Word: indexed
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...ELECTION used to be simple: keep employment high and prices low. Indeed, as of the early 1980s, the noted political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset was touting this formula as a potent predictor of electoral outcomes. Just add up the unemployment and inflation rates, he said. If this "misery index" was below 10, thumbs up for the incumbent. If above 10, then it was time to pen the memoirs...
Well, that was then. These days the misery index is just above 8, the lowest in a quarter-century, theoretically signifying a Nirvana-like America. Yet President Clinton spends much of his time saying he shares our pain. And this isn't just another example of his famously rampant empathy. Conventional wisdom has him presiding over seething economic discontent, even as he presides over an ongoing economic recovery that makes Europe and Japan envious...
...happens, a classic treatise on these sorts of upsides and downsides of capitalism was written by the same economist who invented the misery index--Arthur Okun, Chairman of Lyndon Johnson's Council of Economic Advisers. In 1975 he published a book called Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff. Its point was that there is natural tension between the two halves of its title. Redistributive taxation, minimum wages, unemployment insurance and the like may enhance equality, but they impede overall efficiency and growth. Ideology is partly a question of which side of the tradeoff you favor...
With Seles, Barbara lobs the first one in: "If you could sum up this year in one word, what would it be?" The interview goes smoothly, with Walters only occasionally referring to her trademark index cards. But because Seles arrived late, some New York City rush-hour-traffic noise creeps onto the tape and forces the crew to repeat one series of questions...
...concerns the knife attack on Seles two years ago by a lunatic at a tournament in Hamburg. The second time around, Walters comes up with a new question, one that's not on the index cards. Referring to the knife wound on Seles' back, Walters intently asks her, "Do you ever look at the scar?" Seles, tears welling up, replies, "Never. I'll never look...