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Found 28 results by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead
Gaming the Poor
In a referendum in November, voters approved as many as seven new casinos to join New York State's existing nine gambling facilities. And New York is hardly alone. In recent years, 23 other states have legalized and licensed commercial (as opposed to Native American) gambling facilities. In the casi...
Casinos a Form of Government Malpractice
Today, casino gambling has moved into the economically struggling neighborhoods of the working and middle class. The patrons of these new regional casinos are not high rollers who jet in from distant locales. They are low rollers who live nearby, arrive on buses or by car, and who come back again an...
Engines of Inequality and Social Illness
The main reason regional casinos are created is not to provide wholesome entertainment or to spur economic growth. It is to get more money for the state. This is a deeply regressive form of government financing. The revenue comes disproportionately from lower-income people who live in the economical...
Status Symbol
Parents who have been unwilling even to try to love or bond with each other are unlikely to be able to cooperate together throughout a child's lifetime. Other ties will draw them away from the co-parenting relationship, whether for romance or work. . . . Grown-ups are supposed to take on the job of ...
Does a Culture of Thrift Cultivate Generosity?
The national thrift culture not only encouraged personal savings. It provided the impetus for a culture of mass giving, or what the historian Olivier Zunz, echoing thrift advocates of the time, has termed “public thrift.”
What's Missing From Our Middle Class Debate?
Why Thrift Matters: 20 Propositions
Thrift Week 2012: Why Thrift Matters
Not Lazier, but Softer: America's work ethic has not changed for the worse
What has changed is the kind of work we do. We aren’t getting lazier but we are getting softer. More of us spend our workdays sitting behind desks or counters, exercising our minds and our fine motor skills but scarcely moving a large muscle group.
It Takes Time and Discipline
Shedding debt is a lot like shedding pounds. It involves slow, steady, disciplined effort before it yields substantial results. It means passing up short-term pleasures for longer-term gains. And getting rid of debt, like getting rid of extra weight, is a do-it-yourself activity for most people. Non...
The Middle Class Constantly Seeks Stability
...the history of the expansion of the middle class has been a constant struggle to secure more people against the perils of a risk-taking way of life. This struggle was the impetus for the propagation of bourgeois values like thrift, sobriety, deferred gratification, self-control, financial discipl...
Constantly Seeking Stability
... the history of the expansion of the middle class has been a constant struggle to secure more people against the perils of a risk–taking way of life. This struggle was the impetus for the propagation of bourgeois values like thrift, sobriety, deferred gratification, self–control, financ...
It's a Sure Bet : A Proposal for Lottery-Linked Savings
Franklin's Thrift : The Lost History of an American Virtue
Delivered at the Second Annual Celebration of John Brandl's Uncommon Quest for Common Ground
Is New York Ready for No-Fault Divorce? : The Voiceless Third Parties
Because New York is the last state to come to this debate, it has a responsibility to heed the lessons of the past four decades. Chief among them is to keep in mind what we know about the effects of divorce on children. On this score, a consensus among social scientists has emerged. It distinguishes...
Separate and Unequal Mating Markets
For non-college women, marriage is becoming the exception rather than the rule. Their mating pool consists mainly of non-college men. And noncollege men are not attractive as prospective husbands for reasons that are already familiar. Their ability to support a wife and family has been declining for...
Franklin's Thrift : The Lost History of An American Virtue
Americans today often think of thrift as a negative value – a miserly hoarding of resources and a denial of pleasure. Franklin's Thrift challenges this state of mind by recovering the rich history of thrift as a quintessentially American virtue.
Old School Banking Will Save Us from Debt
If you want your ship to come in, forget about spending a few bucks each week on lottery tickets. A little bit of luck will now come in the form of spending each month a little bit less than what you earn. What’s left over goes into a savings account. A fancy idea? Hardly. Your grandparents pro...
A Nation in Debt
It’s a Wonderful Life still makes for great entertainment, but a hint of sadness pervades viewing the film today in a way it did not sixty, or even thirty, years ago. That is because the American culture of thrift, epitomized by no less beloved a Founder than Benjamin Franklin himself, is at be...
A Nation in Debt
It’s a Wonderful Life still makes for great entertainment, but a hint of sadness pervades viewing the film today in a way it did not sixty, or even thirty, years ago. That is because the American culture of thrift, epitomized by no less beloved a Founder than Benjamin Franklin himself, is at be...