Eli Ginzberg, the dean of applied economics in the United States, has studied the changing contours of economic and social structures in American for over sixty years. A long-time consultant to the federal government, including the last nine presidents of the United States, his name is indelibly linked with the creation, expansion, and refinement of employment policy and human resource needs. This second volume of memoir reviews in fascinating detail the ideas, events, and personal encounters of Ginzberg's long and distinguished career and illuminates the principal influences that helped to shape his life and work. As in his previous memoir, My Brother's Keeper, which dealt with the Jewish dimension of his life, Ginzberg draws on public and personal history to provide an evocative and intellectually rich account of a tumultuous period in American policy. In the first part the author recounts his unusual family backgroundâhis father was an eminent Judaic scholar and his mother a social activist of decidedly unconventional attitudesâand probes the intellectual and emotional roots of his unbreakable ties to New York City and Columbia University. The formative inheritance of scholarship and social concern marked Ginzberg's career in the wider world of academia and government. The chapters in the second part relate his service at the Pentagon throughout World War II and much of the Cold War period, and provide candid and penetrating views of American presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan. Later chapters dealing with consultation and study missions, in the advanced and underdeveloped world, yield valuable insights into the dynamics of economic change. Ginzberg's long experience as an analyst of US corporations and foundations informs his discussion of the problems and challenges facing these institutions at the end of the twentieth century. A unique blend of autobiographical reflection and clear-sighted observation, The Eye of Illusion will be of interest to sociologists, economists, historians, and political scientists.
This is a deeply personal memoir by the doyen of applied economics in the United States. His name is indelibly linked to the creation, expansion, and refinement of employment policy and human resource needs from 1935 to the present. Eli Ginzberg has been a longtime consultant to the federal government, including nine presidents. In this volume, the focus is on American Jewry in the present century from the perspective of an active participant observer and a critical social science based analyst.My Brother's Keeper deals with the changing position of American Jewry in the twentieth century. Ginzberg makes extensive use of his own experiences to review the changes that have taken place in urban life, university involvement, and government agencies. The work covers Jewish life from pre-Hitler Germany to the present, and discusses with intimate candor synagogue life. Drawing upon his unique vantage point, Ginzberg presents new material about many leaders and events that helped transform the role of American Jews in their relationship with other Americans and Israel. At a more conceptual level the author explores major new influences that have reshaped American Jewry, such as the rise of neo-orthodoxy, the substantial increase in Jewish day schools, the blossoming of Judaica studies in American universities, and the rise of women in leadership roles.This memoir makes use of the best social science evidence, and draws on the special experiences of the author in the world of a deeply religious family and tradition. It ranks as a major contribution to the small shelf of self-reflections by social scientists.
Written just before the beginning of World War II, this is an early example of field research into human resources by one of the pioneers in the area. Ginzberg investigates why so many long-term unemployed coal miners in South Wales remained in their villages rather than relocating to other areas of the United Kingdom where jobs were more plentiful. The results of his work, originally published in 1942, remain of value both as a record of an era, an example of communities in distress, and a model of failed social policy.
First published in 1966, this book is an unusual biography. It is written by a son about his father, by an interpreter of economics about an interpreter of rabbinics. It is done with obvious charm, with deep affection for the subject, and yet with surprising objectivity. There could not have been many students of Jewish law and legend of the era who did not at one time or another seek guidance from Louis Ginzberg - the remarkable man whose knowledge was vast and whose memory was phenomenal. In a sense, this book is the biography of a man who helped lay the foundations for an American Jewish culture.
Academic health centers (AHCs) have played a key role in propelling the United States to world leadership in technological advances in medicine. At the same time, however, many of these urban-based hospitals have largely ignored the medical care of their poor neighbors. Now one of the leading experts in American health policy and economics ponders whether current and proposed changes in the financing and delivery of medical care will result in a realignment between AHCs and the poor. Basing his discussion on an analysis of the nation's twenty-five leading research-oriented health centers, Eli Ginzberg and his associates trace the history of AHCs in the twentieth century. He claims that AHCs are once again moving toward treating the poor because these hospitals need to admit more Medicaid patients to fill their empty beds, and their medical students need opportunities to practice in ambulatory sites. He also assesses some of the more important trends that may challenge the AHCs, including financial concerns, changing medical practice environments, and the likelihood of some form of universal health insurance. Eli Ginzberg is director of The Eisenhower Center for Conservation of Human Resources, Columbia University. He has been a consultant to nine U.S. presidents and chaired the National Commission for Employment Policy for six presidents. He is the author of numerous books as well as articles on health affairs in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and many other journals.
This classic study of the effect of unemployment and of the ways of relieving it upon actual, typical families of the 1930s and 1940s is a vivid, startling picture of the demoralizing influence and consequences of America's relief policies during the Depression years. The study comprises an incisive interpretation of the problem and a series of absorbing human interest stories of representative families on relief--cases selected from experiences of relief, including the records of families from various religious groups in an exhaustive study conducted in New York City. Most research on unemployment of the 1930s conspicuously lacks studies of the unemployed themselves. Yet, this is the crux of the matter--necessary to truly understand the cbnsequences of unemployment then and now, so as to deal with it intelligently and efficiently. This book deals with what employment does to people. It answers important questions about the unemployed that are rarely asked. Who are they? Did they fail to earn a living even in prosperous times? What precipitated their unemployment? Do they prefer relief to work? Did unemployment bring about changes in how they think and feel? This is a volume of continuing relevance, and will be of interest to legislators, economists, social scientists, social workers, and psychologists.
This book summarizes the key findings from Philadelphia Private Industry Council's 1985 customer survey. It helps young people to take a critical look at their living practices and define their personal agenda and action plan for pursuing constructive choices in the future.
Business is a necessary evil that the moral leaders of mankind have tolerated but never condoned. At no time did they view with favor the pursuit of material gain. The Old Testament prophets proclaimed against the rapacity of the rich. Jesus scorned the money lenders. Luther had no kind words to say to the wealthy, nor did Calvin indulge the new bourgeoisie." Thus begins this first book-length study of social philosopher and political economist Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith (1723-1790) was a Scottish-born thinker who served as both professor of logic and professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow University. While the publication of his philosophic treatise The Theory of Moral Sentiments at age thirty-six gave Smith fame, The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, has established his lasting reputation. Recognized in its own day as an important and compassionate examination of economics, the book was praised by Thomas Jefferson for its contribution to the field of economics. Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations for several reasons. He was disgusted with the business methods practiced by merchants and manufacturers, and he was concerned with improving the well-being of society. Reflecting his own concerns about the contribution economics could make to the betterment of society, Eli Ginzberg published this study of Smith's humanitarian views on commerce, industrialism, and labor. Written for his doctoral degree at Columbia University, and published as The House of Adam Smith, the book is divided into two parts. The first part reconstructs and interprets Smith's classic The Wealth of Nations, while the second part examines Smith as the patron saint and prophet of the successes of nineteenth-century capitalism. Adam Smith and the Founding of Market of Economics is a fascinating study, and contributes significantly to our understanding of capitalism, free trade, the division of management and labor, and the history of world economics in the nineteenth century. It republication, with a new introduction by the author, will be valued by economists, political historians, students of philosophy, and policymakers.
This book focuses on ineffective adolescent behavior and evaluates prevention programs. In addition, the purpose is to assess the current efforts to reduce adolescent behavior such as drunk driving, teenage pregnancy, and dropping out of school. Also considered is whether prevention programs are effective in reducing the individual and social costs of disability and death resulting from such destructive behavior. It is noted that race and income are not determining factors in accounting for drunk driving among adolescents and young adults. However, race, poverty, and single-parent households go far to account for the vast majority of adolescents who become pregnant, use drugs, or drop out of school. A chapter is devoted to statistics, prevention, and deterrent strategies of adolescent drunk driving. Another explores teenage pregnancy, the programmatic approaches, and services. Drug use is discussed in another chapter, with prevention methods emphasized. The final issue focused upon is the intervention of students dropping out of school. The last chapter discusses possible prevention measures for each of the above issues.
This volume is a unique ethnographic experience, displaying the New Deal as a national event, and not something that simply existed inside the Washington Beltway. Most writers of and from this period never escaped the confines of the District of Columbia. Ginzberg, with the aid of a Columbia University fellowship, did just that. He traveled all parts of the country - with special emphasis on the American Far West and Southwest, with a not inconsequential stay in Hollywood, where the American style was forged to accompany the political change-over. Ginzberg's work is amazingly free of self-serving or hagiographic qualities. His sense of how the New Deal took dangerous fiscal risks, the far from unified responses by the big business nemesis, and the surprisingly complex responses from university elites, will all serve to give a human face to a political upheaval that has grown hazier with time and clumsier with one new interpretation after another of this epoch.
In one of the foremost critiques of the widespread view that in market-based economics the fluctuations of the marketplace are essentially self-regulating, Eli Ginzberg argues the reverse. He asserts that government regulation or intervention to provide stability in the capitalist marketplace is a necessity. In this classic statement of macroeconomic theory, Ginzberg argues that self-directed stable economies, devoid of an appreciation of social and psychological factors, are essentially illusory. The ability of strong blocs--corporate, labor, and agricultural--to control the market in the hope of bettering their economic position places great difficulties in the path of securing a stable economy. For Ginzberg, economic fluctuations in the decade preceding the Great Depression can largely be explained by the interaction of technological, psychological, and monetary factors. Without these factors being subjected to some sort of control, economic stability must remain an illusion. The current period of a significant fall-off in earnings, profits, and full employment also followed a decade of unparalleled monetary growth. The concerns Ginzberg raised are relevant once again. It may turn out that the "neoliberalism" of the present has something to say in response to the free market/free society premises currently in vogue. In a brilliant introductory essay, Nobel Laureate Robert M. Solow offers an impressive report card on The Illusion of Economic Stability: "The prose is tighter and more aphoristic than late Ginzberg, and the tone is more detached, even sardonic." He concludes by admitting that a volatile stock market is one more reason why automatic economic stability seems as illusory today as it did when the book first appeared.
Many different sectors of modern society influence the nation's healthcare system. Government, health insurance companies, managed care organizations, academic health centers, the pharmaceutical industry, and other groups all affect healthcare. In the areas of medical access, cost, and quality, the physician remains the key to the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare services. Eli Ginzberg and Panos Minogiannis, in Ginzberg's final book, examine the supply of health personnel in the United States. They consider the ways it has been influenced by federal and state legislation, healthcare financing, the transformation of the hospital, managed care, and health trends in the last part of the twentieth century. Through this historical approach, the book identifies key moments in U.S. health policy history that have led to problems in the geographical distribution of medical personnel, gender and race representation in the health personnel pool, and subsequent attempts to resolve these problems. This volume pays special attention to current trends in healthcare and tries to forecast the direction of the debate over health personnel supply in the coming years. Chronic care conditions and the ageing of the population on the one hand and the penetration of managed care and the subsequent transformation of American hospitals on the other converge to present policymakers with tremendous challenges in financing healthcare. Ginzberg and Minogiannis argue that a more balanced production and distribution of U.S. health personnel will go far in easing the financial burden of healthcare and at the same time improve the quality of services provided to the American people. "Ginzberg and Minogiannis provide a historical perspective [in U.S. Healthcare and the Future Supply of Physicians] on the current controversies, revealing the complex issues underlying them. Indeed, the authors point out that U.S. policymakers have often focused on the topic of the supply of physicians in addressing larger issues in health care. Questions of how to ensure equitable access to care, improve the quality of health care, contain costs, and best deliver services have shaped the assessments of how many physicians we should have." -Andrew Bindman and Margaret Wheeler, The New England Journal of Medicine Eli Ginzberg was A. Barton Hepburn Professor Emeritus at the Graduate School of Business and director of the Eisenhower Center for the Conservation of Human Resources at Columbia University. An activist scholar rather than academic-turned-activist, he is author of numerous books. Panos Minogiannis is with the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and a research associate at the Eisenhower Center. Currently, he is health services coordinator in Athens for the 2004 Olympics.
The early 1990s saw the U.S. health care system under intensifying pressures and strains as a consequence of steeply rising expenditures, an increase in the number of uninsured persons, and a range of other challenges, including increasingly severe pressures on government and employers, the principal payers for health care. As a consequence of thes
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