Version 3.0 (Nov. 13, 2007)

Political Science 300: Contemporary Issues in American Politics
University of Michigan
Fall 2007

Gregory B. Markus
Professor of Political Science and Research Professor, Center for Political Studies
6735 Haven Hall
(734) 763-2222, gmarkus@umich.edu
Office hours: Tuesdays, 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm, or by appointment

CLICK HERE FOR SHORT PAPER ASSIGNMENTS

COURSE OVERVIEW

The purpose of this course is to develop your capacities as "leaders and citizens who will challenge the present and enrich the future." That phrase is from the official mission statement of the University of Michigan.

We will consider public issues that affect our lives and connect with our values. We will emphasize not only how those issues affect us but also how we can affect them. Politics is not just something we watch on TV or read about. It is something we do.

Prerequisites: integrity, curiosity, initiative, adaptiveness, and a willingness to examine ideas critically through class discussion and participation in out-of-class events as well as in written assignments. If you have had a previous course in political science, terrific. If not, then you may want to do a bit of extra reading to get up to speed, but it will not present a significant problem for you or for the rest of us.

This is a political course. That does not mean it is partisan or ideological. It is not. It means the course deals with matters of shared concern -- public matters -- and that you are expected to participate in the course as a public actor (rather than as a private consumer). Sometimes the readings will express political opinions (and the reasons behind them), as will the lectures, and as will you and your classmates. Some folks get uncomfortable about that. They assert that a course about politics should stick to the "facts." I assert that trying to learn to do politics without actually expressing opinions is like trying to learn to swim without actually getting wet.

How the Course Proceeds

You don't purchase this course and "consume" it. The instructors don't deliver a product to you. Instead, students and instructors engage together in a semester of learning. Students' responsibilities in the learning process differ from instructors' responsibilities, but fulfilling both parts is necessary for the collective enterprise to work well.

Class discussions and lectures often move freely from assigned readings to the latest news. Because our subject matter includes issues and events that are unfolding as we discuss them, we typically modify the course plan somewhat as we go along.

If you make an honest and consistent effort -- attend lectures and discussions faithfully, participate actively and thoughtfully, and take advantage of unanticipated learning opportunities as they arise (and they will) -- then you will almost surely learn a lot in this course, enjoy the experience, and get a good grade. Your GSIs and I are here to help that happen for you.

Lectures supplement the readings, not substitute for them -- and vice versa.

Grading

Grading is on a standard, no-curve 100-point system. Because we do not grade on a curve, there is no competition among you for a pre-set number of "A" grades. To the contrary, we encourage cooperation, studying together, and learning from one another. Of course, all work that you turn in must be your own.

Papers. You will write seven 1000-word papers during the semester, worth 10 points each (or 70 points total). You will be given a specific assignment for each paper, although the assignments typically allow room for you to choose how to develop your response. We do not grade on how closely your perspectives on the topics correspond to our own. We grade on the degree to which each of your short papers presents a logical, well-organized response to the assignment, a response that demonstrates you have grappled with and reflected upon material presented in our readings, lectures, and discussions and what you may have learned from relevant events and activities outside of class.

Participation in active, collaborative learning. The other 30 points is based on your contribution to learning in your discussion section and your participation in (at least) five relevant out-of-class learning activities. (Your GSI will provide the details about this.) Because this course is a collective enterprise, your grade in it will reflect not only how well you demonstrate your mastery of the material but also how conscientiously you contribute to the learning of your classmates, primarily through your active and informed participation in class discussions. An important part of developing your capacities as "leaders and citizens" is practicing public speaking and listening.

Course Readings

I anticipate that there will be only one book you will want to purchase for this course: Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder. It is widely available in paperback (including at local textbook stores) and is also on reserve in the Undergraduate Library.

All other required readings (and most supplementary ones) are available through links in our online syllabus, which is available through a link from my homepage: http://www.umich.edu/~gmarkus

In the Course Outline below, readings marked with an asterisk are to be read by everyone. The supplementary readings are there for you to sample as you wish. I draw on them (and other sources) during lectures. From time to time your GSI may ask one or more of you to report briefly to your discussion section on some of the supplementary readings.

Online registration (free) to the New York Times is required to access its articles.

Many journal articles are available online through ProQuest, JSTOR, or other services. A simple way to locate journals online is to search for the journal title in MIRLYN. You will need to login to MIRLYN to use most of these online services. It will serve you well to become experienced in using them.

COURSE OUTLINE (Lecture dates in parentheses)

1. Leading Change, Locally and Globally (Sept 5, 10, 12, 17)

First paper assignment posted Sept 12, due in lecture Sept 19

* Eby, John W. 1998. "Why service-learning is bad." Grantham, PA: Messiah College Agape` Center for Service and Learning.

* Ganz, Marshall. 2007. "Hillel's questions: A call to leadership," Sh'ma (Feb.).

* King, Martin Luther, Jr. 1967. "Where do we go from here?" (Excerpts)

* Kidder, Tracy. 2003. Mountains Beyond Mountains. New York: Random House.

* View lecture by Paul Farmer, presented at Rackham Auditorium, Feb. 2007: "Building a Health Care Movement: From Haiti to Rwanda." (53 minutes)

* Documentary film, "Holding Ground," to be shown in discussion sections

* Kretzmann, John P. 1995. "Building communities from the inside out," Shelterforce (Sept./Oct.).

Walljasper, Jay. 1997. "When activists win: The renaissance of Dudley St." The Nation (March 3).   See also the DSNI Website.

Higher Education Research Institute. 2006. "Interest in social and civic responsibility increases and support for military spending declines." Los Angeles: UCLA. See also the PowerPoint slides.

Jim Yong Kim featured in "Time 100: The People Who Shape Our World." Time (May 8, 2006).

Partners in Health website

2. The Federal Budget: The Skeleton of the State (Sept 19. 24, 26; Oct 1)

Second paper assignment posted Sept 26, due in lecture Oct 3

* "False balance," Wikipedia.

* Congressional Budget Office. 2007. The Budget and Economic Outlook: An Update (August 2007). (Read Ch. 1, pp. 1-23.)

* Rohaly, Jeffrey. 2007. "The distribution of federal taxes." Washington, DC: Tax Policy Center.

* Gramlich, Edward, 2007. "Why deficits matter: Testimony before the U.S. House Budget Committee." Washington, DC: Tax Policy Center.

* Leonhardt, David. 2007. "What $1.2 trillion can buy," New York Times (Jan. 17).

* Hacker, Jacob S., and Paul Pierson. 2005. "Abandoning the middle: The Bush tax cuts and the limits of democratic control," Perspectives on Politics, 3 (March): 33-53.

* Lowenstein, Roger. 2005. "A question of numbers," New York Times Magazine (Jan. 16).

* Bartlett, Bruce. 2005. "The Medicare mess," National Review (Jan 5)

* Hacker, Jacob (2005. "Bigger and better," The American Prospect (May 6).

* McIntyre, Robert S. 1996. "An overview of tax expenditures." In: Tax Expenditures: The Hidden Entitlements. Washington, DC: Center for Tax Justice.

* MacGuineas, Maya. 2007. "The $800 billion tax loophole," Washington Post (Jan. 18).

* Rivlin, Alice M., and Isabel Sawhill, eds. 2005. Restoring Fiscal Sanity: Meeting the Long-Run Challenge. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. (Executive summary)

Hakim, Danny. 2004. "A fuel-saving proposal from your automaker: Tax the gas," New York Times (April 18).

Piketty, Thomas, and Emmanuel Saez. 2007. "How progressive is the U.S. federal tax system? A historical and international perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21 (1): 3-24.

Andrews, Edmund L. 2007. "Tax cuts offer most for very rich, study says," New York Times (Jan. 8).

Krugman, Paul. 2003. "The tax-cut con," New York Times Magazine (Sept. 14).

Solomon, Deborah. 2007. "How war's expense didn't strain economy," Wall Street Journal (Feb. 5).

Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees. 2007. "Status of the Social Security and Medicare Programs (Summary)."

Diamond, Peter A., and Peter R. Orszag. 2005. "Saving Social Security," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19 (2): 11-32.

Feldstein, Martin 2005.  "Structural reform of Social Security," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19 (2): 33-55.

Porter, Eduardo and David Leonhardt. 2005. "Goodbye, my sweet deduction," New York Times (Nov. 3).

Buffett, Warren. 2003. "Dividend voodoo," Washington Post (May 20), p. A19.

Bartels, Larry. 2005. "Homer gets a tax cut: Inequality and public policy in the American mind." Perspectives on Politics, 3 (1): 15-31.

Howard, Christopher. 1997. The Hidden Welfare State: Tax Expenditures and Social Policy in the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Slemrod, Joel and Jon Bakija. 2004. Taxing Ourselves: A Citizen's Guide to the Debate over Taxes. 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Congressional Budget Office. 2006. "Historical effective federal tax rates: 1979 to 2004" (Dec.).

Congressional Budget Office -- excellent source of information on federal taxes and spending

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities -- nonprofit research center with emphasis on policies affecting low to moderate income people

Tax Policy Center -- a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution

Bureau of the Public Debt, FAQ about the National Debt

The National Debt to the Penny

3. National Security (Oct 3, 8, 10)

Third paper assignment posted Oct 10, due in lecture Oct 17

* Nye, Joseph S., Jr. 2004. "The decline of America's soft power: Why Washington should worry," Foreign Affairs, 83 (3): 16-20.

* Program on International Policy Attitudes. 2007. "World view of US role goes from bad to worse," College Park: University of Maryland (Jan. 22).

* Kirk, Michael. 2003. "The War Behind Closed Doors." (view the PBS "Frontline" program online).

* Fukuyama, Francis. 2006. "After neoconservatism," New York Times Magazine (Feb. 19).

* Pillar, Paul R. 2006. "Intelligence, policy, and the war in Iraq," Foreign Affairs, 85 (March/April).

Rachman, Gideon. 2007. "The war on error," Financial Times (Sept. 28).

National Security Council. 2002. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America.

Ikenberry, G. John, and Anne-Marie Slaughter. 2006. Forging a World of Liberty under Law: U.S. National Security in the 21st Century. Princeton, NJ: Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. (Read the Executive Summary, pp. 6-10.)

U.S. Army/Marine Corps. 2006. Counterinsurgency Field Manual, No. 3-24. Washington, DC: Department of the Army. (Read the Introduction, the first page of Chapter 1, and the first two pages of Chapter 2.)

Galbraith, Peter W. 2007. "Iraq: The way to go," New York Review of Books (Aug. 16).

Office of the Director of National Intelligence. 2007. "Prospects for Iraq's stability: Some security progress but political reconciliation elusive" (Aug.).

Ricks, Thomas R. 2004. "Study published by Army criticizes war on terror's scope," Washington Post (Jan. 12), p. A12. (The full study by Jeffrey Record that is featured in this news article is available in .pdf format.)

Mazzetti, Mark. 2006. "Spy agencies say Iraq War worsens terror threat," New York Times (Sept. 24).

Brown, David. 2006. "Study claims Iraq's 'excess' death toll has reached 655,000," Washington Post (Oct. 11).

Bilmes, Linda, and Joseph Stiglitz. 2006. "The economic costs of the Iraq War: An appraisal three years after the beginning of the conflict." NBER Working Paper No. 12054.

Galbraith, Peter W. 2006. "The mess," New York Review of Books, 53 (March 9). (Review of My Year in Iraq, by L Paul Bremer III, and The Assassins' Gate, by George Packer.)

Glanz, James. 2006. "U.S. rebuilding in Iraq found to fall short," New York Times (Jan. 27). (The full Jan. 26, 2006 report featured in this article is available from the website of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.)

Caryl, Christian. 2007. "What about the Iraqis?" New York Review of Books (Jan. 11).

Rodenbeck, Max. 2004. "Islam confronts its demons," New York Review of Books (April 29).

Fair, C. Christine and Husain Haqqani, 2006. "Think again: Islamist terrorism," Foreign Policy (Web exclusive), January.

Roberts, Tom. 2006. "The Insurgency." (view the PBS "Frontline" program online).

Kirk, Michael. 2006. "The Dark Side" (view the PBS "Frontline" program online).

Pena, Charles V. 2003. "Iraq: The wrong war," Policy Analysis, 502 (Dec. 15): 1-23.

Priest, Dana. 2003. "Rumsfeld visited Baghdad in 1984 to reassure Iraqis, documents show: Trip followed criticism of chemical arms' use," Washington Post (Dec.19).

Zogby International. 2006. "U.S. troops in Iraq: 72% say end war in 2006" (Feb. 28).

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. 2004. The 9/11 Commission Report, Chapter 12.

Baker, James A., III, and Lee H. Hamilton, co-chairs. 2006. The Iraq Study Group Report. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace. (Read pp. 6-62).

Center for Strategic and International Studies, Iraq Briefing Book.

Diamond, Larry. 2005. Squandered Victory. New York: Henry Holt.

Ricks, Thomas E. 2006. Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. New York: Penguin.

4. The US in Global Context: Trade, Development, and Immigration (Oct 17, 22, 24, 29)

Fourth paper assignment posted Oct 24, due in lecture Oct 31

A. Global Trade

* Deardorff, Alan V., and Robert M. Stern. 2002. "What you should know about globalization and the World Trade Organization," Review of International Economics, 10 (August): 404-423.

* Rodrik, Dani. 2001. "Trading in illusions," Foreign Policy (March/April).

* Cohen, Stephen S. and J. Bradford DeLong. 2005. "Shaken and stirred," Atlantic Monthly (Jan/Feb): 112+.

Bernanke, Ben S. 2006. "Global economic integration: What's new and what's not?" Presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's 30th Annual Economic Symposium, Jackson Hole, WY, August 25.

Rosenberg, Tina. 2002. "The free-trade fix," New York Times Magazine (Aug. 18).

Ferguson, Niall. 2005. "Our currency, your problem," New York Times (March 13).

Chinn, Menzie D. 2005. "Getting Serious About the Twin Deficits." Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations.

Bradsher, Keith. 2007. "Dollars to spare in China's trove," New York Times (March 6).

Blinder, Alan S. 2006. "Offshoring: The next Industrial Revolution?" Foreign Affairs, 85 (2): 113+.

Baily, Martin, and Diana Farrell. 2004. "Exploding the myths about offshoring." San Francisco: McKinsey Global Institute. (Free registration may be required to access the report.)

Bhagwati, Jagdish, Arvind Panagariya, and T.N. Srinivasan. 2004. "The muddles over outsourcing," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 18 (4): 93-114.

Rosenberg, Tina. 2007. "Reverse foreign aid," New York Times (March 25).

Berger, Suzanne. 2000. "Globalization and politics," Annual Review of Political Science, 3: 43-62. Stiglitz, Joseph E. 2006. Making Globalization Work. New York: W. W. Norton.

Global Policy Forum website

B. Immigration

* Lowenstein, Roger. 2006. "The immigration equation," New York Times Magazine (July 9).

* Fix, Michael E., and Jeffrey S. Passel. 2001, "U.S. Immigration at the beginning of the 21st Century." Washington, DC: Urban Institute.

* DeParle, Jason. 2007. "Should we globalize labor too?" New York Times (June 10).

* Padgett, Tim. 2007. "Can two kids alter immigration law?" Time (Aug. 2).

Larsen, Luke 2004. "The Foreign-Born Population in the United States: March 2003." Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau.

Borjas, George J. 1995. "Know the flow; nine immigration myths," National Review (April 17): 44-50.

Card, David. 2005. "Is the new immigration really so bad?" Economic Journal, 115 (507): F300-F323.

Huntington, Samuel P. 2004. "The Hispanic challenge," Foreign Policy (March/April). (free registration required)

Freeman, Richard B. 2006. "People flows in globalization," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20 (2): 145-170.

Anonymous. 2006. "Sticks, carrots and fences," The Economist (March 29).

Rauch, Jonathan. 2007. "A simpler, better immigration plan," National Journal (June 16).

Smith, James P. and Barry Edmonston, eds. 1997. The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences Press.

Pritchett, Lant. 2006. Let Their People Come: Breaking the Gridlock on Global Labor Mobility. Washington, DC: Center for Global Development. (Introduction)

Pew Hispanic Center

C. Global Poverty and Development

* World Bank. 2006. "Poverty." (Washington, DC: World Bank).

* Rodrik, Dani. 2002. "Globalization for whom?" Harvard Magazine, 104 (6): 29.

* Eviatar, Daphne. 2004. "Spend $150 billion per year to cure world poverty," New York Times Magazine (Nov. 7).

* Easterly, William. 2005. "A modest proposal," Washington Post (March 13). [Review of The End of Poverty, by Jeffrey Sachs]

* Collier, Paul. 2007. The Bottom Billion. New York: Oxford University Press. Read Chapter 11, "An Agenda for Action."

Blank, Rebecca M. 2003. "Selecting among anti-poverty policies: Can an economist be both critical and caring?" Review of Social Economy, 61 (4): 447-470.

Kristof, Nicholas D. 2005. "Land of penny pinchers," New York Times (Jan. 5).

Sachs, Jeffrey D. 2001. "The strategic significance of global inequality," Washington Quarterly, 24 (3): 187-198.

Easterly, William. 2003. "Can foreign aid buy growth?" Journal of Economic Perspectives, 17 (3): 23-48.

Marglin, Stephen A. 2003. "Development as poison," Harvard International Review, 25 (Spring): 70-75.

Kristof, Nicholas D. 2006. "Aid: Can it work?" New York Review of Books, 53 (Oct. 5).

Dugger, Celia W. 2006. "Peace Prize to pioneer of loans to poor no bank would touch," New York Times (Oct. 14).

United Nations Development Programme. 2005. Human Development Report, 2005. Chapter 1.

Easterly, William. 2006. White Man's Burden. New York: Penguin.

Sachs, Jeffrey D. 2005. The End of Poverty. New York: Penguin.

Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. New York: Penguin.

World Bank website

5. Race and Politics (Oct 31; Nov 5, 7)

Fifth paper assignment posted Nov 5, due in lecture Nov 12

* Grant-Thomas, Andrew, and john a. powell. 2006. "Toward a structural racism framework," Poverty and Race (Nov/Dec).

* Bajaj, Vikas, and Ford Fessenden. 2007. "What's behind the race gap?" New York Times (Nov. 4).

* Kotz, Nick. 2005. "Review of 'When Affirmative Action Was White,' by Ira Katznelson," New York Times (Aug. 28).

* Hout, Michael. 2004. Review of "The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality" by Thomas M. Shapiro. Washington Post (Feb. 15).

* Bertrand, Marianne, and Sendhil Mullainathan. 2004. "Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A field experiment on labor market discrimination," American Economic Review, 94 (4): 991-1013.

* Dickerson, Debra. 1999. "Pennies from hell," Village Voice (May 5-11). (Review of No Shame in My Game, by Katherine Newman.)

* Morin, Richard. 2001. "Misperceptions cloud whites' view of blacks," Washington Post (July 11), p. A1.

* Kurth, Joel. et al. 2001. "Region is diverse, not mixed: Metro Detroit is most segregated area in nation, census shows," Detroit News (April 1).

* Herbert, Bob. 2005. "Impossible, ridiculous, repugnant," New York Times (Oct. 6).

* Mehlman, Ken. 2005. "RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman's Remarks Today at the NAACP National Convention" (July 14).

Blank, Rebecca M., Marilyn Dabady, and Constance F. Citro, eds. 2004. Measuring Racial Discrimination. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Chapter 4. Theories of Discrimination.

Rose, Stephen J., and Heidi I. Hartmann. 2004. Still a Man's Labor Market: The Long-Term Earnings Gap. Washington, DC: Institute for Women's Policy Research. Executive summary. (The full report is also available on the Web.)

Committee on Maximizing the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering. 2007. Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Executive summary.

Wilkins, Roger. 1995. "Racism has its privileges," The Nation (March 27).

Foner, Eric. 1999. "Expert report in the cases of Gratz, et al. v. Bollinger, et al. and Grutter, et al. v. Bollinger, et al."

Anonymous. 2002. "A stigma that never fades," Economist (Aug. 10).

Western, Bruce. 2006. Punishment and Inequality in America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Introduction.

Currie, Elliott. 1998. Crime and Punishment in America. New York: Metropolitan Books, Chapter 1.

Tonry, Michael. 1995. Malign Neglect: Race, Crime, and Punishment in America. New York: Oxford University Press. Chapter 1.

DiIulio, John J. 1999. "Two million prisoners are enough," Wall Street Journal, March 12.

U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics

Sturm, Susan, and Lani Guinier. 2000. "The future of affirmative action," Boston Review, 25 (6). A longer version of this article was published in 1996 as "The future of affirmative action: Reclaiming the innovative ideal," California Law Review, 84 (4).

Turner, Margey Austin, et al. 2002."Discrimination in Metropolitan Housing Markets: National Results from Phase I of HDS2000." Report to U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development. (executive summary)

Darling-Hammond, Linda. 1998. "Unequal opportunity," Brookings Review, 16 (2): 28-32.

Bok, Derek, and William G. Bowen. 1998. The Shape of the River. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Kozol, Jonathan. 2005. The Shame of the Nation. New York: Crown Books.

Massey, Douglas S., and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid. Cambridge Harvard University Press.

National Research Council. 2001. America Becoming: Racial Trends and Their Consequences. Neil J. Smelser, William Julius Wilson, and Faith Mitchell, eds. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Volume I and Volume II.

Walton, Hanes, Jr., and Robert C. Smith. 2007. American Politics and the African American Quest for Universal Freedom. 4th ed. New York: Longman.

6. The Politics of Healthcare (Nov 12, 14, 19, 26) Note: No lecture on Weds, Nov 21

Sixth paper assignment posted Nov 19, due in lecture Nov 28

* U.S. Census Bureau. 2007. Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2006. Read pp. 18-25.

* Freudenheim, Milt. 2006. "Health care costs rise twice as much as inflation," New York Times (Sept. 27).

* Krugman, Paul, and Robin Wells. 2006. "The health care crisis and what to do about it," New York Review of Books, 53 (March 23).

* Toner, Robin, and Janet Elder. 2007. "Most support U.S. guarantee of health care," New York Times (March 2).

* Institute of Medicine Committee on the Consequences of Uninsurance. 2004. "Insuring America's health: Principles and recommendations." Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

* Cutler, David M., Allison B. Rosen, and Sandeep Vijan. 2006. "The value of medical spending in the United States, 1960-2000," New England Journal of Medicine, 355 (Aug 31): 920-927.

* Blumenthal, David. 2001. "Controlling health care expenditures," New England Journal of Medicine, 344 (10): 766-769.

* Brownlee, Shannon. 2003. "The overtreated American," Atlantic Monthly (Jan/Feb.)

* Sack, Kevin. 2007. "Many eligible for child health plan have no idea," New York Times, (Aug. 22).

Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. 2006. "The uninsured: A primer." Washington, DC: Kaiser Family Foundation.

Orszag, Peter R., and Philip Ellis. 2007. "The challenge of rising health care costs -- a view from the Congressional Budget Office," New England Journal of Medicine, 357 (Nov. 1): 1793-1795.

Agrisano, Carlos, et al. 2007. Accounting for the Cost of Health Care in the United States. San Francisco: McKinsey Global Institute. (Synthesis)

Cohn, Jonathan. 2007. "What's the one thing big business and the left have in common?" New York Times (April 1).

Krugman, Paul. 2005. "Health economics 101," New York Times (Nov. 14).

Krugman, Paul 2007. "A socialist plot," New York Times (Aug. 27).

Mankiw, N. Gregory. 2007. "Beyond those health care numbers," New York Times (Nov. 4).

Steinmo, Sven, and Jon Watts. 1995. "It's the institutions stupid! Why comprehensive national health insurance always fails in America," Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 20 (Summer): 329-72.

Arrow, Kenneth J. 1963. "Uncertainty and the welfare economics of medical care," American Economic Review, 53 (5): 941-973.

Reagan, Michael. 1999. The Accidental System. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Starr, Paul. 1983. The Social Transformation of American Medicine. New York: Basic Books.

7. Poverty, Incomes, and Inequality (Nov 28, Dec 3, 5, 10)

Seventh paper assignment posted Dec 5, due Dec 14, 4:45 pm

* Stein, Ben. 2007. "Getting a boost up the ladder of success," New York Times (July 15).

* U.S. Census Bureau. 2007. Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2006. Read pp. 4-17.

* Brooks, David. 2004. "More than money," New York Times (March 2).

* Smith, Joel J. 2007. "26,000 apply for 1,000 casino jobs," Detroit News (March 28).

* Jencks, Christopher, Scott Winship, and Joseph Swingle. 2006. "Welfare redux," The American Prospect (March).

* Zedlewski, Sheila R. 2003. "Work and barriers to work among welfare recipients in 2002." Washington, DC: Urban Institute.

* Haskins, Ron, and Isabel V. Sawhill. 2003. "Work and marriage: The way to end poverty and welfare." Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

* Traub, James 2000. "What no school can do," New York Times Magazine (Jan. 26).

* Johnston, David Cay. 2007. "Income gap is widening, data shows," New York Times (March 29).

* Johnston, David Cay. 2007. "2005 Incomes, on Average, Still Below 2000 Peak," New York Times (Aug. 21).

* Stille, Alexander. 2001. "Grounded by an income gap," New York Times (Dec. 15).

Piketty, Thomas, and Emmanuel Saez. 2006. "Income inequality in the United States, 1913-2002." In A. B. Atkinson and Thomas Piketty, eds. Top Incomes over the Twentieth Century. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Piketty, Thomas, and Emmanuel Saez. 2007. Response to "The top 1% ... of what?" by Alan Reynolds, Wall Street Journal (Dec. 14, 2006).

Parrott, Sharon, and Arloc Sherman. 2006. "TANF at 10: Program Results are More Mixed Than Often Understood." Washington, DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Holzer, Harry J., Paul Offner, and Elaine Sorensen 2004. "Declining employment among young black less-educated men: The role of incarceration and child support." Madison, WI: Institute for Research on Poverty.

Moffitt, Robert A. 2002. "From welfare to work: What the evidence shows." Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

Rector, Robert E., and Kirk A. Johnson 2004. "Understanding poverty in America." Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation.

Krugman, Paul 2002. "For richer," New York Times Magazine (Oct. 20).

Danziger, Sheldon, et al. 2002. "Does it pay to move from welfare to work?" Journal of the Association for Policy Analysis and Management, 21 (Fall): 671-692.

Rothstein, Richard 2001. "Reducing poverty could increase school achievement," New York Times (March 7).

DeParle, Jason. 2004. American Dream. New York: Viking.

Kozol, Jonathan. 1995. Amazing Grace. New York: HarperPerennial.

Shipler, David K. 2004. The Woeking Poor: Invisible in America. New York: Knopf. Reviewed by Ron Suskind.

U.S. Census Bureau -- latest information on poverty in the U.S.