Comment

...Even the mass media, which all too often take their marching orders from the Administration, especially when it comes to matters of so-called national security, have scorned the "peacekeeper" label as absurd...

...A Hard Right Below the Belt When a long-distance runner, overcome by exertion, collapses and dies—it has been known to happen—does anyone call for a ban on the blood-sport of running...

...Even more serious than the rejection of the President's amiable new name for the MX superboondoggle is the indication that Americans are fed up with the Administration's obsessive interest in accelerating the nuclear arms race...

...Big Wheels Get Their Way Commenting in this space last month on the so-called jobs and public works bills sponsored by Congressional Republicans and Democrats, we noted that the prime beneficiary of such legislation would be the national auto-highway-housing complex, which would derive higher profits from the new public subsidies...

...Who shall make such decisions...

...Seven years ago, Barbara Koeppel wrote in The Progressive, "Getting old in America is a rip-off...

...The old are cheated by a Social Security system which promises golden years but delivers endless deprivations...

...Ultimately, we must introduce rational planning and social control to these areas of basic human need if we want to establish and sustain a stable, sound system of public pensions...

...Nobody seems to have followed his cue, except for White House and Pentagon flacks and a few Republican pols...

...Without substantial changes in the fiscal 1984 budget . . . weapons-buying plans will be locked in for most of this decade...

...But now, the Reagan Administration is attempting to close the budget deficit by withdrawing benefits from a larger, less impoverished segment of the population...

...we had no inkling of an extra sweetener the President and Congress had in mind for the trucking industry...

...One such reform would be to devise a genuinely progressive tax to finance benefits...

...As such deals become common, it will be even clearer that economic justice in our society depends heavily on the nature of government intervention...

...In the months to come, its organizers hope to enlist a growing number of Americans in a program of action that ranges from educational assistance to passive resistance...

...Richard Nixon, another landslide victor in 1972 (five months after Watergate), resigned less than two years later, barely in time to avoid impeachment...

...Furthermore, the American worker, unlike the European counterpart, finances the Social Security system by means of a regressive payroll tax that takes a flat 6.7 per cent of each worker's pay—up to the first $32,000 of earnings...

...One bargain orchestrated by New York City's Municipal Assistance Corporation, for example, preserved jobs for city employees, but at a high cost to them: Workers were required to use union pension fund assets to purchase municipal bonds, take sharp wage and salary cuts, and accept stricter work rules...

...military, economic, and political intervention as neither necessary nor desirable, and a "party of war" willing to push the arms race to its ultimate extreme...

...medical technologists will surely refine and improve them...

...He had every reason to assume that the tried and true tactics of the past would suffice once again, so he invoked a menacing Soviet "superiority" fostered by years of reckless U.S...

...Is handwringing our only recourse...

...What can anyone do about it...

...Today, the system is in a crisis that is sure to result in increasing the burden on workers and reducing the benefits available to pensioners in greatest need...

...One other aspect of the truckers' amendment was instructive: It showed that all of Washington's pious rhetoric about New Federalism is mere blather when states' rights come up against corporate interests...

...The result can only be wider resistance...

...Has Cosell, who will continue to broadcast some fights for ABC television—for loyalty's sake, if not for the sake of his seven-figure salary—ever called for a ban on coal mining after a major mine disaster...

...From the outset, Franklin D. Roosevelt insisted that general revenues could not be used to finance Social Security benefits...

...small wonder that Reagan is disappointed...

...Four states now ban these highway behemoths, but they are certain to drop their objections at once...

...He portrayed us as helplessly exposed to an assault that might be launched through something called the window of vulnerability...

...One of the choristers was James J. Kilpatrick, the conservative columnist who will rationalize and defend almost any corporate assault on human health and safety...

...When the President submits his new budget to Congress, it is expected to include almost $250 billion for the military—a record increase from this year's $208 billion...

...Elsewhere in this issue, we have a report on recent developments in the nuclear-free-zone campaign, which appears to be capturing the attention and imagination of many communities...

...Less certain, however, is whether medical practitioners will put aside their euphoria over this technical triumph to consider its ramifications...

...And another fundamental issue is involved: High-technology cures inevitably take control of our health out of our own hands...

...The cost of implanting an artificial heart is one such question: It puts such operations beyond the reach of most Americans...

...There is no evidence that boxers, if properly trained and supervised, are subject to more serious injuries than are participants in other sports...

...the Center refuses to perform transplants on persons older than fifty, and Clark is sixty-one...

...In an article in the January 10-17 issue of The New Republic, billed as the longest piece published in that journal's history, Leon Wieseltier does his best to allay the anxieties of those of us who have come to understand the scope of the nuclear menace...

...As the number of workers declines in relation to the elderly population, Congress and the National Commission on Social Security Reform are considering such steps as cutting back on Social Security cost-of-living adjustments and speeding up projected increases in payroll taxes...

...Weinberger can just hold on during 1983, despite the political pressures caused by rising deficits and joblessness, it wilt be too late for their critics to do much more than wring their hands about Pentagon spending...

...In an excellent article for The Village Voice, Jack Newfield showed how boxing's problems are rooted in the lust for profits among sleazy promoters and greedy broadcasters...

...The social democratic legacy in Western Europe includes pensions that approach 80 per cent of the take-home pay a worker earned just before retirement...

...Still, it is comforting to note that the President pulled out all the stops to rally the people behind his military goals...

...The procedure raised questions about the purposes of modern medicine—questions that it may be impossible to answer fully, but that are worth considering nonetheless...

...Another way, surely, is to look at the way it treats its old people—especially those who are doubly burdened by age and poverty...

...That Tangled, Tattered Safety Net Studies recently released by the Congressional Budget Office and the Urban Institute, a private nonprofit organization, statistically document the Reagan Administration's redistribution of wealth— from the poor to the rich—through tax and budget cuts...

...It is a seductive position, for it allows us to go about our daily business confident that all will turn out for the best in this best of all possible worlds...

...With the help of surgeons at the University of Utah, Clark demonstrated that a human being can be kept alive by a device manufactured to replicate the functions of the most vital organ...

...According to the studies, the two million American families that live precariously balanced just above the poverty line will suffer a 4 per cent cut in real income by 1984, while families earning $80,000 or more per year will reap substantial benefits from the Administration's policies...

...disarmament...

...When a young Korean boxer named Duk Koo Kim died of injuries sustained in the ring, there was an immediate, predictable chorus of demands that boxing be outlawed...

...Are we really helpless in the face of that threat...

...Among families living on retirement income, the top 20 per cent (with incomes of $30,000 a year or more) collect 30 per cent of all Social Security benefits...

...In the lowest pay brackets, deductions for Social Security can substantially exceed income-tax withholding...

...The pioneering heart operation marks a good time to begin doing so...

...Also contributing to heightened public disaffection is the Administration's obvious ineptitude in deciding how it will allocate the huge sums it claims the Pentagon urgently needs...

...The surging peace movement in Western Europe, the nuclear weapons freeze campaign and other antiwar stirrings in this country, the Soviet Union's arms control overtures and the cavalier manner in which they have been rejected out of hand in Washington, the Reagan Administration's casual chatter about "survivable" and even "winnable" nuclear war—all these have certainly been factors in undermining public confidence in the Administration's plans for ensuring our survival...

...We are confident those lifesavers will keep pumping blood for a long time...

...When a polo player falls off his pony and is trampled by the hooves in hot pursuit, does anyone propose that polo be proscribed...

...The Vietnam war was another such test, and up to a point, at least, the Left succeeded in mobilizing a significant resistance...

...But to speak of a free market today is clearly absurd...

...How can we rise to the challenge...

...But there is no evidence that such deals will be beneficial to all or even most Americans...

...the latest survey shows such support now stands at 17 per cent...

...The notorious highway lobby still calls the shots on transportation policy, and gets its way even when its demands are absurdly self-contradictory...

...Do you suppose such enterprising journalists as Kilpatrick and Cosell might help us all to understand the role of networks and promoters in the tragedy of Duk Koo Kim...

...these were to be based entirely on worker and employer contributions, in deference to the notion of preserving "work incentives...

...In the same front-page article in which they described the growing sentiment for sharp reductions in Reagan's proposed level of military spending, The Wall Street Journal's Walter S. Mossberg and Rich Jaroslovsky went on to say: "But such reversal doesn't seem to be in the cards...

...If our economy were to provide more workers with opportunities to exercise real skills and take part in real decision-making, the pressures for retirement would diminish and older workers could assume useful and satisfying roles...

...An immediate response to the Social Security crisis would be the institution of reforms designed to make the system more equitable...

...The growing attention paid to the politics of income redistribution and taxation could spell the end of popular and official faith in what the President affectionately calls the "magic" of the market...

...If that is the test, our society fails...

...But even such changes would not address the more basic faults of the Social Security system...

...As it turned out, we didn't know the half of it...

...It has always worked, but it doesn't seem to work any more...

...The demands on the system will increase as the costs of medical care, home heating, transportation, and other essentials continue to rise...

...For a depressingly large number of workers, the satisfaction of working resides entirely in the paycheck, and the desire for early retirement is strong...

...By all accounts, Mr...

...A medical establishment that has grown fat on chemicals and technological wizardry is not willing to empower people so they can prevent illness...

...The actuarial foundation of the Social Security program has been the assumption—erroneous, as it turned out—that an ever-expanding labor force would always be willing and able to pay the premiums needed to sustain current benefits...

...Reagan backers generally respond to such embarrassing statistics by arguing that the President's policies merely shift income the way the "free market" would if it were unfettered by Government regulation...

...Under the tax bill signed into law in December, the Secretary of Transportation is empowered to deny Federal highway funds to any state that prohibits large double-trailer trucks on its roads...

...Reagan's ambitious military buildup is too costly and should be cut back sharply," The Wall Street Journal reported at year's end...

...Has Kilpatrick...

...It means that Reagan, his successors, and local officials may find it necessary to negotiate economic and political bargains with some disaffected sectors of their constituencies...

...Social Security has always been described, therefore, as an "insurance" system into which workers pay premiums in order to extract eventual benefits...

...The President, we're told in dispatches from the White House, is disappointed that we haven't all followed his cue in calling the MX missile "the peacekeeper...

...The industry's price for support of a bill providing funds for road repairs was the unchecked use of heavy trucks that devastate the roads...

...Admittedly, Social Security has never been an egalitarian scheme...

...Reagan and Mr...

...Those who participate have every right to call themselves peacekeepers...

...Their work is certainly less hazardous than coal mining...

...Right after Reagan's election, a Business Week public opinion poll found more than 75 per cent supporting further increases in military spending...

...Welfare policies play an increasingly crucial role in income distribution— one understood by more and more Americans, thanks to the current attempts to slash the safety net...

...The device itself costs $16,000, and although mass production may eventually bring the price of hearts down, they certainly will not soon become available to all who need them...

...peace movement...

...The double-trailer amendment was pushed by the truckers, of course...

...One must question the rationale behind frantic and costly efforts to sustain life at high emotional and physical costs to patient and family alike...

...Given a projected Federal deficit of about $200 billion, all but the most fanatical saber-rattlers (and the most avaricious military contractors) are bound to have misgivings...

...He can now ask the Wizard of Oz for either a transplant or an artificial heart, the kind of device implanted last December in a Seattle dentist, Barney Clark...

...Most retired workers have drawn benefits that far exceed their contributions...

...Thus, proposals to tax unemployment benefits and medical insurance premiums have been perceived by the middle and lower middle classes as direct attacks on their standard of living...

...If the people no longer buy Reagan's rationale (which was also the essential rationale of his predecessors) for an arms race without end, what can they do about it...

...in the United States, Social Security retirement benefits for the average blue-collar worker are at barely half that level...

...The great danger, obviously, is not just that weapons-buying plans will be locked in, but that the entire planet will be locked in to a spiraling escalation of nuclear weaponry that can only push us even closer to the brink of catastrophe...

...The insurance companies, the physicians, or the sick and sick-to-be...

...Reagan is probably blaming those "paid political propagandists" to whom he has made murky reference in the past...

...Lyndon Johnson, elected by an overwhelming margin in 1964, couldn't even face the prospect of running for another term in 1968...

...In Barney Clark's case, administrators at the Stanford Medical Center effectively denied him a heart transplant...

...The program was devised in the Great Depression to head off more radical income-redistribution proposals...

...Certainly there are some who would have us think so...

...too much Federal money is at stake...

...For 1983 is the year of decision for the Reagan defense program...

...None of these activities will, by itself, stop or even delay the relentless march toward nuclear Armageddon, but taken together they can constitute a mighty force...

...It is the formula that was first enunciated at the outset of the Cold War by the late Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, an architect of the postwar "bipartisan" foreign policy: If you want Americans to assume a heavy burden of military spending, scare the hell out of them...

...This renunciation of the free market's "invisible hand" helps ensure that the level of political alienation does not become intolerable...

...In that sense, boxers and miners are victims of the same sort of exploitation...

...Reagan and his long-time adviser, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, are bent on constituting a majority of two to keep largely intact their $1.6 trillion five-year military spending plan...

...Another was the ineffable Howard Cosell...

...The word is available, and it suits people, not missiles...

...From time to time an issue arises that calls for a swift and total response if we are to avert disaster...

...In the past, some workers have been willing to support cuts in programs that did not directly affect them, such as food stamps or Aid to Families with Dependent Children—programs designed primarily to assist the poorest Americans...

...Among business leaders, in public opinion polls, in Congress, and even within the Administration, there is a widespread feeling that Mr...

...But such considerations are far beyond the scope of those trying to manage what is sure to be a continuing Social Security crisis...

...Heart of Gold The Tin Man no longer has to settle for a make-believe heart...

...Under the heading "The Great Nuclear Debate," Wieseltier identifies what he clearly regards as two extreme positions—a "party of peace" that calls for disarmament and rejects U.S...

...Such terminology has been politically useful in fending off attacks on the system, but it has been highly misleading nonetheless...

...But before we permit ourselves to be carried away by these self-congratulatory musings, we must ask—So what...

...Presumably, Federal legislation could force medical authorities to select patients in a democratic fashion—say, by lottery— but the application of such elaborate technologies inevitably increases the areas of private life that must be subjected to detailed administrative rules...

...Experts say that if Mr...

...Astronomic military spending alone constitutes a direct Federal intervention that pads the pockets of some Americans at the expense of others...

...The most affluent workers pay the lowest proportion of their income in Social Security taxes but derive the lion's share of the benefits...

...Like many other welfare programs in our society—the Federal income tax deduction for mortgage interest, for example—it is a subsidy that is skewed to be particularly helpful to the middle and upper classes...

...Halting the arms race is the most important test of all, with the most critical consequences hinging on the outcome...

...It may be that 1983 will, indeed, turn out to be the year of decision—not just for Ronald Reagan's military spending plans, but for war or peace, for nuclear annihilation or the survival of human life on this planet...

...And the betting is that they will succeed...

...Don't hold your breath...

...He charged, vaguely but repeatedly, that sinister foreign forces, presumably headquartered in the Kremlin, were pulling the strings of the emerging U.S...

...These dilemmas are not easy to resolve, but up to now, health professionals and political leaders have conspicuously avoided addressing the limits and social implications of medicine...

...And now it's Ronald Reagan's turn...

...In fact, as former Secretary of Commerce Peter Peterson has accurately noted, Social Security is not an insurance system but a public welfare program...

...On Page 31 of this issue, we take note of a new campaign of nonviolent resistance to nuclear weaponry...

...From the Government's point of view, casting a welfare "safety net" is another necessary intervention into the economy...

...Antisocial Insecurity One way to ascertain whether a society is just, Feodor Dostoyevsky wrote, is to look at the way it treats its prisoners...

...The free market of myth and fantasy has precious little to do with it...

...Lane Kirkland, president of the AFL-CIO and a member of the National Commission on Social Security Reform, has insisted that early retirement is a particularly urgent cause for blue-collar workers...

...Another would be to subject benefits to income taxation above a given level of total family income...

...The kind of medical intervention celebrated in Salt Lake City is qualitatively different from the basic advances in immunology that have saved millions of lives, even among populations not directly treated...

...Few of us would deny that some forms of medical intervention are desirable, but other forms seem to be nothing more than expensive ways of defying the reality that we all grow old and die...

...Technical workers, for example, are much more likely to benefit from increased Pentagon expenditures than, say, service workers...

...No matter how benefits are financed, Social Security will remain under heavy financial stress in our stagflation economy...

...Who shall benefit from rare or expensive forms of treatment...

...the fiasco over the absurd "densepack" siting system for the MX—er, peacekeeeper—is only the most obvious example...

...The only thing more menacing to our security than nuclear strength is nuclear weakness," Wieseltier insists, offering a blank check to the Reagan Administration...

...No other major industrial democracy treats its elderly poor so shabbily...

...In place of these radical doctrines, Wieseltier offers a ringing, though unpersuasive, defense of nuclear deterrence, the doctrine that got us into precisely the predicament we are in...

...Much of the loss of enthusiasm for higher military spending stems, of course, from the sorry state of the economy and the growing awareness that the Pentagon's bloated budget is not an aid to recovery but a drag...

...Jimmy Carter assumed office in 1977 prattling about the "goodness" of the American people, but by the time he ran for reelection we had gone bad—bad enough to turn him out of office...

...The beginning of the Cold War in the late 1940s, and the attendant witchhunts here at home, constituted one such test, and the American Left failed: Much of it caved in to the pressure from the Right...

...Even more fundamentally, we must address the breakdown of traditional supports for the elderly within the family and the community...

...With freewheeling double-trailers roaming all fifty states, more costly road repairs are in the offing—drawing funds from more rational modes of transportation...