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The U.S. economy of the 21st century little resembles that of the 18th century, but acceptance of change and embrace of competition remain unchanged.
“The panic itself was felt in every part of the globe,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “It was as if a volcano had burst forth in New York, causing a tidal wave that swept with disastrous power over every nation on the globe.” One of the after-effects: “an accumulation of idle money in the banking centres.” The date of this item? January 17, 1908.
Given the sobering news that of late has arrived with distressing frequency, preparing this edition of Outline of the U.S. Economy has been a real challenge. We have tried to approach the task with a sense of historical consciousness. In addition to the 1908 events depicted above, the United States has endured a Great Depression (began 1929), a Long Depression (began 1873), a Panic of 1837 — “an American financial crisis, built on a speculative real estate market,” says Wikipedia — and assorted other recessions, panics, bubbles, and contractions, and emerged from each with its economic vigor restored and its republican institutions vibrant.
We hope that our readers will find this new entry in our Outline series frank, informative, and above all useful. We offer it in the spirit of optimism embedded deeply in American life.
—The Editors Continue reading Outline of the U.S. Economy
The PEW Forum December 2009
Executive Summary
For more than half a century, the United Nations and numerous international organizations have affirmed the principle of religious freedom.1 For just as many decades, journalists and human rights groups have reported on persecution of minority faiths, outbreaks of sectarian violence and other pressures on religious individuals and communities in many countries. But until now, there has been no quantitative study that reviews an extensive number of sources to measure how governments and private actors infringe on religious beliefs and practices around the world. Continue reading Global Restrictions on Religion
Police et minorités visibles : les contrôles d’identité à Paris
A Report by the Open Society Institute
French residents of immigrant origin, particularly those of North African and sub-Saharan African background, have long complained that police single them out for unfair, discriminatory, and unnecessary identity checks. If these perceptions are true, it means that French police are engaged in “ethnic profiling.” That is, police officers are basing decisions about who may be suspicious on the basis of the color of their skin or their assumed ethnic identity rather than on the basis of their individual behavior.
Les citoyens français d’origine immigrée, et en particulier ceux d’origine nord-africaine et subsaharienne, se plaignent depuis longtemps de ce que les fonctionnaires de police les soumettent à des contrôles d’identité injustes, discriminatoires et dépourvus de nécessité. Si ces perceptions étaient avérées, cela signifierait que les fonctionnaires de police fondent leurs décisions sur la couleur de la peau des personnes, plutôt que sur leur comportement.
Continue reading Profiling Minorities:A Study of Stop-and-Search Practices in Paris
by Andre Gunder Frank
University of Toronto
INTRODUCTION
Philleas Phogg miscalculated the eighty day count for his trip around the world, because he crossed the international dateline. So we may be excused if we also fudge our eighty year counts a bit in our round the world review of its shifting image. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels in the West on 1848, to be followed a dozen years later by Capital. That was some eighty years or only about three generations after Adam Smith published his Wealth of Nations in 1776, when he still repeatedly acknowledged the superiority over the West of the East, and particularly of China. But eighty years was enough to generate and permit a 180 degree turnaround in western and some eastern [not to mention southern] perceptions and ‘theories’ about the world and the absolute and relative places and roles of East and West within it. Soon Ruyard Kipling would coin his famous phrase that ‘The East is East and the West is West, and never the twain shall meet’ which is still echoed today by the author of The Clash of Civilizations Samuel Huntington (1993,1996) again writing in Foreign Affairs [1997]. Continue reading AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY YEARS
Chinese see least threat from global warming; Japanese see the most
by Anita Pugliese and Julie Ray
GALLUP
Between 2007 and 2008, Gallup conducted the first comprehensive survey of global opinions about climate change, asking respondents in 128 countries about their awareness of the issue and the extent to which they perceive climate change as a threat to themselves and their families. Overall, Gallup’s data reveal a majority (61%) of the world’s adult population knows at least something about global warming. Forty-one percent are aware of the issue and perceive it as a serious threat.
The following is excerpted from “A Heated Debate: Global Attitudes Toward Climate Change,” which appears in the Fall issue of Harvard International Review on newsstands now. Continue reading Top-Emitting Countries Differ on Climate Change Threat
Internet appendix to Inglehart, Foa and Welzel,
“Social Change, Freedom and Rising Happiness,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
The following graphs shows the trends in happiness levels found in 24 countries, using comparable data from all available surveys for countries having at least xx datapoints from 1946 to 2007. These data are from Ruut Veenhoven’s World Database of Happiness, which include the data from the first four waves of the Values Surveys. These data were downloaded from http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/ and updated to include the results from the 2005-2007 World Values Survey. Continue reading Happiness trends in 24 countries, 1946-2006
Excerpts from: To the Right 
The Transformation of American Conservatism
Jerome L. Himmelstein
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford ( 1989 The Regents of the University of California)
Part One, Chapter 3:
By the mid-1950s several waves of political reaction to the New Deal and its legacy had left American conservatism a significant political voice but still disorganized and powerless. The second act in the drama of postwar American conservatism was the steady growth of an organized conservative movement as both an independent entity and a dominating presence in the Republican party. I divide this process into two phases: Continue reading The Growth of a Movement: Old Right and New
 By Milton Gustafson
On December 13, 1952, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were transferred to the National Archives. Joining the Bill of Rights, which had been in the Archives’ care since 1938, they became collectively known as the Charters of Freedom, the most precious documents in our heritage. Two days later, at 10:15 a.m., on Monday, December 15, 1952 (Bill of Rights Day), the formal enshrining ceremony was held, presided over by Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, and with President Harry Truman and other dignitaries in attendance. Continue reading December 13th: Travels of the Charters of Freedom
Tausch Higher education and societal development EXCEL data file (3 Tables)
The Austrian political scientist Arno Tausch foresaw already in 1991 in an article for the widely circulated social democratic monthly “Die Zukunft”, published in Vienna, the crisis of the European Universities. Tausch proposed then the idea of a full University democracy with free elections of University Presidents, Deans etc. with a net household income per capita weighted tuition system. Continue reading Excellence Ranking 2009 And the Crisis of the European University
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