JIM MANZI
Every capitalist economy faces a conflict between economic innovation and social cohesion. For America, the effort to balance the two is made all the more difficult by the growing cultural gap between the rich and the poor. We have managed to avoid confronting this challenge for decades, but the economic crisis and increasing global competition mean we can no longer ignore it. How can we — and how should we — strike a balance between a prosperous economy and a thriving society?
NICOLE GELINAS
The financial crisis clearly revealed serious failures of regulation. But in addressing them, policymakers should draw their inspiration from the post-Depression system of financial regulation that served the country well for decades — rather than conjure overly complicated and burdensome new rules.
ROBERT STEIN
Ronald Reagan's 1981 tax reform succeeded less because of the means it employed than the ends it served: correcting gross distortions in the tax code, lightening the tax burden on American families, and encouraging productive work. The next great reform of the tax code should pursue the same ends through means suited to today's economic realities — starting with relief for parents raising children.
CHARLES BLAHOUS
A wholesale rescue of the Social Security system is unimaginable in the current political climate. But policymakers could still ease the system's fiscal woes with measures designed to respect and reward seniors who continue to work. 
CHESTER E. FINN, JR.
For thirty years, the national education debate has focused on standards, testing, and choice. This mix of ideas has changed the way we think about education, but largely failed to bring serious improvements in student performance; and the debate is clearly running out of steam. The next wave of education policy will need to grapple with the reasons for this lack of progress, and to get back to basics.
BRADLEY A. SMITH
Proponents of campaign-finance reform have long claimed the moral high ground in our politics. But their motives, methods, and results belie that claim, and should force us to rethink some common assumptions about money and politics.
LAWRENCE M. MEAD
More than a decade after welfare reform, the approach to poverty that lay behind it still has not taken hold with many poverty experts and policymakers. Unless we understand why welfare reform worked, we risk reverting to the patterns of the past — as the early months of the Obama administration already begin to suggest.
JAMES Q. WILSON
Advances in genetics and neuroscience are expanding our knowledge of the biological foundations of human behavior. But will this improved understanding of how our genes and brains shape our actions make a mockery of our system of justice, which is designed to hold people accountable for what they do?
DIANA SCHAUB
Baseball, the great American game, unites the generations and has a played a crucial role in forming our culture. The health of baseball concerns all of America, and the health of America — perhaps especially the American family — finds itself reflected in the state of our national pastime.
ERIC COHEN
Remembrances of Irving Kristol, who died in September, have tended to emphasize his intellectual journey from the left to the right. But what emerges most powerfully from almost seven decades of writings is Kristol's exceptionally consistent view of the world — a view with much to tell us about our country and its prospects.
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