Word: self
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Another example of the law of unintended consequences was that welfare and other poverty programs helped foster a dependency on government. The idea of welfare has always been problematic, for it reflects a conflict between two archetypal American values: generosity and self-reliance. Yes, we must offer the poor a hand. But doesn't such help undermine their ability to help themselves? Conservative scholars like Charles Murray contend that Aid to Families with Dependent Children provided an economic incentive for women to have babies out of wedlock and for men to avoid supporting their children. Murray goes...
Three years after perestroika was introduced, its effects on day-to-day economic life remain meager to the point of near invisibility. Grocery shelves are even barer than they were two years ago, partly because of bad weather conditions. Gorbachev's determination to force industry to become "self- financing" -- to fund current production from the proceeds of past sales -- has run into bureaucratic snags, with central planners continuing to exert control over factory operations by placing "state orders" that effectively determine how much factories produce. Plans exist to revitalize the agricultural sector with a podryad, or contract, arrangement modeled...
...frustrated mama's boy who spent his life scorning family relations as unhappy when not downright unnatural. A product of a menage a trois who loathed his given name of George because he shared it with both a pathetic father and the self-styled musical genius who became his mother's lover. An eccentric who attributed ill health and body odor to cotton and linen clothing and advocated a wardrobe of unbleached woolen garments. A purported avatar of women's liberation who called himself a "philanderer" and preferred married women for romance. A lectern-thumping socialist who prided himself...
...19th century, hardly seems likely to become one of the most lionized men of the 20th century. Yet this portrait, a dozen years in the making, in the end enhances Shaw's achievements. In place of the glib rhetorician, Holroyd poignantly brings into view the shy, resentful, self-thwarting youth who created the persona of G.B.S. Ashamed of his scandalous and impecunious family, embarrassed by his own awkward ways with peers, employers and especially women, yearning for a position as genius long before he found the particular talent that could confer it, the stagestruck young Shaw seemingly envisioned himself...
...knowledgeable about weapons systems and deserves praise for his work on the Job Training Partnership Act. His problem is that he has not figured out his limitations or how to overcome them, a process he is now conducting in the glare of the campaign. He is sunnily self-confident and accustomed to the leeway accorded good-looking, engaging men. At the G.O.P. convention, when Republicans were debating whether to dump him from the ticket, Quayle wanted to wing his acceptance speech without a text or TelePrompTer. "Good Senators," he explained, "don't speak from prepared texts." He was overruled...