Category : Froma Harrop

“Why Americans Won’t Do Dirty Jobs” is the presumptuous headline on a Bloomberg Businessweek cover. The subject is Alabama’s new no-tolerance policy toward illegal immigrants and the people who hire them. As expected, the law has caused an exodus of undocumented workers from Alabama, depriving fish-processors, farmers and other businesses of hands willing to perform [...]

Americans typically eat over 1,000 meals a year. But for many, Thanksgiving dinner seems to be the one that, like a magnet, gathers the iron shavings of every food anxiety. Why should that be? You’d think that this feast with family and friends would be accepted for what it is — an innocent once-a-year gorge. [...]

Thanksgiving is the most American of holidays. But there is something almost un-American about it. It is a day opposed to striving, to getting more. Time to stop adding up the numbers on the scorecard of life. We freeze in place, look at our situation and give thanks for whatever is there. The Wall Street [...]

The “poverty issue” opens a vast highway system of social and economic observations headed in every direction. Some say poverty is a national disgrace. Some say it’s the poor people’s own fault. Some say the government must end it through bigger subsidies and more services for the poor — others by reducing that help and [...]

It was odd becoming a personal friend of Andy Rooney so late in his life and so far into my own. I’d seen him on “60 Minutes” for all 33 years, first while sitting on the rug in my parents’ house. Through one of Andy’s close friends and neighbors, I actually got to know him [...]

A perceived decline in “national greatness” haunts Americans of all political persuasions. Many equate it with the drop in our superpower status. But others ask, “Are the costs of perpetually commanding the high ground worth it?” Money we spend defending the world, others spend building fast trains. In the past, countries suffering economic seizure went [...]

Conditions at some of the “Occupy” tent sites started going downhill at a most inopportune time. A New York Times/CBS poll had just reported that 47 percent of the public said that the movement’s views reflect those of most Americans (with only 34 percent saying they do not). On the ground, the homeless were moving [...]

Since I was a wee pill-popper, I’ve taken more vitamins and other supplements than I care to admit. If over the years I’d invested that money in an S&P 500 stock fund… oh, well. Now we learn that most of those oils, minerals, exotic fruit extracts and herbs don’t help us any more than would [...]

Hard to believe, but once upon a time, economists worried that the U.S. government would pay off all its debt. Also hard to believe, once upon a time was only 11 years ago. President Clinton had bequeathed his successor budget surpluses “as far as the eye could see.” He wanted some of them used to [...]

Ed Rendell, do you have plans for 2012? Hillary Clinton? If you, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, or you, the secretary of state, are free next year and wouldn’t mind, would you please launch a primary challenge against President Obama? This request stems not from anger at Obama’s penchant for blithely negotiating away certain [...]