Word: trusted
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...recent book For Common Things: Irony, Trust and Commitment in America Jedediah Purdy '97 has written a sermon urging us to take seriously serious things. Above all, the author writes, acknowledge your responsibility to the communities you live in, then shoulder it. For those who want to argue, consistently, against this imperative, there are several vacant cabins in Montana. Jobs on Wall Street await those who do not debate the point. But probably most of us think that working for the common good is not an altogether bad thing. Some of us might admit as much in public...
...These are not in themselves bad gods and they certainly are not new gods either. One must judge a deity by its martyrs. Many might die for democracy; very few, I think, for the 106th Congress. And how must a courtier live? He must survive by intrigue and scant trust, through deference to the king and his gods, by keeping out of the fields and sun. By, in short, the mean ends Purdy deplores...
This has happened without debate or controversy. Where are all the people who have spent the past decades shrieking that the trust fund meant Social Security was self-supporting and that therefore benefits were beyond dispute? The argument was always nonsense. The people paying in money are different from the people drawing it out, so the size of the pay-in says nothing about the justice of the payout. And where are the trust-fund zealots now? If it's immoral bordering on treasonous to raid the Social Security trust fund for other government purposes (though all that means...
...Security for general government operations is especially weird because what is actually happening is the opposite. Both parties have agreed in principle that some part of the future government surplus should go to saving Social Security. In other words, general tax revenues will be poured into the Social Security trust fund and used to finance benefit checks...
...proper way to save Social Security is a mild pruning of benefits for the better-off half of the retired population, in order to keep the trust fund growing for future retirees. If a budget surplus actually does materialize, worthwhile goals like health care for the uninsured or--yes--even a tax cut ought to come before pouring more money into the trust fund. Where is the courageous politician who will say it's time to stop Social Security from raiding the government...