Word: basics
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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That prospect worries older people as well as the young. In fact the reason Social Security is unlikely to ignite an age war is that many elderly people acknowledge its flaws and admit the system needs to be changed, while many young people support its basic principles. Even some lobbyists for the aged privately accept the need to adjust Social Security, by raising the age of eligibility or taxing benefits for the wealthy, as part of a drastic deficit- reduction plan. While many retirees defend Social Security, they are horrified by the legacy of a $2 trillion debt they will...
...groups is difficult and awkward by nature because by setting a group apart one takes on the role of observer and judge. This role is not assumed by choice but prescribed by the subject matter. Ethnicity is a difficult subject to treat because people are afraid to confront the basic fact that people are different. Some of them are more advantaged than others by whatever accidents of circumstance place their ethnic group in their socioeconomic context. Any class on immigration and ethnicity must examine these differences...
Despite their profit-making ability, Wasserstein and Perella were unable to resolve a basic tension between the competing demands of First Boston's investment-banking and trading departments. During the bull-market days of the early 1980s, trading departments grew in size and influence because of their steady profit stream. But since traders are now risking large amounts of capital in increasingly volatile markets, investment bankers argue that the money would be better spent to finance ventures that lately have produced more reliable income. Dealmakers like Wasserstein and Perella are especially eager to become merchant bankers, who use their...
...soldiers spent their four months of basic training learning to fight enemy armies, not to police occupied lands or control riots. The troops have also labored under a series of ambiguous orders as their bewildered generals struggled to find policies that worked. Though Israeli leaders insist that the soldiers are supposed to open fire only when their lives are endangered and beat Palestinians only when confronted, inexperienced conscripts find it hard to define those conditions precisely. And while military leaders now insist that there was no blanket order to administer indiscriminate beatings, the soldiers in the field and the Palestinians...
...Arias plan has become the great totem of the current Nicaragua debate. But it is no substitute for an American foreign policy. Americans still have to ask themselves the basic questions. Questions of national interest: Can the U.S. risk the domination of Central America by a Soviet client state? And questions of national purpose: Is it right for the U.S. to support a guerrilla force fighting a Leninist dictatorship? "Central American" answers to these questions are conflicting and cacophonous. In deciding its own answers, ! America might want to listen to various of these voices. It is not obliged...