice; property crime; reported offenses; shootings; small-city; and social policy; and socioeconomic status criminal justice reform critical race theory Cultural Revolution (China) Dallas, TX Declaration of Independence Democratic Party demographics: big-city; and immigration; misperceptions of; nomenclature; and self-identification; small-town/rural Dick, Philip, ix education: affirmative action in; inequality in; reform of; remedial; school vouchers; see also achievement tests; teachers Education Longitudinal Study Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965) employment discrimination Equal Educational Opportunity Survey (1965) Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Fayetteville, NC FBI: Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) feminism Floyd, George Forbes Fort Lauderdale, FL g (general intelligence) Gallup Gardner, Howard genetic testing gentrification Goldberg, Jonah Gould, Stephen J.

pages: 332 words: 100,601

Rebooting India: Realizing a Billion Aspirations
by Nandan Nilekani
Published 4 Feb 2016

MOOCs are currently viewed as an addendum to traditional classroom-based coursework; the latter enables you to get a degree from a deemed university, while the former is more important for acquiring the kind of skills that will help you land a job, a crucial aspect in a country whose standards of higher education are so low that nearly half the graduates it churns out every year are unemployable in any sector.15 Granting choice, eliminating fraud While MOOCs bring up regulatory concerns around innovation and the role of the state in education, there is another disruption that the government can bring about through incentive design. The concept of school vouchers has been discussed at length over the years, and was mentioned in Imagining India as well. This idea grants the power of choice to the consumer, and funds students instead of schools. Rather than pouring money only into government schools, a fraction of the funds can be used to grant school vouchers, which students can then use to pay for their education at a school of their choice. Naturally, students will gravitate to the institution that provides the best level of instruction, whether it’s public or private; the voucher system brings in competition that can help to lift the overall quality of both sets of institutions.

Naturally, students will gravitate to the institution that provides the best level of instruction, whether it’s public or private; the voucher system brings in competition that can help to lift the overall quality of both sets of institutions. The flow of money from the government to schools will now follow the principles of the open market—the best-performing schools will get more money as more students enrol, and the underperformers will either have to pull up their socks or go out of business. Nandan envisioned the impact of school vouchers on the educational system as a reform which ‘effectively removes ideology from funding and implementation and makes it easier, say, to hand over management of existing and failing government schools to the private sector, if this will attract students. This can bring the private sector and NGOs into already existing school infrastructure and government school buildings, instead of the current approach where we are constructing an alternative, private school system from scratch.’

Section 12 of the RTE mandates that private and unaided schools set aside 25 per cent of their total enrolment capacity for students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and that such students should be given free and compulsory education up to the elementary level. This provision of the RTE Act gives us an opportunity to create a voucher system, where poor families are issued school vouchers that can be used by parents to match children to schools in the same way that students are matched to engineering or medical colleges upon completion of standard twelve.16 Lastly, we would like to turn our attention to the question of de-materialization of degrees and skill certificates. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already announced a Digital Locker initiative in which a person’s important records, including educational certificates, will be stored securely in the cloud and can be accessed by government departments as needed.17 Fake resumes are circulating in the job market to an alarming degree, with an estimated one in five resumes in the IT industry being falsified.18 People go so far as to set up fake companies that can provide experience certificates to jobseekers, helping them to inflate their expertise and skills when job-hunting.19 A de-materialized degree combined with Aadhaar-based identification serves as a guarantee for the person’s educational qualifications, increasing trust between jobseekers and potential employers.

India's Long Road
by Vijay Joshi
Published 21 Feb 2017

What is ideally needed is a drastic cull of delinquent teachers! But change from within the government sector is very unlikely to happen, given entrenched union power and the inertia in the system. There is thus a strong pragmatic case in India for an education voucher system in which all schools, including government schools, would charge fees to cover their costs, and poor people would be given education vouchers to enable them to send their children to government or private schools, whichever they prefer, with the presumption that schools that fail to attract applicants would have to contract or close down. (Of course, government schools would have to continue to be the sole source of instruction in remote areas where private schools do not exist or do not come up.)

Indeed, one of the main arguments for public education is that it ensures universal free access (at the expense of the taxpayer) and makes up for the effects of income inequality. But this is a deficiency that could be corrected by offering all parents, or poor parents in particular, the option and the means to choose private or public schools for their children, by giving them ‘education vouchers’. Under such a scheme, both public and private schools would charge fees but students would ‘carry their school fees with them’ in the form of vouchers that are paid for out of general taxation. A voucher scheme would thus match the equity objective of free public education but would have the additionally important feature of enabling competition between public and private schools.

In the Indian context, it is hard to imagine that government schools could deliver greater teacher effort and better education outcomes solely on the basis of reform within the public school system, in response to the ‘voice’ of citizens. Or to put it another way, ‘voice’ alone would be ineffective if parents did not also have the possibility of ‘exit’. Thus the case for education vouchers in India is not ideological but pragmatic: competition and the threat of student-​exit are necessary conditions for public education to improve. There are two counter-​arguments. The first is that if vouchers were introduced, the children of parents in vocal elite-​groups would leave government schools, which would lead to further deterioration of these schools by reducing the pressure for reform.

pages: 370 words: 112,602

Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty
by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
Published 25 Apr 2011

For example, governments could subsidize insurance premiums, or distribute vouchers that parents can take to any school, private or public, or force banks to offer free “no frills” savings accounts to everyone for a nominal fee. It is important to keep in mind that these subsidized markets need to be carefully regulated to ensure they function well. For example, school vouchers work well when all parents have a way of figuring out the right school for their child; otherwise, they can turn into a way of giving even more of an advantage to savvy parents. Fourth, poor countries are not doomed to failure because they are poor, or because they have had an unfortunate history.

The Rise of Affordable Private Schools,” working paper (2010). 20 Sonalde Desai, Amaresh Dubey, Reeve Vanneman, and Rukmini Banerji, “Private Schooling in India: A New Educational Landscape,” Indian Human Development Survey, Working Paper No. 11 (2010). 21 However, among applicants to a lottery for secondary school vouchers for private schools in the Colombian city of Bogotá, the difference persisted: The winners did better than the losers on standardized tests, were 10 percentage points more likely to graduate, and scored better on the graduation exam. See Joshua Angrist, Eric Bettinger, Erik Bloom, Elizabeth King, and Michael Kremer, “Vouchers for Private Schooling in Colombia: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment,” American Economic Review 92 (5) (2002): 1535– 1558; and Joshua Angrist, Eric Bettinger, and Michael Kremer, “Long-Term Educational Consequences of Secondary School Vouchers: Evidence from Administrative Records in Colombia,” American Economic Review 96 (3) (2006): 847–862. 22 Desai, Dubey,Vanneman, and Banerji, “Private Schooling in India.” 23 Abhijit Banerjee, Shawn Cole, Esther Duflo, and Leigh Linden, “Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 122 (3) (August 2007): 1235–1264. 24 Abhijit Banerjee, Rukmini Banerji, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennerster, and Stuti Khemani, “Pitfalls of Participatory Programs: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Education in India,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 2 (1) (February 2010): 1–30. 25 Trang Nguyen, “Information, Role Models, and Perceived Returns to Education: Experimental Evidence from Madagascar,” MIT Working Paper (2008). 26 Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, “Growth Theory Through the Lens of Development Economics,” in Steve Durlauf and Philippe Aghion, eds., Handbook of Economic Growth, vol. 1A (Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Ltd.

See Joshua Angrist, Eric Bettinger, Erik Bloom, Elizabeth King, and Michael Kremer, “Vouchers for Private Schooling in Colombia: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment,” American Economic Review 92 (5) (2002): 1535– 1558; and Joshua Angrist, Eric Bettinger, and Michael Kremer, “Long-Term Educational Consequences of Secondary School Vouchers: Evidence from Administrative Records in Colombia,” American Economic Review 96 (3) (2006): 847–862. 22 Desai, Dubey,Vanneman, and Banerji, “Private Schooling in India.” 23 Abhijit Banerjee, Shawn Cole, Esther Duflo, and Leigh Linden, “Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 122 (3) (August 2007): 1235–1264. 24 Abhijit Banerjee, Rukmini Banerji, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennerster, and Stuti Khemani, “Pitfalls of Participatory Programs: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Education in India,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 2 (1) (February 2010): 1–30. 25 Trang Nguyen, “Information, Role Models, and Perceived Returns to Education: Experimental Evidence from Madagascar,” MIT Working Paper (2008). 26 Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, “Growth Theory Through the Lens of Development Economics,” in Steve Durlauf and Philippe Aghion, eds., Handbook of Economic Growth, vol. 1A (Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Ltd.

pages: 559 words: 161,035

Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools
by Steven Brill
Published 15 Aug 2011

And all of the Republicans were far more absolutely hostile to the unions than we were, so we thought we’d be okay with the unions in the fall, if we got there.” The Obama ’08 troops may have been liberated, but their candidate was not completely unshackled. Later in the campaign, Obama would have to walk back from some support he had offered for school vouchers during an interview. Vouchers are the ultimate extension of school choice. They allow parents to take a government check meant to cover the cost of their children’s education in public schools and use it to pay for any private school of their choice. Many school reformers who support charters—public schools open to all children without entrance requirements, except for winning a lottery where applications outstrip seats—do not support vouchers, because vouchers could allow public funds to pay for religious or politically affiliated schools, and because the whole idea of the government paying for private schools undermines the idea that K–12 education is a core government service.

However, when it came to the presidential election, she was not a Democrat for Education Reform. People like David Einhorn, the short seller who had written that early $250,000 check to DFER, might argue that DFER would be effective because its thrust was akin to Nixon’s going to China, but Rhee was so put off by Obama’s opposition to school vouchers and so appreciated John McCain’s rhetorical blasts against the teachers’ unions that she had told her boyfriend, Kevin Johnson, that she was going to vote for McCain. Johnson, the Sacramento Democratic mayoral candidate whom Rhee had met at the DFER event in Denver, was appalled. “You can’t cast a vote on this one issue,” he insisted.

Teaching,” 368 –69 North Carolina, as Race to the Top winner, 413, 414 NYC Teaching Fellows, 90, 91, 95 –96, 107 Obama, Barack, 42, 115, 117, 131, 157, 170, 236, 237, 278, 297 –98, 333, 345, 346, 379 –80, 402 economic stimulus plan of, 5, 7, 227, 237 –38, 239 –40, 313 education reform and, 3–4, 131 –32, 153 –54, 182 –83, 197 –98, 206 –7, 214 –15, 216 –17, 243, 288, 312, 353, 394, 411 –12, 415, 421, 437 education transition team of, 221 –22 Race to the Top initiative of, see Race to the Top school vouchers and, 183, 216 –17 in 2008 presidential campaign, 182 –83, 197, 206 –7, 214 –15, 216 –17, 245 Obey, David, 240 –41, 313 –14 Office of Management and Budget (OMB), 228, 237, 244, 259, 420 n Ohio, 231 n, 374, 429 as Race to the Top winner, 413, 414 One Day, All Children (Kopp), 54 Oprah Winfrey Show, 392, 396 Orszag, Peter, 151, 226 Palm Beach County, Fla., 232 Parent Power, 299 –300 Parent Revolution, 406 –7 Parker, Erin, 432 –36 Parker, George, 394 –95 Parker, Kevin, 327 Participant Media, 281, 285 Pastorek, Paul, 138, 237, 258, 306 –7, 310, 311, 315 –16, 361 Pataki, George, 111, 165 Paterson, David, 261 –62, 271 Peace Corps, 51 peer review, 49 –50, 232, 250 Pelosi, Nancy, 241 Peña, Federico, 207 Pennsylvania, 275, 307 Perkins, Bill, 295 –97, 299, 300, 327 –28, 380 –82, 384 Perot, Ross, 52, 62 Peter Hart Associates, 122 Peterson, Bart, 170 Petry, John, 115, 117 –18, 131 –32, 144 –46, 155 –56, 161, 162, 163, 165, 167, 168, 169, 183, 206, 223, 237, 327 –28 Harlem Success Academies and, 166 Phi Delta Kappan, 68 Phillips, Vicki, 178 –79, 201, 202 Picard, Cecil, 137 Pittsburgh, Pa., 396, 423 –24, 431 Gates program and, 202 –5, 233 –34, 238, 252 –53, 260, 347, 349, 358, 415, 423 Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers, 203 –5, 252 Podesta, John, 222 –23 Porter, Roger, 59 poverty, 2 educational achievement and, 27, 77, 180 Powell, Colin, 221 Powell, Michael, 333, 392 –94 Prince, The (Machiavelli), 97 principals, 176, 214, 260, 338 –39, 399, 409 accountability of, 89, 96, 103, 104, 148, 394 Leadership Academy and, 16, 120, 148, 149, 186, 399, 431 NLNS and, 82 –83 teachers’ unions and, 17, 90, 97 –100, 104, 120 –21, 122, 127, 186 –87 Project on the Next Generation of Teachers, 251 public education: budget increases vs. performance in, 50 bureaucracy in, 2, 29, 43, 44 localized structure of, 45 –46 politics of, 417 systemic failure of, 26 –27, 29, 50, 71, 283, 347 –48, 428 see also education reform public employee unions: backlash against, 430, 432 –33 collective bargaining and, 231 n, 430 political power of, 39 –40, 430 –31 “Quiet Revolution, The,” 353 Quinn, Christine, 409 Race to the Top, 4–9, 29, 60, 66, 175, 237 –44, 246, 254 –55, 279, 297, 304, 305, 313, 350 –51, 360, 380, 420, 422, 424, 429 –30, 437 “adjustments” to, 412 charter schools and, 8–9, 317 –18 media and, 261 –63, 273, 278 –79, 309, 319, 328, 337, 338, 353 memoranda of understanding (MOUs) of, 259, 268, 273 –76, 316, 320, 329, 336, 337, 343, 359, 361, 372, 413 murder boards for, 309 –10, 316 Round One of, 306 –12, 315 Round Two of, 315 –16, 320, 321 –23, 333, 334 –36, 337, 343, 353 –54, 359, 371 –78 secondary benefits of, 418 –19, 430 Statements of Work of, 377 teachers’ unions and, 345, 372, 373, 412 union backlash against, 263 –64 union contracts and, 266, 268 –69 vetting process for, 244, 254 –58, 268, 275 –76, 308 –12, 315 –20, 359 –62, 371 –78, 415 see also specific states Raskin, A.

Fortunes of Change: The Rise of the Liberal Rich and the Remaking of America
by David Callahan
Published 9 Aug 2010

option=com_content&view=article&id=74: the-2009-silicon-valley-index&catid=39:silicon-valley-index&Itemid=52. 16. Lori Olszewski, “Some Prop. 39 Backers Have Deep Pockets,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 23, 2000. bnotes.indd 302 5/11/10 6:29:36 AM notes to pages 190–221 303 17. Paul Festa, “High-Tech Advocates Clash over School Vouchers, Skilled Labor,” CNET News, September 22, 2000, http://news .cnet.com/High-tech-advocates-clash-over-school-vouchers,-skilledlabor/2100-1023_3-246068.html. 18. Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, “The Social and Political Views of American Professors,” Harvard University, Working Paper, September 24, 2007. 19. John Markoff, What the Doormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (New York: Viking, 2005). 9.

Someday, if Facebook goes public and if it can actually earn a profit, Zuckerberg is likely to be worth far more. Looking further ahead, the day will come when Zuckerberg starts to tire of business and will want to do something useful with his pile of money. And although it’s impossible to say what he might do, there is a good chance that he won’t be bankrolling right-wing think tanks or school vouchers. Zuckerberg’s fortune is just one of many that will be harnessed for public purposes in future years. Although the United States seems at the end of its second Gilded Age, we are still at the beginning of a golden era of philanthropy that taps the wealth created during this period. Some of today’s largest new fortunes have barely been touched for charitable or political causes—like the money of the Google Guys ($17.5 billion each in 2010), or the great wealth of people such as Steve Ballmer ($14.5 billion), Jeff Bezos ($12.3 billion), Abigail Johnson ($11.5 billion), James Simons ($8.5 billion), Steven Cohen ($6.4 billion), and on and on.

pages: 482 words: 122,497

The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule
by Thomas Frank
Published 5 Aug 2008

According to a 1998 memo, members of the Congressional Black Caucus were to be particular targets of Abramoff’s campaign to “develop” Democrats for the CNMI; two of them actually took trips to the islands (since their trips were sponsored by yet another friendly nonprofit, these representatives were unaware of Abramoff’s involvement). Another tactic in this quixotic campaign was school vouchers, the issue which always seems to come up when conservatives are moved to consider the black electorate. Proclaiming in 1997 that the CNMI—as part of its well-known devotion to free-market principle—was about to approve a vouchers program, Abramoff’s team brought various CNMI officials to the mainland and hooked them up with leading conservative voucher advocates and inner-city education activists in Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Washington, D.C.

Labor unions were number two; Norquist proposed that conservatives “crush labor unions as a political entity” with some sort of “paycheck protection” measure and weaken them more generally with strategic expansions of NAFTA, like forcing Teamsters “to compete with Mexican truck drivers.” Third were school vouchers, which would put paid to what he called the “2.1 million Democratic precinct workers belonging to the National Education Association.” Fourth, a few “modest reforms” at HUD and the Department of Education that would cut off funds to “big city machines.” And then—the coup de grâce—the Democratic Party would become “a dead man walking” when Team R privatized Social Security, permitting everyone in the country to own stock and thus share in those pleasures heretofore known only to the elite: “watching their investments grow—rather than shrink in the face of trial-lawyer parasites, labor-union work rules, and government-worker-driven taxes.”3 And much of this program was accomplished during the conservative era, if not on the precise terms Norquist suggested.

Wade Roosevelt, Franklin D. Rothbard, David Rove, Karl Saarinen, Eero Saipan. See Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) Saipan Tribune SALT treaties San Francisco Chronicle Santorum, Rick Saturday Evening Post Savage, Michael Savimbi, Jonas Scanlon, Michael schools vouchers science, war on Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) Seattle Times Sellars, Duncan Sequent (newspaper) Sessions, William sex industry shareholder revolts Shaw Group Shelby, Richard Shelk, John Sherman Anti-Trust Act Shriver, Sargent Silicon Valley Simpfenderfer, Mike Singapore “small government” “smart-growth” faction social Darwinism Social Security privatization of Social Security Administration South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission Southern Baptists Soviet Union collapse of Spain Special Operations Technology Spike, The (de Borchgrave) SSA Marine firm Stalin, Joseph Starr, Ken State, Department of Stayman, Allen Steffens, Lincoln Stevens, Ted Stewart, Scottn Stigler, George Stockman, David stock market crash of 1929 stock options strike suppression strip-mining Student Coalition for Truth student loan programs Students for a Better America Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) Students for America subcontractors “supply-side” theory Swann, Ingon Switzerland Syria Tan, Willie Target America (Tyson) tariffs tax-and-spend mantra taxes Ciskei and CNMI and cuts in income tax lobbyists and tax-exempt foundations tax revolts teamsters union Teapot Dome scandal Telecommunications Act (1996) Telling It Like It Is (videotape) Ten Commandments Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Tenorio, Froilan terra nova (journal) terrorism Tet Offensive Thailand Thatcher, Margaret think tanks Third Wave, The (Toffler) Threlkeld, John Tierney, John timber industry Tinian air base “Tinkering with the Success of Liberty” (Ferrara) Torres, Stanley tort reform tourist industry toy industry Tozzi, Jim trade associations tradition, destruction of Transportation Safety Administration Treason (Coulter) “Treason of the Senate, The” (Phillips series) Treasury Department trial lawyers “trips” program Trotsky, Leon trucking industry Tyson, James Ukraine union-busting firms Union Pacific Railroad UNITA United Brotherhood of Carpenters (UBC) United Nations U.S.

Crisis and Dollarization in Ecuador: Stability, Growth, and Social Equity
by Paul Ely Beckerman and Andrés Solimano
Published 30 Apr 2002

The envisaged expanded coverage of these programs has progressed slowly, however. Various new socialprogram initiatives were discussed during early stages of the crisis, but budget restrictions and, more importantly, political indecisiveness impeded their progress. Some, such as employment programs, never materialized at all and others, such as an education voucher program, were only implemented as of late 2001. By that time, the economy was showing signs of recovery, with GDP growing at 2.3 and 4.5 percent in 2000 and 2001, respectively, and with open unemployment down from a peak level of 14 percent in 1999 to around 10 percent in 2000 and 2001. Economic recovery was helped by rising oil prices (in 2000), migration abroad of large numbers of Ecuadorans, and several rounds of real-wage adjustments.

More likely, the real economy has become more sensitive to the effects of such shocks without the short-term cushion—albeit imperfect—that used to be provided by exchange-rate and monetary adjustment. The need for an adequate social-protection system remains. In the aftermath of the crisis, the Ecuadoran government has taken measures to allow for a recovery of real social spending after severe declines during the crisis, and it has introduced new programs, including the educational voucher program, targeted to the poor. Overall, however, the social safety net in many ways still suffers from the deficiencies it had at the start of the crisis. Much more is needed to provide effective protection to the vulnerable. This chapter aims to analyze the effects of the crisis on poverty and human development during the crisis and the response capacity of Ecuador’s social safety net.

pages: 924 words: 198,159

Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army
by Jeremy Scahill
Published 1 Jan 2007

For a time, Betsy and Dick lived down the street from the Prince family, including Erik, who is nine years younger than his sister.34 In 1988, Gary Bauer and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson began building what would become the Family Research Council (FRC), the crusading, influential, and staunchly conservative evangelical organization that has since taken the lead on issues ranging from banning gay marriage to promoting school vouchers for Christian schools to outlawing abortion and stem-cell research. To get it off the ground, though, they needed funding, and they turned to Edgar Prince. “[W]hen Jim Dobson and I decided that the financial resources weren’t available to launch FRC, Ed and his family stepped into the breach,” wrote Bauer.

In 2004 she was the single largest donor to the successful campaign to ban same-sex marriage in Michigan, kicking in $75,000 of her own money.89 She served on the boards of the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family and was active in the Council for National Policy and a host of other right-wing religious organizations.90 “My main thrust is to do things that Jesus would want you to do to further your knowledge of him and his ways,” she told the Holland Sentinel in 2003.91 Edgar, Elsa, and her new husband, Ren, cumulatively donated nearly $556,000 to Republican candidates and political action committees,92 along with untold millions to right-wing causes. Along with the DeVos family, the Princes remain major players in the conservative Christian movement in Michigan and nationally. One of their recent hard-fought but unsuccessful battles was to implement school vouchers in Michigan. The DeVos family itself spent upwards of $3 million in 2000 pushing the perennial conservative education ideal.93 Erik Prince adopted his father’s behind-the-scenes demeanor, as well as his passion for right-wing religious causes, but with a twist. “Erik is a Roman Catholic,” said author Robert Young Pelton, who has had rare access to Prince.

In many nations—right now—Christians are harassed, tortured, imprisoned, and even martyred for their faith in Jesus Christ.”151 Jim Jacobson, a former aide to Gary Bauer in Ronald Reagan’s White House, runs the group, which has taken public positions against the work of the United Nations, calling some of its agencies “merchants of misery,”152 and has protested that Iraqi self-determination could harm Christians.153 In calling for the United States to attack Afghanistan after 9/11, Jacobson declared, “Only unequivocal military strikes will express our commitment to world peace and the rule of law.”154 The board of directors included Blackwater lobbyist Paul Behrends, former Republican Senator Don Nickles, and former Voice of America director Robert Reilly, who began his career as a Reagan White House propagandist for the Nicaraguan Contras and worked briefly for war contractor SAIC on its ill-fated attempt to create a new Iraqi information ministry.155 In 2000 Erik Prince was on hand for a Michigan benefit to raise money for one of his family’s (and the theoconservative movement’s) pet causes—school vouchers. At the event, Prince spoke to the Wall Street Journal, saying both his family and the DeVos clan believe in conservative, Christian, free-market ideals, and that his beloved father’s business—the one responsible for building up Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council—“was an engine that generated cash that he could use to do good things.”156 He said his sister Betsy was using those “same energies.”157 By that time, the thirty-year-old Prince had his own small cash-generating engine, on the brink of becoming much, much bigger.

pages: 128 words: 38,187

The New Prophets of Capital
by Nicole Aschoff
Published 10 Mar 2015

Billionaires like the Waltons, the Broads, and the Fishers have spent hundreds of millions on education reform, and the Gateses are at the center of it all. They argue that we need to completely re-envision public education if we are to prepare children for a high-tech future. There are varying opinions on how to do it. Some, like the Waltons and the Broads, want school vouchers (government-issued certificates of funding that enable parents to send their children to private schools instead of public ones) and complete privatization. The Gateses think that vouchers have “some very positive characteristics” and praise the efficiency of parochial schools, but they think the public is too invested in public education and thus resistant to these kinds of sweeping change.23 Instead, the Gates Foundation is pursuing incremental change through the increased application of market mechanisms to public schooling.

pages: 134 words: 41,085

The Wake-Up Call: Why the Pandemic Has Exposed the Weakness of the West, and How to Fix It
by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge
Published 1 Sep 2020

Seattle and San Francisco both did reasonably well at handling Covid (certainly compared with Washington, DC). San Francisco and Boston are good at technology; Dallas leads the way on toll roads; New York has massively improved air quality. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, New Orleans embraced charter schools and school vouchers. Since the 1960s the federal government has generally centralized power, shifting it to the place that is farthest away from the people and closest to the organized special interests that crowd together in K Street. That process must be reversed. Big-city mayors should get more power over schools, transport, and police, and they should also be encouraged to copy successful ideas from other cities through a special federal government fund.

pages: 637 words: 128,673

Democracy Incorporated
by Sheldon S. Wolin
Published 7 Apr 2008

While 83 percent of Americans believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus, only 28 percent admit to a belief in evolution.3 These statistics take on added significance in light of the remarkable commingling of politics and religion that has occurred in recent years and gives every indication of increasing in the future. In that mixture it is not religion generally but primarily fundamentalist and evangelical religion whose energetic political activism is helping to shape the course of some public policies (e.g., antiabortion, school vouchers, and welfare programs) and playing a pivotal part in elections. Evangelical Protestants are in the vanguard of these developments, both as foot soldiers for the Republican Party and as influential players in Beltway politics.4 Contrary to a common assumption—that an “outdated” belief is similar to an old-model refrigerator or auto, that its antique status connotes inefficiency, feebleness, lack of power—the exact opposite is true of religious fundamentalists.

How influential the phony version can be was illustrated when, during the 2004 elections, the Democratic presidential candidate testified plaintively, “I am not a redistributionist Democrat. Fear not.” He identified himself as “an entrepreneurial Democrat.”22 The nationalistic, patriotic, and “originalist” ideology being hawked by Republicans promotes a myth of national unity, consensus, that obscures real cleavages in order to substitute synthetic ones (“the culture wars,” school vouchers, abortion) that leave power relationships unchallenged. Manufactured divisiveness complements the politics of gridlock; both contribute to induce apathy by suggesting that the citizenry’s involvement in politics is essentially unneeded, futile. In the one case, of consensus, active involvement is superfluous because there is nothing to contest—who wants to dispute the wisdom of The Founders?

pages: 482 words: 121,173

Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age
by Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne
Published 9 Sep 2019

Congressional Internet Caucus, 321n3 Connect America Fund, 323n17 Constitution, U.S., 9 Bill of Rights, 7 First Amendment to, 12, 15, 33, 36, 102 Fourth Amendment to, 7–8, 14, 15, 23, 26, 33, 34, 36 Constitutional Convention, 77 consumer credit, 246 consumer privacy, see privacy Cook, Tim, 16, 252 Coons, Chris, 314n9 copyright, 284 Correal, Annie, 220 Courtois, Jean-Philippe, 181 Court TV, 104 Crovitz, Gordon, 104–5 Curie, Marie, 184 Customs and Border Protection, US (CBP), 215, 220–21 cyberattacks, 111, 112–14, 124, 205 attribution of, 118–19 denial-of-service attack in Estonia, 91–92 NotPetya, 69–72 WannaCry, 63–69, 71–74, 122, 294, 300, 301 Cyber Defense Operations Center, 111 cybersecurity, 61–76, 92, 112–15, 119, 123, 294–95, 300, 302 China and, 251, 252 data sharing and, 283 generational divide in views on, 71 national security and, 110–11 tech companies’ attitudes toward, 294–95 Cybersecurity Tech Accord, 119–21, 294, 300, 301 cybertribes, 92–93 cyberwar, cyberweapons, 69, 118, 130, 205–6, 289 Czechoslovakia, 40 D DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), 173–74 Daily, 219–20 Daily Beast, 83 Daily Princetonian, 13 Dartmouth College, 193 data, xiii, xiv, 195 creation of, 274 government, 283–84, 297 open, 269–86, 297 ownership of, 283 privacy and, 282–84; see also privacy sharing of, 275–76, 280–83 data centers, xiv–xv, xviii–xix, 8, 19, 21, 24, 42, 44–45, 52, 133, 303 of Microsoft, xiv–xix, 5, 14–15, 29–30, 34, 42–46, 48–56 data science, 181, 196, 207, 264, 323n9 biomedical science and, 273 Davos, World Economic Forum at, 191–93, 202 DCU (Digital Crimes Unit), 78–81, 85, 111, 112, 316n2 Declaration Networks Group, 167 Declaration of Independence, 7 deep fakes, 99 DelBene, Suzan, 314n9 democracy(ies), 10, 77–88, 89, 91, 95, 97, 107, 149, 227, 229, 289, 295, 301–4 disinformation campaigns and, 94, 289, 302 foreign interference in, 105–6 see also elections Democratic National Committee (DNC), 78, 278 Democratic National Convention (2016), 77, 78 Democrats, 82, 84–85, 106, 172, 278–81 denial-of-service attacks, 91–92 Denmark, 109–10, 112, 123, 130 Depression, Great, 164, 165, 171, 242–44 Deutsche Telekom, 122 Dick, Philip K., 211 Dickerson, Caitlin, 220 DeGeorge syndrome, 213 Dietterich, Thomas, 328n12 Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, 283–84 Digital Geneva Convention, 113–15, 128, 300 digital neutrality, 35 diplomacy, 109–30 disabilities, 200, 287–88 disinformation campaigns, 90, 94, 102, 104, 106–7, 289, 294, 302 Russia and, 95–98, 103 Downing, Richard, 59 DREAMers, 173–74 E Economic Graph, 181 economy, 241–43, 289, 299 Edelman Trust Barometer, 216–17 Edison, Thomas, 194 education, 156, 180, 182, 186, 207 computer science, 170, 177–81, 184 Microsoft’s school voucher program, 177 Microsoft’s Technology Education and Literacy in Schools program, 178–79 national talent strategy and, 175–76 Washington State Opportunity Scholarship program, 181–82 Workforce Education Investment Act, 182–84 Egan, Mike, 331n8 8chan, 99 Einstein, Albert, 129, 171, 209–10, 289 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 172 ElectionGuard, 87 elections, 84, 95 in France, 81 hacking and, 81, 86–88 U.S. presidential election of 2016, 81, 82, 139, 144, 157, 172, 189, 278–82, 331n8 voting machines and, 87 electricity, 70, 286, 289, 299 data centers and, xiv, xvi, 44 in rural areas, 159, 160, 163–66 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), 22, 23, 33, 47 electronic grids and infrastructures, 70–71, 266, 299 El Paso, Tex., 233–35, 331n8 Ely, James, 110 email, 23, 24, 28, 49, 221, 237–38 phishing and, 79, 83 Russian hackers and, 81, 95 employee activism, 215–17 Empson, Mark, 70 encryption, 14–15, 19, 87, 149, 171, 283 endangered species, 288 engineering, 141–42 England, 316n2 National Health Service in, 62 see also United Kingdom Estonia, 89–93, 320n19 Étienne, Philippe, 123 European Commission, 131 European Court of Justice, 136, 137 European Union (EU), 43, 44, 47–48, 56, 124, 284, 314n10 Brexit and, 131–32, 139, 238 General Data Protection Regulation of, 131–32, 139–43, 146–49 International Safe Harbor Privacy Principles of, 133–36 Privacy Shield of, 137–38, 300 F FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), 336n10 Facebook, 2, 16, 44, 73–76, 85, 92, 95–99, 103, 104, 120–21, 124, 125, 133, 173, 253, 270, 272, 281, 285 Cambridge Analytica and, 144 Christchurch mosque shootings and, 99, 126 disinformation campaigns on, 90, 95–98 privacy and, 135, 144 facial recognition, 203, 211–30, 239, 264, 330n21 bias and, 198 legislation on, 226, 330nn19–20, 331n26 regulation of, 221–22, 224, 225, 228, 296 surveillance and, 227–28 Fancy Bear (APT28; Strontium), 78–81, 84–85 Fargo, N.Dak., 331n8 FarmBeats, 163 farmers, farming, 156, 163, 164, 171, 243–44 FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), 13, 22, 25, 27, 28, 36, 49, 63, 73, 78 data requested from Microsoft by, 31 FCC (Federal Communications Commission), 158, 323n17 Blue Book of, 101–2, 318nn27–28 broadband and, 153–56, 158, 322n6, 323n9 FedEx, 70 Ferguson, Bob, 173, 324n4 Ferry County, Wash., 151–55, 157, 166–67 fiber-optic cables, 13, 14, 42, 43, 153, 158, 159, 162, 163, 296 filing cabinets, xiv, 309n2 fire extinguishers, 236 fire horses, 231–32, 245, 247 First Amendment, 12, 15, 33, 36, 102 FISC (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court), 12 5G, 153, 266 Ford, Henry, 245, 246 4G, 158 Fourth Amendment, 7–8, 14, 15, 23, 26, 33, 34, 36 Fourth Geneva Convention, 113, 117–18 Fourth Industrial Revolution, 169 Fox News, 314n10 France, 126 National Assembly in, 224 presidential candidates in, 81 Revolution in, 319n36 1798 war with U.S., 9–10 terrorist attacks in Paris, 26–28 war between United Kingdom and, 105 Francis, James C., IV, 52, 314n10 Francis, Pope, 209–10 Frank, John, 3, 4, 8, 22 Franklin, Benjamin, 7, 77, 87, 107, 192 frauds and scams, 192–93, 316n2 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, 272–74, 276, 284–86 Freedom House, 222 freedom of speech, 102 French Revolution, 319n36 Friedman, Nat, 277 FTC (Federal Trade Commission), 29, 146, 310n6 G Galileo, 209 Garnett, Paul, 167 Gates, Bill, xviii, 29, 194, 240, 252, 254, 277, 325n11 Gates, Melinda, 252 Gebru, Timnet, 198 Gellman, Bart, 13 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), 131–32, 139–43, 146–49, 294 Genêt, Edmind Charles, 105–6, 319n36 Geneva, 129 Geneva Conventions, 113, 117–18, 320n16 Geography of Thought, The (Nisbett), 258, 261–62 George, John Earl, Sr., 165, 166 Germany, 39–41, 51–53, 56 Germany, Nazi, 39, 41, 61, 90, 129 Giant Company Software, xviii Gibson, Charlie, 314n10 Gilliland, Gary, 273 GitHub, 100, 277 Global Network Initiative (GNI), 333n16 Good, I.J., 328n12 Google, 16, 19, 44, 85, 97, 104, 120, 122, 124, 126, 133, 144, 173, 199, 216, 253, 256, 269, 272, 285 government sued by, 12, 18–19 Microsoft and, 12 military and, 203, 204, 215, 216 NSA and, 2, 4, 13 Plus, 270 YouTube, 2, 95, 99, 125, 126 GPS, 33–34, 228 Graham, Lindsey, 56, 57 Gramophone, 101 Graphika, 95 Great Depression, 164, 165, 171, 242–44 Greek philosophy, 259, 263 Green Bay, Wisc., 331n8 Green Bay Packers, 233, 331n8 Gregoire, Christine, 186, 189, 316n2, 325n20, 327n40 Guardian, 2–4, 8, 19 Gutenberg, Johannes, xiii, 209 Guterres, António, 205 Gutierrez, Horacio, 312–13n12 H hackers, hacking, 71, 79, 81, 86, 113, 266, 287 Chinese, 251, 263 elections and, 81, 86–88 hackers, Russian, 78, 82–83, 95 elections and, 81, 86 Strontium (Fancy Bear; APT28), 78–81, 84–85 Hamilton, 106, 249 Hamilton, Alexander, 105, 106 Harding, William, 100 Harvard Law Review, 330n24 Hastings, Reed, 16, 17, 335n7 Hatch, Orrin, 176, 314n9 He Huaihong, 261–62 Heiner, Dave, 194, 197 Heller, Dean, 314n9 Hippocratic oath for coders, 207–8 Hitachi, 122 Hoffman, Reid, 267, 292 Hogan-Burney, Amy, 25–26 Hollande, François, 28 HoloLens, 204, 238–39, 252 Hood, Amy, 174, 183, 188–89, 293–94, 306 horses, 240–45 fire, 231–32, 245, 247 Horvitz, Eric, 194, 199, 218, 327n5, 328n12 Hotmail, 21–22 Hour of Code, 179 House of Representatives, 7, 56, 57, 176 housing, 186–90, 302, 327n40 Houston, Tex., 96 Howard, David, 31–33, 35 HP, 120, 132 Huawei, 263 Hudson Institute, 84 Hu Jintao, 252 human rights, 260, 262–64, 292, 301–4, 333n16 Human Rights Watch, 206 Humphries, Fred, 55 Hutchinson, Bill, 272 Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, 272–74, 276, 284–86 I I, Robot, 193 IBM, 192, 285, 310n6 ImageNet, 197 immigration, 169, 171–76, 290 DACA program and, 173–74 facial recognition and, 214–15 national talent strategy and, 175–76 separation of children from parents at the border, 214, 215, 220–21 Immigration and Customs Enforcement, US (ICE), 214–15 Immigration Innovation Act (I-Squared), 176 information bubbles, 95 information technology, 70, 253, 298–300 China and, 253, 258, 263–67 persuasion and, 107 weaponization of, 97 infrastructure and grids, 70–71, 266, 299 Inslee, Jay, 325n20 Instagram, 95–96 Intel, 253 intellectual property, 113, 175, 207, 284, 336n9 International Campaign to Ban Landmines, 127 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 113, 118, 127, 320n16 International Humanitarian Law, 117 International Monetary Fund, 97 International Republican Institute (IRI), 84 international rules, 302 arms control, 116–18, 128, 302 International Safe Harbor Privacy Principles, 133–36 internet, 24, 41, 91, 106, 107, 192–93, 299, 335n9 Communications Decency Act and, 98–99 rural broadband and, 151–67, 289, 296, 322n6, 323n9 Internet Research Agency (IRA), 95–96 Interstate Commerce Commission, 299–300 Iowa, 164–66 Iran, 71 Iraq, 81 Ireland, 42–46, 49–56, 133, 135 Ischinger, Wolfgang, 96 ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), 28 Israel, 81 J Jacobins, 319n36 Japan, xvii, 75, 122, 124, 129, 253 Japanese-Americans, internment of, 10 Jarrett, Valerie, 15–16 Jefferson, Thomas, 105, 106, 313n5 Jewish manuscripts, 288, 335n2 jobs, 186, 187, 297, 302 artificial intelligence and, 231–47 creation of, 156–58 digital content in, 177–78 Economic Graph and, 181 immigration seen as threat to, 175 unemployment, 152, 156 Jobs, Steve, 142, 241 Jones, Nate, 25–26, 49 Jourová, Věra, 136–37 Joyce, Rob, 73 Justice Department (DOJ), xx, 12, 13, 16, 18–19, 26, 31, 35, 36, 49, 53, 56, 148 K Kahan, John, 323n9 Kaljurand, Marina, 91–92 Kenya, 160 Kentucky School for the Blind, 287, 334n1 KGB, 92 Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), 220, 329n11 King County, Wash., 152, 157 Kirkpatrick, David, 192 Kissinger, Henry, 250, 259 Kistler-Ritso, Olga, 90–92, 317n2 Klobuchar, Amy, 176 Klynge, Casper, 109, 112, 123, 127, 128, 130 Kollar-Kotelly, Colleen, 335n7 Koontz, Elbert, 152–55, 167 Kubrick, Stanley, 328n12 Kushner, Jared, 173, 280 L Lagarde, Christine, 97 landmines, 127, 320n21 language translation, 197, 236, 239–40, 261 Law Enforcement and National Security (LENS), 24–26 Lay-Flurrie, Jenny, 334–35n1 Lazowska, Ed, 178, 325n11 LEADS Act (Law Enforcement Access to Data Stored Abroad), 314n9 League of Nations, 129 Lee, Kai-Fu, 269–70, 272, 273, 276 legal work, impact of technology on, 236, 237 Leibowitz, Jon, 29 LENS (Law Enforcement and National Security), 24–26 Leopard, HMS, 313n5 libraries, ancient, xiii, 309n1 Liddell, Chris, 173 Lincoln, Abraham, 10 LinkedIn, 100, 103, 126, 181, 325n18 Linux, 277 Long, Ronald, 43 LTE, 158, 162 M Macron, Emmanuel, 81, 123–24, 127 Mactaggart, Alastair, 144–49 Madison, James, 7 Maersk, 70–71 Mahabharata, The, 205 malware, 63, 68 see also cyberattacks Mamer, Louisan, 164–66 Manhattan Project, 171 Map to Prosperity, 157 Marino, Tom, 314n9 Markle Foundation, 325n18 Martin, “Smokey Joe,” 231 Martinon, David, 123 Mattis, James, 67 May, Theresa, 132, 238–39 Mayer, Marissa, 18 McCaskill, Claire, 83 McFaul, Michael, 117 McGuinness, Paddy, 56 McKinsey Global Institute, 241 Mercedes-Benz, 240, 326n31 Merck, 70 Meri, Lennart, 91 Merkel, Angela, 239 Mexico, 124 Microsoft: AccountGuard program of, 84, 85 AI ethics issues and, 199–201, 205, 218, 222, 223, 229–30, 294 AI for Earth team of, 288 antitrust cases against, xx, 12, 29, 96, 143, 148, 175–77, 291, 310n6, 335n7 Azure, 126, 140 Bing, 100, 104, 126, 140 board of directors of, 335n7 Brazil and, 48–49, 53 China and, 65, 250–52, 254–55, 259–61 Christchurch Call to Action and, 125–27 cloud commitments of, 30, 33, 292 Code.org and, 179 Cyber Defense Operations Center of, 111 Cybersecurity Tech Accord and, 119–21 data centers of, xiv–xix, 5, 14–15, 29–30, 34, 42–46, 48–56 Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) of, 78–81, 85, 111, 112, 316n2 ElectionGuard system of, 87 engineering structure at, 142 facial-recognition technology of, 213–15, 222–24, 226–27, 229–30 and FBI’s request for customer data, 31 Friday meetings of, 62 General Data Protection Regulation and, 140–43, 146–47, 294 Giant Company Software and, xviii GitHub, 100, 277 Google and, 12 government sued by, 12–13, 15, 16, 18–19, 33, 35–37, 83 housing initiative of, 186–90, 327n40 Immigration and Customs Enforcement and, 214–15 Ireland and, 42–45, 49–56 Law Enforcement and National Security (LENS) team of, 24–26 LinkedIn, 100, 103, 126, 181, 325n18 Muslim travel ban and, 173 NSA and, 1–4, 8, 13–14 Office, 84, 140, 253, 254 OneDrive, 126 open-source code and, 277–78 Patch Tuesdays of, 74 Philanthropies, 178–80 privacy legislation advocated by, 132, 146–48, 321n3 Research (MSR), 170–71, 194–95, 197, 237, 275, 328n12 Research Asia (MSRA), 255 Rural Airband Initiative of, 160–62, 166–67 Russia’s message to, 86 school voucher program of, 177 security feature development in, 111 Senior Leadership Team (SLT), 15, 62, 141, 221, 274, 307 Strontium and, 78–81, 84–85 Tay, 255–56 TechFest, 170–71 Technology Education and Literacy in Schools (TEALS) program of, 178–79 TechSpark program of, 233, 331n8 Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) of, 63, 78–79, 84 Windows, xx, 12, 29, 63–65, 203, 212, 253, 270 Word, 50, 264 Xbox, 72, 100, 126, 140, 160 military weapons, 117–18, 127, 202–6, 264, 329n29 artificial intelligence in, 202–6, 215, 216 nuclear, 116–17, 210 minimum viable product, 225–26, 296 Minority Report, 211–12 missiles, 66–67 MLATs (mutual legal assistance treaties), 47–49, 52 Mobility Fund, 158, 323n17 Moglen, Eben, 314n8 Mook, Robby, 279 Morrow, Frank, 125 MSTIC (Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center), 63, 78–79, 84 Munich Security Conference, 96–97, 208 Muslims, 288, 335n2 Christchurch mosque shootings, 99–100, 102, 125–26 travel ban on, 173 Myerson, Terry, 65 Myhrvold, Nathan, 194–95 Mylett, Steve, 187 N Nadella, Satya, 28–29, 62, 65, 66, 73, 115, 126–27, 141–43, 172–74, 186–88, 199, 200, 204–5, 218, 219, 221, 239–40, 252, 274, 276, 277, 289, 292 National Australia Bank, 213 National Federation for the Blind, 334n1 National Geographic Society, 161 National Health Service, 62 National Human Genome Research Institute, 213 National Institute of Standards and Technology, 221–22 nationalism, 112, 300–301 National Press Club, 29 national security: cybersecurity and, 110–11 individual freedoms vs., 9–10 National Security Council, 26 NATO, 82, 124, 204 Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence, 92, 320n19 Nazi Germany, 39, 41, 61, 90, 129 negotiations, 175 Netflix, 16, 335n7 network effects, 270 neural networks, 196–97 New Deal, 164 NewsGuard, 104–5 New York, N.Y., 245 fire horses in, 231–32, 245, 247 New York Times, 63, 65–67, 99, 118, 219–20 New York University, 333n16 New Zealand, 75, 124, 125–27, 130 Christchurch mosque shootings in, 99–100, 102, 125–26 NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), 127, 128, 208, 302, 303 Nimitz, USS, 203 9/11 terrorist attacks, 8–9, 71, 72 1984 (Orwell), 227 Nisbett, Richard, 258, 261–62 North Korea, 63, 64, 67–69, 71–74 missile launch of, 67 Noski, Chuck, 335n7 NotPetya, 69–72 NSA (National Security Agency), 3, 8–9, 13, 15, 73 Google and, 2, 4, 13 Microsoft and, 1–4, 8, 13–14 PRISM program of, 1–4, 8, 9, 310–11n4 Snowden and, 4–5, 8, 9, 13–14, 17–19, 25, 41 Verizon and, 2–3 WannaCry and, 63–69, 71–74 and White House meeting with tech leaders, 16–19 nuclear power, 143–44 nuclear weapons, 116–17, 210 O Obama, Barack, 15–16, 26, 53, 83, 131, 174, 179–80, 278, 279, 284 meeting with tech leaders called by, 16–19 Office, 84, 140, 253, 254 Office of Personnel, US (OPM), 251, 263 O’Mara, Margaret, 297, 335n9 OneDrive, 126 Open Data Initiative, 285 Oracle, 120 Orwell, George, 227 O’Sullivan, Kate, 119–20 Otis, James, Jr., 6–7, 311nn14–15 Ottawa Convention, 320n21 Oxford University, 95 P Paglia, Vincenzo, 208–9 Pai, Ajit, 153–54 Pakistan, 21–22 Palais des Nations, 129 Paltalk, 2 Panke, Helmut, 335n7 paralegals, 236 Paris, terrorist attacks in, 26–28 Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace, 123–25, 127, 128, 300, 301 Paris Peace Forum, 123 Parscale, Brad, 280, 281 Partnership on AI, 200–201 Partovi, Hadi, 179 PAWS (Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security), 288 PBS NewsHour, 85–86 Pearl, Daniel, 21–22 Pearl Harbor attack, 10 Pelosi, Nancy, 57 Penn, Mark, 312–13n12 Pettet, Zellmer, 242–44 Petya, 69 Pew Research Center, 155–56, 323n9 phishing, 79, 83 Pickard, Vincent, 101 Pincus, Mark, 17–18 poachers, 288 Posner, Michael, 333n16 post office, 7, 192 Prague Spring, 40–41 presidential election of 2016, 81, 82, 139, 144, 157, 172, 189, 278–82, 331n8 Preska, Loretta, 314n10 Priebus, Reince, 279–80, 282 Princeton University, 13, 174, 218, 288, 314n10, 335n2 printing press, xiii, 209 PRISM (Planning Tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization, and Management), 1–4, 8, 9, 310–11n4 Pritzker, Penny, 136, 137, 250 privacy, 5–6, 21, 22, 30, 39–59, 131–49, 193, 229, 289, 300, 301 artificial intelligence and, 171, 199–200, 207 California Consumer Privacy Act, 147–48 data sharing and, 282–84 differential privacy, 282–83 Facebook and, 135, 144 facial recognition and, see facial recognition Fourth Amendment and, 7–8, 14, 15, 26 General Data Protection Regulation and, 131–32, 139–43, 146–49 legislation on, 132, 146–48, 321n3 Privacy Shield and, 137–38, 300 public attitudes about, 143 public safety and, 21–37, 222 reasonable expectation of, 7–8, 34 right to, 330n24 Safe Harbor and, 133–34 search warrants and, see search warrants social media and, 145 Wilkes and, 5–6, 23 see also surveillance Privacy Shield, 137–38, 300 Private AI, 171 Progressive movement, 245 ProPublica, 197–98 Proposition 13, 146 Purdy, Abraham, 232 Q Quincy, Wash., xiv–xv, 5, 34, 42 R racial minorities, 184–85 radio, 95, 100–102, 106, 159 Radio Free Europe, 107 radiologists, 236–37 railroads, 110, 299–300 Railroads and American Law (Ely), 110 ransomware, 68 WannaCry, 63–69, 71–74, 122, 294, 300, 301 Rashid, Rick, 237, 238 Reagan, Nancy, 116 Reagan, Ronald, 23, 116, 146 Red Cross, 113, 118, 127, 320n16 Reddit, 99 Redmond, Wash., 187 Reform Government Surveillance, 16–17 regulation, 102, 143, 144, 192, 206–7, 219, 224, 266, 295–98, 300, 301, 303 of artificial intelligence, 192, 296 China and, 258 of facial recognition, 221–22, 224, 225, 228, 296 of governments, 301–2 of railroads, 299 of social media, 98, 100, 102–4, 144 Republic, Wash., 151–52, 155, 167 Republican National Committee (RNC), 279–82 Republicans, 82, 106, 172, 278–80 International Republican Institute, 84 Republic Brewing Company, 167 restaurants, fast-food, 235, 241 Ries, Eric, 225 Riley v.

Congressional Internet Caucus, 321n3 Connect America Fund, 323n17 Constitution, U.S., 9 Bill of Rights, 7 First Amendment to, 12, 15, 33, 36, 102 Fourth Amendment to, 7–8, 14, 15, 23, 26, 33, 34, 36 Constitutional Convention, 77 consumer credit, 246 consumer privacy, see privacy Cook, Tim, 16, 252 Coons, Chris, 314n9 copyright, 284 Correal, Annie, 220 Courtois, Jean-Philippe, 181 Court TV, 104 Crovitz, Gordon, 104–5 Curie, Marie, 184 Customs and Border Protection, US (CBP), 215, 220–21 cyberattacks, 111, 112–14, 124, 205 attribution of, 118–19 denial-of-service attack in Estonia, 91–92 NotPetya, 69–72 WannaCry, 63–69, 71–74, 122, 294, 300, 301 Cyber Defense Operations Center, 111 cybersecurity, 61–76, 92, 112–15, 119, 123, 294–95, 300, 302 China and, 251, 252 data sharing and, 283 generational divide in views on, 71 national security and, 110–11 tech companies’ attitudes toward, 294–95 Cybersecurity Tech Accord, 119–21, 294, 300, 301 cybertribes, 92–93 cyberwar, cyberweapons, 69, 118, 130, 205–6, 289 Czechoslovakia, 40 D DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), 173–74 Daily, 219–20 Daily Beast, 83 Daily Princetonian, 13 Dartmouth College, 193 data, xiii, xiv, 195 creation of, 274 government, 283–84, 297 open, 269–86, 297 ownership of, 283 privacy and, 282–84; see also privacy sharing of, 275–76, 280–83 data centers, xiv–xv, xviii–xix, 8, 19, 21, 24, 42, 44–45, 52, 133, 303 of Microsoft, xiv–xix, 5, 14–15, 29–30, 34, 42–46, 48–56 data science, 181, 196, 207, 264, 323n9 biomedical science and, 273 Davos, World Economic Forum at, 191–93, 202 DCU (Digital Crimes Unit), 78–81, 85, 111, 112, 316n2 Declaration Networks Group, 167 Declaration of Independence, 7 deep fakes, 99 DelBene, Suzan, 314n9 democracy(ies), 10, 77–88, 89, 91, 95, 97, 107, 149, 227, 229, 289, 295, 301–4 disinformation campaigns and, 94, 289, 302 foreign interference in, 105–6 see also elections Democratic National Committee (DNC), 78, 278 Democratic National Convention (2016), 77, 78 Democrats, 82, 84–85, 106, 172, 278–81 denial-of-service attacks, 91–92 Denmark, 109–10, 112, 123, 130 Depression, Great, 164, 165, 171, 242–44 Deutsche Telekom, 122 Dick, Philip K., 211 Dickerson, Caitlin, 220 DeGeorge syndrome, 213 Dietterich, Thomas, 328n12 Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, 283–84 Digital Geneva Convention, 113–15, 128, 300 digital neutrality, 35 diplomacy, 109–30 disabilities, 200, 287–88 disinformation campaigns, 90, 94, 102, 104, 106–7, 289, 294, 302 Russia and, 95–98, 103 Downing, Richard, 59 DREAMers, 173–74 E Economic Graph, 181 economy, 241–43, 289, 299 Edelman Trust Barometer, 216–17 Edison, Thomas, 194 education, 156, 180, 182, 186, 207 computer science, 170, 177–81, 184 Microsoft’s school voucher program, 177 Microsoft’s Technology Education and Literacy in Schools program, 178–79 national talent strategy and, 175–76 Washington State Opportunity Scholarship program, 181–82 Workforce Education Investment Act, 182–84 Egan, Mike, 331n8 8chan, 99 Einstein, Albert, 129, 171, 209–10, 289 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 172 ElectionGuard, 87 elections, 84, 95 in France, 81 hacking and, 81, 86–88 U.S. presidential election of 2016, 81, 82, 139, 144, 157, 172, 189, 278–82, 331n8 voting machines and, 87 electricity, 70, 286, 289, 299 data centers and, xiv, xvi, 44 in rural areas, 159, 160, 163–66 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), 22, 23, 33, 47 electronic grids and infrastructures, 70–71, 266, 299 El Paso, Tex., 233–35, 331n8 Ely, James, 110 email, 23, 24, 28, 49, 221, 237–38 phishing and, 79, 83 Russian hackers and, 81, 95 employee activism, 215–17 Empson, Mark, 70 encryption, 14–15, 19, 87, 149, 171, 283 endangered species, 288 engineering, 141–42 England, 316n2 National Health Service in, 62 see also United Kingdom Estonia, 89–93, 320n19 Étienne, Philippe, 123 European Commission, 131 European Court of Justice, 136, 137 European Union (EU), 43, 44, 47–48, 56, 124, 284, 314n10 Brexit and, 131–32, 139, 238 General Data Protection Regulation of, 131–32, 139–43, 146–49 International Safe Harbor Privacy Principles of, 133–36 Privacy Shield of, 137–38, 300 F FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), 336n10 Facebook, 2, 16, 44, 73–76, 85, 92, 95–99, 103, 104, 120–21, 124, 125, 133, 173, 253, 270, 272, 281, 285 Cambridge Analytica and, 144 Christchurch mosque shootings and, 99, 126 disinformation campaigns on, 90, 95–98 privacy and, 135, 144 facial recognition, 203, 211–30, 239, 264, 330n21 bias and, 198 legislation on, 226, 330nn19–20, 331n26 regulation of, 221–22, 224, 225, 228, 296 surveillance and, 227–28 Fancy Bear (APT28; Strontium), 78–81, 84–85 Fargo, N.Dak., 331n8 FarmBeats, 163 farmers, farming, 156, 163, 164, 171, 243–44 FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), 13, 22, 25, 27, 28, 36, 49, 63, 73, 78 data requested from Microsoft by, 31 FCC (Federal Communications Commission), 158, 323n17 Blue Book of, 101–2, 318nn27–28 broadband and, 153–56, 158, 322n6, 323n9 FedEx, 70 Ferguson, Bob, 173, 324n4 Ferry County, Wash., 151–55, 157, 166–67 fiber-optic cables, 13, 14, 42, 43, 153, 158, 159, 162, 163, 296 filing cabinets, xiv, 309n2 fire extinguishers, 236 fire horses, 231–32, 245, 247 First Amendment, 12, 15, 33, 36, 102 FISC (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court), 12 5G, 153, 266 Ford, Henry, 245, 246 4G, 158 Fourth Amendment, 7–8, 14, 15, 23, 26, 33, 34, 36 Fourth Geneva Convention, 113, 117–18 Fourth Industrial Revolution, 169 Fox News, 314n10 France, 126 National Assembly in, 224 presidential candidates in, 81 Revolution in, 319n36 1798 war with U.S., 9–10 terrorist attacks in Paris, 26–28 war between United Kingdom and, 105 Francis, James C., IV, 52, 314n10 Francis, Pope, 209–10 Frank, John, 3, 4, 8, 22 Franklin, Benjamin, 7, 77, 87, 107, 192 frauds and scams, 192–93, 316n2 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, 272–74, 276, 284–86 Freedom House, 222 freedom of speech, 102 French Revolution, 319n36 Friedman, Nat, 277 FTC (Federal Trade Commission), 29, 146, 310n6 G Galileo, 209 Garnett, Paul, 167 Gates, Bill, xviii, 29, 194, 240, 252, 254, 277, 325n11 Gates, Melinda, 252 Gebru, Timnet, 198 Gellman, Bart, 13 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), 131–32, 139–43, 146–49, 294 Genêt, Edmind Charles, 105–6, 319n36 Geneva, 129 Geneva Conventions, 113, 117–18, 320n16 Geography of Thought, The (Nisbett), 258, 261–62 George, John Earl, Sr., 165, 166 Germany, 39–41, 51–53, 56 Germany, Nazi, 39, 41, 61, 90, 129 Giant Company Software, xviii Gibson, Charlie, 314n10 Gilliland, Gary, 273 GitHub, 100, 277 Global Network Initiative (GNI), 333n16 Good, I.J., 328n12 Google, 16, 19, 44, 85, 97, 104, 120, 122, 124, 126, 133, 144, 173, 199, 216, 253, 256, 269, 272, 285 government sued by, 12, 18–19 Microsoft and, 12 military and, 203, 204, 215, 216 NSA and, 2, 4, 13 Plus, 270 YouTube, 2, 95, 99, 125, 126 GPS, 33–34, 228 Graham, Lindsey, 56, 57 Gramophone, 101 Graphika, 95 Great Depression, 164, 165, 171, 242–44 Greek philosophy, 259, 263 Green Bay, Wisc., 331n8 Green Bay Packers, 233, 331n8 Gregoire, Christine, 186, 189, 316n2, 325n20, 327n40 Guardian, 2–4, 8, 19 Gutenberg, Johannes, xiii, 209 Guterres, António, 205 Gutierrez, Horacio, 312–13n12 H hackers, hacking, 71, 79, 81, 86, 113, 266, 287 Chinese, 251, 263 elections and, 81, 86–88 hackers, Russian, 78, 82–83, 95 elections and, 81, 86 Strontium (Fancy Bear; APT28), 78–81, 84–85 Hamilton, 106, 249 Hamilton, Alexander, 105, 106 Harding, William, 100 Harvard Law Review, 330n24 Hastings, Reed, 16, 17, 335n7 Hatch, Orrin, 176, 314n9 He Huaihong, 261–62 Heiner, Dave, 194, 197 Heller, Dean, 314n9 Hippocratic oath for coders, 207–8 Hitachi, 122 Hoffman, Reid, 267, 292 Hogan-Burney, Amy, 25–26 Hollande, François, 28 HoloLens, 204, 238–39, 252 Hood, Amy, 174, 183, 188–89, 293–94, 306 horses, 240–45 fire, 231–32, 245, 247 Horvitz, Eric, 194, 199, 218, 327n5, 328n12 Hotmail, 21–22 Hour of Code, 179 House of Representatives, 7, 56, 57, 176 housing, 186–90, 302, 327n40 Houston, Tex., 96 Howard, David, 31–33, 35 HP, 120, 132 Huawei, 263 Hudson Institute, 84 Hu Jintao, 252 human rights, 260, 262–64, 292, 301–4, 333n16 Human Rights Watch, 206 Humphries, Fred, 55 Hutchinson, Bill, 272 Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, 272–74, 276, 284–86 I I, Robot, 193 IBM, 192, 285, 310n6 ImageNet, 197 immigration, 169, 171–76, 290 DACA program and, 173–74 facial recognition and, 214–15 national talent strategy and, 175–76 separation of children from parents at the border, 214, 215, 220–21 Immigration and Customs Enforcement, US (ICE), 214–15 Immigration Innovation Act (I-Squared), 176 information bubbles, 95 information technology, 70, 253, 298–300 China and, 253, 258, 263–67 persuasion and, 107 weaponization of, 97 infrastructure and grids, 70–71, 266, 299 Inslee, Jay, 325n20 Instagram, 95–96 Intel, 253 intellectual property, 113, 175, 207, 284, 336n9 International Campaign to Ban Landmines, 127 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 113, 118, 127, 320n16 International Humanitarian Law, 117 International Monetary Fund, 97 International Republican Institute (IRI), 84 international rules, 302 arms control, 116–18, 128, 302 International Safe Harbor Privacy Principles, 133–36 internet, 24, 41, 91, 106, 107, 192–93, 299, 335n9 Communications Decency Act and, 98–99 rural broadband and, 151–67, 289, 296, 322n6, 323n9 Internet Research Agency (IRA), 95–96 Interstate Commerce Commission, 299–300 Iowa, 164–66 Iran, 71 Iraq, 81 Ireland, 42–46, 49–56, 133, 135 Ischinger, Wolfgang, 96 ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), 28 Israel, 81 J Jacobins, 319n36 Japan, xvii, 75, 122, 124, 129, 253 Japanese-Americans, internment of, 10 Jarrett, Valerie, 15–16 Jefferson, Thomas, 105, 106, 313n5 Jewish manuscripts, 288, 335n2 jobs, 186, 187, 297, 302 artificial intelligence and, 231–47 creation of, 156–58 digital content in, 177–78 Economic Graph and, 181 immigration seen as threat to, 175 unemployment, 152, 156 Jobs, Steve, 142, 241 Jones, Nate, 25–26, 49 Jourová, Věra, 136–37 Joyce, Rob, 73 Justice Department (DOJ), xx, 12, 13, 16, 18–19, 26, 31, 35, 36, 49, 53, 56, 148 K Kahan, John, 323n9 Kaljurand, Marina, 91–92 Kenya, 160 Kentucky School for the Blind, 287, 334n1 KGB, 92 Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), 220, 329n11 King County, Wash., 152, 157 Kirkpatrick, David, 192 Kissinger, Henry, 250, 259 Kistler-Ritso, Olga, 90–92, 317n2 Klobuchar, Amy, 176 Klynge, Casper, 109, 112, 123, 127, 128, 130 Kollar-Kotelly, Colleen, 335n7 Koontz, Elbert, 152–55, 167 Kubrick, Stanley, 328n12 Kushner, Jared, 173, 280 L Lagarde, Christine, 97 landmines, 127, 320n21 language translation, 197, 236, 239–40, 261 Law Enforcement and National Security (LENS), 24–26 Lay-Flurrie, Jenny, 334–35n1 Lazowska, Ed, 178, 325n11 LEADS Act (Law Enforcement Access to Data Stored Abroad), 314n9 League of Nations, 129 Lee, Kai-Fu, 269–70, 272, 273, 276 legal work, impact of technology on, 236, 237 Leibowitz, Jon, 29 LENS (Law Enforcement and National Security), 24–26 Leopard, HMS, 313n5 libraries, ancient, xiii, 309n1 Liddell, Chris, 173 Lincoln, Abraham, 10 LinkedIn, 100, 103, 126, 181, 325n18 Linux, 277 Long, Ronald, 43 LTE, 158, 162 M Macron, Emmanuel, 81, 123–24, 127 Mactaggart, Alastair, 144–49 Madison, James, 7 Maersk, 70–71 Mahabharata, The, 205 malware, 63, 68 see also cyberattacks Mamer, Louisan, 164–66 Manhattan Project, 171 Map to Prosperity, 157 Marino, Tom, 314n9 Markle Foundation, 325n18 Martin, “Smokey Joe,” 231 Martinon, David, 123 Mattis, James, 67 May, Theresa, 132, 238–39 Mayer, Marissa, 18 McCaskill, Claire, 83 McFaul, Michael, 117 McGuinness, Paddy, 56 McKinsey Global Institute, 241 Mercedes-Benz, 240, 326n31 Merck, 70 Meri, Lennart, 91 Merkel, Angela, 239 Mexico, 124 Microsoft: AccountGuard program of, 84, 85 AI ethics issues and, 199–201, 205, 218, 222, 223, 229–30, 294 AI for Earth team of, 288 antitrust cases against, xx, 12, 29, 96, 143, 148, 175–77, 291, 310n6, 335n7 Azure, 126, 140 Bing, 100, 104, 126, 140 board of directors of, 335n7 Brazil and, 48–49, 53 China and, 65, 250–52, 254–55, 259–61 Christchurch Call to Action and, 125–27 cloud commitments of, 30, 33, 292 Code.org and, 179 Cyber Defense Operations Center of, 111 Cybersecurity Tech Accord and, 119–21 data centers of, xiv–xix, 5, 14–15, 29–30, 34, 42–46, 48–56 Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) of, 78–81, 85, 111, 112, 316n2 ElectionGuard system of, 87 engineering structure at, 142 facial-recognition technology of, 213–15, 222–24, 226–27, 229–30 and FBI’s request for customer data, 31 Friday meetings of, 62 General Data Protection Regulation and, 140–43, 146–47, 294 Giant Company Software and, xviii GitHub, 100, 277 Google and, 12 government sued by, 12–13, 15, 16, 18–19, 33, 35–37, 83 housing initiative of, 186–90, 327n40 Immigration and Customs Enforcement and, 214–15 Ireland and, 42–45, 49–56 Law Enforcement and National Security (LENS) team of, 24–26 LinkedIn, 100, 103, 126, 181, 325n18 Muslim travel ban and, 173 NSA and, 1–4, 8, 13–14 Office, 84, 140, 253, 254 OneDrive, 126 open-source code and, 277–78 Patch Tuesdays of, 74 Philanthropies, 178–80 privacy legislation advocated by, 132, 146–48, 321n3 Research (MSR), 170–71, 194–95, 197, 237, 275, 328n12 Research Asia (MSRA), 255 Rural Airband Initiative of, 160–62, 166–67 Russia’s message to, 86 school voucher program of, 177 security feature development in, 111 Senior Leadership Team (SLT), 15, 62, 141, 221, 274, 307 Strontium and, 78–81, 84–85 Tay, 255–56 TechFest, 170–71 Technology Education and Literacy in Schools (TEALS) program of, 178–79 TechSpark program of, 233, 331n8 Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) of, 63, 78–79, 84 Windows, xx, 12, 29, 63–65, 203, 212, 253, 270 Word, 50, 264 Xbox, 72, 100, 126, 140, 160 military weapons, 117–18, 127, 202–6, 264, 329n29 artificial intelligence in, 202–6, 215, 216 nuclear, 116–17, 210 minimum viable product, 225–26, 296 Minority Report, 211–12 missiles, 66–67 MLATs (mutual legal assistance treaties), 47–49, 52 Mobility Fund, 158, 323n17 Moglen, Eben, 314n8 Mook, Robby, 279 Morrow, Frank, 125 MSTIC (Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center), 63, 78–79, 84 Munich Security Conference, 96–97, 208 Muslims, 288, 335n2 Christchurch mosque shootings, 99–100, 102, 125–26 travel ban on, 173 Myerson, Terry, 65 Myhrvold, Nathan, 194–95 Mylett, Steve, 187 N Nadella, Satya, 28–29, 62, 65, 66, 73, 115, 126–27, 141–43, 172–74, 186–88, 199, 200, 204–5, 218, 219, 221, 239–40, 252, 274, 276, 277, 289, 292 National Australia Bank, 213 National Federation for the Blind, 334n1 National Geographic Society, 161 National Health Service, 62 National Human Genome Research Institute, 213 National Institute of Standards and Technology, 221–22 nationalism, 112, 300–301 National Press Club, 29 national security: cybersecurity and, 110–11 individual freedoms vs., 9–10 National Security Council, 26 NATO, 82, 124, 204 Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence, 92, 320n19 Nazi Germany, 39, 41, 61, 90, 129 negotiations, 175 Netflix, 16, 335n7 network effects, 270 neural networks, 196–97 New Deal, 164 NewsGuard, 104–5 New York, N.Y., 245 fire horses in, 231–32, 245, 247 New York Times, 63, 65–67, 99, 118, 219–20 New York University, 333n16 New Zealand, 75, 124, 125–27, 130 Christchurch mosque shootings in, 99–100, 102, 125–26 NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), 127, 128, 208, 302, 303 Nimitz, USS, 203 9/11 terrorist attacks, 8–9, 71, 72 1984 (Orwell), 227 Nisbett, Richard, 258, 261–62 North Korea, 63, 64, 67–69, 71–74 missile launch of, 67 Noski, Chuck, 335n7 NotPetya, 69–72 NSA (National Security Agency), 3, 8–9, 13, 15, 73 Google and, 2, 4, 13 Microsoft and, 1–4, 8, 13–14 PRISM program of, 1–4, 8, 9, 310–11n4 Snowden and, 4–5, 8, 9, 13–14, 17–19, 25, 41 Verizon and, 2–3 WannaCry and, 63–69, 71–74 and White House meeting with tech leaders, 16–19 nuclear power, 143–44 nuclear weapons, 116–17, 210 O Obama, Barack, 15–16, 26, 53, 83, 131, 174, 179–80, 278, 279, 284 meeting with tech leaders called by, 16–19 Office, 84, 140, 253, 254 Office of Personnel, US (OPM), 251, 263 O’Mara, Margaret, 297, 335n9 OneDrive, 126 Open Data Initiative, 285 Oracle, 120 Orwell, George, 227 O’Sullivan, Kate, 119–20 Otis, James, Jr., 6–7, 311nn14–15 Ottawa Convention, 320n21 Oxford University, 95 P Paglia, Vincenzo, 208–9 Pai, Ajit, 153–54 Pakistan, 21–22 Palais des Nations, 129 Paltalk, 2 Panke, Helmut, 335n7 paralegals, 236 Paris, terrorist attacks in, 26–28 Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace, 123–25, 127, 128, 300, 301 Paris Peace Forum, 123 Parscale, Brad, 280, 281 Partnership on AI, 200–201 Partovi, Hadi, 179 PAWS (Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security), 288 PBS NewsHour, 85–86 Pearl, Daniel, 21–22 Pearl Harbor attack, 10 Pelosi, Nancy, 57 Penn, Mark, 312–13n12 Pettet, Zellmer, 242–44 Petya, 69 Pew Research Center, 155–56, 323n9 phishing, 79, 83 Pickard, Vincent, 101 Pincus, Mark, 17–18 poachers, 288 Posner, Michael, 333n16 post office, 7, 192 Prague Spring, 40–41 presidential election of 2016, 81, 82, 139, 144, 157, 172, 189, 278–82, 331n8 Preska, Loretta, 314n10 Priebus, Reince, 279–80, 282 Princeton University, 13, 174, 218, 288, 314n10, 335n2 printing press, xiii, 209 PRISM (Planning Tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization, and Management), 1–4, 8, 9, 310–11n4 Pritzker, Penny, 136, 137, 250 privacy, 5–6, 21, 22, 30, 39–59, 131–49, 193, 229, 289, 300, 301 artificial intelligence and, 171, 199–200, 207 California Consumer Privacy Act, 147–48 data sharing and, 282–84 differential privacy, 282–83 Facebook and, 135, 144 facial recognition and, see facial recognition Fourth Amendment and, 7–8, 14, 15, 26 General Data Protection Regulation and, 131–32, 139–43, 146–49 legislation on, 132, 146–48, 321n3 Privacy Shield and, 137–38, 300 public attitudes about, 143 public safety and, 21–37, 222 reasonable expectation of, 7–8, 34 right to, 330n24 Safe Harbor and, 133–34 search warrants and, see search warrants social media and, 145 Wilkes and, 5–6, 23 see also surveillance Privacy Shield, 137–38, 300 Private AI, 171 Progressive movement, 245 ProPublica, 197–98 Proposition 13, 146 Purdy, Abraham, 232 Q Quincy, Wash., xiv–xv, 5, 34, 42 R racial minorities, 184–85 radio, 95, 100–102, 106, 159 Radio Free Europe, 107 radiologists, 236–37 railroads, 110, 299–300 Railroads and American Law (Ely), 110 ransomware, 68 WannaCry, 63–69, 71–74, 122, 294, 300, 301 Rashid, Rick, 237, 238 Reagan, Nancy, 116 Reagan, Ronald, 23, 116, 146 Red Cross, 113, 118, 127, 320n16 Reddit, 99 Redmond, Wash., 187 Reform Government Surveillance, 16–17 regulation, 102, 143, 144, 192, 206–7, 219, 224, 266, 295–98, 300, 301, 303 of artificial intelligence, 192, 296 China and, 258 of facial recognition, 221–22, 224, 225, 228, 296 of governments, 301–2 of railroads, 299 of social media, 98, 100, 102–4, 144 Republic, Wash., 151–52, 155, 167 Republican National Committee (RNC), 279–82 Republicans, 82, 106, 172, 278–80 International Republican Institute, 84 Republic Brewing Company, 167 restaurants, fast-food, 235, 241 Ries, Eric, 225 Riley v.

pages: 251 words: 44,888

The Words You Should Know to Sound Smart: 1200 Essential Words Every Sophisticated Person Should Be Able to Use
by Bobbi Bly
Published 18 Mar 2009

“To behold the day-break! / The little light fades the immense and DIAPHANOUS shadows, / The air tastes good to my palate.” – Walt Whitman, American poet and humanist diatribe (DIE-uh-tribe), noun A speech railing against injustice; a vehement denunciation. The editorial was a mean-spirited DIATRIBE against school vouchers written to prevent children from other towns from being sent by bus to Centerville High School. dichotomy (die-KOT-uh-me), noun Division into two parts, especially into two seemingly contradictory parts. A DICHOTOMY between good and evil is present in every human heart. didactic (dye-DAK-tik), adjective Designed, made, or tailored for purposes of education, self-improvement, or ethical betterment.

pages: 212 words: 49,544

WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency
by Micah L. Sifry
Published 19 Feb 2011

SIFRY In 2007, Steve Urquhart, the Republican chairman of the Utah House of Representatives Rules Committee, launched a wiki called Politicopia, where he promised to post the text of pending legislation before his committee and invited the public in to comment. Thousands of people did, and Urquhart credits the dialogue that resulted in affecting the outcome on several pending bills, including one on school vouchers and another on abortion. Commenting on the passage of the voucher legislation, Urquhart said, “For six years we’ve been chasing our tail on this bill, and today the bill passed in very large part because of Politicopia.” He explained how: “When private dialogue was made public, the main area of criticism was publicly revealed to be fictitious.”15 Another valuable experiment that also happened in 2007 was something called “Legislation 2.0.”

pages: 173 words: 55,328

Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal
by George Packer
Published 14 Jun 2021

“Rosa sat so Martin could walk so Obama could run so we could all fly”: that was the story in a sentence, and it was so convincing to a lot of people in my generation—including me—that we were slow to notice how little it meant to a lot of people under thirty-five. Or we heard but didn’t understand and dismissed them with irritable mental gestures. We told them they had no idea what the crime rate was like in 1994. Smart Americans pointed to affirmative action and children’s health insurance. Free Americans touted enterprise zones and school vouchers. Of course the kids didn’t buy it. In their eyes “progress” looked like a thin upper layer of Black celebrities and professionals, who carried the weight of society’s expectations along with its prejudices, and below them, lousy schools, overflowing prisons, dying neighborhoods. The parents didn’t really buy it either, but we had learned to ignore injustice on this scale as adults ignore so much just to get through.

pages: 1,037 words: 294,916

Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
by Rick Perlstein
Published 17 Mar 2009

Among its off-the-deep-end arguments were that corporations should not make charitable donations (lest stockholders be defrauded by this economic irrationality); that the Post Office should be sold off; that licensing procedures for professionals like doctors should be banned (the market would take care of the problem of quackery on its own)—and that the government should disburse educational “vouchers” to force public schools to compete in the marketplace. It seemed only a matter of time before Friedman and Goldwater should meet. Friedman first wrote Goldwater with a policy suggestion in late 1960, but he received only a perfunctory acknowledgment in return. After the professor bludgeoned Goldwater’s Senate adversary Joe Clark, however, Goldwater proposed a meeting.

The best measure of a politician’s electoral success was becoming not how successfully he could broker people’s desires, but how well he could tap their fears. This is a book, also, about how that story began. Scratch a conservative today—a think-tank bookworm at Washington’s Heritage Foundation or Milwaukee’s Bradley Foundation (the people whose studies and position papers blazed the trails for ending welfare as we know it, for the school voucher movement, for the discussion over privatizing Social Security) ; a door-knocking church lady pressing pamphlets into her neighbors’ palms about partial-birth abortion; the owner of a small or large business sitting across the table from a lobbyist plotting strategy on how to decimate corporate tax rates; an organizer of a training center for aspiring conservative activists or journalists; Republican precinct workers, fund-raisers, county chairs, state chairs, presidential candidates, congressmen, senators, even a Supreme Court justice—and the story comes out.

The Great Economists Ten Economists whose thinking changed the way we live-FT Publishing International (2014)
by Phil Thornton
Published 7 May 2014

Chapter 7 • Milton Friedman163 Attempts to follow particular measures of the money supply in the UK in the 1980s ended after it was shown that direct and predictable links between the growth of the money supply and the rate of inflation broke down. This form of monetarism was replaced first by exchange rate targeting and then by inflation targeting. Some of Friedman’s unorthodox libertarian policy proposals – such as school vouchers and a volunteer army – have gained mainstream acceptance while versions of a negative income tax have found a home in the UK’s Working Tax Credit and the US Earned Income Tax Credit. Others, such as the legalisation of drugs and prostitution, may be ideas whose time is yet to come. Verdict: credits and debits Friedman vies for the title of the most influential economist of the late 20th century (probably with Samuelson).

pages: 252 words: 73,131

The Inner Lives of Markets: How People Shape Them—And They Shape Us
by Tim Sullivan
Published 6 Jun 2016

The nine food bank presidents who comprised the rest of the working group did not all greet the idea of using markets to fix their not-really-broken system with a standing ovation. It may not have helped that the pitch came from a group of University of Chicago economists, whose ranks include libertarian extremists like Milton Friedman (of school-voucher fame) and Gene “Efficient Markets” Fama. Prendergast recalls that at some point during the preliminary discussions, John Arnold, then president of the West Michigan Food Bank, stood up and announced, “Look, I’ve got to tell you guys. I’m a card-carrying member of the American Socialist Party.

pages: 223 words: 77,566

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
by J. D. Vance
Published 27 Jun 2016

But it was a strong sense of duty, so Mom and I went to Mamaw’s for the night. I remember watching an episode of The West Wing about education in America, which the majority of people rightfully believe is the key to opportunity. In it, the fictional president debates whether he should push school vouchers (giving public money to schoolchildren so that they escape failing public schools) or instead focus exclusively on fixing those same failing schools. That debate is important, of course—for a long time, much of my failing school district qualified for vouchers—but it was striking that in an entire discussion about why poor kids struggled in school, the emphasis rested entirely on public institutions.

pages: 305 words: 75,697

Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be
by Diane Coyle
Published 11 Oct 2021

This shift does not mean that the majority professional opinion has abandoned markets, however. Most economists consider markets as generally a better way where possible than direct government intervention of organising the economy, still often advocate market solutions (such as carbon trading or school vouchers) for policy problems, remain convinced about the broad merits of trade liberalisation, and so on. Such instincts are generally justified by evidence based on specific applied research. If the evidence suggests an active government role, economists will recommend it; and indeed in the decade since the GFC there has been a widespread shift in sentiment in this direction.

pages: 262 words: 79,469

On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense
by David Brooks
Published 2 Jun 2004

Trader Joe’s is for people who wouldn’t dream of buying an avocado salad that didn’t take a position on offshore drilling or a whey-based protein bar that wasn’t fully committed to campaign finance reform. Someday, somebody should build a right-wing Trader Joe’s, with faith-based chewing tobacco, rice pilaf grown by school-voucher-funded Mormon agricultural academies, and a meat section that’s a bowl of cartridges and a sign reading “Go ahead, kill it yourself.” But in the meantime, we will have to make do with the ethos of social concern that prevails at places like Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. You get the impression that everybody associated with Trader Joe’s is excessively good—that every cashier is on temporary furlough from Amnesty International, that the chipotle-pepper hummus was mixed by pluralistic Muslims committed to equal rights for women, that the Irish soda bread was baked by indigenous U2 groupies marching in Belfast for Protestant-Catholic reconciliation, and that the olive spread was prepared by idealistic Athenians who are reaching out to the Turks on the whole matter of Cyprus.

pages: 309 words: 85,584

Nine Crises: Fifty Years of Covering the British Economy From Devaluation to Brexit
by William Keegan
Published 24 Jan 2019

By 1988, he was at Health, where, from the left of the party or not, she found him ‘extremely effective … tough in dealing with vested interests and trade unions, direct and persuasive in his exposition of government policy’. But when he got to Education, Clarke disappointed his political mistress with his firm belief in state provision and his public dismissal of her advocacy of a pet proposal of the right’s – education vouchers. In those previous departments Clarke was in many ways blazing the trail for New Labour’s policy of trying to make public services more efficient and more responsive to public demand. He was an active reformer and maintains in The Chancellors’ Tales that the offer of the chancellorship by John Major was ‘a bit of a surprise to me’.

Propaganda and the Public Mind
by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian
Published 31 Mar 2015

But the point is to make people afraid that there’s an educational crisis coming. The second thing is, Make that crisis come by underfunding, Not enough school construction, low salaries and so on. Then propose alternatives, which sound at the beginning like good ideas: charter schools, magnet schools, vouchers, who could be against that? You gradually chip away, making the public system less and less functional, less and less popular because it’s nonfunctional, producing propaganda about how awful it is, offering alternatives which begin small and end up where the big investment firms are expecting it to.

pages: 372 words: 92,477

The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State
by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge
Published 14 May 2014

It has put its pension system on a sound foundation, replacing a ­defined-benefit system with a defined-contribution one and making automatic adjustments for longer life expectancy. It has reinvented its state as well as reducing its size. The Swedes have done more than anyone else in the world—certainly more than the cautious ­Americans—to embrace Milton Friedman’s idea of educational vouchers, allowing parents to send their children to whatever school they choose and ­inviting private companies or voluntary groups to establish “free” schools, that is, schools that are paid for but not run by the state. In Stockholm half the schoolchildren go to independent schools. In the country as a whole almost half have opted out of their local schools (so they go either to another one, farther away, or to an independent school).

pages: 314 words: 88,524

American Marxism
by Mark R. Levin
Published 12 Jul 2021

Community committees should demand competition in education. The issue is what is in the best interest of individual students and the public, not entrenched school board members, teachers’ unions, and the educational bureaucracy. This triumvirate always oppose school choice, including charter schools, vouchers for private and parochial schools, etc., because they oppose competition. Parents and other taxpayers should insist that tax dollars follow the student, especially now given the radicalization and politicization of our public school systems, and the abuse of power demonstrated by many teachers’ unions during the coronavirus pandemic. 8.

pages: 304 words: 22,886

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness
by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
Published 7 Apr 2008

International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 9 (1991): 47–68. Perry, Ronald W., Michael K. Lindell, and Marjorie R. Greene. Evacuation Planning in Emergency Management. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington, 1981. Peterson, Paul E., William Howell, Patrick Wolf, and David E. Campbell. “School Vouchers: Results from Randomized Experiments.” In The Economics of School Choice, ed. Caroline Hoxby, 107–44. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “D Is for Daunting: The Medicare Drug Program.” November 6, 2005, Health section, Five-star ed. Polikoff, Nancy D. “We Will Get What We Ask For: Why Legalizing Gay and Lesbian Marriage Will Not ‘Dismantle the Legal Structure of Gender in Every Marriage.’”

pages: 364 words: 99,613

Servant Economy: Where America's Elite Is Sending the Middle Class
by Jeff Faux
Published 16 May 2012

When the department began to tighten up on the rules for such loans, Donald Graham, the Washington Post’s CEO, led an intense campaign to protect his investment, hiring high-priced lobbyists and editorializing against the tighter rules in the paper. One result was that in the 2011 budget standoff between President Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner, the president acquiesced to Boehner’s demand that a District of Columbia’s policy of refusing to provide local tax money for private school vouchers be overruled.15 Even more profit may lie in the reformers’ ultimate goal of making charter schools the model for U.S. primary and secondary education. Charter schools are supposed to be community based, run by boards of parents and local residents and therefore more responsive to neighborhood needs than “faraway” city school boards.

pages: 358 words: 106,729

Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy
by Raghuram Rajan
Published 24 May 2010

We also need to find ways of publicizing school-performance assessments in a manner that is both comparable across schools and easily understood by parents. Failing schools need to be given initial support to improve, but not multiple chances to do so. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 goes some way toward these goals but needs to be strengthened. Finally, parental choice can help bring the discipline of competition to schools. School voucher programs, if properly administered, can allow students to vote with their feet and prevent failing schools from holding talented but poor students hostage. Charter schools can also help. These are quasi-public schools that have more freedom from regulation than public schools in return for greater accountability.

pages: 377 words: 110,427

The Boy Who Could Change the World: The Writings of Aaron Swartz
by Aaron Swartz and Lawrence Lessig
Published 5 Jan 2016

Conservatives, Horowitz says, believe in process and different points of view. But the leftists just wanted to hire another Marxist. At another university, a prospective professor says that he was about to get a job as an Asian history professor but the offer was rescinded after he let slip that he supported school vouchers. When Horowitz was a Marxist he was never singled out like that. Professors, he says, should never reveal their political perspectives. After all, doctors don’t have politics; they’re professionals. But professors have the audacity to put political cartoons on their doors, scaring away timid conservatives.

pages: 273 words: 34,920

Free Market Missionaries: The Corporate Manipulation of Community Values
by Sharon Beder
Published 30 Sep 2006

It found that Republican affiliation correlated with the length of time that a person had been in a retirement plan. After 10 years those in a 401(k) plan were 7 per cent more likely to support a corporate tax cut, 9 per cent more like to oppose a minimum wage, 10 per cent more likely to support school vouchers, and 17 per cent more likely to support social security privatization than non-investors. They were also more likely to support free trade, death-tax reduction and market-based energy policies. Those owning stocks directly, as opposed to indirectly via pension funds, developed a capitalist ideology even more rapidly.23 A Gallup poll in 1999 found that shareowners were more likely to support cuts in capital gains tax, as did Rasmussen Research, which found that the result held for all demographic groups.

Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear
by Dr. Frank Luntz
Published 2 Jan 2007

NEVER SAY: School choice INSTEAD SAY: Parental choice INSTEAD SAY: Equal opportunity in education NEVER SAY: Vouchers INSTEAD SAY: Opportunity scholarships Thanks to an effective advertising campaign by national and state teacher unions, Americans remain at best evenly split over whether they support “school choice.” But they are heavily in favor of “giving parents the right to choose the schools that are right for their children,” and there is almost universal support for “equal opportunity in education.” “Vouchers,” seen as depriving public schools of necessary dollars, have even less support than the principle of school choice. However, “opportunity scholarships” do have widespread backing, as they are perceived to be a reward for good students to get a good education. Here again, the words you use determine the support you will receive.

pages: 406 words: 113,841

The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives
by Sasha Abramsky
Published 15 Mar 2013

They might want to think about expanding programs like the federally funded Race to the Top, in which states compete to create templates for new learning environments that merit the infusion of extra dollars from the feds. They might want to push legislation such as that championed, so far without success, by Denise Juneau, Montana’s energetic superintendent of education, mandating that all students remain in high school until they turn 18. They might want to argue the merits of charter schools, or school vouchers, both of which have engendered spirited, frequently overheated, debate in recent years. They might want to emulate Oregon’s recent efforts to create an all-encompassing education strategy that goes from preschool to higher education, with an oversight board empowered to shift resources into particular settings as the need demands.

pages: 453 words: 117,893

What Would the Great Economists Do?: How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today's Biggest Problems
by Linda Yueh
Published 4 Jun 2018

He also opposed direct government involvement in the economy, highlighting the detailed regulation of industry, the control of radio and television, toll roads, public housing and national parks, and the legal prohibition of carrying mail for profit as examples of taking government too far. Friedman was also in favour of the legalization of drugs, school vouchers, health saving accounts and an end to conscription in peacetime. In short, Friedman advocated a limited role for government, countering objections with: ‘Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.’10 For Friedman, each government policy needed to be carefully analysed for its impact on the economy.

pages: 374 words: 113,126

The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today
by Linda Yueh
Published 15 Mar 2018

He also opposed direct government involvement in the economy, highlighting the detailed regulation of industry, the control of radio and television, toll roads, public housing and national parks, and the legal prohibition of carrying mail for profit as examples of taking government too far. Friedman was also in favour of the legalization of drugs, school vouchers, health saving accounts and an end to conscription in peacetime. In short, Friedman advocated a limited role for government, countering objections with: ‘Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.’10 For Friedman, each government policy needed to be carefully analysed for its impact on the economy.

pages: 412 words: 128,042

Extreme Economies: Survival, Failure, Future – Lessons From the World’s Limits
by Richard Davies
Published 4 Sep 2019

‘Well, then everyone despises the people at the level below, and will do everything they can to get to the level above.’ Another parent describes it as ‘educational war’. The middle layer – the co-payment schools – are the key players in this battle. Introduced in the 1980s the co-payment policy provides parents with an educational voucher, which can be ‘spent’ with a school of the parents’ choice; these vouchers are then used by the schools to claim a monthly payment from the government, on top of which they are able to charge additional fees. The SIMCE system was introduced at the same time to provide a transparent measure of each school’s performance.

pages: 435 words: 120,574

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
by Arlie Russell Hochschild
Published 5 Sep 2016

Kaitlin Mulhere, “In the Face of Colossal Cuts,” Inside Higher Ed, April 27, 2015, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/04/27/anxiety-over-massive-proposed-cuts-louisianas-colleges-felt-across-state. 95“explore options and ramifications of ending the Desegregation Order” See CSRS, Southwest Louisiana Regional Impact Study (accessed August 4, 2015), 121, http://www.gogroupswla.com/Content/Uploads/gogroupswla.com/files/SWLA%20Regional%20Impact%20Study_Final.pdf. The U.S. Department of Justice has listed twenty-five un-desegregated schools on its Civil Rights Division’s “Open Desegregation Cast List.” And it has held up a school voucher program in an attempt to force desegregation—locking children into failing schools, critics charge. Since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, desegregation of public schools has been legally mandatory. But today schools remain very separate and unequal. More than two million black students attend schools where 90 percent of the student body is made up of minority students.

pages: 494 words: 116,739

Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change From the Cult of Technology
by Kentaro Toyama
Published 25 May 2015

Democracy in a Box Packaged interventions come in all shapes and sizes: iPads to supply children’s education; condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS; and you may have seen ads from organizations such as Oxfam and Heifer International asking you to donate a goat – great as food and fertilizer source for a poor farming family. But, as with microcredit, packaged interventions aren’t limited to physical goods. They can be abstract ideas or institutional structures: school vouchers, charter schools, home mortgages, elections. Elections are hailed as the means to achieve democracy, and US foreign policy seems fixated on having other countries hold them. Few events provoke the media frenzy as a nation’s first election. Recent events in the Middle East and Afghanistan, though, remind us how little voting accomplishes in and of itself.

pages: 386 words: 122,595

Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science (Fully Revised and Updated)
by Charles Wheelan
Published 18 Apr 2010

I have powerful childhood memories of my father, who has no great affection for the environment but could squeeze a nickel out of a stone, stalking around the house closing the closet doors and telling us that he was not paying to air-condition our closets. Meanwhile, American public education operates a lot more like North Korea than Silicon Valley. I will not wade into the school voucher debate, but I will discuss one striking phenomenon related to incentives in education that I have written about for The Economist.4 The pay of American teachers is not linked in any way to performance; teachers’ unions have consistently opposed any kind of merit pay. Instead, salaries in nearly every public school district in the country are determined by a rigid formula based on experience and years of schooling, factors that researchers have found to be generally unrelated to performance in the classroom.

pages: 409 words: 125,611

The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them
by Joseph E. Stiglitz
Published 15 Mar 2015

We have to make sure that all children have adequate nutrition and health care—not only do we have to provide the resources, but if necessary, we have to incentivize parents, by coaching or training them or even rewarding them for being good caregivers. The right says that money isn’t the solution. They’ve chased reforms like charter schools and private-school vouchers, but most of these efforts have shown ambiguous results at best. Giving more money to poor schools would help. So would summer and extracurricular programs that enrich low-income students’ skills. Finally, it is unconscionable that a rich country like the United States has made access to higher education so difficult for those at the bottom and middle.

pages: 419 words: 119,476

Posh Boys: How English Public Schools Ruin Britain
by Robert Verkaik
Published 14 Apr 2018

The human right of a parent to send their child to a state-funded selective school has already been curtailed. Why shouldn’t the state change the character of non-state schools? Should the human-rights bar prove insurmountable perhaps we should consider turning all our schools into fee-paying private institutions, issuing the poorest pupils with school vouchers which they could spend at Eton, Harrow and Winchester or any school they chose. By sending everyone to public schools run by companies like Capita and G4, no one would unfairly benefit from a privileged education and the taxpayer would save tens of billions of pounds a year in funding primary and secondary schools.

pages: 598 words: 140,612

Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
by Edward L. Glaeser
Published 1 Jan 2011

That’s more than $400,000 for every man, woman, and child living in the city before the hurricane, or more than $200,000 for every household in the much larger New Orleans metropolitan area. Surely the people of New Orleans would have been better off just getting that money directly, in the form of checks or housing and school vouchers, than for great gobs of cash to go to contractors. If it wasn’t for the durability of its homes, the city would have been much smaller a long time ago. No matter how much we all love New Orleans jazz, it never made sense to spend more than $100 billion putting infrastructure in a place that lost its economic rationale long ago.

Designing Interfaces
by Jenifer Tidwell
Published 15 Dec 2010

Your eyes have probably followed the changes across the rows, noting changes through the year, and comparisons up and down the columns are easy, too. The example shown in Figure 7-48 uses the grid to encode two independent variables—ethnicity/religion and income—into the state-by-state geographic data. The dependent variable, encoded by color, is the estimated level of public support for school vouchers (orange representing support, green opposition). The resultant graphic is very rich and nuanced, telling countless stories about Americans’ attitudes toward the topic. Figure 7-48. Geographic and demographic small-multiples chart (http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2009/07/hard_sell_for_b.html) A more abstract two-dimensional trellis plot, also called a coplot in William Cleveland’s Visualizing Data, is shown in Figure 7-49.

pages: 525 words: 146,126

Ayn Rand Cult
by Jeff Walker
Published 30 Dec 1998

She is lambasting the very man actually leading the movement for economic liberalism, for which in fact she was primarily the fiction propagandist, its Maksim Gorki. Part of why Rand hated Hayek is explained by Greg Johnson. For Hayek, government intervention in the economy is out. “Redistribution, however, is quite another matter. . . . For instance, social safety-nets, subsidies for the arts, school-vouchers, and taxes on luxuries and ‘sins’ do not seek to alter or replace the market. Rather, they merely re-direct demand within it.” Though Hayek would not necessarily support all such measures, he would argue that they do not inherently menace the survival of capitalism. So Hayek does not completely rule out the government reallocating resources by political means, an absolute no-no for Rand.

pages: 497 words: 150,205

European Spring: Why Our Economies and Politics Are in a Mess - and How to Put Them Right
by Philippe Legrain
Published 22 Apr 2014

Manifestly, money makes a difference: witness the dominance that Eton, a school for the rich, has over British public life. Equally clearly, private, non-profit schools have no problem delivering a good education. So one way of ensuring there are Etons for everyone would be to provide parents with generous education vouchers, with top-ups for kids from underprivileged backgrounds. That way schools would be motivated to attract them and then have the resources to provide them with better education. Paying higher salaries to attract better teachers would help; as would valuing teaching more highly as a profession; perhaps one would lead to the other.

pages: 538 words: 147,612

All the Money in the World
by Peter W. Bernstein
Published 17 Dec 2008

“We’ve trained more superintendents than any other group in America,” says Broad. “We have placed fifty-seven MBAs with experience into large urban schools. We feel good about that.” Meanwhile, in New York City, hedge fund manager Bruce Kovner (2006 net worth: $3 billion) is (like Ted Forstmann) deeply involved with education vouchers as well as in creating small, independent charter schools. Kovner sees competition and freedom of choice as a way for children and their families to break out of huge, crime-ridden, dead-end schools. “More than one out of every three hundred people in the United States is in New York City public schools,” says Kovner.

pages: 487 words: 151,810

The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement
by David Brooks
Published 8 Mar 2011

Harold also found that his new colleagues shared a materialistic mind-set. Both liberals and conservatives gravitated toward economic explanations for any social problem and generally came up with solutions to this problem that involved money. Some conservatives argued for child–tax credits to restore marriage, low-tax enterprise zones to combat urban poverty, and school vouchers to improve the education system. Liberals emphasized the other side of the fiscal ledger, spending programs. They tried to direct more dollars to fix broken schools. They expanded student-aid subsidies to increase college-completion rates. Both sides assumed there was a direct relationship between improving material conditions and solving problems.

pages: 444 words: 151,136

Endless Money: The Moral Hazards of Socialism
by William Baker and Addison Wiggin
Published 2 Nov 2009

He goes so far to say that most observers agree on this, and that to achieve modernity and progress we would follow a natural tendency for power to gravitate to the state and be taken away from those who hold private property. With privatization reemerging in the late 20th century, affecting prisons, security forces, port administration, Medicare drug plans, universities (funding crowded out by endowments), and soon public schools (vouchers) or social security, he laments that this favorable trend began to reverse decades ago.10 The folly of this view is that privatization and big government are bedfellows. Once government gets to the size that it is involved in nearly every industry and aspect of our lives, people are naturally going to engage with it to shape outcomes.

pages: 582 words: 160,693

The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State
by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg
Published 3 Feb 1997

The requirement to involve a majority imposes massive transaction costs between you and achieving what in all likelihood is a relatively straightforward and rational goal. Milton Friedman discussed the merits of the economic, as opposed to the political, mode of expression in advancing his proposal for school vouchers in Capitalism and Freedom: Parents could express their views about schools directly, by withdrawing their children from one school and sending them to another, to a much greater extent than is now possible. In general they can now take this step only by changing their place of residence. For the rest, they can express their views only though cumbrous political channels.5 Albert 0.

pages: 517 words: 147,591

Small Wars, Big Data: The Information Revolution in Modern Conflict
by Eli Berman , Joseph H. Felter , Jacob N. Shapiro and Vestal Mcintyre
Published 12 May 2018

Perhaps for that reason, even some of the most suppression-heavy counterinsurgencies in history made some efforts to provide g.20 To understand the substantive intuition for why g complements m, think of residents of three villages in Colombia.21 In the first, a father is converted to supporting the government by a program that provides welfare payments and school vouchers. He may want to help the government take control of his village, but that is difficult because the only guns he sees in the streets are in the hands of FARC guerrillas. A tip is unlikely, because he can’t imagine what the government forces would do with it. In the second village the government spends the same amount on troops, rather than on welfare and schools, so an elderly woman sees government forces moving in, somewhat replacing the FARC.

pages: 524 words: 146,798

Anarchy State and Utopia
by Robert Nozick
Published 15 Mar 1974

But since it would have no right to forbid private entrepreneurs from doing the same, why think the state will have any more success in attracting customers in this than in any other competitive business? f Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), chap. 6. Friedman’s school vouchers, of course, allow a choice about who is to supply the product, and so differ from the protection vouchers imagined here. g Unfortunately, too few models of the structure of moral views have been specified heretofore, though there are surely other interesting structures. Hence an argument for a side-constraint structure that consists largely in arguing against an end-state maximization structure is inconclusive, for these alternatives are not exhaustive.

pages: 558 words: 168,179

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
by Jane Mayer
Published 19 Jan 2016

Betsy DeVos, who eventually became the chairwoman of Michigan’s Republican Party, was said to be every bit as politically ambitious as her husband, if not more so. With her support, in 2002 Dick DeVos ceased managing Amway in order to devote more time to his political career. The results, though, were dismal. The DeVos family spent over $2 million in 2000 on a Michigan school voucher referendum that was defeated by 68 percent of the voters. The family then spent $35 million in 2006 on Dick DeVos’s unsuccessful bid to become the state’s governor. In their zeal to implement their conservative vision, few issues were more central to the DeVos family’s mission than eradicating restraints on political spending.

pages: 741 words: 199,502

Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class
by Charles Murray
Published 28 Jan 2020

Instead, I have advocated changes that I think would work if they were implemented but that I know are politically impossible—replacing all welfare and income transfer programs with a universal basic income, legal defense funds to support systematic civil disobedience to the federal government, and universal education vouchers, among others. Valued Places and the Four Wellsprings for Human Flourishing However, I do have beliefs about policy implications more sweepingly defined. Readers who don’t know what they are have an ample choice of sources. I’ve touched on them in all but a few of the books I’ve written from Losing Ground on, most comprehensively in In Pursuit (1988).

pages: 669 words: 226,737

The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics
by Christopher Lasch
Published 16 Sep 1991

The Bergers advocated a state that would respect "private preferences" instead of attempting to remodel the family according to preconceived theories of child psychology and moral development. The state's responsibility for children ended with adequate nutrition, health care, and education; and even these were more likely to be assured by the market than by an elaborate welfare state. A system of educational vouchers, for example, would provide families with a range of institutional alternatives and thereby introduce market forces into the "monopolistic situation" created by a uniform system of public schools. The best way to assure moral order and economic progress, in short, was to curb the power of the new class

pages: 1,213 words: 376,284

Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, From the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First
by Frank Trentmann
Published 1 Dec 2015

In nineteenth-century London, consumer groups were formed by propertied householders against private monopolies in gas and water. In 1980s–’90s India, the frontier of consumer politics was bad public services. One reason choice appeared so attractive as an instrument of social welfare was that most of the poor had been let down by state schools and power stations; Pradeep Mehta, CUTS’ crusading director, has proposed school vouchers, so the poor can pick their school, instead of sitting in a classroom with no teacher at all. In the 1990s, critics across the globe attacked neo-liberalism for shrinking public life. Privatization, it was said, reduced public-minded citizens to self-centred customers. That argument was the privilege of affluent nations that went to bed without having to worry whether there would be water and electricity in the morning.