Building majority coalitions for sub-majority benefit distributions

Public Choice - This paper poses a deceptively simple question. It asks, how can a program or group of programs that provides distributive benefits to recipients in a minority of legislative...     

The Medicaid Mandates of the 1980s: An Intergovernmental Perspective

Medicaid, the health care program for the poor, has undergone significant changes in the last fifteen years. Many of those changes relate to the intergovernmental nature of the program. Medicaid is jointly operated, with the federal and state governments sharing program costs. Despite a set of program guidelines dictated by the federal government, states have traditionally had substantial latitude in Medicaid decisions. However, a series of developments in the 1980s led to increasing constraints on state Medicaid discretion, including federal mandates to expand Medicaid coverage. This article examines the inception and effectiveness of the Medicaid mandates from the perspective of interstate equity of health care services for poor families.     

U.S. and Japan’s trends in attitudes toward the Korean peninsula

This article argues that Japan would not only be concerned about the creation of a united Korea, which could be a serious economic and political rival in her own backyard, but would actively fear the prospect of the extension of Chinese or Russian military influence to the Straits of Tsushima through a Korean regime that leaned towards either of these powers. For the U.S., too, while there might be political advantages in the appearance of a serious economic rival to Japan, these would be greatly outweighed by the possibility of the same extension of Chinese or Russian military influence feared by Japan. This is evident in the strategic, economic, and diplomatic objectives and interests of the powers in the peninsula. This article concludes that the coexistence of the two Koreas will be not only inevitable for the time being, but ultimately desirable for the external powers.     

Culture,self, and“URI”: Anti-Americanism in contemporary South Korea

As a much debated phenomenon in contemporary South Korea, anti-Americanism has been seen primarily as a response to the perceived political and economic domination of the United States in Korean affairs. This article suggests that such a view, however, is incomplete without consideration of the cultural and psychological context in which contemporary discourses of cultural nationalism have arisen: specifically, an indigenous cultural psychology characterized by an emphasis onuri (“we”)—a collective sense of socially diffuse yet unified and homogenous selfhood. As one variety of contemporary national cultural discourse, anti-Americanism is a response to certain to certain unwelcome trends in cultural development that have already begun to undermine the collective sense of Korean selfhood, as reflected in part in Korean concern over the Western “cultural invasion,” and Korean critiques of American bias and arrogance in dealings with Korea. However, far from being a static concept concerned only with defensive protection of Korean identity,uri also reflects Korean concern for re-formulating national cultural identity in terms more accommodating to the outside. Ultimately, anti-Americanism needs to be seen in the context of a Korean cultural psychology, which posits the enduring value of a collectively defined selfhood as an alternative to the prevailing individualist representations of the West. Diane M. Hoffman is an anthropologist and independent scholar with research interests in contemporary Korean culture and Korean-American intercultural relations.     

Images of the Future: The Basic Income Challenge

In this paper, the significance of basic income as an option in the future is investigated against the background of recent changes in society and social security systems, presented in four segments. First, the concept of basic income is presented in the context of existing social security systems. Basic income represents an elementary form of unconditional income in terms of labor and income. Second, arguments for and against basic income are studied; the social and political foundation is identified; and the relationship between the validity of the basic income as a future option and concrete socioeconomic conditions is discussed. Third, basic income is placed against the background of wider processes of social ordering—specifically, the relationship between state and society. Finally, arguments are made for reconsidering the present system of social security and its future transition.     

Labor market experiences of low-income black women in middle-class suburbs: Evidence from a survey of gautreaux program participants

This article reports on a highly unusual experiment in racial and economic integration, the Gautreaux program. This program helps black families who are either current or former residents of public housing move into subsidized housing in Chicago and its suburbs. Surveying a random sample of 332 participants, we find that suburban movers are significantly more likely to have a job post-move than city movers, even among those who had never had a job before moving. Multivariate analysis shows that these differences are significant even after controlling for respondents' previous work history, human capital, and personal characteristics. These results suggest that low-income urban blacks experience significant gains in employment by moving to middle-class suburbs. Thus, housing assistance may be an effective alternative to traditional welfare-to-work programs.     

State and federal tax equity: Estimates before and after the Tax Reform Act of 1986

The progressivity and equity of both state and federal individual income taxes, as well as the combined system of both taxes, are examined before and after the federal Tax Reform Act of 1986 using a variety of measures applied to federal Statistics of Income individual income tax data; state taxes are calculated using TAXSIM. Our findings are as follows: First, in both 1985 and 1987, state personal income taxes were generally less progressive and more horizontally equitable than the federal system. Second, in moving from 1985 to 1987, state personal income tax systems generally displayed decreased progressivity and horizontal inequity. The combination of the two systems displayed generally lower progressivity and horizontal equity scores when we compare 1987 to 1985. Last, the after-tax income distribution became more unequal when we compared 1987 to 1985.