The privatization process in Russia necessitates a reexamination of one of economics' most sacred tenets. Under the wrong circumstances, private property rights can become a destructive force, not the constructive force for economics growth and political stability that economists have always...

Two factors have rendered aggregate economic growth a weakened weapon against poverty in the modern U.S. economy. First, the increase in the national rate of divorce has increased the proportion of the population that lives in households that are headed by women, a group that has historically...