The university in chains

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Irwin Garfinkel

In Assuring Child Support, Irwin Garfinkel, former director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, proposes a comprehensive new program of child support enforcement and insurance called the Child Support Assurance System. In the United States, rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock childbirth are climbing so dramatically that over half of the next generation is likely to spend part of its childhood in single-mother families. As many as half of these families will live in poverty, caused in large measure by the failure of the current system to secure adequate child support from absent parents and to assure minimum support when parents cannot provide it. Assuring Child Support shows how these problems could be remedied by a new national system of child support enforcement that is both feasible and affordable - a practical reform that is within the nation's grasp.^ Garfinkel critiques the current system of the court-mandated support and federal assistance programs as both inefficient and unfair, arguing that it fosters irresponsibility among absent parents - usually fathers - and encourages welfare dependence over employment for single mothers. He then details the three essential components of the Child Support Assurance System: a monetary support standard set by law; routine income withholding to facilitate collection from the nonresident parent; and government insurance against non-payment of the full benefit. Supplementing policy and economic analysis with accounts of pilot tests in Europe and the United States, Garfinkel's emphasis throughout is on a system that fosters full financial responsibility in both parents while at the same time providing a social safety net.^ In concluding chapters, Garfinkel anticipates and answers critics of CSAS, carefully demonstrating how this program can pay for itself by reducing welfare use and increasing the parental support for children. An important book on one of America's most pressing problems, Assuring Child Support compels us to recognize the precarious future facing many of the nation's children and recommends sound reforms for providing them with more secure and promising lives.

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George Monbiot

In this collection of essays on money, religion, war, power, culture and nature, the author explains why we are heading into an uncertain future in which peace and sound politics are paramount to our survival. From his attack on the countries that deny the existence of global warming to his rally against the injustices of the Iraq war, the author turns his gaze on the aspects of modernity that most endanger the prevailing world order. With characteristic precision, he offers unassailable proof that the desecration of the resources on which we all depend threatens the peace, equality - and very existence - of humanity. This book is an urgent wake-up call that we cannot afford to ignore. -- Publisher details.

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Barry Jones and Michael Keating

Is Europe witnessing the death of the nation-state? In this book, leading scholars examine how European integration and regional assertion threaten this once-mighty institution and are profoundly altering the politics of Europe as it moves towards the 21st century.

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from the Macroeconomic Research Group

MERG has become convinced that a sea change in economic policy is essential to generate growth in the next few years. It can demonstrate that its proposed policy framework is both coherent and affordable. The MERG proposals offer a radically different vision of the future of South Africa. They have been designed to address the current imbalances, through direct intervention, in a way which would benefit all sections of the South African population within a short period of time. MERG took the objectives of the democratic movement as its starting point. The aim of the MERG framework is, therefore, to secure a rapid improvement in the quality of the daily lives of South Africa's poorest, most oppressed and disadvantaged people. The strategy stresses programmes to: initiate job creation and training programmes for the unemployed; improve the status of the poorest women in the rural areas; improve the availability and quality of education, health, housing and electrification; raise the level of wages of low-income workers, and; dramatically improve the skills of employed workers.