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He is now Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow and resident in the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.[

Fukuyama is best known as the author of The End of History and the Last Man, in which he argued that the progression of human history as a struggle between ideologies is largely at an end, with the world settling on liberal democracy after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Fukuyama predicted the eventual global triumph of political and economic liberalism:[citation needed]

As a key Reagan Administration contributor to the formulation of the Reagan Doctrine, Fukuyama is an important figure in the rise of neoconservatism, although his works came out years after Irving Kristol's 1972 book

In a New York Times article of February 2006, Fukuyama, in considering the ongoing Iraq War, stated: "What American foreign policy needs is not a return to a narrow and cynical realism, but rather the formulation of a 'realistic Wilsonianism' that better matches means to ends."[14] In regard to neoconservatism he went on to say: "What is needed now are new ideas, neither neoconservative nor realist, for how America is to relate to the rest of the world — ideas that retain the neoconservative belief in the universality of human rights, but without its illusions about the efficacy of American power and hegemony to bring these ends about

Fukuyama began to distance himself from the neoconservative agenda of the Bush administration, citing its overly militaristic basis and embrace of unilateral armed intervention, particularly in the Middle East. By late 2003, Fukuyama had voiced his growing opposition to the Iraq War[15] and called for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation as Secretary of Defense.[16]

resident Obama is attempting a triple play this week that eluded his predecessors over the past two decades: simultaneous progress on the most vexing and violent problems in the Middle East — Israeli-Palestinian peace, Iraq and Iran — in hopes of creating a virtuous cycle in a region prone to downward spirals.

It turned out that the reverse was true as well: When one of those efforts fell apart, so did the other two.

Johns Hopkins University

He is today the Majid Khadduri professor in Middle East Studies and Director of the Middle East Studies Program

One notable contribution Ajami made in the September October 1993 issue of Foreign Affairs was a rebuttal to Samuel Huntington’s "The Clash of Civilizations?", regarding the state and future of international relations after the Cold War.

In his article “The Summoning”, Ajami criticises Huntington for ignoring the empirical complexities and state interests which drive conflicts in and between civilizations

high unemployment

social spending

cuts in social spendin

protesters say they so distrust their country’s political class and its pandering to established interest groups

their political leaders, regardless of party, had been so thoroughly captured by security concerns, ultra-Orthodox groups and other special interests

anticorruption measure

less hierarchical, more participatory

the political system has abandoned its citizens.”

That consensus, championed by scholars like Francis Fukuyama in his book “The End of History and the Last Man,” has been shaken if not broken by a seemingly endless succession of crises

continuing European and American debt crisis —

many criticise America for not asking them which targets to hit

Some wealthy Damascenes say that though they are keen to see the back of Mr Assad, they would rather America not strike because they fear the potential consequences. Syrians living in rebel-held areas, who have less to lose, seem more supportive of intervention.

many are annoyed that the conversation about strikes revolves around America’s credibility and deterring other regimes, rather than putting an end to Syria’s war or Mr Assad’s rule.

Some Arab states, like Saudi Arabia, urge action in private, but keep quiet publicly, lest they be seen to be seeking Western help

One thing many Syrians do agree on, however, is their contempt for Mr Obama's indecisiveness: "Obama, you ass, are you going to hit us or not?" asks a young Damascene on Facebook.

Once again we see no indication that public insurance generosity has had a damaging effect

Note also that the employment rate increased in nearly all of the countries during this period. On average, it rose by nine percentage points between 1979 and 2013. That’s not what we would expect to see if generous public insurance programs were inducing large numbers of able adults to withdraw from the labor market

What we see in the chart is that countries with more generous public insurance programs tend to have less material deprivation.

With globalization, the advance of computers and robots, increased pressure from shareholders for short-run profit maximization, union weakening, and other shifts, wages have been under pressure. Couple this with the fact that many people at the low end of the income ladder have labor market disadvantages — disability, family constraint, geographic vulnerability to structural unemployment — and we have a recipe for stagnation in the market incomes of the poor.

here’s a good reason for these shifts: government provision offers economies of scale and scope, which reduces the cost of a good or service and thereby makes it available to many people who couldn’t or wouldn’t get it on their own.

Government provides more insurance now than it used to. All of us, not just some, are dependent on it. And life for almost everyone is better because of it

Korpi and Palme found that the pattern across eleven affluent nations supported the hypothesis that greater use of targeting in transfers yields less redistribution

To make them more affordable, the government claws back some of the benefit by taxing it as though it were regular income. All countries do this, including the United States, but the Nordic countries do it more extensively. Does that hurt their poor? Not much. The tax rates increase with household income, so much of the tax clawback hits middle- and upper-income households.

Another difference is that public services such as schooling, childcare, medical care, housing, and transportation are more plentiful and of better quality for the poor in the Nordic countries. Public services reduce deprivation and free up income to be spent on other needs. It’s difficult to measure the impact of services on living standards, but one indirect way is to look at indicators of material deprivation,

Targeted transfers are directed (sometimes disproportionately, sometimes exclusively) to those with low incomes and assets, whereas universal transfers are provided to most or all citizens.

Targeted programs are more efficient at reducing poverty; each dollar or euro or kroner transferred is more likely to go to the least well-off. Increased targeting therefore could be an effective way to maintain or enhance public insurance in the face of diminished resources.

“the more we target benefits to the poor … the less likely we are to reduce poverty and inequality.”

hese expenditures are encouraged by government tax advantages.22 But they do little to help people on the bottom of the ladder, who often work for employers that don’t provide retirement or health benefits.

The hypothesis that targeting in social policy reduces political support and thereby lessens redistributive effort is a sensible one. Yet the experience of the rich countries in recent decades suggests reason to question it. Targeting has drawbacks relative to universalism: more stigma for recipients, lower take-up rates, and possibly less social trust.44 But targeting is less expensive. As pressures to contain government expenditures mount, policy makers may therefore turn to greater use of targeting. That may not be a bad thing.

Public insurance programs boost the incomes of the least well-off and improve their material well-being. If such programs are too generous, this benefit could be offset by reduced employment or economic growth, but the comparative evidence suggests that the world’s rich nations haven’t reached or exceeded the tipping point.

Spending lots of money on social protection is not in and of itself helpful to the poor. Total social expenditures in the United States are greater than in Denmark and Sweden, because the US has a large private welfare state. But relatively little of America’s private social spending reaches the poor.

Public services are an important antipoverty tool. Their benefit doesn’t show up in income data, but they appear to play a key role in reducing material hardship. Services expand the sphere of consumption for which the cost is zero or minimal. And they help to boost the earnings and capabilities of the poor by enhancing human capital, assisting with job search and placement, and facilitating work-family balance.

CO2 embedded in imported goods minus the CO2 embedded in exported goods.

some of the CO2 produced (and reported) in emission records of Asian and Eastern European countries is for the production of goods consumed in Western Europe and North America

The composition of this trade is also important in terms of carbon intensity.

The goods exported from Russia, China, India, and the Middle East typically have a high carbon intensity, reflecting the fact that their exports are often manufactured goods. In contrast, we see that exports from the UK, France, Germany and Italy are low; this is likely to be the higher share of export of service-based exports relative to those produced from heavy industry.

If you believe that net worth is a reflection of merit, then any attempt to curb inequality looks unfair.

as a classic analysis by the historian James Weinstein showed, the reforms were intended to co-opt public pressure and avert more radical measures

they sprang from a pragmatic belief that the robustness of capitalism as a whole depended on wide distribution of the fruits of the system.

Committee for Economic Development, which played a central role in the forging of postwar consensus politics, accepting strong unions, bigger government, and the rise of the welfare state.

The C.E.D. called for tax increases to pay for the Korean War and it supported some of L.B.J.’s Great Society

Today, there are no centrist business organizations with any real political clout, and the only business lobbies that matter in Washington are those pushing an agenda of lower taxes and less regulation. Corporate profits and C.E.O. salaries have in recent years reached record levels, but there’s no sign of a return to the corporate statesmanship of the past (the occasional outlier like Warren Buffett notwithstanding)

Early in the past century, there was a true socialist movement in the United States, and in the postwar years the Soviet Union seemed to offer the possibility of a meaningful alternative to capitalism. Small wonder that the tycoons of those days were so eager to channel populist agitation into reform

“zero cash up front” for admitted students.

This automatic and there is no possibility of non-payment or partial payment. The reason is that the government treats HECS payments as a tax line in your pay check.

Repayment schedules are progressive — the more you earn after graduation, the more quickly you pay the government back what you owe for your education. If your salary just meets the threshold, you are “taxed” 4% of your income each year until you pay off all your debt, which could take well over a decade. If you earn twice as much, the annual repayment is 8%

You can also avoid HECS by leaving Australia because then you don’t have to pay Australian taxes.

there is a big obstacle to overcome.

The U.S. is unique in having a vibrant private not-for-profit higher education sector sitting alongside the public colleges and universities. One big difference: the privates don’t receive any direct state or federal funding. As a result, they tend to rely more heavily on tuition than the public ones do.

The clear ethos is that the most talented students should be able to get an Ivy League education, not just those with the ability to pay.

Charge the full tuition price to those who can afford it. Offer very generous f