Payment Due or Big Catch

Payment Due: A Nation in Debt, a Generation in Trouble

Author: Timothy J Penny

The generational wars are about to begin: competing for entitlements, wrestling over taxes, dancing around the deficit. Today’s children and grandchildren are tomorrow’s taxpayers and social fabric. The authors of Payment Due contend that we are setting those children up for economic disaster.Former Representative Tim Penny (D–Minn.) knows how volatile the politics of the situation are; he retired because he couldn’t locate in Congress at large the institutional will (or stomach) to deal with the issues squarely. Political scientist Steven Schier understands the way in which the politics work against economics to solve the problem. Together, they take us inside the Capitol corridors to show us the lobbying, arm twisting, and pork barreling that goes on to derail policies designed to reduce the federal deficit. We get to play the “Washington Monument game” along with the worst of the offenders and to see firsthand how three schools of deficit thought—the wolves, pussycats, and termites—each approach the prospect of cutting back federal outlays and weaning the great middle class from its own welfare dependency.A hallmark of the book is its three-tiered set of long-term entitlement reform proposals, complete with careful documentation of the contribution each recommended item makes toward reducing the federal deficit (or at least slowing its increase). Along with suggested short-term plans, these proposals give students the opportunity to try to solve both short- and long-term problems. Students will appreciate the timeliness and relevance of the book’s argument to their generation’s future plight, and all readers willbenefit from the clear presentation of complex economic concepts and arguments essential to understanding the federal deficit debate—and to confronting the political, social, and moral payments now coming due.

Booknews

Contains practical advice on hardware and software requirements for library Internet access, assessing current equipment and purchasing new equipment, and finding and working with low-cost upgrades. Compares different types of Internet services, discusses selecting an Internet provider, and looks at software packages and sources. Includes a glossary and an annotated bibliography of books and periodicals for personal and library use, plus commercial Internet access providers, US and overseas free-nets, and mail-order services. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Book about: Conducting Meaningful Experiments or Communicating and Adapting Across Cultures

Big Catch: A Practical Introduction to Development

Author: A F Robertson

This interactive, role-playing case book is an enormously rich and stimulating way of challenging students to think about the problems of development and how development experts go about trying to alleviate them. One of the most innovative and eloquent anthropologists of development, A. F. Robertson has drawn from his extensive field experience to construct a hypothetical scenario of the sort typically encountered by those who are making development decisions.