AEI scholars have produced a plethora of new titles this summer and fall. Below we highlight some of their new books. Many are being published by the AEI Press under the direction of Samuel Thernstrom.
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How to Fix Medicare: Let's Pay Patients, Not Physicians
Roger Feldman
AEI Press, June 2008
Medicare's current physician payment method often underpays doctors for some services while overpaying for others, making the system inefficient and problematic. In How to Fix Medicare, health economist Feldman argues that Medicare should do away with paying physicians directly and instead give patients medical indemnities, or fixed amounts of money, based on their medical conditions.
Feldman argues that the indemnity payment would reduce government control over prices, placing it in the hands of patients instead. Suppliers could price their services according to the natural supply and demand of local markets, and patients could then shop for the best prices and services according to their own needs and preferences. Feldman writes that his indemnity proposal would encourage patients to spend their money and choose their health care more wisely. Rather than focusing on Medicare's financial crisis, his proposal advocates smarter payments meant to rehabilitate Medicare's efficiency.
See www.aei.org/book937/.
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Fighting Words: A Tale of How Liberals Created Neo-Conservatism
Ben J. Wattenberg
St. Martin's Press, July 2008
Unlike Wattenberg's previous data-driven demographic tomes, Fighting Words is a memoir of a movement by one of its leaders. He defines neoconservatism as a natural ideological heir to liberalism, with a message summed up by Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson's slogan "common sense, for a change." In Wattenberg's telling, some liberals--dismayed by the Democratic Party's leftward movement in the 1960s on domestic issues like crime, civil unrest, and cultural "coarsening" and its shift toward accommodation of Soviet expansionism abroad--stayed put in the center, finding themselves identifying ever more with conservative ideals.
Wattenberg covers his speechwriting days in Lyndon Johnson's White House, the
publication of the landmark The Real Majority, working on Scoop Jackson's presidential campaigns, the formation of the centrist Coalition for a Democratic Majority, and the growing influence of neoconservative ideas from the 1980s to the 2000s. He also includes a chapter on his decades at AEI and the role of think tanks in American life.
See www.aei.org/book938/.
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No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers
Michael Novak
Doubleday, August 2008
Novak offers a lyrical and moving account of his personal struggle with the harsh reality of faith. He goes beyond the recent spirited debates between atheists and believers to examine the "dark night" of both sides--times when solitude, abandonment, and divine absence are strongest. Novak challenges the arguments of prominent best-selling atheist authors like Sam Harris, Daniel C. Dennett, and Richard Dawkins. But instead of personally attacking these authors, he finds common ground with nonbelievers, presenting correspondence with an atheist friend as a means of countering their points. Novak urges both believers and unbelievers "to learn a new habit of reasoned and mutually respectful conversation."
Never denying the complicated human struggle with doubt, Novak welcomes atheists into the perpetual discussion of this experience, arguing that the atheist perspective is important to theists: "It awakens them from complacency, forces them to confront new arguments and to think more deeply about older ones. It tempers hubris."
It is in the face of the existential questions of "who we are, what we may hope, and why" that both atheist and believer share similar doubts. The difference, according to Novak, lies in the acknowledgement by believers that God cannot be seen but instead is to be understood by reason "from what God cannot be." It is within this shared framework of universal darkness that Novak pleads for a more just and civil existence.
See www.aei.org/book956/.
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Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality
Charles Murray
Crown Forum, August 2008
In Real Education, Murray calls for a new definition of educational success, outlining four precepts that need to be acknowledged before we can improve the nation's schools: "Ability varies. Half of the children are below average. Too many people are going to college. America's future depends on how we educate the academically gifted."
We can only begin transforming the educational system when we recognize that students in the same classroom are not equal in academic ability and become realistic about the expectations for students at different levels, Murray says. It is "educational romanticism" that prompts people to ignore the disparities in intellectual ability among students. He argues that we are doing a disservice to those who are not cut out for higher education by insisting that college is for everyone and that we are shortchanging the academically gifted by not requiring enough of them.
"The goal of education," Murray writes, "is to bring children into adulthood having discovered things they enjoy doing and doing them at the outermost limits of their potential." He offers practical suggestions for improving the educational system, such as encouraging the educational development of gifted children and emphasizing career and technical education as an alternative to college prep.
See www.aei.org/book958/.
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Why Groups Go to Extremes
Cass R. Sunstein
AEI Press, September 2008
Law professor Sunstein uses recent studies to show that when groups of like-minded people deliberate, they often adopt more extreme views than the individual members had at the outset--a phenomenon called group polarization. In studies of punitive damages cases, for example, deliberation caused "both a severity shift for high-punishment jurors and a leniency shift for low-punishment jurors." Likewise, groups of citizens with similar ideologies became "significantly more homogenous"
following deliberation of controversial issues.
Sunstein offers several reasons why like-minded people go to extremes. First, members of homogenous groups present information that reinforces the belief of the group. Second, when less confident discussants hear their views corroborated, their confidence grows. Finally, people want to be perceived favorably, so they may shift their positions to reflect the tenor of the group. Heterogeneous groups can temper extremism by presenting more varied arguments and ensuring that no single view dominates.
See www.aei.org/book959/.
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The Poverty of "The Poverty Rate": Measure and Mismeasure of Want in Modern America
Nicholas Eberstadt
AEI Press, October 2008
For more than forty years, the official poverty rate has been the basis for U.S. antipoverty spending. But Eberstadt argues in The Poverty of "The Poverty Rate" that the measurement "appears to be inconstant, deeply flawed, and increasingly biased." He argues that it has not taken into account increased standards of living and therefore distorts government spending and distracts from policies to prioritize help for the truly needy.
The official poverty rate is based on reported income levels and revised according to Consumer Price Index changes. Because of its rigidity, it seems to indicate that there has been little improvement in conditions for poor Americans. For example, Eberstadt writes, "low-income and poverty-level households today are better-fed and less threatened by undernutrition than they were a generation ago. Their homes are larger, better-equipped with plumbing and kitchen facilities, and more capaciously furnished with modern conveniences." Indeed, after surveying late-twentieth-century poverty trends, he finds that consumption by the poor has become disconnected from their incomes--that is, a poverty rate based on income levels no longer accurately reflects their economic well-being. Eberstadt urges the development of a new measure of progress by the poor.
See www.aei.org/book961/.
