Book Review: Income and Social Security and Substandard Working Conditions: The Work Alternative: Welfare Reform and the Realities of the Job Market

people as individuals and for society as a whole that ensue from the decline of two-parent families. Ultimately, the author contends, all proposals concerning tax rates, labor laws, social programs, health insurance, housing subsidies, and school curricula should be assessed in terms of whether they strengthen or weaken the stability of the two-parent family. Until policy-makers take that criterion seriously, America will become an increasingly "miserable" and "meanspirited" nation in which to live. Neely documents that the existing education, welfare, and social insurance systems were never intended to handle the mounting carnage of young human lives that has been thrust on them. Drawing on his extensive political experience, he dismisses the usual calls for more dollars and trained professionals as having no prospect for success. Moreover, the groundswell of resistance to raising taxes in the 1990s means that, as the numlber of persons in need of these social and remedial services soars, the available funds for such purposes are contracting. This retreat, Neely argues, is inevitable because there are opportunity costs for the use of public funds. Taxpayers are revolting against paying for increasing social services if it means there are fewer funds available for such other necessary public sector obligations as infrastructure improvements, police and fire protection, qualitative improvements in education, and environmental protection. Neely argues that until the country and its leaders are willing to put aside "our laissez faire morality" and become more "judgmental" about family structure issues, the situation will only worsen. There will be more under-achievement in schools, more drug abuse, more crime, more teenage pregnancies, more people in jail, more murders, and more violence in both urban and rural America. Other social reforms are doomed because they are cosmetic remedies that fail to treat the deep societal wounds caused by the collapse of the traditional family. Neely views these problemns, formidable though they are, as solvable, and he outlines possible answers. To be sur e, nitpickers and moralists across the political spectrum will find fault with his proposals, which cover, among other things: family planning; birth control; abortion; changes in tax laws to benefit "stay-athomne" parents; the creation of "mommy tracks" and "daddy tracks" in the workplace; paid parental leave; flexible work hours; and a professional advertisement campaign attacking illegitimacy and divorce, aimed at making the desirability of two-parent families a public health issue. The message of this book is harsh but no more so than the conditions it describes. The failure to place as much emphasis on personal responsibility as on the pursuit of personal liberty and individual freedom, it seems, is undermining the pillars of a civilized society. This book dares to place a host of seemingly disparate socioeconomic issues in an interrelated policy context. But given the nature of the remedies that are proposed, it is hard to see how the political sector could be organized to respond. Nor is the academic world, with its predilection for specialization and its proclivity for abstract model building and political posturing, likely to be of much practical help. While we should be grateful that someone has had the courage and the talent to make such a powerful case for such a fundamental issue, the sad fact is that too much of society may already be too much of the problem. For the greatest gap in human achievement is not between what should be done and what can be done but, rather, between what can be done and what will be done.