Word: social
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Part of his argument rests on a deep concern about "intergenerational equity." There are "better ways to spend money than indefinitely extending life," he charges. Long treatment of the elderly drains funds from the health needs of other groups and from urgent social problems. He also has withering views about many of the non-ill elderly: the "young-old" who deny age and indulge an "it's-my-turn" attitude. Their lives, says Callahan crustily, would gain meaning "if instead of taking a cruise, they work for a cause...
...puts artificial reproduction and genetics at the top of his list of emerging concerns. The possibility of selecting a child's sex, he contends, has "profound social implications." Advances in genetic screening that identifies whether the unborn individual will be subject to heart disease or cancer or schizophrenia raise a new round of issues. Would altering the defective genes in utero be ethically permissible, given the risk of unforeseen results for future generations? The moral dilemmas spawned by the high-tech world of biomedicine -- closer to salvation or Pandora's box? -- are sufficient to keep Callahan and his Hastings associates...
...deficits are the product of a unique American decade of budget deadlock, unfettered spending and unprecedented borrowing. President Reagan, for his part, fought bitterly against tax increases and cuts in the defense budget when both seemed called for. The Democrats, for their part, were slow to compromise on social spending and, like the Republicans, cherished their pork-barrel projects. Corporate America, which had grown content with its domestic marketplace, aggravated the trade deficit by its lack of motivation to sell products abroad. Consumers added to the trouble by developing a ravenous taste for imported goods and credit-card spending...
...trillion) has mounted, since interest payments on old borrowings are crowding out other items. Net interest outlays increased from 9% of the budget in fiscal 1980 to 14% in 1986, or $136 billion. Such uncontrollable expenditures, along with the Administration's determination to spare large categories like defense and Social Security, have forced budget cutters "to work in an impossibly small corner covering only 30% of the spending total," observes TIME Correspondent Lawrence Malkin in his recent book, The National Debt. A frustrated Pete Domenici, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee during 1981, told Reagan...
Perhaps the most insidious growth in the budget has come in payments to middle- and upper-class citizens, a type of handout that typically carries no test of need. Social Security payments have increased 17% between 1981 and 1986, to $198.8 billion, even after adjustment for inflation. Many entitlements rise automatically because they are indexed to inflation...