Word: short
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...eight years, home ownership has declined for the first time since 1940. The fall has been sharpest for young families; for people between 35 and 39, the percentage owning their own homes has dropped from 61% to 53% since Reagan became President. Middle-class salaries have simply fallen far short of the inflation in housing costs: today's average home buyer has to save 50% of / a full year's income just to put up the down payment, as opposed to 33% in 1978. As a result, those buying homes tend increasingly to be those lucky enough to have parents...
They live outside the margins of ordinary American life, isolated and unassimilated, a Third World society within a First World nation. Theirs is a Hobbesian universe where life is nasty, brutish and often cut short by violence, disease and drugs. They live lives without: mothers without husbands, men without work, families without homes, days without structure, neighborhoods without hope. They are America's Underclass, a disturbing daily reminder that American Democracy has not measured out liberty and justice...
...Dukakis has failed to convey his economic message in vivid, kitchen-table terms. "He needs to make it more of a statement of principle," says Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg. "When he gets done speaking, voters have to think, 'That's what this election is all about.' Time is very short, but there is some time." Last week, juiced up by his favorable debate reviews, Dukakis waged class warfare with more gusto than he usually displays. He belabored Bush repeatedly for ignoring the concerns of ordinary families as they try to educate their young, care for their sick and provide...
James Robinson, chairman of American Express, argues for the creation of a new international organization, the Institute of International Debt and Development, or I2D2 for short. (American Express knows something about marketing, after all.) I2D2 would buy Third World loans from commercial banks at a discount in exchange for bonds backed by industrial countries. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development offers a far more radical proposal: an outright 30% reduction of private bank loans owed by 15 major debtor countries...
...steroids remain a private matter. Throughout the big leagues of athletic excellence, just the natural excesses have become awesome. The mammoth Washington Redskins tackle Dave Butz was once asked if the pain ahead, the accumulated remnants of 16 seasons, chilled him. No, but the reports of short life expectancy were worrying. "You can live with a lot of pain," he said sagely, "but you've got to be alive...