Word: ideas
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...have learned that the best thing government can do is rid itself of involvement in the private economy. From Britain to Chile to China, privatization has everywhere proved an economic boon. Investing Social Security funds in the private economy is a total reversal of this salutary trend. The idea is to get government out of private industry...
...didn't understand me. I tried talking to it reasonably, but it was fruitless. When I said, "You say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to; you say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to," it heard, "Using potato vice, the auto use a tomato." While the idea of potato vice intrigued me, I was getting discouraged by my machine's tin ear. I spent a week with Dragon Naturally-Speaking Mobile ($250), a 4-oz. tape recorder that holds 40 minutes of speech and fits in the palm of my hand. It's designed to take dictation...
Before we get too carried away by the idea of improving human intelligence with genetic technology, it's worth noting that no domesticated animal is more intelligent than its wild, undomesticated ancestor. Compare a domesticated dog with a wolf or a coyote, and the tame dog will come up short. Intelligence evolves in response to heavy selective pressures in the struggle for survival. The lean, mean environment of the urban poor, not the "pop genetics" of the affluent suburbs, is already producing some of our next generation's geniuses. JOHN W. HOOPES Lawrence, Kans...
...finally it was President Clinton who had to make the first move. For years, neither he nor congressional Republicans have wanted to be the first to offer a major reform package, since whoever did so would surely get hammered by the other side. But Clinton needed a bold idea in his State of the Union address to help divert attention from that little matter in the Senate...
...most battered part of the plan was the stock-market idea. Corporations hated it. Members of Congress in both parties hated it. And, most important, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan--the patron saint of our prosperity--hated it. "I do not believe that it is politically feasible to insulate such huge funds from government direction," he said. That's Greenspanese for a simple concern: by investing some $700 billion in Social Security funds, the government-cum-shareholder would inject politics into the free market and unduly influence corporate decision-making. Would the government, for example, bring an antitrust or discrimination...